Jeg opfatter bogens hovedperson, den rige Afrikaner, Martin Mynhardt, som i høj grad et selvportræt, formentlig er figuren Bernard en anden side heraf. Jeg er dybt fascineret af Mynhardt, sønnen Louis, hans mor og hendes stædighed og gudstro, Bernard og hans trosbekendelse og Bernard er en moden mand i forholdet til Reinette. Mynhardts forsvar (overfor Louis) for sin rigdom er en ganske præcis beskrivelse af kapitalismen. Svigerfaderen er også en stærk figur, præst men med et åbent sind.
Beskrivelsen af faderens tilstand ved det sidste besøg minder mig om noget tilsvarende, men beskrivelsen er stadig værdig, DET kræver en rigtig god forfatter, elendighed bliver så let uværdig. Forældrenes forhold til døden er også beskrevet respektindgydende.
I personbeskrivelsen er der så megen menneskelighed, at det alene gør bogen værd at læse. Dertil kommer så de sorte tjenestefolk, der er lige så hele mennesker og Bea af indisk afstamning. Den almindelige menneskelige tendens til at finde formildende omstændigheder ved egen tilpasning til urimelige samfundsvilkår kommer også lige med.
Og beskrivelsen af Apartheid, set indefra. Her er desværre meget, der er helt aktuelt, ikke bare i Israel, herunder anvendelsen af ordet terrorisme om frihedskamp - nå, det brugte Best jo også. Beskrivelsen af den sexuelle side af Apartheid (313-7) er specielt gribende. En hvid juniorpræst begår den "frygtelige forbrydelse", at have et sexuelt forhold til en sort tjenestepige, politiet overvåger ham gennem 2 måneder, henter ham midt i natten og tilkalder hans overordnede ! Derefter har man svært ved straks at frigive ham mod kaution ! Her præsenteres Apartheiden direkte, hårdt og umenneskeligt.
Altså en fantastisk bog, som enhver skal læse.
Brink har en interessant iagttagelse om jøder og Afrikanere (altså dem i Sydafrika). De er som et flag; smukkest i modvind. Hans beskrivelse af Sydafrika under Apartheid, giver også mange ligheder med Israel i dag.
Hans udlægning af Biblens Pilatus' skyld, er bedre, mere rimelig og mere sammenhængende end nogen prædiken jeg har hørt. Nu kommer jeg, sandt at sige, aldrig i kirke. Men alligevel.
Bernards bedstefars hykleri/moralske opstød er derimod mere generelt menneskelig.
Bernards "long statement from the dock?" (133-6) er et skarpt principielt opgør med Apartheid. Er der to grupper i et samfund, er den eneste holdbare politik at arbejde sig frem til ligestilling.
Tænk, at vi nu er i den situation, at danske forældre må sige lige som Mynhardt. Det drømte vi ikke om i 1978 !!! Og den med fængsling uden lov og dom gælder jo desværre i dag i USA.
Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika.
I was off to New York, returning via Brazil; other business came up - and when I finally turned up at Dullabh's Corner that afternoon there was nothing but an enormous hole where the buildings had been. It took some time to connect it with newspaper reports about Indian shopkeepers removed by the Government to another group area, angry demonstrations and resistance, and forcible eviction (nothing serious: only a couple of injured and some children bitten by police dogs). 17
Bernard once told me of his grandfather in the North-West who'd sat on his stoep one morning watching a neighbour girl skipping, causing her dress to fly up at every jump. Apparently she wasn't wearing any panties. Grandpa Bernard sat there, gripping his stick more and more tightly until the knuckles showed white through the skin. When he couldn't take it any longer he called his wife out to the stoep:
"Woman, will you chase that child with her bare cunt out of my sight before she gives me a stroke?"
"Why don't you look away?" she asked.
Whereupon Grandpa Bernard uttered his immortal word:
"It's no damn use. That thing's like lightning. You see it without looking."
72
"We'rejust like the Jews,
you see. I've often noticed the moment things go well with us, we get difficult.
The Afrikaner has always been at his best in the wilderness, not beside the
fleshpots of Egypt." 88
As far as Pilate was concerned, he subscribed to the traditional view that the man was irredeemably guilty, something I have never been able to accept. I have just looked it up in the Gideonite Bible in my hotel room (St Matthew 27, St Mark 15, St Luke 23, St John 18 and 19) and I'm more convinced than ever that Pilate was completely justified in acting as he did in his particular circumstances.
What were those circumstances? The mob wanted Jesus dead; their leaders wanted him dead; He himself wanted to die in order to fulfil the prophecies. Pilate, knowing very well that he man was innocent, tried his best to save him. First he discussed the matter with the crowd; then he called in the accused who told him that He had been born "to witness unto the truth". But when Pilate pressed Him to define what He meant by "truth", he received no answer.
