A poem for Sarah Baartman - Diana Ferrus

I heard, the other day on the radio, a description of Hankey - the tiny little town where Sarah Baartman, the so-called "Hottentot Venus" was born and in it has, at last, been buried. The grave has, apparently, been vandalised. I recalled the poem written for her, by Diana Ferrus. (This is the only version I could find. I find the word "wretch" in the second verse a bit strange. I wonder whether it should not be "wrench"?)

Recently, I have been having rather spirited discussions with regard to body types - and what some consider "ideal". In the midst of the heated discussions, I thought of this poem.

A poem for Sarah Baartman
By Diana Ferrus


“I’ve come to take you home –
home, remember the veld?
the lush green grass beneath the big oak trees
the air is cool there and the sun does not burn.
I have made your bed at the foot of the hill,
your blankets are covered in buchu and mint,
the proteas stand in yellow and white
and the water in the stream chuckle sing-songs
as it hobbles along over little stones.

I have come to wretch you away –
away from the poking eyes
of the man-made monster
who lives in the dark
with his clutches of imperialism
who dissects your body bit by bit
who likens your soul to that of Satan
and declares himself the ultimate god!

I have come to soothe your heavy heart
I offer my bosom to your weary soul
I will cover your face with the palms of my hands
I will run my lips over lines in your neck
I will feast my eyes on the beauty of you
and I will sing for you
for I have come to bring you peace.

I have come to take you home
where the ancient mountains shout your name.
I have made your bed at the foot of the hill,
your blankets are covered in buchu and mint,
the proteas stand in yellow and white –
I have come to take you home
where I will sing for you
for you have brought me peace.”

A street child's tale

I dreamed, last night, I was a street-child. In my dream, I woke up under a bridge in the centre of the city. It had been raining all night. I was cold and I was hungry. I wandered around the town. It was mid-morning when I did my usual thing of directing cars into parking places – even where there were many available. I put my head to one side and said words – any words – to the people passing by. I said “Please, I’m hungry”. I said “Please baas, two Rand to buy some bread”. And occasionally, someone would give me something. Always very little. And sometimes, I had enough to buy something.

But there was nothing which could take away the ache I had in my stomach. Nothing I ate could take it away. Not even the food from the dustbins outside Kentucky. I sniffed some glue which I bought with some of my money. I felt my head turn and spin and the blood rush to my eyes. I felt the glue burn my nose. I felt as though nothing at all mattered for a few minutes.

And then I felt a sharp pain in my back. I was thrown onto the floor and kicked in my head. In my stomach. In my mouth. “Give us your money!” they shouted. They were bigger and they were older and they had knives. I gave them my money. My little money. I must get a knife, I said to myself.

Now I had a bloody nose and I hurt all over. I asked a white woman for some money. She looked at me and her lips curled back in disgust. “Vra Mandela”, she spat (“ask Mandela”) and walked on clutching her handbag.

I went to the park and washed the blood off my face. A man in a big black Mercedes stopped and offered me fifty Rand to do things to him. We drove to a quiet road where no-one could see. I did what he wanted. When he finished, he hit me and threw me out of the car. He didn’t pay me. As he drove away, he made the window go down and shouted “Thanks!”

Now I was lost. I cried because I was alone. I walked down the road in my broken shoes. They were broken and they smelled so badly. No-one looked at me. No-one saw me. I was a lost child, walking down the road with tears in my eyes and no-one saw me. I had no-where to go.

In the university, I was chased away, even by the cleaning woman, who just swore and me and waved her hand. She had no food for me. She had no money for me.. I must go and get work. Yes – if I stopped sniffing glue and fighting, then maybe I wouldn’t be in such a bad state. No, I must go away – she has children of her own to worry about.

The students didn’t see me either. I lay down on the pavement and shivered, because it was now late and I had nothing warm. I pulled my thin jersey over my knees. I saw children in cars going home with their parents. They were smiling and playing. They had toys. They were eating things – sweets and chips – and they were happy. And when they saw me they looked at me. Their smiles stopped for a second. They paused on their way. And then the lights changed and they were gone.

I walked across to the shelter called Khayalethu. There was no-one there. They had closed it down because there was no money to run it anymore. Then the big boys found me again. I ran away over the road and a car swerved and then hit me – and I died.

