Press man with heart: RIP Martin Dannheisser

MARTIN Dannheisser. Photograph courtesy http://www.pdmedia.org.za

WITH A LARGER-THAN-LIFE presence, and a passion for the arts and for basic integrity, Martin Dannheisser was a champion of press freedom in politically precarious times. His was the presence that turned any dinner party into a memorable event, and he was the man who could ignite a laugh in the bleakest of contexts. A beloved friend, deeply respected professional and treasured family man, Dannheisser died suddenly in his sleep on 28 August 2018. He was 78.

Known and loved in bridge-playing circles and speech-making ones, Dannheisser adored the medium of the newspaper. Indeed, in his Johannesburg home, there was a display of slugs from the pre-computer days of hot metal printing, when printers set type by hand. These beautiful wooden and sometimes cast letters mirrored from the ones you can read, were inked and printed in relief: Wonderful objects and conveyors of meaning to the world.

Martin and his brother Peter ran a community newspaper during apartheid called the Springs Advertiser, and a printing works named New Era Press, which became famous among anti-apartheid activists in the 1970s and 80s for refusing to buckle when the racist regime tried to stifle all papers it didn’t like.

In the midst of the states of emergency and the killings of the 1980s, most newspapers and journalists had succumbed to the threats of the apartheid government. Some daring ones, however, continued producing investigative stories exposing the sordid nature of the regime’s actions. But where would they print them? And how would they distribute them?

“The Springs Advertiser!” those in the know would surprisingly say. Running what was ostensibly an out-of-the-way commercial rag, Dannheisser was one of the last remaining pillars of a free press during that tortured era of the South African media when violence was everywhere in the country and newspapers had to be printed under grim, frightening circumstances.

He was the classic veteran newspaper man in the ‘old’ style: tall, rough-cut, with a hardcore work ethic which would make him stay up long hours to get a paper print-ready. He believed doggedly in an independent press; his company provided services to a wide spectrum of papers, including high-profile anti-apartheid publications such as the Weekly Mail, right-wing Afrikaner publications, and cultural publications such as one for the then Inkatha cultural liberation movement which aimed at a resurgent Zulu nationalism.

He had a mischievous, dry sense of humour with which he would catch people by surprise. He once took the arts editor of a local paper aside and told her with a straight face that he intended to scrap the entire arts section of the paper and replace it with advertising. She was appalled. And outraged. And then she saw the sparkle in his eye. Dannheisser was a great lover – and supporter of the arts in South Africa, across the board. He and his wife had season tickets at many of Johannesburg’s theatres and concert halls and were brave and impassioned enough, even in their latter years, to visit theatres and arts festivals in out-of-the-way and dodgy places. Their personal contemporary South African art collection boasted gems by artists of the ilk of Deborah Bell.

Dannheisser was also a very straight talker. When an advertising sales rep in a local paper once glibly announced at a sales meeting that she hadn’t achieved any sales for several weeks, he responded angrily that she should ‘get off her backside’ and go out and sell and sell and sell! She picked up her handbag and ran out of the room in tears. Later that day her husband called to threaten the editor. Dannheisser was, of course, on the mark.

A great orator, coming third in the world in a Toastmasters competition, and a celebrated Rotarian, he was someone for whom culture mattered. A trained tour guide of the city’s heritage, Dannheisser had a wise sense of perspective and priorities.

One of the founders of the Weekly Mail described how Dannheisser would agree to print by “scribbling the price and the terms on the back of an envelope” because it was too dangerous at the time to put it into a formal contract.

The situation of the anti-apartheid media at the time was fraught with insecurity. A few publications, such as the Rand Daily Mail, continued to carry stories which embarrassed and infuriated apartheid’s racist motivators. They were accused of intentionally smearing the image of South Africa in the eyes of the outside world for nefarious reasons, and essentially for being ‘unpatriotic’.

The RDM was controversially closed in 1985, partly for its anti-apartheid stance in the midst of the massive clampdown by security forces. Some of its journalists then pooled their severance pay to create a new paper, the Weekly Mail, which continued the anti-apartheid stance, and today is known as the Mail & Guardian.

It was in this troubled media environment that the Springs Advertiser remained a reliable and important ally. It continued servicing and printing many provocative independent papers through the 1980s. The media community who continued to report and publish, did so at great risk to themselves. Journalists were harassed and arrested and laws were passed which made it almost impossible for them to do their jobs.

But irrespective, the edited content of the openly anti-apartheid Weekly Mail, produced in its Johannesburg offices, would arrive week-after-week at the Springs Advertiser’s premises to be printed, before it was loaded onto trucks for distribution. Dannheisser had a lawyer on hand to check that the material was strictly within the letter of the law: he knew that a tiny deviation would give security police an excuse to prevent publication altogether. Talking about those sexily dangerous days replete with everything from nasty right wing graffiti to bomb threats, Dannheisser, related how police would often raid the premises to delay printing and sometimes, out of spite, would take away an entire week’s print run for ‘checking’, only returning it when it was too late for distribution.

