Me, passing through Oudtshoorn - and a shoulder throw I was thinking of purchasing

God - I must do something about that skin of mine!

What were we thinking?

The End Conscription Campaign (ECC) is about to celebrate, in rather grand style, its 25th anniversary. For those too young to remember, the ECC was formed as a platform for white (male, as they all were at the time) conscripts to resist conscription into, what was then, the South African Defence Force (SADF). It was never a large organisation, but it sure as hell was a brave one! Names such as Ivan Toms, David Bruce, Saul Batzofin, Charles Bester, Mike Evans, Billy Paddock, Richard Steele, Peter Hathorn and Brett Myrdal immediately come to mind.

It was not an easy thing to stand up against virtually all of one’s cohorts and face the real wrath of the state. These, amongst others, did just that. And their contribution is certainly worth saluting and reflecting upon. For myself, I took a different path. I left the country and went to live with my then spouse, in Lesotho. For the record, if there is one, I thought it might be interesting to reflect on some of the impulses which made me do that.

I did not come from any kind of activist background. I grew up in a white neighbourhood, with standard middle class values and perspectives on life. Amongst some of these “values” was the firm belief that white people were better than black people. That was just a fact of human existence. No one, in our neighbourhood apparently, ever questioned that. (Except perhaps Helen Suzman. And the Harmels, who also lived close by. And Helen Joseph, who was always under house arrest, but lived up the road. And Eli and Violet Weinberg, who lived a few houses away, and who worried my mother, because they sent us Christmas cards, even though they were Jewish.) Generally speaking though – no-one questioned the basic presupposition, that Black people were inferior to white people and that whatever it took, we need to keep them off our patch.

So, what I remember is, that although there was never any question about this belief, dotted around us were these strange people, who for some strange reason, did not appear to agree with that idea. We lived in parallel universes. My parents, good people, not very educated, under exposed, and both of them having run away from being classified “coloured” in Cape Town, were not going to explore the possibility that blacks might be anything other than second-rate citizens. Neither their world, nor their upbringing would allow them to do that. They were captives of apartheid. They knew very well that it was to their benefit to keep it going and to protect it. So when the time came for their sons to get conscripted, they had no qualms about it at all.

My brother, 10 years old than me, and not one for any form of conflict, did his duty. I went as a child to his passing out parade. There was lots of marching and lots of guns and lots of canon-firing. He had “done his duty”. After that he went to work as a Charted Accountant and was annually “called up” for camps thereafter, to keep the military machinery turning and his mind focussed on the fight against Communism.

But I was always rather different from him. I have always been told that I am a natural rebel – a charge I do not accept, but it does allow some easy explanation of my actions. It was not that I had come into contact with Communists, or ANC people, or even the white left. My ex-wife, Jane, and I decided to leave the country, when all other options ended, because we were young and because, being young, we could take risks that would not have been possible if we were not.

That was fundamental. We were young. We were rebellious – but not in the extreme. And both of us shared the highly extraordinary idea, that the SADF was not fighting a just, nor a necessary war. And that, fundamentally, apartheid was wrong. I can’t even remember how we arrived at that position, because neither of us were particularly active in politics at university.

I remember being extremely irritated by Guy Burger – now professor of Journalism at Rhodes University – (which is where we were) – because of his grim and unyielding political perspective. I remember fasting for 8 days in a little group, led by my Philosophy lecturer, James Mulder – as a demonstration to Jimmy Kruger (then minister of Police) that Steve Biko could easily have fasted for 8 days and not died – as was being claimed. But that was about it. One or two skirmishes with the police, demonstrating about something or other – but it was all playful, rather than anything in any way serious.

What did have a fairly profound impact on my life was the Church – both in terms of the liturgy and in terms of the kinds of people I met in it at that time. John Suggit, New Testament Professor. Douglas Bax, who taught me Systematic Theology, together with Felicity Edwards. These were not radicals, theologically or otherwise, but they had a mortal integrity which inevitably led to a sense of and a desire for justice. Alongside them, of course, in the higher political realm, were voices like Desmond Tutu and Allan Boesak, both of whom had profound influences on me.

And when we took the decision to leave the country, we knew, for ourselves, that we were crossing a Rubicon, because there would be no going back. I wish, so very much, that more white people could have had that experience. Because I know for myself, that had I stayed behind and gone into the army, and just put up with it, I would know a great deal less now than had I not had that exile experience. It is something for which I am eternally grateful. And I think it was so meaningful and important precisely because I was not enough politically involved prior to leaving. I simply could not have begun to understand anything of what the consequences were going to be on my life and how I would be remoulded because of it.