I went to heaven and there was God in all his glory. He had a golden crown on his head and he had a long white beard and he wore a shining white robe. I was excited and happy to see God. I said “Hello God. My name is Immanuel Mkhize”. But it was strange, because God met me on the outside of the gates. He said he was very sorry, but he couldn’t let me in. There was nothing he could do about it. He gave me a piece of cake and patted me on the head and smiled at me and then left me alone.

And in heaven, beyond the Pearly Gates, I could hear the sounds of laughter and people singing hymns. I could see people smiling at each other. I could see and hear all these things, but I could have none of it. I was a street-kid, even after death. And no-one saw me.

Rejoicing in my ape ancestry

My first real job was teaching in a very rural school in the tiny University town of Roma in Lesotho. The learners were still called “pupils” in those days. It was a Roman Catholic school, run by monks and discipline was high.

I taught a miscellany of subjects, ranging from English to Biblical studies and the examining body, was Cambridge. Never mind the students, it was I who learned a huge amount! I was a naïve white boy. My contact with black people had been – up to that point - rather limited. And here I was, suddenly confronted with an entire class of children who were all of them, black. Or brown. Or a fairly uniform dark colour – or so it appeared to me.

But it soon became clear that black people saw things that I simply didn’t. When someone at the back of the class made a noise while I was writing on the board, I would round on the class and demand to know who was the culprit. “It was that black one at the back!” a chorus would shout. I would look at the back row and see a row of black kids – all of whom looked pretty much the same to me and be simply none the wiser.

Similarly, I realised that the boys in the school class didn’t see the kind of signifiers I saw in white people. A boy would come and tell me that someone had been looking for me. I would ask for more description. They would look blank. “She was white”, they would say. I would ask if she had dark hair or light hair? They would stare at me blankly. It was something they simply did not seem to notice. But the tiny differences in skin shade between themselves, that they would be acutely aware of.

The problem started when I was teaching them about the two creation narratives in the Genesis story – the first (and more recent one) from the Priestly source and the second and earlier one from another entirely different source, called “J” (or the Jahwist). They were two entirely different writers, writing in different contexts and with different objectives. Their stories differ from each other fairly seriously. It would be very difficult to see them as the same story, written by the same author. (Try reading from Genesis 2 vs4b and tell me it isn’t the start of an entirely new narrative, different from Genesis 1.1ff)!

I was teaching them, in the light of the genesis myths, the scientific view of the universe – of the slow march of evolution – where branches of ape-like creatures start to walk upright and whose brains start expanding and being used in artifacts and technology. They looked extremely puzzled. Was I saying we were descended from apes, they wanted to know?

Well, yes, in a way, I was. I talked about the various kinds of hominid which we knew about from the fossils, Paranthapus, Australopithecus, Homo Ergaster and so on. They listened intently, but I was getting nowhere. “:Look”, I said, getting creative and unbuttoning my shirt, “see how hairy I am!” – revealing my ample chest hair. “That comes directly from my ape ancestry!”

The children stared at me, horrified. “Well”, they said finally, “You might come from ape ancestry – but we certainly don’t!”

I found much the same kind of attitude with well-meaning (but ill-educated) religious people when I was running the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in Gauteng. They seemed to find it extremely hard to believe that Homo Sapiens Sapiens (which is what anatomically modern humans are) is just another formulation of ape, along a long and bushy chain of ancestry. Somehow, because we are now describing our species – we are wanting some special dispensation. Some unique quantifier that makes us special and different. There isn’t one. We are, quite simply, what we are. And what we are is because of where we come from. (Where we will journey to from here, is an entirely different matter!)

From our perspective then, two things seem to me to be extremely interesting. Firstly, the colour of our skins – an extremely recent development in our make-up - is the least important (from a genetic point of view) thing about us.

And secondly, the development of speech and language, and much later down the line, the development of symbol and religion is also something relatively extremely recent. It is neither helpful, nor accurate to imagine that these things were with us from the very beginning. They are latecomers in the slow millennial trudge of human development. (That trudge has now, of course, evolved into something close to the speed of light in this, the information and communication age, but it is all based on the same developmental linage).

I have this amazing thing in my possession - a stone tool. I picked it up amidst the huge earth-moving excavations which were being done, just outside of what is now called the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site - which is the project I used to work on.

