Old Takkies Indaba

I was never one of those physical boys. Sure, I went through stages of flexing my arms to make “muscles bulge, and stuff like that, but on the whole I avoided physical confrontations if possible (except in cases where some poor kid was being bullied, and so on). My little explosions in that context I would prefer to leave out of this equation. Maybe I was plain and simple a coward. But no, I don’t think that was it. After all, through my friendships with my Zulu peers I had made myself into a more than adequate stickfighter, was able to kill a running rabbit with a whirling thrown stick, and quite a few really macho things. I just preferred to avoid receiving or inflicting pain. But this was all very ad-hoc. I hadn’t formed any particular opinions on violence, militarism and things like that. Things before matric were just personal feelings.

And then we got an American “brother” for a year. Our school participated in bi-annual exchange programs via the American Field Service, and as luck would have it, our family got to host Keith Burbage for my matric year. This was in 1970, and apartheid was in full swing, with no outside media coverage permitted, no TV, and thus a blanket on information available to us budding young about-to-be conscripts. At 16 we were forced to register for Military Service, which usually commenced immediately after matric.

In the predominantly Nationalist culture of Port Natal, the whole National Service issue had become elevated into what amounted to a mandatory rite of passage, and the prevailing belief was that one was not a man until one had “been in the army”. My own ideas were just starting to form, as I became exposed to the anti-Vietnam issues governing much of the music emanating from the states, but it hadn’t developed a South African bush war flavour yet, as quite frankly I didn’t have the foggiest idea of what shit was actually going down in Namibia, Angola (where until 1994 no-one officially even admitted to a South African presence) Zimbabwe and Mocambique. Absolutely no idea. Total conscription was still new, as until a year or so earlier a percentage of young men were still exempted – seemingly on an arbitrary basis. John had miraculously been one of those not called up, although he actually volunteered some ten years later – something which is still a complete mystery to me, but it is his life – so I was not primed by older siblings, as many of my “friends” at school were. I still shudder at the memory of how many of my schoolmates actually looked forward to going off to “skiet terries” (shoot terrorists) or “slot floppies” as the then popular “Rhodesian” T-shirt loudly proclaimed. With this memory eternally firmly planted, I never cease to me amazed at how few people there are around today that admit to having supported the Nationalist regime. But then lies and smokescreening have become so much part of contemporary South African existence that I suppose I should not be surprised. Our political dishonesty today, in 2008, leaves me quite breathless, but that by the way.

And then Keith arrived, laden with newspapers, magazines and of course loads of “banned” records. And the information blackout started to come apart. I was confronted with glaring evidence of an inhumanity I would never be able to accept, never mind go out and fight for. Fuck that. And Keith’s tales of returning zombies after the extremes of Vietnam, coupled with a very obvious fear of going over there himself ( he was to be shipped out within weeks of his return from SA) brought my previously unformed, but I believe present, ideas, regarding the complete unacceptability of militant behaviour and the use of weapons into sharp focus. There was no way I was going to be forced to point a gun at another human being. Ever.

But there was the rub. I love my country. Not in any patriotic sense as one tends to define patriotism today, but simply because it was my homeland. It was where my parents had grown up, dreamed dreams of a “good” life, and had children. It was the centre of my very being. The place where I wanted my children to grow up good and happy one day. But the options for a white male weren’t all that many. You either went to the army, or you went to jail. Simple. Or you could uproot yourself entirely, and go off to some freezing Euro climes to sit it out. Well that was not for me. Firstly I had no intention of allowing some immoral politician force me to leave my homeland, and secondly, I simply couldn’t afford to up and run.

My tactics were eventually forced on me.

Till 1970, my matric year, life had basically been a fair facsimile of average adolescent schoolboy life. Obviously there were the little personal refinements and rebellions, but I was basically your average, well behaved, good schoolboy from what appeared to be an average middle-class white suburban home.

