Smoking Doctors

Soon after moving to Gauteng in the mid 1990s, I badly needed a doctor – the reasons for which, I now forget. I was newly arrived in Pretoria. The Boerewors curtain (and life behind it) was a strange and frightening place. The entire Department of Land Affairs was staffed by white people. More than that, Afrikaans white people, who were so furious that a white person from “outside” had been appointed to the position instead of them, that they refused to talk to me in anything other than Afrikaans for the first 6 months. So, life was a little challenging. I needed a doctor, so I asked the only person who was remotely nice to me in the directorate I was running, if she could perhaps recommend anyone. As it happened, she could but she was hesitant. I wondered why? “Because, well, because”, she said “… no, make up your own mind about him”. I was intrigued.

Within seconds of meeting him, I understood her hesitation.

On that day, he was dressed from head to toe in black leather. He had long peroxide blond hair, done in ringlets which cascaded down his back and, to the front, to his nipples. He had a black moustache and goatee. He had a silver cross dangling on a chain around his neck, which was lost in a forest of dark chest hair. He was as camp as a row of pink tents. And he was smoking a cigarette.

As you can imagine, I was a little nervous, but I needed a doctor for whatever it was. And so began what is now a 17 year relationship, because even though we moved to Johannesburg and then to Cape Town, he and I have remained in periodic contact.
He had, for a while (what my mother would have called), his “eye” on me. But he really was never my type and nothing ever happened either way. He was (is) a brilliant doctor. It was almost as though he could kind of “divine” the problem. He was certain about many things: his particular version of God; politics; men; women; cats; dogs; climate change – the lot. He was (is) also a thundering, inexcusable, unbearable racist.

Quite simply. He hates “die kaffirs”. Over the years, he had learned to pare that down slightly by calling them “them”. Arguing with him is and was futile. His views were and are based on gossip, prejudice, hate, victimisation, conspiracy theories, lies, hysteria and loathing. (I know it is surprising that he is also a good doctor, but that he certainly is). His heroes were DF Malan, Verwoerd – who knows, probably Hitler as well. He just hates blacks. (We decided very early on, that we would never take our children to him).

Now the area in which his surgery is situated is in, or very close to Sunnyside. And Sunnyside, for any of you who might know it, has become an almost entirely black neighbourhood. The area immediately around his surgery has transformed, from when first I went to see him, from being a tight-lipped, pinched Afrikaner community, to being a Boom! Boom! taxi speakers, sheep’s head on the braai kind of area. He has stayed on, hating and loathing everything and everyone around him.

Every year or so, he gets robbed, or held up, or something equally dramatic and life threatening. Every year, he has his knees removed and replaced, or his stomach diverted, or his lungs replaced, or his heart transplanted. It is always terribly dramatic and life-threatening stuff and the other doctors are always amazed at how strong he is and how quickly he recovers from whatever beset him.

Every year, religiously, he calls me to wish me on my birthday. He tells me a joke, with seemingly no punchline (I suspect it gets lost in the translation) and he tells me of the latest mishap to befall him.

A couple of days ago, I was in Pretoria with a few minutes to spare, so I went to say hello. I got hugged, as usual, so hard that the breath leaves my body for far too long. We started chatting. He had forgotten what job I was now in. Restitution, I told him. I saw his face glaze with fury. He stood up. He started shouting at me, that it was disgusting to take people’s land away from them and give it to morons who didn’t know how to look after it. Well, as it happens, I told him (trying to divert the direction of the conversation), some of the claimants are white. Restitution isn’t about colour. He didn’t hear that. He just went on ranting.

“They were bloody nomads!” he screamed “They owned nothing anywhere! The land was acquired completely legally. They were just too bloody stupid to do it first! And thank God they didn’t manage to get their paws on it first, because then we would be completely up the creek without a… what’s it called? A sort of spade thing you row boats with?... A paddle! Up shits creek without a paddle”.

And so it went for a full 10 minutes. “The whole bloody lot of them are born with their hands like this (he demonstrated hands cupped, open in the begging position). “Why don’t you just get out of here and let me do my work!? I could see that we were in the middle stages of a medical emergency, so I stood up and left.

I am sad, because obviously, that friendship (however strange it might have been) is at an end now. I suppose what is even more strange, is that it ever happened in the first place. His level of hatred is (perhaps it always was) pathological. How he survives where he does, beats me. And what he so ably illustrates is how some white people have managed to weather majority government, without changing their views or their positions (or their outlook) one iota. They are exactly the same disturbed racists which they were under apartheid.

He lives in a parallel universe. The black people braai-ing sheep’s heads on his doorstep are like a tide of garbage which has arrived and which needs to be carefully picked through to get to one’s car and then into the safety of one’s house every evening. It is “them” and “us”. The war continues. The bitterness doesn't end.

And then I remember his secretary. She used to dye her hair a vivid red and wear it in a pile on top of her head. She is a “blommetjie van die veld” if ever there was one. True Pretoria, in every way. Her daughter has adopted two black children – Matthew and Luke. She loves and adores them. They only speak Afrikaans. While I was waiting to see the doctor, she couldn’t wait to show me pictures of her grandchildren, on her phone. She has told me before that she cannot talk about them in his presence, because, well, you know how he is.

Truly, we are a strange lot. And how many generations is it going to take to make things normal? White people, generally, have simply tripped into liberation, without having to do very much at all, except put down their guns. What is so badly missing and so badly needed, is re-education.

"Skoonheid" - (Beauty)

So, I have this cousin, who lives in Fish Hoek. He likes to walk on the mountains which surround the village, barefoot. He has a head full of shockingly white hair and a Stalin type moustache on his lip. He is a straight up-and-down kind of guy, in most senses of the word. I was therefore very interested when, casually, he told me about this movie that he had seen recently, “with loads of graphic gay sex in it. I was expecting him to dismiss it – but he didn’t. Far from it! “It was a brilliant movie!” he pronounced.