A scientist told me that it was probably a "core" from which flakes were chipped off. Because of the excavations, it was completely displaced from where ever it would have originally been, and therefore not of worth much from a scientific point of view.

When I hold it in my hand, it fits extraordinarily snugly. And I can imagine, just dimly, that creature before me, working on it, some 2 million years ago, which held it in the hand as well. It is an extraordinary feeling, this link between me typing on a computer and that creature (probably Homo Habilis, a distant ancestor of modern humans known now as "the tool-maker").

So, when I hold in my hand, a stone tool that I picked up one day in modern Gauteng and I feel the weight of it, the cut of it and I know, the probable last creature to hold it lived 2 million years ago. I can see the direct line between that kind of ancient Oldowan technology tool-making and the computer on which I am typing this article, strange as that may be. It is a wonderful, extraordinary linage. The link is those elements of consciousness and ingenuity which makes us today what we are, and made them what they were.

That, and nothing else, needs to be the basis on which we exegete the creation narratives of Genesis 1 and 2 – and indeed, any other creation narratives which may be around! If we don’t – if we try to mask this obvious reality – we simply expose ourselves as intellectual clots.

Goodbye my brother

Alan, the Sunday cricketer


I grew up, to all intents and purposes, an only child. Both my brothers and my sister were much older than I. My mother confessed to me once, that she had worn black throughout her pregnancy with me because she was ashamed that people would know that she and my father were still having “relations” at the age of 45. When I asked her, on another occasion whether she ever enjoyed having “relations”, she shrugged her shoulder and said “well, your father seemed to enjoy it”.

It was a different time. It was more than half a century ago. My brother Alan and his family would come to visit every Sunday for lunch. He was a sporting type – good at all of them. He would fashion a cricket bat out of a plank of wood, and to my horror, we would all have to stand around playing cricket after lunch.

It was awful. I always managed to get injured in one way or another. Either I would collide with someone in a catch (which I would inevitably miss); or the ball would hit me in the eye; or the wicket would mysteriously jump up and hurt me; or the dog next-door would bite me when I would be sent to fetch the ball. It was always the same.

And Alan would be kind and encouraging. I was after all, a disappointing wimp. He was well aware of the fact that I would have preferred to be playing the piano or reading a book. He simply could not understand it, so there I was, forced to play that dreary bloody game Sunday after Sunday.

He was what was called “a man’s man”. He was big and muscular and from the pictures I have seen of him, very good looking in his youth. A sportsman, who got honours for this and credit for that. He was smart as well. He effortlessly passed school and part time university. He became a chartered accountant, passing his board exam the first time around, with flying colours. He went into business, made a million or two and looked like he was headed for the top.

My mother was never convinced. “Why does he always need to talk in telephone numbers, when it comes to money?” she would ask. She wasn’t impressed with his bragging, or his penchant for the finer things in life. She thought, correctly, that most of it was a sham.

It didn’t stop him living in big houses and driving expensive cars. It didn’t stop him developing a drinking and a gambling habit which nearly sank his family and himself. He was a flawed personality, but he was also extraordinarily affable. And he got by on that affability. People liked him, were drawn to him. He could sell ice to Eskimos. When you listened to him talk, you would believe what he was saying, whatever it might be.

And that was, of course, in many ways his downfall. He got to depend on his mouth and his personality and to get by on reliance on both. I saw him drunk out of his mind and talking nonsense on many an occasion. But I also saw him sober and kind. As a child, he taught me how to make a kite out of dowel sticks, string and tissue paper. He took me on holiday with his family more than once. He was very kind to me.

Then I went to university, and became (I think) too wild for him, because we drifted apart. He came to stay with me once, some years later and ran up a massive telephone bill and then disappeared without settling it. And that, besides his son’s wedding 12 years ago, was the last I saw of him.

We became strangers. We shared the same DNA, but nothing else. Not ideas, nor politics, nor philosophy, nor pain, nor joy. Two weeks ago, when it became clear that he was dying of renal failure, there was an opportunity to go and see him in Port Shepstone with my other siblings. I declined. I declined not because I had any particular problem with him, but because it simply felt completely inauthentic to rush to his bedside when he was dying, but to have had nothing to do with him, for most of his life – as he had nothing to do with mine.