The plan had always been to get a good matric, with maths and science and the necessary creds to get into Stellenbosch, and by June everything seemed to be heading swimmingly in that direction. Field Service exchange boet Keith had made for interesting but not fatal diversions and the end game was coming into play with mock matric still showing B’s in my maths and sciences and D’s in the languages, as had been the pattern for years, with my traditional dragging F in History. No star student I didn’t work myself to death, ‘cause I knew I was bright and would have as much chance of failing as the Titanic had once the ball had begun. I was going to pass well enough to go to med school and be a GP just like we’d all planned for years.

Then one night during the few weeks of study break for the finals, I was up in my room studying Van Wyk Louw when I started getting a headache – wrote it off as eye-fatigue and closed my eyes for a few minutes….. or so I thought.

I woke up in a metal bed in a strange dim room with filtered light. Very confused. Head very sore. Vision sort of blurry. Hmmm. Hospital. IV tubes and machines and pretty soon a nun?

Turned out that I was in Marianhill Hospital, where I’d had my appendix out years before, and that I was very sick. Apparently I was lucky to be among the living, having been unconscious for several days under treatment from a bunch of neuro-surgeons who had saved me after a serious bout of encephalitis unfortunately not detected until I was in a rather bad way. Dr Mauritius Joubert, I think it was… in the company of our much-loved family GP, Dr Von Thomann whom I trusted implicitly.

So matric finals that year were out of the question and I had a reprieve till the exams in March. I was on total bedrest for a month or so, then had to avoid stress and stuff that really goes hand in hand with final exams, until the dreaded “hereksamen”. A very weird situation. Preparing for my exams without being allowed to work too hard! But not only because of that. I felt completely alien to the person I had been. My world remained unchanged but within a few weeks the way I processed it seemed to have changed beyond understanding and beyond redemption. Although I was still good at numbers and formuli and things, I no longer found them inspiring. The had become downgraded to tools at which I had become sufficiently proficient to accomplish the sort of things I thought I needed, and so warranted no further interest, really. Whereas my undoubted “skill” with language and “creative writing” (for want of a better notion) had previously been a source of fun, a means of flexing intelligent wit and definitely impressing people. Suddenly I found myself enthralled by poets, completely entranced by The Waste Land and Beckett Opperman and Pound. Suddenly I knew what I was supposed to do. I seemed to have no choice. I was to write poetry in Afrikaans. All the rest was preparation. The boyhood idyll, the strange alienation of living in a snobby English suburb while attending a conservative Afrikaans school in perpetually colonial Natal, the flirtations with religion in various forms, the menial vacation jobs, and then the revelatory convalesence, all of that was simply sketching in the background. From here on it was training for a different kind of job – one that would never feed one or pay rent, but one I simply had to follow. A different ballpark altogether. An undefinable curriculum for someone hitherto culturally blind. So in those months I had to think. All that was really clear was that I was determined to avoid going to the army, that I knew that med school was no longer a good option, and that I needed to figure out a way of earning a living from something other than writing. The folks were both teachers. I knew the ethos and was well connected in that area. So the next choice was also obvious in retrospect. Teaching. In the Arts. Makes sense. So I got a loan and enrolled at Natal University pending passing my exams. Which of course I did, this time with B’s in all the languages, and D’s in the other set, and history still way back there in F. By the time I’d finished the exams I was already attending classes at the University up the hill and growing my hair, much to the disgust of the school principal who felt obliged to warn me of the communists at an “Ingelse the kids from liberal, wealthy English-school backgrounds – I had led a very cloistered life. Sexually I was utterly naïve. All the girls in my life thus far had been friends – one of the guys. Few that these guys actually were, given my small circle of friends. My political world, though I suppose liberal in its nature, had not been formed by any rhetoric or focused discourse, but had evolved through the peculiar blend of association throughout my childhood and adolescence. I found myself outside the circle of politicos (Charlie Nupen and the like) because I simply found the blithe acceptance of an ideology at obvious odds with their priviledged upbringing (Michealhouse, Kearsney, Hilton, DHS) completely absurd. I remember one NUSAS firstyear “recruitment” gathering, in which we were treated to this impassioned speech full of “comrade” and “struggle” and all the in vogue catchphrases by an absurd young man in spotless designer clothes that even looked ironed, and remember being fiercely aware of the obvious fact that this young devotee had never been anywhere near a washing machine or iron in his entire mapped out life. No that was not for me. But at least the discourse was available, and one could sit an the sidelines and sneer to one’s heart’s content. That sort of became an unconscious modus operandum. The sidelines of the “scene” SEEMED TO FIT ME PERFECTLY. And that was nice. New to me and very comforting. And of course the peripheries have their own populations. Other observers. Fellow riders of the boundary-lines. I liked it there and think I’ve stuck to that dimension ever since. An ever-shifting haven of interest. Nice. I’m home.

