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Mind Your Colour (1981)

Mind Your Colour

(1981)–Vernon February–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

The 'Coloured' Stereotype in South African Literature


Vorige Volgende

Chapter 7
My brother's keeper1

The ambiguity and duality surrounding the ‘Cape coloured’ reach a peak with the group of Afrikaner literary iconoclasts who pursue their cultural revolution under the nomenclature, Die Sestigers (i.e. those from the sixties). The ‘Sestigers’ one learns, do not form a movement as such, but consist rather of a group of individuals who deviate from the accepted myth of Afrikanerdom. In a foreword to a publication on these writers one reads that: ‘The literature of the “Sestigers” is a literature of exile inside their own country, and especially in the wider context of Afrikaans literature.’2

The ‘Sestigers’, one gathers, are writers who open the portals of Afrikanerdom by touching upon such issues as the oppression of the blacks and the hypocrisy of Afrikanerdom in respect of sex and religion. Formerly these issues were either sacrosanct, taboo or simply ignored. One should however bear in mind that they were not the first Afrikaans writers to draw a link between literature and society. Afrikaans poetry was (and still is) full of references to social issues affecting themselves, for example the Anglo-Boer war, the period of poor-whiteism in Afrikaner history. But the involvement was a group myopic one, or as the South African critic and writer, Ezekiel Mphahlele, puts it, ‘oneeyed Dickensian’ in orientation.3 The chief concentration was on the Afrikaner tribe, with the blacks featuring only as stereotypes.

The ‘Sestigers’ were however different in that they seriously attempted to break through this group myopia. Understandably, quite a few of the Afrikaner writers concentrated on the ‘coloured’ as part of the Afrikaans-speaking community. Jan Rabie, the novelist and short story writer, represents one spectrum of the search for a common identity within the Afrikaans-speaking community. In his novel Ons die afgod (lit. We the Idolaters, 1958), he attempts

to define the ‘coloured’ presence within the Afrikaans community.

André Brink the other Afrikaner writer who has largely determined the face of the ‘Sestigers’, even went one ambitious step further, in his novel, Kennis van die aand (1974), by letting his main ‘coloured’ character, Josef Malan, become a gross historical (genetic) and political indictment against Afrikanerdom.

Breytenbach, the arch-apostle of the ‘Sestigers’ before his fall from grace, attempted to destroy the cultural ox-wagon with pyrotechnical zeal while still in exile in Paris.

Admittedly then, the ‘Sestigers’ were openly critical of their tribe, the Afrikaners, and some came close to identifying themselves with the black cause (or at least pleading for a change of heart among their fellow white men).

Jan Rabie, in assessing the South African situation, even resorts to what appears to be a ‘black idiom’. He reminds his group, the Afrikaners, that the non-whites are only used as a source of cheap black labour, that the English are at least capable of a critical voice and the Afrikaner, his people, fulfil an oppressive role. Like Adam Small, Jan Rabie's main concern is to define the boundaries of, at least, Afrikaansdom as opposed to Afrikanerdom. And he is especially concerned with the role of his ‘brown brother’ within Afrikaansdom.

Rabie realizes that his community of Afrikanerdom cannot function optimally if half of its speakers are eliminated solely on the basis of having a darker hue. ‘The Afrikaans community’, he writes, ‘is but half a one. Of the four and a half million with Afrikaans as their mother-tongue, half is not regarded as Afrikaner...is poor and voteless.... Our brown brothers [bruin broers].’4 Drawing on history, Rabie goes on to remind his fellow Afrikaners, in most forceful terms, that ‘the Afrikaans language is the country's greatest multi-racial achievement hitherto; originating during the mixing of Hollander and Hottentot and imported slaves two, three centuries ago. Hottentotbastards were the first to carry the name Afrikaner. Afrikaans and Afrikaner is therefore not synonymous with Whiteman.’5

But the one person who by and large constituted the vital sinew within ‘Sestiger’ thinking was Breytenbach. He had crossed all institutionalized borders by first going into exile, and then marrying across the colour line; that is, someone who was not white, let alone Afrikaner. While overseas, he had heaped scorn on Afrikanerdom and worse still, had openly aligned himself with black revolutionary movements. He was welcomed by black and white opponents of apartheid, who were

enamoured of the idea of an Afrikaner convert against the political system. After all, had history not produced other loyal Afrikaner freedom fighters, notably, Abraham Fischer?6

Breyten was also of course (or primarily one should say), a poet of no mean ability, who, in style and content, had shaped Afrikaans in a way it had never been shaped before. He was not only an iconoclast but also a pioneer. If at home in South Africa, young people were rather charmed by the Breytenbach phenomenon, then overseas it was his political pronouncements which gained for him the fame he eventually enjoyed. In an article entitled Vulture Culture, he spelt out some of his political credo as follows:7

Apartheid is the state and the condition of being apart. It is the no man's land between peoples. But this gap is not a neutral space. It is the artificially created distance necessary to attenuate, for the practitioners, the very raw reality of racial, economic, social and cultural discrimination and exploitation. It is the space of the white man's being. It is the distance needed to convince himself of his denial of the other's humanity. It ends up denying all humanity of any kind to the other and to himself.

