South Africa in Africa: The post-apartheid era

edited by Adekeye Adebajo, Adebayo Adedeji and Chris Landsberg
(University of KZN Press)

Review: Terry Bell

This excellent volume does not deal with the prospects of a post-Mbeki presidency or with any of the possible fallout from the internecine feuding within the ANC. And this should not matter, for no matter the outcome now or in 2009 when President Thabo Mbeki steps down, the complex issues of South Africa’s relationship with the rest of Africa will remain in place.

And debates about these issues, which predated the formal transition of 1994, remain crucially important. How should — and how do — the various domestic constituencies relate to the rest of the continent? And what are the perceptions and impacts of a rapidly spreading South African influence throughout Africa?

Government and business are, of course, key players here, but relationships have also been influenced by internal policies such as Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). The often heady mixture of fact and myth about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the transition from apartheid have proved a quite potent force.

South Africa’s political, economic and military muscle influences national priorities and policies and has a direct influence on relations with the other nation states of Africa. These factors could also determine to a large degree the manner and direction of the continental future.

As this collection of 13 essays makes clear, there are no easy answers. However, as the editors — they also each contribute an essay — point out: the hope is to provide the beginnings of some answers.

This they do, admirably, fleshing out many of the debates that surfaced a decade ago in South Africa and Africa: Within or Apart. That volume was edited by the Nigerian academic and regional integration proponent, Adebayo Adedeji. Here he contributes the opening essay, outlining the political and economic context, “looking inside from the outside”.

Adedji argues persuasively that South Africa has “not chosen the path of socio-economic transformation”; that the economic and consequent social divisions of the apartheid past have, if anything, become further entrenched.

The only weakness — and it does not have a direct bearing on his argument — is the simple equation of “communism” with the Soviet Union without any further explanation or definition.

But the case that Adedji makes for the “neo-liberal paradigm” being to the detriment of African transformation and development seems unanswerable.

This thought-provoking essay is followed by what is, essentially, an apologia for the present system in an essay on the myths and realities of BEE. Penned by Businessmap Foundation’s Kehla Shubane, it amounts to a paean to shareholder democracy, that enduring myth of the corporate and neo-liberal world.

From Shubane, it is a relief to round off the section on context with former TRC commissioner Yasmin Sooka’s incisive analysis of the myths and realities of the TRC. This raises very clearly once again, the role of business and the relationship with government.

It makes for a good introduction to analysis by Pretoria University’s Maxi Schoeman of South Africa’s often apparently schizophrenic approach to foreign policy issues. As she notes, the involvement with the rest of Africa is still evolving and a future as a potentially hegemonic partner “will not be an easy role”.

In military and regional security terms, government may be able to manage this dual role of being, by historic and geographic consequence, a big brother and would-be equal partner. When it comes to business, it is a different matter as Khabele Matlosa and Judi Hudson respectively, spell out.

However, Hudson fails to acknowledge — as do almost all writers on international economics — that the world is dealing not with a problem of shortages, but one of gluts; that the development of the micro processor has created a productive revolution that the world has yet to come to terms with.

Africa, no more than any other region on earth, is not immune. To talk, therefore, of encouraging inter-regional trade as a means of development without analysing the effects of international surpluses — and consequent price cutting and dumping — is problematic.

But this does not in any way undermine the argument for greater regional and continental ties. As Chris Landsberg notes in the conclusion to his essay on the AU and Nepad: “South Africa cannot go it alone” in attempting to build “a progressive movement” on the continent.

How that other sub-Saharan giant, Nigeria, fits into this equation is the subject dealt with clearly and concisely by Adekeye Adebajo, the executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution, attached to the University of Cape Town.

There are also informative essays on relations with the Lusophone states and, very importantly, with north Africa and the Horn. However, Iqbal Jhazbhay could, perhaps, have shown clearly how the far from democratically established Arta transitional government in Somalia came into being.

The penultimate essay, by Devon Curtis, may also provide something of an eye-opener for the apparent legions of starry-eyed supporters of exporting — as one size fits all — South Africa’s recipe for achieving peace and parliamentary democracy.

