“That’s when the anger started,” she says resentfully, pointing to the article when he’d finished reading. “After that, there was very little talk of stars or deserts or forgotten histories, no more tears shed over sad books, just an intense, brooding silence. He would come in here, slouch in his chair, and listen with distant glassy eyes as I did all the talking. Not that that was ever a problem, you understand.”
Kagiso laughs. But her smile fades quickly.
“Sometimes I think I may have talked too much. If I’d kept silent more, perhaps that would have made him come out with things, get them off his chest a bit. But I didn’t want to make him feel unwelcome. Didn’t want to shut him out.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself, Frances. Issa’s always been prone to withdrawal, ever since we were children. He sometimes used to shut himself in his room for days.”
“Well, I still wonder whether if I had – Anyway...”
She removes a cigarette from the box and rolls it in the tips of her fingers for a while. When she has lit it, fearful of the flame, she lays it in the ashtray.
“And I don’t think he was working very much either.”
Kagiso frowns.
“Yes. I came to know when he was writing by a piece of music he used to play. I can hear it now. Oh, it was a beautiful piece. I do miss it. I don’t even know what it was called. Didn’t want to ask. Thought he might think I minded. Didn’t want him to turn the volume down. So I never asked. Suppose I’ll never know now.” She looks up at Kagiso who looks down at his hands.
“Now everything was silent down there, with only the news on the hour, every hour. Beep beep beep, then the announcement of capital cities around the world. If he did play music, it was always that terrible shouting stuff that young people listen to these days. And I’m sure one of the songs – he used to play it often – used to go something like, ‘I just don’t give a – ’, you know?” She raises a palm to her mouth, as if to exclude a child, then mimes an F.
Kagiso nods.
“So if he wasn’t working, then what did he do all day?”
“Well, he washed a lot.”
Kagiso sits up in his chair. “He washed?”
“Yes, his mother reacted to that too. Yes, all the time.”
“And was he... seeing people? Getting visitors?”
“Well, he never used to get any visitors, apart from his friend Katinka, who used to call by from time to time. But even that soon stopped. She buzzed me from outside one night, cold night it was too, when she’d got no reply from downstairs. Thought he might be here with me. I invited her up to wait in case he was running late. But he never came. Furious, she was. And you know Katinka... doesn’t mince her words.”
Kagiso smiles agreement.
“Apparently, he’d stood her up a couple of times before. I tried to ease things over for him a bit – told her I had no idea where he was, that it was unlike him not to be home. Suggested that something must have happened to detain him. But really, he’d taken to going out most nights and often didn’t get back till very late.”
“Did he ever talk about where he’d been?”
“Never. And I didn’t think it my place to ask.”
In the ashtray, the cigarette has transformed itself into a long worm of ash.
‘A road map into our past’
‘The Report that follows tries to provide a window on this incredible resource, offering a road map to those who wish to travel into our past.’
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
October 1998
KAGISO DUSTED ON THE DAY HE ARRIVED. Not that he enjoys housework, only wanted something to do. Decided to start by eliminating the gloomy layer of grime that had settled between him and the flat, as Issa would have known it. The wardrobe was empty, the bathroom and kitchen were left spotless, the small bar fridge was washed, turned off and the door left ajar. Disconsolate relief, everything had been done, nothing to do...
Except pack the bookcase.
It is pleasing to look at, the handsome, commanding proportions of the solid oak, the meticulous alphabetical arrangement of the books on its shelves. Katinka has asked to keep it – she remembers helping Issa collect it from an antique dealer in gentrified Crouch End over the hill. Couldn’t believe what he’d paid for it, couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t make do with something from IKEA. Its contents will be shipped back to Johannesburg. But Kagiso doesn’t want to dismantle it, finds it hard to get started, procrastinates, seeks distractions.