But of course, recognizing the homestead doesn’t mean you know much about it. Before I could safely use it as safe-house – a place from which I could launch sorties and recces into the grey world of suit-design, and then return and dissolve into the landscape like a latter-day guerrilla – I had to learn its secrets. Had to get a handle on some kind of blueprint through which to embrace some definition of a comfort zone. And that too becomes an excavation of apprenticeship for the aspiring ‘writer” I was beginning to see emerging through the mist of new friendships, new senses waking, all of that.

One can’t realistically embark on any journey, particularly not one with some visualized destination, unless one has a fair idea of one’s port of origin and departure. No maps can be drawn. No sensible weathercasts noted. No matter how laterally one wishes to think things should be, history will always be linear. This does not imply that notions of cause and effect apply. Not at all. Simply that no matter what causes what, events will nevertheless occur in chronological sequences. So no matter how ad-hoc one wishes to be with one’s life, even THAT decision is the result of a choice. And choices are made in order to make things conform to some desired strategy. So whether one is conscious of these processes or not, it is glaringly obvious that each and every action is the outcome of a strategic decision. Ergo strategy is essential. Ergo also then that understanding of oneself (ultimately the point of departure for any thought or action) is a prerequisite to any viable statement, whether that be aesthetic, political or otherwise. So point one of my apprenticeship had to be to define a personal take on the human beast. Simple. And this is what I set out to do.

I think I must make it clear that this is all supposition in retrospect. No way was I sophisticated enough to formulate this stuff at the time and then act accordingly. I was just a lost kid finally finding that the shifting grounds were actually quite comfortable, despite the effort of staying upright required. It all just followed a particular course, because it’s perfectly logical, once one pieces together the jigsaw of how it all happened.

In concrete terms, I became quite extreme. Never quite getting into the whole peace/love ethos, I embraced the explosion of colour and individuality that hippy culture offered. Grew the hair. Super long. With beard. Without beard. Eyebrows. Shaven eyebrows. And loads of colour. And moved through that very quickly when I discovered that there was a lot more stuff even further out that was really really interesting. Iggy Pop had a lot to do with it, I think, and the far side of The Kink, Pink Fairies, Can. Floyd and so on were really just the visible surface of a much more interesting hinterland. Again the peripheries.

And from this point I think it would probably be wiser to use pseudonyms for people. Things started moving beyond the boundaries of laws and certain social norms, and so I think it would be fairer on the characters that peopled my life that they remain unnamed. For the sake of openness, bizarre as that may sound.

Facts also have many faces. We all know there’s no such thing as one immutable history. Every telling is inevitably coloured by the lens of the camera. Who’s holding it. Depth of focus. Choice of frame. Filters. Exposure. Available light. And then always the all important editing, whether conscious or no. All these things define the flavour of a tale, so one will always have but one chef’s offering laid out to taste. Judgement lies in the gourmet, if there is to be such a thing at all. You decide. I will simply place the pieces as I feel they should fall. You make the calls.

It’s relevant to pose these issues at this point, ‘cause this is when Robin, the person, actively started participating in the formation of his collage that was to become a life. I have to hand it to my parents for allowing the leash to stretch to my requirements while remaining there as an invisible unstated safety net for decades to come, without ever actively putting any spanners in my works. They advised, when asked. They showed disapproval, sure. But never judged. I was allowed to judge myself, but somehow there had been instilled some moral baselines that remained firm throughout my adult life, give or take the odd bounce. My decisions were always mine. And this is when that really all kicked off.