Dannheissers’ ownership of the Springs Advertiser – which was originally established in 1916 – dated back to 1948. Martin’s father Walter had arrived in South Africa from Germany in the early 1930s and had settled in the town named Springs, east of Johannesburg. There he raised and educated his two sons, and there, he bought the paper along with the printing works. Over time the group grew to include five local titles: the Springs Advertiser; the Springs Outlook; the African Reporter; the Highveld Herald; and the Bethal Echo. The Dannheisser brothers ran the Springs Advertiser until 2006 when they sold to Caxton, the major owner of South African community papers.

But more than just an advertising rag, over the years, the Springs Advertiser under the leadership of the Dannheissers was also a significant incubator for young writers, where they received skills and professional acumen to make them sought after by the general press, and the careers of people in the industry of the ilk of seasoned arts writer and sub-editor Christina Kennedy, attest to this today.

Dannheisser, who held official positions in the newspaper industry, was born on 9 September 1939 and educated at the London College of Printing before he served in the South African army: In the trajectory of his press career, he was chair of the Provincial Press Division of the Newspaper Press Union, a member of the Media Council, and chairman of Capro, an independent representative body of media owners representing community newspapers.

He leaves his wife Anne, daughters Helene and Rene, son-in-law Steven, grandchildren Kendra and Jared, and his brother Peter and family.

This post Press Man with Heart first appeared on My View by Robyn Sassen and other writers.

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Schadeberg: Moments in Time

Hans Prignitz’s handstand on the St Michaelis Church, Hamburg, 1948. © Jürgen Schadeberg

ESSENCE of a shoot: Jurgen Schadeberg, with Peter Magubane (left) and Bob Gosani, at Drum Magazine in 1956. Photograph by Jurgen Schadeberg, courtesy Claudia Schadeberg

WHAT WOULD MAKE a man risk his life by balancing precariously on one hand with his legs above him, on a rain-soaked ledge of a building high above a city half covered by mist? That’s what acrobat Hans Prignitz did in 1948 in Hamburg, as a favour to a 17-year-old photographer working for the German Press Agency. The photographer was Jürgen Schadeberg. That was the shot that signalled the beginning of his illustrious career. Over the next six decades Schadeberg became a legendary photographer with a portfolio of stunning images which chronicled apartheid and events in other countries. Schadeberg died on 29 August 2020, from complications after a stroke. He was 89.

The image of Prignitz remained one of Schadeberg’s personal most favourite, famous pictures, ultimately being listed in The Guardian’s “My Best Shot” series. His other favourite was one he took in 1994 of the new SA President Nelson Mandela returning to visit his former cell on Robben Island, where he had spent the major part of his 27-year incarceration.

Schadeberg was born in Berlin on 18 March 1931. It was a time when goose-stepping Nazis were emerging brazenly onto the streets. In an interview in the Guardian in 2014, Schadeberg recalled that when he was growing up he would ask his mother: “Who is this man on the radio who is always shouting and seems so angry? What is this all about?” The man, of course, was Adolf Hitler. His mother told him to be quiet or he would get them into trouble. “It was a very unpleasant environment to grow up in,” he said. “And, after the war, a lot of Nazis were still around.”

In his early teens, Schadeberg was forced into the Hitler Youth, but played tricks there, sometimes by marching backwards, or wearing bright colours instead of the requisite brown uniforms. Police told his mother to control her son. In his memoir, he describes the “slow descent into hell” of the imposition of Nazism on Berliners.

Schadeberg was the only child of a single woman named Rosemarie. She was an actress. After the war’s end, Schadeberg was dismayed by what he saw as an inherent quality in Teutonic German culture, drawn to Nazi-like marching in step and singing about the glories of the Führer and the Fatherland. He moved to South Africa in 1950, barely out of his teens.

But on arrival, he discovered that South African racism was just as bad as what he had left behind in Germany. “The blacks” were spoken about by South African white people in just as contemptuous a way as Jews had been spoken about in Germany. Some people said they wished Hitler had won the war. It was the beginning of formalised apartheid – although most people believed it would not last, since fascism had already been conquered in Europe.

Within a year, Schadeberg joined Drum magazine as a photographic freelancer. The Sophiatown-based publication, which was to become known as an important anti-apartheid mouthpiece had been founded in that year, 1951, by radio man and journalist Bob Crisp. Schadeberg moved through the ranks of the weekly’s hierarchy to become its chief photographer and art director. He mentored great photographers such as Alf Kumalo and Peter Magubane. Drum’s provocative investigative reporting, often spicy photographs, opinion columns and dramatic crime stories drew a mainly black audience. Writers were vastly diverse.

Schadeberg’s passions were always lit by jazz and dancing. Jazz, he said, was “a form of defiance and protest which eased the burden of apartheid”.