When I listen to many white people talking today – new and “born again” democrats – who have so much to criticise the present government about, and so many opinions on so many things – I just feel extremely grateful that I had the experience I did have. I do not feel superior. I am, really, anything but self-satisfied. But I can say this without any shadow of a doubt - I feel immensely privileged to have experienced what I did. And sad for those that did not have the same kind of experience.

This is one of the big problems about our so-called “miracle” revolution. There was no re-education of people. So what happened, by and large, is that we all just carried on, basically unchanged. Whites, breathed a sigh of relief and realised that if they just shifted over slightly from their hard fought position of extraordinary privilege, they could carry on fairly undisturbed. At the same time they started the petulance and insistent moaning which has characterised the group, since liberation perched, as they are, on the summit of Mount Integrity.

Blacks, on the other hand, started heading for the trough and their snouts have been firmly buried there ever since. We all erected a smiling, dancing figure of Mandela in the business hub of the country; Desmond Tutu called us the rainbow nation; everything was just hunky dory.

Certain topics became untouchable – like “culture” and “socialism” and intellectual debate got dumbed down so completely, that we have lost any inkling of what it means. American culture and Chinese goods swept through the country. And high levels of crime, even in the highest places, became the accepted norm. Twenty-five years later, that is where we find ourselves. I suppose it could be a lot worse, but it certainly could be a whole lot better.

What were we thinking back then? I know this much. We wanted a country we could all be proud to belong to. We wanted a non-racial and non-sexist country. We wanted a country where we could live without fear and where the poor, especially, were given houses, education, access to health care, jobs, decent living conditions and security. We wanted peace. That is what we wanted.

And have we got these things now? Not enough, is my view. Not enough. And the clock ticks on. And I can only but ask - what if we reach 20 years of democracy and there are still people with no houses, no jobs, no education, no sense of self-worth, because of the terrible toll that corruption, greed and government inefficiency exact? Do we honestly think they will just keep quiet?

Low Tech Anti-hijack device

Spotted in Johannesburg, Thursday 22 October 2009

The same old story

So, a naked hairy white man enters the steam room at the Morningside Gym in upmarket Johannesburg. He greets me. Unusual! Not what one has come to expect in Cairp Tahn, but anyway. So far so good.

His opening remark is something like this. "They", he says, gesturing in the general direction of the sound coming from the television outside, "They are kicking out those counsellors in Mapumalanga (sic!) just to replace them with more corrupt counsellors". I keep quiet. I think Oh God! What did I do? Why was I born? And I wish I was dead - all of these simultaneously.

But he continues. "Its bladdy disgusting! It was never like this before!" Now this is where I made my mistake. I engaged. I said "Pretty much the same as the previous government." - a fatal error. He reluctantly conceded the point, however "it was done with more subtlety", he said - as though that made it OK! "There were never any of these service delivery strikes before", he averred. "No", I said, "because the previous government just shot protesters dead!"

He agreed, albeit reluctantly. But then he went on, musing on the possibility that perhaps "they" need a bit more heavy-handedness than they are getting at the moment. "Oh?" I said, "like shooting them dead?"

He went on. "They" burn their buildings. "They" don't appreciate anything that gets given to them. "They" mess everything up. By this stage I just kept quiet. It seems nothing changes. I wanted to ask him if he would be having the same conversation if I happened to be black. I wanted to ask him why the buildings "they" were destroying were "theirs" and not "ours"? I wanted to ask him if he would have preferred an all-out racial war, rather than a negotiated solution which guaranteed that the former oppressor lost nothing. But I didn't. I just dripped quietly and said nothing.

And as it happens, that day was also when the Rector of the Free State, Jonathan Jansen withdrew charges against the white students who, last year, humiliated workers at the Reitz residence of that University - apparently urinating on meat and then forcing the black workers to eat it on video. He did so "in the spirit of reconciliation". He then went further by inviting the offending students to complete their studies at the university. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu immediately congratulated him on his action? I think he was wrong to do so.

When a black person sees, in their mind's eye, a white student urinating on food and forcing an older black woman to eat it, be under no illusion, that incident is not seen as isolated. It is seen as just another act of brutality and humiliation, which has centuries of history as a precursor. And it awakens all of that. Every act of racist brutality. Every act of humiliation. Every pain and all the suffering caused by apartheid. It is not just an isolated event. And it will not do to say, "Oh, we need to forgive!" because it is blacks apparently, who need to do the forgiving, and whites can just go on humiliating, with impunity. It will not do!

Besides anything else, you can't forgive on someone else's behalf.

A lesson from Silkworms

I have banned any and all additional living things in this house. This is not Johannesburg. This is Cairp Tahn and houses are built on postage stamps here – given the fact that we are all crammed into a tiny little area around the mountain.

