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I am a fixer. People call me when they have problems. It's a cool job, because people's discreet little problems often smell of something from the laundry bag. True, sometimes the smell of old socks is overwhelming. But the times when a young virgin's passionate secretions mingle with her deodorant make it all worthwhile.
My most recent virgin came to me because her boss called me. He is a gentleman and gentle man, with three children. He could not believe the amount of porn on the poor lass's computer. He did not know how to deal with it and he called the fixer. The viruses and Trojans were beyond me, so I called in another discreet friend and he restored the peace.
The girl in question is young, Muslim and very good. She most definitely is a virgin who never once has had a boyfriend.
I am old. I have nearly passed the sell-by date for this conference. I am at the age where women tell me about the men they bed; they don't assume I can or want to do it anymore.
When I took the young woman through some protocols of the net, I became the first man ever to talk sex with her. If one understands the codes of humanity it is possible to tell when a young woman comes - not violently as in orgasmic, but in a quiet ooze of desire. She can be wearing jeans, a habit or a burka, it remains a sweet and wonderful smell. I am old. I realised her desire was not for me, but for the forbidden fruit that I so openly addressed in my office.
Believe me, my talk was necessary. The men in Kelvin Klein underpants were one thing. But to have to unravel the Trojan links to sites like lickmy****.com from her source files was quite another.
My baggage.com
This is not a paper on internet porn, it is a paper about empty morals. My age tells you that I lived through and experienced apartheid. I saw the staggering finger of PW up close and personal on no fewer than two occasions.
I sat through life orientation sessions in the NG Kerk's Sunday School where the police chaplain proudly displayed a slide show on the "fight against terrorism". Among the slides that I'll never forget were a few of a Casspir with the nose piled high with the bodies of dead Swapo fighters tied to the spare wheel.
The moralistic members of the NG Kerk and the Nasionale Party formed many statutory bodies to ban André P Brink's and Etienne Leroux's books, to put stars on our soft porn and to demand cuts to our movies … Hands up all those who remember the awful little screen, "Cuts ordered by the Censor Board have been effected …"
I danced with joy when Kortbroek finally flew the struggling Nats on his suicide mission into the hands of Patrick Lekota. It reminded me of an SMS that I received four days after 9/11. It read: "Big #$@% in Pretoria. AWB threatens to fly hang gliders into Union Building."
I am supportive of the NG Kerk's desire to change. Personally, I think they should hire Kortbroek to kill them so that a new phoenix can rise, but I do support individual dominees who want to change the threatening finger of God/PW into an inclusive home for all.
There are wonderful people, like Christina Landman and Ben du Toit, working from within the system. Others, like Sakkie Spangenberg, have opted out but continue to inspire through the New Reform movement.
Elsewhere the same trends are visible in the broader faith community:
- John Spong, a remarkable American theologian, remained in the church and is fighting for gay marriages to be legalised. He openly says that the church has to condone and bless sex outside marriage.
- Farid Esack, a Muslim theologian, tries to stimulate debate in the mosques and in the private homes of fellow Muslims.
- Rabbi Hoffman, an American now resident in Cape Town, gently explained to me the other day that his views may not agree with some of the more "traditional" Jewish ones.
The list is much longer. These believers - and they are believers - sow seeds of hope into the gentle punch-bags of religion. Battered wives go back to their abusive husbands. Battered religious punch-bags without hope go back to their abusive leaders.
9/11
Or they fly aeroplanes.
What is the difference between flying planes into the Twin Towers and dropping yet another bomb on a house in Fallujah, killing women and children?
I'll tell you what the difference is. The Master Narrative called the World Economy is backing the bomb in Fallujah.
I'm not a Green Peacenik, nor do I belong to EarthLife. I am a capitalist businessman who makes money through my trade.
I am also a student of literature, and the Master Narratives have changed very little since the New Journalism reared its head. The USA is in yet another country that does not want it there. They are again dropping bombs on innocent women and children because they have no exit strategy. The body bags are mounting again; so, too, are the piles of innocent civilian bodies.
It is easy to condemn Muslim fundamentalists who hold schools hostage, and one has to. Two wrongs don't make a right. But why do so few Christian and Jewish voices go up against the atrocities in Palestine? Is it simply because Israel is killing Muslims?
As authors we have to protest. We have to write against oppression. We should take our cue from very young Monica Ali's Brick Lane (an attack on the patriarchal system in the Islam) and the equally young Arundhati Roy's The God of small things (an attack on the caste system).
Have sex
My eye caught an article on the internet the other day. The eMail & Guardian of 31 August 2004 carried an article to the effect that delegates from 12 African countries met in Durban and patted one another on the back for refusing to distribute condoms in schools.
I beg your pardon?
Here is a list of the top 12 countries in the world when it comes
to teenage birth rates. For the sake of the argument I'll list the
figures as well.
