"An Education" - not really!

The date is 1961 and somewhere in Britain, living in extremely boring surrounds and going to school and wanting to get to Oxford, is Jenny (Carey Mulligan). Jenny does things like plays the cello; has friends with whom she smokes; and tolerates her extremely under-exposed parents. There is a young boy who is interested in her and he is duly invited around for an excruciating tea with the parents.

Then, suddenly, an older man David, (Peter Sarsgaard)enters her life. He drives a snazzy car; he flashes his wealth and he. He has wit, experience and good looks. Of course, she is going to fall for him. Fact is, he is a bit shady, but who is going to notice, with charm like his?

That, of course, is the point. People don’t notice. The period and the place is quaint and naive, from our vantage point. Based on journalist Lynne Barber’s memoir, this movie, feels more like a stage play. But maybe I missed the point. Maybe the point was that it should feel antiquated and stilted, to take one back into that particular period. If so, it succeeded. If not, it was fairly tedious.

Not that there was nothing to hold one’s interest. The period was captured perfectly. The acting was good – I wouldn’t call it superb. The story was somewhat predictable. But there were other vignettes which caught my attention. For instance, I was fairly surprised that in what looked like a straight up and down British family, that smoking was not un-tolerated. So as a 16 year old, it was not outside the bounds of acceptability that she could smoke fairly publicly.

Secondly, her parents wanted her to go to Oxford. But the point about going to Oxford, was so that she could meet someone suitable. Education was not really the issue, from her father’s point of view (her mother just stood around looking worried and arching her eyebrows, most of the time).

But the real shocker, to me, was that at the age of 16, it seemed perfectly in order that she should be contemplating marriage! (Today, there would be questions of child molestation!). But then I remembered that awful musical called “The Sound of Music”, from around the same era, with the “You are sixteen, going on seventeen” song, and it just seems as though our ideas around marriageable age have lengthened rather dramatically, without me really noticing!

It is nominated for a British Academy Awards for just about everything there is. It has Emma Thompson playing a small part as the School headmistress, who, when told that the older boyfriend is a Jew, purses her lips and says to Jenny “The Jews killed our Lord”. It is a “good” movie. But it is very unsatisfying.

Besides being a period piece, the plot is neither really interesting, nor novel, nor worth making a movie about. With that as a basis, you see where I am going? If you like the 1960’s, or lived through the 1960’s, or want to see what the 1960’s looked like, then go and see it. If not, stay at home.

Avatar - not for sissies!

So, I joined the throngs going to see the biggest movie of all time last night. The movie house was full to the brim. And we got handed our sunglasses at the door. And everyone was all chatty chatty before it started.

I noticed that the sound, in the forthcoming attraction bit, seemed to be particularly loud and I was grateful for the semi-deafness in my left ear. My friend and I (definitely forming the older bracket in the audience, by some years) looked disapprovingly at each other in an exchange of meaningful glances. Then I yelled into her ear, above the racket “Why the hell is it so loud?” She couldn’t hear me. But no-one else seemed to mind.

Then the instruction to put on the glasses. A frisson of amazement went through the audience – or at least those of us who had never seen 3D (which is now followed, I noted by a TM) before. A ball shot towards us and stopped at what appeared a couple of metres from my nose and then zoomed back again. The sub-titles were suspended magically in the middle of nowhere. It was another dimension and I realised I had made the kind of transition that one made years back between black and white television, and colour. It is just another world.

Now the story, in case you don’t know it, is about this ex marine bloke called Jake, with gammy legs and in a wheelchair, who is drafted into some kind of detail on a planet called Pandora. The Americans (just because no other people on the whole planet could possibly have the kind of technology in the future which would enable them to have colonised another planet) are looking for some rock called “Unobtainium”, which just happens to be under a sacred space of the (“aliens”, I think they call them in the film) original inhabitants of the planet. These “aliens” are blue, large and basically human in proportion. But they are a peaceful lot. Soft choral “Ah-ah-ah” type music plays when they are around. They sit around trees and have religious ceremonies to become one with their ancestors and the trees. They have made friends with the local flying dinosaurs and ride around on their backs.

The Americans, per contra, fly around in metal machines that make one hell of a noise, drink coffee and smirk at the mention of the “monkeys” or “kitty cats” or “savages” that live in trees – which may stand in their way of getting the Unobtainium.

