Alert! Last Saturday, author and activist Fatima Meer, who had died the day before, was formally remembered at two ceremonies in her hometown of Durban. The second, which I attended, was the relatively low-key mosque funeral and burial in the city centre; the first was a rather more elevated affair, a memorial service cum state funeral at the Durban ICC.
At the time, I was writing a piece on the SA Lit and publishing scene; here are a few notes related to the ICC event from the cutting room floor:
South Africans have just marked twenty years since Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, and the recombinant strands of history, literature and politics spun out of that moment produced a bizarre episode for the annals of each. It centred on Nelson Mandela’s former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who, earlier in the month, bore the brunt of an unlikely attack from the wife of Nobel laureate VS Naipaul. Lady Naipaul published the contents of a conversation she and VS supposedly had with Madikizela-Mandela, during a visit to South Africa in mid-2009, which made the latter out as viciously disparaging of her former husband. The scandal raged in the South African media, forcing a statement from Madikizela-Mandela, who denied ever having granted Naipaul an interview.
Then, on Friday, a source of redemption presented itself in the form of a loss to the fraternities of South African writers and political activists alike. Fatima Meer, Nelson Mandela’s first official biographer, passed away in Durban. Meer’s Higher than Hope – published in 1988, when Mandela was still in prison – preceeded the monumental Long Walk to Freedom by some six years, and was based on material famously smuggled out of Robben Island. Muslim rites dictated that her body be laid to rest on Saturday – and Madikizela-Mandela was in Durban in a flash for the state funeral. Her tearful keynote, one could not help but speculate, was meant as much to restore her place in the narrative of Nelson Mandela’s life, cancelling out the Naipaul disruption, as it was to commemmorate Meer’s.
In retrospect, it sounds horribly cynical – but I was glad to learn, via an unprompted email from a friend, that I was not the only one under the impression that Madikizela-Mandela’s move – and by extension the ANC’s – smacked of rank opportunism. The Nation’s Dave Zirin, who attended the ICC event with author Ashwin Desai (The Race to Transform: Sport in post-apartheid South Africa), relayed some interesting comments on his blog:
Given her stature, it’s not surprising that the African National Congress rushed to claim her legacy, giving Fatima Meer a public, state funeral, which I attended. Winnie Mandela herself was present and spoke about their decades of friendship. (Dennis Brutus, suffice it to say, did not receive a state funeral. As his friend Patrick Bond said to me, “If Dennis had a state funeral he would have gotten up and left.”) The ANC’s embrace of Fatima in death raised more than a few eyebrows at the service. Many remarked how bizarre it was seeing the very politicians she lambasted, singing her praises and the very police she confronted, carrying her casket. Fatima’s ally, Ashwin Desai, said archly, “I love Monty Python movies and therefore I had no problem with the service. Because that’s what it was: Monty Python.” Another friend whispered to me, “The last time Fatima was near so many police, there was tear gas.”
Zirin’s complete post is certainly worth the click-through, as it doubles as an obituary for both Meer and her activist colleague Dennis Brutus (RIP 2009).
Very nice to know that one is not alone in one’s political blasphemy!
Taking her inspiration from Tom Chatfield’s Fun Inc. and a 10-hour experience with Myst 15 years ago, Ann Donald strays slightly from the world of books to the world of games in this week’s column.
About 15 years ago I bought my first Apple Mac, which came with the computer game Myst installed on the hard drive
In what turned out to be my first and only experience of computer games so far, I sat rapt for 10 hours straight, lost in the alternative game-world. When finally I looked up blinking, I realised I had completely ignored my family for an entire day. I was shocked at myself, and swore I’d never play the game again. Somehow, it never occurred to me that losing myself in a computer game for hours on end was not much different from doing so in a book. But then I am of the generation that understands computer games are Bad and books are Good.
Alert! Continuing with its mission to boost Kenya Lit, the Kwani? collective will launch four new titles in Nairobi on 24 March:
To be a Man – A Kwani? Poetry Competition Anthology
Tales of Kasaya: Let us now praise a famous woman By Eva Kasaya with Jackie Lebo
Cock Thief By Parselelo Kantai
Stone Hills of Maragoli By Stanley Gazemba
From Kwani:
A launch of these titles will be held at The Kenya National Museum on Wednesday 24th March 2010 at 7pm. The launch is part of a double header event between Kwani Trust and the Caine Prize For African Writing Workshop 2010. The evening will also include readings by Kenyan and African writers from the Caine Prize workshop.
Here are the blurbs for the books:
‘Tale of Kasaya’ by Eva Kasaya with Jackie Lebo.
In 1991 a girl of 13 years by the name of Eva Kasaya dropped out of school in rural Western Kenya and came to Nairobi to work as a domestic servant. For several years she was consistently harassed by subsequent employers. When she turned 19 she managed to go back to school and thereafter train as a dressmaker. She also started writing about her life during this period, having never given up on becoming a published writer. Tale Of Kasay” Let Us Now Praise A Famous Woman traces Eva’s journey from girlhood to the present, her memoirs reflecting the plight of hundreds of domestic servants across Kenya. “Once I told her my child story she was really inspired to that extend and asked if I could write it down for her. So one night after I did my dishes for the evening, I took out a small book I had taken from the child in the house, and I started writing. And I wrote for 3 days, it had some very strong meaning for me. I did in a small notebook; to my amazement she told me it could be a big book if I got it published.”