(Birth rates are published per 1 000 teenage girls. Teenagers in
this study include only girls between 15 and 19.)
| World ranking |
Country |
Teenage birth rate |
| 1 |
Niger |
233 |
| 2 |
Congo
Liberia |
230
230 |
| 4 |
Angola |
229 |
| 5 |
Somalia |
213 |
| 6 |
Sierra Leone |
212 |
| 7 |
Uganda |
211 |
| 8 |
Chad
Guinea-Bissau
Mali |
195
195
195 |
| 11 |
Guinea |
168 |
| 12 |
Gabon |
161 |
(The Economist Pocket World in figures, 2003 Edition)
No prizes for spotting the African countries on this list. No prizes either for indicating which of these countries have populations that are overwhelmingly Christian, Muslim or a combination of both. This is not dark Africa, my friends. These countries are firmly in the hands of the priests, pastors and imams.
But what is the flip-side? Here are the countries with the lowest teenage birth
rates:
| World ranking |
Country |
Teenage birth rate |
| 1 |
North Korea |
2 |
| 2 |
South Korea |
3 |
| 3 |
Japan
Netherlands |
4
4 |
| 5 |
China
Sweden
Switzerland |
5
5
5 |
(The Economist Pocket World in figures, 2003 Edition)
What do the priests and imams say about that?
The four Eastern countries on the list are still quite unspoiled by the big two expansionist religions. And the Netherlands? "Gggôôô! Wat een viese boel! Every second street in Amsterdam has a porn shop! And they allow prostitutes to be part of their tourist attractions!" And the Swedes?
Okay, so this is about sex
André P Brink's books were an eye-opener in my conservative youth. I have read most of them (that's a library full).
Brink's books shook the political foundations of this country. But equally one has to point out what a seminal work Die swerfjare van Poppie Nongena was. I often explained to my students at the University of Venda that the conservative whiteys were extremely comfortable in their white little houses. "Ons weet nie wat daar aangaan nie," was their motto when prodded about the atrocities of apartheid. They read Ons wag op die kaptein and said: "Sien, dis hoekom die swartes op hulle plek moet bly." Then, quite unaware as they claimed to be, they bought a new book with a yellow cover by the same author. And, suddenly, a black woman entered their clean little lives.
Students of literature should ask NALN to send them copies of the correspondence that raged in the newspapers about Poppie. Johan Degenaar was a voice of reason, but sadly, quite a number of literature gurus jumped on the Nasionale Party bandwagon and condemned the book.
The pen proved mightier than the Trojan horses filled with moralistic dominees and politicians covered in bumper stickers urging us to repent and pray:
- Apartheid (officially) is dead.
- All my neighbours are a shade darker than white.
- The Nasionale Party joined the ANC.
- Poppie can vote.
Never underestimate the power of books. Never underestimate the influence on the Afrikaner psyche of seeing "goeie kinders" like Brink, Jonker, Rabie, Miles and Leroux clasping the hands of the "enemy". John Vorster himself got furious with Fanie Olivier for sending him "bombs" disguised as poems.
En wat van daai terroris, Breyten Breytenbach?
A country's authors are its collective subconscious. When the going got tough, the "Little Magazines" got going. This movement saw people like Rosa Keet and Dan Roodt being banned by the Nats. Jeanne Goosen, Johan van Wyk, Etienne van Heerden, Koos Kombuis (in various guises), Louis Esterhuizen, Theunis Engelbrecht (also a real verkleurmannetjie) - all these "big names" were young and "dangerous" in the way they used cheap magazines and clandestine distribution methods against old King Vorster.
Koos Prinsloo earned himself the ire of PW Botha. Botha got angry at a lot of people, but jinne, 'n Afrikaner wat sulke goed skryf?
Readers will notice that my references are almost exclusively Afrikaans.
I grew up in a very conservative home. My father was a typical Afrikaner who followed his leaders blindly. He was often critical of little things in the Kerk and in politics, but once a year a gilded Christmas card would arrive, addressed to JW de Vries. My dad would take the envelope with shaking hands and open it with his sharpest pocket knife. Then he would hold up the white card with a faux gold crest above the words Eendrag maak mag. Inside would be a generic little Christmas message from one of the ministers, signed pp by some clerk while she was doing her nails. My father would be in heaven. Die party het hom onthou.
And that is why these authors irked my dad so much. They had broken ranks. They wrote in Afrikaans, but their messages were not what he wanted to hear. The fact that Adam Small and Clinton du Plessis wrote in Afrikaans hurt more than my father wanted to admit.
That, in part, was what drove me into the arms of Clio. In her I found a person who shared secrets with me. She questioned the Sunday School like I did. And, oh boy, she taught me about sex! I spent many happy hours masturbating through the pages of Brink, Leroux and Weideman.
And yes, my dad did warn me: allow sex into your life, then bad things like politics will happen to you. I discovered politics as well. While tannie Carike dubbed overseas songs into Afrikaans in praise of Dias, these vervlakste skrywers were writing about things that the Nasionale Party were trying to hide.
Our predecessors continued stirring. André P Brink did more to bring about the downfall of the Nats than the Sappe ever did. Riana Scheepers and her Katriena books did more to ease the Afrikaanse tannies into the new South Africa than Kortbroekie or Tony and the Dems could ever have hoped to do. Adam Small weighed more heavily on the minds of the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie than any of their official policy documents ever did.