Jake is able to enter the body of a Na’vi (the name of the beings which live on Pandora). It is a body with legs (which he doesn’t have, but which he is promised, if he infiltrates the Na’vi world and brings back intelligence about how the Americans can get them to move from the area they are living in).

So, he enters his Na’vi body and finds acceptance in the Na’vi world by doing a whole lot of rituals and coming of age things. It is a “noble savage” experience. They are wonderful beings, integrated with nature, innocent and beautiful. But fairly stupid (or perhaps, under-developed), so they need the help of the white (American) man, Jake to help them. Jake, predictably, falls in love with a Na’vi women and he eventually leads a rebellion against the horrible Americans, whose folly he sees quite early on in the movie.

There is crashing and banging. It is an exhausting movie to watch, because the tension is extremely high, the noise level unbelievable and the 3D effects astonishing.

But is it memorable? Does it make one think? Does it challenge one’s views? Do I even remotely want to see it again? The answer to all of these is a resounding no! Did I enjoy it as an experience? Yes I certainly did!

And now, I understand that there is a thing called Avatar porn, which is about to be released by Hustler. I can't quite get my head around it all.

The day I kicked a soldier's arse

Eugene de Kock: Picture - Times Live

I have been thinking about Eugene de Kock, the apartheid murderer who plied his trade on the state’s behalf at the infamous Vlakplaas. He was one of the very few who came clean at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. But despite that, he was still convicted on numerous civil charges and sits, to this day, in jail. The rumour is that President Jacob Zuma is considering him for a pardon.

He is a haunting figure - (at least, he haunts me). He looks so completely ordinary. He used to wear thick, beer bottle spectacles. He would appear at the hearings wearing a green jersey, with a kind of khaki shirt. He looked like anyone’s uncle, brother, friend. And yet here was a man who murdered several people personally. A man who would kill, seemingly at will and who engineered the deaths of too many to remember. A man who caused unbelievable suffering, not only to the people he killed and whose bodies be burnt to get rid of, but to their families, their friends and comrades, who continue to mourn their loss. He was dubbed by the media, “Prime Evil”.

I have been dithering, about whether I think he should be pardoned, or whether I think he should be kept in jail for the rest of his life. I watch the polls and I watch the people who take particular sides in the debate. Mostly, they are people whose opinions I admire and respect and I find I just cannot settle on one side or the other.

The whole debate around De Kock which is going on at the moment, is juxtaposed (certainly in the media) with the imminent possibility of the pardoning of the President’s friend, the convicted criminal, Shabir Shaik. Frankly, I find the comparison distasteful. The one is a multiple killer. The other is a crook. I, for one, can’t argue that a crime is a crime is a crime – never mind how irritating I find the fact that the President might be considering pardoning the crook. They are not crimes of the same magnitude. They just aren’t.

That being said, I am not sure, as I have said, that De Kock should not be pardoned. The fact that he has told the truth actually gave the truth Commission the kind of substance it simply would not have had without his testimony. And when one compares that, for instance, to the testimony of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, (which was shocking in its brevity and economy with the truth) – then I must say, I battle to argue that De Kok should not be pardoned.

But it has turned me to thinking about the complicity of many of us in the whole nightmare that was apartheid and of a memory of something I did way back then – by way of getting even.

I was working in the underground of the ANC and we were instructed by the ANC structures not to travel by air, when we were attending national meetings, because the state was able to keep track of individuals who were flying, and take note of where they were flying and who else was flying there at the same time. So, we were told to travel to meetings by other means.

So, I booked myself on an overnight train from Pietermaritzburg to Johannesburg, to attend a particular clandestine meeting we were having. When I opened the door of the compartment, I was greeted by 5 burly white Afrikaans speaking South African Defence Force (SADF) members. (In those days, of course, only whites were conscripted and only whites could be in certain sections of the train.) I knew, as I opened the door, that it was going to be a really difficult journey.

Because I was white, I was immediately one of the gang. They passed me a beer. They told stories about Angola and about what was going on in the townships. They wanted me to tell them stories too! They got a bit confused when I said I had not been to the army, but before I needed to fabricate a reason why not, they provided an easy one for me: “Oh!” said one, you are in the medical profession!” I said, timidly, yes I was! Which part of the medical profession, they asked? Fearing I might be asked to diagnose rashes and growths, I said “Psychology!”

