Hell's Teeth

Remembering Nelson

2015-12-05T07:01:00.001+02:00

Today is the 2nd anniversary of the death of Nelson Mandela - a man who is justly called one of the fathers of our nation. There are many of us who might have problems with some of the positions he took and some of the compromises he made. But no-one can doubt his greatness or his significance. Or his remarkable ability to bring together opposing opposites.

A poem I wrote at the time:

WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE
(Remembering Nelson)

When all is said and done
And the sound of the earth falling on
The box that holds
Your body
Is muffled
And the bugle
And the poet
Rasping "Aah Dalibhunga"
Is dim

Then, in that moment,
Let me look upwards
And see the broad sky.

When all is said and done
And the flags are folded
The chairs stacked
The tents stowed
For another show
On another day

Then, in that quiet moment,
Let me look outwards
And see the far horizon.

When all is said and done
And the social medias
Have found another saint
Or another sinner
To hail
Or to hang
To praise
Or to pillory

Then, let me think
Of this shining day
Of this bright
African son

When all is said and done.

Perpetrator and victim - visiting Auschwitz

2015-09-06T23:08:00.001+02:00

Beyond the electric fences which kept the prisoners inside the camp, there is a pleasant looking, double story house. This was the house of Rudolf Hoess, who ran the camp. It is located within easy walking distance of the gas chambers and the ovens. From one of the windows on the top floor, you could see the roof of the gas chamber, if you were to look, on any day, at any hour.

It was here that Hoess raised his children. This is where his family slept and ate their breakfast. This is where he relaxed. This is where he made love to his wife, heard his children preparing for school. This is where he listened to the radio, read a book, brushed his teeth, combed his hair, where he slept and where he rose in the morning for work.

As it happens, it was also within sight of his house, that he was hanged for his crimes, on a simple wooden scaffold, erected with wooden pillars on either side, holding aloft a single piece of railway track. It was erected for him and it stands today, in his terrible memory.

But it is this extraordinary fact of placement that grips one, when one visits Auschwitz. That the crimes he was committing, he did within easy walking distance from his family life. Thousands upon thousands of people were being tortured, maimed, experimented upon, shot, gassed and murdered in many other ways. On a daily and routine basis. Children were wrenched from their fathers arms and led to their deaths. Mothers were forced to watch while their babies were murdered in front of their eyes and then were put to death themselves.

Families were ruthlessly split. The weak and less useful were disposed of as quickly as possible. It was not, in a macabre sense, a problem for the Nazis of how many people could be killed at any one time. Their ability for this was fairly limitless. But the numbers of deaths posed a logistical problem of the time it took to dispose of their bodies. The first solution was mass burial. This required considerable space and the right kind of soil. In Birkenau, (also known as Auschwitz 2, and just down the road from Auschwitz 1) mass burial became unsustainable, because the soil was clay - and the bodies eventually would re-emerge , whenever it rained. So mass cremation replaced mass burial - and cremation placed an irritating limit on the amount of people who could be killed on any one day. Birkenau is, incidentally, some 30 times larger than Auschwitz 1. And when you walk on that ground, in some areas, it is the ashes of the dead that forms the dust on your shoes.

In one of the rooms in Auschwitz, there is a very large glass urn. It is filled with the ashes of what were once human beings. People with lives, and homes, and children, and hopes and dreams. There they lie now. All and everything that remains of them. Mixed together with others who shared their fate. A tragedy of innocence.

Innocence, because these people had done nothing other than live where they lived, worship where they worshipped, shop where they shopped, learn where they schooled. They had simply lived their lives. And this was what was deemed to be a crime worthy of the most indescribable punishment, suffering, death and utter and absolute dehumanisation and commodification.

One of our party found it most extraordinary that there was so much deception involved in the process: The Jews were told that they needed to bring a packed suitcase with them. (If they packed a suitcase, there must be a future!) They were told to bring a basin in which they would wash themselves. (If they had a basin and they could wash - surely it wouldn't be so bad!) They were told very explicitly, that Work means Freedom, on their arrival, as they walked into hell. (I'm strong. I can work. I will get my freedom!) They were told that they could bring with them fifty Deutschmark, to see them live in a little comfort after they arrived. (There must be, at least, the chance of a little more comfort! Why else would they suggest i bring money?)

Those who were so selected were told they would be able to shower. (If I shower, at least I will feel a little better!) The men should undress on the one side of a wall and the women on the other. It was a shower! It was so very welcome! They could not know that they would meet each other, naked, beyond that door. Their naked children would be with them. Their human dignity would be utterly destroyed, but they would be there, naked and alive, long enough to feel it all draining from their bodies. When the Zyclon B gas was pumped into the room, there was time enough for them, by far, to know what was happening to them - what had happened to them.

It took 10 minutes on a good day - but anything up to 30 minutes on a bad day - depending on weather conditions, after the gas was delivered into the chamber - for them all to die. There would be panic. There would be desperate and vain attempts to escape the horror. There would be prayers which were never answered. There would be people trampled beneath, in an orgy of despair and desperation.

When the chamber fell completely silent, as it always did, the bodies would be removed and processed. The bodies would be disinfected and the hair would be removed for recycling. Jewelry would be removed and collected, sorted, counted and dispatched. Clothes would be sorted and searched. Everything and anything useful or valuable would be sent back to Germany for sale or re-use. Nothing was discarded, unless it really was useless. Metal eyelets would be removed from the shoes of the victims - so detailed and so precise was the processing of the commodity.

Hitler needed an enemy. He needed an enemy to galvanize his party and his people. And when choosing an enemy, it would be wise to choose an enemy that is not too poor, which is why the Jews suited him so well. Because they were, effectively, the middle class of Poland. They could be trusted to bring with them their allocated fifty Deutschmark. They would have a suitcase. They would fill it with their belongings. They would, most likely, have gold filled teeth.

Hannah Arendt coined the phrase, some time ago, about the banality of evil. Banal, because it is so easy. Banal because of the fact that it does not take anyone very extraordinary to be evil. You do not need any special talents. You do not need to be athletic, or gifted, or beautiful (or indeed, ugly!) You do not need to be bright, or stupid, or particular in any way. You can be all of these things, and none.

Some years ago, I encountered the Psychologist, Elaine Bing, who has spent most of her professional life working with perpetrators of violence. These people - usually men - are obviously not the most beloved of society. They have committed horrible crimes. More often than not way in excess of any order they might have received. More often than not, they are outwardly normal. They lead seemingly normal lives. You would not be able to identify them by the way they look or the way they live. To all intents and purposes, they are upstanding members of society. They will frequently attend church. They will, perhaps, love culture. They will appreciate art or a good novel. But below the surface, they are something very different.

They have no pity for their victims. They have no boundaries for any of their chilling behaviour. They have no remorse. They have no insight into any of the pain or any of the suffering and destruction they have caused.

I asked Elaine how she coped with dealing with them. How did she survive her encounters? How did she not feel contaminated and sullied? Her response was as powerful as it was shocking. She said "I think to myself, that could be me".

Dealing with ghosts - Visiting Auschwitz

2015-09-06T21:34:00.000+02:00

It is 3.13 am in the morning. I have wrestled with my bedclothes and I have chased after (and lost) any hope of sleep. I have given up. Tonight, it will not happen. I have resigned myself to that bald and simple fact.

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - which can prepare one for the kind of emotions one will encounter when visiting Auschwitz. Absolutely nothing. No amount of pain. No amount of horror. No experience, no thought, no imagining, no sound, no silence. There is nothing. There is nothing. There is nothing.

The vastness of it all - the sheer size and magnitude - defies any depiction or any human words. Put them together how you may. Pile up epithet upon epithet, image upon image, horror upon horror, metaphor upon metaphor - and still you will never be prepared. Take everything you know about war, splice all your slivers of knowledge together, pack them as high as you can - to the ceiling, to the rafters, to the roof, to the chimney - and still ... still you will not be able to prepare yourself for what you will find there.

The arrival to this place is unemotional and unimpressive. There are no theme park banners. There are no pointers or flyers, no garish advertising. The building itself, from where the visitor encounters it, is uninspiring and even a bit ugly. The signs directing you to the toilet or the modest shops are vaguely amateur.

You will be struck by the coaches, parked and waiting for the people they are transporting. How many of them there are. How many people want to come here. You will notice that the entrance is free. (You pay for your guide, only). There is a line of people going into the camp. They come from Australia and India and England and America. Others have travelled here from every corner of Europe. There is a party of Germans, behind us. How, asked a member of our party, do Germans deal with this, when they come to visit here? Like everyone else, said our guide, they are quiet. Maybe they are a bit more quiet, he reflected.

At the entrance to this place, there are pictures of prisoners. Front and side. Some of them have information. Some have none. I met this man, across the years and the boundaries of distance and language. His name was Brak Danych. He had been given a number 604. And beyond that, there is no data available. He was Polish. They started with the Poles. He is a young man of maybe 18 or 19 - 20 at the most. And he was murdered. The picture was his last. There is no hope in his eyes.

Everything he might have been. His children that he never had. His family, his endeavours, his bravery (or perhaps his lack), his loves, his likes, his hopes, his dreams and his fears are all there. They crowd into this one picture. He is alone as he faces his captors and his fate. Only his name and his scared - his sad, resigned eyes stare across the years to us now.

And then it starts.

As you pass through the iron gates, with the famously cynical statement, that "Work brings Freedom", you are gripped as if by a whirlwind. Or, as I would imagine, a Tsunami. You are ill-prepared for what you will see. You have come wearing the thinest of cotton, in a mighty snowstorm. You are covered in the thickest of overcoats, when the mercury is pushing beyond 45 degrees.

You will walk the corridors, not as a prisoner - (for you will walk out again). You will walk as a perpetrator. You will begin to understand, with the luxury of freedom as your guiding light, how far we can go, when we want to, into that valley of hate. When we choose to go there and when no-one is at hand to stop us.

The ghosts of Auschwitz do not scream or yell. They make no sound at all. They throw nothing. They leave no footprints, they rustle no leaves. They are not violent, or angry. They make no attempt at communication. They are silent.

It is the silence of utter and complete despair. Disbelief. Incomprehension. It is the silence of the piles upon piles - upon yet more piles of their belongings. Shoes, enamel basins, spectacles, prostheses, combs and piles of human hair. Piles that lie desolate and forever.

These are the silent places of our world, where there is nothing that can be said. No words. No philosophy, no religion, no god. No song, no chant, no music of any sort or kind. There is nothing to soothe the brain thrown into turmoil. There can be no solace. No balm at all. That silence - that silence of the closed and the open mouths of those millions whose commercial worth would be assessed on their arrival and would seal their fate - that is what we are confronted with here. There is nothing to say. There is nothing that can be said. There is nothing to be said. Nothing.

And as you start to stagger a little, as you start to limp into the next corridor. As your settled world starts to unravel and undo. As your brain tries in vain to filter and to file what you are seeing, you start to meet those ghosts of Auschwitz. You see them in the man Mengele is selecting for death, because he would be too old to work. You see them in the mother and her children, walking to their inevitable deaths. In the confused young man. In the child with his suitcase. In the footfall of torture and death.