All-in-all, a must read for anyone with a serious interest in Africa and in South Africa’s place within the continent.

Papwa Sewgolum – From Pariah to Legend

by Christopher Nicholson (Wits University Press, 2005)

reviewed by Terry Bell

Finally it’s there for all to read: the full story of one of South Africa’s greatest golfers, Papwa Sewsunker Sewgolum, and his appalling treatment as a victim of apartheid, reflected against that of another great golfer and beneficiary of the system, Gary Player. Written by former human rights lawyer, amateur golfer and now judge Christopher Nicholson, Papwa Sewgolum – From Pariah to Legend is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the past in the context of the present.

Most importantly, this book clears away much of the murk and misinformation that has peppered often angry exchanges about the 1963 incident that gave the greatest impetus to the international anti-apartheid sports boycott campaign. That was the shameful occasion when Papwa, finally given the opportunity to compete in a truly open tournament, won the Natal Open golf championship.

The picture that shook the sporting world was of Papwa having his trophy hurriedly handed to him in the rain as the rest of the players — all classified “white” — sheltered in the clubhouse. “It was only a drizzle; it was hardly raining,” was one of the excuses offered up.

Gary Player also noted in a recent interview that it was not raining hard; that “there was a red carpet” and that he had stood with Papwa. But Player was not even there, although this mistake has often been made.

But shameful though it was, had 1963 been the occasion when Papwa beat Player in the Natal Open, it might have been slightly better for Player’s image. For it was after this event that shook the international sporting world that Gary Player went on to pen his infamous lines: “I am a man of Verwoerd and apartheid” in his book, Grand Slam Golf.

The book was only published in 1966, the year after Gary Player was beaten in the Natal Open by Papwa Sewgolum. It did not rain on that occasion, but Gary Player questioned
whether Papwa’s score card was correct. It was and Papwa was handed his trophy, although, apparently in their haste, the officials forgot to give him his cheque for winning; that was handed to him through a window of the clubhouse.

Nicholson, ever the lawyer, does not make assumptions or draw conclusions about motivation; he merely puts the record straight. And he has done it in an extremely accessible way.

The writing is clear and unemotional and and explains simply the game of golf in which two talented South Africans took part at the same time. Both professed only to be golfers, uninterested in politics, but as Nicholson shows, Player — the “pretty twin” — although he changed his public position as circumstances changed in South Africa, was deeply involved in the apartheid-support system established by the state.

Papwa — the “ugly sibling” — on the other hand, even embarrassed his hosts in India by insisting when he played there, that the South African flag be flown alongside those representing the countries of other players in the tournament. And the “Pretty twin” never challenged the fact that one of the few golfers in the world capable of beating him was banned by racism from even making a living out of golf, while Player went on to become a multi-millionaire.

There is only one serious error in the text and one which City Press readers may spot: making a passing reference to other sporting greats such as the boxer Jack Ntuli who were forced out of South Africa by apartheid, Nicholson mentions “Precious Mkhize [who] became the British Commonwealth weightlifting champion in Jamaica in 1966.

He meant, of course, Precious McKenzie, the fly and bantamweight lifter who has won more Olympic, Commonwealth and world championship medals than any other South African sportsman ever. But this editing error does not detract from a highly informative book on a long overdue subject.

Filthy Shakespeare

by Pauline Kiernan (Quercus)
Review: Terry Bell

Like countless students before and since, I struggled, at school, to come to terms with the language of Shakespeare. Not the plotting or the action; just the words. Outside of Julius Caesar. In much the same way I never understood why we should learn Latin if we were never to speak it.

Because Shakespeare’s Elizabethan English is after all, at odds with our modern idiom. It’s like a remote dialect of the language that is necessary to learn if one were ever fully to understand the nuances and obvious word plays used by the bard.

Which was why I have offended Shakespeare purists for decades by insisting that Shakespeare’s plays should be translated into modern idiom. With all due care, of course, to the cadence of his language. But I was regarded as a heretic. Probably still am.