Now I’m not complaining, you understand. It is just that one has to cut one’s animal kingdom according to ones available space – that’s just the way it is. My partner Leon, who has this need to foster everything that breathes, would happily incorporate cats, dogs, hamsters, birds and fish – not to mention more children – into our environment. But I put my stiletto firmly down on this score. I said no more living creatures!

It’s not that I don’t like living things. I do. I have had my fair share of attachments to cats, dogs, budgerigars, etc – but not for here. That’s all I am saying. So when the kids look at me with big brown eyes and say “Daddie, please can we have a dog?” I say “No!” When they beg for a fluffy little kitten, I say “No!” When they look longingly at a fish tank, I say “No!”

They have learnt their lesson and they know that I am serious. Last year, they thought they had all trumped me. I was told that there was a lame bird which had been found. I looked into the box to see the creature which Joshua, the youngest, was force feeding and saw that it was a bloody Starling – the avian equivalent of a rat. I threw it over the fence. They knew I was serious about this thing after that.

But then I relented.

Silkworms, I was told, don’t make a mess. Silkworms can be kept in a box. Every child needs to have Silkworms in order to understand the meaning of life. So, Leon went onto the internet and found some clever entrepreneurial child down the road who was selling them by the barrel-load for seemingly low prices.

They were fetched. They started eating Mulberry leaves by the sack full . One child wouldn’t touch them. The other wouldn’t leave them alone. That lasted for a few days. Then I started noticing that the leaves which they were supposed to be feeding on were looking a bit like that stuff they put around Sushi – rather dry. The poor things were starting to chew on the cardboard box in desperation. Why? Because the novelty had been lost somewhere – and boredom with the endlessly munching creatures had begun to set in. The childminder was sent out, with a child, to get the leaves – and so it continued.

Then the cocooning started. Some of the worms escaped and started making cocoons on the floor, on the wall, on the furniture. Then the 2 week wait and finally those dreadful moths emerged, buzzing and flapping and mating and producing millions of eggs.

Oh yes, there have been one or two discussions about the cycle of life. But not enough, I would say, to justify all the effort. And now, my question is – do we wait for the eggs to hatch next year? Or do we turf them now and just pretend that is where the cycle of life ended? Or should we just buy a nice, clean, worry free – book? Um.. gosh – what a difficult choice! From now on, I am sticking to my rule!

Whalemeat Rissoles

In her younger days, my cousin was a very elegant woman indeed. She tells me now, aged 87, that she always had an inferiority complex about the way she looked – which is odd, because she always looked extremely elegant. But complexes aren’t based on fact, usually – anyway, I digress.

She is about to move into a frail care unit and so she is turfing out a whole range of stuff she once used but now no longer needs. To me came two cookbooks “The Royal Hostess – South Africa’s own cookbook”, the first version (dated 1953), calls itself. The second, the 10th edition revised – is dated 1978.

It was recipes for Whalemeat, which caught my eye. The book does a little preamble to the recipes which reads as follows:

“During the War years, whalemeat (sic – no capital even!) was introduced in England to supplement the very meagre amount of animal protein supplied by the few ounces of weekly meat ration. With proper handling and cooking, British housewives found they could produce nourishing and tasty meals from Whalemeat. South Africa too has had to fall back on whalemeat during the severe meat shortages we experience each winter...”

The preamble continues:

"The following suggestions and recipes may tempt housewives to try whalemeat for themselves, and, if they follow the instructions carefully”, the writer assures us, they will be “agreeably surprised at the appetizing results”.

Just in case you may have wondered about it, the taste of Whalemeat is described as “a blend of steak and liver” which is hard to distinguish from “ordinary meat” if correctly prepared.

So that is what the fuss is about in Japan! That is why they need as much Whale hunting as they do “for scientific purposes” of course. For the “blend of steak and liver” taste.

If any Japanese readers (or indeed other Whale eaters) are looking for the “proper methods of handling, and suitable recipes for the preparation of this cheap yet valuable protein food”, just let me know. I will be happy to share with them Whale meat recipe tips from the Royal Hostess.

The Amazing "Egg Man" and the equally amazing "Chickenman" Mkhize

Gregory Da Silva, originally from Benin, is the Amazing Egg Man. I have seen him wandering around Greenmarket Square, in the centre of Cairp Tahn, for all of two years now.

On his head, he carries this extraordinary construction. It changes shape and look, according to whatever is “on the go” at the time. The FIFA 2010 World Cup, is clearly the theme of the present construction.

But it is not just the height of the thing which is extraordinary – it is the actual concept. He has stuck half egg-shells - (as you can see, many of them!) onto this headpiece and it is this which has given him the title of “Egg Man”.