They are still silent, but they are starting to take form and shape. They carry with them their suitcases. Their stay will not be forever - they think. They will be needing a basin to wash themselves. A brush for their hair. They have just had a terrible journey and they need to get themselves stripped for a shower, these silent ghosts of our collective past.

And they pass us on their journey. We meet them in their delusion and in their hell. We pass them by as we go our way. And, most probably, next week and next month, we will meet them again. But we will not nod at them or make any eye contact with them or show them any sympathy. Our tears will all be dry. Our lives will be being lived again. Our work and our comfortable families will take up our interest and our time.

You see, these silent ghosts do not leave us, when we leave this place. They do not need gas chambers to be real. They move amongst us still. We meet them at the traffic light, dressed in rags. We see them in the children we have neglected and ignored. We pass them by in the drug dens of the Cape Flats and the makeshift houses thrown together out of wood and steel sheets in Orange Farm.

They are there, drinking the dirty water of our rivers. They are looking in the dustbins of our cities. They are sleeping night after night, under a cardboard sheet. They are with us still.

To my children on the occasion of their parents wedding.

2014-12-29T10:08:00.003+02:00

My dear Gabriel and Joshua

Last Saturday, your dads got married. It was a wonderful wedding that we have been planning for many months. (Well, let me be honest here – Leon has been doing most of the planning, most of the hard work – I have been nodding occasionally, agreeing with this and disallowing that, every now and again, as is my wont).

We spoke to you both about us getting married quite a long time ago. Your reactions were not, initially, very encouraging. “Oh gross!” you both exclaimed. “Do we have to come?!” And finally, “Are you going to kiss?!” But your views seem to have mellowed a little since then. Gabriel, you baked a rainbow cake and iced it in white and suggested that we have the same for our wedding. Joshua, you got very enthusiastic about what we were all going to wear and demanded red takkies for your shoes – not to mention matching braces.

We have come a long, long way. Leon and my journey to this point has been almost 16 years, and our parenting has been almost 13 of those 16 years. You have been with us for most of our relationship so far. It is extremely difficult for me to remember what life was like without you.

I remember my own shock, when it became clear that Leon wanted children. It was never something I had imagined for myself, believe me! I balked at the idea of endlessly changing nappies and shoving spoonfuls of mush from bottles into gaping mouths. I asked myself (and him!) what was the point of being in a gay relationship, if one was going to ruin it with children! But I also listened to him. I’m sure I was no different from any marital partner who discovers that their life partner wants children. I listened.

Leon made it clear that this was a non-negotiable for him. He had to have children. And from the moment I heard what he was saying, my life was turned inside-out and upside-down. Because children are very different from puppies or kittens. They start reading you from the moment they see you. They analyse all your good and all your bad. They take everything in and then they take over the whole of your life.

Gabriel, I can remember when we first met. Leon called me excitedly to say that the Princess Alice Adoption Home had called him to say that they had a baby who they thought might be right for us. I raced there. I wanted to meet you myself before I made any decision. I was told where your cot was and I sat beside you. You lay there quietly, sucking your middle finger and watching me. Analysing me. Assessing me. We sat like that for quite a while. I put out a finger and you took hold of it with your other hand. And that is when it happened. I became your father from that moment. From that moment my being was entirely and forever changed. From being just an ordinary man, I became a father.

They say, when you are adopting children, in the legal documents, that this child which you are adopting is “as if born from you”. I can tell you both, Gabriel and Joshua, that this is true. You are both “as if born from” Leon and me. There is no other way of putting it. When we first met you Joshua, the social worker brought you into the tiny office she was working from. She put you first on Leon’s lap and then after a while, Leon passed you on to me. You were watching us both intently.

You were reading us, assessing us, forming your very strong opinion of us. And it was then – right there in that office – that you became our son and we became your parents. In a single moment of time. In an instant. It was that quick and that powerful. You were “as if born from us”. When I look at you, I see myself. That is just the way it is. It isn’t complicated. It didn’t take forever. It required no effort at all. It happened there and then. Just like that.

And so it was that the two of us started the parenting journey that has really defined most of our lives for the past 13 years now. We got used to the nappies. I got used to the occasional projectile vomit. We worked our way through the pre-school and the early years, trying to do the best we possibly could for you both. But what is seldom recognised is that you have not just been passive participants in all of this. You have lived your lives with us too. You have had to put up with our weaknesses and faults, along with our strengths. You have had to tolerate our irritating ways and our foibles. You have had to accept that we are very distinct individuals and we often have very different (and probably very confusing) views on just about everything.

You have given us completely unconditional love. You have comforted us when we were low. You have laughed with us, when we were happy. You have tolerated our latest ideas and survived some of the worst of them. You have built our family together with the two of us. Solidly, steadfastly, through easy and through seriously difficult times. You have co-built what we have together.

What the legal documents about adoption don’t make reference to, is the way in which adopting a child will change you – and how it will do so irreversibly. Because my life – our lives – can never be the same again, since you came to live with us. You have shown me things I would never have known. You have given me more joy than is possible to describe. You have given me more to be proud in than I would ever have achieved in my own life. You have shown me an aspect of love that I would never have known, without you in my life.

So when people have asked your other dad and I, why we have waited until now to get married, we have answered “because it feels right to us to do it now”. Both of you are old enough to understand what we are doing in getting married. Both of you are old enough to be fully part of it. Our marriage is between the two of us, but a large part of us – is you.

Our wedding was a celebration. All the people who came there, were people who are deeply connected to our lives. Our families; our friends, from near and from far; our colleagues from work; some of your friends and the parents of some of your classmates. It was a wonderful celebration of our life together. We are so lucky to live in a country where our family is legally recognised.

These are things which have been fought for. They did not come easily, or automatically. They have been the fruits of struggle. For some of our family members, it has been a difficult thing. For some of our friends, the same. For some of our colleagues also. These are not always easy things.

But, in general and in relation to everything that matters, the support we have received has been overwhelming.

We wanted to celebrate our love in the communion of our friends and loved ones. We wanted you to experience that love – that joy – that acceptance and that support, which we know surrounds us. It is a wonderful thing, which we can all depend on.

The fact that we are married now, doesn’t really change much. Breakfast is still going to be breakfast. Homework is still going to be homework. I am probably still going to be grumpy more than I should be. But what has changed is the fact that we are now publicly, openly, in overwhelming celebration – a wonderfully supported family. If families as happy and as complete as ours are not public – then who should be? We celebrate the house we have built for ourselves. We celebrate our commitment to each other and our love for each other. That is what we did, when we married each other last Saturday.

We chose the name Gabriel, for he is the bearer of good news. We chose the name Joshua, because he is the one who leads people to complete their journey. We chose them both because of the cultural tradition from which we have come and which forms a dominant part of our milieu, (for better or for worse). We are all what we are. We can only try to live up to the ideals we set for ourselves, not those which have been set by other people.

But here, now, at this really important moment, let us all reflect on the wonderful thing which we as a family have built together. May it continue to change to suit all of our very individual and different needs. And from us as your parents, you can depend on our love for you as we grow in love for each other. You can depend on this, for as long as we are alive to give it.

All my love

Your dad

Michael

Lemon Polenta Cake

2014-10-05T10:57:00.003+02:00

I’m not a great cake fan. In many ways, I’m happy about this, because if I were a fan of anything else edible, I think I might be in very serious trouble.

But I am a lemon fan – so this is another wonderful way to serve that glorious fruit. And my kids love it, which is always a surprise!

You need:

1 ¼ cups cake flour (if you want to use Spelt Flour, which is gluten free, then that is also fine.)

1 ¼ cups sugar

½ cup polenta

½ t Bicarb

½ t salt

170ml Buttermilk

¼ cup Olive oil

2 large eggs

1 t vanilla essence

Juice and grated peel of 1 lemon

Mix the flour, sugar, polenta, bicarb and salt together in one bowl. In another bowl mix Buttermilk, Olive oil, eggs, vanilla essence and lemon rind and juice well together. Add the wet mixture to the dry and mix well.

Pour the batter into a well-greased 20 – 22cm spring-form baking tin and bake for 30 – 40 minutes (depending on your oven). The cake should be browned, but not dry. Let it cool for about 10 minutes in the pan before allowing it to cool completely on a wire rack.

I put some home-made Lemon Curd on mine. You could also make an icing by mixing the juice of half a lemon with about 1 ½ cups of sifted icing sugar and then adding as much water as you think is necessary.

Branston Pickle

2014-09-13T14:53:00.002+02:00

This is an essential ingredient for a traditional Ploughman's lunch, which used to be a standard item on the menu when I was a student in Cambridge. It is not quite a chutney. The pieces are much bigger than one would expect in a chutney, and the flavour is quite robust and complex.

For this recipe, there is quite a long list of ingredients - so I would recommend you get them all together before you start. Another piece of advice - you have to actually enjoy the remedial action of chopping things - otherwise you need to have one of those machines that do it for you - otherwise you will start stabbing yourself or something.

Don't be alarmed by the high volume of vegetables and other ingredients, as compared to the amount of liquid. Someone it all seems to sort itself out.

There are a number of recipes on the web. I have tried most of them and in my opinion, this one is the best. This one comes from Delia online - but it isn't a Delia recipe. It is one which an admirer has placed on her website. I would love to thank him or her for it - but they are steadfastly anonymous. But thank you - whoever you are! Its a super recipe.

OK! Lets go

Ingredients

250g carrots
150g turnips or beetroot (ideally swede - but we almost never have that here)
250g cauliflower
250g onions
200g courgettes
6 cloves of garlic
50g dried apricots
75g seedless raisins
50g seeded dates
200 Granny Smith apples (peeled and cored)
50g small cocktail gherkins (I use pickled ones)
225g dark brown sugar (treacle sugar if possible)
1t salt
60ml lemon juice
650ml cider vinegar
50ml molasses (or malt extract)
1T Worcestershire sauce
2t black mustard seeds
5 green chillis
1t cumin powder
2t ground allspice
1t ground black pepper
2T Cornflour (the original recipe calls for 1T arrowroot, which I have no idea where to get!)
Caramel colouring (I have no idea where to get this, so I use caramel flavouring instead. The object of the colouring, I gather, is to get the mixture as dark as posssible.)

Method

Chop all the ingredients into 2.5mm cubes if you want to use as a sandwich spread or a bit bigger if not. Mix everything, apart from the colouring and cornflower into a large pan.

Bring to the boil and then reduce to simmer for about one and a half - two hours, or until the harder ingredients have softened to your liking. (I like them a bit crunchy).

Take some of the vinegar and add to a small bowl containing the cornflour. (If the mixture is looking a bit dry after the cooking - just use additional vinegar.) Add this mixture to the paan and cook for another 5 minutes.

Remove from the heat and allow it to cool.

Bottle in sterilized jars (preferably with plastic lids) and leave to stand at least for a month before using. In a cool, dark place, it will keep for a year or longer, improving in flavour with time.

It is absolutely wonderful with strong flavoured cheese. I have also loved it with chicken, on a sandwich.