His work in the 1950s, which became known as the heyday of Drum – the “Drum decade” – addressed social justice issues that moved him, such as civil disobedience across South Africa, and the five-year treason trial of Nelson Mandela and 155 other anti-apartheid activists. He and Magubane covered the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1956 Women’s March to Pretoria to protest against laws forcing them to carry passes. They were arrested for photographing the Treason Trial between 1956 and 1961. They documented the aftermath of the Sharpeville Massacre in March 1960, when police opened fire on a gathering of some 7 000 unarmed people protesting against the pass laws, killing 69. For their funeral, he chartered a light plane to circle the line of coffins from above to illustrate the scale of the killings.

Under his guidance, Drum’s photographers immortalised life in the vibrant, multicultural Sophiatown, its people and their popular culture in fashion, jazz and dancing. Together with bold investigative journalism, Drum also gave its readers sport and celebrities, such as musician Todd Matshikiza, who composed the musical King Kong. Schadeberg photographed the singer Miriam Makeba in 1955 for the cover.

His portfolio contains images across a wide spectrum, including ANC activists such as Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, jazz musicians such as the great trumpeter Hugh Masekela, and writers such as Can Themba, Bloke Modisane, Es’kia Mphahlele and Nadine Gordimer.

As Drum’s popularity grew, these iconic writers in South African literature came on board, as did people of the ilk of Casey Motsisi, Lewis Nkosi and Nat Nakasa. The writer Henry Nxumalo was one of the writers who developed an animated style to write about jazz and shebeens, and confessional, naughty interviews, which were fun to read for the publication’s vast readership.

 One particularly famous photograph of Schadeberg’s taken in 1955 was of Constance Molefe, a junior tennis star from Orlando, leaping over a tennis net, racket in mid-air, looking dangerously close to catching her foot in the net. She appears to be fixed in flight, aiming at the future and her hopes of a senior title as an athlete. But her dreams as a star black athlete would soon be dashed by apartheid.

“A photograph is a pause button on life,” Schadeberg said in 2017. “You capture a moment in life, a moment that has gone forever and is impossible to reproduce.”

Nxumalo – who was fondly known as “Mr. Drum”- was a courageous investigative journalist who fought to expose injustice and cruelty. As part of a Drum investigative report, Schadeberg and Nxumalo once posed as a visiting journalist and his servant to gain access to farms in Bethal so that they could write about the abuse of farm labourers, there. Public response was huge and the edition sold out. Later, Nxumalo got himself arrested so he could write about prison conditions.

Drum’s rebellious spirit, however, couldn’t endure under stifling apartheid. It eventually withered, with many of its best members emigrating from the country. In addition, by 1956 Sophiatown’s black residents were being forcibly removed by a government fanatical about racial separation, to make way for a whites-only suburb.

Schadeberg left Drum in 1959. As a freelancer, partly for the Sunday Times, he went on to produce powerful images of the most important individuals and events in South Africa. He left South Africa in 1964, and travelled through Europe, photographing life in England, Scotland, Spain, and France. In 1985, swept up in enthusiasm for political developments in South Africa and believing that momentous democratic changes were imminent, he and his wife Claudia returned to the country.

But by 2007 Schadeberg’s disillusionment about the “new South Africa” and the persistence of racial separation and inequality made him and Claudia realise they were not really “African”. They left the country. He lamented in interviews how it was so different from the“rainbow nation” he had expected to emerge from the transformation. But notwithstanding their disappointments, they had witnessed at first-hand a once-in-a-lifetime event, the incredible change when South Africa actually dismantled apartheid. In its first fully free elections in 1994, whites and blacks stood in the same queues to vote for their president.

In 2014 Schadeberg received the Cornell Capa Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Center for Photography. That award constituted resounding public acknowledgement for his rich career, which was bookended by his picture of Hans Prignitz balancing on a ledge in Hamburg in 1948, and going all the way forward to Nelson Mandela in his jail cell in 1994.

Schadeberg married Claudia Horvath, an art historian and television producer, in 1984. They spent 36 years as spouses and working together on films, books and photography. Scathingly intolerant of new trends in photography, Schadeberg said in an interview in the Mail & Guardian in 2014, that much of it amounted to imagination without real skill. He added that he thought a lot of contemporary photography needed to justify itself verbally: “I don’t need to justify my pictures,” he said. “Take it or leave it. You either like them or you don’t.”

When Schadeberg died in La Drova, Spain, he joined the list of distinguished late South African photographers who had confronted apartheid, including people of the ilk of David Goldblatt, Gisele Wulfsohn and Santu Mofokeng. He is survived by Claudia and their son Charlie as well as five children from his previous marriages, 15 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He provided a great legacy for them to cherish.

This post Schadeberg: Moments in Time appeared first on My View by Robyn Sassen and other writers.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man?

Is he South Africa’s best chance? Is President Cyril Ramaphosa up to the task of leading South Africa through the coronavirus crisis?

DO WE have another Mandela moment on our hands like the heady days after 1994 when Cyril Ramaphosa, under Mandela’s leadership, helped draw up the South African constitution and the country’s future looked bright? Or is this the beginning of the descent into violent social unrest of the sort we knew during apartheid?

