kagablog

Why I am writing this book, or

(chicken-shit takes off his glasses)

“Afrikaner, vrot (rotten) banana” was one of the first things I ever said heard about Afrikaners. My parents emigrated from what was then Rhodesia to SA when I was 11 years old, in 1974. My sole knowledge of Afrikaans came from my parents, on the long drive to Cape Town. I was to reply to people who speak Afrikaans with the sentence “Ek is jammer, ek kan nie Afrikaans praat nie” (I’m sorry, I can’t speak Afrikaans). Presumably, they would then respond to any requests in English.
I attended English primary and secondary schools in Cape Town, where encounters with Afrikaners were minimal and seen through thick lenses of prejudice. Afrikaners were called by a variety of derogatory names, usually implying that they were brutish and coarse, in comparison to the “refined, intellectual and cultured” English (the fact that English, from settler times, were often the scum of the earth didn’t seem to bear water).
These prejudices were rubbed in all the more when our school played rugby against Afrikaans schools. We were inevitably thrashed by terrifying, enormous and occasionally barefoot Afrikaans lads, who bore down on us with a ferocity and dedication to the game we simply did not possess, or, as we kidded ourselves afterwards as we licked our wounds, really wanted to possess.
The only time that the Afrikaans/English war ceased was upon encountering a situation where blacks were involved. Here, all cultural differences were immediately forgotten and the issue of race would spring to fore; White was unquestionably Right, it bonded us beyond our imagined loathing.
Despite my liberal parents both having attended university, my knowledge of politics was minimal. Upon completing my schooling, without a university exemption, I found myself – without considering the alternative choices of exile or imprisonment as realistic options – in Grahamstown training camp. Here I was to fulfill my duties as a white South African, in apparently defending our womenfolk from the threat of “black, communist rapists”.
Here I was insulted night and day by Afrikaans corporals; the standard term for raw recruits was “hoender-kak” (chicken-shit). I was also surrounded by Afrikaner “troupe” (troops) from small dorpies (towns) of the Eastern and Western Cape, whose poor education, lack of worldly knowledge and blind desire to willingly hunt down and kill “commies” only served to confirm the prejudices I had half-ingested at school. I did, however, learn to speak Afrikaans, for the first time in my life. As the officers’ commands were in this language, I really had no choice. Two years of sweat and bullets followed.
Having completed my national service, I then qualified to enter the hallowed halls of university, on a point system that determined that army-leavers were more likely to pass their exams. The threat of having to do “camps”, an extension of national service, invoked an intense, thorough dedication to my studies.
At Rhodes I discovered to my shock that I had been defending a racist regime for the past two years of my life. I found myself chanting ‘Swapo’ (South West African People’s Organisation) at rallies, with the “commies” I had been trying to kill for the past two years in Namibia.
I also fell in lust with a young Afrikaans woman for almost half a decade. But despite being in possession of an absolutely Afrikaans surname, her parents had decided to Anglicise, and no Afrikaans was ever heard from her shapely mouth.
My mind-opening thus began at varsity, but it was only in my mid-thirties that I encountered a breed of Afrikaners who enabled me to see not only them, but people of other cultures in a radically different light.
I was at this stage treading some rather unsavory, dark paths. These rather “New Age” Afrikaners introduced me to some ancient powerful rituals and a way of seeing things which put me back on track.
Their take on things was a universe apart from laager (fortress) mentality. Perhaps escaping from conservative backgrounds required a special effort of will. They were all involved in the arts, from music to sculpture to pottery, and they took me on trips to visit various clans of San/Bushmen, whom we communicated with through Afrikaans and music.
I became involved with several Afrikaans female artists. I learned that the Afrikaners, verkrampt or verlig, (conservative or enlightened) were deeply passionate about the arts. I have always regarded artists as the only worthwhile creatures on this earth … and hence … sprang the inspiration for this book.
This book is dedicated to the Afrikaners who saved me from myself.

Motivations, methodology, myself

The absurdity of my quest (to write Avante-guava Afrikaner/AA) really struck me as I paged through art books, to discover interesting artists, but only those with Afrikaans surnames. It was apartheid all over again, and this point was hammered home thoroughly when a rough précis of AA was posted on the kagablog and comments on its merits and failings poured in.
The scope of AA was chosen as a narrowing of focus on the subject matter. Not that Afrikaans artists is a narrow field. If my ego thought it would be inflated by choosing to write a book, it was soon shrunk to tiny proportions, when faced with the task of selecting the best or most interesting artists from a huge variety of incredibly creative, informed individuals. This became immediately apparent, even after my initial research.
Due to my poor Afrikaans, I am focusing on musicians (I have an extensive background in music) and visual (fine) artists and photographers. I am choosing to focus on Afrikaans artists who are not part of mainstream Afrikaans kultuur (culture) either by choice, or because they are not acknowledged, or do not wish to be.
The motivation of this book is a celebration of alternative Afrikaans art, to make the voices and works of these people known to a wider audience, to establish if they see themselves as having a shared identity, or if they are just lone voices in the wilderness, expressing their pain and joy in their art. If so, what are they saying? Who is helping them say it, and how?
The process will involve an organic growth from concept to dissemination of the idea for general debate, from artist referring me to other artists, from encountering of an art-form or idea to other practitioners using the same or similar concepts. It will be self-reflexive, in that I am the (largely naïve) central character processing the information
I receive, and who will, hopefully, be in turn changed by the information I receive. My writing will, if all goes according to plan, reflect these personal changes and how I respond to each circumstance or set of circumstances.
The method employed will be one of journalism-style interviews, based on questions from my research and past experiences. These questions are also likely to change as I see how my initial interviewees respond. The book is a documentary of both individuals and a (counter) culture, with a focus on how personal experiences of the past and present affect/ed the artists chosen, and how they reflect this in their art. It is also a personal journey of my own.
Analysis of their answers, comparisons between individuals and attempts to collate the individual responses into a composite whole will be avoided, unless very obvious themes emerge. Intellectual and academic discourse will be avoided wherever possible, to keep the book accessible to more than those privileged few who “wonder lost within the walls of ivory towers”.
AA is a book for public debate, hence my decision to post it on the Internet, and input derived from readers may help to push the book in the directions it needs to go.