If you can forge this, I will eat my bakkie!

Another proudly South African moment. This morning we were in the bowels of the new government security printing facility in Pretoria: a light and white high-tech space, where there are surprisingly few lab-coated workers and, amongst those few, a sense of calm, efficient purpose punctuated only by the soft crackle of lasers carving 3-D photographs into new passports.

Our guide was holding up the new South African passport: “If you can forge this, I will eat my bakkie!”

The Journey, a poem by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,
though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt the old tug at your ankles.

I confess that I, too, am a racist

Racism is all the rage in South Africa right now: Gwede Mantashe and the ANC are using racism for their election-year defence of the indefensible; the opposition are using racism to attempt to topple Jimmy Manyi; Trevor Manuel is using racism, though I’m not sure of his game there?

And amongst this noise, I have been following, and have been deeply moved by, the work of human transformation that Jonathan Jansen has initiated at the University of the Orange Free State (UOFS).

The Outsiders

The white Mercedes roared and rattled along the gravel road, sending a cloud of white dust billowing out to settle in a white shroud over the roadside vegetation. Whites.

The children, laughing with bright smiles creasing dark faces, were clambering like monkeys over the gate and were perching on the fencepoles. Blacks.

What would I kill for?

I was a Russian soldier. Rewind to the Second World War. We were advancing through a winter forest: tall black trees spiking up through a fresh white snowfall. I could hear our tanks rumbling and clanking behind me, and the shouts of the men of my unit by my side. Then the shooting started. I was hit high up on my torso between the chest and shoulder and I fell back into the white snow. The noisy battle moved on past me. My friend knelt down beside me, and for a moment, without a word being spoken, I felt the deep love between us: the love of two kindred souls journeying together for a time. Then I started to leave: floating upwards into the misty white, away above the tips of the reaching trees.

Catharsis

The clouds hung low and the moon was a dull thud on the taut drum of the sky. The long grass bent before my groping flashlight – now dispersing into distant darkness, now coming up against a closer anthill or bush. The beam swung in a slow arc, searching.

A glint of something trapped by the light. The swinging torch stopped, retraced its path and aimed at the unidentified creature. Eyes focused – but it was just the eye of a dikkop, which promptly flap-scurried away. Silence.

I was dressed warmly, with heavy boots, an army-issue jacket and a knitted balaclava. I was armed with the flashlight, a .22 rifle and a knobkerrie. I was springhare-hunting.

I Shot a Dove

“It’s my birthday today! I love birthdays. I wonder what I’m going to get!” I stick one warm unsuspecting toe out from under my duvet. The icy air grabs at it and I draw it back, quickly. “I should be allowed to lie in, after all it’s my….Wait!”

I chuckle to myself. When you’re fourteen, mothers can’t fool you anymore. For the last ten years my mother has crept out at dawn on my birthday to pick flowers and lay them around my place at the breakfast table. Today she has left it a little late.

A Soweto Story: The Ache of Empathy

I have struggled throughout my life to find the line between intervening and laissez faire. Like two weeks ago when for the umpteenth time our nanny didn’t arrive for work, this time because her betrothed had passed away. Was it time to fire her, or bail her out again? (Note to self: try not to die in  Soweto when you are a Mozambican who has been working in the country for 16 years, you have lost your passport and all form of ID, and your building contractor employer has just gone bust, leaving you, in turn, broke.)

The Bubbles of Knowing

They were here again this week. (I now call them the Bubbles of Knowing). This time they appeared on Wednesday evening as I auditioned for a TV commercial.

I completely nailed the audition. But before you send congratulations, or ask for the YouTube link, let me quickly make something quite clear: I don’t know yet if I’ve got the gig or not; the client still needs to approve me. But I knew for myself I’d nailed it already on that last top note. Even before they said “Cut”, like they do in real movies. Even before the crew doing the recording said “Wow, that gave me shivers!”

The Road Not Taken

“I haven’t seen you in what, 20, years? What are you up to? I thought you would be a movie star by now.”

I was waiting at the airport international arrivals this morning to meet a visiting foreigner. A school friend happened to walk through the sliding doors – off the plane from Tanzania where he is farming avocados and coffee. After more than 20 years we still recognised each other; perhaps there is a certain part of memory reserved for when you’re in the same rugby team and he is playing flank to your prop!