Being an artist himself, Breytenbach realized that the white writer,8

cannot dare look into himself. He doesn't wish to be bothered with his responsibilities as a member of the ‘chosen’ and dominating group. He withdraws and longs for the tranquillity of a little intellectual house on the plain by a transparent river. He will consider himself a new ‘realist’, an ‘anti-idealist’.

In another article, called The Fettered Spirit, he refers to the Afrikaner ideology as one of ‘Christian Nationalism or Calvinist tribalism...trying to perpetuate itself (according to the image it has of itself) by monopolizing all power and dictating to the other tribes their supposed lines and forms of cultural, political and economic development.’9

Let us take a closer look at the tone and tenor of the two excerpts concerning South Africa. One is at once aware of a very interesting phenomenon. When Breytenbach discusses the political scene in South Africa in its totality, he is less forceful. However, when Breytenbach discusses or rails against the tribe that is Afrikanerdom, or when he interprets the tribe within the overall South African setting, he comes

over very forcefully indeed. Being of the tribe and having belonged to the tribe, having subscribed to the tribal ethos at one stage, he does not have to resort to pedantry and sophistry in his depictions. For he knows the tribe inside out. Notice, for instance, the difference between the line in Vulture Culture that, ‘apartheid is a state of being apart’, and the following attack on the Afrikaner in The Fettered Spirit that, ‘Afrikaner ideology is one of Christian Nationalism and Calvinist tribalism’. The first observation seems forced and the second is plucked straight from the heart.

It is when he is at least Afrikaans (if not Afrikaner), that he is most effective in his commentaries on the South African political scene. Then he can confront his reader with the beauty and the tragedy of his land culminating in such lines as the following:10

 
God the Bureau for the Safety of the State
 
God with a helmet on
 
in one hand a brief case full of shares and gold
 
in the other a sjambok.

At home, he was admired by younger Afrikaners for daring to say what they felt vaguely. Older Afrikaner academics, while recognizing Breytenbach's poetic talent and contribution, were very uneasy about his un-Afrikaner-like activities. The extent to which Afrikanerdom was disturbed by Breytenbach's extra-literary activities is evident from an interview with the Afrikaner Professor T.T. Cloete in an Afrikaans daily, Die Burger, in 1974.11 When asked whether Breyten Breytenbach was really a danger to the Afrikaner nation and the Afrikaner language, Cloete made it quite clear that the poet was associating himself with the enemies of Afrikanerdom. He enumerated wellknown opponents and writers in exile, among others, Mphahlele, Brutus and La Guma. The inference was crystal clear - Breyten was also an enemy. Cloete was however prepared to concede the intrinsic merit of the literary products of Breytenbach. From Cloete's remarks it was already evident that Afrikanerdom was prepared to sacrifice Breytenbach. This aspect of his life will however be dealt with at a somewhat later stage.

There are thus very many facets to the poet Breytenbach. In the first place, he was an Afrikaner who wrote in Afrikaans, and Afrikanerdom never allowed him to forget this. But, he was also a poet living in exile in Paris, away from his immediate language community, which in the end would inevitably have imposed certain restrictions on his creative ability. In addition, Breytenbach was also playing a very active political role against the political system in South Africa.

The poetry of Breytenbach is indeed one of the highlights in the history of Afrikaans. It is not my intention to go into the ‘earthiness of the oral and anal notes’12 in the work of Breytenbach, nor the influence of Zen Buddhism on some of his poetry. The concern is rather with Breytenbach the Afrikaner prodigal son and his impact on Afrikaner culture as a ‘Sestiger’. The poet's problem was not to make an orphic descent, but to deny the tribe and risk ostracism and hostility. A poet who writes in a language like Afrikaans is in greater need of his immediate community than someone who writes in English, or French for that matter. One needs to dip into the idiom and melody, in order to sustain the creative process. In the absence of such an immediate Afrikaans-speaking community, the risk of losing one's touch is not unreal.

Exile is an oft-recurring theme with Breytenbach. As an Afrikaner who wrote (and writes) in Afrikaans, his dilemma was compounded of several elements. He needed the tribe, the language, the melody and the landscape for his creativity. Yet, at the same time, he had learnt to despise the tribe. This loneliness comes through at times. Rejection of apartheid for a black man in South Africa means regaining dignity. For the white writer it entails isolation and negation, alienation and frustration and probably feelings of guilt. For the pressures, even from friends from within (i.e. in South Africa), are great not to overstep the institutionalized borders, as Breytenbach at times experienced. In his poem Luistervink, Breytenbach realizes that he can at the most become, ‘a Frenchman with a speech impediment’.13 Yet he knows that others will follow him and it is on their behalf that he wishes to intercede. He pleads that those who come afterwards should also be treated with kindness.