Warning: Once you are hooked on this stuff, you will aversion therapy, or something similar, to get off it!

National Women's Day

2014-08-11T22:42:00.000+02:00

In the haze of sentimentality and form (rather than substance) which characterizes South Africa these days, it is sometimes easy to forget the unbelievable courage it must have taken these extraordinary women, who carried their petitions up to the Union Buildings all that time back, telling Strydom that he had "struck a rock".

I'm so privileged to have known one of these four, in my life. Helen Joseph was her name (2nd from the right). She lived fairly close to where I grew up. And all the years that I grew up, she was under house arrest. My mother, despite the fact that she thought she was exceedingly unwise, had a deep respect for her. Often on our way to the shops in Norwood, we would pass by her house in Fanny Ave, and Helen would be standing at the gate. My mother would greet her politely, and she would greet back. She didn't know my mother, and my mother didn't know her "personally" - whatever that meant - but they would still greet each other.

And we would carry on walking by, on our way to the shops. And Helen would stay standing there at her gate. She was not allowed to be in the presence of more than one other person. That was the condition of her banning order. (The banning order clearly did not envisage her standing at the gate and greeting people. If they had thought if that, I'm sure they would have ensured that she couldn't.)

Helen Joseph was also a devout Anglican. She was a member of the church my family attended, St Luke's Church, Orchards. And it was thus, years later, when I was researching material for my thesis on the Church and struggle in the 1950s that I met Helen Joseph again, in several interviews which I did with her. By that stage, she was very frail physically, but her mind was still razor sharp. I used many of her insights in my thesis, which eventually became my first published book "Between the two Fires", (published by what was then the University of Natal Press).

I encountered her also when I was Provincial Chaplain for the Anglican Students Federation. Her spirit served as an inspiration to generations of students, many of whom, I am sure, can trace aspects of their political consciousness back to their encounters with people like Helen.

On this National Women's Day, I find myself asking, where are the role models for my children? More specifically, where are the female inspirations? Where is the equivalents of Helen Joseph standing behind her garden gate and greeting my mother and me as we walked up the road to buy our milk? Where?

Is it that I move in the wrong circles? Is it that I flash past in my car? Is it that my life is too full to notice, or to identify, or to point out such people? It cannot be that they do not exist.

And then I realize, the problem is not them, it is me. For I am looking for grandiosity and fame. I'm looking for status and prestige. What I'm missing is the rock I meet every day, not behind some other garden gate, but here, on this side of my own gate.

For fundamentally, these four women, these four giants of our struggle for freedom and democracy, were ordinary women. They were mothers, sisters, wives - before they were heroes of the struggle. Very like the extraordinary woman who has been a mother to my two children, throughout all their lives, (besides raising three of her own), they too parented, cared for, loved, nurtured, raised, in their different ways.

So, Mary Muremi, I salute you. Not on National Women's Day, but every day that you enrich my life with your impeccably high standard of work; with your devotion to my family; and your love for my children. You are a role model indeed. You are a credit to our country. I salute the wonderful example you have always been and always will be. You take forward the vision of those women who marched in Pretoria that day, in the best possible way. Malibongwe!

Friendship across the years

2014-07-11T22:57:00.000+02:00

I was a 15 year old boy. I came from a middle - to working class family. Church was my staple diet. It was here and at school, that I met people. They were all, (pretty much) the same kind of people with, (pretty much) the same kind of ideas and views. I sang in the church choir. And it was here that a remarkable friendship was struck. The organist (who was also the wife of the priest) was a woman whose horizon was quite a bit beyond anything I had ever come across before. To me (and I guess to others as well), she was quirky, independent, irrepressible, strange. She had a loud voice, for which she made no apology. She had views, for which, equally, she cared little about crossing the line of acceptability. She was incandescent.

And the friendship we struck was remarkable. She taught me the organ. She would hitch up her skirts and smash a shuttlecock on the badminton court. She would drive me, in her off-brown, two-tone Morris Minor, to the remote outskirts of Johannesburg - (a wild place called Fourways), for a picnic. We went to the Ballet together. We went to the Opera. We went to the Wilds and the Melville Koppies.

And all the while she would talk. She would talk about Literature, about Art, about Music (ah yes, music, music and more music). She would explain why she hated this and why she loved that. She would ask my opinion on a painting at the Art Gallery. She would moan audibly when the conductor was Edgar Cree and the pace of a particular piece of music was boringly militaristic.

She had a foul temper. More than once I was struck across the head when I played badly, or when as her badminton partner, I missed a shot in a game of doubles. She swore. She said words like "shit" and "fuck" and made no apology for them. Not often. But my mother would have fainted had she heard them. She would laugh until the tears rolled from her eyes at a good joke and she would yell at people she considered bad drivers. She would roll her eyes at stuffiness and she would shriek in derision at any sign of prissyness. Her husband, the priest, could not have been a more middle-of-the-road personality. He adored her, but remained grey and dull. Steadfast, but somewhat dreary.

Politically, she was conservative. I suppose she would probably would have voted for the United Party, rather than for the Nationalists - but largely because of a deep-seated prejudice against Afrikaners, rather than because of any objection to apartheid.

Another older person I befriended, later on in my life, was a Monk of the Community of the Resurrection. Brother Charles was the exact opposite to Sylvia Glover, politically. He matched and raised her eccentricity at every other level, but politically, he was radical in a way I had never come across before. He believed, extraordinarily, that we were all equal. That we could all have a place in the sun. He believed Nelson Mandela was a hero and that his banned African National Congress was good. He would collect people off the street in Braamfontein and invite them (and me!) into his office at lunchtime. He would spread a tablecloth over his desk and open a couple of cans of tinned fish and share a loaf of white bread amongst us all. It was food fit for royalty, believe me, for so we were served and treated.

Brother Charles was also a man with an eye for the off-beat. In his long life, he had read much, experienced hugely, loved variously, lived passionately. He talked non-stop. He repeated himself at will. He laughed by throwing his head backwards - flinging his skullcap off the top of his head - and exposing his dentures.

His humanity was endless. He loved people, especially poor people. He was a friend to everyone. To walk with him down a central Johannesburg street too forever, because everyone knew him, and would greet him and would hug him and love him. When I stayed with the community for several months, he once took me to meet some friends of his down the street in Rosettenville. A Portuguese couple. It was around nine o'clock in the evening, and they had already retired when he rang the doorbell. No matter! We were ushered into their bedroom, their got back into their large King-sized bed and treated us to a glass of wine.

Brother Charles taught me about a Christianity which put people before dogma, which laughed uproariously at silliness and stupidity and anything which counted against people. He thumbed his nose at it all and lived his life on the absolute edge - with the poor and the hungry and the marginalised. He took me to them. They welcomed me too. I was changed forever.

And I have had many more older friends in my life - and I still have them. They have always enriched me and challenged me and laughed at my pomposity. I have had the privilege of learning from their lives and their ideas. I have had the joy of being a friend to them as well.

I look at my children, young as they are, and I hope so much that they too will have the privilege of meeting eccentrics like these - while they are still young and while their ideas are still forming. Older people who can show them how to be something different. How to be bold and bright and irreverent. I wish them this gift. I wish them this extraordinary path to insight, which older people give to us. And just this knowledge stops me, the older I get, from the worst excesses of grumpiness and dismissive attitude, in case I too could possibly be someone, for someone young to remember.

From Faith to Faith

2014-06-16T20:43:00.000+02:00

On Trinity Sunday, 32 years ago, I was made Deacon on what was a particularly frozen morning, in the Cathedral Church of St Mary and St James, Maseru, Lesotho. I was living in Lesotho because I had chosen to leave South Africa, instead of facing either jail or conscription into the Army. I left behind bewildered parents, who simply did not understand and who were extremely fearful of the consequences. I left behind a parish priest and a Bishop who were enraged that I had not informed them beforehand. I left behind the whole of my life – family, friends, places I had known and loved. I and my (then) wife had no idea what the future might hold and very little plan for it. All we knew, was that we couldn’t support the violence and the killing of the apartheid state anymore.

And on Trinity Sunday, three years later, I found myself prostrate before the Suffragan Bishop of Lesotho, Donald Nestor. There was snow on the ground outside. Dark clouds swirled. Thunder cracked. If I close my eyes, I can conjure up in an instant – in a moment – the smell of the incense, the sound of the congregation in full throat – the ice cold stone of the floor on which I was lying.

I can remember the Bishop dressing me in a Stole, across one shoulder, and Dalmatic. I can remember the taste of the wine and the bread. And I can remember how pleased I was to be ordained Priest a year later on the Feast of St Thomas the Doubter. Because that is what I was, am and probably always will be.

“It is not God that I reject, Alyosha”, I read in Dostoyevsky’s extraordinary novel, The Bothers Karamazov, “it is just that I, most respectfully, return Him the ticket”. I can remember those words pounding through my brain at a later point in my life, when I decided, once and for all, to leave the Church and all that is in it, for good. I most respectfully return Him the ticket. The ticket to redemption, to Heaven, to eternal bliss, to Paradise. I return Him the ticket to certainty. I return Him the ticket to resurrection and the life eternal. I do it calmly. I do it peaceably and I do it respectfully.

The Church has shaped me and fashioned me in so many ways. When I was a teenager, I formed a virtually unnatural relationship with the wife of the local priest. There was nothing sexual in the relationship, but it was an extraordinary trans-generational friendship. I drank in her taste for art, for music, for theatre. I swam naked in the lake of her wisdom, her critique of sacred cows, her bluntness and honesty. I was 15 at the time. She opened up a wonderful, colourful world for me. She was a woman of faith. Her husband was dreary, plodding, unimaginative and sweet. She was incandescent.

I sang in her choir, Sunday by Sunday. She was the organist and introduced me to the wonder of that instrument. Sunday by Sunday, I heard stories about justice, about honesty and integrity, about what could be and what should be in the world. Sunday by Sunday we would sing the Psalms of David and we would hear about a new world which was just out there – within our grasp. Our fingertips were touching it. It was a hairsbreadth away.

I played the organ at weddings and funerals. I saw the cycle of life firsthand. I understood, even at that young age, that Faith means believing things which you know to be untrue.

My encounter with academic theology at university was a liberation. I could, at last, throw away all the nonsense and concentrate on the meaning, on the symbol, on the truth as opposed to the way in which that truth was so inadequately being transmitted. I was shocked to discover that the church, in general, didn’t like this at all. It was becoming clear to me that ill-educated priests and intellectually stagnant bishops battled to deal with even the basics in theology. Instead they trundled along on the easy road, where everything is explicable – where God has an answer and the Bible is clear and obvious.

They wanted their students to do theology, but they did not want them to change any of their Sunday School understandings. And the students, likewise, would fiercely resist any questioning. Because any questioning, any reasoning, any rejection of anything at all, meant a lack of that thing called “faith”.

I stayed in the church for largely pragmatic reasons. Perhaps even pragmatic political reasons. It was never comfortable. But nor was it impossible, provided I did not overstep any serious theological line. I sometimes did.