Immediately, they were in awe. What could I tell them about them? I plumbed the depths of Psych 101 and produced a couple of profiling tests, which they enthusiastically participated in. They were convinced.

But there was one of them, arrogant, racist to the hilt, profoundly offensive, that I determined to teach a lesson to. I waited until we had all taken to our bunks and fallen asleep. I got up and took his entire uniform, beret, jacket, trousers, and shirt. In the pocket of his jacket was his ID document, and a number of other cards identifying him as an SADF soldier. I bundled the entire lot together and wrapped it in my towel and hid it in the bottom of my rucksack.

When everyone woke up as the train neared Germiston, there was a huge ruckus when he discovered that his uniform was gone. “There is a terrorist on the train!” he screamed. He dashed, naked, except for a towel around his waist, up and down the corridor shouting, “There is a terrorist on the train!” Army boys in various states of undress started prowling up and down the corridor looking for the terrorist.

When I asked what was going on, I was informed “They do this kind of thing. They steal uniforms so that they can infiltrate back into the country”. At one point, someone suggested that everyone’s bags get searched. I started sweating. Someone pointed out that in all probability, the terrorist had long gotten off of the train. A point that seemed to be acknowledged by everyone. I was profoundly relieved.

At Germiston station, clothed in his underpants and a towel, he got off the train, cursing the terrorists who had stolen his uniform. I offered him some money to make a phone-call.

I have often thought of that arrogant, racist boy. The perfect product of apartheid. I wonder if he is still alive. I wonder if he has changed. I wonder if he remembers that night when a terrorist stole his uniform. I wonder what the story was that he told about it.

I can’t remember what my feelings were, besides the thrill of danger and the feeling of satisfactory come-uppance which it gave me. Of course, he never would have suspected it was me, because he was too racist to think it was me. Because, as far as he was concerned, all whites were on the same side.

But of course, they weren’t. And neither were all blacks on the same side. And neither are they still. (Please don’t get me wrong. The amount of whites in the struggle, as compared to the amount of blacks, was minute. The amount of whites who suffered during apartheid as compared with the amount of blacks was minuscule. And I include myself here, I did not suffer under apartheid, I only benefited).

Revenge, even in that small dose which I administered, was sweet. But revenge cannot be the thing which dictates the way one lives. And I think the side of me that wants De Kock to stay in jail, is the same side of me that wanted that arrogant little shit of an SADF soldier to suffer – if only through the loss of his uniform and the punishment which would surely follow.

I don’t think that it is an admirable thing and I know it is not sustainable. And doesn’t the fact that De Kock is in jail simply make the rest of us whites, who benefited in every possible way because of the terror he was unleashing, feel as though justice is somehow being done? When we know, without any question, that it has not yet been done, by a very long shot.

Racism in Claremont

Photo: Jeffrey Abrahams, Cape Argus

I heard an interesting interview on the radio, while driving from George to Knysna. It was with a woman who posted a “For Sale” sign up in her restaurant window, in Claremont, Cape Town. But the sign added, “White buyers Only”. Then underneath the printed sign, she added in hand-written print “Order of the inspector”.

Now, besides the fact that this, in itself, is rather strange in supposedly free, democratic South Africa, the woman who owns the business (whose name is Zikusooka Wamono), is black.

Her story goes as follows: First, she rented a place in a less than desirable area. Business was bad, because of the fact that passing vagrants, would urinate in the alley leading to her restaurant and loiter there. She tried putting up a fence to make the alley impassable. The barrier she had erected got taken down by the council. Business went from bad to worse and eventually she decided to close it down and look for other premises.

She chose upmarket Claremont. She found a suitable site. She designed it, equipped it and furnished it, at considerable expense. However, at every stage, she was pestered and harassed by the police. They visited her at odd hours, demanding changes to this and changes to that. They have opposed her application for a liquor licence. It was clearly harassment. But she soldiered on.

Eventually, after unbearable frustration and constant intimidation, she put the “For Sale” sign up. The police officer had told her that “over his dead body” was she going to open her restaurant, because a black-owned businesses would bring “indecent black people”. His advice to her was to sell her business to a white. And that is the reason she put up the sign in her window.