The movie he was talking about was “Skoonheid” – (translated Beauty), which has been getting some measure of high regard at the recent Cannes festival. It stars Deon Lotz – an actor, I have to admit, I have never heard of - and a range of other people I have never seen before in my life.

What is the movie about? Well, it is about this very ordinary Afrikaner who lives a very ordinary kind of life. Of course, he is gay (though he would not admit that) and fixates on a good looking young man at his daughter’s wedding. He becomes extremely compulsive about this young man. Essentially – that is what the film is about.

Now, you might think that is hardly novel – and indeed it is not. But what is so extraordinary about this film is the intensity of the primary role. The film is layered – repressed Afrikaner males, hypocritical, violent, angry, tending toward psychotic - and all the expected avenues are explored at that level. But there is another level, the ease and unfettered freedom of the beautiful young man – uncluttered with the history of the country. The electrical “charge” in which the younger generation operates, where older men on the prowl are simply invisible. The straightforward unedited, un-nuanced, almost naive business orientation of the new generation – happy to simply use contacts, situations, relationships etc, for whatever scheme they might have in mind.

And yet another level is that of the kind of inner turmoil in which some people still labour – there are frequent references to how little the government does, or cares; how the law enforcement agencies are sadly wanting; how the country is falling to pieces. Yet these remarks are made within a ring of deceit and evil which is carefully hidden from view – but indulged in and continued.

The layers are all there – in the veneer of respectability; in the role of father, husband and provider; in the lostness of someone still essentially damaged by apartheid; in a culture of ipods and trance music; in the hypocrisy of a person living an individual lie, but never hesitating to point to failure and corruption in the state.

The main character, Francois, is plainly a very disturbed individual. He cannot cope with the reality of his sexual orientation, but that does not stop him (and a portly bunch of similar men), gathering on a regular basis at remote farmhouses to have orgies. He starts to spin completely out of control – becoming completely predatory on the one hand and then reacting like a 12 year old, when he discovers his daughter in what seems to be not much more than a casual friendship with the object of his own desire. He stalks his wife and stalks this younger man. He plots in a cringe-making, amateurish way, to engineer a sexual encounter with him.

The result is explosive, extremely violent and utterly awful. The tension gets ratcheted up to an almost unbearable level – and then, one is faced with the mundane once again, with all of the contradictions still intact.

There is no resolution. There is no light, no glimmer of hope. The man continues, corrupt, abusive, self-destructive and unrepentant - dispensing either money or forgiveness to the people who are actually his victims. It is shocking to watch. Particularly if one is, let us say, of a certain age.

The title, “Skoonheid” is an interesting one. It is translated beauty – and the beautiful young man is the obvious object of the older man’s desire. But it can also mean “displaying an excellent character” – and with that in mind, the movie is certainly worth pondering.

Some reviews have criticized the movie for being "plodding". I have to say, I did not feel that. I thought it was brilliantly acted, nuanced and certainly unpredictable. But more than that, it has a gritty realism about it, which kept me wide awake.


Starring: Albert Maritz,Charlie Keegan,Deon Lotz,Michelle Scott,Roeline Daneel,Sue Diepeveen
Director: Oliver Hermanus

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

Markers of change

The daughter of a friend of mine - a beautiful, lithe Lesbian aged 20 – recently went on that mandatory trip to Europe, which every student is supposed to do. You are supposed to visit every art gallery you possibly can. You are supposed to party till dawn in a foreign city. You are supposed to starve, because you don’t have enough money over there. You are supposed to hitch rides, because you can’t afford the train. You are supposed to be wild. You are supposed to be free. That is all part of being a student.

So she went. And she had a ball. And she spent her last penny. And she was standing in a long queue at Heathrow airport waiting to catch her flight home. There were mostly South Africans standing in that queue. Behind her was a large-bellied, shorts-wearing, Afrikaner. He had a greying, nicotine-stained moustache. The lithe student had made up her mind that this was not the kind of person she would see herself associating with. She was fairly certain about that.

Some way in front of them, also standing in the queue was a woman in full Purdah, wearing that suddenly controversial garment which covers the face, the Burka. She was called out of the line by the security officials. In full view of the other people in the queue, she was ordered to take off her head-dress. At first she resisted, but then complied, when it became clear that if she did not, she would not be allowed to board the plane home. There she stood. To her, she could have been stark naked. She tried to hide her face. She squirmed in shame and embarrassment.

My friend’s daughter felt the blood rise to her head. She felt utterly powerless and utterly outraged. And then she heard the man behind her, muttering under his breath these few words: He said “Dis nie reg nie”. (That is not right).

She turned to him and they spoke to each other in Afrikaans. They both agreed that what was happening was outrageous. Why was the woman not taken into a private space, if they were so desperate to search her? Why was she allowed to be so publicly violated, in a so-called liberal country?

So there were these two individuals. A pot-bellied Boer and a young Lesbian student, bonded together in their disgust for what was happening to a Muslim compatriot. And their whispered converse left them both with an extraordinary pride in what they were and how far we as South Africans have journeyed, to become what we are.

During the World Cup, my job took me to every corner of the Western Cape Province. I have had detailed negotiations with virtually every municipality in every District. And this is what I have seen: I have seen white people and black people and coloured people working together, and working hard. I have seen honesty and integrity. I have seen competence and I have seen government officials willing to work overtime, without recompense. (I have seen idiots and crooks as well). But in general, I have to say, that what has impressed me the most are the white officials, mostly Afrikaans speaking, who do their jobs and do them well. And who have changed beyond recognition. They are comfortable in their own skins and the people around them are comfortable with them.

Transformation has happened and it is a wonderful thing to see. And it is things like this that should give us as a nation, real pride in the journey we have taken and the point we have reached. But besides anything else, I would want to say that it is very likely indeed that it is because minority groups like the Muslim community feel not only respected in our society, but integral to it, that we could host a totally safe World Cup.

Getting the thing I wished for

So, being Easter, I went to hear the Messiah last night at the beautiful Cairp Tahn City Hall. It is a really magical building, with frosted decoration on the ceiling and booths, and grand chandeliers which have a thousand light bulbs. The stage is backed by a massive organ. The woodwork is wonderful and the seats suitably uncomfortable for a building of that age.

