h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My father finished his second book, a collection of short stories called ‘Slagboom’ (difficult to translate – multiple meanings, including the kind of traffic barrier used at the entrance of ‘gated communities’ – which by the way are rampant in SA now but hardly existed at the time my dad wrote the book) and it was published in 1980. He used a print he designed himself, featuring a simplified black-and-white image of his face, for the cover design of the book. ‘Slagboom’ departed somewhat from the more autobiographical nature of ‘Vir ‘n Lewe’. There’s a very dark element throughout the book, with various stories dealing with trauma, loss, conflict, violence, insanity, and death.

It just so happened that the coming years would indeed be, in many ways, quite dark for my father and for us.

At the end of 1980, as I related in the previous posting, my father moved to a new job and a new town. He preceded us, going over to Pietersburg at the end of 1980. I was in Grade Two in 1980, and had to finish my school year. (My sister was still in Kindergarten). At the end of the school year I joined my father in Pietersburg, and my mom and Maryke came a while later.

We were staying, at first, in the place here called the ‘Jeugsentrum’ (Youth Centre) which is simply a building with cheap apartments for rent. My dad and I stayed in the rather bare apartment for a while … I can still remember some strips from the comic ‘BC’ pasted on the walls in lieu of more sophisticated decoration.

We had a house built for us while staying there. We had driven around looking at houses in town but my parents weren’t satisfied, so we bought a yard at the edge of the town – wild lands were just beyond – and had a house built. We moved in there some time in 1981.

My father was looking forward to working at the University of the North. The University served the northern part of the old Transvaal province, a region where there were few white people. The students at the University were mainly Pedi (Northern Sotho) and Venda, with some who were Zulu, Swazi or Tsonga (mainly called Shangaan back then). I would say the University of the North was quite a prestigious University, with large grounds, good facilities, and excellent lecturers. My father would be teaching Afrikaans. The language was in great demand back then in the Apartheid days. Especially there were huge numbers of law students who wanted to study Afrikaans. Afrikaans was a very powerful legal language. The entire legal system in South Africa was based on the Roman-Dutch law inherited from the Netherlands, with principles adapted to local conditions, and most of the legal writings were in Afrikaans. Like the notorious Apartheid laws!

My father, though, at the time, had quite liberal sentiments, even while not questioning very much the political policies of the country. For him it was a chance to serve and educate people. Black peoples could use a knowledge of Afrikaans to empower themselves better. Unlike the policy of obligatory teaching in Afrikaans in schools, at University, students had the freedom to choose the subject, or leave it, and a great many chose to study it.

So my father innocently grasped the opportunity to teach at that University … but was destined for major disappointment and disillusionment.

At the very beginning, things were going fairly well. A large contingent of law students studied Afrikaans under my father and a number of other lecturers. There were other Afrikaans students as well, and with the faculty of Drama, a number of plays were produced with the students as actors. It was fun; the standards were high.

But those were the years in which the country was burning … and soon there was burning at the University as well.

Not about Afrikaans! About other matters … students protested about general politics … and also … University politics! There was struggle amongst various factions in the student body, who were vying for political representation with the University authorities. Certain youth leaders had a flair for riling up their followers to commit acts of violence and destruction.

That was a thing my father – and we as well – had difficulty accepting: the wanton destruction. Students congregated in masses, and burned down or otherwise destroyed University buildings and property. It is still something I can’t accept. What possible use is it for students to damage and destroy their own campus?

Also there were incidents of violence even threatening my father and other University staff. There was a lot of throwing of rocks and other potentially harmful objects … sometimes cars were burn down … frequently the police (Apartheid-day police were a pretty fearsome bunch) were called in to keep things under control. I don’t know of lecturers ever actually being physically harmed, but a number of students did lose their lives in these protests.

Protests, even when not violent, also massively disrupted the teaching process … not just for Afrikaans, but for everything. It so often happened that for much of the year, very little teaching took place. Often, exams were disrupted. And this serves the students HOW???!!!