But I say all of this, because of a question my partner asked me the other day. Why, he asked, despite my rejection of religion, am I still so connected to it all? (The question was in relation to music by that amazing contemporary American composer, Morten Lauridsen, whose music is infused with the most profound sense of the numinous).

My response was inadequate – and doubtless it is still so. My being, the way I think, the things I respond to in art and in music – are shaped by my life’s journey with the church. To deny that would be impossible. To shake it off, ridiculous. I am stuck with it. That is just the way it is.

And have I lost faith? Do I regret the things I do not believe? Not at all! I am most profoundly liberated by them. I am free to take the best and to dispense with the worst. I would describe myself, I suppose, as an old fashioned Existentialist, where what matters most is what you choose to do.

And if it were at all possible, I would be a church goer – possibly more accurately, a church lurker. But it is not possible, until the church fully and completely accepts LGBTI people as full citizens of the human race. If that day were to come, in my lifetime, I would be pleased to return and celebrate my Diakonate, or my priesthood on the feasts of the Blessed Trinity and St Thomas the Doubter, once again. But until then, it is impossible. I would be completely and utterly inauthentic. I would not be able to justify myself.

But until then (and in the hope that there will be a then) – I will enjoy what there is to enjoy. I will relate to all that is good. I will value all that I have been shown and all that I have been given. Because faith is inevitably faith in someone else’s faith.

Elaine Bing: Unmaking of the Torturer

2014-04-23T19:56:00.000+02:00

Elaine Bing: Unmaking of the Torturer, Lapa, Pretoria 2014

I am not a quick reader. I never have been. I am always shocked by those who can get through a book with ease in an afternoon - and even more shocked by those who can do so and still remember the plot or the tack. But even I have to admit, that it has taken me an inordinately long time to finish this book.

And the reason is not that it is badly written - far from it, (even though there are some edits which the work would have benefitted from). No, it is the subject matter. I had the same kind of experience, in my early University days, when I encountered the Marquis de Sade for the first time. The fact is, this is all extraordinarily uncomfortable territory.

It is far easier to read a book about human suffering, for instance. In a book about human suffering, you have the advantage of being able to plunge deep into the well of human empathy. The other side of it all, perched comfortably upon the summit of Mount Compassion, one is able to survey all that is beneath one - and pronounce in a manner which is difficult to contradict. And tut tut about it. And shake one's head about it. But in this book, there is no such easy refuge. Victims are easy to sympathise with. That is the hard-wiring we are (mostly) all fitted with.

Several years ago, I had a discussion with the author while she was doing the research which forms the basis of this work. I was more than curious. I asked her how she managed to cope with it all. I wondered how she managed to disengage from it. How she remained objective and dispassionate. How do you do it? I asked her.

Her answer was both surprising and at the same time so extraordinary, that it has stuck with me ever since. She said these words: She said "I constantly think, this could be me".

Now, let me describe Elaine Bing to you, for those of you who might not know her, or ever have seen her. She is a middle aged, white woman. She grew up in an ordinary family, which lived an ordinary kind of life, in an ordinary kind of place. Her background is that of a fairly typically Afrikaner. Now, true enough, she has a rebellious streak in her. She caused some eyebrows to be raised by her choice of partner. She had the kind of liberal views, which I am sure, many would not have approved of in the day. She never accepted the expected role of a housewife and a mother - which most women of her generation and her ilk would have resigned themselves to. But to consider her in the role of a torturer would certainly be pushing the boundaries of one's imagination.

And that, succinctly, is her point. That, in all its strangeness and in all its ridiculousness, is the point her book is making. The point is a simple and deeply profound one. Any of us are capable of extraordinarily evil things. When you understand that, you will get a glimpse into the mind of the torturer.

Bing records the therapy sessions of three white South African men who became perpetrators of torture, pain, suffering and death. The times were mad. The government was rogue and the security forces were completely out of control. These men were, to all intents and purposes, allowed to do whatever they wanted to do, in the name of maintaining order and security.

All three men came from fairly typical religious and Afrikaner cultural backgrounds. Each of them was swallowed into a chaotic vortex of blood and destruction, in the period prior to democratic elections in South Africa. Each of them was fed an unwholesome diet of propaganda to enable them to believe that what they were doing was right and just. Each of them lived dual lives - that of state agent and that of family man - and the two were kept more or less separate from each other.

Each person has an individual story to tell. From the perspective of the reader, I found it very difficult indeed to tell one apart from the other - especially because I was only reading the book on weekly aeroplane trips - with consequent gaps between readings. That said, it made little difference, because the stories are indeed very similar. There are context variations. There are degrees of religious belief etcetera, but the story is essentially the same story. The three voices give one three vantage points of the same phenomenon.

I found myself both repulsed and fascinated - tremens et fascinens. I felt like I was being taken unwillingly on a journey I would far rather avoid. It is undoubtedly a rough ride and it is not for the feint-hearted. But it is a really important journey. It is all too easy to dismiss men like this as evil and despicable and vile. It is much more difficult - much, much more difficult, to see them as damaged human beings, in need of help. That insight - that imperative is the most difficult and at the same time, the most compelling feature of this book.

Bing examines her own reactions to the stories these men are telling, constantly. And, in doing so, she articulates many of the reactions of the ordinary reader. Because it is not possible, I would argue, to read this book dispassionately, whoever you are and wherever you are. The stories are too graphic, too raw, too violent to leave one feeling anything but bewildered and horrified. And if one happens to be South African, one's reaction will be different in texture, depending if one is black or one is white - perhaps also if one is male or one is female. Perhaps even one's age will mark one out for particular reaction. But whoever you are, you cannot be unmoved. There is just too much.

My disappointment with the book is that it seemed to me to end too soon. I did not find the last chapters detailed enough, or focussed enough. What one is left with is a very detailed journey into the minds of the three torturers, with some insight into the observations of the therapist on the effects the sessions had on the therapist - but little insight into the actual journey towards healing (assuming there was one!) The sessions with the perpetrators are so profoundly devastating, that it is extremely difficult for the reader to disengage from these and, in the space of a few pages to move to analysis and general observation.

I would have liked the same attention to detail in the process which led to some sense of wholeness. Instead, one is forced to pick up crumbs in spare sentences - a paragraph here, an observation there, given during the sessions themselves. I was looking for (and felt seriously deprived of), a much more detailed analysis.

But let none of what I have said here detract from the value of the work as a whole. This is an area we have generally shied away from in South Africa. For a range of reasons: because it is unpleasant; because we have no societal mechanisms for dealing with it; because we have been so desperate to build an alternative myth, of a rainbow nation. But to recognise this level of damage and this kind of unresolved malaise is vital if we are ever to walk the long walk to real freedom as a country.

A friend of mine once said that Nelson Mandela didn't save black people, in South Africa, he saved white people. Perhaps that is the sad truth and perhaps that is an indicator of the length of the road we still need to travel towards wholeness. Elaine Bing's book is a critical signpost along that road. One which we ignore to our collective peril.

Stella's Apple Crumble

2014-04-09T22:12:00.000+02:00

OK, this is one of the reasons I'm fat. My mother, Stella, used to make these pretty glorious apple crumbles almost every week. What, I ask you, with tears in my baby blue eyes, is a growing boy supposed to do? The pastry is extraordinarily good. Neither too sweet, nor too bland and it keeps its texture well for warming later.

What you need:

230g Flour
25g Cornflour
10ml Baking powder
pinch of salt
25g Caster sugar
130g Butter
1 Egg (beaten)
25ml Sunflower oil (or similar, but not olive!)
1/2 t Vanilla essence
1 x 385 ml tin of apples (about 10 apples cored, skinned and sliced)
1/2 t Cinnamon
25 ml Currants
25 ml Brown sugar

What you do:

Sift flour, cornflour, salt, baking powder and caster sugar.
Rub in butter.
Combine egg, oil, vanilla essence and add to the flour mixture.
Form into a dough with your hands and do not over-knead.
Roll out half the dough and press into a pie dish.
Cover with apple.
Sprinkle with cinnamon, currants and brown sugar
Grate remaining dough over the apple
Bake for 30 minutes at 180 degrees C

Serve hot with Vanilla ice-cream, whipped cream or custard.

Tip: if you like a mushier apple mix, then before placing them on the pie bottom, cook them and the currants sugar and cinnamon for a while on the stove top, with the sugar and a little water - until you get the desired texture.

Celery, Tomato and Jalapeno Relish

2014-03-30T09:43:00.003+02:00

This is a really excellent relish - very easy to make and goes with almost anything. (I put some onion seeds into this one - but, while adding nicely to the taste, they end up looking like mice droppings, so avoid!)

1 cup sugar

4 t salt - celery salt if you have it

½ t dry mustard

½ t ground cloves

½ t allspice

½ t cinnamon

½ 2 celery seed (optional)

3 cups cider vinegar

Large bunch of celery, chopped

12 large tomatoes, skinned and chopped

12 Jalapeno pods, deseeded and sliced (You can use any pepper, if these are not available)

Mix all the ingredients in a large, wide pot.

Bring to the boil and then reduce to a simmer for about an hour. If the mixture has too much liquid, carry on simmering until it is thick.

Spoon into sterilized jars and seal after letting them cool for a while.

Quince Jelly

2014-03-17T21:54:00.000+02:00

I have just discovered quince. They came in our Harvest of Hope bag last week, and I didn’t have a clue what to do with them. This recipe comes from my all-time favourite preserving book – “Good, old fashioned Jams, Preserves and Chutneys” by Sara Paston-Williams, National Trust Books, London, 1985.

After making this jelly, I have discovered that quince is a big – but somewhat old fashioned thing in the Cape. I have heard tales of eating it with salt, grated in salads, in tarts etc etc. But like loquats, it seems to have lost favour.

I was very pleased with the result. A beautiful deep pink jelly, with a subtle and distinctive taste. Will go well with cheese (Cheddar, Stilton or Camembert), meat – lamb, mutton, ham and poultry. Also can be used on scones and muffins or a glaze for fruit flans and cheesecake.

Because of the fact that with jellies, you only use the juice, the yield is much reduced – so what I got from the recipe below was three decent, but fairly small jars.

If well sealed and stored, it should last for up to a year.

Ingredients

1.4kg (+ -) ripe quinces

Water to cover

Thinly sliced rind of a large lemon (and juice)

White sugar

Method

Wash the quinces and rub off the down on their skins.

Don’t peel or core them, just chop them roughly. Place in a large saucepan and cover with water.

Add lemon rind and simmer gently for about 1 hour, until the fruit is soft.

Stir in the lemon juice and strain in a jelly bag overnight. (I used a muslin cloth in a colander, standing in a baking dish. It can’t stand in the juice, so find some way of elevating the colander – if you are improvising like me. It takes a hell of a long time to strain. Don’t force it, because then the jelly will go cloudy).

Measure the juice and pour into a clean saucepan.

Add warmed sugar. Allow 450g to each 600ml of juice.

Heat gently, stirring until the sugar has dissolved – then bring to the boil and boil rapidly until setting point is reached.

Pot in sterilized jars and cover (when coolish) with wax paper rounds (wax side down). Then put a sterilized lid on tightly and store.