It has to be said that the whole experience is very odd. He chats endlessly into a telephone – you get snippets of conversation, and he is usually talking to Mandela. Or Helen Zille, the present Premier of the Western Cape. Mandela, (or the Premier) appear to be asking his how he is. He is always well and apparently completely unconcerned by the fact that he is being watched by small crowds of incredulous people. He chats on and on. He has the air of someone busy and going about his business. It is not a cell phone that he is speaking into – it is an old fashioned telephone set, plugged into no wall socket.

The object of the whole thing, which he does quite successfully, is to get people to take a picture of him and for that they should pay him something, which he collects on a flat grass plate. He never demands money. He just holds the grass plate and manages to not only balance the contraption on his head, but to walk in an easy carefree lope on the cobbled surface of Greenmarket Square. At the same time he also manages to take the money off the grass plate and deposit it somewhere on his person for safekeeping.

He reminds me of another (now deceased) character I saw in Pietermaritzburg many years ago - Chickenman Mkhize. Apparently, Chickenman, before becoming badly epileptic, used to work in a local Dairy. When he was medically boarded, he set up outside the Tatum Art Gallery where he displayed a weird mixture of mobile wire figurines and miniature road signs. These road signs were often very funny indeed, because the letters were often oddly arranged, forcing the viewer to actively engage with the piece. He would take orders, and you would write what you wanted the sign to say on a piece of paper. What he made out of it, was almost never what you wrote.

One of his favourite signs was “GONET OPOT” – which was the first of his signs which caught my attention, and had me needing to stop the car because I was laughing so much.

Another was “BEWAREO FJOGGERS” – which also had me laughing till the tears flowed. I had him make the one pictured above “SAFESE XZONE”, because I was working in the field of HIV/AIDS at the time – and we had it made into a T-shirt. (I remember paying R10 for it in the 1990s. It is now worth considerably more!)

The media he used was almost always, recycled material. He himself had strange, unwashed looking. He had a wildness about him, which was fairly frightening. But boy! Did his work make me laugh! We often would discuss whether or not he actually knew why his work made people laugh – we never asked him.

Gregory da Silva, the Egg Man, has something of that same strangeness about him. His laughter is staged. His teeth available for the camera (in a way that Chickenman’s were not), his “conversation” peculiar. But they are both brilliant artists. They force you to notice them. They make you stop what you were doing and engage, even if it is to choose to ignore them. To me, they are completely amazing!

Return to Gay Eden

For the first time in a very, very, very, long time, I went to what was known in the 1970’s and 1980’s as a “Gay Bar” on Friday night. (I suppose, more correctly, it would be true to say that I went to a Gay Bar on Friday night that fairly closely approximates what I had experienced in the 1970’s and 1980’s). It was the Amsterdam Bar in Cobern Street, in the Cairp Tahn City centre.

Johannesburg in the 1970’s was a fairly difficult place for a Gay teenager to explore sexual orientation. Mostly because there was so little to explore! One heard whisperings of a bar which operated in Hillbrow, called the Butterfly Bar, in the Harrison Reef Hotel (I think by my time, it had been renamed the Skyline Bar). Entering the Amsterdam Bar, the other night made me remember my first experience of the Skyline Bar.

Of course, we are talking here from the hindsight and not inconsiderable experience of some 35 years or so – so I didn’t walk around the block for 15 times, too scared to go in. I wasn’t sweating profusely and wondering whether or not my paisley shirt with fashionably long collar and skin tight light green bellbottoms with a big zip in the front would have the desired impact. No, I just parked outside and went in, taking in the strange drapery on the outside of the building and the gold angel-hair curtain one needed to go through to get inside.

The moment I stepped inside, memories came flooding back to me. Because here, like so many other places I experience in Cairp Tahn, was like walking into a time warp. I remembered the absolute relief I first felt, when entering the Butterfly Bar, all those years ago. To see gay men, in numbers – not just isolated camp queens walking down a street every now again – but clumps of them, gaggles of them sitting around tables, smoking and drinking, laughing carelessly, being at home with themselves. That was a huge and fabulous relief.

The person I went with was a school friend and a regular at the bar. I was jealous of how many people he knew. He waved to this one over there. Told me conspiratorially that that one over on the other side of the bar was trying to “camp him up”. Kissed (dear God, that was a revelation and a half!) another one, who was mincing around in extremely tight pants which showed off every asset he had below his naked belly button.

I was jealous of my friend but extremely relieved for myself. Because at last, after what seemed like years (all 18 of them!) in the wilderness, I had come to a place which I could call my erotic home. And believe me, never a Saturday night would go by, after that, without me being there for at least some portion of it.

