Terror and Courage

For the past few days, I have had someone staying with me who goes back well into my past. We were together in the underground in Lesotho, in the early 1980s and in Pietermaritzburg in the mid to late 1980s. Needless to say, these were extremely difficult times.

In Lesotho, there was continuously the threat of raids from the South African Defence Forces. They came across the border in 1983 and again in 1985. They killed at will. They targeted specific buildings and killed anyone inside those buildings. People were killed while they slept. One had her throat slashed, as she slept in a hotel room in the middle of Maseru. As it happens, they killed someone with absolutely nothing to do with the ANC. They had been given information that a particular cadre was staying in room “x” which was (say) three rooms to the left on the right hand side of the building on the third floor – they counted from the left hand side, instead of the right hand side, and that was the person that died. In the aftermath of the raid, I drove with two friends to the houses of those who had been killed. The horror still lives with me today.

In Pietermaritzburg, during what was called the “Seven day war” we saw yet more horror, as the state backed Inkatha and the ANC fought each other. (This was after Nelson Mandela had been released). We were living in the “black” township of Imbali and lecturing in the Federal Theological Seminary, at the time.

We were just remembering some of the moments which continue to haunt us. Bodies lying in the road. Bodies piled in the mortuary. Bodies found in the forest. Remembrance services held in the Lay Centre in an attempt to help people come to terms with the tremendous loss we were suffering.

I said to my friend, that when I think back on those days, the thing I struggle with is remembering my own cowardice – the extraordinary level of fear I had. And, she reminded me, it was not the way I behaved. People were not aware of that fear and that cowardice. I was glad to hear of things I did, which were not cowardly, but still I remember it being there. And it has made me somewhat less judgemental of cowards, I think.

Journeying for Justice - Stories of an ongoing faith-based struggle

Journeying for Justice – Stories of an ongoing faith-based struggle”, compiled by the PACSA 30th anniversary Collective, Cluster Publications and Jive Media, Pietermaritzburg, 2009, 144pp
It is undoubtedly the case that the Pietermaritzburg Agency for Christian Social Awareness (PACSA) was, and perhaps still is, a highly significant organisation, in the life of Pietermaritzburg and the surrounding areas of that city. The book correctly locates the beginnings of the organisation within the context of a developing Black Consciousness ideology in the 1970s. The major premise on which it was formed was to start a white organisation, which would set about “converting” white people – or rather to win them over to a more democratic frame of political consciousness.

Now, whether it actually ever really did that, is difficult to tell. The book does not deal with the question directly, but rather suggests that although that may have been the impetus for its beginnings as an organisation, it soon found itself pulled into the whirlpool of broader political involvement in the late 1970’s and 1980’s.

At the same time, the book (and I would understand here that the book comes from the organisation itself) also seems to give the impression that the issue of white “conversion” was so vast and so impossible a task, that perhaps it would be true to say that not even PACSA itself believed that achieving this was ever a real possibility – certainly not to the extent which would have been needed to change the outcome of a whites only election.

What happened, and what is engagingly documented in the book, is a range of information dissemination - “Factsheets” - which provided white people (and indeed anyone else) with the kind of information they would not get easily elsewhere (because of draconian government restrictions at the time, on the media).

Another way in which PACSA sought to create solidarity around the cause of liberation was through “Agape” (fellowship) meals. These were Ecumenical quasi-Eucharistic events in which like-minded people could come together to affirm each other and to share bread and drink in a meal of fellowship. These, apparently died away after a while – but their significance in creating a committed community of like-minded and mutually supported individuals seems hard to overestimate.

Having lived in Pietermaritzburg during the 1980’s and early 1990’s, I knew many of the personalities featured in this book. I never involved myself very directly in the work of PACSA, because I was, in fact, working underground for the African National Congress. And this was the problem: For me to have been an active member of PACSA would have unnecessarily exposed the work I was doing elsewhere to the security police, so I could not. Pietermaritzburg was, however, an extremely small place and whites involved in the struggle at any level were few and far between – so we all knew each other fairly well – and I am sure the security police knew all of us too!

This is one of the features of the organisation which the book does not deal with adequately, in my opinion. I suppose it is understandable in what amounts to a commemorative publication. But the fact is, PACSA also had its problems. It was a small organisation. Its connection to the liberation movements was somewhat idiosyncratic at times. It was, or at least appeared to be, a church organisation, but it seemed to operate almost like a political organisation – taking orders from no-one. This made it fairly unpredictable on the one hand and on the other, sometimes much too close to some of the highly problematic positions taken by the Heads of Churches , at the time.