Yet to me it is not the poem in which he calls Vorster a butcher, but a simple and lyrically beautiful one, depicting his imaginary homecoming, which lingers on. It is filled with pathos, humour and nostalgia. It is so specifically South African (Afrikaans), and yet so simply universal - the exile who dreams of seeing his hearth once more in his poem, Die hand vol vere:14

 
inside ma's heart is standing still
 
(and where are the glasses?)
 
pa wakes up a little dazed and confused
 
 
 
but mummy is already outside
 
in dressing gown with red cheeks
 
and there I was larger than life
 
on the lawn near the cement dam...
 
 
 
a top hat on
 
a smart suit
 
carnation in button hole
 
new Italian shoes for the occasion
 
my hand full of presents
 
a song for my ma a little bit of pride for my pa
 
 
 
...I had thought I would be there just so
 
like a Coloured Christmas choir on Christmas morning mummy
 
I had thought how we would cry then
 
and drink tea.

Here Breytenbach was not trying to be just Afrikaner and man or Afrikaner, politician and man. Here he was a man in exile like La Guma, Nortje and Mphahlele, longing for home. Not Afrikaner man, just man.

One suspects that part of Breytenbach's appeal as poet, painter and Afrikaner, in Holland, was his political opposition to apartheid, rather than the beauty of his poetry. In a sense however, Holland as a country did more to provide Breyten, the exile, with a spiritual (linguistic) climate of recognition than France, for example, ever could.

Increasingly, Breytenbach's activities were taking on a political turn and in 1974, he returned clandestinely, some aver out of misguided idealism, a deep-rooted nostalgia and a suicide wish, in order to set up a series of political cells for the overthrow of the apartheid State. He was arrested and sentenced to nine years. All Afrikaner writers hastened to find extenuating circumstances for his crime. Some of his poetry was movingly recited in the courtroom. Never had the judiciary been assaulted with such an effusion of Afrikaans poetry. He was made to appear a prodigal son who had strayed. The poet himself apologized to the Prime Minster, Vorster, for insulting him in one of his poems. Afrikanerdom closed ranks to help an illustrious son, like it had never done for other distinguished blacks. The Breytenbach case revealed one important lesson to those so-called iconoclasts - Afrikanerdom knows no pardon for those who stray from the fold. Even Breytenbach had to acknowledge this in his final plea, which ended in a rather pathetic mea culpa.

In all the apologies made for Breytenbach afterwards by Afrikaner poets, novelists and academicians, one by Adam Small stands out. ‘There are people who...find nine years a heavy sentence and that is true...but I too live behind bars in this country....The bars are the colour of my skin.’15

Concerning Breytenbach's poetry Small continued: ‘how many of the verses which can still be read as one would want them to be read, how many of the verses can still remain standing after what Breytenbach has said in court? It is as if Breyten would now have to start writing all over again, it is as if he had destroyed a large part of his own work.’15

If Breytenbach temporarily stood for the voice of conscience in Afrikaner literature while overseas, then at home, André Brink seemed to fulfil a similar role. As a young and very bright Afrikaner, he had given ample proof of his talents. He was rather prolific as a writer, having written several novels and articles.

However, the novel which caught on outside the confines of Afrikanerdom and Afrikaansdom was Kennis van die aand (translated by the author himself as Looking on Darkness, 1974). It dealt specifically with the situation of the ‘Cape coloured’, Josef Malan. It was also the most daring treatment of the colour question ever attempted in Afrikaans by an Afrikaner author. One has only to compare Josef Malan with Toiings by Mikro, or Skanwan van die duine by the Hobson brothers, to appreciate this.

Afrikaner religious, cultural and political leaders were particularly upset by the content and the tenor of the novel. The book gained the distinction of being the first novel by an Afrikaner writer in Afrikaans ever to be banned. The Dutch Reformed Minister who submitted the novel to the censorship board spoke for most of Afrikanerdom when he advanced reasons as to why the book should be banned. He objected to the novel because it tore religion apart and also ridiculed it. The novelist also vilified the Afrikaner, who was depicted as being cruel and oppressive. The police force in particular was portrayed as inhuman. Other church dignitaries called the novel filthy, vulgar and obscene. The Reverend Vorster, brother to the Prime Minister, spelt out his peculiar literary critical opinions in the following manner when he said: ‘if this be art, then a house of ill-repute is a Sunday School’.16

Even one of the judges hearing the appeal against the banning order saw fit to prejudge the findings by declaring the book to be despicable, inhuman, sadistic and violent (Die Burger, 7 August 1974).17 The following criticism was fairly general:18

The country in question is South Africa, with its police force and whites portrayed as overlords and the oppressors of those with a darker pigmentation. The people with a different skin colour are represented in the form of the South African Cape Coloured, who is the narrator in the book....We have a distorted and one-sided picture of race relations in this land where Josef, like a Christ-like figure, is made to suffer innocently and led to the slaughter chamber by the white man who acts like a bully. The complicated racial situation is reduced to a one-sided coarse contradiction, with on the one hand, the white oppressor boorish, stupid, pale and impotent - and on the other, the brownman - virile, refined, intelligent and civilized.