Now, I always have mixed feelings about going to the Messiah. I mean, apart from the fact that one has heard it a gazillion times, you never know what you are going to get. I have sat through Messiah’s with a “cast of thousands” – which sounded like Messiah for the very hard of hearing. Then, on the other hand, I have had Messiah on authentic instruments played and sung by males only, wearing wigs. That was an equally strange experience.

I have wept in the Messiah. I have fallen asleep in the Messiah. I have regretted going because I was bored out of my mind and I have wondered why I thought, even momentarily, that I wouldn’t go, because the experience was so wonderful.

So last night, I went, with this “lucky-dip” mentality. Last year, there was a counter-tenor singing the Alto part that was spectacular. This year a mezzo that I had heard before and has a harsh edge to her voice and a tendency to have so much vibrato, that she frequently quavers right off the note – so I wasn’t expecting very much. Nicholas Cleobury was conducting, though – so it stood some chance of being, at least tolerable.

Curiously, there was a row of empty seats in front of me. I looked around the Cairp Tahn audience. Predictably white. A dot, here and there, of another colour but mostly, blindingly, depressingly white.

It started. Cleobury was taking it at quite a cracking pace. The tenor was lyrical and sweet – “Comfort ye, my people”. Suddenly, one of the side doors burst open and in walked a row of young , hip, gum- chewing, black, (I would say) 20 year olds. One of them had a T-shirt which read “Reaching your full potential IN GOD”.
They had the extensions; the dreds; the shiny African-American relaxed and gelled look. They carried bottles of Coke and they seemed intent on sitting in the row in front of me. They showed no sign of guilt or embarrassment at their lateness. They sat down. They giggled at the irritation of the people around them. They whispered loudly to each other, then they settled down to enjoy the performance. They conducted the air. They twiddled their fingers at the string sections. They lip-synced the words, (when they knew the words). If there was the slightest hint of a beat, such as in “Why do the nations rage”, for instance – they jived along with the music, while mercifully still seated in their seats.

Sometimes, with some of the less well-known recitatives and choruses, they started sending and receiving text messages on their phones and passing them to each other to read. They opened their coke bottles with a loud hissing sound. In a word, it was profoundly disturbing. At the end of part one, there was a moment’s indecision on the part of the conductor. They clapped. There was some lacklustre support for them from one or two others in the audience. They complained to each other loudly, that “these people are scared to clap!”

During the interval, I thought about what I was witnessing here. On the one hand, I have long complained about the complexion of Cape Town Symphony Concert audiences. On the other, here I was complaining where black youngsters sitting in front of me didn’t know how to behave!

On the one hand, it is a question of them simply not understanding the conventions. On the other, it is precisely the conventions which have kept people like them outside the concert halls and attending hip-hop events instead.

The point I reached, eventually, was that it was infinitely better for them to be there – visibly enjoying the music of a European composer who died 251 years ago, to them not being there at all. I am not saying that they shouldn’t shut up and sit still during the performance. What I am saying, is that all that kind of stuff can follow.

The Help – by Kathryn Stockett , Penguin/Fig Tree, London, 2009

I have to admit, when I first started this book – many months ago – I had my doubts. (I have to also admit that most of my reading takes place, these days, on aeroplanes, or at airports waiting for them). The doubts were about the voices which are used throughout the book, predominantly of Southern black (African-American) women.

It takes some getting used to. But after not too long, I found it starts to read perfectly naturally. We have all, after all, been thoroughly attuned to that voice through the medium of television and movies. It is nothing unfamiliar. It is just that one doesn’t see it written very often. The first time I did encounter it was in The Colour Purple. (I have to admit it took me one hell of a long time to work out what “Shug” might be!)

But it really is a voice we know, albeit in this unfamiliar form. And once you start getting into the book, it becomes a really exciting and different experience. Through the device, you are suddenly projected into this unfamiliar world.

The author herself, (she reveals in her afterword) had doubts about this decision. Of course she did! The chances of sounding patronising, or of sliding into some really offensive “white” take on African-Americans, were pretty good. But she doesn’t – well not from my perspective anyway. African-Americans will obviously have their own opinions on the matter.

I tried to imagine what the effect would be, if a white person in South African were to write a novel in the black voice – recording the details and mannerisms of accent. The likelihood of misunderstanding and/or real offense would be very high indeed. Does anyone remember that ghastly programme which used to run on Springbok radio called the “Pip Freedman Show”? He had a number of personae – all of whom were racially defined. A “Cape Coloured” man called Ghatipi (I am not sure of the spelling here) sticks in my mind. It was demeaning and offensive – though of course, no-one white thought so for a moment.

When I was writing my novel, “Remittance Man” (UKZN Press, Pietermaritzburg,1997) I started by putting one of the characters in accent. But it really did come across forced and painful – so I dropped it.

But there is none of that here. The voices seem to be to be as clear as a bell and as practised and authentic as you can get. It is beautiful. I read the book in awe of her art and her ability. It is quite spectacular.

The stories she tells, of the relationship between maids and their employers, is by no means an unfamiliar one to any South African. The assumptions are all the same. The fear is kept firmly in check. Some of the conditions are indeed vicious and uncaring. But there are a number of vital differences.

Firstly, the African- American “Helps” drive their own cars. They talk on the telephone to each other and there seems to be very little restriction on them doing so by their employers. They own their own houses. Their children go to school and sometimes to University. They seem to be poor, but they are not living in the kind of abject poverty that we have all around us. The same insane racial sense of superiority pervades the parallel world which the whites are living in. They talk about “Nigras” to each other, in the presence of the Help, as if they are not there. To be human is, nonetheless, to be white.