So over the years my father had to gnash his teeth and bear with it … but he gradually became less and less liberal in his views. At a time he could be termed a right-winger. This had an effect on me also … I was quite right-wing when I was in high school … believing basically that mostly the black people were messing things up in the country, and messing up the opportunities we (whites) were giving them.

We were naïve, though. We had too much trust in the leaders of the country, and were not interested enough in politics to research what was really going on. That’s a different story that I might tell in greater detail later …

Back to the 1980’s and my father’s work at the University. With much of the unrest, I really feared for the safety of my father. It wasn’t nice to think of him out there having to confront large hostile crowds chanting anti-white protest songs. It wasn’t nice to think of him trying to teach people against their hostile inclinations.

Another thing that was happening is that educational standards were dropping. Every year, the quantity AND quality of the work covered by the students, went down. For a teacher and lover of knowledge like my father, this was massively frustrating.

I wonder if my father had chosen to stay in Pretoria, and *not* go to Pietersburg in 1980, how our lives might have been different? My father ‘reaped’ a lot of trauma and frustration, from his years spent at the University of the North, and one wonders, in the long run, if it really was worth it. Time that cannot be recaptured …

With our home lives, though, things were fairly fine. My mother for a while worked at the Pietersburg Public Library, but was able to also get a job at the University of the North in 1985. While I cannot remember much about our friends in Pretoria, I know my dad and mom managed to make quite a number of friends in Pietersburg. Apart from friends my mom made from her work at the library, there were my father’s friends from the University … Eddie and Drienie de Nijs; Chris Terreblanche; Joris de Vleeschauer … we were fairly social in those days.

Pietersburg didn’t have a nice museum and zoo like Pretoria did. We still got out … my dad took us on trips to the local game reserve … quite an excellent little place with rhinos and many other large animals, not even to mention a wonderful diversity of birds. We also visited the Potgietersrus Game Breeding Centre, and took a few trips to the Kruger National Park.

In 1983 we went to the seaside for the first time, as a family: the huge town of Durban, currently the third largest South African city. We spent time on the beach and in the sea. The experience was marred for me by a very painful rash I incurred and I couldn’t tolerate the sea or the sand … so we spent some time away from the sea as well. My parents took us to an amusement park with rollercoasters and other rides – including a very tacky ‘house of horrors’; a ‘Miniature World’ where cities and lots of things were built on a very small scale; even a trip to a large wholesale store was fun for me, where my parents bought me some nice LEGO toys. Even time spent inside the hotel was interesting to me … I remember we watched some very crappy movies like ‘Xanadu’ and horror flicks about people-eating ants and the ‘Mothman’ on the hotel’s own TV channel.

One thing I remember especially about that holiday, is that we spent a lot of time reading paperback books under the umbrellas on the beach. If I am not badly mistaken, it is there that my father started reading the science fiction books by the authors Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg. I hope I’m not kidding myself when I say my taste for science fiction also started around then. In subsequent years we would read all the books of Isaac Asimov’s that we could get our hands on. There was also an Afrikaans science fiction book, I think translated from Dutch actually, that I read back then. My father also bought original Afrikaans science fiction, like the novels ‘Die Groen Planeet’ (The Green Planet), ‘Swart Ster oor die Karoo’ (Black Star over the Karoo) and ‘Die Hemelblom’ (The Flower of Heaven) by the excellent Afrikaans author Jan Rabie. I hope tobe able to tell you, some time in the future, about where this eventually led …

OK let’s leave the story hear for now. Part Four to come soon …

Fascinating. I can see this...keep 'em coming.

What you say about the protests is interesting - and bang on. Theory is one thing...why in the world would students burn down their university buildings when that only made it difficult to get the education they needed to make real changes? This can be hard to understand. (I suspect bad revolutionary thinking.)

Also, why attack the very people who are trying to help you? But I remember that time, and the kind of 'us-versus-them' thinking that could so easily get started. I am a language junkie. I remember being told not to sign up for Swahili in the early 70s, so I didn't, not wanting to go where I wasn't welcome...that sort of thinking might be hard to understand today.