I called Zikusooka, just to express support and solidarity with her. And to say to her unsurprised I was that she had been subjected to this treatment and how unbearably racist my own experience of Cape Town has been, as well.

She told me that the policeman concerned was, in fact, not white – but “coloured”, or mixed race. That didn’t surprise me either, because the racism of this place is not the preserve of the whites alone. It is something which is the common vocabulary of everyone who lives here. It is largely unchallenged. It is considered acceptable. It is constant. It is widespread and it is encountered right across the board and it is completely debilitating.

Although I was warned about it, when we decided to move here some years ago, I have to say, I had no idea how serious and how widespread a thing it is in this City. I had no idea that it would be everywhere. In the supermarket; in the school; on every road; and in every suburb. Naked, unashamed and unapologetic racism. There is a thin veneer of integration, but it is a sham. You can see it is a sham when you go shopping. You can see it is a sham when you visit a restaurant or the beach or the gardens at Kirstenbosch. Or when you drive down a road. You can see it is a sham when you examine who teaches what, in which schools. As I say, it is across the board. White, coloured and black. Everyone.

So, I salute the courage of Ms Wamono. She told me that she is on anti-depressants and she did this out of complete desperation. But she remains unbowed. She is going to fight, until she has no breath left in her. I salute her and I have told her that when and if she finally opens her doors, that I will be amongst her first enthusiastic customers.

That being said, I have one hesitation. The reasons given by the other side, for opposing the granting of a liquor licence need to be listened to quite carefully and assessed. They argue that it is because of her previous business and the negative effect it had on the area, that they are opposing this application. I am not in any position to judge whether those allegations are true or not. But what I am sure of, is that she has been harassed this time. And it looks very likely, given the racially skewed context of Cape Town, that what lies behind the harassment, is racism.

And there is one other thing which may be at play here. Her name and her accent sound Ugandan. And you know how much we love Africans from other parts of Africa, in this neck of the woods!

A crumb or two from FIFA's table

I thought it might be worth posting these pics of the Cape Town Stadium, done in wire beadwork. We have commissioned all of the 2010 stadia to be done in this way so that wire/beadworkers can get a tiny look-in on the World Cup. I think they are pretty good. The artist is Abraham Tapera, who is one of a group called Bead Nation.

Divine abundance

A medical orderly waves flies off an old man asleep on the ground outside his nursing home in Port-au-Prince, Sunday. (Julie Jacobson, AP Photo)

I have been thinking about one of the points which was made in the sermon this morning. The reading was about Jesus turning water into wine. Now that “sign” (as John would have it) is pretty much like a magician’s trick, let’s face it. The wine runs out at a wedding. A worried Jewish mama wonders if her son can do anything about it, to avoid embarrassment. The son needs to be pushed a bit, but then starts working this magic trick with water. And everything turns out a really good vintage at the end.

When I studied Theology, I was interested to read something very similar in the pseudonymous Gospel of Thomas. (The 3rd Century Gospel of Thomas was one of about 19 “Gospels” from which the 4 Canonical Gospels were eventually chosen). There was a curious passage in it where Jesus moulds clay pigeons on the Sabbath. When people object to this, he claps his hands and the pigeons fly away. I have often compared these two supposed incidents and wondered what on earth the difference between them might be.

The priest this morning wisely did not dwell on the nature of miracle. In John’s Gospel, in any case, they are never referred to as miracles – they are “signs”. So, what might this be a sign of then? The preacher raised an interesting point – that this event (whether historical or not is irrelevant) took place in the context of a party, where people were getting drunk. A titter went through the congregation. He made the point that this story is about the abundance of God. The generosity of God. The sheer extravagance of God.

Only yesterday, I was having a discussion with my Mother-in-law. We were talking about the recent fatal shark attack on Fish Hoek beach this last week. She would have it, that God is in control of everything. When your time is up, it is because God decided that this would be the moment of your death, at the start of things. I suspect that besides sheer fatalism, there is something comforting which she finds in this notion. God is in control. God makes decisions about things and there is a level of dependability – even comfort in that.

Mischievously, I raised the issue of Haiti to her. I asked her whether God also had that in the plan from the beginning of time? She fell silent. I knew she would, as have scores of my students before. It is impossible to posit a loving, all-powerful deity in the face of manifest evil.