The Anaconda Bar, which was, as I remember it, near the Drill Hall, was a far seedier place – and in many ways more outrightly sexual. There was Disco music playing extremely loudly. The place was very dark. The corners all occupied with writhing couples in various states of undress. There was even an outside area where you could get a breath of smokeless air every now and again. It only opened late in the evening, which meant that the crowd would start at the Butterfly Bar and then migrate to the Anaconda.

It was, naturally under Apartheid, a very white world. Yes, it was occasionally raided by the police and these raids were spoken about in hushed tones (as several businessmen blanched and then hastily swallowed their drinks and fled). But generally, it was a fairly safe environment. Or at least, that was my experience of it.

Stepping into the Amsterdam Bar the other night, made me feel like I was back in Hillbrow in the late 1970s for all sorts of reasons. Firstly, the clientele is almost totally white. Secondly, no-one seems to find that fact in any way strange! Thirdly, and this was something I have to say I really enjoyed, there is a real sexual mix of people – I am talking of within the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and (possibly even the Intersex community).

There were a good couple of Drag queens there; Lesbians of various shapes and forms; Leather boys; Fems; Butch boys; Muscle boys – you name it, they were there. Missing were the black boys and girls. And the Coloured boys and girls. And that is a strange, but not untypical thing, in this racially divided city in which I live.

I was told by a much younger nephew, many years ago, that I was really out of date, when I asked airily one day, what had happened to all the gay bars. He said that it was almost as though the distinction had fallen away and that no-one cared anymore whether you were gay or straight. So everyone went everywhere and you danced with who you wanted to dance with. And you kissed whoever you wanted to kiss. I was astonished by this and listened in be-wonderment. How the world has changed, I thought!

Well, I am not sure what clubs or bars he went to, but I would think what he was describing has never really become the norm. Homophobia continues everywhere. And there remains a real need for spaces where gay and lesbian people can just get on with what they do naturally, without having to constantly justify themselves to the hetero-dominant universe. I think we need our own spaces, just like the black management forum needs theirs. And what we do in those spaces has bugger–all to do with anyone else.

Crayfish Curry

The Kreef - Rock Lobster - Crayfish season opens fairly soon in South Africa. This recipe is, without any doubt, the best crayfish curry recipe I have ever tasted. It is really easy to do and the results are amazing!

One word of caution - check that your supplier actually has a licence to catch them and that they are not under-sized. Last year, a work colleague of mine offered to get me Crayfish. I thought the price was rather good (but I'm new to Cairp Tahn - so what did I know?). When they arrived - I saw why. They looked like Langoustines! I will never do that again! I repent in dust and ashes!


Crayfish Curry

1 kg Crayfish tails
2 large onions – finely chopped
2 ripe tomatoes
1 green pepper
10ml crushed garlic
1 chilli
2 t Seafood masala
1t turmeric
1t cumin
1t coriander
Pinch nutmeg and cloves
½ t cinnamon
½ t black pepper
120 ml coconut cream
15 ml lime juice
5 or 6 curry leaves
1t sugar
Salt

Fry onions in a little oil until soft. Puree green pepper, tomato, garlic and chilli. Add to onions and cook for 10 minutes. Add all the other spices, curry leaves, lime juice and sugar and cook for another 10 minutes. Take off heat and add coconut cream. Stir into mixture. Add crayfish in shells into the mixture and cook with lid on over medium heat for 15 minutes.

Serve with rice as follows:

Boil 1 cup of rice with 2 cinnamon sticks, 4 cloves, pinch nutmeg and 5ml turmeric. When done, add drained 250 ml lentils. Salt to taste.

The good teacher

His name is Douglas Bax. In Presbyterian circles, I think he is well known. He is 74 now and was, two weeks ago, hit by a car, riding on his bicycle. There wasn’t much damage. He is fine, bar a couple of bruises.

He was my lecturer at Rhodes University, in the 1970s. His mind was incredibly sharp. His wit timed and impeccable and his critique of the apartheid government, withering. He was one of the first people I had ever encountered, who really taught me how to think. And how to declaim.

I saw the fire in his eyes, when he spoke of things he hated. I saw compassion without weakness. I saw his pain and anguish, as we all considered the tragedy of what was happening around us. And it was he who started my lifelong process of thinking theologically.

If you are not a theologian, if you have not been taught how to think and interpret things theologically, you really will have no idea what I am talking about. That is not an arrogance, or a conceit. It is just the way it is. I have no idea how mathematics works – I can’t get excited by it. I can’t fathom how motor cars operate, and I probably never will. I listen in wonder when my doctor tells me about physiology, but most of it comes out as gobbledegook, so I just nod appreciatively.