Critics overseas received the book with general acclaim. Thus the ex-South African and novelist Jonty Driver, now resident in England, said in the Times Literary Supplement of the English translation that Brink ‘has torn the nest to pieces’.19 Driver, the exile, proved himself to be totally ignorant of the ambiguity and near-kinship characterizing ‘Afrikaner-coloured’ relationships when he innocently and naively commented: ‘It interests me that Afrikaner writers seem to find it much easier to identify imaginatively with the Coloured than with the black Africans’.19

The story centres upon Josef Malan, a talented ‘coloured’ actor, who is awaiting excution for the murder (an unfinished suicide pact) of his white girl friend, Jessica. He is intelligent, sensitive and moves, despite his brownness, in an essentially white idiom. His world is one of Molière and Tartuffe, of Shakespeare and Hamlet, of Pirandello and Artaud.

There are few novels in Afrikaans where the ‘coloured’ features so large. Brink, the novelist, supplies Josef with a neatly constructed genealogical tree. One of the striking qualities of Afrikanerdom is its glorification of the heroic past. All this is a necessary adjunct to powerful myth formation in the Afrikaner group. One of the noticeable omissions in the ‘coloured’ make-up is the lack of such an historical background as a solid basis for myth-formation. Now, thanks to Brink, the ‘coloured’, Josef Malan, was provided with a past and myth in the best Afrikaner and Afrikaans tradition. In this past are found various strands of South African history - slaves from the East Indies, Khoi from the Cape, French Huguenots in exile, Dutchmen, Irishmen and Xhosas. In the initial chapters, Brink constructs a collage of miscegenation and violence unparalleled in Afrikaans literature. The

associations are also ‘devoid of lyricism’, as Millin would have it. Josef's ancestry disappears in an orgy of violence. They all die prematurely, never reaching beyond that Christological figure of thirty-three years of age. His ‘coloured’ males are martyrs in the white man's world. Here the no-past, no-myth, heritage of the ‘Cape coloured’ is forcibly accounted for. Josef Malan is the first ‘Huguentot’ in Afrikaans.

Josef's ancestry reads like a page from the Old Testament. It is studded with an Abraham, a Rachel, a Martha and finally, a Josef Malan. Admittedly, this is a creditable attempt to cast the history of the ‘coloured’ in fictionalized form. The historical novel as a genre draws, of course, on a long tradition in Afrikaans literature. There is the Boer war hero and spy, as enshrined in the works of Mikro. There is the Great Trek hero, as found in the novels of Stuart Cloete. The Dutch past is invoked in Mooi Annie by d'Arbez. The nearest one can get to this in the fiction of black writers is Peter Abrahams' Wild Conquest (1951).

The picture as it emerges in Brink's novel is an unpretty one. It recalls the factual accounts of Marais in The Cape Coloured People (1939) and those of numerous other South African authors. The novelist, Brink, uses the historical situation as an indictment against the system of apartheid. As with Breytenbach, he too is particularly forceful when attacking the tribe. Despite the book's short-comings, it is a wry commentary on South African society. Liberal critics waxed lyrical over the novel. Here was an Afrikaner writer and an academic, telling the world in fictionalized form that the Afrikaner was a monster and a brute. He was no outsider but an insider. Moreover, his novel disturbed his tribe so much, that one of the Ministers of the Church immediately submitted it to the censorship board for scrutiny. Rugby photos and pictures of scantily clad white girls, which generally adorn Afrikaans newspapers, made way for lengthy articles on the pornographic and politically damaging qualities of the book. Academics took part, the clergy wrote long tirades, even ordinary members of Afrikanerdom responded. Yet, there are definite indications that Brink did not veer so radically from the accepted Afrikaans literary tradition.

First of all, Josef is a ‘coloured’ who, in the words of his mother, can claim on the basis of his father's family tree that ‘he has a history just like any old white man’.20 The female progenitors are again submissive types, the men tragic misfits or mere pawns, doomed for premature extinction. Having situated the ‘coloured’ in this historical framework of rapine, unwilling pregnancies, relationships shorn of

romance, lives without any glorious myths to prop up dreary existences, Brink then proceeds to portray Josef, the main character, in modern-day South Africa.

Much of the praise or criticism heaped on the novel stems from the author's treatment of the racial situation. Afrikaners objected to the portrayal of the white man as a predator, rapist and violator. Liberals extolled the revolutionary and anti-racist stance of the novel. Yet the interesting quality of the book is hardly mentioned in reviews - that is, Josef's relationship with his white friends. For it is in this, that Josef Malan appears to be cast very much in the South African literary tradition of ambiguity.

In no way is he free from the unconscious desire to be white. He is industrious, intelligent, a prototype of the sensitive, educated ‘coloured’ as described by Adam Small in Die eerste steen. Yet he is firmly encapsulated in the castle of his skin.