Sally Gross - Many parts to a whole

2014-02-16T14:49:00.000+02:00

There cannot be many people - (no I am teasing, there is only one) - who would have started life as a Jewish boy called Selwyn; converted to Christianity; became a Dominican Monk; became a communist; entered the anti-apartheid struggle, joined the African National Congress and helped organise the Dakar talks between the ANC and the apartheid government; and then decided to investigate what she called her "bodiliness" only to discover that she had been incorrectly described, at birth as male. She called herself Sally and she wore a dress.

When she approached her Order about the anomaly of a fully ordained Roman Catholic Priest, who was actually a woman, the church did what it normally does in instances where it is caught between a cross and and a garotte - and simply excommunicated her. There she was, left on the streets - a world authority on the works of St Thomas Aquinas, but homeless and jobless because of her preferred gender.

After reading some of the emails Sally sent out about about her plight, I put the matter to my boss - a deeply humane and excruciatingly efficient person - and a contract was arranged for Sally to work in the Regional Land Claims Commission of the Western Cape as a researcher. She worked there, reasonably happily, for many years.

In the beginning it was strange, many people tell me - to have this large person with a deep booming, rather plummy voice, in a dress, insisting that she was MISS Sally Gross. Claimants who encountered her on the telephone, would sometimes insist, when they met her, that they had spoken to a man, not a woman. She would quickly put them right. Fellow officials, even today, many years after she had left the Commission, will recount instances of Sally emerging furious from her office, in full flight and throat, flailing her cane about and not shy to connect with anyone in her rampage.

Sally was a character. I remember her in Pietermaritzburg, (when she was still Selwyn and teaching at St Joseph's Seminary). When you met her casually in the street, she would immediately engage on some issue or the other. She would quote Latin, Hebrew, Greek to you - and assume that you understood. She knew everything about everything - as far as I could work out. And not just the basics. Not just the general drift of an argument. She would know the fine detail - the argumentative twists and turns - the very substance of anything you wanted to talk about - with references. And her graciousness was never to expose you for your mere nodding acquaintance with the matter to hand. She would simply assume that your knowledge was as vast as hers - and carry on.

The Church scarred Sally. It did so knowingly and it did so repeatedly. And the people in it who did so should please bow their sorry heads in shame at this point. Hold the false grief, please. Close your avuncular mouthes. Bury the platitudes and just shut up. You can have nothing to say. Take your loving Jesus anywhere else - but not here.

Sally didn't ever pretend to be a saint. But nor would she pretend to be anything other than who she was. She refused to allow herself to be anything other than what she was - and she was made to pay dearly for doing so, by the church with the victim saviour. She refused to fit the mould. She would not. She could not.

I once said to her, not so long ago when we were discussing our mutual disgust with the church, that I had never depended upon a belief in God to appreciate the goodness of the world - she agreed with me, in a simple and uncomplicated (and unreferenced!) way. Neither had she and neither did she.

Sally had journeyed from Jew, to Christian, to Communist, to Buddhist to secularist. And although she would share and appreciate a range of beauty in all of these, it was to the beauty of nothingness, of the nihil that she would trudge towards in the end.

She had no fear of death - we discussed it on numerous occasions. She had a fear of dying alone. And that is what happened. And the fact that it happened in the way that it did is a testament to the singular, lonely path she trod. It was never easy. It was never grand or ostentatious. It was never flashy. It was what it was. And those of us who knew her should not punish ourselves too much over it. It was usually unsupported. That was her life.

I will miss her insight and her shy sense of humour. I will miss the camaraderie we shared as exiles and outcasts, both as priests and as christians and as ANC members. I will miss that plummy voice on the end of the phone, quoting Hebrew at me. Most of all, I will miss her courage. I will miss the fact that she was not only form - she was also substance. A rare thing in this country of ours. Hamba Kahle MISS Sally Gross.

Charly's Bakery - Cairp Tahn

2014-01-17T23:26:00.000+02:00

Its not so much that Leon and our childminder, Mary, were completely felled for a day and a half, after eating a carrot cake cupcake from Charly's Bakery (and getting severe food POISONING) that made me mad as a snake - it was the behaviour of the manager when I reported it to her!

Look, I suppose I was naive. I fondly imagined that the manager of Charly's Bakery (you know that uber trendy place opposite the Fugard - with the lovely pink and white cake boxes which everything comes in - at one hell of a price?) would actually care that two of my family were POISONED by her beautifully decorated, but POISONOUS product. I thought she would care.

The encounter went something like this: Picture it (uber trendy bakery filled with uber trendy Cairp Tahnians). Me: not uber trendy and clutching an ice-cream tub with two of their POISONOUS cupcakes inside. I ask one of the serving ladies if I could please speak to the manager. She glances at my ice-cream tub like it might contain a piece of turd. She nervously puts her head around the corner and calls one of the people sitting at the tables in full view who are decorating cakes. Even in the crammed and noisy serving area, I can hear an irritated sigh. She (one of the daughters, I think) appears. "What is this about?" she asks, hostile and put out - (like I am begging for money, or asking for sex). I say, "Is there somewhere a little less public we can talk?" "No! she says, "what do you want to say?"

At this point, I seriously considered shouting "Your fucking carrot cake gave two members of my household food poisoning", but I restrained myself. I said, calmly, "You really don't want to have me discuss this with you here." Reluctantly, she moves to a slightly less peopled space. I tell her my story.

"Firstly", she said, "I don't believe it". I looked at her gobsmacked. "We sell thousands of cakes here and no-one has ever complained". She was now glaring at my ice cream tub like it contained fraudulent products from some other bakery. "Secondly", she said, "I have an order to finish". I said, the blood rising to my head, "Oh, do you? Well, would you mind awfully if I demonstrate to you how you should have handled this encounter?" I explained to her that I wasn't asking for a refund. I wasn't even asking for an apology. I had come, out of my way, bearing my ice-cream tub with two of her bloody cupcakes in it, because I thought she might be interested. Because I thought she might be ever so slightly concerned. Because I thought she cared a fig about what kind of product she was pumping out there and what was wrong with it.

She waivered. She explained to me in an irritatingly patronising voice that she was under huge pressure with her order and she hoped I didn't feel "undervalued". (Bloody hell! "Undervalued"!!!) One of her staff had died on duty the day before (I'm still trying to work out the relevance of this - unless before dying that staff member had decided to POISON the carrot cake cup cakes). "So what I suggest is", I said, "that I give you this ice cream tub with your cup cakes in it and you investigate what is wrong with them. I will leave my name and number and you can let me know your findings".

She saw her chance, grabbed the ice cream tub and ordered one of the lackeys behind the counter to get my details.

I am absolutely certain that will be the last of the matter. She simply wasn't interested.

That is what I wrote over a week ago - but then this:

Well, the Charly's Bakery saga continues: You will recall (or maybe you won't) that Leon and Mary had food poisoning from two of Charly's Bakery's carrot cake cupcakes. I took two of them back, wanting to suggest to Charly's that they get them tested. Before I could do so, I was firmly put in my place, by one of the managers who I have subsequently discovered goes by the name of "Rock" - or something like that (my hearing is deteriorating fast). Anyway, I presumed nothing would come of it - and posted something on Trip Advisor, on the advice of a friend.

Yesterday, more than a week later, I had three messages left on my cellphone. The last, complete with an irritated sigh on the word "three" as she impressed on my answering service how much she was trying to get hold of me and how irritating it was of me not to be sitting waiting for her call - (this was the indefatigable "Rock" again).

Today I called back. "Ah", said Rock. "I'm sorry it has taken us so long to get back to you, but we wanted to wait to see if anyone else was going to complain". (I interpreted this to mean, "we have only just seen your rather unflattering review of us on Trip Advisor"). "No one did complain!", she said - as though that clinched the case. But if that wasn't enough to convince me, then she added the following: "I even forced one of my staff to eat one - and nothing happened, so clearly there was nothing wrong with them".

Now, seriously, is one so unbearably stupid as to believe this?! (And even if one did, why didn't she eat the damn thing herself, instead of forcing a hapless staff member to eat a potentially poisonous cup cake? And, gosh yes! A staff member who has the kind of relationship with his or her employer which involves being forced to eat potentially poisonous cupcakes is bound to admit to being poisoned! I believe it all! I am a really gullible idiot!)

"So" said Rock, triumphantly, "seeing it is not our fault, we won't be able to refund or replace". (I pointed out again, at this point, that I had asked for neither).

Now I heard the trap shut. "However", she said. (There was an ominous pause) "I did read your review on Trip Advisor and I would like to say that I found it extraordinarily insensitive of you to make a joke about our employee who died". I tried to point out that the joke was about her - not about the dead employee. I tried to point out that it she she who had raised the dead employee as an excuse for her shoddy behaviour - but she was having none of it ... "common human decency!!!" I heard her saying. "Every one of my staff" - (the same staff whom she forces potentially poisoned cupcakes on, you remember) "read that review and they were absolutely traumatised by what you said!"

She went on and on, teaching me a lesson. Telling me that "In future" - (I assured her there was going to be no future) - "making a complaint is one thing, but making jokes about dead employees is just beyond any kind of decency".

I was now the problem. The fact that I had questioned what possible relevance a recently dead employee could have on a suspicious carrot cupcake, was the primary issue to be dealt with. Well, she said, she could see that nothing was going to satisfy me. She had apologised for the way I had been treated (actually her words were she was sorry IF I FELT I had been badly treated). And that was that!

Appalling. The entire encounter was appalling. Rock, or whatever her name is, really needs to go on some kind of basic customer relations course, instead of being so smugly self-satisfied with her television persona of a caring, edgy, interesting, lovable baker woman, with a penchant for bright colours. Just the basics - just the absolute basics, would have been completely fine with me. How about "Terribly sorry this has happened. We will investigate. Is there anything we can do to make the situation better?" But then where am I? Oh yes! It's Cairp Tahn. We are all so very pleased with ourselves here!

Out Damned Spot.

2013-07-26T13:14:00.000+02:00

I have had my share of dealing with large government tenders. It is a hell of a process and it would, in my experience, require an enormous amount of collusion to get round or to manipulate in favour of one or other particular company. That it can happen, and does happen, is undeniable. But what is clear from the recent price fixing revelations of the major construction firms involved in the bids for the 2010 soccer infrastructure tenders, is that they recognised this – and sought a more reliable and more effective way of beating the system. Price-fixing only requires the collusion of others who stand to benefit in the industry – not rogue government officials. That is why it is, generally, such a reliable mechanism for corruption.

I once, in casual discussion with a relative of mine who was high up in the business stratosphere, asked him why it was, in his opinion, that I had never been asked by anyone to manipulate a tender. In all the years I have worked in government, I have never been approached by anyone in business, to do anything. I found this strange, because frankly, in some of the large tenders I have handled, I had been expecting it. But nothing! Not a knock on a door. Not the offer of a holiday in France. No cars, no shopping vouchers, no houses, no expensive suits, no Rolex watches. Every year, I have filled in my disclosure of interest forms, disclosing the paltry fact that I own one serious debt - my house, and nothing else. No shares, no gratuities, no gifts over R300. I am director of no companies. It is a fairly depressing disclosure, to be sure.

