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Of solemnity, self-righteousness and misplaced indignationAnnie Gagianois a professor in the Department of English at Stellenbosch University, where she studied and has taught for many years. She specialises in the study of African English fiction and postcolonial studies while also teaching and reading in several other areas of her subject, such as Shakespeare studies and 20th-century English poetry. Although I am by no means religious by inclination, one of my favourite sayings is William Blake's dictum that "the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God". What I have found fascinating in the intensity of the criticism levelled so far at Yvonne Malan and myself - the focus even of the main leader in Die Burger on 22nd February - was the question of debate participants' priorities and their debating style. For instance, in his editorial Die Burger's editor (I presume he was the author of this piece) could not yet have read our statement (which is only being published in the campus newsletter Kampusnuus tomorrow, along with - correctly - a response to it by the Woordfeeskomitee), yet he saw fit to characterise our own participation in previous debates sneeringly and falsely as the (presumably politically opposite but) equivalent of Roodt's shameful vituperations, and ourselves as liable to have our own voices silenced as we are accused of doing to Roodt. This impertinent type of editorialising seems to have opened the floodgates of irritation against people like us, who are now absurdly demonised as "enemies of free speech" (the same thing began even earlier in the columns of LitNet). All this before our and our fellow signatories' statement has been published! There is a difference between fair and reasoned criticism or the airing of dissenting opinions on the one hand and attaching labels to people before one has made sure what exactly their views, and their reasons for holding them, are. The parochialism of Die Burger's way of blowing up every flurry on Stellenbosch University campus into a major media event is by now a knee-jerk response, but it forfeits respect for itself as a responsibly run newspaper. In the Blake quote above, the key term is honest. Dr Dorothea van Zyl, Woordfees director, urges us in her Seminaarkamer piece to "play the ball, not the man" - an expression that does not fit the given situation, in my estimation. No one "plays" men (and women) more viciously than Dr Roodt himself and he is, thank goodness, exceptional in his tireless enthusiasm for marketing himself and his objectionable views - in a very particular market, be it added. It is unfortunate that that "market" seems to be rather larger than even I had thought. The other issue is that what Roodt utters in his polemical writings hurts the dignity of so many people that to have numbers of letter writers grabbing their pens to defend Roodt's right to what is here falsely called "free speech" - falsely, because his is racist, entrapping and offensive speech - is inordinately depressing. Why are they not directing their indignation at Roodt instead? Dorothea van Zyl insists on the "autonomy" and "independence" of the Woordfees and suggests that it foregrounds the interests of "writers" within a society that does not usually (in her view) accord authors a sufficiently "prominent position". These remarks use expressions in the same unqualified way as the way in which the phrase free speech is being bandied about. Hitler (and the analogy is not a cheap shot here, given Roodt's "Adapt and Die" piece) was also a writer, after all, and it is a very ancient point that a "democracy" (note the facile use of this term in Die Burger's editorial) gave rise to Hitler's fascism. Writers and their opinions, particularly when these are presented as public commentaries, in reams, and with an air of intellectuality and scientific research (as Roodt presents his "Adapt and Die") are not sacrosanct and it is absurd to suggest that they are not civically and morally accountable for such utterances. Van Zyl's suggestion that we want to "tarnish the integrity" of the Woordfees by requesting a withdrawal of the invitation to Roodt for (note) the March 12th event is a misuse of the term; I would suggest that the integrity of an event of this kind would be better protected by showing itself sensitive to the serious implications (which we raise in our statement, and which I many times communicated to Van Zyl when I heard about the nature of the March 12th event, before she took the issue to LitNet and to Die Burger), of the decision to give him a platform of the kind he has been offered. Van Zyl's unfortunate reference to our protest as the equivalent of "self-aangestelde boendoehowe" has by now backfired, I believe, in view of the kind of denunciation Yvonne Malan and myself are being subjected to (by Roodt, among others). Chinua Achebe labelled racism one of the "malignant fictions" of the world. The issue of the quality, purpose and effect of Roodt's use of language in the writings he is best known for, is to me at the heart of my protest against his March 12th appearance at the Woordfees. Bessie Head, who wanted the worth of women recognised and their potential unlocked, saw young black men as the great hope of our continent. In 1972 she formulated her view of the writer's task in this country as follows: It is to be hoped that great leaders will arise [here] who remember the suffering of racial hatred and out of it formulate a common language of love for all people. // Possibly, too, Southern Africa might one day become the home of the storyteller and dreamer, who did not hurt others but only introduced new dreams that filled the heart with wonder. (A Woman Alone, p 103) This view (and practice) stands at the opposite end of the scale in comparison with Roodt's use of writer's skills in his polemic writing (I am not acquainted with his literary texts). In a piece such as "Adapt and Die", Roodt plays to the most awful kinds of racist resentment, bitterness and despair, mixed with a strangely complacent sense of alienation from this land and its people. To write a document like this is to use language in a katabolic manner - that is, a way that is the very opposite of creative writing - and in my view, not only writers who are novelists or poets or playwrights, but all of us, should attempt to do so, whatever our language medium. As an attachment to the above piece, and because I was challenged to do so by a clutch of three Afrikaans writers in Die Burger (on the letter page, 23/02/05), I ask that the final letter I wrote by email to Dr Van Zyl, before I learnt that she was using the LitNet Seminaarkamer forum and that the matter had been reported to Die Burger, be printed below*.
-----Original Message-----
* Die e-pos van Annie Gagiano aan Dorothea van Zyl is onveranderd
geplaas, dus sonder enige redigering of taalversorging. Om hul privaatheid te
beskerm is die direkte e-pos-adresse verwyder.
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