The story is about several of the people living in Jackson, Mississippi (only one white amongst them) who start making the journey to find each other. It is a truly inspiring and magnificent tale. What is so remarkable about it, is that it gives the reader a glimpse into the world as it was then – on the brink of irrevocable change.
Read through the eyes of a 50 year old South African, it is so easy to simply flip the switch of translation and to remember one’s own youth, with “the Maid” and the kind of complex relationships which developed. The story made me think about a woman who looked after me when I was a child of 6 or7. Her name was Bertha. She taught me my first words in Sesotho. She loved me and looked after me.

One day, she was gone. I was told that she had gone home and wasn’t coming back. S few days later, she appeared, nervously at the gate with a gift for me. It was a vest, wrapped in giftwrap. She said I should take it, and not tell my mother she had given it to me. And when I wore it, I should think of her.

I found out many years later, that our lodger, a certain “Mr Page” had raped Bertha, while we all on holiday. Bertha had laid a change – and that is what got her fired.
My mother and father were good people. Simple people. They were also deeply racist. That was all they really could be, with relatively little education and exposure and living in a system designed to make them so. When the chips were down they would protect their own, no matter what the morality of the issue, no matter consequences.

That is what this book is about. The many consequences.

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!

Yesterday in Mosselbay, with a darkie

My work colleague is beautiful. She has one hell of a body. She wears high heels that require the equivalent of tightrope-walking skills. She dresses like a model and shops to calm her nerves. She has long, LONG dreadlocks - natural ones; she boasts well manicured nails. She gets up at five in the morning to start her beauty routine. She eats like a horse and never seems to put on weight. And, oh yes, did I mention she is black? No? Well, she is.

I see the way men look at her. They pause, when she walks into the room. Their eyes tear her clothes off of her. They find themselves lingering over her lips, her boobs, her crotch, her bum, her legs. They follow her around the room. And, because we appear to be together, they sometimes stare ruefully at me. Normal behaviour, I would imagine.

But in Mosselbay, I also saw something else, which she pointed out to me. We went to the restaurant in the hotel we were staying in, for supper. As she entered, men and women looked up, and kept on looking. Ah yes. This wasn't lust, it was unfamiliarity. It was something just this side of alarm. Because then I noticed - which she of course had noticed in a glance - that the room was entirely white.

Then I get glared at. I glare back and they back down. But only after some point has been made. Some strange point which they are making. Only after they have maintained the hostility for just a millisecond, do I get the point.

You see, apparently, in Mosselbay she would have to be my whore. So unlikely is it, that a man of my age and a beautiful black woman could just be enjoying an evening together.

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.

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.

District 9 and why I liked it

Some of the write-ups have indicated that District 9 is, in an underlying kind of way, about apartheid. And I suppose, yes, shunting people off into sealed areas and treating them like animals is a little bit of what apartheid was about. But having just seen the movie, I think that is an extremely facile interpretation.

A spaceship hovers above Johannesburg. After a while, when the initial fascination wears off, the authorities decide the vessel should be boarded. What they discover there is hundreds of malnourished aliens, which look a little like Parktown Prawns (aka Libanisidus Vittatus) - on speed.

Now for those who don’t know these creatures (Parktown Prawns) – if you have lived in certain areas of Johannesburg, where they abound – you would know that living with them is a real trial. They are extremely ugly. They appear when you least expect them, and if you challenge them, they have a tendency to squirt a dark blue liquid all over the place and jump at you. No-one would want to keep them as a pet. There seems to be a fairly clear allusion to these in the movie, because the alien creatures are called, dismissively, “Prawns”.

The movie takes us into the relationship between humans and these aliens some way down the road. The “Prawns” have all been herded up and kept in compound squatter camps. There is a band of Nigerians who have seen the chance for making serious money in the supply of contraband. And there are the authorities, who, because of popular demand, have decided to evict the “Prawns” to a location further away from the city.

The human population is united across all sectors – race, gender, class. They want them removed. There are one or two slight impediments – such as “rights” which the aliens are seen to have, by the international community. So, there are a range of token nods in the direction of these “rights” but the general idea is clear. Come Hell or High Water – they will be removed.

The story is fairly blood-spattered and scattered with a range of villains. The sound effects, and the camera work spectacular. But there is one aspect which is really surprising. The aliens start to take on a significantly more humane character than their human “hosts”. Greed is the only determinant with the humans. They will stop at nothing to satisfy that greed. And the veneer of “rights” is just token adherence to the notion of ethics, rather than anything in any way substantial.

The lead character is nothing more than a naive and useful idiot, who has no idea that he is being used. The lead aliens don’t really have much personality – because their means of communication is a series of clicks and grunts, which makes engagement, for the audience at least, rather difficult. But the point is abundantly clear. The humans recognise none of their abilities. The aliens are dependent on human provision entirely. And that dependency creates a relationship of extreme and mostly one-sided violence on the part of the humans. They have no interest in the well being of the aliens. They only have interest in their own well-being. And these are degrees of exploitation.

The Nigerians (who also live in what is called a “camp”), in close proximity to the aliens, are the first level of exploitation. They believe that actually eating aliens will give them power. There are other more systematic, more clinical attempts at exploitation going elsewhere – but the theme is the same. It is simply a matter of level and degree.

And that is what I liked so much about the film. The violence is simply the outward symptom of an inner, almost psychotic impulse to dominate, rape and pillage. And when the whole scheme starts to come apart at the seams, then the media is there to lie and to spin and to distort reality. I think it is a really good movie. Go and see it!

Back to school

In Cape Town, in a way I had never understood it to be in Johannesburg (or even, for that matter Pietermaritzburg), access to resources depends pretty much entirely on where you live. So, when we decided to move to Cape Town, a friend implored me to only consider buying in the Southern Suburbs. Her reason was straightforward. “That is where the best schools are”, she said.

So, being the compliant type that I am, I obeyed. And subsequently, we spent a few months of laast year looking for an appropriate school for our oldest child. Now, yes, it is true, our circumstances are not the usual. We are a same-sexed, white couple, with two adopted black children. And most of the time, life is just as ordinary and as straightforward as anyone could want it to be. But sometimes, one is taken aback by how different, apparently, other people’s reality is. Our first interview with a prospective school principal was a case in point.