At this writing, it is reported that mobs have attacked a truck carrying food parcels, and fights have broken out between residents of townships who are protesting that food parcels meant for them are going elsewhere. Hunger is rife in the country, and when people cannot feed their children, they will do anything. How long will it be before supermarkets are attacked and their shelves emptied or shoppers leaving stores are waylaid? Thugs have found fertile ground for their illegal actions.

President Ramaphosa’s challenge feels impossible. Known in professional circles as a ‘ditherer’, does he have the rational toughness we need to turn this situation around?

Despite public enthusiasm for him, a word of caution is necessary. In their desperation to beat Covid-19, South Africans have given the government wide-ranging powers which sound uncannily similar to the laws and regulations during apartheid. These include restrictions on travel, where one may work or reside, what one may eat, who one may associate with, what information can be broadcast, the carrying of personal documentation, and powers given to the police and army for arrest and entry into private property which only people who lived in apartheid will remember.

It is predicted that the Covid-19 pandemic will last a long time, and tail off gradually. Will the authorities relinquish all these new powers they have acquired? Politicians are notorious for clinging tenaciously to power once they have it. Can Ramaphosa control the police and army?

When he addressed the nation several times in the last few weeks to outline his plans for restarting the economy and helping needy South Africans, you could feel an air of excitement. Covid-19 has united this country in a way that seemed impossible just a while ago. But South Africans can be forgiven for being wary of promises. There have been so many disappointments. Enormous highs have been followed by devastating lows.

After Mandela, came President Thabo Mbeki, who refused to listen to scientists about HIV-Aids, and brought politics into the issue, reputedly resulting in the loss of 300,000 lives. Commentators refer to it as a genocide. His health minister Manto Tshabalala Msimang, was called ‘Dr Beetroot’ for promoting the benefits of beetroot, garlic, lemons, and African potatoes to combat the disease. After Mbeki we had President Jacob Zuma for a decade, who had been punted by Mandela as the best candidate to lead the country. Zuma nearly brought the country to its knees with corruption and shenanigans with unsavoury characters like the Guptas.

So far, Ramaphosa is following science in relation to Covid-19, but there are sinister political forces in the background looking for an opportunity.

Covid-19 is the biggest test the world has faced since World War Two. South Africa has done relatively well compared to other countries. The health infrastructure is intact, although under huge pressure; the World Health Organization has commended South Africa on its response.

Forever optimistic, South Africans seem willing to follow a credible leader, this time Ramaphosa. But middle class and wealthy South Africans living in their posh suburbs know they are not completely safe from the chaos Covid-19 could unleash from poorer areas all over the country, where hundreds of thousands of people cannot afford social distancing because they don’t have credit cards and can’t stockpile food.

 

 

Spare me a few rand?

WORTH THE RISK? Does a beggar pleading for a few rand carry the Covid-19 virus? Would you avoid giving him anything if he did?

THERE’a cellphone-made video circulating in the radio waves of a man in a car spraying sanitiser on the cupped hands of a beggar, instead of filling them with coins. A future satirist might find this fitting material, but on the streets in the era of Covid-19, it is no joke.

If you drive down the busy Barry Hertzog Avenue in Emmarentia in the early morning, you will see homeless people emerging from under the trees in the park alongside the road, where they build small fires. If you proceed up the road towards the shopping centre, there is a good chance you will be approached by a beggar, asking for money. Will you do what you might have done a couple of months ago? Would you look around in your car or handbag for a few rands? If you will, are you still comfortable touching money, which the Covid-19 specialists tell us, are potentially covered in virus?

You might ignore the man, and stare straight ahead with pursed lips, as if he didn’t exist, while waiting for the traffic lights to change. Many people have done this for years. If your window was open, the beggar might approach you and appeal directly to your face, with a tragic story of need.

There is genuine pity felt for the beggar living from hand to mouth in the lockdown, even if it is suspected that he spends most of his money on drugs, not food. But are you afraid if he ignores the 2m rule in his quest for money from you? Are you more afraid if he wears a facemask, or doesn’t?

These seem like bizarre questions from a crazy dream, but are real in today’s context. Hopefully, one outcome of this pandemic may be that serious problems which should have been addressed long ago by government and others, might be tackled more urgently: How to humanely uplift the beggars, and not endanger the people they beg from. There are solutions, complicated as they may be.

Thousands of food parcels have been collected by NGOs for distribution to poor families without work or other means of survival. Within the Covid-19 pandemic, thousands have lost jobs; hunger is rife. Even here though, amongst the poorest segments of society, the homeless beggar often still falls through the cracks.

He is mostly invisible to the driver on his way to the supermarket. Or he is an irksome reminder that if there are beggars, all is not well in society and there is work to be done. When there is a downpour in Johannesburg and everyone rushes inside for shelter, the beggar, draped in a dirty black rag remains in the street. He hopes that one driver will have enough sympathy to open their window to the elements and drop a coin or two into his hands. How he survives against the elements is mysterious to most.

The difference now, with the coronavirus, is that his health affects the health of the people in cars, or those in the streets who ignore him. There are many ways to address poverty, but it needs urgent attention.