Josef's relationship with white women is even more interesting. It seems to approximate to ‘a kind of subjective consecration to wiping out in himself and in his own mind the colour prejudice from which he has suffered so long’.21

The white women are all pre-Raphaelites, walking straight out of the paintings of Millais, paeans of beauty, golden-haired tributes to white aestheticism - for example, Jessica and Hermien. The relationship between Josef and Jessica is one big rhapsodic canticle. The same undercurrent of sex which pervades the novels of white authors from Africa to America, when white women and ‘coloured’ men are brought together, is noticeable here.

Hermien, the white girl on the farm where Josef grew up, becomes a Virgin Mary or a Little Miss Muffet. The childhood episode where Josef briefly sees Hermien perched naked on a rock is nostalgically recalled when he is with Jessica. In the throes of sexual activities, he has to forcibly suppress this image of Hermien, ‘heraldically perched on her rock’.22

Josef's first meeting with Jessica, the girl from England, has a dreamlike ethereal quality. The moment lasts forever, is permeated with fragrant romance and weltschmerz - they become twin souls breathing as if one. Josef, ‘so beautiful, so brown’,23 becomes a ‘coloured’ Werther. Fully conversant with Shakespeare, Molière and Pirandello, he is in effect only frustrated by his darker hue. His sexual encounters with white women have a singularly poetic quality. By contrast, his ‘coloured’ females are as unprepossessing or as totally insignificant as those found in the works of Millin. Josef's mother groans under

life and her periodical sexual escapades. The ‘coloured’ women in Josef's theatre group are evaluated largely in terms of their sexual capabilities - that is, they are either good in bed or very inept. No romantic aura surrounds them. One suspects, nay knows for certain, that Brink's inability to create truthful ‘coloured’ female characters is due to his failure to penetrate this facet of South African life. After all, the law simply forbids such contact. On the other hand, it is easier for the white and ‘coloured’ male to forge some sort of relationship which passes for friendship in South Africa.

In demythologizing the South African scene, the novelist Brink himself fell prey to some white myths. In fact, Josef is much more of a product of ambiguity than would at first be apparent. He is also much more of a ‘brown’ Afrikaner than meets the eye in this ostensibly political novel. There is, for instance, the relationship between Josef and Willem, the Afrikaner who grew up with him, but who has become a prosperous person in town. Their relationship was very intimate in childhood, but awkward in adulthood. Yet both of them fail to wipe out that former intimacy. It embarrasses Willem at times, yet he cannot ignore Josef. It is this ambiguity and former intimacy in a shared childhood, which causes Willem to provide the financial backing for Josef's theatrical group. This duality is evident when Josef visits Willem in his office. Willem is half-apologetic on the one hand, yet forced to defend his white self. He admits; ‘I am bound by my colour to the group which allows this to happen. I can do nothing about it.’24 Josef, despite the fact that he is castigating his former friend, coaxes him into a familiarity, by recalling the childhood scene, where they fell asleep in each other's arms. The ‘brown’ Afrikaner brother and the ‘white’ Afrikaner, bound to each other in a bond of shared memories and racially ascribed roles.

Jerry, Josef's friend and fellow actor, emerges as a much more realistic type, who at least operates within the society with guile, humour and suppressed bitterness. With Josef, like with Jan Herold, in Rabie's novel, Ons die afgod (1958), one is still reminded too much of Mikro's Toiings, ‘hands stretched out for a little bit of love...at the Afrikaner portals...marching to the same destiny’.

Self-immolation on Josef's part does not wipe out the desire to be white. The Josef who says, ‘each person must choose his own territory of involvement and mine is the theatre’25, is a far cry from the two characters, Michael Adonis and Willie Boy in La Guma's A Walk in the Night (1962).

In all the rumpus about Brink's book, one article contained in the

Journal of the TLSA (more of an open letter to Brink), was completely overlooked by white South Africans. The letter assesses the novel from the viewpoint of the ‘non-citizens’, as the writer puts it:26

Your chief character Josef Malan is a ‘talented brownman’, and therefore it is necessary to obtain some clarity about the concept ‘Coloured’ (as also the concepts Bantu, Indian etc.). Clarity about race, colour and nation is the sine qua non for any meaningful discussion of South African affairs....The ‘Coloured’ (or Bantu, Indian etc.) is not a human being but an artificially created classification, who exists by and in the South African legislation....Poor Josef Malan. You have created him, as ‘Coloured’, and therefore he stands under the sign of the lie, is less of a fully-fledged human being. Just notice the relationship between Josef and Willem, especially upon Josef's return. Here one is not confronted with a man, but with what the Afrikaner intellectual thinks the educated Coloured would feel, think and do....You have used your own experiences in creating Josef Malan...he makes love as you made love or as you could have done it...You have tried to create Josef out of two conflicting elements, man and ‘Coloured’ man...Why must Jessica and Josef die? Do you really expect me to believe and accept that the only future there is for love across the colour line is death? Come off it André!...Here you give in as artist to the deep and dark feelings of your tribe.

