Black Tuesday

The lamentable passage through the South African Parliament today of the controversial (yet obviously not controversial enough) “Secrecy Bill” flies in the face of any mandate that the “struggle against apartheid” ticket gave the ANC to rule.

I won’t re-hash the details here (see The Guardian and the BBC), but it doesn’t take a PhD in political science to see that this is a clear step backwards - in the dubious direction of the “big brother” days of Botha’s security police. Indeed a sad day in South African history. And it has the right-wingers rubbing their hands in “I told you so” glee.

Freedom of speech, expression and the press have been hobbled.

It’s not by far the first crack to appear in the pristine visage of the “new” South African Government, (see Breytenbach: Mandela’s Smile) nor will it be the last. But maybe this one will prove structural.

It’s a matter of historic record that when the ANC was formed in 1912, it was essentially an alliance between a diverse and often divergent group of organisations who agreed to set aside their differences and unite in the struggle against the injustices of apartheid. Indeed, when whites began to join the struggle, a significant Black Nationalist contingent hived off.

Whatever the subsequent tribulations, Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as President in 1998 was abundant proof that that strategy had succeeded. But at the same time, a large part of the ANC’s raison d’être had disappeared.

Had the decades of comradeship cemented the sometimes substantial political rifts that had previously existed between the various movements? Looking back over 17 years of de jure free democracy in South Africa, it seems not.

In the longer term, it would be very healthy politically if the ANC would fragment and thereby lose its overwhelming monopoly on power. It would mean that several smaller parties would have to jockey for power, a bit like many Western-European countries. Problem is that South Africa is so much larger (the 1,500 km Cape Town - Pretoria is equivalent to Amsterdam - Zagreb).

Maybe the best one can hope for is a UK or US-style scenario with two major parties swinging between the benches every four to eight years, with a small yet significant middle-of-the-road contingent yapping at their heels.

Also, while the transition from apartheid to democracy might have been cited as “miraculous” for its lack of bloodshed, there are no guarantees that miracles necessarily repeat themselves. Especially not on a continent where resorting to violent means to achieve political results has, shall we say, a low threshold.

So the question (as always in Africa) is not whether there will be change or not, but how traumatic it will be. So we wait... tick, tick, tick.... as the strains of Umshini wami waft over the country.

A few years ago, I wrote the piece below. You might already have seen it. It just came to mind today. – AMB

Why I left South Africa for the Netherlands

It has often been asked of me, especially by those in my new homeland, why I chose to leave South Africa, a country that enjoys “such marvellous weather” and commands “such breathtaking natural beauty”, to live in Western Europe.

The short-version knee-jerk response is “if you have to ask, you’ll never know”. However, taking into account that many (dare I say most?) Europeans have an image of South Africa gleaned from travel posters, or TV bytes of Nelson Mandela being welcomed into freedom by ecstatic multi-cultural crowds, the answer demands more explanation.

But how does one condense the feelings, emotions and cold, hard facts that contribute to a decision to uproot oneself and leave the country of one’s birth for the uncertainty of self-imposed exile? After all, unlike some of my fellow non-European expatriates, I was not fleeing a war or political persecution. Granted, I had lost my job due to affirmative action; my business was going down the tubes as my potential clients went bankrupt and/or emigrated; my money was becoming worth less every day; we did live in a state of fear of violent crime that was so constant that it became “normal”; but all these things can be solved or tolerated in one way or another if you are really determined to stay in South Africa.

Now, having made my home in the Netherlands for nearly five years, this FAQ is becoming easier to answer. It is not that events and experiences have somehow convinced me that I had made the right decision all along. Indeed, my conviction that I have now found the right place for me has remained unaltered since the movers boxed my boots and books and we landed here. It is rather that a few fleeting events, experiences and observations, have proved strangely allegorical in a way that the European mind can relate to.

Some of these might have seemed insignificant or even irrelevant in isolation; others will have dawned on me at the time, and subsequently faded from my memory, lacking the impact to stay there.