Was I wrong? Should I have gone, just to “do the right thing?” Should I have just pretended and just dealt with my feelings of fraudulence? I am sure that there are some who will argue that I should have. But I say this. He was my blood brother. That was really all he was. He did a couple of kind things to me when I was a child. That was all. We had nothing more in common than the fact that we made our appearance into the world through the same aperture and caused by the same natural process.

But we were no more connected in life than I am with the person sitting opposite me in the train on the way to work. We had a certain, vague familiarity, but no commitment. That was the choice we both made, for whatever reason.

And so, I would now consider my family to be others. Some of them might be blood relatives, but most of them are not. They are the people that I need, and who need me. They are those who have bothered to engage with my life and whose lives intersect with mine. They live in my house and they live in my heart. They are bound to me in ways so complex and layered that I cannot even start to disengage or disentangle. They are my family, and in more instances than not, they have no genetic relationship to me at all.

So, Alan, I thank you for being kind to me when I was a child. I wish we had been more to each other than we were, throughout our lives. But it would be false to pretend otherwise.

May you rest now from your labours, from your trials and struggles and the demons you faced in life and as you approached your death. Goodbye, my eldest brother. Goodbye.

Pear and Cranberry Chutney

This is a really wonderful recipe. I added chillies for some bite. Lots of pears around at the moment.

Pear and Cranberry Chutney

1kg Firm pears
185g Onions
405g canned cranberry sauce (you can get it easily at supermarkets)
225g Demerara sugar
1/2t Ground ginger
1/2t Allspice
1/2 t White pepper
1t Sea salt
3 Birdseye chillies (depending on your need for bite)
2 1/2 Cups cider vinegar

Core and dice the pears (no need to peel). Peel and chol; onions. Place all ingredients in a nmonreactive saucepan over medium heat and stir for 10 minutes. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer the chutney, uncovered, for about 1 hour, or until it starts to thicken.

Ladle it into warmed, sterilized jars, leave to cool and seal well. Store in a dark, cool place.

Adapted from Jan Berry and Rodney Weidland Art of Preserving ten speed press, Berkeley, Calif, 1997

Wearing women's clothing

There must be a reason, though no-one has ever told me, why it is that women hang up their underwear in bathrooms. I have tried to figure it out whenever I have been invited out for a meal or something, to a house with women in it. You go to the loo and there they are, languishing on taps; trailing off shower nozzels; dangling from window fasteners; draped over the basin.

Why? Men don’t do it – and I have done my own washing for long enough (before any of you women start howling) to know that I have never been gripped by a sudden and inexplicable desire to dangle my Jockies over a tap!

It’s not that there is anything essentially wrong with it, I suppose. It just seems to me to be very strange. Especially, when sometimes bits and pieces of lingerie seem to be forgotten there. Lives get lived around them. They become part of the bathroom, like some strange, bizarre ornament. Age starts to solidify them. They start to glue themselves to the thing they were placed on. When you touch them, they crackle. When you lift them, they seem to maintain the shape of the thing they have been clinging to.

The questions remain: Why were they placed there in the first place? Is it something that mummies teach their daughters to do from a very early age and is it followed unquestioningly by every generation?

I ask, because on one occasion, I had a frightening encounter with several generations of women’s underwear, happily cohabiting in one bath room. I knew they belonged to different people, because some were slinky and frilly and flowery, while others were vast and a sort of off-brown colour and seemed to have vast amounts of elastic everywhere. Some pieces looked more like something one would use to restrain a lunatic, than wear routinely.

Personally, I have never understood the mechanics of some of the strange pieces of clothing which women wear and I have certainly never contemplated wearing them myself. Which is why I was more than curious, the other day, to meet someone who confessed to me to being a cross-dresser. Actually, he likes wearing the underwear, not the top wear. So, if he didn’t tell you, you wouldn’t guess. He was in his late twenties, masculine but quite pretty in a strange sort of way – and heterosexual. He told me about his fetish almost like he was telling me he preferred a BMW to a Merc. He told me he didn’t like men very much and he loved women. He had a girlfriend, and she didn’t know, though he wished he could tell her.

In the same week, I was told about a pre-school where the children were encouraged to cross dress for a day. It was meant to be a sort of “fun” thing to do and most children and parents entered into the spirit of the thing and had a great time. Sure, some of the parents thought it was horrible and revolting and were certainly not going to have their little Skye or Tristan in a dress. Heaven forbid!