She is a homely looking, somewhat pleased with herself white woman, with very clear understandings of what a teacher is and what a parent is. Things have changed somewhat from our first encounter, but I could not help feeling vaguely patronised, then. Perhaps it was the unfamiliarity of the situation. It was difficult to tell.

Now understand, this interview process is, by its very nature, a lopsided one. She is in a position of some considerable power. And you, the parent, are trying to put your best face forward, because you want your child to have access to the school, which, from all accounts, is one of the “good” ones.

So, when she sits you down, folds her arms and says “Look, I’m a very straightforward person. How long have you two been together?” you might be pardoned for wondering whether she would ask a heterosexual couple the same question. You may be pardoned, too, if you bit a large hole in your tongue and refrained from asking her that question, which would certainly be what she deserved. The problem is, she is in a position of some considerable power in this situation, and you are not. So you sit there like a deer in the headlights and meekly say you have been together nine years, for what it is worth.

Then you are then told that your child would not be allowed dreadlocks, if he were to be accepted at her school. You are given a bogus anthropology lesson on the “meanings” of various styles of black hair. They were so preposterous and bizarre, that I can’t even remember them, but what they pointed to was a mindset which remained, shall we say, underexposed?

This was followed, some time afterwards, by an orientation session with all the parents and children, she started by addressing the children. “Let me tell you”, she said, “this is a safe place. And the teachers are going to be just like your mummies. You will get to love them, and they will get to love you, just like your mummies love you”.

Now there is nothing essentially wrong with this. The sentiment is obviously well intended. But she hasn’t thought a centimetre beyond what is usual. Our child doesn’t have a “mummie”. (And, I bet sitting in the audience, our child wasn’t the only one without a “mummie”. ) Furthermore, “Mummies” sometimes don’t love their children. “Mummies” sometimes run off with others and leave their children with someone else. That isn’t something gay, or straight, it is just the way the world sometimes works.

In our search, we also went to another school – a much more “free-spirited” school – where the same-sex thing was seemingly of no consequence. But the prospective teacher, with both parents and the child in the room starts saying “Oh, but he doesn’t have parents, does he?”

I don’t despair. I have no doubt that they are all good and kind people. But isn’t it weird that in this day and age, that this kind of thinking is probably the norm?

It is, essentially, about the dominance of one particular world view over everything else. It is there when whites do it to blacks. It is there when blacks do it to whites. It is there when straights do it to gays and when gays do it to straights.

The problem is, it is mostly unchallenged and unchecked. It is insidious. It gets passed on down the generational line. And it is reinforced, fed and nurtured in the school environment, unless something is actively done to challenge it.

Talking of which - the school my child now goes to has a "diversity group". Very nice. My partner sent them an email, enthusiastic and willing. We never got any reply.

Practical hints for race relations

Living in Cape Town, one has to learn to do things a bit differently. Like, for instance, being constantly aware of where “the Mountain” is. Because all directions to anywhere and everywhere are given in relation to “the Mountain”. The weather, also, seems to be determined by which side of “the Mountain” you are on.

You have to get used to rain in winter. You have to scale everything down in relation to your living requirements, because buying the tiniest little dwelling here, would probably buy a whole street anywhere else. So, in the spirit of all of this, I decided that I needed to get rid of some of my books. To be honest, I don’t know why I had so many of them. It isn’t as though I am constantly referring to them, but somehow, like old friends, and pleasant memories, it felt nice to have them around.

But – given the fact that space is now at something of a premium, I decided to get rid of many in my collection. And in the process – which brings me to my point – a yellowing newspaper article fell out of one of them. It was a clipping from what I think was “The Star”. It is entitled “An Afrikaner’s Diary” and is signed Jan Burger.

The date of the piece is 4 May 1958 and is mostly about an interview which the author did with poet and dramatist Uys Krige, condemning the prudishness of the censors at the time. But it was the last few paragraphs which caught my eye. The author refers to a “recent Sabra congress” (apparently this is short for "Suid-Afrikaanse Buro vir Rasse-Aangeleenthede" which I think means something like the "Bureau for race relations", or something) where some pactical hints were shared about how whites could create a bit more goodwill between themselves and “non-Whites” (sic). I am going to quote the paragraphs in full, because – well you will see why…:

“Mr F.J van Wyk, Assistant Director of the Institute of Race Relations, asked whether the names of Native casualties could not be mentioned in newspapers. Natives feel that the omission of their names is discrimination.

Mrs E.S. Bell of Bloemfontein asked parents to restrain children from mocking Natives in the street. Mr Krynauw of Worcester said that our attitude that Natives must greet us first is wrong. The Bantu’s tradition is that the superior should take the initiative.

Mr B Steyn, senior information officer of the Department of Native Affairs, asked Whites serving behind shop counters not to throw change at Natives. It hurts.”

I have read and re-read the passage, wondering whether behind it, there might be some attempt at humour, perhaps. Perhaps in the last sentence? But then the other “hints” don’t seem to indicate this. The passage gives one a glimmer of what the majority white mindset of the day was. You will agree with me, even without the considerable benefit of hindsight, it is as extraordinary as it is absurd.

But then, at the same time that I found this piece, I read of a court case where a certain Zanele Magubane was given an apology and R10 000 by her employer, Cameron Forsyth, in settlement for a text message which was about her and mistakenly sent to her, (but intended for his wife), calling the childminder a “kaffir bitch”.

The ongoing tragedy today, besides the fairly substantial mess we are in politically, is that most white people still have no concept of their absolute continued contribution to that mess. By thinking the things they think, by believing the things they do, and by saying, the moment they think they have a sympathetic ear, the sort of crud they say. In Cape Town, (in many ways the last hiding place of the un-reformed), I hear these opinions, beliefs and statements, more than I ever have before elsewhere.

And the most irritating thing of the lot, is that they continue to think that they are somehow superior – even after apartheid!

A strange sense of business

Now, the place I love to stay in Plettenberg Bay is a B&B called - somewhat alarmingly - "Sunshowers". It is on the lagoon and there is one room - room 5 - which has this utterly amazing view. Besides which, it is a HUGE room, tastefully furnished and wonderfully comfortable.