My relative looked at me amused – (actually it was worse. He looked at me as though he had suddenly come to understand just how stupid I really am). “Michael”, he said wearily, “do you not know that in every serious business, there is a whole unit which is dedicated to profiling people like you. They will have done a detailed scan on you and come up with the fact that you would probably have too many difficulties with an offer. So they look for other more likely candidates”. I was scandalised. His quizzical look turned to unabashed pity (verging on disdain) at my naivety.

So, “corruption” is very much a word bandied about today, as if the ANC has invented it. But if we are in the least bit honest, we will admit that corruption is much bigger, much deeper, much wider, much more endemic to our society than being simply an ANC or government problem. To characterize it as such is really not to understand the nature of the problem. It is a problem which reaches back far into the country's nationalist part, where corruption was pervasive, state enabled and unchallenged. Those same nationalist politicians, in close alliance with big business and multinational companies, simply carried over their corrupt practices, virtually unchanged, into the democratic era - but now enabled, where it has succeeded, by black and government (by which I mean the whole span of government, from ANC to DA) support, either explicit or implicit.

I have certainly had personal experience of less than savoury demands made by non- ANC politicians, who happened to be my political heads at the time. On the scale of things, the demands made on me were minuscule and did not succeed, because of the tight prescripts of the Public Service Management Act. On the other hand (and let me say this clearly) in all my years of government, I have never had any similar demands made on me by ANC politicians, nor have I witnessed anything personally, amongst the senior officials I have worked with which could be termed corrupt behavior. I am merely making the point that the ANC does not own the sole rights to corruption, nor is it the only party which can be corrupt. Nor would I want to ignore blatent cases of corruption where the ANC is involved.

I agree completely with the assertion that corruption is key to the attainment of justice in our society, but I would urge that we don't get sucked into the easy and comfortable analysis that this is merely an ANC problem. Get rid of the ANC, I sometimes hear, and corruption will miraculously vanish, day will dawn, birds will sing overhead, rainbows will form in the sky. I don’t think so. The ANC has no monopoly on corruption in our society.

Clearly, yes, it is a government problem, but it is also very obviously a private sector problem as well. And even more than that, it is a problem which involves every citizen. It involves every one of us when we pay a bribe, because we are in a hurry. It involves us when we grease a deal. It involves us when we make a call to a friend or relative in a government department, who can fast-track a decision, or tweak an employment process. It is about feeding the demand. These are the ways in which corruption is fed and sustained.

Corruption is a state of the collective mind. It cannot happen in insolation. It requires two to tango. It cannot happen only somewhere else – with others – over there somewhere. If you think about it, hard enough, you will likely start to see how uncomfortably close a thing it is, to all of us. And if we do that, and if we are honest, perhaps that might be the beginning of the end.

The soul of the first people

2013-04-22T22:09:00.001+02:00

It has always struck me as singularly odd that the national Coat of Arms should be so spectacularly anachronistic. Why would we choose a language for our coat of arms, which we recognise nowhere else? (You must admit, that is a strange thing!) And the stick figures on the Coat of Arms are clearly meant to represent either the Khoi or the San or something in-between. Why would we choose them, when we continue to recognise almost nothing else about them in our national life?

So I was both pleased and interested to attend a day and a half, in what was called a national “dialogue” with the so-called “Khoisan”, in Kimberley, earlier this month. They came from all over the country. From every province. They spoke, mostly Afrikaans. Publicly though, there were some demonstrations of the spectacular shower of clicks of a fast disappearing tongue. The mood was high. There was much banging of tables and blowing of a Shofar (or Ram’s horn) at the mention of anything slightly anti-government. Or, indeed, anything which told of their dispossession and their anger at it. Their sense of deep loss. Their mutual nostalgia for values and traditions which lie only in a distant world, in another time.

Some do not recognise this government at all. I have sat in meetings in the past where they have shouted at me, consigning me and “my” government to hell and damnation. I noticed, when we stood to sing the national anthem, that there were some amongst them who refused to do likewise. They sat, sullenly and pointedly. It was not theirs. They would not be coaxed into making it theirs, either.

They came in various hues. Racism was sometimes extreme and often overt. I heard one or two of them complaining that the delegates from the North looked “more like Ngunis”. The focus of their dislike and venom was aimed at “die swartes” – the blacks – and their government. Unsurprisingly, (to me, anyway) whites, and the previous white government, seemed to get of relatively lightly. It was “die swartes” who were to blame for the majority of their woes. It is “die swartes” who are taking their jobs and robbing them of their land.

Many of them spoke of themselves as though – in the hierarchy of dispossession – they were at the very bottom. (I have no doubt that there were many who actually believe this). There was a tendency to adroitly re-shade history and to present the Khoisan as the only and the ultimately dispossessed. Some bemoaned the perceived fact that they fared a whole lot better under apartheid. There was more and better education. There were jobs. There were houses. It wasn’t paradise, but it wasn’t anything worse than their present conditions and possibly a whole lot better.

I was powerfully struck by their obvious and sad lack of unity, caused, undoubtedly by the fact that they have had relatively few opportunities to ever get together. The majority spoke in glowing terms of a world they didn’t know and of which they had almost no experience. There were young children there – maybe 15 or 16 years old – who really should have been in school. These children whipped themselves up into a fervour that was chilling, when handed a microphone. They each reflected their parents fervour, and longing, and hatred and sense of betrayal. They would storm whichever citadel they were aimed at. They would stop short of virtually nothing to achieve their goal. Such is the passion – such is the volatility of youth.

The “dialogue” ended, when a woman sitting a table in front of me (and who had introduced herself as the spiritual leader of the Khoisan) took the microphone on the stage to close in prayer. Before she did so, she called on other religious leaders to join her on the stage. Half the audience stood and went forward. There was very little space left on the enormous stage, when all of them had made their way there.

Then she started. She screamed relentlessly into the microphone. Hands elsewhere were raised. The name of Jesus was shouted. The ram’s horn blew. She wasn’t so much praying as providing marching orders for God. This is what was going to happen. He just needed to take note and implement.

The prayer carried on for probably a full 15 minutes. In the middle she built up to a thundering crescendo, with tears pouring down her face. Her voice breaking and rising at the end of each sentence. There was shouting in front of her and behind her. Hands, outstretched, reached for the ceiling. The horn blew from the back of the hall. And then it was suddenly over and everyone went on their way.

I could not help wonder why people striving to recapture something of their culture and the tradition of their forebears would choose to engage in, (and with such remarkable enthusiasm and vigour) the religion of the coloniser. And then, not only that, but in its most extreme and most obviously American form. That is a strange thing indeed. Perhaps someday, one amongst them, will explain it to me.

And secondly, I could not but fail to notice my own repugnance of that thing called “Nationalism”. It is always built on such shaky foundations. And it almost always leads down the road to disaster and ruin.

Lies, stories and truth

2013-04-01T21:35:00.000+02:00

JDF Jones, Storyteller - The Many Lives of Laurens van der Post, John Murray, London, 2001

I bought this book many years ago, on one of those Exclusive Books sales, where there are piles and piles of mouth-wateringly inexpensive books lying on tables outside the shop. And you simply can’t resist. It is hardcover, with one of those dust sleeves on it and it cost nothing! Who, I ask with tears in my baby blue eyes, can resist that?

I knew virtually nothing about the man. Naturally, I had heard his name. Naturally I had, at some point in my life, fingered a copy of something he had written – though (I admit) I never actually read anything of his, at any point. But he was part of the background tapestry to my life. Perhaps, when I was a student, having an unread Laurens van der Post on one’s bookshelf meant that one could be considered somewhat avant garde? Maybe I can remember my mother getting a sympathetic smile of ownership at the mention of his name, because of his links with the British Royal Family? Was his, perhaps, just one of those names, like Joe Slovo, that every white South African knows? Who knows? But I bought the biography and it sat on my shelf for year after year.

I started reading it, largely because I felt some kind of responsibility to do so. You can’t have large, dust-covered hardcovers on your shelf forever. There is some kind of law of the universe which decrees that immoral behaviour – or at least deeply irresponsible. So, after looking at it, as I say, for many years, I finally started reading it.

And what an extraordinary pleasure it has been! JDF Jones is a journalist and journalists often make really good writers. To be sure, I am not used to journalists being such painstaking researchers. But this one is and it simply adds to the great pleasure of reading this book. Because it is meticulously researched – not to the extent that you get lost in footnotes – but to the extent that he makes no statement that cannot be backed up by some form of evidence. And that kind of rigour is very necessary, not just in life, but in relation to this subject matter in particular. Because the subject matter is such a strange contradiction.

Laurens van der Post grew up in a tiny village of what was then the Orange Free State. His nanny for a time, was a woman of Khoi descent. His family was typical in many ways – with some eccentrics and a couple of heroes thrown in. But, from an early age, he seemed to have seen his future outside South Africa. It was the war, eventually, which would be both the making of him and the springboard to a different life.

From the very start, however, it becomes clear that Laurens van der Post is a complicated and beguiling character. But more specifically, he is a liar. He lies about virtually everything, whether he needs to or not. This psychopathic condition is given the edge by an almost pyrotechnic ability to spin a story. He was so good at it and the combination of fabrication and storytelling so bewitching, that he could write his own history, remake his own story and convince everyone of its truth and serious meaning. So the Khoi maid starts to become the central pattern of his knowledge of and relationship to “Bushmen” in their primordial human purity. His ventures in captivity in Singapore become templates for human behaviour in general. A walk down a road becomes a venture into territory hitherto unexplored by humankind. The ordinary becomes the super extraordinary. The mundane becomes charged with meaning and power. Nothing he does is ordinary. Everything is material for another grandiose and wondrous tale.

I have known a person like this and loved them very much, despite the tissue of lies that was part of everyday existence. I know the magical world they invent and somehow manage to negotiate. To be in their presence is a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows, of magic and wonder. But to live with them, you have to suspend disbelief. You cannot enquire too closely. It is imperative that you lend them your trust, knowing, as you inevitably will, that it will be broken. And still the ride continues.

Laurens was all sorts of things - some of them even approaching noble. But many and much of them were a sham, a sleight of hand, a mirage. Even though he was not very highly educated, nevertheless, he held academic court on a range of subjects, in a number of countries and in a number of extraordinarily wide contexts. Even though he had extremely limited experience of “Bushmen”, nevertheless, he set himself up as a worldwide expert – and was accepted as such. His stories about them, borrowed and reworked from books. Even though he had virtually no idea of the politics of Rhodesia at the time of settlement – nevertheless, he credits himself as virtually solely responsible for the transition.

He became an advisor and confidant of Mrs Thatcher. He was father-figure to Prince Charles, as a young man. He befriended Chief Buthelezi at the time of South Africa’s grasping for a solution to its terrible problems. He gave them all the most weird, ill-informed and perplexing advice – based largely, not on any facts, but on his own imagination.

Why was he listened to? How did a bald faced liar become so highly regarded and so highly connected? This is indeed a great mystery. Some of it had to do with his charm and wonderful personality. Some of it had to do with his created and uncontested history. Some of it had to so with flaws in the very people he managed to influence. But it happened! That is what makes the reading of this biography so extraordinary and compelling.