But I was told this by one of the mothers who, like me, thought it a really imaginative, brave and laudable thing to do, on the part of the school. She asked her little boy, as she adjusted the pink bow in his hair and brushed up his rouge, whether he was expecting anybody to laugh at him. “No”, he said, “we have been told that everyone is doing it, so no-one is going to laugh.”

My friend, the mummy in question, pointed out to me the dynamics of what was hidden behind some of that kind of thinking. “You almost never find men or boys being allowed to dress ‘down’ and wear women’s clothes,” she said, “though it is quite OK for girls to dress ‘up’ and look like men and entrench all this ‘power dressing’ stuff which seems so much a part of the scene at the moment”.

And my hat, there is certainly a great deal of it about these days! All our parliamentary women (and one or two extra parliamentary ones as well) power-dress like crazy. Except, it isn’t the pseudo men-in-a-suit look at all. It is those extraordinarily large, violently colourful (in the green-to-red-to-orange-to-purple range) dresses with lots of machine embroidery – in a sort of West African style, with one helluva matching head-dress and a pair of Cazel sunglasses, which makes up the womanly power-dressing look of today.

I once sat in a steakhouse in Randburg with a friend. A more macho setting, one could not hope for. And in walked a really sexy looking woman – short skirt, legs to- die-for doll, stunning hair, which she swooshed around her. The heads turned appreciatively. There was a wink there and a nudge here. The boys were all eyeing her. She turned to the waiter to order and turned out to be very much a man! Like everyone else, I was a bit flabbergasted. The waitron fainted. But I don’t think I have ever admired quite so much, in my life. I didn’t want to dress like him, or her, or whatever, but which of us could honestly say we couldn’t do with a bit of that kind of courage?

(First published inb the Natal Witness 04.04.1997)

Me and the sangomas

Look, I’m not your average white boy. I can’t jump particularly high, or run or dance – but I’ve seen a thing or two in my time. Like, for instance, the things that sangomas do.

Now, for the uninitiated amongst you, let me tell you how to spot a sangoma. Number one – they wear lots of beads in their hair. Or, at least, they wear a wig over their hair, with lots of beads on it, dangling down. Next, some of them wear strange looking yellow bubble-like things on their heads, which, I discovered, are dried goat bladders. (Listen, don’t criticise what you haven’t tried!). These are attractively arranged, usually, with a spray of chicken feathers.

Next, they wear a sort of cross-your-heart bra like thing, either made out of beads, or skin. Often there is quite a lot to cross, but they never seem to be too bothered. Often they wear strings of bottle-tops around their ankles, which sort of jingle as they walk or stamp, which they do when they dance.

When they are together, the dancing is rhythmic , often circular, and the singing, extremely repetitive. On top of all of this “herbs” are burnt (nothing I have ever smelt before) and vast quantities of snuff is taken. Meetings with sangomas are punctuated by alarmingly loud sighs and even louder yawns. These indicate the presence of the ancestors – or something.
Now, the reason I’m telling you all this is because I thought I was fairly au fait with the sangomas of KwaZulu-Natal. At least, I could recognise them a kilometre away. I knew how to greet them – “Makhosi!” I would say, hands beating together. And again “Makhosi!” and they would respond in kind.

So, with all this intimate cultural knowledge, I found myself travelling along a very rural road in Deepest Limpopo. I was told, helpfully, that we were going to be meeting “a group of women” – nothing more.

Now, I want to emphasise the rural nature of the surroundings. I mean, this was rural with a capital R. After about four hours of hard travel, we reached a settlement of sorts. In it, we asked where the meeting was going to be. We were directed to a spot further along the road, where there was a large shady tree. Under this large shady tree were seated about thirty women. But there was something extremely odd about these women. They were all wearing tinsel on their heads!

Now, I know what KwaZulu- Natal sangomas look like. I know what Cape Town sangomas look like, but I had absolutely no experience of Limpopo sangomas. But … after all if you can wear blown-up goat bladders on your hear, why not tinsel? Why not indeed!

So, I treated them with the utmost respect. I clapped my hands and said “Makhosi!” They looked at me a little strangely, but responded in a good natured sort of way. (I put it down to linguistic and cultural differences.) I then engaged the person who was translating the rather rapid Northern Sotho for me in conversation about the difference between the way Western medicine views disease and the way in which traditional healers view disease. He listened attentively, responded cautiously and politely changed the subject. I returned to the topic, which I found extremely interesting and which I assumed he did too.