Over the many times I have been coming here, there has been a range of women who seem to run the place. Straightfoward, ordinary types. Not unpleasant. In fact, I have to say, very sweet and accommodating. I usually come with a black work colleague. Seeing I found the place, I have made it clear, that when I am in town, I get room 5. There has been grudging acceptance of this. However, my colleague also has her preferences, within the limited choices of the 5 suites that there are. So, she asked for another particular room.

Now, since coming here, and chatting with the people who run the place, we heard about the owners, who apparently, live on a farm in the Free State and don't seem to take a huge amount of interest in the place, leaving the people who run it to do just that. They weren't complaining at all, and as I said, the place is really wonderful. Well run, immaculately clean, efficient and very easy to return to.

So tonight, for the first time, we met the owner. She is a kind of stick-thin woman (I would say in her early thirties). She has that kind of "modern" look about her. Somewhat grungy - you know the type - layers of odd clothing - too tight fur collared jacket buttoned once in the middle, tie-dyed blond hair looking badly cut. Boots.

She greeted us at the door and told my colleague, immediately, that she was aware that she didn't like the particular room that she was going to put her in, "but I am the owner" she said, as though that settled the matter, "and I am staying in the room you usually stay in - so you have to have this other room".

Of course my colleague was disappointed, but accepted it, because it is, after all, only for one night. But I started to think the thing through. How absolutely weird! What extraordinarily peculiar business practise! Was it the same as me demanding to have room 5?

Well, no. It isn't. Both of us are guests, for goodness sake. Surely, the issue is that both of us should be made as happy as we possibly can be? How come I was being given the best room in the place and she the worst? Could it possibly be ... a little bit of racism? Just a touch, maybe?

Well, it is hard to tell, and impossible to prove - and naturally will be denied. But it is a question I have in my mind.

Bruno - Iconoclasm writ large

Sacha Baron Cohen's latest swipe at the universe as we know it, is through the medium of his alter ego - Bruno, a gay Austrian who wants to be the most famous person in the world. The film, using a methodology similar to Borat - that of a travelogue - takes in a very wide range of situational moments: fashion shows; auditions for movies; attempted talk show hostings; charity work; advice with gay conversion specialists; peace-making in Palestine; hunting expeditions; appearances on chat shows in the Deep South aimed at African American audiences, with a black baby that he claimed he exchanged for an iPod. The list of standard, but manipulated situations turned on their heads, goes on. The scenes which work the best are those where he places himself in the firing line - with Hasidic Jews; coming on to three desperately straight backwoods hunters; meeting with a leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade. These are life-threatening situations. I don't know what one feels at the end of them. And the laughter the scene evokes is certainly tinged with alarm, verging on hysteria.

What makes him such a genius, in my estimation, is neither the plot (which is palpable bullshit) nor the acting (which is scrupulously obvious). What makes his genius is his un-erring eye for the uncomfortable issue and the uncomfortable situation. This is a man who understands, more than rest of us, the basis of prejudice and the kind of illogical and incomprehensible violence which prejudice can (and almost always does) bring about.

It is not a film for the under-exposed. If you have any issues - any issues at all - about penises, or sex toys, or race, or queens, or gay people, or gay sex, or porn, or religion - don't go an see this movie. Buy some pop-corn and get a nice DVD. Or choose another one. Any other one, but not this one. Because this one will offend you. It will offend you so much that you will walk out. So trust me, skip it. But if you don't have any issues about things like that, then go and see it and be prepared to have your mettle tested. There is a scene towards the end of the movie, involving cage fighting in Fort Smith, Arkansas, for instance, where the potential for violence is so palpable, with the audience so worked up and enraged, that the effect is completely unnerving.

The audience tonight was fairly young, and some of the in-house responses to the multitude of situations were fairly predictable. Responses, for instance, to some of the really outlandish and utterly explicit gay stuff, from a mostly young audience, was mostly one of astonishment and disbelief. But I would estimate that for your ordinary everyday straight thrill-seeking kewl teenager, the experience must have been fairly harrowing and undoubtedly uncomfortable. Cohen takes no prisoners. There is no-where to hide.

But the lesson in this kind of iconoclasm, is that society is completely riven with prejudice. Of course, it is American society, which is particularly under the spotlight here, but the transposition to our own society is so slight, so minuscule, that you would need to be completely idiotic not to see it. The film is about the adventures of a gay Austrian in middle America, but it easily could be about a lesbian Nigerian in Soweto. And the "gay" issue is simply the medium to mine the vein of societal hegemony. It provides us with a tool to investigate what we all know is there, but perhaps need something like this to expose. It confronts us, in the way good art does. It worries us, and it won't let us be.

There is a kind of denouement at the end of the movie, which indicates the underlying intention of the movie. It is in the form of a song sung by well known, credible personalities, who sing a duet with the character Bruno. Because, despite the over-the-top characterisation and situational mayhem, underlying the movie is the mind of a man who seems to be able to see through the whole hegemonic grip of what is considered normal in the world in which we live.

There was a smattering of applause for the movie, as we all scrambled for the doors. Almost like what sometimes happens after a really bumpy landing. The applause is something like a cross between relief, joy and appreciation that we are not mangled wrecks, but can get out of the plane and carry on with our lives.

I felt lighter of foot, after leaving the cinema. Not in a Pollyanna kind of way. It was much more grown up than that. The man is, like many that went before him, distasteful, but prophetic.

Low GI Hamburgers- vegetarian or otherwise

We went, last night, to the Five Flies Restaurant, in Keerom Street, in the city Centre. They have being doing this birthday celebration thing, where prices are taken back 10 years - so your whole 3 course meal costs under R100 - which is fairly amazing. (You need to book weeks in advance, and the restaurant is completely full).

The place has a slightly snooty reputation and, being opposite the High Court and near the financial district of Cape Town, is obviously well positioned.