Again he handles the mementos on the shelves; the speedometer from their student banger, Issa had removed it after the car was eventually written off in a head-on collision with a drunken driver – it registers 119 251 km; the jar of sand he’d gathered from the side of the road in the Karoo – Kagiso can still see him crouching – where the car clocked 100 000 km; the poem now posted inside, scribbled on a rolled-up travel card: The story of my life / written in the / sands of time / buried in the / warm dunes / – how many more / caravans will / move on / without noticing / the faint shadow / this ripple creates; the special edition R5 Inauguration Coin, stuck with blue tack to the front edge of the middle shelf.
He wraps the coin in the silver foil from inside his cigarette packet to distinguish it from the other coins in his wallet. Then he raises a reluctant hand to the first shelf but quickly drops it by his side with a sigh, imagining, again, the scenario: What if he comes back? Catches me? What will I say? We thought it best. Had given up on you. Decided to pack up your stuff and take it home, to your room in Ma Vasinthe’s house.
His attention is drawn to a bright yellow note, which sticks out of the top of one book. He opens the book. The note is from Issa to Frances: Found this in a bookshop on Charing Cross Road. Ahead of your trip to Canterbury, I thought you might find it interesting. Kagiso reads the highlighted section:
Part Two:
The Literary Heritage
Chaucer’s Dame Alys, the Wife of Bath, illustrates her expertise in the art of life by quoting two proverbs. They belong to the category of sayings of Arab philosophers which are cited in the Disciplina Clericalis and the Secret of Secrets. But Dame Alys attributes them to the Almagest of Ptolemy:
Whoso that nyl be war by othere men,
By hym shall othere men corrected be.
The same wordes writeth Ptholomee;
Rede in his Almageste, and take it there.
Her opinion of Ptolomy and the Almagest is pronounced with the authority of experience of Ptolemy:
Of alle men yblessed moot he be,
The wise astrologien, Daun Ptholome
That seith this proverbe in his Almageste:
“Of alle men his wisdom is the hyeste
That rekketh nevere who hath the world in honed.”
Chaucer, in composing these passages, was following the example of the Roman de la Rose which gives us an important clue to the exact location of these sayings:
[The tongue would bridled be, as Ptolemy
Early in the Almagest explains
In noble words: “Most wise is he who strives
To hold his tongue save when he speaks to God”]
The source “at the beginning of the Almagest,” from which Chaucer and Jean de Meun drew different proverbs, is of particular importance as it confirms Chaucer’s use of Ptolemy’s Syntaxis in the translation of Cremona from the Arabic. The preface from this version was a biographical note on Ptolemy composed by “Abulguasis.” It contained thirty-three sayings attributed to Ptolemy and was taken from an Arabic work, The Choicest Maxims and Best Sayings, by Abu al-Wafa’ (“Abulguasis”) al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik, a Muslim historian and philosopher who lived in Egypt. al-Mubashshir’s work was composed in 1048-49. It comprises short biographies and descriptions of twenty philosophers, accompanied by a series of sayings under the heading of each, and is related to the widely read compilation of “strange sayings” of Greek philosophers by Hunain ibn Ishaq.
He boxes the book. Rising, he notic
es again the empty space where the postcard of home used to be. Home, he thinks, was here. And so was –
He positions himself opposite the space. Only the foundations of the towering city now remain. Undiminished, they continue to dominate the bookshelf, like five large cornerstones. His eyes move slowly over the thick black spines, the white lettering that runs down the middle – Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report – the red volume numbers at the base of each – Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3, Vol 4, Vol 5.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 / Once I caught a fish alive
He sends out a cautious hand to the first volume and dislodges it, slowly. The gentle tug causes the shelf to creak. He hesitates, does not remove the volume entirely from its secure position, only partially, so that it balances, a little precariously, over the edge of the shelf. Cautiously, he examines the protruding cover: a collage of faces, some known (an oath-taking De Klerk, hand raised in the air, Thabo, Zuma, Tutu) others not. He leans forward to read the gravestone pictured in the centre. It is embossed with flags of the ANC and the South African Communist Party:
The Cradock Community and the people of SA salute you in your heroic struggle for freedom, peace, justice and social emancipation. Your blood will nourish the tree that will bear the fruits of freedom. Long live the fighting spirit of our leaders.