But there is also, for the first time, an ironical converse to the situation. What if you, in your luxury sedan, have just returned from overseas, you are carrying the virus, and unbeknownst to you, you are contagious? As the beggar in the street extends his empty palm to you, together with your couple of rand, you give him something else: a case of Covid-19, to take home to his fellows.

In this topsy-turvy reality, nothing is as it was.

 

Lost, again, in the 20s

Will the 2020s produce another Sachmo?  A hundred years ago in the 1920s, after the First World War, the arts of all types flowered in the aftermath of the devastation of the war, producing iconic names such as Louis Armstrong, Picasso, and others, as countries rebuilt themselves. What will happen when the coronavirus is defeated?

WHAT does it mean to be a teenager in a time of coronavirus lockdown? You will grow into adulthood with a scar in your understanding of how society works and what is permissible. But maybe you will also become adult with an extra advantage.

Those who came of age during the carnage of the First World War, spent their early years in a time of massive sadness when huge numbers lost loved ones in the war, thousands were maimed and mentally damaged, and millions suffered the gruesome aftermath of the Spanish flu’s ravages. They are colloquially known as the ‘lost generation’. The generation of the 1920s suffered the physical and emotional wounds of their time, which they transmitted to further generations.

Gertrude Stein, American writer living in Paris during the 1920s, is credited with coining the term. Ernest Hemingway popularised it in the epigraph for his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises: “You are all a lost generation”.

But the doom and gloom of being mooted “lost” aside, that ‘roaring twenties era’ was full of great art, where the Charleston was the dance of choice, flappers and women’s rights held sway, where Picasso blossomed and the literature of F Scott Fitzgerald was seminal. It was the time of the Harlem Renaissance and the career of Louis Armstrong boomed.

Today’s coming-of-age youth, particularly the South African born-frees, a part of the millennial generation, are growing into adulthood in a society where apartheid is history and joblessness and hopelessness, the norm. Because of COVID-19, these young people – like the rest of us – are experiencing a society traumatised, where no-one can predict how it will end.

But end, it will. Humanity will survive; economies and societies will be rebuilt. We don’t know how; there are more questions than answers. Whatever else it brings, it will have a focusing effect for many people about what is really important in life. And about the urgency of doing the things that really matter.

One already hears stories about the resolve of couples who have long courted, suddenly deciding to move in together because no-one knows what will happen, and they abhor the notion of not being together. Or people with long grievances against each other, calling out of the blue to reconcile in friendliness. Or others trying to locate colleagues they have worked with in the past, with whom they had a special connection.

It might also have the opposite effect. People who have carried protracted resentment against each other, might decide to vent this anger without regard for the consequences, since they might not get another chance. Divorces, suicides and violence might easily be among the outcomes.

Will babies born now carry any particular identity as they grow older? What will a child who was taken out of school this month, away from his friends, carry with him about the notion of friendship? In years to come, will people who were born during this time be named after the virus? Like the ‘lost generation’ of the First World War or the ‘baby boomers’ after the Second World War’?

On a more philosophical level, the value of things might take on an entirely different meaning. If the whole world and humanity are under threat, what does it matter whether one was called a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian or an atheist? Or a vegetarian or a meat eater? Or for Iranians, whether their hatred of Israel had any value? Or for Israelis, whether it mattered who had control over the kotel? These questions hang in the air; but there is a future and humanity will survive.

 

How to laugh at what scares you

Is it forbidden to laugh at catastrophe? Gallows humour? Celebrated American comedian Randy Stewart Rainbow has millions of followers of his political videos on YouTube. His reaction to the coronavirus pandemic shows bizarre statements from US President Donald Trump saying that everything is “under control”

HOW long does it take a global catastrophe to turn into humour? In the case of the coronavirus, very quick: the online world is replete with hilarious songs and vignettes concerning the terrible threats this world faces. American satirist Randy Rainbow with his refrain “someone could develop a cold” parodies a song from the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls, and US President Donald Trump’s evasive response to the virus. Israeli band the Jam and Joplin produced a darkly funny version of The Knack’s 1979 song My Sharona, as My Corona, where everyone is masked. All these works have the sole intention of releasing some of the great stress we all share during these difficult times.

Is this humour offensive or necessary? Gallows humour is often the only way one can respond to catastrophe. Falling apart is never really a solution.

And then, there is a cultural response. Flash mobs of people singing from balconies and streets, ordinary people living in apartment blocks in Italy, Israel and elsewhere, have become testimonies to the human spirit in a state of quarantine. Historically, some of the greatest works of art have their roots in human struggles, from Shakespeare to Charlie Chaplin.

In South Africa, while many theatres and arts festivals have glumly closed their doors, others are creatively rethinking their formats to meet the coronavirus head-on. The organisers of the National Arts Festival said on Tuesday that rather than cancelling the festival in Makhanda due to the travel ban, they would do something bold – the Festival will be going completely online for the full 11 days from 25 June to 5 July so it can continue sharing its magic and hope. Organisers called it “…An opportunity to connect when we are being asked to distance ourselves from one another.”