But I do understand how theology works, because that is my training. That is the way my thinking happens. I can’t help it. I think theologically, even when I don’t mean to. And Doug Bax was one of the causes of that.

When I first settled in Cairp Tahn, I looked him up in the phone book and called him. Our conversation was extremely brief. “I will come and see you”, he said. That was many, many months ago. And today, he arrived at the gate out of the blue.

We sat comfortably and we spoke long. I hope it is the start of many more. Because what I did not tell him was how profound an influence he had on me, politically, theologically, personally. I doubt he had any idea.

We are strange creatures, are we not? How we are influenced, so easily for good, or for ill? We are lucky, I would say, when our teachers are good.

Confession

The trip from Cairp Tahn to Johannesburg is usually a fairly gruelling 2 hour flight. I do it more times than I enjoy. The plane is usually full and passengers usually fairly bad tempered.

I am reading, at the moment, Wally Lamb's monumental, (and now 10 years old book) - I Know This Much Is True (Harper, London 1999). It is about identical twins, one a paranoid schitzophrenic. It is about love and hate; about love and resentment; about the person we think we are and the person we are made to be. It is the kind of book which takes in huge sweeps of world history, a snapshot of a particular paranoid moment in our collective past and examines the inner depths of a condition as only this man, the author, knows how. You cannot read the book without an extraordinary amount of introspection.

And, sitting on the plane from Cairp Tahn to Johannesburg, I found myself remembering the last time I made sacramental confession to a priest. For those who are not inside this tradition (and I have to say, neither was I at that point!) the whole idea of confessing "sins" to a priest and receiving absolution from God, through him or her, is destinctly peculiar and even mindlessly archaic in a world which is now dominated by psychologists.

When I went for my first confession, I was about to be made Deacon. In preparation for this, I was on a three day silent retreat in a very remote place called Masite, in the tiny Kingdom of Lesotho, where my wife and I had fled to avoid my being called up into the South African Army.

It was in the winter - and believe me - the winters in that tiny, landlocked, extremely mountainous Kingdom can be unbelievably cold. There is a retreat house at Masite, run by the Sisters of the Society of the Precious Blood - an Anglican order. The buildings are made of stone. There is (or at least there was) no electricity. The Chapel was freezing cold, but ethereal in its simple beauty. And on retreat, one arose in what seemed like the middle of the night, teeth chattering, to say the Office of Prime - the first of the liturgical services of the day.

The retreat itself was a silent one. You could read whatever you liked, but you were not allowed to speak. It was before the days of computers, the internet, cellphones and all the other electronic and cyber intrusions on one's thought processes. The point of the process was to focus on what you were doing, on who you were and where you were going - for three days. Food, of a very basic kind, was brought to you. You could go for walks every now and again and you were expected to attend the daily Mass and the other offices.

During this process, I made my confession to my spiritual advisor of the time. The first confession I had ever made. Before I did so, I needed to consider a range of things - what would I consider a "sin". What about those things which others considered sin, but I didn't - like, for instance, homosexual love? I was, after all, a married homosexual and did not then, and do not now, consider homosexual love to be sinful. I was, however, not only married and Gay, but also about to enter Holy Orders.

What about homosexual acts? That, of course, was is and was a much more complicated question for the church - but in the end, it would not be something I would be confessing as a "sin". There were, in my life, much bigger things to consider. Acts of cowardice. Deceit. Integrity. Honesty. Acts where love and compassion were lacking. These were, and for me, remain much more serious concerns than genital ones.

And so I made my confession. It was a simple affair, of me and the priest seated facing away from each other in the chapel. He simply listened as I spoke. And when I was finished, he gave me counsel. It was not admonishment for the wrongs I had committed, but rather encouragement to move beyond. When he spoke the words of forgiveness, I felt able to forgive myself. That was the key - the permission to forgive myself for the things I had done, because I had heard words of forgiveness from someone else.

The non-schitzophrenic twin in Wally Lamb's story finds that act of self-forgiveness the most difficult. His acts of omission and his acts of commission against his "weaker" twin are indeed serious. It is also true that they are circumstantial. They haunt him and plague him and hunt him down. They confront him when he least expects them. They surprise him and terrorise him.

His "weaker" twin, on the contrary, never judged him. He loved him completely and with utter, childlike trust. He never saw the "sins" his brother committed against him. He never believed anything but the best of his brother. And his brother was not, by any stretch of the imagination, universally bad or universally cruel. But it was a relationship of the struggle of the inner self. Two opposite and contrasting poles of the same person, starkly evident in two people who look exactly the same but are confusingly and glaringly different.