MATTHEW GONIWE
BORN 2721947
DIED 28061985
REST IN PEACE
NOBLE SON OF AFRICA
He studies the faces of the two anonymous women on the cover, wondering who they are, where they’re from – and about the truth they hope to find, whether they have found it, whether, if they have, they are reconciled to it? Then he notices their eyes, preoccupied, haunted.
He steps back.
“A stage-managed whitewash,” his colleague, Lerato, had spat. “And Tutu wants us ‘to close the chapter on our past,’ with this? When it castrates our leaders and diminishes our suffering. And why? To assuage liberal guilt and pacify fucking bourgeois fears. Don’t think for one moment that we are satisfied.”
He pulls a sleeve across his brow and slides the volume back into its slot.
6, 7, 8, 9, 10 / Then I let it go again.
He studies the contents page in the second volume and flicks ahead to the fifth chapter, ‘The Homelands from 1960 to 1990’. On the title page, a photograph: a young man, able bodied, black; his trousers around his ankles – made, like a boy, to stand in the corner and face the wall. In the foreground is a picture of President PW Botha. Smirking. Kagiso goes no further.
On the cover of Volume Three, a soldier takes aim, a woman is comforted, Mandela embraces Suzman and a headline reads: ‘You left me blind – and I forgive you’.
He removes the volume from the shelf and sits cross-legged on the floor with it cradled in his lap, searching it, like a telephone directory, for names, names he knows – names of the tortured, the missing and the dead:
The case of Steve Biko 18
Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko [CT05004/ ELA] was detained on 18 August 1977 in Port Elizabeth and died in custody on 12 September 1977 in Pretoria.
Security police officers Major Harold Snyman [AM3918/96], Captain Daniel Petrus Siebert [AM3915/96], Warrant Officer Ruben Marx [AM3521/96], Warrant Officer Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen Beneke [AM6367/96] and Sergeant Gideon Johannes Nieuwoudt [AM3920/96] alleged that Biko died of brain injuries sustained in a ‘scuffle’ with the police at the Sanlam Building, Port Elizabeth.
At the inquest, magistrate Marthinus Prins ruled that Biko’s death was caused by a head injury, probably sustained on 7 September during a scuffle with security police in Port Elizabeth – but that there was no proof that the death was brought about by an act or omission involving an offence by any person.
He follows a footnote to Volume 4, Chapter 5 where he finds Biko’s gravestone being watched over eternally by the prayerful pose of a participant at the proceedings:
BANTU STEPHEN BIKO
HONORARY PRESIDENT
BLACK PEOPLE’S CONVENTION
BORN 18-12-1946
DIED 12-9-1977
ONE AZANIA ONE NATION
The death in detention of Mr Stephen Bantu Biko Stephen Biko was a prominent leader of the Black Consciousness Movement in the mid-1970s. He was detained by Eastern Cape security police in August 1977 and kept at Walmer police cells in Port Elizabeth. From there, he was taken regularly to security police headquarters for interrogation. The two district surgeons responsible for his medical care were Drs Benjamin Tucker and Ivor Lang.
On 7 September 1977, Stephen Biko sustained a head injury during interrogation, afterwhich he acted strangely and was uncooperative. The doctors who examined him (naked, lying on a mat and manacled to a metal grille) initially disregarded overt signs of neurological injury. They also failed to record his external injuries or insist that he be kept in a more humane environment (at least that he be allowed to wear clothes). When a physician was finally consulted, a lumbar puncture revealing blood-stained cerebrospinal fluid (indicating possible brain damage) was reported as being ‘normal’, and Biko was returned to police cells.
Finally, on 11 September 1977, Stephen Biko lapsed into semiconsciousness. Dr Tucker recommended his transfer to a hospital in Port Elizabeth, but the security police refused to allow this. Subsequently, Dr Tucker acquiesced to the police’s wish to transfer Biko to Pretoria Central Prison. Stephen Biko was transported 1 200km to Pretoria on the floor of a landrover. No medical personnel or records accompanied him. A few hours after he arrived in Pretoria, he was seen by district surgeon Dr A van Zyl, who administered a vitamin injection and asked for an intravenous drip to be started.