I must stress here my feeling that I have made the right decision for me. Just as these allegories speak to me personally – and anyone else is at liberty to accept or reject them – as this is neither intended to be a glorification of the Netherlands or Europe, nor an indictment of South Africa. It is simply a reflection of my personal feelings and opinions, as they relate to what I see as my particular position in the universe.

Back in 1997, my wife and I travelled to the Netherlands to see what life here was like, feel-out employment prospects and generally have a good look around. After attending a classical concert, we returned to our lodgings in central Amsterdam. Tiptoeing past a poetry reading on the ground floor, we climbed to our rooms, and soon agreed that we were both famished.

I decided to throw together a quick pasta, but we hadn’t been shopping that day, and I needed some ingredients. Handing her a 50-Guilder note (then equal to about ZAR200), I asked her to pop around the corner to the avondwinkel (night shop) to buy a few things.

It was only once we were enjoying our linguini some time later that it crept, alarmingly, into my mind: I had sent my wife out, alone, into a big city, at a few minutes before midnight, with ZAR200 in her hand. In Cape Town, I would have gone instead, but not before strapping a revolver to my hip and double checking that the high-tech alarm system and panic buttons were set. And even then, I would certainly not have walked but rather used the car, taking care to lock all doors and not stopping at red lights for fear of hijacking.

Admittedly, as in any city in the world, someone might have snatched the money from her. But in Cape Town, they would have raped her for good measure and then murdered her in case she could identify them.

I looked out over the canals and gables (and my linguini) and decided: This is a country I can live in.

By May 2000, my wife and I had been living in Alkmaar, an ancient walled city some 40km north-west of Amsterdam, for almost a year. In contrast to our former home, where the oldest man-made structure (the Castle in Cape Town) dates from 1666, Alkmaar was established as an independent military outpost in 1075, granted rights as a city in 1254, and would celebrate 750 years of existence in 2004.

The Netherlands was holding its annual Bevrijdingsdag (Liberation Day) celebrations. By its specific date (May 5), it marks the country’s liberation from nazi occupation following WWII, but with the passage of time its significance has extended to celebrate liberation and freedom in general – the freedom from racial, religious, political or lifestyle discrimination and persecution for which the Dutch mindset has become renowned.

In Alkmaar in particular, Liberation Day is celebrated with gusto (and much Heineken and Grolsch). In 1604, Alkmaar was the first Dutch city to welcome Jewish settlers, but its particular bond with freedom harks back to 1573 when the defeat of the Spanish at the city walls marked the beginning of the end of Spanish occupation in the Netherlands. De victorie begon in Alkmaar (Victory began in Alkmaar) still rings on the city’s streets.

That day, after wandering those streets and dodging the revellers, I returned home just in time to see a televised broadcast of the Liberation Day ceremony on Amsterdam’s Dam Square. Predictably, the guests of honour included Queen Beatrix, the then still unwed Crown Prince Willem Alexander, the mayor of Amsterdam, and the then Dutch premier Wim Kok.

I could not help but reflect on the strangely eclectic, yet quintessentially Dutch makeup of this front row: A hereditary (albeit Constitutional) monarch and a King-in-waiting, the Jewish mayor (incidentally, since 1945, nearly all of Amsterdam’s mayors have been Jewish), and a former trade union leader.

After the ceremony was opened, it was the turn of Kok to give his address. My knowledge of Dutch politics and politicians was still scant so I was interested to hear what my adopted country’s leader would have to say about freedom. I poured myself a beer and settled down on the couch for what I expected to be a long haul. After all, in my experience, politicians (South African ones especially) are not known for their brevity.

He ascended to the podium, and after a short mandatory formal greeting, said (I paraphrase): “Today we celebrate freedom, but we must never forget that the first principle of freedom is the respect for the freedom of others.” Then, to my absolute amazement and sincere admiration, he stepped down from the podium and resumed his seat.