Brink's novel covers a wide political canvas, Jan Rabie's Ons die afgod (1958) is mainly concerned with the ‘bruin’ (brown) presence within the Afrikaner cosmos. When the novel first appeared, it made a considerable impact because of the empathetic plea contained in it. Rabie was thus one of the earliest iconoclasts by Afrikaner (Afrikaans) standards. This idea of an Afrikaans-speaking community which included ‘ons bruin broers’ (our brown brothers) came out clearly at the conference of all those writers styled as ‘Sestigers’, at the University of Cape Town in 1973. In a sense, it was a coming together of like and ‘enlightened’ Afrikaners (Afrikaans-speaking persons), who were said to be committed artists. Theirs was a Mini Trek, convened to define at least, the borders of Afrikaansdom, if not Afrikanerdom, as they understood it.

Rabie, the Afrikaner, and Small arrive at similar conclusions in respect of the Afrikaans-speaking community. The ‘brownman’ is Afrikaans, if not in skin colour, then at least in language and culture.

Right at the inception of Rabie's novel, one of the cardinal themes is spelt out. Frans, the questioning and enlightened Afrikaner, is speaking to his former classmate and friend Willem, who has turned into a successful farmer and a die-hard conservative. In the course of the conversation, Willem states that ‘everyone who speaks my language is dear to me’.27 And a little later, when Frans is alone with Willem's sister Hermien, he is prompted to ask whether the ‘brown people’, who also speak Willem's language, are also dear to him. Here already, there is a hint of Rabie's search to prove that ‘Afrikaans is not synonymous with Afrikaner and white’.28

Willem and his family stand for the traditional ideas and values in Afrikanerdom, enshrined in the trinity of Language, God and People. This trinity is fed by an ancestral veneration for the land and cheap brown and black labour. The Willems are the ritual proprietors of Die Groot Trek. Frans, the roamer, is the voice of conscience, who sees where his people have fallen by the wayside. He realizes that they have turned material possessions in the shape of huge farms, into idols. He then, is the representative of the Mini Trek.

Jan Herold is the brownman who approximates to the Afrikaner way of life and thinking. He grew up with Willem, played with him, and is imbued with a similar ancestral love for the soil of his village, Greysdal, as, for example, his white friend Willem. But Herold is destined for tragedy because he has come back to disturb the neat little equation of Afrikanerdom, by stepping out of his institutionalized role of subservience. The relationship between Willem, the Afrikaner, and Jan, the ‘coloured’, is fraught with ambiguities. For Jan, the brownman, this is symbolized by his attachment to an old pocket knife he once received from Willem as a present. Willem himself is awkward and defensive in discussing Herold, the ‘coloured’, with his friend Frans.

The whites are openly hostile to Herold. To them, he is a smart Aleck (or to put it in Afrikaans, oorlams). He, for instance, drives a car and refuses to behave slavishly. Both Herold and the whites of Greysdal are caught up in a mutual web of distrust and dependence. Herold's great desire to buy a piece of land in Greysdal, the town of his birth, and notably a part of Willem's farm land, is not only a direct threat to the Afrikaner heritage, but also underlines his unconscious identification with them. Herold is a typical product of cultural ambivalence.

Frans, the outsider, is similarly caught between his love for his people, the Afrikaners, and a realization that the brownman is also part of his cultural heritage. Frans is even prepared to sacrifice the

friendship of Willem and the love of his sister for his beliefs. His one man crusade is destined to fail because he gets embroiled in two types of hostilities - that of Jan Herold who mistrusts his motives - and that of his fellow Afrikaners in Greysdal, who come to look upon him as a ‘kafferboetie’29 and a traitor. In stepping out of his ascribed role, Frans loses everything, including the love of Hermien.

Williams, the ‘coloured’ school principal, who prefers to speak English and not the language of the oppressor, is cast in the role of the communist. He, however, at least knows how to operate within the Afrikaner system without losing his self respect. Williams stands for the rejection of Afrikaans and Afrikanerdom. Jan Herold is a ‘coloured’ who tries hard to accommodate himself within Afrikanerdom and the cultural pattern. Yet, not even Williams is free from the taint of ambiguity. He, for example, changes his tone and attitude towards Frans after his initial hostile attitude, when he finds out that the latter meant well.

When Herold is mercilessly thrashed by Willem, the incident comes over as one of self-castigation. Similarly, when Herold lands in prison, it is Willem who feels he should save him from the indignities of the common criminal by buying him to serve his sentence as one of his farm labourers. It appears to be more of a conscience salvaging effort on his part however. Yet, this ostensibly kind deed elicits only resentment and sullenness on the part of Herold.