I hope it will soon be impossible to understand.

Hi again Dmitri! This thing is continuing to this day, and is now giving the government ... the new, fully-democratically-elected government ... a big headache. Now, the 'cause' is different, but the same destructive methods are used. In Wednesday's paper, it is reported how residents of the township of Siyathemba rioted against poor municipal services, the shortage of employment, and also against 'aliens' resident in their midst. No, not ET ... people from places like Ethiopia, India and Pakistan. They plundered and damaged the shops of these 'foreigners'. They also damaged and set on fire municipal buildings. They burnt down the only library in town.

Now this is, of course, an instance of 'book burning'! And ... books bought specially for the community, and made available for them ... with a lot of love and care by the librarians, if they are at all like the librarians I've known. There is something sacrilegious to it in my view!

The thing is, in the apartheid days, the use of destruction as a way towards political ends was justified ... and now this is still being justified. It's like a genie escaped from a bottle that cannot be put back again. The government now has this big headache, with people protesting against *them* the way they once protested against the Apartheid state.

The problem is the government has made promises to the people it can't keep. The people aren't blind ... they can see the government is not delivering. And that leads to massive levels of frustration.

One thing I must mention, is that the majority of protests are peaceful. There are some people who want to be destructive, though ... and sometimes they get their way. It's really a case of a minority of protestors making the real mess.

I studied at the University of the North for a couple of years. The classes went on smoothly but on one day, there was a crowd gathered and singing protest songs. But the regular German students were all in class, paying little attention to the protestors. I asked one of my fellow students, a Miss Ramokgopa, what was going on, and she only said, it's a load of nonsense. Present day 'politicking' at the University is basically nothing more than a clash of personalities: these two or three are contending for a spot on the Student's Board, and slinging around lies and insults towards each other, and their various supporters protesting and clashing against each other as well. Or politicking against the rector, instigated by someone who has a grudge against him. It's quite incredible the lies they make up about each other, and the vehemence with which they vie against each other.

Today I can see lots of reasons for 'protesting' ... against governments, against big business for all the various unethical aspects going with 'big business' ... but truly, I think the way to go is, non-violent, and relying on intelligent argument rather than destruction or intimidation tactics.

One thing I am still wondering about is whether things on Earth might not deteriorate so far that a violent global revolution might not become the only option left to get us out of the mess ... but right now, we still have fairly free speech, and many non-violent alternatives ...

Willem, it seems that everywhere in the world there will be a minority bent on destruction anywhere and anyway they can, bringing peaceful intelligent protest in to disrepute. An intelligent argument with such trouble makers is near impossible. Unfortunately such people whip up a hysteria which spreads. It happens here too.

Back to read more later.

Websailor

I'm sorry to hear it's going that way, Willem. I know exactly what you mean.

The problem, I think, is that when there's a legitimate reason for protest, people overlook the violence, in a sense. Then when you have a chance to change things peacefully, the violence-mongers are frustrated and keep on going. That's counterproductive, to say the least.

I'm currently working on the part of the US history course that deals with the 'Revolution' - ie, the War of Independence. Only about 40% of the population was for this.

What led up to it was a lot of increasingly violent protest against government measures. There was a terrorist group called the Sons of Liberty. They destroyed government property, injured or killed government agents, spread propaganda, etc.

After the war, two things happened which changed the setup: the leading Loyalists were terrified into leaving the country - and the new regime used the army to put down further protest (the Whiskey Rebellion and the Hot-Water Rebellion, etc).

In other words, those revolutionaries knew how to put a stop-bath on revolution, something other groups don't seem to know how to do.

Hiya Websailor and Dmitri! Thanks for the interesting observations. The whole way in which 'Revolution' has happened in different countries, can teach one a lot about people, about government, and about effecting social change.