If you have known such a person, believe me, you will not be able to put this book down. If you have not known such a person, this book will forewarn and forearm you. Because they are usually the most seductive and wonderful people. Ruthless? Yes. Calculating? Yes, indeed. But wonderful and astonishing nonetheless.

Laurens discouraged any biography during his lifetime, saying that he had written it all himself in his books. But the real reasons become obvious with the reading of every page. His status as some kind of secular saint starts to pale as one hears of his illegitimate daughter whose mother he had seduced when she was only 14 years old. His claim to brokering the Lancaster House Agreement, does not bear scrutiny. His intimacy with CJ Jung was somewhat slight – despite his grand claims to the contrary. It was all, or if not all, then mostly, a mirage.

But the book also looks at his ability to inspire love, not only from those in close association with him, but from a wide range of people the world over. And it is this, which is perhaps, his redeeming feature.

Reflections of an ex-Christian at Easter

2013-03-29T09:03:00.000+02:00

(Pic - "The Sermon on the Mount" from Ecce Homo. Elizabeth Ohlson Wallin, 1998, Photograph, 79" x 60")

My journey with Christianity has, it needs to be said, been a fairly robust one – on both sides, I suppose. I was born and raised in a fairly ordinary Christian home. By this, I mean, that we went to a little parish Church within walking distance of our house. We cooked a turkey at Christmas and had Christmas pudding aflame with brandy. We had Easter Eggs at Easter and otherwise lived fairly ordinary, middle-of-the-road lives. My parents were standard parents, with fairly standard ideas. It was a happy home and the Church was a reasonable part of it. We got baptised as infants and confirmed on reaching puberty. If we got married, it was in the parish church. If you died, that is where you got buried from. It was just the way you did things.

My siblings were much older than me and had gone their separate ways by the time my hormones started raging. And when they did, they raged within the fairly safe confines of Church youth groups and choir practise – so generally, it was all relatively safe and sound.

I knew from an early age that I wanted to become a Priest. I used to explain to my easily bewildered students, many years down the track, that it was primarily the gorgeous clothes the priest wore that had initially attracted me to the priesthood. Of course, my motives all got dressed up in stuff the bishops wanted to hear, like calling and vocation and things like that – but actually, it was the glamour – the sheer outright drama of the thing, which did it.

I went to study theology at Rhodes University and Cambridge and Manchester. I loved it all! I loved the academic rigour, the debate, the sheer, glorious liberation of being able to think things through and to discard the nonsense and hold on to what made rational sense. I had some pretty amazing teachers – I think of the extraordinary Canon John Suggit. I think of Bishop John Robinson, who was quite happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater and still was able to maintain some kind of link with both the religion and the institution of the Church (and more amazingly, was allowed to do so!)

I worked for a while as a priest in Lesotho. In reality, it was a convenient cover for political activity. But it was also character-moulding in all sorts of ways. If I close my eyes, I can still remember the day I was made Deacon in the Cathedral of St Mary and St James, Maseru. There is a point in the service, where the Deacon is required to prostrate himself before the altar. I remember the freezing cold of the stone floor, the smell of the incense mixed with wood smoke. I remember the overwhelming drama of the thing and the sense of dignity and communion as the massive congregation welcomed me.

I was ordained Priest in Manchester Cathedral, after long negotiations with the ecclesiastical authorities, because of my refusal to swear any oath of allegiance to the Queen. I remember the growl of the organ and the triumphant procession. I remember the taste of the wine at the first Mass where I was the celebrant.

So when I call myself an ex-Christian, it is not an easy thing. I have so much of the religion etched in my brain, in my consciousness and my unconsciousness. The images, the sights the sounds, the smells – these are a significant part of me. And I entered into it, for a massive chunk of my life, fully and passionately. Doubtless, I would still be there, if it were in any way possible.

When a new Archbishop of Canterbury is enthroned – something happens inside me. It is difficult to explain – but I am still connected to it long enough to remember that I have since rejected it all. When a Pope resigns and a new one is chosen, something in my inner being awakens and reacts. When we approach Eastertide and my child asks me about the plagues in Egypt, I react with something much more than passing interest.

And it is not that I believe in any kind of objective God, really, it is not. And it is not that I regret not believing in God. It is something quite aside from that. It is a strange and eerie connection with the rich past which has made me who I am. It is impossible to pretend that it means nothing, or that it achieved nothing or that it is worth nothing. And I would not want to do that.

In the end, we, as a same-sex family with two adopted children, decided to cut ties with the Church once and for all, for reasons which have nothing to do with belief. It was simply impossible to continue in it as second-class citizens and for our children to be brought up in an environment where we were not fully and completely accepted. It became abundantly clear that it would be asking too much of an institution, riven with its own lies and contradictions, on the question of sexuality – (let alone theology!).

And so, I live my life without the Church any more. There are some things I miss intensely and many more things I don’t. I miss the drama and the ritual and the rumble of the organ. I miss the hieratic language and the powerful, living poetry which accompanies it. I don’t miss the bigotry and the anti-intellectual conservatism and the lies and the all-pervading, inescapable hypocrisy, which is allowed to grow and flourish and flower and seed, without any hinder or check.

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that for all of it, my children – in their particular circumstance are better - much better - without it. I am not sure I will be able to protect them from its worst excesses forever, but I am going to do my best to shield them, for as long as possible. So they will have to be content with Easter eggs rather than the extraordinary story of hope rising from the darkness of the tomb.

"Sweet Tooth" by Ian McEwan,

2013-02-26T21:48:00.000+02:00

Sweet Tooth. A Novel by Ian McEwan, Alfred A Knopf, Canada, 2012

It didn’t take much to get me excited about reading the latest Ian McEwan. I saw, firstly, that it was dedicated to one of my favourite people, the redoubtable Christopher Hitchens, who died in 2011. Secondly, McEwan has a way of hooking the reader into his story from the first page. It is a remarkable gift, this – he seems to do it every time, for me, at any rate.

Then, I like the way he savours his words. I like the way in which they are packaged and presented. I like the way he uses words like “orotund” – meaning pompous, or pretentious – and gets away with it, without sounding it. I like the way he can set you the scene by a simple phrase - “Among the favoured topics in letters to The Times were the miners, ‘a worker’s state’, the bipolar world of Enoch Powell and Tony Benn, flying pickets, and the Battle for Saltley” – and there you have it! You are plunged immediately back into the Britain of the 1970’s.

I love the way he lets the reader see the ways in which his characters think and look. Of the main character, (a somewhat conservative MI5 Agent called Serena Frome (rhymes with plume), who was recruited by a much older lover – “I went on working in Curzon Street while I tended the little shrine of my secret grief”. Of a minor character, who becomes hugely significant later on in the novel “It was the case that his ears protruded from strange hillocks of bone at the sides of his skull and those ears were awfully pink”.

She, the narrator, describes one passing character as someone with a “dry gingerish look and the tightly swallowed vowels of a South African, though he originally came from Surrey”. These are brilliances. They are polished and they duly shine. They have a savour and a scent that is just wonderful and ravishing. And the book is laced with them.

Then there are the casual observances – “Reality isn’t always middle class”. “We were like tennis players warming up, rooted to our baselines, sending fast but easy balls down the centre of the court to our opponent’s forehand, taking pride in our obliging accuracy”. Now that is dazzling writing!

The story is, nonetheless, an easy one. Miss Frome is tasked with signing up a talented young novelist to a foundation – run by MI5 and codenamed “Sweet Tooth”. A fairly daft idea of the secret service funding novelists, who, it is hoped, will project a particular view of Britain, inside and out. She falls for the smart young novelist whom she has tethered and has to live with the strange, but delicious deception of not revealing to him who she really is.

Her background is ordinary. She is the daughter of an Anglican Bishop. “It was”, she says, “one of the blessings of our family life, and perhaps Anglicanism in general, that we were never expected to go to church to hear or see our father officiate. It was of no interest to him whether we were there or not”.

She is mendacious, for sure. But she isn’t evil or wanton. She is ordinary – the perfect spy. The fact that she is “rather gorgeous as well” certainly counts in her favour. Her task is a relatively small one. The project is peripheral. But she derives great pleasure from it.

The book describes the tests and turns of a fairly ordinary, very happy and rather fulfilling relationship. The sex is good. The money coming from the Foundation makes life easy. The couple enjoy good dinners with good wine on a much more regular basis than would normally be the case for people of their age. They are happy and content. And then a disaster which was waiting to happen, does.

Now it is at this point that an ordinary, pleasant read gets turned into something quite extraordinary. There must be very few writers who could manage to play the reader so thoroughly and so comprehensively as does McEwan. He does it in a single, deft, flip. In a moment. In a twinkling of an eye. And he does it with such dexterity that I guarantee you will be left breathless and laughing. Such is the measure of real intelligence in a writer. It is not that you have been manipulated – it is rather than you have been played. And the final moments bring the entire chorale together. It is magnificent, without being pretentious. It is memorable without being laboured. It is a light-headed joy to read.

The Ultimate Lentil Burger

2013-01-19T17:46:00.001+02:00

You can relax! The search is officially over for the ultimate veggie burger. (Believe me, the search has been a long and a hard one - but finally, here it is!)

These patties have past the most stringent family tests in my household, with requests (I could hardly believe it!) for more!

I make a bigger batch, by trebling the quantities and then freezing them for use on other occasions.

400 g dry lentils (if you insist - I just use 1 tin rinsed)
1 large onion finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic crushed
2 T Nomu Egyptian dukkah
1 egg
10g of chopped parsley or coriander
1/2 cup of oats
1 round of feta, crumbled
Olive or Canola oil to fry

Cook the lentils in the normal way, or just open the can and rinse in a sieve or colander.

Heat some oil in a pan and fry the onion and garlic until it is soft and golden
Add the dukkah spice and fry for 2 minutes (I have also used chermoula spice, if I can't find dukkah)

Remove the onions from the heat and allow to cool completely. Mix the onion mixture with the rest of the ingredients in a bowl. Shape into four large patties and allow to stand in the fridge for about an hour.

Heat a little oil in a frying pan and fry the patties for about 3 or 4 minutes on each side.

Serve in a bun with a hummus base (if you have some in the fridge) and all the usual burger toppings, to taste.

You will not regret it, I promise!

The New Normal

2013-01-09T20:08:00.000+02:00

Stephen Mulholland has got a lot of people upset, with his recent article in the Sunday Times, titled: “Same-sex parents have a special duty to their children”. I would say, he isn’t wrong. We do have a special duty to our children – but not quite in the way Mulholland imagines.

Bringing up a child, no matter who you are, isn’t the easiest thing. The manuals are both incomprehensible and dull. Anyone around you who has ever had a child is quicker with the advice than with actual help. It is a lonely sea and you have to paddle it pretty much on your own, on those bleak nights when projectile vomit hits the ceiling and temperatures soar off the charts. Of course there are the “Little House on the Prairie” moments as well, when all is sweetness and such dazzling light as one could never hope to imagine, let alone describe.