Alert! KwaZulu Natal’s Witness newspaper appears to be the first of SA’s free-to-web media outlets to scurry behind a pay wall. Literary punters visiting the Witness books section and clicking an article – say, an interview with Thando Mgqolozana – are, as of today, if they’re not subscribers to the newspaper, confronted with this:
(Either that, or they’re confronted with an ad for the Witness Maritzburg Matchmaker, which, for those of a certain bent, could provide hour upon hour of literary pleasure.)
Previously, nearly all content on the Witness was free-to-read online. BOOK SA couldn’t find a notice warning subscribers of any imminent change, but perhaps the newspaper has been secretly sold to Rupert Murdoch, and is being used as a test case for the “gain market share as you retreat into a provincial enclave” strategy.
It would appear, then, to be goodbye, but hopefully not adieu – given the nature of the web, which is a helluva shapeshifter – to our reviewing and profiling friends Margaret von Klemperer, Anthony Stidolph, Carol Brammage, Moira Lovell, Nalini Naidoo, Christopher Merrett, Stephen Coan, Sharon Dell, Hazel Barnes, Janet van Eeden and the other members of the Witness‘ lit team. We’ll miss ya!
The jury is out on the intentions of the mysterious “Free the Web” Campaign that has nuzzled its way onto networking sites and advertising spaces across the net – including taking up prime Google ad space on BOOK SA (see images above).
What exactly does it mean to “Free the Web”? One ADSL discussionista has proposed that this could simply be another promise of cheap uncapped internet. But, with 12,568 fans to their Facebook group, we think there’s more to it than that. This could be good – if Free the Web were getting Telkom to slash its 4mb line rates, for instance. Or it could be cynical and awful – if it amounted to just another guerilla marketing campaign along the lines of the National Skirt Extension Project or the CanYouTwist promotion.
Do fans of Free the Web really know what they are backing or are they simply clicking and following blindly? There are zero – zero – organisational details available online, just a lot of happy-clappy Orwellifying like this:
The purpose of this page is to highlight the effect of high bandwidth costs on ordinary South African small and medium business owners as well as the man on the street.
Something big is on the horizon… the time for change has come.
It’s time to Free the Web! Be part of this movement for change!
But the fog of Free the Web’s surreptitiousness is slowly lifting: a “whois” search on thewrightidea.co.za, which redirects to the Free the Web Facebook page, reveals its registrant to be Grant Wright of Quirk e-Marketing. Finally, some real finger-pointing can commence! Grant, alternatively Quirk, what the hell is going on here?
Grant’s answer would likely be: “Wait till tomorrow” – that’s Thursday, 18 March, when more on the campaign is set to be “revealed”. BOOK SA’s money is on: Free the Web is either driven by iBurst (in which case: fail) or an iBurst-like service that’s slightly cheaper than iBurst (in which case: fail again, unless the speed is 4mb and the bandwidth is essentially uncapped). BOOK SA’s hopes are pinned on: Free the Web will blow us out of the water with a truly innovative offering that will actually bring about the unshackling of web users in SA. Ooh, can’t wait. Now, about Telkom’s line rates…
The blurb, notes and links related to a new book published for the upcoming FIFA World Cup:
If we can learn anything from our unique, energetic Mzansi style, which was created in such unsuitable surroundings of the township streets, then we should have hope. – Jennifer Malec, Kick-Off Magazine
Soccer is more than a game for entertainment or a sport for prestige in South Africa. And there is more to a soccer field than a flat, open area with neatly trimmed grass.
In South Africa, a soccer field is a place of camaraderie and fun, a community hub, an alternative to crime, a sporting battlefield. It may be a road, a parking lot, a beach or purposely built pitch. And it might be used by children, club teams, carefree strangers passing by, or cattle.
The Real Soccer Fields of South Africa explores all of these fields through a collection of photographs by Christiaan Vorster, young South African photographers, the DreamFields Project and Kick-Off Magazine, as well as a few international photographers.
Beyond the fields themselves, specially written articles and features focus on the meaning of these spaces, highlighting the obstacles South African soccer players face, and celebrating their passion and determination.
10% of net sales will be donated to the DreamFields Project.
Contributors:
Christiaan Vorster, The DreamFields Project, Kick-Off Magazine, The Extra-Mural Education Project, Grant Veitch, The Richard Allen Foundation, The Stellenbosch Academy of Design and Photography, St Andrew’s School for Girls, Michaelhouse, Westville Boys’ High School
The short drop is never easy, Erik. You need to give a lot of thought to vectors, weights and coefficients which never were my strongest suit. But you, my friend, took full measure of the terminal rationale before you hit the lab and put your grim equation to the test. You scored full marks All went as you predicted Beam + rope + knot + body = X But where does gravity fit in? And how? And so you left us dangling shrugging, cursing that we cannot comprehend such simple mathematics.