Similarly, while facilities for the elderly are in lockdown, cutting people off from their families, staff from old age institutions like Pretoria’s Jaffa have posted happy videos onto facebook of residents at lunch and recreation, for their loved ones to see. Communication technology enables connections beyond physical spaces.

Two types of leaders, whether political, community or otherwise, emerge from the coronavirus kind of scenario: One is motivated towards recognising the harsh reality, yet taking action to make it better; there is always something that can be done. The other sees only the gloom and passes it on to others.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s address to the nation on Sunday, eloquently imploring South Africans to resist panic while declaring coronavirus a national disaster, was the first type – statesmanlike and inspiring. This contrasted with other high level figures such as US President Donald Trump who in the beginning blustered as usual, insisting that the virus is under “tremendous” control when his own experts said it wasn’t.

Ramaphosa said South Africa faces “a grave emergency”. But if everyone acts together, decisively, the coronavirus will be beaten, echoing US President Franklin D Roosevelt’s famous phrase during the Great Depression: “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Fortunately, the response from major South African figures and organisations, Jewish and others, has been to follow the spirit set by Roosevelt in 1933, and now by Ramaphosa.

Real leadership will be needed in the coming weeks or months, or however long it takes to defeat the virus. An urgent warning is necessary to people in political parties, ANC factions and others who have spent many years stabbing each other in the back: your squabbles may be useful material for satirists, but your power-grabbing is neither heroic nor useful for the country. The virus will be defeated despite you.

 

Parliamentary games and rude words

How far can a member of parliament push? In May 2017 the Economic Freedom Fighters were forcefully removed from Parliament after creating violence in response to an appearance by President Jacob Zuma.
The showdown with Speaker Baleka Mbete, which came after the EFF failed to obtain a court interdict against the forceful removal of MPs, resulted in the most violent eviction of the party since it began demonstrating at appearances of the president

A PERLIAMENT can’t operate if its members don’t stick to etiquette. But nothing is perfect. The extreme emotions attached to politics frequently overrides protocol, as we’ve seen lately in this country. The modern world has seen parliamentary shenanigans nothing short of comical: from banging desks with shoes in front of stern-faced representatives, to offering to attend sessions naked. The real, burning issues may sometimes get lost in the quarrels, or actually find their true expression.

Israel’s Knesset is no exception, amidst the country’s over-heated politics. In 2010, Arab MK Haneen Zoabi was cursed and shoved for relating her harrowing experience as a passenger on the Mavi Marmara ship which attempted to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. Other MKs shouted her down: ‘Go back to Gaza, you traitor!’ yelled one in Arabic. Russian-born MK Anastasia Michaeli alighted the podium, blocking her from speaking by standing between her and the microphone. Arab MK Jamal Zahalka ran to defend Zoabi. Arab and Jewish MKs scuffled in the aisles, requiring ushers to intervene. The Speaker expelled Michaeli and Zahalka from the hall.

A famous international protocol-breaking incident, which has become legend, occurred during the Cold War at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, filled with sombre international delegates. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev vociferously demanded the resignation of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, accusing him of acting for colonial powers. He then shocked delegates by loudly banging his shoe on the desk after the Philippines accused the USSR of imperialism in Eastern Europe.

How far can vigorous debate stretch without damaging the institution of Parliament itself? In South Africa in 1998, Manie Schoeman, leader of the New National Party from the Eastern Cape punched the ANC’s Johnny de Lange, who retaliated. Speaker Frene Ginwala described the incident as a ‘brawl’; Schoeman, who started the fracas, was suspended from Parliament for five days, and De Lange for one.

In 2016, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) were thrown out of the Chamber for causing pandemonium during the State of the Nation Address (Sona) of then-President Jacob Zuma. And in the Sona this year of President Cyril Ramaphosa, the EFF made it impossible to hear him by constant interruptions; the Speaker suspended parliament. It was worse in the Sona debate a week later.

How you dress is a measure of your respect for your colleagues. But what counts as respect? In 2015 EFF leader Julius Malema, reacting to a parliamentary committee’s deliberations on a dress code, was rumoured to warn that his EFF MPs would discard their trademark red overalls and go naked in the Chamber if Parliament forbad the wearing of such apparel. He also rejected anything requiring the EFF to don the more formal-looking garb which characterises many parliaments, saying they would not dress like ‘colonial masters.’

Sadly, South African politics has become so unseemly that senior politicians – Malema and ANC figures – accused each other of domestic abuse, last week, in front of the parliament, the nation and the world, when gender-based violence is at an incredible high. Rightly, a huge outcry erupted from all sides of society. Why did the Speaker not show leadership and censor the guilty parties by ejecting them from the Chamber when this happened? The Speaker is as guilty as anyone for allowing it.

It goes further than the individuals concerned. One can argue whether making such accusations is technically a breach of etiquette, but it is certainly a breach of the spirit of parliament. Tragically, it makes South Africa look like a playground for bullying by adults who should know better. What must younger South Africans learn from this?