Such ambiguities characterize the entire behaviour patterns of both Willem, the Afrikaner, and Jan Herold, the ‘coloured’. Herold's ambiguous attitude and his repeated pathetic attempts at self-immolation are a radical departure from the Toiings type, and a notable feature of the ‘new brownman’ in Afrikaans literature of the ‘Sestigers’. In the end, Herold kills Willem, the white Afrikaner brother, for denying him, the ‘brown Afrikaner’ brother, a part of his heritage. He kills him with the very same pocket knife he once had as a gift. And in so doing, he symbolically seems to kill his other self. Again, one is back with the cry uttered by Mikro and Small about the ‘coloured’ when Jan Herold says: ‘I did not want his land! If he had only once treated me like his fellow human being.’30

Jan Herold and Josef Malan, then, are ‘coloureds’ (bruinmense) who are the products of cultural ambivalence. In Jan Rabie's view, the Afrikaans community is incomplete, because our ‘brown’ brothers are rejected.

The ‘Cape coloured’ may then be largely Afrikaans in terms of language (although this too is debatable). Through the pigmentocratic

factor, he operates largely in an idiom which makes him essentially non-Afrikaans. It may very well be that the Afrikaner has duped himself into thinking that he understands the ‘coloured's’ language, whereas in essence he is completely out of touch with the ‘coloured's’ idiom, as will become even clearer from the works of Alex La Guma.

Breytenbach's warning in his article, Vulture Culture, looms large for all Afrikaner writers who move outside their institutionalized roles: ‘If you write or paint or film as an Afrikaner you have to compromise the only raw material you have, yourself, your own integrity. You become alienated from yourself which is worse than being cut off from the tribe.’31 Few Afrikaners are prepared to defy the tribe or invite its scorn. Breytenbach himself finally experienced what it was to be cut off from the tribe - in Pretoria - where the tribe came to plead for him, castigate him, and mourn for him. If anything, his trial showed that the ‘Sestigers’ can only fully be appreciated in relation to the tribe. For, while Afrikanerdom has always made allowances for the aberrations of Afrikaners within the tribe, as the newspaper Die Beeld admitted in December 1975, immediately after Breytenbach was sentenced, Afrikaners have largely emerged as an ‘oligarchy of ingrossers’ and ‘licensers of thought’.32 And it is this, which reveals to what extent the ‘Sestigers’ were really iconoclasts or merely temporary prodigal sons, who eventually come home to roost.

The stranglehold of Afrikanerdom on culture is abundantly clear from the rather repressive censorship laws. These laws have been gaining in volume and invariably affect the blacks. If white South Africa is ever aware of it, then there is little indication that Afrikaners are disturbed. As long as Afrikaner writers play out their role, they are safe from the threat of being ‘under pittance and prescription and compulsion’.32

Barring a few, Afrikaners generally belong to one of the Dutch Reformed Churches in South Africa. The three tiers of Language, God and People (Volk), constitute the backbone of their society. It is difficult to detect any opposition between Church and State. In fact, the Church has played a significant role in securing for the State an Index Librorum Prohibitorum. The very people who taught the Brinks at Potchefstroom are, in one way or another, also responsible for the banning of his book.

Let us take a closer look at some of the prohibitive laws passed in South Africa. The Suppression of Communism Act, which was promulgated in 1950, has more to do with the suppression of free speech and ideas than would be inferred from the name. The

Riotous Assembly Act served a similar purpose. In 1955, The Customs Act prohibited the distribution of literature (by post) which was objectionable, indecent or obscene. In 1958 and 1959 respectively, The Post Office and Prisons Acts were passed. In the various provinces there were ordinances prohibiting the distributions of indecent and profane literature. In 1960, The Publication and Entertainment Law was proposed. After numerous amendments, it was finally passed in 1963. Under the control of public entertainments was meant any place which admitted persons who carried membership cards or who paid contributions. The Board was, for instance, given the power to prohibit ‘any film which in its opinion, inter alia, depicts matter which prejudicially affects the safety of the State, may have the effect of disturbing the peace.’33

A classical example of a farcical interpretation of the law was the film Ocean's Eleven, which was about a big bank robbery in Las Vegas. On the posters advertising the film, the face of Sammy Davis Jr. was painted white.

This then, is the crux of the ‘Sestiger’ movement. Its members were all Afrikaner writers who railed against the tribe, but who never really left the tribe to oppose, fully, the system of apartheid. In his open letter to André Brink, in The Educational Journal, the writer cuttingly comments: ‘Maybe I should not be ashamed on your behalf. Maybe, you have nothing in common with us’.34

Nowhere does the chasm between the citizens and the non-citizens come out so clearly as in the censorship laws. Afrikaner writers protested vigorously when Brink's book was banned and Breytenbach jailed. Yet, they shed no such tears when La Guma's works were proscribed or when Nat Nakasa and Arthur Nortje died in exile. For these people do not, did not, and never will, belong to the Afrikaner tribe.

In 1963, Dr Verwoerd, the chief architect of apartheid, stated in the House of Assembly: ‘We want to keep South Africa White... “keeping it white” can only mean one thing namely white domination, not “leadership”, not “guidance”, but “control”, “supremacy”.’35

The Afrikaner writer generally never seriously cared for the dispossessed of the country, except in a master-servant relationship. Not even the ‘Sestigers’ can succeed in changing this. After all, the highest cultural organization of Afrikanerdom, which awards the ‘Hertzog prize’, still has difficulty accepting Petersen, Philander and Small as ordinary members because they happen to be ‘coloured’.