I have not reached the end of the book yet, but I hope very much that the "stronger" twin reaches a place of forgiveness for himself. In my experience of life since my last confession, that is the one thing which I know is true - that forgiveness is not only possible, but necessary. And the most difficult person to forgive, is oneself.

Trans-racial togetherness

After much to-ing and fro-ing we were invited to attend what was described as a “trans-cultural” adoption group yesterday. Now, what might a “trans-cultural adoption group” be, you ask me?

Well, this particular group was one where white single mothers, who have adopted black children have got together on a monthly basis – for reasons of support, I suppose. I would have called that a trans-racial adoption group. The fact that they call it a trans-cultural adoption group is cause, I would say, for some concern. It goes back to the substantive matter of whether or not culture is racially defined. This, after all, was one of the fundamental tenets of apartheid ideology – that we are all racially and culturally separate-able and circumscribable. It then took it further. It said that culture was something fixed for all time. It was something which was defined primarily by skin colour, and once defined, it was something one could not escape.

Now, to assume that the culture of the children in this group - because they happen to have black skins - is of a different culture to the parents with white skins, to my mind, is highly problematic. There was even some casual discussion, in the group of nodding in the direction of the “culture” of a particular child. So, I heard that one child’s biological background was Zulu. I wonder what, in reality that is going to mean for the child? Lessons in Zulu dancing? I discovered, when I did a DNA test of myself, that I had Croatian roots - what on earth does that mean in my life, other than vague curiosity?

We were invited to the group somewhat curiously, being neither single nor mothers, you understand. We went, because we feel it is in some way important for our children to understand that they are not alone in the world – that there are other families like ours. But the problem is, what happens when there are some fundamental discordances relating to values? Is that something we want them to be exposed to as well?

As it was, the leader of the group revealed that there was some issue about us being a same-sex couple. Apparently there was some discussion in the group about having men in the group, because there was a lack of male role-models. When our names came up, apparently, one comment was “but do we really want two gay men in the group?” Again, it is really a question of values. Of course, in the real world, our children are going to need to realize that not everyone is accepting of gay men parenting children (trans-racial or not). But do we want to belong to a group where some of the parents are not completely affirming?

It’s difficult. This is, after all, Cairp Tahn. This is one of the most racially divided spots on the African continent. So, there is some sense in taking what is on offer. But does that mean that values need to be compromised as well? I really don’t know. I suppose I also have some missionary zeal left in me, which means that I still feel constrained to convert the infidel, but does one do that in the context of one’s children? That is a question which we will be considering in the next while, for sure.

Seapoint nostalgia

Pix: Our children Joshua top, age 6. Gabriel below, age 7

Anyone who has lived in, or, I suppose, even visited Cairp Tahn in the good months of the year will know that promenading the beachfront in Seapoint is one of those things you have to do before you die.

The promenade is busy on good days. Joggers, those with good and those with indifferent bodies; walkers; strollers; amblers; beggars; parents kicking a football; children having a football kicked at them; dog walkers a-plenty; ice-cream eaters. There are a lot of people there, if the weather is good.

The actual beach should really only be looked at. It is completely shale, with jagged rocks and pools of slimy green, littered with a few plastic bags. But if you look beyond this – then, Ah! And if the sun happens to be going down, then double Ah.

For myself, I have these really strong and close to overwhelming feelings of childhood nostalgia, because as a child of (I suppose 6 or 7) my parents and I boarded a train and headed for Three Anchor Bay – which is right next to Seapoint. The 2 day train journey (I remember) seemed utterly interminable. We had lorry loads of boiled eggs and flasks of rapidly cooling coffee. On the second evening on the train, we went to the dining car for our meal. There was silverware service, involving waiters in crisp starched white jackets with shining metal buttons. The train seemed to stop endlessly and the Karoo stretched on for mile after never ending mile.

I remember my mother “writing away” to the owner of our intended lodgings in Three Anchor Bay. I remember the answer arriving saying that we were duly booked. My parents would only call Cape Town in the case of a death in the family and even then, the tension caused by what was the imagined cost of the call was unbearable. The conversation would be clipped, fulfilling of all the required sympathies and niceties, but the receiver replaced as soon as was decently possible.

My nostalgia began, I think, when I suddenly remembered some of the stories I had heard about that trip. Like being rescued from the sea at Three Anchor Bay, when I fell off the rocks. Like me vomiting on (and consequently completely ruining) the carefully prepared Christmas dinner my aunt had made for us. Like the trips I had on the little miniature Steam Train. Like the huge live crayfish I and my father went to fetch from the fishing boats early in the morning.
And I remember how unimpressed I was at my first sight of the sea, because from the road along the beachfront, all you can really see from the car is the line where the sea meets the sky.