However, after reading Pauline Kiernan’s engaging and impeccably researched Filthy Shakespeare, I feel at least partially vindicated in my heresy. Only partially, because I now realise it is probably best to read the bard in the original. But only if the language and the historical context are fully understood.

Yet the words of Shakespeare, then as now, tend to have iconic status: they are not generally to be tampered with, even when they are incomprehensible. And for that observation, I am grateful to that great thespian, Sir John Gielgud, who once admitted, when interviewed about playing King Lear, that he loved the sounds of the words even although he often didn’t know what they meant.

Closer to Shakespeare’s own day, there were many of a genteel or more prudish bent who knew precisely what his words — and his many clever puns — meant. And they condemned him for them. Shakespeare was described as crude and vulgar.

He was just that, for the playwright was a man of his time, writing for audiences that lived in a grossly overcrowded, corrupt and disease-ridden London. This was a city of crowds, squalor and filth, where beggars, artisans and aristocrats rubbed shoulders alongside the open sewer that was the river Thames. It was also a city where the bells of 114 churches signalled hypocritical morality every hour on the hour and where the Bishop of Winchester accumulated great wealth by licensing the many well patronised brothels of Southwark. These, in turn, played a major role in the spreading of venereal disease, the “pox” that afflicted thousands.

As Kiernan notes: “It’s little wonder that the plays of the time are full of references and puns on faeces, and flatulence and bodies encrusted with festering, putrid plague and boils.”

The language the people spoke — and which Shakespeare brilliantly used — reflected the circumstances in which they lived. It was rich with figures of speech used, as Kiernan says, “to describe or disguise the cruel facts of life”.

Shakespeare’s claimed blasphemy, his sexual punning and references to bodily functions and disease certainly offended the sensibilities of the early 18th Century English poet, Alexander Pope. And it drove British writer Robert Bridges to write in 1907: “Shakespeare should not be put in the hands of the young without the warning that the foolish things in his plays were written to please the foolish, the filthy for the filthy, and the brutal for the brutal…..”

It also gave the language the term “bowdlerise”, meaning to expurgate literary texts. Perhaps a little harshly, Harriet Bowdler and her brother, Thomas, have come to symbolise such prudish censorship. However, they were merely, as they saw it, providing a version of Shakespeare “to make the young reader acquainted with the various beauties of this writer, unmixed with any thing that can raise a blush on the cheek of modesty”.

Shakespeare most certainly did not write for children. He wrote full-blooded, raunchy, polemical plays that could be appreciated by the audiences of his day whose lives were often brutish and all too brief. And they came to hear, not to see his plays; the aural superceding the visual.

But the plays, increasingly visual as well as aural, became iconic during the Victorian period which followed the Bowdlerised Shakespeares of 1807 and 1818. The words and the puns — along with a good measure of the fun, the contemporary satire and the insight — were stripped of much of their meaning. And it is this watered down and largely incomprehensible literary gruel which generations of school students have been made to suffer.

Kiernan, an award winning playwright, screenwriter and one of the world’s leading Shakespeare scholars has now provided a brief guide to the historical context of the bawdy bard. But the bulk of the book comprises a forthright analysis and explanation of “Shakespeare’s most outrageous sexual puns”. This would bring more than “a blush on the cheek of modesty”, but is a fascinating and worthwhile contribution to understanding the great playwright and his times.

Diamonds, Gold and War: The Making of South Africa

by Martin Meredith
(Jonathan Ball)

Review: Terry Bell

Martin Meredith has already established himself as a force in terms of the political and economic analysis of Africa and the historiography of the continent. His recent The Fate of Africa: A History of 50 Years of Independence has rightly been hailed.

Diamonds, Gold and War maintains, in a highly readable form, the same high standard of scholarship, erudition and clarity of analysis. Here can be clearly seen the advantages of being an historian/journalist or journalist/historian: this is an enthralling, comprehensive narrative covering the events that shaped modern South Africa and had a considerable impact in many other parts of the world.