After a while, his eyes lit up. “Oh, I see!” he said. “You think these women are sangomas. Well, they are not. They are drum majorettes!”

(First published in the Natal Witness 24.04.1996)

Being an eternal victim

Every now and again throughout my life, I have found myself bowled over by something said, or read, or reported. Something which is so utterly profound, that my entire perspective, from that moment on, is completely altered. They are moments of enlightenment, of nirvana, of extraordinary understanding. Unfortunately, I can’t think of a single instance of such ingenuity emanating from me! But, I suppose, it is that which separates the geniuses from the mediocre.

There is a wonderful moment in Peter Schaffer’s play “Amadeus”, where Salieri, a somewhat pedantic and altogether boring contemporary, who is hopelessly outshone by Mozart, lament’s his rival’s genius. What galls him most is the fact that Mozart seems to show no appreciation for the tremendous gift he has. All Salieri can do is watch, and listen, and seethe. He rails against the God that created things so unfairly and so maliciously, by enabling Salieri to recognise that genius, but never to produce it.

Some years ago now, I was reading Albert Luthuli’s autobiography Let my People Go – and words leapt at me from the page. Luthuli was reminiscing about his teaching days at Adam’s college and recalling a white member of staff – a Mr de Villiers, who was later to become Secretary for Bantu Education. Luthuli remarks that this man made him understand something of the way in which Afrikaners understand themselves as being victims of their past. And then. Almost in passing, Luthuli makes a remark which changed my perspective forever. He says this, “The tendency to see oneself perpetually as a victim will lead to the evasion of responsibility and the condoning of evil…”.

I was standing in a queue which was, apparently, going nowhere this week. I was born in June and therefore I needed to take myself off to the licencing department to get a new driver’s licence. I thought it might probably take about half an hour. I was wrong. Hopelessly wrong. It actually took four hours!

But standing in that queue gave me a chance to not only hear some curious conversations, but to reflect on one or two things as well. The sojourn didn’t begin well. Three of Cape Town’s finest members of the master race decided that they didn’t really need to worry too much about the curious, but terribly reasonable etiquette which one follows when standing in queues. Had they been black and jumped the queue, there would have been hell to pay, I can promise you. But they were white. So people behind them just sort of pretended that it wasn’t happening.

I felt my blood pressure peak and said loudly, clearly and in my most indignant and assertive English voice, “Excuse me, but that is not your place”. Now, one would expect some measure of embarrassment. One would expect some sign of contrition.. One might even expect them to move. None of the above happened.

The woman in the group – let me describe her. Shortish, lycra longs, pulled over her stick-insect legs, feet forced into medium high heeled shoes (one heel a bit worn), brightly coloured top with badly dyed hair, blue make-up on her eyes. Anyway, this blommetjie van die veld rounded on me like a snake. Who did I think I was? she asked, not requiring an answer. How long had I been standing there? she wanted to know. Did I have any idea how long she had been standing in the queue? She had been there longer than anyone, and she was sick of it. I looked like the kind of person that was just looking to cause trouble. Why don’t I just grow up!?

I have to say, words, for once, failed me dramatically. I looked around me for support. There wasn’t much, I can tell you. Two blacks who were unfortunate enough to be behind this woman and her cronies looked like they wanted the ground to swallow them up. The people I was with looked supportive, in a non-involved sort of way, but said nothing.
I tried saying something else, I forget what. She with the blue-eye make-up rounded upon me again. “Oh shaddup!” she said between clenched teeth. “I’ll give you a bladdy slap!”

I realised that she wouldn’t be moving. The two men she was with looked minimally more contrite than she did, but they were clearly onto a good wicket, so they just stood around, bodily disengaged in some mysterious way from the real action – parasitic on the ferocious one.

Standing in the queue for the next few hours, listening to their inane chatter, enabled me to ponder the situation in some considerable depth. What I realised was that this woman’s real gripe with the world was that she was somehow owed something. Due to what, in particular, I did not know. But that was the reason behind this patently unfair behaviour of hers. She could justify the clearly unjustifiable, by resorting to the “I am owed” reality in her mind.