So he came to a very sensible decision. He made it unequivocally clear to all concerned that he believed the man to be innocent. But because the circumstances demanded it, and because the crowd made it possible for him to comply by taking the blood upon themselves, he washed his hands calmly and fearlessly and gave the prisoner up to them.
To my mind it is the action of a reasonable man who has a clear view of the demands of his time and who refuses to be influenced by irrational considerations. 100-1.
It had to do with a foreigner, an Italian if I'm not mistaken, who'd emigrated to the Transvaal shortly after the Anglo-Boer War, and married a Black woman a year or so after the Union had been formed in 1910. At the time such marriages were, of course, perfectly legal. Like other couples in the same position they settled in Sophiatown, where he stayed on after the death of his wife. When the suburb was declared White and the inhabitants were removed, he went to live with one of his daughtcrs in another township; Albertsville, I believe. By that time the old man was already an invalid. A few years later, it must have been about '62, Albertsville was also proclaimed as a White area and the daughter, classified as a "Coloured", was evicted from her home. The Resettlement Board, however, stipulated that the old man, then in his eighties and confined to bed, couldn't accompany her as he was White. 105
As for those who gave evidence against me, including some whom I once knew as clients or as friends, I have no wish to hlame or reproach them in any way. I do not know under what circumstances they were persuaded to turn against me. There are facts of which the State knows, in connection with methods of interrogation used by the Security Police on detainees, methods through which the human personality can be twisted and distorted; these facts bring shame to our country, and in the lignt of what is known about them this Court will be competent to reach its own conclusions on the reliability of the evidence thus obtained. I must specifically remind the Court of the suicide of one person who had been approached to give evidence against me, a man of whom no one who had ever known him would have believed that he would try to take his own life; and of two other serious attempted suicides among those witnesses who were finally called by the State. In circumstances like these I suggest that the administration of the law changes its character. It ceases to have integrity. It becomes an inquisition instead. It leads to the total extinction of dignity and freedom.
My Lord, even if you should decide to impose the death penalty on me, ' shall not offer any plea in mitigation. What I have done I did in the full awareness of my responsibilities for the sake of a freedom greater than that of one individual. I put myself into your hands. I have no fear either of the future or of death. And now nothing can impair my ultimate freedom. 112
... in December 1974, ... Bernard and three other Capetonians had been detained in terms of Section 6 of the Terrorism Act. ... "Do you know what I find most upsetting about the whole case, Martin? The fact that although all fourteen of the accused, Black, Brown and White alike, are South African there isn't a single Afrikaner among them - whereas it was the Afrikaners who set the first example of fighting for freedom and justice in this country. 114
As a White, as an Afrikaner, linked through the colour of my skin, and through my culture and my language, to that group which is in power in this country, my choice is different. I am free to reap the fruit of my White superiority while it lasts. Or I may choose to do nothing at all. But a third course is open to me. And as a thinking and feeling man my only freedom today lies in renouncing, for the freedom of others, everything I might otherwise lay claim to, not through any merit on my part, but through the condition of my birth - which is the epitome of bondage. No man is so completely oppressed by the oppressor as himself. 134
But that final visit was different. By that time he was so riddled with cancer that he could think of nothing else. The radiation had caused him to lose all his hair, jaundice had turned his face and hands into parchment, his voice had become high and shrill, and halfway through a sentencc he would forget vhat he'd wanted to say. His skull appeared shrunken and fragile like that of a bird.
His only interest, now, was his illness and the variety of medicines he had to take; broken down, through pain, to this concentration on the irrelevant and the trivial. The total indignity of suffering. 137-8
"In the old days," said La Grange, "a man was arrested and taken to court in accordance with the Rule of Law, Nowadays they can keep him for as long as they wish - and then they can let him go just like that. Hasn't that happened time and time again?" 143-4.
I still had to face Elise with the news. And Louis too. ("Let me tell you one thing, Dad: they don't realise it, but if people like Bernard are turning against them their days are damned well numbered.") 150
'Especially existentially,"said Charlie. "Let's put it this way: your White Sisyphus operates in the dimension of metaphysics. My dimension is social."
"I'm afraid I don't understand.
"It's the social which determines the nature of my task, the nature of my rock. On my way downhill to pick up the absurd rock again, I don't see anything metaphysical: what I see is my social condition, my oppressors. You may think in terms of suicide, if you wish to stick to Camus. Not I, because I exist socially. I've got to make the jump from suicide to murder. And I don't think either of us can still start with innocence. To hell with William Blake." 154
I'm not sure you gave your marriage enough chance to prove itself, Bernard." .... "I don't think time has anything to do with it. It's a matter of knowing clearly enough that you made a mistake. For some it takes a lifetime; for others it happens sooner." ... "When you phoned me that day, you said you wanted to grow old together." ... He looked past me. "I can't think of anything I'd like to do more than just that," he said after a long pause. ... But I can't think of myself only." ... "I've thought mainly of her." 169
But I hadn't reckoned with her tenacity. In the beginning it hadn't been all that obvious:
"Just give me some time to find my feet first," she'd said. "I think I'll manage all right."