But generally, children of whatever age are a bit of a slog. You have to hammer away at their spelling and reading and vocabulary and maths. If you don’t, like a neglected work email inbox, it starts to become impossible to recover the lost ground. You have to bandage the grazed arm, you have to calm their fears. You have to take them to school, you have to make their supper and then get them to eat it. Being gay or lesbian is neither here nor there, since one does none of these things using one’s sexual organs, or any combination of them.

Each phase has its wonders and each phase seems to have its slog. It is the dreariness of dealing with nappies and tasteless food that comes out of very expensive bottles in chemists; it is the fighting for space in bed; it is the explaining things over and over again – because, as a friend of mine once said to me long, long ago – “You have to teach them everything!”

Yes – everything. And what she forgot to tell me is that you have to un-teach them a hell of a lot of things as well. We have to explain to them that the world is sometimes a very hostile place – where children will laugh at them because of who they are, or because of who we all are as a family. And we have to explain to them that those children have learnt their cruelty and their bigotry and stupidity from their parents. And it is very likely that they learnt it all from their parents in turn.

We have to teach them how to deal with a world where some people think it is fine to be one thing and not fine to be another, whether because of race, or religion, or accent or gender. We have to teach them tolerance, even of the idiotic many who are so terribly comfortable – so unchallenged – so unruffled. We have to teach them these things, not because of who we are but because of what the majority is, and how it thinks (or doesn’t) and behaves.

So yes, I think Stephen Mulholland has a point, bumblingly made, albeit. Gay and Lesbian parents need to do a great deal to protect our children from rampant and openly confessed heterosexuals. They are a dangerous breed, by and large.

And it is the case, holding as they do, a majority of such huge proportions, that they can behave as though there is no-one else on the planet. They can define what is “normal” and what is not. They can demand obeisance to the gods of “family values” and “common sense” and “religious principles”. And they can persecute those who do not conform to a binary view of gender, sex and sexuality. And they do. I need not cite the terrible details. That is what is “normal” in the world in which we as lesbian and gay parents live with our children.

It is not his patronising attitude which worries me. (I would much rather be patronised than ignored). It is not even his short-sighted and bigoted conclusions which he reaches on the basis of no discernible argument. What worries me most about Stephen Mulholland is that he is so god-damn smug and self-righteous about himself. He speaks, perched so comfortably on the summit of Mount Self Content. His speaks a hetero-normative tongue, because he simply has never heard any other language. That is what worries me. And he is not alone. You, dear reader, are likely to be with him too. Now put yourself in my shoes, as a parent. Would you not have your work cut out for yourself?

Masala Chick Peas

2013-01-05T06:37:00.001+02:00

This really delightful dish has even got my children asking for more - this is a rare feat, believe me! The recipe is an adaptation from one I found in my favourite curry book of all time - Healthy Indian Cooking by Shehzad Husain and Manisha Kanani (Hermes House, Blackfriars, London, 2007). It is really quick and easy to make and extremely rewarding.

You need:

1 tin chick peas (drained)
50 g tamarind stock
1/2 cup boiling water
2 T olive oil
1/2 t cumin seeds
2 onions (fairly large), chopped
2 cloves garlic (crushed)
10 cms green cabbage, finely sliced
3 cms ginger (grated)
1 or 2 green chillis, depending on taste
1 t ground cumin
1 t ground coriander
1/4 t turmeric
1/2 t salt
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1/2 t garam masala
5 roti for serving (you can buy these ready made, if you don't make your own)

Break up the tamarind and soak in boiling water for about 15 minutes. Rub thr mixture through a sieve and discard the stones and fibre.

Heat the oil in a large wok or heavy based saucepan and fry the cumin seeds until they start to pop. Add onion, garlic, ginger and chilli and fry for about 5 minutes

Add cumin, coriander, turmeric and salt and cook for 3 minutes. Add tomatoes and bring to the boil. Simmer for around 5 minutes.

Drain chick peas and add to the tomato mixture, together with the garam masala and tamarind. Add the sliced cabbage and simmer for about 5 - 10 minutes. The cabbage should still have some crunch, so don't overcook.

Serve in warm rolled roti. It's fabulous!

What the President might have said ...

2012-12-29T06:53:00.000+02:00

This picture of Nelson Mandela with a/his dog surfaced some time before the remarks by President Jacob Zuma about the different cultures of animal ownership between black and white South Africans.

The holidays, this year, have been dominated by remarks made by President Zuma regarding the way in which white people, apparently habitually, treat their domestic pets better than they do the black people around them. The President’s mistake, as far as I can see, was not the observation itself – which may or may not upon investigation, prove to be true. The real problem with his remarks, in my estimation, was the way in which he gets himself entangled in notions of “culture” which are not only spurious, but extremely dangerous.

The ex-governor of the Reserve bank, Tito Mboweni, tells a story about when he was working as a young man, as a gardener in a white person’s home – before Limpopo was Limpopo.He says that round about lunch time – in the heat of the day he would hear “the Madam” calling “Titus! Titus! Come and get your lunch!” That was the signal for him to run like hell, because he had to get to the stoep to protect his lunch, before the dog got it.

His lunch would be three very thick slices of bread with jam on them, served on a chipped enamel plate. There would also be an enamel mug of extremely sweet, milky tea. “The Madam” had never thought to ask him whether he actually drank tea, and whether he liked sugar and milk, or not.

When he tells this story – and I have heard it often – there are often shrieks of laughter from black people of a certain age, who recognise the scenario, and squirming embarrassment from whites, who recognise their mothers or their grandmothers in the story as well.

It is just a fact that people will not fail to notice when domestic pets are treated way better than they are as people. They will not fail to notice this because there is a perceived natural hierarchy in the universe, with the humans at the top. The life of a human is seen to be much more valuable than the life, for instance, of a dog and therefore there is enormous resentment and indignation when the dog appears to be getting the better deal.

The corollary of this is that because humans are perceived to be on top, they can do what they like with other forms of life and treat them as they will or desire. So, we can starve the animals in our care (whether they be horses on farms, or dogs or cats); we can let them die from neglect; we can beat them if we want to; we can stone them when they come across our paths. Why? Because we are the boss of the universe.

Clearly, the truth is that both of these extreme frames are wrong. It has bugger-all to do with that hallowed thing called “culture”. Stoning a dog, because it irritates you - or because you can - isn’t some great statement of African culture – it is just despicable inhumanity. Neglecting the plight of a farmworker while pampering a kitten is exactly the same thing. These things are not cultural, they are the best examples of how ugly and revolting human beings can be.

Whether it be the revolting regular practice of slaughtering bulls with spears for fun in Spain, or whether it be the equally revolting annual practise of killing bulls with bear hands in Kwazulu-Natal; whether it be the neglect of a dog under one’s care or the neglect of human beings in one’s employ – these things are not cultural – they are just wrong. To baptise a practise as “cultural” does not make it right, it does not somehow allow the practitioner to escape from criticism or critique. It cannot be a cosy hiding place for acts of cruelty and barbarism.

So, let us be clear – the perennial acts of neglect of human beings, compared with the penchant for pampering pets is going to be noticed and it is going to be paraded as yet another example of ongoing oppression. (Of course, to presume that this is something which is entirely racially based, is just remarkably silly). But on the other hand, to presume that human beings have the right to dominate and subject (and if so desired, torture and neglect) all other forms of life, is crass and backward. Do not expect that this is going to go un-noticed either. Neither perspective is cultural. Both should be condemned.

The President’s recently expressed view is nothing unique to him. I have heard it expressed as an almost defining characteristic of white people, by many black people. (And I have also heard the opposite expressed as a characteristic of black people, by many whites.) Where these are simple prejudices, they are at least something one can attempt to deal with, either by education or by argument. But where they get entangled in the concept of “culture”, they become dangerous and extremely blunt weapons of analytical destruction. Culture is, mostly, a fearful and terrifying thing.

Define the word "real".

2012-12-25T22:15:00.000+02:00

Some time ago, I was overhearing an argument taking place between my two children. Usually, they get on. They are, indeed, polar opposites of each other. The one’s black is the other’s white. The one’s yay is the other’s nay. They agree on very little but they contrive to get on. They are not biologically related, either to each other, or to me.

But this time it was blistering – the argument. It was brought to a close when the younger one spat at the older these words - he said, “Anyway. You aren’t my real brother!” The words stung his brother. They certainly stung me. I kept silent though. I would wait my time to deal with it.

During the next week, I went searching through my photograph albums. They are substantial in some areas, and exceedingly thin in others. I was looking for, and found some pictures of my two brothers – the one 15 years older than me (and now dead), the other ten years older than me.

I waited a week and then called the family together. I placed the pictures of my brothers on the coffee table and asked the children if they recognised any of the people in them. They examined the old photographs carefully. The one showed a youngish man swinging a cricket bat, the other showed a family of four siblings. It had me as a baby, being held by my sister and with two brothers posing alongside her.

No, they didn’t recognise any of them, besides my sister. These, I said, are my real brothers. These are my blood brothers. Have you met either of them, I asked? They looked again at the pictures. No, they didn’t think they had. In fact, I said, they had met one of them very briefly, at my sister’s funeral last year. Oh, they said, yes, they had.

Had they ever heard these brothers of mine phone me about anything? No, they hadn’t. Did either of them call me on my birthday? No, they didn’t. For Christmas? New Year? For any reason at all? No, they said. They were not aware of any contact.

Did they not think that was strange, I asked? Yes, they did think so. I then went on to elaborate on the relationship. My older brother had been kind to me when I was growing up – but we had lost contact early on and that connection was never re-established. My younger brother seemed to want nothing to do with me from the start – whether it was because I was a rebel, or because he didn’t approve of my lifestyle, or my politics or my views, I did not know the reason.

But the upshot of it all was that my brothers had virtually nothing to do with me throughout my late adolescence, early adulthood and middle age. Nothing! They knew nothing of me. They had made no effort to contact me. When terrible and dramatic things had happened in my life, they were both sublimely uninvolved. I dealt with exile, return, arrest, passport removal, divorce and a suicide entirely without them. My relationships were unknown to them. My triumphs and my tragedies, my joys and my sorrows – all passed them by.

These were my “real” brothers. These were people who share significant elements of my DNA. They are my blood relatives. On the other hand, there is someone with whom I have grown up. A friend – and we have been friends since the first year of High School. We could not be more different. We have very different views on things, very different positions. We argue, when we want to, like hell.

But this man has been present in my life. Every step, every fumble, every fall and every achievement. I asked them if they recognised him? Yes, they said, they did. Does he call me ever? Often, they said. Have you met him? Many times, they said. This man is not related to me in any way. He shares nothing of my DNA. But this man is my real brother. This is the man I can rely on, not to agree with me, but to support me – no matter what. Which of them, I asked my children, would they think I should consider to be my real brother?

My children were staring at me with wide eyes and open mouths. I am sure this is not the last time we will have conversations around this matter – because I believe it is a hugely important one to have. But I think they did get the salient point, that it is not how you are related, biologically, that matters at all. Rather, it is how you behave.