I have written often on the issue of black entitlement. Of course, the entitlement is not and never has been a black preserve. There is good reason to argue that the whole edifice of apartheid was built on the belief that whites were entitled. And behind all of this, lurking in the shadows, gnawing at the vitals, is the concept of victim. I am a victim, therefore I am owed.

I was talking, the other night, to someone whose life is spent dealing with victims. Real victims, that is, not the imaginary ones who just believe themselves to be victims. These are people who have been tortured, raped, abused, hijacked and so on. He said that he often holds workshops for victims and in them, there often comes a point when a victim is faced with his or her own ability to victimise. That is the turning point. That is when a person stops being a victim and has the courage to face their own inadequacy – their own evasion of responsibility and condoning of evil. Often they find themselves facing their own much more active victimisation of others. And then – and perhaps only then – they are free.

A visit to the dentist

I think it might have been because I wasn’t expecting the dentist to be a woman that we started our brief relationship on a slightly rickety footing. She, not I, was 25 minutes late for the appointment.

The receptionist and I glared at each other from time to time. She busied herself on the telephone with friends from far and wide. After a long while, she actually spoke to me.

“Uh dunnah wheh she uz,” she said. I glared. There was an awkward silence. Then, out of the blue she said, “Hev you evah met a blek then invented anything?” I said I had not. “Thet’s right!” she beamed. She hadn’t either! This appeared to prove something profound to her. She was quite unmoved when I added that I had never met a white that had invented anything either. I pondered the prospect of what it must be like to look at a picture of, say, Thomas Edison, and experience a feeling of deep racial pride swelling in my breast.

Her next conversational offering was “Wheh does your waahff buy her washing powder?” I explained that I did not have a “waahff” – (“shame”, she said) but that we bought it anywhere we happened to be shopping. (“Rehlie!” she said). Could she interest me in a whole complicated scheme of biologically friendly products, so pure you could literally drink the water after doing your washing? There were facial creams for the girlfriend (she decided I must at least have a girlfriend), and slimming products – (she wasn’t sop rude as to say for whom these might be put to use). Oh, and gardening products as well. Before I could blink, she had a glossy pamphlet out, with all her products on display. I was sampling the Aloe Vera suntan lotion and she was filling in a list of items I would be purchasing.

Luckily, at that moment, the dentist came in, gesticulating and muttering about the children and school. I listened hard, but I didn’t hear any apology. But then who has ever been apologised to by a health practitioner who is late?

I was shown to another room and made to lie in that extraordinary position which, I imaginbe, would be ideal for giving birth. “Ah”, she said, endearingly, as she snapped on her rubber gloves. “I like this kind of mouth. So big and wide!”

Then she started poking about and counting things off. The hygienist type person, behind me, was writing things down. There was lots of counting. “H1” and “B12” and “S12” – and stuff like that. I wondered what it could all mean. Then X-rays were taken. “Shouldn’t you be hiding behind a screen wearing a lead vest?” I asked. “Oh no”, she said in a rather patronising voice, “technology is so advanced these days” (don’t you just love that…?) “that the dose is completely harmless”.

I was told that there was nothing “essentially” wrong with my teeth. I could have told her that. But despite this fact, it was her considered opinion that I should have all my “ugly metal fillings” removed and replaced with porcelain fillings. “You have a lovely smile”, she said, pandering to my not inconsiderable vanity, “why ruin it with all these ugly shadows?”

I suddenly saw my mouth in a whole new way. What was before, just my mouth, had now become a ghastly pit of black, shadowy fillings, begging to be removed! “And how much would this whole thing cost?” I asked gingerly. “Oh” she said vaguely, “what medical aid are you on?”
Before I knew what was happening she had the oral hygienist on the telephone to my medical aid asking how much they would pay “for this kind of procedure”.

The news wasn’t good. The medical aid would only pay R2 000 a year. That translated into about one-and-a-half teeth, she said. “But”, she brightened considerably, the new medical aid year is in April, so we could fit one in now and then get more in the new financial year!”

And I, gormless twit that I am, allowed her to book an appointment for me for the next week. It took me an entire day to see the light and change my mind. I related this story to someone who sells things for a living. He smiled knowingly. “All she needs is one in eight clients to buy her line and she will make a very good living. That is the way we all work it.”

This article first appeared in The Natal Witness, March, 1998