It is an age-old problem for theists, of course. The existence of evil. But it takes a Haiti to bring it into the sharpest relief. What kind of a God would allow that sort of thing to happen? What kind of a God would do nothing to stop it, if it is was something in that God’s power to put a stop to? Either God is powerless to stop it; or not loving; or evil. Those are your options. Those are your only options.

So, to hear a sermon, this morning in church on the abundance of God, the generosity of God, the extravagance of God, as illustrated in the story about changing water into wine at the wedding at Cana needs to be unpacked in relation to the devastation going on before our eyes in Haiti. Those two pictures need to be placed side by side.

And curiously, Christianity is not just about a God up there. It is also about a God who is “one of us”. Who suffers terribly, and who dies. That too is some of the extravagance of the Christian God. If it wasn’t for that aspect, I would venture to say, the Christian God would be ultimately demonic, utterly capricious and lacking in any moral perspective whatsoever. With it, there is, at the very least, an element of conundrum. And there are some who would say, that saves the day from a philosophical perspective.

For the rest of us, all we can do is find some way to show compassion to people who are suffering. If we do so as church, that is fine. As mosque, as temple. For some of us that living of compassion is the only way to demonstrate the nature of the divine (and indeed to experience the divine in that activity). By being as human and as humane as we are able.

The things we can trust

Last night, our family went out to dinner to celebrate our eldest son turning 8 years old. Leon’s parents took us all to a Pizza place – a really nice one, which was empty enough for the kids, together with one of their cousins, to run a little wild, without frightening off too many patrons.

Gabriel had a very busy day, and by 8.30, he was tired. He came and sat on my lap, for a while (as he seems to be doing these days) and then he stretched himself out on the bench next to me, and fell asleep, his head resting on my lap.

I looked down at this sleeping child and I started to remember our 8 year history together. From that tiny 3 month old baby lying sucking his finger in the Princess Alice Adoption Home, to this fairly confident boy, whom I recently went to watch doing cartwheels around the stage.

There is nothing, no words, no sound I can make - nothing I can write or explain – which can describe these kinds of moments. Every parent knows them. They seem to be something which the depths of our human being recognises and treasures. If you do not have children, or have not been attached to children in this kind of fundamental way, you will not know what I am talking about. It is so extraordinarily powerful. It is overwhelming. It is humbling. It takes one back to the very depths of one’s own being and life experience.

I put a post up on Facebook about it and a friend replied that the picture I posted evoked in him some of his most secure childhood moments. I responded, saying that what made me really sad was that Gay and Lesbian people, generally, do not experience it. Indeed, I would have never experienced it had Leon not insisted on children.

Another friend, whom I told the incident to, and the profound effect it had on me said, “isn’t it wonderful – that complete trust”. Indeed, it is wonderful, that I can be Gabriel’s secure place – even if only for a few simple and precious moments.

Everything is meant to be

I saw a recorded programme, recently aired on the telly, of the rise to fame of Susan Boyle. Now, let me say, I like Susan Boyle. I cried with everyone else when her "Britain's Got talent" Youtube video was doing the rounds. I loved the way in which she strode onto the stage; the way she belted out "I dreamed a dream" - which I had never heard before. I loved the whole thing - and Simon Cowell's comeuppance and everything.

So now these days, she has a lot more make-up on; her unruly eyebrows have been plucked to death and her lips glossed. I saw that her money-makers have seen fit to squeeze her into rather tight fitting evening gowns and do her hair in strange ways to give her a rather peculiar look of unwilling glamour. Her voice is still as powerful, but they seem to have forced her to slow everything down to a very dull pace, so that now, "I dreamed a dream" sounds like a deeply meaningful, exceedingly dull funeral dirge - along with everything else she sings. They seem to be trying to milk sentimentality out of every syllable, every cadence, every note and it has turned a really fresh and exciting singer into tedious commercial slush.

But that is not what got me so mad. What got me mad was the constant going on about how "it's never too late to have a dream". Teary-eyed middle-aged to rather well done Americans, waving banners, and turning dumpiness into some kind of hitherto unheralded virtue. Except, they seemed not to have noticed that the dumpiness on Susan Boyle - the very thing which made her so appealing in the beginning, is now airbrushed - (or maybe I am confused and maybe that is what they are all aspiring to!)

