The Time of Reckoning
Ariel Dorfman, the Argentine, Chilean, American novelist is in South Africa to deliver a lecture for the Nelson Mandela Foundation. He has not been invited to do so by accident and what he has to say will be worth listening to carefully. He is an "international treasure" and an inspired choice to deliver the lecture because of his learning and his personal life experiences of the horrors of revolutionary change he has witnessed at first hand in Chile.On 23 July 2010 and in Cape Town he was the respondent at a lively encounter during which four young South Africans who share his calling discussed their work around the broad but ambiguous theme "Suspect: Reconciliation". As each of them reeled off their contributions to the discussion, it was plain that a common theme enveloped their thoughts on the topic. One spoke of his interaction with a dweller in a condemned inner city building but 3 kilometres from his comfortable flat in a leafy suburb and lifted out five significant words spoken by the young migrant harassed by his landlord: "I'm threatened, I don't feel settled". Another spoke of the culpable homicide which accompanies the ritual cultural circumcision ceremonies each year. That crime is one about which nobody speaks, and about which nothing is done, despite the mounting death toll. A toll, it should be noted, which exceeds the number of babies who die in our public hospitals due to culpable mismanagement and poor hygiene. A third describes her feelings around growing up in a house which her parents were able to buy because the apartheid era Group Areas Act disqualified the previous owner from continuing in ownership and possession. The title of the book of the fourth author on the panel, "Dog Eat Dog" - suggestive as it is of criminality and cannibalism, says it all.
The common theme of all of the works and words brought to the discussion by the young South African authors is indisputably lawlessness. It is their stock in trade. One author gets his inspiration from the gruesome murder of a cousin, another from the experiences of those unluckier initiates who find themselves on the wrong end of a rusty razor blade during initiation ceremonies. The third is obviously, and movingly so, more than uncomfortable about growing up in a "stolen" house, while the title of "Dog Eat Dog" is quite unambiguous.
Dorfman's brief is to respond to these inputs without giving away the content of his embargoed Nelson Mandela lecture due on 31 July 2010. Not an easy assignment. He points out that it is the function of the novelist to fill any void in society with words. Sketching his own experiences in revolutionary times in Chile, he stresses that the writer needs to be near enough to the issues under discussion to understand them but distant enough to criticise. Fear, he says, creates lies in the work of novelists. But then again, he confesses that all novelists are liars; even though this concession is jocularly made it is patently true.
Turning to the situation regarding reconciliation in present day South Africa, Dorfman likens the state of play to a pot of milk boiling on a stove with uncontained vigour. Unless swift action is taken, the milk will spill over and burn. The burnt milk will not be able to be cleaned up without considerable effort when it is stuck to the stove and pot. Dorfman points out the need for urgent steps to clean up and control the threat posed by the boiling milk and the consequences of it boiling over.
This is a powerful metaphor: the coffee, to which Dorfman does not refer explicitly, will be cold if the milk is not boiled properly, combining heat and flavour to optimum effect is the desired result. If the milk boils over and is spoilt, the process has to start again, because burnt milk is useless.
So too with national reconciliation, the right combination of flavour and heat is the correct recipe. Reconciliation is not, as veteran journalist Terry Bell suggests during the "contributions from the floor" session, a matter of mixing manure and ice cream. This does nothing for the former and ruins the latter. Far rather spread the manure on the grass, grow nutritious fodder for the cows to eat and make decent ice cream with the rich milk they produce.
Dorfman, whose home language is Spanish, tells of his sojourn in Amsterdam. There he becomes acquainted with the term "Rekening" which he likens to the English word "reckoning". In Holland this is of course a reference to the bill. Amusingly, Dorfman describes his dismay upon reading the bill: "Did I really eat that mousse?" he asks in mock horror.
This is where South Africa finds itself today according to the analysis offered by Dorfman: we have eaten the mousse and are at the time of reckoning in respect of our national attempts at reconciliation. It is a reckoning in which we will have to come to terms with what has been done and what has not been done to achieve reconciliation in the land. He concludes his remarks by urging authors to be both "transgressive and responsible" in the necessary process of exacting accountability for progress made on the road to reconciliation. This is a process which requires both boldness and caution. The balance to be struck is one in which the most meaningful writing involves the writer in the recognition of the truism that "to be loyal to one's community one needs to betray one's community." This is the essence of speaking truth to power. It is the process by which accountability is exacted: those in authority are required to explain their action or inaction and to reasonably justify their decisions. The void into which the young local authors are pouring their words is one created by lawlessness.
Fortunately for South Africans, we have not had to live through the horrors of a revolutionary change. Our painstakingly negotiated national accord was made by reaching a compromise with which all sides seem equally unhappy, but this unhappiness pales into insignificance compared to the human suffering that a full blown revolutionary change brings about in any society upended by involuntary regime change. From the floor, Black Sash stalwart Mary Burton may be "full of anger" because the peace and progress promised by the national accord has not materialized. She may justifiably criticise the compromises of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on which she served. Respected commentator Rhoda Kadalie may carp at having to explain to callow youths of the Democratic Alliance administration in the Western Cape the ins and outs of the land claims in District Six. The milieu of murder, mayhem, culpable homicide and state sponsored theft in which the young writers craft their work is best addressed by a return to the rule of law, thereby replacing current lawlessness with substantive lawfulness.
By exacting accountability from those in authority and by promoting responsiveness to the needs of ordinary people who seek no more than the human dignity, equality and various freedoms promised them in the Constitution, we may yet transcend our 1994 rainbow nation status and achieve the "intermingling" of all the colours of that rainbow, as suggested from the platform. In this way one nation, united in its diversity, can reach the goal of non-racialism and non-sexism pointed out by Nelson Mandela and other founders of the new South Africa. Transcending the current multi-racial discourse and substituting a non-racial one falls to our youth to do.
It is a goal worthy of the effort required to achieve it.
Paul Hoffman SC
24 July 2010