Censorship of the idea, the application of an arbitrary power, was

something which largely affected the blacks. Armed with an impressive battery of laws and institutions, the Afrikaner has, since assuming power in 1948, muffled all protests among the dispossessed. Significantly, they had useful adjuncts in cultural organizations and the Dutch Reformed Churches.

The control of publications covers items such as newspapers not published by a member of the newspaper press, books, periodicals, posters, duplicated or typed material, drawings, photographs and sound recordings. A publication is considered undesirable:36

inter alia if it or any part of it is indecent...offensive, harmful to the public morals, offensive to religious convictions of any section of the inhabitants of the Republic, brings any section of the inhabitants into ridicule or contempt, is harmful to the relations between any sections, is prejudicial to the safety of the State, the general welfare, or peace and good order.

According to a leading article in The Star, significantly entitled ‘Operasie hou jou bek’ (lit. Operation shut up),37 there are ninety-seven definitions of the term undesirable.

Understandably, The Publications and Entertainments Amendment Bill had the full support of the public committee of the Dutch Reformed Church. Speaking on behalf of the said committee, the Reverend de Beer spoke for all Afrikanerdom when he stated:38

No Christian State can allow the stream of disgusting and unchristian books, magazines and films which are coming into the country, or are created here to continue to weaken and undermine the national morale and Christian faith with the inevitable result that the people are made ripe for a takeover by communism.

Protected by ‘an oligarchy of ingrossers’, as Milton called censors in his Areopagitica (1644), the Afrikaner writer blissfully participated in his ‘culture for the few’, for the poor were non-existent and, at the most, a creation of communist-inclined South Africans.

Thus, the works of black and white writers which held any danger for Afrikanerdom in particular, and white South Africa in general, were banned. At times, this process assumed such ludicrous proportions, that it was hard to explain to foreigners that one was not joking. Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell, which is a story about a beautiful black horse, was reported to have fallen foul of this law at one stage. Rumour also had it that Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native

was also banned. Could it have been that the automatic translation of the title into Afrikaans as Die terugkeer van die Kaffers caused all the rumpus?

Practically all black writers in exile are banned in South Africa, the enormity of which seems to bear out Milton's depiction of control boards as ‘oligarchy of ingrossers...measured to us by the bushel’. The works of Adam Small, Petersen and Philander are readily available in South Africa. Significantly, they all write in Afrikaans. The main point is that all those writers who oppose the regime, or describe the South African reality in a way which is not acceptable to the rulers, are regarded as dangerous. And for this reason, their works are not made accessible to the South African public.

La Guma, Brutus, Mphahlele and Rive then may not be read in South Africa. Meanwhile, many of their works are included in courses on African or Commonwealth literature. The licenser has failed to ban their books into obscurity. For, neither the writers in exile, nor these dangerous books, are ‘residing over the death of free enquiry, free thought and democracy, but the very state itself’.

Brink, Breytenbach and Rabie are of the tribe and will forever belong to the tribe. Again it is interesting to look at the open letter to Brink by one of the ‘non-citizens’ (nie Burgers) as found in the TLSA. Speaking about the banning of the book, the writer quite categorically states that he is against censorship. But he demands not only that Brink's book be read but also the works of South Africans in exile, notably La Guma, Brutus and others. The writer in the TLSA continues:39

Look, the people of South Africa are not free, cannot be free... The law of censorship, totally unacceptable as it is, is of secondary importance. The main issue is the constitution which curtails the franchise and turns the majority of the citizens into Non-Citizens...When I am against the banning of your book, then I don't want the privilege of White citizens for you, and certainly not the special privilege of an Afrikaner writer. Not at all. I demand for you...what I demand for myself and for all of us. The democratic right of writers in a democratic country to honour only in his work of art the limitations of a man's social conscience.

In a devastating final comment, the author of this open letter comments that Brink even wrote to the censor telling him what a good Afrikaner he was, how he attended that Calvinist Protestant

University of Potchefstroom, how he did all those good and healthy things that a thorough-bred Afrikaner should do. He even addressed the censor as ‘Oom Jannie’ - ‘To emphasize that you are tribally related... as it behoves a good Afrikaner’.40

The ‘Sestiger’ movement will therefore always remain an Afrikaner (white) exercise, because the writers were not iconoclasts, merely nigglers, and Afrikanerdom has always been able to cope with pinpricks. The Brinks, the Rabies and those others who styled themselves Sestigers', were significantly quiet during the upheavals at Soweto, Manenberg and Bonteheuwel. For, as Sartre puts it, the choice is either to stop writing or to fight for the freedom of the oppressed, which means taking a political stand, for example, renouncing the tribe, and risking exile or a term of imprisonment. For the ‘Sestiger’, if he is not careful, ‘the very truth he holds becomes his heresie’41 - that is, he dupes himself into thinking that he is on the side of the oppressed.


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