At the same time, in real live TV time, images of Haiti's trauma and misery are appearing on the news. Collapsed buildings, devastated lives, death and deep, profound suffering. And some of these poor destroyed people are trying to make sense of a universe so vicious and cruel, that it all just completely beggars any kind of belief in a kind, or even vaguely compassionate deity, or ordering force.

And that is why I so passionately hate the crass, platitudinous, air-headed nonsense which would have us believe that "Everything is as it is meant to be". "There is a reason for everything". It just isn't and there isn't. To even think so is callous in the extreme.

This is why I am such an admirer of an organisation like the "Gift of the Givers Foundation", led by Dr Imtiaz Sooliman. I first came across them, when I was living in Pietermaritzburg, many years ago. And I have watched them, down the years, responding immediately to any situation where there is human suffering. They don't care whether the people affected are Muslim, or Christian, or Atheist. They don't care a hoot what or who you are. They simply care that you are suffering.

What they do (and what they seem to do extremely effectively and efficiently!) is muster massive amounts of support from wherever they can, and take that support in the form of blankets; water purification tablets; medical supplies etc immediately to the people who are suffering. They don't believe "everything is as it should be". They believe that suffering can be made less. I think they are wonderful and I am constantly astonished by how quick off the mark they are with help in the most dire situations. What astonishes me about this organisation is that they just go ahead and do it, with no pomp, no ceremony. They just go and do what needs to be done.

Watching various ageing Americans in their "I Love Susan Boyle" T-shirts, telling me how "dreams don't have a time-line" and "it's never to late to dream your dream" and how "everything that happens is meat to be" against the Haitian backdrop just brought into sharp relief how bland, how meaningless and how totally lacking of content and depth popular culture is. You can't air-brush what's going on in Haiti. There are no bright lights, or happy endings. It is all just raw, utterly meaningless suffering.

Mrs Babu's shoe shop

Today, I went to seek out and find some school sandals for my children, prior to the big day of return (thank God and all that is Holy) tomorrow. The school, which runs a branded shop (alongside every other conceivable way of getting money out of my pocket) didn't have sandals. I was told that "they are not very popular". Well, maybe. But in a heatwave of 36 degrees Celsius, I really couldn't be bothered with popularity, and I would hope my children would feel similarly.

So, seeing the school didn't have the right sizes, we asked for the supplier - which led us to Mrs Babu's shop in Wynberg. When I called to ask for directions, I was given them - precisely and without hesitation. The shop was unassuming. As I stepped inside, it felt like I had taken a step into 1960. There were single shoes arranged in an old fashioned way, in the windows and around the walls. There were archaic adverts about which shoe might provide one with the best fit. There was one of those measuring things, to tell exactly what size your foot is.

Mrs Babu opened the security gate for me and beamed in an old fashioned, welcoming way. "May I help you?" she enquired. I told her my needs and she disappeared into the back of the shop for an extraordinarily long time. When she came back, she was full of conversation. How old were my children? Which school did they go to? How was I finding it?

Of course, I was the only customer. When I entered, I noted that another customer was just leaving. There was a place to sit to try on your prospective shoes. There were photographs in frames on the walls, of a husband, perhaps. And a son?

She told me that she had been running the shop for the past 40 years and that she originally came from Johannesburg and that the apartheid authorities had tried to get her removed because she was neither "Cape Coloured" not "Cape Malay" as the apartheid classifications required. She was classified "Asiatic", so they had a special place reserved for her and her family.

"To hell with them!" she told me. "I told them to get lost and to take their papers with them!" And so she stayed, behind the shop she ran. And they couldn't (or at least, they didn't) move her.

I allowed myself to get stung for polish and some sort of leather care follow-up cream, just for the sheer pleasure of her company. How different things are now.

Invictus

Let me be clear – I don’t understand Rugby. I have no idea what they are doing when they run in lines across the field, throwing the ball to each other backwards and charging each other down and making spit fly. Even less, when they thud into each other in a kind of low-slung group hug and make a collective kind of “Ugh” sound. I have studiously avoided the game all my life, so it was, you understand, with considerable reluctance that I agreed to go to see Invictus, with a rugby-mad friend of mine from the UK.