The dishes were a little sparse, but adequate and the clientele the usual "Cairp Tahn" fare of 99.5% white and 0.5% coloured. Black Africans - 0%

The waitrons were ALL white, except for the Maitre D - who was black, but with a pronounced former model C (read white) school accent. In this day and age, I think this is utterly unacceptable. How is it possible that an institution like this, situated where it is, is staffed ONLY by white waitrons?

Likewise, I had tea the other day with an ex colleague from Gauteng, in a place called Bravura in Greenpoint. (It used to be Melissa's, but now seems to have changed hands). Again, exactly the same thing. ONLY white waitrons! I had brought along some hand painted Kelp Vuvuzelas to show my friend. She asked one of the waitors what he thought of them. He had never heard of a Vuvuzela, in the first place, and had no idea what they might be used for, in the second. My friend was so astonished that after the tea, she asked a second waiter whether he knew what a Vuvuzela was. He not only had never head of one, but couldn't even pronounce the word!

These are the kind of goons given preferential racial employment within spitting distance of the Greenpoint stadium - which is one of the venues where the 2010 FIFA World Cup is going to be played for the first time on African soil, in less then a year's time! This means, basically, that they have never opened a newspaper, and never even so much as glanced at a soccer match on television. Because, of course, in South Africa, Soccer is regarded as a black sport and Rugby a white sport and ne'er the twain shall meet.

Of course, there is a history to this all. The apartheid state funded and supported Rugby and tried to keep black people out of it. And soccer, which became the sport black people followed and played, was naturally completely inadequately resourced. But one would not expect the Greenpoint white waitron goons to know this. I would not be surprised if they had never heard of apartheid!

Several of the people at my table at Five Flies ordered the Lamb Hamburger, and were very pleased with it. The potato chips left a bit to be desired, but the Hamburger itself was very good.

Here is a really good recipe for a low GI healthy hamburger patty (veg or otherwise). It's from the amazing Eating for sustained energy 1, by Gabi Steenkamp and Liesbet Delport - works really well and is fabulous. You need to do the BBQ sauce as well to get all the GI values right -The end product is really great!

Hamburger patties and BBQ sauce

1 x 410 g tin brown or sugar beans drained
1T vinegar
1T Worcester Sauce
½ t crushed garlic
200g ostrich mince or 1 cup dry soya mince reconstituted
1 medium onion finely chopped
1 slice brown bread crumbed
1 cup oat bran
1t beef stock powder
1t Marmite
2 t dried mixed herbs
1t dry parsley
Black pepper
1t salt
1 egg

BBQ sauce
1 onion, chopped
1 large apple, finely grated
¼ t crushed garlic
1 t olive oil
4T tomato sauce
1 tomato finely chopped
½ cup water
4t brown sugar
2t Worcester sauce
1t salt
2t mustard

Process together beans, vinegar, Worcester Sauce and garlic. Add mince, onion, herbs, breadcrumbs, oatbran, beef stock, pepper and egg and mix lightly to a firm consistency. Form into meatballs. Fry in olive oil at a fairly low heat.

BBQ sauce

Saute onion and garlic in the oil until transparent. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 5 minutes

Charles Celliers "For whites only" - review

So, now I have read the book, which I merely thumbed through before.

Book review

Charles Cilliers, For Whites Only. What White people think about the New South Africa, published by X Concepts Publications, 2009.

Described as “one of the most controversial books of the year”, a new book by Charles Cilliers is on the shelves: For Whites Only. What White people think about the New South Africa, published by X Concepts Publications, 2009. I heard him being interviewed on the radio recently and fielding questions and comments, before reading the book. I was certainly impressed enough to go out and buy the book on the strength of the interview.
For starters, the cover is not attractive. In fact it is fairly repulsive. I suppose neither is the subject – and that is the point. It is a colour cartoon of a man urinating on a food tray, placed on a toilet. The food-tray is labled “reconciliation”. The cartoon has obvious reference to the ghastly prank some white students in the Reitz residence of the University of the Free State played (and filmed) on some black workers in the institution. Be that as it may.
In the book, Celliers deals with a range of "white" issues - like, "My domestic worker is my best friend"; "I never benefited from apartheid"; "I always disagreed with apartheid"; "Affirmative action is reverse racism" and the one we all know and love (or at least have heard of, if not used) - "When Mandela dies, chaos is going to be let loose in the country" (aka the "Night of the Long Knives").
On radio, the author was sharp. A little bit too "Cairp Tahn" University sounding for my immediate liking - but razor sharp. He says the kinds of things most white people really hate hearing, like - that actually, the country is in a much better place now than when they were running the show; that there is no way that your domestic worker is your best friend; that every white person benefited personally, directly and very comprehensively from apartheid; that affirmative action is necessary to get the historically skewed situation (which white people made), corrected; and that it is highly unlikely that a frail, retired, 90 year-old is holding the whole thing together and that this kind of belief is a prime example of the unfathomable unwillingness of white South Africans to change.
There is a certain self-righteousness in the writing which, I have to admit, I found a bit tedious. Particularly when he records long conversations, where he put his father right on this matter and that. I found it a tad galling, despite the fact that I agree wholeheartedly with what he is saying. Indeed, he often puts his finger on the nub of the matter much better than I ever could. But that doesn’t make some of the style any less irritating.
My own view is much in agreement with Celliers - that the political settlement which took place in the country favoured white people far too much and it failed completely to deal with the sense of utter entitlement, arrogance and almost criminal ignorance which abides to this day in most white heads and most white families. I suppose that was the price of peace at the time. But surely not anymore! We are 15 years down the line. And 15 years down the line, white South Africans, in the main, still think black South Africans are lazy slobs; that every one of them is a criminal or a would-be criminal, or rapist or murderer; and that the government is full of crooks because they are black; and that present day crime has no relation whatsoever to the madness of the system white people invented, imposed and were perfectly happy to sacrifice almost anything and anyone for!
The point Celliers was making on the radio (and which he makes in less pithy form in his book, which I doubt will be read by many whites - naturally) is that White South Africans have not really changed at all, in the main. The problem is, if they don't change pretty soon, another dynamic may well kick into play. That scenario is not unlike the one presently playing itself out in Zimbabwe – where whites (and anyone in opposition, regardless of colour) are made into perennial scapegoats by a band of thugs and brigands, masquerading as revolutionary leadership. Celliers’ point is that there isn’t a hell of a lot of time left for white people in this country to actually make friends with black people, so that together, we both can craft a consolidated and unified future.Personally, I am very grateful indeed to Gordon Brown and David Cameron and the mostly white band of crooks they have in the leadership of their parties, for providing us with the kind of comedy of errors which has been the case in British politics for the past few months – and which has only been briefly interrupted by the death of Michael Jackson!). I have been extremely interested in the lack of comparison which white people in this country made with politicians in Britain. The same people who are usually so ready and so able to dismiss our politicians and a band of incompetent brigands and crooks and who hanker so profoundly for all things "civilized" (read British, European, Afrikaner or what-have-you).And please, this is not to say that crime isn't a problem and that idiots and lazy people don't get employed, or that corruption isn't becoming overwhelming. It always was a problem and it always will be a problem. It just isn't a racial problem. That's all. The racial problem in this country remains unchanged. It is still a white problem, by and large. That is what this book is about.