Mistletoe and COVID-19

Control? My foot! US President Donald Trump said on January 22 on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” about the coronavirus: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”

PICTURE the scenario: It is winter in Europe. Snowing. Young men – soldiers – are in trenches, at war with one another. And then midnight strikes on December 24, and for a moment they are just young men, very far from home, celebrating Christmas. In the First World War, on Christmas day during the early period of the war, French, German, and British soldiers crossed trenches to exchange seasonal greetings. Men from both sides ventured into no man’s land to mingle and share food and souvenirs. They sang carols and played football. And then, all at once, it was all over and the men got back behind their cannons and bayonets, to continue war business as usual.

A positive similar side-effect, to global crises today like the coronavirus is that, in a world which never seems able to end its disputes, the virus might create a form of ‘peace’ because it does not respect borders. Your foe is as vulnerable as you; what happens to him might directly affect what happens to you.

International cooperation to fight the virus is occurring on a scale almost unprecedented in history. Although the pandemic doesn’t yet come anywhere near previous major pandemics, where death tolls were staggering, warning signs are there. The death toll crossed the 4 000 mark on Monday; the infection rate exceeded 113 000. Spanish flu, however, after the First World War, caused 50 million deaths, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The most deadly epidemic of contemporary times, has been AIDS, which UNAIDS says caused 32 million deaths from 1981. Fiery sexual politics stirred by moral grandstanding, religious dogma and exploitation initially bedevilled the response to AIDS, as it has with coronavirus in the rhetoric of some religious figures.

Politics creeps in where it can and coronavirus is no exception. In the US, disputes between health officials and President Donald Trump over whether his administration has done enough to combat the coronavirus, are rife. He says he has everything “under control”. In a tweet he blamed the media for trying to damage his government’s image. He said “The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to make us look bad. Sad!”

Last week it was reported by Ynet that when Israel was considering adding America to a list of countries from which visitors would be required to spend 14 days in isolation upon entry, the move was delayed by some government ministries for fear of compromising ties with the US and concern about Trump’s response to this.

But on Sunday, PM Benjamin Netanyahu told a press conference, that he was instead considering taking a wider step. On Monday evening Israel drastically ratcheted up its efforts to protect the country from coronavirus, requiring all those arriving from any country at all to go into self-quarantine for 14 days with immediate effect. Crisis can sometimes force even politicians to do what is necessary, even ones who don’t normally agree.

Similarly, the contemporary climate crisis awareness also has the potential to cross borders and bring people on opposite sides together. Increasing droughts in sub-Saharan Africa, new hurricanes in the Indian Ocean and a rise in the global temperature are signs that if humankind does not get its act together for the environment, the future is bleak. Through all the haze, a common enemy is becoming identified: the people who spew carbon gas into the atmosphere, plastic into the oceans, and the international companies supporting them. Will the climate change and coronavirus activists and the First World War Christmas revellers be a model for how to handle other human disasters?

 

Braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and hate crimes

The ethos of apartheid pervaded South African life everywhere, against which ordinary people could not or did not want to fight. For most people it became simply the way things were, not a crime against humanity

MANY white South Africans probably can’t imagine that they might have been perpetrators of a crime against humanity. It sounds like such a gigantic, malevolent, bloody concept. On the whole, they saw themselves as going about their ordinary lives, growing up, getting educated, and raising their families, not necessarily as political activists. During their youth, many white South Africans travelled the world, associating freely with people from other countries.

Yes, there were anti-apartheid and anti-South African protests in various places, at various times, of which they might or might not have been aware, but these took a back seat and didn’t really affect the travels of the average South African. South African companies thrived all over the world and international companies came here and flourished.

The majority of ordinary white South Africans are also probably not aware of the wording of the Statute of Rome, or even the existence of the Statute. It says that the apartheid system in which they lived alongside black people or above them as masters for decades, was a crime against humanity, an international crime. The 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court says apartheid was similar to other ‘crimes against humanity’.

So when FW de Klerk and his foundation, without debate, issued a statement two weeks ago saying that the idea that apartheid was a crime against humanity was incorrect, many ordinary white South Africans were probably confused. In finer detail, he said it was an ‘agitprop’ project initiated by the Soviets and their ANC/SACP allies to stigmatise white South Africans by associating them with genuine crimes against humanity. Images conjured up by the words ‘crimes against humanity’ include totalitarian repression and the slaughter and torture of millions of people. The Germans in the Second World War did that; Stalin did it in Russia; the Hutus did it to the Tutsis in Rwanda. But South Africa did not do that.

De Klerk was joint deputy president under former president Nelson Mandela in 1994. He had previously been the last apartheid president. He had presided over the dismantling of the legislative framework of apartheid, freeing the way for the present non-racial democratic constitution. He jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize, with Nelson Mandela.

Following outrage over his statement, and pressure from wiser South African leaders, including Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, the FW de Klerk Foundation officially withdrew and apologised for the contentious statement on apartheid.