The bare bones of the story and many of the anecdotes dealt with may be well known to those who have ever shown an interest in, or been exposed to, the history of this period. But while there is not much that is very new in terms of overall facts, the manner in which they have been drawn together, reveals a clear understanding of the political and economic nuances. This makes for the most lucid reportage on this era that I have come across.

It is the sort of history that reads like a good thriller. Which is probably why the publishers chose to feature a comment by Wilbur Smith on the cover. Smith, a writer of generally gung-ho action novels notes: “Vivid and thrilling…a book I know I will re-read time and again over the years ahead.” This comment is obviously aimed at attracting readers who would not normally bother with what is all too often thought of — and all too often is — history drily and boringly told.

And it is these very readers, especially in South Africa, who should read this book. For here the roots of the present and the all too recent racist past are exposed and there are sound lessons to be drawn about many current political developments. At a time when so much history has been obscured by popular myth and prejudice, when revisionist rewriting of the past abounds, this a timely reminder of how the years between 1870 and 1910 laid the foundations of the modern South African state. Here we see how bigotry, brutality, racism and arrogance fuelled opposing nationalisms, along with the racist distortions and the still extant mythology of liberal English and illiberal Afrikaners.

It is useful even to be reminded about just how the pass laws and the notorious compound system came about and who introduced these measures many decades before formal apartheid was announced in 1948. I had forgotten — or perhaps never fully realised — just how the supposedly “progressive” members of the commission headed by Sir Geoffrey Langdon firmly put in place the basis of formal, legal, segregation in their 1905 report.

There is also a salutary reminder here of how the kombuis taal of Afrikaans came to be the glue of Afrikaner nationalism and how this nationalism was unconsciously fostered and promoted by the perfidy of British and colonial bureaucracy. Meredith’s explanation of the origins and growth of Afrikaner nationalism also aids an understanding of the ethnic and nationalist strife which continues to erupt, not only in Africa, but around the world.,

Above all, Meredith here presents admirably clear portraits of the two men who dominated most of the period covered: Cecil Rhodes and Paul Kruger. Of course, there already exists a large body of literature dealing with both men and their careers. Much of it, however, is two dimensional and, especially in the case of Rhodes, amounts to mild or blatant hagiography. Kruger’s image has tended to suffer from the predominant English view of him as a crude buffoon, a man who did, indeed, believe that the world was flat.

But it is easy to see why the SA Communist Party leader Bram Fischer (as quoted in Meredith’s 2002 biography, Fischer’s Choice) chose, during his 1966 trial to quote Kruger, despite his narrow Calvinism, as “one of the great Afrikaner leaders”.

Both Rhodes and Kruger were men of considerable ability, but in any hero and villain stakes, it is Rhodes who clearly takes the cake as a wholly unprincipled and consummate opportunist. His often charming exterior and erudition only thinly disguised a malicious, power-hungry opportunist and racist capable of glorying in brutality.Olive Schreiner,

It was the writer, Olive Schreiner, as Meredith points out, who saw and understood this duality. She wrote to her sister: “Rhodes, with all his gifts of genius…and below the fascinating surface, the worms of falsehood and corruption creeping.” Like so many other prominent people, she was also, initially enamoured of Rhodes. But, as she wrote in 1892: “I saw that he had deliberately chosen evil.”

Schreiner, also modelled the villain of her 1897 novel Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland on Rhodes, and included as a frontispiece illustration a “Christmas tree” of hanged Ndebele fighters surrounded by a group of white “pioneers” of Rhodes’ British South Africa Company.

But this is no one-sided or jaundiced view of that tumultuous period. The users and the used, the betrayers and the betrayed, the good the bad and the ugly all parade here in a grand tale that is extremely well told and whose lessons we ignore at our peril.

The one criticism I do have — and it is is one that will certainly be shared by researchers and academics — is that Diamonds, Gold and War is not fully annotated. Instead of detailed foot or end notes on sources, Meredith relies on ten pages of general “chapter notes” and an 11-page “select bibliography” list. It may sound like carping, but I feel that reference merely to “the archive evidence” for a source is simply not good enough.