I'd let her have her way, assuming it would be a matter of only a few months. But she became more and more obdurate. and after a while I discovered that the solitary life on the farm had indeed become indispensable to her.
In short, Ma had begun to flourish. Ma, but not the farm. That continued the steady decline of the previous years and on several occasions I had to invest large sums of capital just to ceep it going. 192
One thing I'll always remember about those visits is how, every Sunday afternoon after coffee, we would all set out to the graveyard in our church clothes. The two old people had selected a spot for their dual grave years ago; even the hole had been dug and remained there in readiness, covered by iron sheets. And on Sundays we would pay our solemn family visit to "Oupa's hole" to make sure everything was still in order. In the attic of their old house in Hill Street their coffins stood waiting, filled with dried apricots and raisins and figs for the time being. A family steeped in death, almost voluptuously conditioned by it. 193
"And if God doesn't listen?"
"He'll listen when the time comes." Her mood was expanding now. "You remember that time in Griqualand West when it didn't rain for three years? Then we held the prayer meeting and I took my umbrella and my raincoat to church with me. They all lookd at me as if I was out of my mind, in that blistering heat. Even Dominee was joking about it. But I just said to him: "I thought we'd come to ask God for rain ? Where's your faith then?' And as we came out of church, it started raining. I was the only one of the congregation who got home dry."
"Haven't they tried firing rockets into the clouds around here yet?" I asked."
No, why should they? It's a bad thing, that. Trying to twist the Lord's arm, they are." 224
I remembered him saying: "One thing you should always bear in mind is that God must have an enormous sense of humour too, else He would never have made man." [sagde Elise's dominee father.] 228
"Oh, come on. Don't be childish."
"I'm not childish, Baas Martin." He knew very well how it piqued me to be addressed like that.
"So your guests enjoyed their bit of local colour, did they?" he finally asked.
"Of course."
"Nice slide shows they can arrange for their families and friends when they get back home. All these uninhibited children of nature. I suppose you'Il be taking them to the mine dances on Sunday?"
"What have you got against 'uninhibited children of nature' ? Nobody forced the girls to undress."
"I'm not even referring to that."
"I wish you would say what you mean."
"It's bad enough fooling a bunch of foreigners," he said angrily. "But how the hell do you manage to go on fooling yourself?"
"In what way am I foohng myself?"
"Why don't you show them what the land really looks like for a change? See South Africa and die."
"Where do you want me to take them?"
'Have you ever set foot in Soweto?"
'Of course not. Why should I?"
He accelerated suddenly, driving through a yellow light, and went straight on instead of turning right where he should.
'Where are you going now?"
"Today you're going to Soweto," he said with a grim smile.
'What's got into you?"
"Regard it as an initiation. How the other half lives. The other,eight per cent."
It took me a few moments to regain my composure. "Fair enough, Charlie," I said. "But I can't go there without a permit."
"Oh fuck it," he replied, turning his broad smile to me.
"How many of us are going about without passes every day?"
"I still don't understand what you really want me to see.
"Let's call it a bit of history."
'That's not history. That's today.
Charlie laughed, his eyes almost closing behind his thick lenses. "That's our way of making history, Martin boy. In this country you and your people think you've got the monopoly over history. I've got to make my own from day to day."
I've never denied your right to your own past."
"Sure. As long as it could be read between the lines. Nothing official." Swerving to pass a loaded truck he said: "Did you know my great-grandfather was a counsellor of King Moshesh - a moeletsi? 270-1
And today I'm going to show you something."
"What do you really want to show me?"
He laughed. "The inside of hell," he said. 272
I thought: What was that little bastard doing so many thousands of miles away from home? Perhaps they hadn't even told him where he was going or whose war he was going to fight. Just as they never told us. 301 [Mynhardt om sønnen Louis, der som soldat var sendt til Mozambique.]
"Wait a minute," I said. I couldn't help smiling, knowing he'd chosen the wrong territory for his attack: I'd found the answers long before he'd even dreamed up the first question. "What I possess today, I've achieved in a system of Free Enterprise because I've been prepared to take risks. And now I can offer all my capital and my experience and my know-how in return. I never stop ploughing back. Our whole system depends on individuals prepared to create job opportunities and training for others, and accepting responsibility for them. Where do you think the capital for development would come from if people like me weren't prepared to furnish it."
"And on whose labour do you base it all?"