The start of the film did not bode well. Mandela’s release from Victor Vester prison, driving past a groups of white boys playing Rugby – the coach (or the teacher, or whatever he was) with a thick Afrikaans accent, says words to the effect of “Remember this moment, because nothing is going to be the same after this”. He says this, like he is reading, with difficulty, from a cue card. I squirmed in anticipation and settled down for a ghastly experience.

But then the whole thing changed!

One could not help being struck by the way in which Morgan Freeman was made to look so extraordinarily like Mandela. (Wait until he speaks, I thought, ruefully!) He had managed to recreate, perfectly, the walk, the stoop, the mannerisms and then - not without blemish, but pretty damn near it - the speech of Mandela. My naturally cynical self started to weaken.

Then Matt Damon as Rugby captain Francois Pienaar. He looks nothing like him, and it took a long while for him to actually do anything besides look handsome and pensive and visionary – (Oh, God, I thought – wait until he speaks!) and then he did – and he actually got the accent! I was now seriously engaged.

Of course there were gimmicks. Like the fact that Mandela insisted on going for an early morning walk every day with a minimum of security; like there were real dangers to his life; like the collapse of his marriage; like the white people who looked extremely grim and the black security people who also looked extremely grim. But you know what? The film really does manage to re-create a moment in our history – an instant – when Rubicons were crossed, and bridges were made and where people changed their minds about other people.

I was too young to remember where I was when Kennedy was assassinated. I do remember where I was when the rugby World Cup was being won. I was in the airport building in Johannesburg, waiting for a flight. I wasn’t watching the match. I was watching the crowd at the airport. I was completely astonished to see black people completely caught up in the moment. (Of course, white people were too, but that was to be expected.) But for that moment we really were a united people, with everyone cheering for the same team.

It was, perhaps, the only time when we have done so. We were not united during the famous election (or any since). We were not united at the inauguration (or any since). Indeed, I cannot think of any instance, besides this unlikely one, where unity has been seriously considered or freely demonstrated. And when I think about it, the reason it happened was this, and only this: because of the kind of leadership which was shown - not by any of the political parties. Not by the sports bodies. Not by the churches or shuls or mosques. It was entirely due to the kind of leadership which Mandela displayed.

Invictus captures that leadership, and it is a timely reminder. We are, as I write, exactly five months away from the FIFA 2010 World Cup. Will this major event have a similar effect on our country? Certainly, the business people (black and white) are slavering in anticipation; the soccer watchers will all have a jolly time; many more white children will be captivated by soccer than ever before; and I am pretty sure we will all be able to pat ourselves on the back and proclaim the event “incident free”. But will it add to our character and substance as a nation? That, as before, will depend very largely on the quality of the leadership.

Go and see this movie, if you can. It is really well worth it. Not least because of the superb acting, but also because of the message it took an American like Clint Eastwood to remind us of.

The Slave Lodge

I was taken on a tour, this morning, by Patrick Mellet, the man who put together the storyline for the Slave Lodge in Cape Town. I was struck by several things. Firstly, the way in which the story of the slaves in the Cape is still a far from dominant theme in the City, the Province and the country - despite the fact that in this Province, the majority of the people who live here, either directly benefitted from what slaves did in the past, or are directly descended from slaves.

It is an extraordinary thing, the way in which this history, which should be all-pervasive, is in fact, a whisper. It is as though the suffering and the inhumanity perpetrated against the slaves is made to continue by the dominant historical voice. Which of us does not know about the Second World War? Which of us has never heard of Jan van Riebeeck and the Dutch East India Company? On the other hand, which of us knew that Simon van der Stel would, probably, today be termed "Coloured" (in the terminology of the apartheid state?) And which of us knows where the slaves who built the Cape Colony, with not much more than their bare hands, came from originally?

The Slave Lodge is an impressive building, having served once as the High Court and even the Parliament. But it is unfinished as a fitting monument to our slave ancestors. The exhibition space is fair enough, but as it is at present there is no clear cohesion and the visitor is left puzzeled as to the logic of the thing. Had Patrick Mellet not been with us, I would not have understood the logic of the thing (as indeed I did not on the time I visited the Lodge before). Nor would I have understood that the exhibition as a whole is incomplete!