Let me say immediately that Peter Kerchhoff, founder and major driver of PACSA between 1978-99, was a man I admire greatly. I have said so elsewhere and I have no hesitation in saying so again now. But he did not function politically. He functioned, 99% of the time, from his heart. And that could be extremely difficult, every now and again, from a political perspective.

This aspect, the book does not deal with. It is, of course, part of the bigger issue of the relationship between the Church as a whole and the struggle for liberation. That there was a relationship, is obvious. That the Liberation movements needed the Church, is also obvious. What is not so obvious is how timid the Liberation movements were in the presence of the churches, on the one hand, and how difficult it was, from within the Liberation movements to work with them, because of their almost total lack of strategy and accountability. PACSA seems to me to have fallen, frequently, between these two stools of church accountability and political responsibility.

Bar that point – and I would say it is a fairly significant point – the book is well worth having, if one is either interested in the period, of if you lived through it. It certainly brings us now, to a point of anamnēsis - “remembering”. A remembering beyond nostalgia. A remembering which takes the lessons of the past to be used in the present, in order to change the future. PACSA certainly did that when I was living in Pietermaritzburg. I understand that it continued to do so on a range of issues, including Land and Gender, after I had left. I have no doubt it will continue into the future.

The question for me is always going to be – to what extent is an organisation an extension of the Church, sometimes at its most difficult and its most reactionary and to what extent is PACSA prophetic to both Church and society. Because I am fairly certain the latter is what the organisation wants to be.

Which makes me wonder why such an important issue was, seemingly, avoided in this book.

The Amazing "Egg Man" and the equally amazing "Chickenman" Mkhize

Gregory Da Silva, originally from Benin, is the Amazing Egg Man. I have seen him wandering around Greenmarket Square, in the centre of Cairp Tahn, for all of two years now.

On his head, he carries this extraordinary construction. It changes shape and look, according to whatever is “on the go” at the time. The FIFA 2010 World Cup, is clearly the theme of the present construction.

But it is not just the height of the thing which is extraordinary – it is the actual concept. He has stuck half egg-shells - (as you can see, many of them!) onto this headpiece and it is this which has given him the title of “Egg Man”.

It has to be said that the whole experience is very odd. He chats endlessly into a telephone – you get snippets of conversation, and he is usually talking to Mandela. Or Helen Zille, the present Premier of the Western Cape. Mandela, (or the Premier) appear to be asking his how he is. He is always well and apparently completely unconcerned by the fact that he is being watched by small crowds of incredulous people. He chats on and on. He has the air of someone busy and going about his business. It is not a cell phone that he is speaking into – it is an old fashioned telephone set, plugged into no wall socket.

The object of the whole thing, which he does quite successfully, is to get people to take a picture of him and for that they should pay him something, which he collects on a flat grass plate. He never demands money. He just holds the grass plate and manages to not only balance the contraption on his head, but to walk in an easy carefree lope on the cobbled surface of Greenmarket Square. At the same time he also manages to take the money off the grass plate and deposit it somewhere on his person for safekeeping.

He reminds me of another (now deceased) character I saw in Pietermaritzburg many years ago - Chickenman Mkhize. Apparently, Chickenman, before becoming badly epileptic, used to work in a local Dairy. When he was medically boarded, he set up outside the Tatum Art Gallery where he displayed a weird mixture of mobile wire figurines and miniature road signs. These road signs were often very funny indeed, because the letters were often oddly arranged, forcing the viewer to actively engage with the piece. He would take orders, and you would write what you wanted the sign to say on a piece of paper. What he made out of it, was almost never what you wrote.

One of his favourite signs was “GONET OPOT” – which was the first of his signs which caught my attention, and had me needing to stop the car because I was laughing so much.

Another was “BEWAREO FJOGGERS” – which also had me laughing till the tears flowed. I had him make the one pictured above “SAFESE XZONE”, because I was working in the field of HIV/AIDS at the time – and we had it made into a T-shirt. (I remember paying R10 for it in the 1990s. It is now worth considerably more!)

The media he used was almost always, recycled material. He himself had strange, unwashed looking. He had a wildness about him, which was fairly frightening. But boy! Did his work make me laugh! We often would discuss whether or not he actually knew why his work made people laugh – we never asked him.

Gregory da Silva, the Egg Man, has something of that same strangeness about him. His laughter is staged. His teeth available for the camera (in a way that Chickenman’s were not), his “conversation” peculiar. But they are both brilliant artists. They force you to notice them. They make you stop what you were doing and engage, even if it is to choose to ignore them. To me, they are completely amazing!