I was incredulous as the realisation slowly came to me that I was living in a country where the Premiere, instead of using a nationally televised podium to further his political agenda, had simply re-stated one of the inalienable principles which have made the Dutch renowned for tolerance.

My response to myself was equally simple: This is a country I can live in.

As the months ran into years and I became more comfortable in my proverbial clogs, I came to realise, or rather rediscover, that so many of things that I had accepted as ‘normal’ in the land of my birth simply were not so, nor should they be.

In my new country the principle of freedom rings true. It is not a hollow word that is used in the rhetoric of a system that has replaced one form of elitism and discrimination for another. With its strange mix of liberal socialism and constitutional monarchy, in my new country (most) civil servants treat members of the public with a courtesy that tacitly acknowledges who pays their salary. Company bosses are bereft of the power to fire anyone who simply disagrees with them and major corporate decisions need the approval of an employee-elected Works Council. Yet, with all this power in the hands of the workers, negotiation tends to take the form of consultation as opposed to confrontation and strikes are extremely rare.

My next realisation came when, in April 2001, I read how Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen had officiated at the first gay marriage ceremony in the Netherlands, made possible under the new law that he had steered through legislation while in his former position as Justice Minister.

Shortly thereafter, some friends who could finally celebrate their same-sex union in law after being together for more than 20 years, asked me to take pictures at their wedding. I once again said to myself: This is a country I can live in.

Then, in May 2002, the populist Dutch right-wing parliamentary candidate Pim Fortuyn was gunned-down by a single assassin a few days before the general elections. The country was in uproar. The condemnation of the attack was sincere – from all layers of the political spectrum. Premier Wim Kok, whose politics were diametrically opposed to Fortuyn, put politics aside and once again displayed his brevity: “Ik ben er kapot van.” (I am devastated).

Fortuyn’s assassination and its aftermath brought home two more things that were so different here from the country of my birth.

Firstly, as much of the world press described Fortuyn as a right-wing extremist, all echelons of the Dutch media were quick to point out that this was not so. While many dismissed him as a populist demagogue, Fortuyn was a right-winger in a country where the bandwidth between right and left is relatively narrow. Extremism, whether right or left, is anathema to the moderate Dutch.

Then, the public reaction to the murder reached a crescendo with Fortuyn’s funeral, worthy of a saint and somewhat overdone. It seemed as if the Dutch had forgotten their watchword: “Doe maar gewoon, dan doen je al gek genoeg” (roughly: Just act normally, then you’re acting crazily enough). I realised that in this peace-loving, tolerant country, neither the government nor the populace had the emotional mechanism or equipment to handle a political assassination – an occurrence all too frequent in the land (and continent) of my birth but unheard of in the Netherlands for more than 400 years since the assassination of William “the Silent” of Orange in 1584.

In spite of the unfortunate events that led me to the conclusion, I could only repeat: This is a country I can live in.

The next realisation was again on Liberation Day, this time in May 2003. I was watching a live telecast of a concert given by a massed orchestra on a floating stage in the middle of the Amstel river in Amsterdam, surrounded by myriad boats and pontoons. Everyday Amsterdammers mingled with dignitaries and royalty to enjoy a vibrant programme of popular classical music. Fine, this is Europe. This is normal.

It was during an interval that one of the TV commentators pointed out the sturdy physique of the superb Estonian conductor and recounted that the maestro had once been his country’s national wrestling champion. An interesting bit of trivia, but so what? Well, seen through the eyes of one who was raised and educated in South Africa, there was no “so what?” about it. In South Africa, being national wrestling champion in your youth and becoming a celebrated conductor later are almost mutually irreconcilable. This sound absurd? Read on.