Poppie's daughter still lives in a shack
I am amazed that people are wondering what there is to write about now that Apartheid has, officially at least, joined the Dodo in a museum.
Every now and again I rub shoulders with the new millionaires whose surnames sommer tell you that they don't speak die taal as a mother tongue. Some of them are arrogant and they flaunt their wealth. Others are unobtrusive. I park my small, second-hand car next to their gleaming beemers and talk shop.
It's cool. We have come a long way.
But then I drive home. I see the shacks next to the road and I arrive at my motorised seven-foot gate to find a shopping trolley full of boxes and empty bottles blocking my driveway. I often go into the squatter areas. I know people who live there. I grab my camera and I try to document some of the things that words battle to describe.
I open the newspaper and see that *&*#N police decided to pick up some prostitutes again. I turn on the telly and see how naked, limp children's bodies are carried from a school that got invaded by people who claim to believe in a higher being.
That's not cool.
My wife arrives home with stories of twelve-year-old children too far pregnant to abort. She tells the story of the woman whose husband beats her for taking the pill. Now she is HIV+ from him and she knows that the other five children will suffer if this little one inside her is not removed. My wife sometimes cries with frustration when she tells of people too poor to pay the taxi money to go and see a specialist. She vents her anger when the state hospitals have yet again run out of essential medicines and when seventy-year-old patients had to be turned away after having queued since six o'clock in the morning.
You open the literature in good Christian homes and see fake smiles and easy American answers of abstinence in Africa. You see a young Muslim girl sitting in front of you, squirming with the desires of the flesh, you smell her body responding … You know that her dad won't allow her to date. You talk to a dominee's daughter who tells of her secret affair because it's easier to have people asking questions than admitting to mom and dominee dad that you are no longer a virgin at twenty-five.
That's way uncool, man.
The three issues that will shape our future
So, what are we going to write about?
I'll tell you what I will focus on:
- Poverty
The thick necks in their gleaming beemers need to be reminded again and again that issues like a basic income grant are not nice perks - people need those to eat.
- Liberty
At the time of writing, gay marriages are not legal in this country, nor are they in many others. Prostitutes are still fair game for the police. Muslim girls are not allowed to date or wear normal clothes. Christian boys and girls are still told that evil shall befall you if you have sex - so they do it without the necessary knowledge and know-how and then the girls fall pregnant or get HIV. The ANC in their moral righteousness are still a threat to press freedom - look at Mbeki's pathetic support for Mugabe.
- Religion
I marvel at the new, uncompromisingly honest theologies that are appearing all over the world today. The problem is that the average dominee, priest, imam or rabbi is too scared to be honest with his flock. He chooses to lie to them and to punch them into submission.
The case of Jackie Nagtegaal
I am going to pick on Jackie because I believe she is one of the strongest young voices in South Africa today. I am in awe of her sharp brain.
In a recent interview with Insig she was quite adamant that she did not have issues to write about. Clever move, I thought, especially as Insig got her to pose with the "old" (ie can't participate here) Antjie Krog. What does one say in the wake of Krog? Krog's struggle credentials go back to before Jackie was born.
You do what Jackie did. You say nothing. You allow your books to speak for you.
Jackie's do. I often visit book clubs and, boy, do these tannies read Jackie! "Is it true," they ask me, "that young people have this much sex?"
Somehow the deeper meaning of the young nightingale's work takes longer to sink in. That's alright. Jackie has got them. That's important. They'll read her again and again.
The day will come that Jackie's stature will have grown enough for her to tackle the deeper things in public and not just through her characters.
Brink did it. Leroux did it. They got read. When they chose to drop a stinker at the feet of the Natte, everybody noticed.
Three final pleas
My time has come. I need to hand over to you, the younger generation. At least that is what I am told by the organisers of this conference.
I'll leave the baton here, on the e-lectern, with three final pleas:
- We may feel that we are unable to make a contribution in the Sudan or in Russia, but write and be damned. Write again. Get read. Get the people talking like Jackie does.
- Fight for our liberties. Fight for our right to read the soft porn elsewhere on this site. Fight for the right to exchange and view porn on the internet. You don't have to use it, you may even disapprove of it. I disapprove of many things the net dishes out, but trust me, once book-banning and film blackouts start happening, it will be too late. We have come a long way, but our lawmakers are quick to grab a moralistic cause to play for votes. Even Tony and the Dems promise the death penalty for votes. Soon Queen Tony may start attacking abortion clinics. Fight him and his ilk.
- I know I'm soon to be "young" no more, but please, do still have coffee with me when you see me. Old writers need to be informed of the youth's vision. As you can see, we accumulate baggage so quickly …
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Izak de Vries is the father of a very busy two-year-old
boy called Jabu. He is married to Elma, a medical doctor.
He lives in the hope that when he and Jabu grow up he will
have time to read the books he wants to read, see the films
he wants to see and climb the mountains he wants to climb.
His latest work, Rites of the ox, has just
been published.
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