That was then. And then some 45 or so years got in the way. And when Leon and I are promenading on the Seapoint Beachfront, I can’t help wondering what, if any, nostalgia my children will be having in the year 2049.

Does the worm inevitably turn?

Pic: A dam just outside Worcester - where the meeting was held

“To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?
Not to the beast that would usurp their den.
The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.'"
Shakespeare Henry VI Pt. 3.

I am interested to note, these days, how quiet the media is, (and more interestingly, the white public is) about Jacob Zuma. Just a matter of months ago, you could have sworn that the sky was going to fall, the earth was going to heave and we whites would all be swallowed up in the disaster which would follow the victory of the ANC at the polls and his ascendency to the Presidency.

I note with further interest, a recent newspaper report about a meeting which the leader of the opposition and Premier of the Western Cape, Helen Zille had with the President. She came away from it saying that it is “hard not to like him”. She went further and said that this was all the more remarkable, seeing she had run a specific and individually targeted campaign to “Stop Zuma” during the election.

I also see how silly former President Thabo Mbeki is seeming these days and I can’t help seeing some kind of vague similarity between him and “Die Groot Krokodil” – former apartheid President, PW Botha. When he, in his day, was kicked out by FW de Klerk and the new breed of Afrikaners (who were seen as crazy reformists in some circles) and the ANC, Communist Party and other Liberation movements were unbanned, Botha continued to breathe fire and brimstone, never seeing the wood, for a forest of trees.

And some whites, many whites, perhaps even the majority of whites today, are still breathing the same fire and brimstone. I hear them all the time, all around me. The other day I was in a meeting in a rural area way out of Cape Town. There were a total of five whites in a meeting of about 20 people. At lunch, being fairly early in the queue, I happened to sit at a table with no-one else at it at that point. I could not fail to notice that within a short while, all the other whites in the meeting had gathered at my table. And then it started…

They simply assumed that I was one of them and would therefore agree with their reactionary position on things in general. They spoke about “them” and they spoke about “us”. They lamented the passing of the old days. I chewed on my salad and said nothing. Not because I am shy. Not because I am slow in coming forward, but because I was totally gobsmacked!

These were four people I had never met before in my life. They work in significant, public interface related jobs. They deal with black people on a daily basis. But their minds are twisted and distorted and their understanding of South African reality is profoundly skewed. The world which they apparently live in is monochrome and diseased. And here is the tragedy – they have no idea that this is their reality!

The tragedy is that they position themselves as liberals – as people who “never supported apartheid”. Now they are merely observers. Now they are the experts on democratic government. Now they are the victims of affirmative action. They chose to ignore, I could not fail to notice, the fact that three of them were actually employed in the state itself or para-statals!

It is this killing, whinging mindset which is so totally reprehensible. Crime is “their” responsibility – and “they” don’t have a clue how to solve it, because “they” are either criminals themselves, or stupid – or, of course, more probably both.

And what does this kind of attitude do (besides making the bearer into a bitter, twisted human being)? This is what I think. I think it infects everyone – the good and the bad, the criminal and the victim, black and white. It sets up a societal dynamic which corrodes and insinuates itself into every aspect of life. It is there in the shopping centre, the gym, the Church, the street, the airport. It feeds on itself. It grows fat and it spreads. It is insidious. It is contagious.

But here is the issue. It is not just a “white” thing. There is nothing genetically involved here. It can equally become a “black” thing. In the Western Cape, it is undoubtedly now a “coloured” thing.

I see yesterday in the press, the African National Congress in the Western Cape issued an apology to the Western Cape Province, for its previous fractious, inefficient and nepotistic government. It was a government which was fairly trounced at the polls, bringing the Democratic Alliance to power again.

I think the apology is well intended and it is a desperate attempt to salvage some level of credibility. But I do not think it will work. It is not the case, after all, that previous Democratic Alliance governments were wonderful. In fact, they were disastrous. But the ANC has managed to completely alienate vast swathes of the Western Cape population – a population which is already deeply conservative, racist and divided. What the ANC has managed to do is to compound fears, prejudices and racist beliefs. It has done so by ignoring people, by marginalising people, by arrogance and by greed. This is the consequence of its actions.

So, whatever good President Zuma may achieve - through openness, or accessibility or through tight controls on corruption – it won’t matter a damn in the Western Cape in my estimation, for a very long time to come. Because the party he belongs to seems to have forgotten the primary matter of race in the equation. Race isn’t an issue which can manage itself and in this country it isn’t going to just go away. And as long as there are some South Africans who feel more important than other South Africans, we have all the ingredients we need for a profoundly depressed and diseased society.