"What would their labour have been worth without my capital and my guidance?"
"But you're not prepared to share!"
"Good Heavens, Louis," I said, "are you really expecting me to give up the race so that the loser may win?" I couldn't help feeling contempt for his argument: it was so superficial.
"You want a race where everybody can reach the winning-post at the same time. Balls!" (His language was proving contagious.) "The day you deny a man the chance of being rewarded for his effort, you can dig a grave for our civilisation. And achievement is based on competition. That's all there is to it."
"Survival of the fittest?" he asked furiously.
"No. I didn't get here at the expense of others. I use my position and my capital to teach them to be self-sufficient themselves."
"There are many ways of buying a conscience," he said fiercely.
"Do you regard prosperity as a disgrace?!"
Throughout our argument the rhythmic chant accompanying the picks and spades went its droning way.
"Don't you feel afraid sometimes?" he asked unexpectedly: it came like a blow below the belt.
"Afraid? Of what?"
"Of everything suddenly coming to an end. Exploding."
"They'll lose much more than we would, if they tried. They know only too well that they depend on us for their economic development. And if you take a look at what my companies are already doing for them—"
'It didn't sound very peaceful at Westonaria."
"We've already settled those riots."
"But for how long, Dad? When will the next ones break out? And where? Doesn't that scare you? You and your whole generation, Jesus, Dad: you organised everything so neatly, made a law for everything. But surely you know it's only a temporary arrangement. One murder like last night's threatens the whole edifice. You can't understand it. You feel scared. And the more scared one gets the more power you need to keep it nicely covered up. Until one gets addicted to it."
I controlled myself as well as I could. "You're young," I said. You've got nothing to lose yet. So it's easy for you to criticise and attack."
"And you've got everything to lose, so you're scared. Is that it? So you'd rather cling to what you've got, no matter how bloody sordid it is." 306-8
"But I can tell you one thing, when we got out of that bus we gave them a proper work-out right there in the road, man. There wasn't one of them straight on his black feet when we drove off. I don't think they'll be a traffic hazard again after this." 323
'Well, and how's the army?" asked Mrs Lawrence.
"He's out of it new," I said quickly.
"Gave 'em heil, eh?" the old man insisted. "Good for you. In future they'll know to leave us well alone."
"You should have wiped the whole breed of vermin from the face of the land," said Gert.
"Why didn't you join us then?" asked Louis with a cool aggressiveness I hadn't expected. "Instead of staying behind on your farm?" 324
The Boers just don't like learned kaffirs." 327
More and more strangers drifted into the house of the friend where we were having drinks, lured like moths by an open flame. Not that there was all that much light, for none of the houses we visited had electricity. Outside, there were mesh-protected lamps on tall posts at street-corners, each huddled selfishly over its own small pool of light. And in the distance, marking the course of the high barbed-wire fences enclosing the townships, were blinding floodlights reminiscent of the photographs of concentration camps. 346
Somewhere in history there comes a day when, for the first time, a territory is annexed, not because land is necesary but because a nation has grown addicted to the idea of expansion as such. There comes a day when, for the first time, violence is used not because it is unavoidable but because it is easier. There comes a day when, for the first time, a leader is allowed to promote his own interests simply because he happens to be the leader. 369
Shuffling on her thick bare soles the old Black woman entered.
"Some more coffee, Kristina.
'Yes, Madam."
After she'd gone, Ma sighed: "Poor old Kristina. What's going to become of her now?"
"They'll stay on the farm even if it's sold."
Part of the livestock, you mean?" 375
A young man smiling from ear to ear, one of the few in that crowd of soaked, miserable people who seemed happy. And when I asked him the reason, he said: 'Madam, because I was just in time to grab my dombook before the water took it away.'"
"I suppose he was suffering from shock. Then one often acts strangely."
"He was very serious, Martin. If that pass-book had been washed away, he would have been nothing. Don't you see? everything he is, is in there. His name, his number, his address, his whole life. Without it he can't go anywhere. What do you think of a society in which a man's dombook is his highest priority?"
"You're reacting emotionally again."
"Every time you have no answer you blame me for being emotional. 427
"I met one of your employees yesterday," she remarked casually. "Charlie Mofokeng. Remarkable man."
'What's so remarkable about him ?"
"To have come all this way, starting as a farm boy. Studying abroad and all that."
"I've come the same way."
'"You've had everything on your side. Charlie is black." 431
"So what?" He glared at me through his thick glasses. "You know, when I came to work this morning, down there in Sauer Street, the van stopped beside me. 'Kaffir, where's your pass?' I gave it to him, but I said nothing. I don't speak to people who can't even read properly - let alone the writing on the wall. He looked at my book and threw it down on the pavement. 'Pick it up!' he said, laughing." 433
Orla Jordal, 2007
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