As the product of a Continental home, my childhood years were filled with the sounds of Mozart, Beethoven, Handel. On my parents’ bookshelves, Shakespeare, Virgil, Plato and Homer rubbed shoulders with Nietsche, Goethe, Schiller and Spinoza (an Amsterdam Jew). But once I went to school, especially at High School, anything pertaining to poetry, art or classical music was the preserve of moffies (a derogatory term; literally gays but colloquially synonymous with sissies, nerds, or anything perceived to deviate from absolute male machismo). I remember someone telling me that worldwide, the male/female proportion of professional fine and performing artists was 80/20, but that in South Africa it was 20/80, simply because from an early age, any pursuit which might later lead to a performing or artistic career was “only for moffies”.

While at a party when I was about 16, I recall a pretty but naïve Afrikaner classmate asking me: “They say that because you are in the art and drama class, you are a moffie, is that true?” When I asked her, she seemed at least to know that a moffie was “a boy who wasn’t attracted to girls and liked to have sex with other boys”. How that sexual preference related to art, drama and classical music was beyond her but as her father and Dominee had said it was so, it had to be true. During our evening stroll in a nearby vineyard, my now less-naïve classmate discovered that there was at least one South African boy who attended art and drama class but did not fit her father or Dominee’s definition of moffie bit I doubt if she ever raised the matter with them...

Joking aside, the fact that for various sociological reasons, homosexual men are disproportionately represented in the arts worldwide is incidental. What is relevant is that in South Africa, this disproportionality is amplified immeasurably as a symptom of a social malaise. If you were to suggest to a random white South African male, (you’d first have to interrupt his conversation limited to sport, women and cars) that there actually are heterosexual male stage actors and even ballet dancers, he’d look at you as if you were talking about aliens! And it makes one think that the phenomenon of middle-aged men coming “out of the closet” and taking off with a male lover after years of marriage and socially imposed heterosexuality is eight times more prevalent in South Africa than the world average. Accepting that prejudice is learned, just as they were brought up racist – to accept as a somehow incontrovertible fact (their father and Dominee said so, so it had to be so) that black people are lazy, stupid, and otherwise generally inferior – so they were raised homophobic.

Tragically, numerous patently effeminate young South African men take marriage vows, have children, and later, once maturity of years has given them enough experience (to make a lifestyle choice open to any Dutch teenager), “devastate” their families by announcing that they were gay all along. That they’re leaving the lady, the lawnmower and the Labrador to move in with a pretty boy in tight jeans. As if the socially myopic family couldn’t see that he had shown signs of being a moffie ever since, aged about six, he showed a distinct preference for trying on his sister’s dresses. At least they have his art and drama to blame.....

So, here I was, in the Netherlands, watching a world-class orchestra playing Rachmaninov under the virtuoso baton of the former national wrestling champion of Estonia! And I smile (wince) as I imagine the hospital food what would be served to any of those manne on the rugby grandstand who dared call him a moffie.

Now this is a country I can live in.

As I said before, this is not intended as an indictment of South Africa. Warts and all, Africa is unavoidably and undeniably fused into the marrow of my bones and will always be part of who I am. My soul will always be stirred by African rhythms and African landscapes. This does, however, focus on some aspects of South African society and culture that might not be obvious to the outsider, yet are irreconcilable with my personal philosophy of life.

While on the surface, I was not fleeing a war or political persecution – I am, after all, neither black, nor communist, nor gay – deeper down, I have maybe always been fleeing a form of cultural persecution from a social order which, to a far greater extent than most, openly (and often institutionally) derides anyone who is different in colour, interests, philosophies or lifestyle choice. A social order that made my love – nurtured by Continental parentage – for opera, classical music, drama, spiritualism, intellectual pursuits and egalitarian philosophy, brand me a stranger in my own native land. And this in spite of the cries of “freedom” in the so-called “new” South Africa. Now, I flee no more.

I now live in a country where those interests and feelings are embraced by many. I can find like-minded people on any street corner or, yes, football stadium. I can speak with like-minded people every day without being branded weird, subversive or a moffie and I live in a society where to do so would be socially unacceptable.

Yes, this is a country I can LIVE in!

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