On 12 September, Stephen Biko died on the floor of a cell in Pretoria Central Prison, naked and alone. The post mortem examination showed brain damage and necrosis, extensive head trauma, disseminated intra-vascular coagulation, renal failure and various external injuries.
Kagiso returns to the Commission’s findings:
THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT THE DEATH IN DETENTION OF MR STEPHEN BANTU BIKO ON 12 SEPTEMBER 1977 WAS A GROSS HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION. [AT THE TIME] MAGISTRATE MARTHINUS PRINS FOUND THAT THE MEMBERS OF THE [SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE] WERE NOT IMPLICATED IN HIS DEATH. THE MAGISTRATE’S FINDING CONTRIBUTED TO THE CREATION OF A CULTURE OF IMPUNITY IN THE SAP.
DESPITE THE INQUEST FINDING WHICH FOUND NO PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS DEATH, THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT, IN VIEW OF THE FACT THAT BIKO DIED IN THE CUSTODY OF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS, THE PROBABILITIES ARE THAT HE DIED AS A RESULT OF INJURIES SUSTAINED DURING HIS DETENTION.
IN VIEW OF OUTSTANDING AMNESTY APPLICATIONS IN RESPECT OF BIKO’S DEATH, THE COMMISSION IS UNABLE TO CONFIRM A PERPETRATOR FINDING AT THIS STAGE.
Kagiso had bought tickets for he and Issa to see Cry Freedom. He’d hoped that seeing the film together would help them put aside their differences, find a way forward – that in it, his love for film and Issa’s commitment to the struggle would find some sort of middle ground. He’d joined the queue early. Tickets were sold out within hours.
Sweet, Issa said when he phoned to confirm their bookings. Very cool. I’ll see you in Rosebank later.
But by the time they got to the cinema, the film had been withdrawn, confiscated by the police at the last minute, even as the first reels had started to run.
Now, sitting cross-legged in front of Issa’s bookcase, it strikes him that, more than a decade later, he has still not managed to fill in all the gaps inflicted upon him by a censorious dictatorial regime. The books not read, music not heard, histories not known, have become, like the holes in the expensive smelly cheese for which he has developed a liking, a part of his truthfully reconciled and liberated life.
He has still not seen the film. To him, it remains a police seizure. That is what lives on, the film itself, a blank space, a smelly hole. He is, he thinks, a little like the front page of a national newspaper stuck in his journal; full of blank spaces:
Our lawyers tell
/>
us we can
say almost
nothing critical
about the
Emergency
But we’ll try:
PIK BOTHA, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, told US television audiences this week that the South African press remained free.
We hope that was listening.
They considered our publication subversive.
If it is subversive to speak out against , we plead guilty.
If it is subversive to express concern about we plead guilty.
If it is subversive to believe that there are better routes to peace than the we plead guilty.
Below it, he has scribbled: ‘I am a collection of blank spaces, defined more by what I don’t know, than by what I do.’
But the catalogue of crimes in his lap does not record the invisible forgettable survivable blows to the brain by the censor’s axe. He starts to search for his own name: Mayoyo; Kagiso, left stupid after having been lobotomised by the South African Board of Censors in the interest of national security. He releases the pages of the fifth volume from back to front with his thumb. When the headline ‘Finding on former President PW Botha’ flashes past, he catches the page:
102 Mr Botha presided as executive head of the former South African government (the government) from 1978 to 1984 as Prime Minister, and from 1984 to 1989 as Executive State President. Given his centrality in the politics of the 1970s and 1980s, the Commission has made a finding on the role of the former State President:
[...]
BY VIRTUE OF HIS POSITION AS HEAD OF STATE AND CHAIRPERSON OF THE [STATE SECURITY COUNCIL], BOTHA CONTRIBUTED TO AND FACILITATED A CLIMATE IN WHICH THE ABOVE GROSS VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS COULD AND DID OCCUR, AND AS SUCH IS ACCOUNTABLE FOR SUCH VIOLATIONS.
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