Upstairs, there is a very strange cultural history collection, with bits of Egypt, toys, and old pianos and clocks thrown in to the mix. Downstairs, some of the exhibits work, and one room in particular is a complete failure. For it to remain like this is, to my mind, hugely disrespectful to both the tourist and our slave ancestors, whom it seeks to represent.

Is Allah for everyone?

There was a SAPA-AP report in the Cape Times of 04 January 2010, entitled “Malaysia awaits ruling on whether Allah is God to Muslims only”, which I found interesting. Apparently, the government of Malasia is set to challenge a High Court ruling that Christians have a constitutional right to use the word Allah to refer to God. The High Court ruling struck down a government ban on non-Muslims translating the word “God” as “Allah” in their literature. Mild protests apparently followed.

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit, filed in 2007 by The Herald in its Malay language edition. The Herald is the Roman Catholic Church’s main publication in Malasia. The problem seems to be that some Islamic commentators agree with the government position that the word “Allah” is an Islamic word, which should be used exclusively by Muslims and that its use by other religions is misleading. Naturally, there are also other Islamic scholars, who say there would be no problem in the use of the word by non-Muslim people, seeing it, simply, as a translation, and nothing more.

Now, this raises some interesting questions. If the word is, in fact, nothing more than a simple translation of the word “God” into Arabic, then it seems to me that any kind of restriction on the use of the word is going to be difficult at best and nonsensical at worst. How would one control it?

Would one need to substitute another word in its place (pretty much as the Jews do, so as to protect the sacred tetragrammaton YHWH with other words and circumlocutions such as “Jehovah”, or “Elohim”?) My suspicion is that it is this sense of reverence which is some of the motivation behind the attempt to protect the word “Allah”.

On the other hand, it could be the view that any use of the word by non-Muslims, particularly in the context of Christian evangelism, is somehow a deliberate attempt to blur the distinctions between the two religions. I have no doubt whatsoever, in a strongly proselytizing environment, that this could well be the motivation. In which case, I suppose, there really can be no rules of engagement!

But the bigger question would be this: If only Muslims can use the word “Allah” because, somehow, that word is connected to Muslim people, what would be the relationship of “Allah” as an entity, to non-Muslims? Is there hidden in this view, the understanding that there is a different God, called “God” for non-Muslims, and “Allah” for Muslims? Because that would be extremely strange in a monotheistic environment.

Some time ago, my eldest son, aged 7, asked me whether the name of God was Allah. I said yes, it was. Then I had a moment’s thought. I said, “But Christians also call God...” I thought some more, and came up, ingeniously, with “God!” I wonder, now, was I wrong?

Terror and Courage

For the past few days, I have had someone staying with me who goes back well into my past. We were together in the underground in Lesotho, in the early 1980s and in Pietermaritzburg in the mid to late 1980s. Needless to say, these were extremely difficult times.

In Lesotho, there was continuously the threat of raids from the South African Defence Forces. They came across the border in 1983 and again in 1985. They killed at will. They targeted specific buildings and killed anyone inside those buildings. People were killed while they slept. One had her throat slashed, as she slept in a hotel room in the middle of Maseru. As it happens, they killed someone with absolutely nothing to do with the ANC. They had been given information that a particular cadre was staying in room “x” which was (say) three rooms to the left on the right hand side of the building on the third floor – they counted from the left hand side, instead of the right hand side, and that was the person that died. In the aftermath of the raid, I drove with two friends to the houses of those who had been killed. The horror still lives with me today.

In Pietermaritzburg, during what was called the “Seven day war” we saw yet more horror, as the state backed Inkatha and the ANC fought each other. (This was after Nelson Mandela had been released). We were living in the “black” township of Imbali and lecturing in the Federal Theological Seminary, at the time.

We were just remembering some of the moments which continue to haunt us. Bodies lying in the road. Bodies piled in the mortuary. Bodies found in the forest. Remembrance services held in the Lay Centre in an attempt to help people come to terms with the tremendous loss we were suffering.

I said to my friend, that when I think back on those days, the thing I struggle with is remembering my own cowardice – the extraordinary level of fear I had. And, she reminded me, it was not the way I behaved. People were not aware of that fear and that cowardice. I was glad to hear of things I did, which were not cowardly, but still I remember it being there. And it has made me somewhat less judgemental of cowards, I think.