His statement stoked the uproar of the Economic Freedom Fighters in parliament last week at the State of the Nation Address. To onlookers, the EFF looked like a bunch of rowdy attention-seekers. But they claimed to represent black South Africa, to tackle the eons of white colonialism and apartheid and demanded that De Klerk, sitting in the public gallery, be kicked out as “he had blood on his hands”.

Predictably, they rejected the De Klerk Foundation apology, demanded that he be stripped of his Nobel Peace Prize, and lose his privileges as a former head of state. The unruly manner in which the EFF punted its message, or the apparent lack of focus of their attacks on people, from Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan to De Klerk, made it hard to listen to them. But does the EFF, and their fiery leader Julius Malema, really represent black South Africa today? Apartheid is gone; the country is on a different track, however tenuously, and with whatever problems. Whatever it is these people in red overalls represent, they make us sit up and take notice that the trauma of black South Africa has not gone away, nor the polarities between black and white.

Geoff Sifrin is a veteran South African editor, journalist, columnist. See more of his work on his blog

Call me by my name

WHITE and black South Africans, looking back well over thirty years from this month, will remember the days when, if a white man’s car got a puncture on the roadside, the owner was able to call out to a passing black man with the words: “John, please come and help us fix this tyre!” Some black men would comply to avoid trouble. It seems incredible today, but such was the power relationship of white over black.

Some white South Africans who immigrated over the years, and even elderly white South Africans still living here, aren’t accustomed to the radical changes. It is not uncommon to hear expatriate South Africans who have lived in Australia for many years still refer to black people in derogatory terms used during apartheid. Even the taboo “sch- word” and the forbidden k-word have currency among some. In disgruntled local white communities, this reminds them of the power they once yielded.

But what they know is that times have changed and they cannot call out across the road that way, assuming they will be complied with.

If you think about it, since the ground-breaking speech by then SA president FW de Klerk 30 years ago this month, announcing the dismantling of the apartheid laws, it has become markedly unacceptable for black people to accept the generic ‘John’ or ‘Lizzie’. These names were coined for white tongues during apartheid, which could not pronounce black birth names because they contained sounds like ‘x’, ‘q’, ‘c’, ‘hl’, or other African sounds. Birth names are increasingly used, forcing whites to deal with the Hlengiwes, Qinisos, Mncebisis or Nonhlanhlas of this world. The world-respected South African painter formerly known as Helen Sebidi, particularly when she was employed as a domestic worker during the earlier part of her life, now celebrates herself as Mmakgabo Mmapula Mmankgato Helen Sebidi, with the emphasis on Mmakgabo.

This dual-naming situation has a clear echo in Jewish society. It was a naming fashion for decades among diaspora Ashkenazi Jews who came to South Africa to give your child a name the rest of society could use, complying with usage in the secular world, and another more appropriate to religious tradition but which was not frequently used. For example, Brian, Colin, Brenda and others were appropriate in the secular world.

But these days, young Jewish couples who are shifting rightwards in their religious observance, dispense with this tradition, and the Ephraims and Rivkas of this world no longer feel it necessary to have English equivalents. Along with this comes an assertion and reclaiming of Jews’ ethnic pride and identity, similar to black South Africans.

The same phenomenon of unfamiliarity occurs among secular people with the Jewish names they haven’t heard before. And confusion about whether they have heard it correctly or how to pronounce it.

A next Jewish step might even be to revert to the usage which Jews had in the villages, or shtetls in Eastern Europe a century ago in which their lineage was included. Thus, Ephraim might be referred to as ‘Ephraim the son of Moishe’ (in Hebrew, Ephraim ben Moshe). Another layer is that Jews in parts of Eastern Europe were required by the authorities to adopt surnames. They often did this by using a name which corresponded to the work they did, or the place they came from. Thus, the well-known Jewish surname Shneider means tailor.

As part of the trend of name reversion among black people here, the actual meaning of popular African names previously unknown to whites emerges. The popular Zulu name Amahle means ‘the beautiful one’. The Basotho name Amohelang means ‘receive’. Dikgang means ‘arguments’. Lehlohonolo means ‘luck’.

There are also ‘English-seeming’ names which derive from an occurrence in the life of a child, which are translations from an African language relating to that event. The name ‘Consolation’ for example, might derive from the African word for the death of the baby’s mother in childbirth.

Is it important for whites to know the meaning of a black person’s name? Or is it important for someone to know the meaning of a Jew’s name? Many awkward situations arise where well-intentioned white South Africans bend over backwards to ‘do the right thing’ and ask black people what the meaning of their name is, like some kind of colonial curiosity. Or when a secular person asks to know the meaning of a Jew’s name, forcing the Jew to talk about his name in this way when he might not even know what it is, to his embarrassment. Turning the thing around, would you ask someone called ‘Joan’ what her name means?

Calling someone by their name is never a simple gesture. The enormity of the political significance of being generically named “John” because you are male and black was completely lost in the awareness of the white people who used it. Hopefully our society will never allow it to be lost again.

Geoff Sifrin is a veteran South African editor, journalist, columnist. See more of his work on his blog