Speculating in the gym

I need to get back to the gym. After a month's break from my regimen, due to a slight operation on my feet, I need to get back.

When I was living in Johannesburg, a couple of years back, I liked to go early in the mornings, while I was still feeling righteous. There are not a great many people in the gym at that time. And those that were there were the people with toned bodies, tattoos and bulging muscles. There were also, like me, one or two oddities. There was a woman, who is probably somewhere in her late sixties, who wore a tight leotard, with something else colourful on top of that, which seemed designed to disappear between her butt cheeks and then re-emerge triumphant at the her low slung and rolled down waist. She had blond tie-dyed hair, which one was not fooled by, which she held back in a kind of runners Alice band – coordinated with the colour of the thing which had disappearing up her butt cheeks. The entire ensemble was finished off with some large woolie socks, rolled down for action, over expensive looking gym shoes. She was not a pretty sight, but she carried it off with such utter determination and self-delusion, that one could only admire her for it.

Behind me, on the cycles every morning, were two 30 year old boys. The one black and the other white. They were both absolutely perfect specimens. Everything about them was perfect. They wore exactly the right kind of clothes, which I would never find in the shops, even if I went shopping with a gym instructor. The black one had a shaved head. The other had hair perfectly cut. Each hair is exactly where it should be. Each gelled bit stuck up where it was meant to be. The muscles on both of them rolled around under their shirts and on their legs and on their arms as they cycled. It was a heady sight and I carefully chose a cycle for myself in front of them, but also in front of a large mirror so that I could watch this morning display. It is visual poetry. It often brought tears to my eyes. (I tried to weep discretely, so as not to alarm them).

They both spoke to each other constantly. They laughed. They joked. They pass sotto voce comments on passing women. They discussed the economy. They made rude remarks about a range of unlikable politicians. They had some telling and what seemed to me to be strong opinions on the state of the nation and world affairs. But the really interesting thing, besides their marvellous pecs, is that they only talked to each other in isiZulu! In the beginning, I thought it might be something of an affectation. But it never changed. In the change-rooms, they talked isiZulu. In the showers, they shouted across to each other in isiZulu. If anyone joins in, it is in isiXhosa!

And over the weeks and months I witnessed them, I started pondering how this relationship could possibly have come about. Maybe they grew up together? Perhaps they were best friends in school? Perhaps they met here in the Gym and found that they shared a common language? I speculated that they might be lovers, but I somehow doubted it. They seemed to be too inordinately interested in passing leotards of the feminine persuasion.

Then they shower, they put on all sorts of skin lotions and potions, which are poured out of expensive looking bottles. They put on immaculately ironed shirts, ties and suits. The white one did a final adjustment to his hair, getting just the right bits to stick up, and then off they went. They were fit. They looked utterly fabulous and they drove off, one in a very large, expensive BMW – the other in a competingly large Mercedes.

Now, envious as I was of their perfectly proportioned looks, that was not the real cause of my interest or my jealousy. I was jealous of them, because they could speak to each other in a language other than English, so fully and so fluently and with such obvious enjoyment and fluidity. I was, and remain very jealous of that. You can keep the cars and the hairstyles and the perfect suits. I wouldn’t mind the looks but what I am really envious of is the ability they had to communicate with each other.

Now, I was taught Afrikaans at school. It was never a pleasant experience. Apart from the real Anglo centric resistance that we all seemed to have to the language, there was also growing resentment country-wide about its use as a teaching medium. So for many reasons, it wasn’t very cool to learn it. I can speak it today and I can understand it – not well, but in a passable sort of way. How much I regret that I shied away from it as much as I did in school. I read, some time ago, Marlene Van Niekerk’s brilliant book Agaat (Tafelberg/Jonathan Ball, 2006, in the equally brilliant English translation. And as I was doing so, I wished with all my heart that I had the skill to read it in the original. But I know I don’t have enough to do that.

I grew up in a world when Afrikaans was the only option other than English. I live in a world today, where not having other languages, other than English and Afrikaans is a severe handicap. Strangely, I do not see white kids today chatting to their black friends, or, for that matter, to each other - in anything other than those two languages. I see lots of black kids speaking only English to each other. It is, in my opinion, a great pity and a gaping hole in our transformation.

And Cape Town is far worse than Johannesburg in terms of this kind of transformation. Sure, Afrikaans has more prominence, but isiXhosa is regarded as a kind of "minority interest" kind of thing. And Cape Town remains so fundamentally racist, that almost no-one who speaks English or Afrikaans as first languages will bother to speak isiXhosa, or even think it might be necessary.

I find, for instance, that neither "white" nor "coloured" people in Cape Town, seem to bother with the correct pronunciation of Xhosa names."Oh, something like that", I hear them say, when they are corrected. We have a long, long way to go.