The thing is, unlike America where I gather the Revolution was a very well-planned and well-managed process, over here, the 'revolution' was a very heterogenous and rather chaotic affair. There were several different liberation or anti-apartheid movements ... the ANC, AZAPO (Azanian People's Organisation), the PAC (Pan-Africanist Congress), the SACP (South African Communist Party), COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions), the UDF (United Democratic Front) and smaller local groups. Please note that not all of the above groups justified violence as a legitimate form of struggle.

There was not much organisation of the whole liberation effort. Different kinds of protests were organised by different groups, and sometimes, by instigators not specifically connected with any organisation. There were clashes between liberation movements as well, most prominently in the case of the violence between the ANC and the INKATHA Freedom Party.

Liberation also did not come about as the result of a successful and unified 'war effort' ... to a significant extent, the change came as a result of the white government (and some but not all of their supporters) willingly giving up the power and negotiating for full democracy because of realising that Apartheid was an untenable and indefensible system. The pressure felt was not just due to the violent protests and resistance, there was also the moral pressure, the calls on the conscience of the white people of the country to change. Even though as a youth I was for a time, sort of a 'right winger', I was listening to and hearing the arguments for abandoning Apartheid since it was a repressive system, and one could not perpetually thwart the aspirations of the majority of the people of the country. Fair is fair - all 'peoples' want freedom, and all deserve freedom equally.

That is why I still believe in the power of the voice of reason. People *can* be convinced that what they're doing is wrong.

But like I and some others believe that non-violent means were dominant in effecting change in South Africa … there are also people who say and believe that actually, the violent struggle was what made the whites give in, ultimately.

The ANC, during the Struggle period, was not a very big and powerful organisation that could control all its 'followers'. And like I said, the ANC was just one of the liberation organisations. Now, as a political party, it has swallowed or democratically vanquished most of its erstwhile allies in the liberation struggle. It has had to totally change its style from a liberation movement, to a governing political party. In the process some principles were abandoned … primarily, when it comes to the economy. The ANC has for all intents and purposes embraced capitalism, mostly ignoring ongoing calls for communist or socialist policies from its alliance partners the SACP and COSATU.

With the ‘transformation’ of political and social spheres, the ANC has dismantled much of the ‘system’ that has been working under Apartheid, and the problem is that when the system stop working, there is chaos, until a new and *working* system can be brought into being. The system of law and order is just one that has almost completely collapsed – though the government is hard at work trying to build it up again. But in the wake of this, crime has flourished and South Africa now has one of the highest crime rates in the world. (The army has also been 'transformed' and is a mere shadow of the fearsome organisation it was under Apartheid.)

There has also been much deterioration in the life situations of people, with ongoing lack of housing, clean water, electricity … and ongoing shortage of paying jobs … and just when people were *expecting* a concrete betterment in their lives.

So: the ANC was never in total control, still isn’t in control, and not in a position to quickly put down large-scale protests or riots; there are lots and lots of dissatisfied people; there is still the memory and the belief of violent struggle having effected positive change.

Thus it’s hardly surprising that violent protest is still continuing in South Africa! I’m reading a Wikipedia article where my country is called the ‘most protest-rich country in the world’. But let me just say one thing … most of the protest is peaceful, and the level of political violence is NOT nearly as high as it was during the Apartheid days. But still, the violence and resistance that is there, is quite a headache for the government. And it can get much worse, if social conditions continue to deteriorate.

Yes, the problem of revolutions is that they often dismantle working systems. It's a struggle to get them working again.

In the US, alternate governments were put in place the moment the Revolution started. So colonial governments went on as usual. That helped. Committees of Correspondence, Committees of Safety, etc. They kept what they'd learned.

The first constitution the new country wrote - and remember, nobody had ever done this before - was woefully inadequate. There were tax rebellions, etc. So they got together to replace the Articles of Confederation with something that worked. And came up with the Constitution, which was a remarkable piece of work.

It only took them about a year to debate the thing and get it into shape. Amazing. It was flawed - deeply, in places - but it was a good working start.

I know everybody hopes the South African government can learn the lessons and make things work. You all are putting the work in, you deserve a bright future.