- Richard de Nooy
*
Doppelganger
In the middle of it all on a sprung floor a fellow mingler laughed, saying I was such a card I really should meet my other half and marvel.
Miraculously, according to the stranger, my twin was there that night: in wit and waggish turn of verb a perfect match. It was uncanny to find two so alike at the same party.
We must be introduced – the wind must whip the flame! the wave must strike the shore!
“There — at the other end of the room – can you see which man I mean?”
I didn’t need to look. I knew it would be you, my own, and that later, when all our charm was blown we’d fight in the car on the way home.
- Finuala Dowling
*
A Thing of Beauty
Cicadas sandpaper-shaping shadows, sawing away the dry hot holidays, welding that day and dozens like it into one deep, burning sky. This, before words, is our blue and gold childhood melded in memory’s magnificent workshop, enameled in a never-ending half-existent noon.
Folio Books’ poetry series launched with a bang last month and continues with wicked women’s words from BOOK SA regulars, Helen Moffett and Liesl Jobson. You’re invited to come and share a glass of wine while listening to poems that will delight, shock, comfort and amuse.
Helen Moffett is a freelance writer, editor, academic and poet, who’s lectured as far afield as Trinidad and Alaska. Her academic writings include a great deal of gloomy but necessary work on sexual violence in the post-apartheid context. She writes about cricket because it reminds her why she likes men (and because she loves the game with a passion). She has also published a university textbook on poetry, an anthology of South African landscape writing and several short stories. Her debut collection of poems, Strange Fruit</a , was recently published by Modjaji Books.
Liesl Jobson is a musician, photographer and writer, and the author of 100 Papers, a collection of prose poems and flash fiction (Botsotso, 2008) and an anthology of poetry, View from an Escalator (Botsotso, 2008). She is the winner of the POWA women’s writing poetry competition and the Ernst van Heerden Creative Writing Award.
As widely reported, author and activist Fatima Meer died in Durban on Friday, and received a state funeral on Saturday, where Winnie Madikizela-Mandela delivered the main speech. Here are the main stories related to Meer’s death published so far:
Obituary: Mail & Guardian
Fatima Meer, the African National Congress stalwart, died in a Durban hospital on Friday afternoon at 81. She had been admitted to hospital a few weeks ago.
The former South African Broadcasting Corporation board member and sociologist, despite crippling banning orders, built up a reputation as a prolific academic and a powerful advocate of gender equality.
Meer survived an apparent assassination attempt by apartheid hitmen in 1977, and attacks in later years, which she blamed on the Black Consciousness Movement and the Inkatha Freedom Party.
He said Meer, whom Madiba affectionately called Fatimaben (meaning sister Fatima), published Higher than Hope, an early biography of Mandela while he was still in prison.
“In the latter years of his imprisonment, she sent him drafts of her manuscript for correction. After interest was expressed in a film version of the book, she suggested to Mr Mandela that he be played by Sydney Poitier, to which he agreed, in a letter to her in 1989, adding, however, that he was not sure that the American actor would accept the offer.”
Dangor said Meer visited Mandela at his home in Johannesburg in October last year.
A tearful Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was among the hundreds of mourners who paid their last respects to struggle activist Fatima Meer at her state funeral at the Durban Exhibition Centre yesterday.
Meer died on Friday at St Augustine’s Hospital after suffering a stroke a few weeks ago at 81.
Madikizela-Mandela said that Meer “was never truly recognised for the work that she had done during her life”.
“I will work for her home to be declared a national heritage site. May her soul rest in peace.”
Thursday night saw the launch of Idasa’s 2010 Democracy Index, Testing Democracy alongside the opening of Lobby Books, a joint indie bookshop venture that is less about competition, as we previously reported, than it is about collaboration. Lobby Books is a partnership between Mervyn Sloman, of The Book Lounge, and Henrietta Dax, of Clarke’s Books.
After the event was opened by Idasa executive director Paul Graham, UCT associate professor of law Richard Calland spoke about the importance of a bookstore at Idasa, and the creative use of the space overseen by Architect Justin Cooke.
Continuing along the theme of development, guest speaker Njabulo Ndebele outlined the context in which the Democracy Index series, established in a distinctly different political era, now finds itself. He spoke particularly of the need for a reshuffling of our nation’s priorities; a shift to putting the people of South Africa ahead of political parties.
Judith February and Neeta Misra-Dextra, the book’s editors, highlighted the findings that Ndebele described as an “attempt at a qualitative assessment of democracy and equality” with a focus on the inter-relatedness of democracy and development. Testing Democracy is the third iteration of the Idasa’s Democracy Index. May the works continue to help actuate our democratic society, still-latent for many.
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Book details
Idasa’s Democracy Index 2010: Testing Democracy: Which way is South Africa going? edited by Judith February and Neeta Misra-Dexter EAN: 9781920409159 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Alert! Last Saturday, author and activist Fatima Meer, who had died the day before, was formally remembered at two ceremonies in her hometown of Durban. The second, which I attended, was the relatively low-key mosque funeral and burial in the city centre; the first was a rather more elevated affair, a memorial service cum state funeral at the Durban ICC.
The jury is out on the intentions of the mysterious “
