The South African Defence Force: “Inventing threats to the
country and scared of its shadow since the 1950s.” People who speak about the actions of this literal force tend
to be threatened (no jokes - I knew someone who received death threats for even considering writing about a NP government-planned assassination) or ugly-eyeballed or murdered, which gives us insight into the
paranoia that transcends the ping-pong stupidity of US relations with North Korea. But
somehow I think I am less of a threat than the urgency of their psychiatric
evaluations, and in any case, I will whisper.
See, the Nationalist government was afraid of more than
colour TV, rock music and the second half of the century. It was afraid of
*hushed tones* the liberals. History tells
us that the greatest threat to a regime is that exact same threat carried out
by someone else. In this case, one half of a race divided by language and violence dating back to the 19th century, gained power by voicing its second-citizen-man-ship and retained power by intimidation. Yes, they were afraid of the oppressed because they had felt oppressed so they oppressed. I can appreciate that
someone heavily invested in their culture might believe
that nurturing culture means some degree of separation. But in hindsight, it is about as practical as democracy or communism. You get that now, right?
But this is heavy-duty psychology here.
Up until the 80s, the SADF enforced conscription. Yes,
folks. I always think, what we need is more soldiers. Eighteen-year-old men were decked in khakis,
oppressed and repressed, and then given rifles. Why? Because we were fighting a
war, fool! Against their ghosts and, oh yes, anyone whose hair didn't
pass the pencil test. Another book called An
Unpopular War (actually a very popular book) raises the issue of the silence around conscription and our
fathers’ roles in the force, but primarily what those young men went through that was so heinous they pretend it never happened.
No one talks about it. I have never had a discussion with anyone about this, unless you count my father telling me that he was exempt because he had a heart condition. Some of the forces were sent into Namibia
and Angola, destroying people and villages with, um, inventive (I edited my thesaurus so that 'inventive' means 'horrifying') tactics (not as
efficiently as Boko Haram though - 16 villages destroyed in one weekend. 16, two days). Some were sent into townships and
villages to stir up trouble that they could blame on the 'insurrectionists' (again, I edited my thesaurus so that it means 'an adult who daydreamed about walking down any street in any area without being asked for his papers as if there were a border post on every corner').
No one talks about conscription. No one.
Well almost no one, otherwise there wouldn't be a post. Kill Yourself and Count to 10 by Gordon Torr is about a specific hernia in a long medical report about the
SADF. Scene: Greefwald, a small barracks near the border with Botswana and along the Limpopo River. Premise: handfuls of transgressive liberals, gay men and the mentally ill are
shipped here and moulded into wholesome members of society. Near-fatal physical
tasks like lifting rubble and boulders from one place to another all day, and
leisurely jogs in the bright sun or through thick bush, with some mind games
before lunch, being a reasonable way to mould a wayward child, right?
Characters: one haunting egomaniac and possible rapist of a psychiatrist;
many enraged, impotent and not well-spoken commanders, sergeants and lieutenants;
a riff-raff of erratically lovable misfits ranging from those so liberal they can
only be pushed to say that they don’t know any black people so they can’t
comment on their moral characters, metrosexuals and repressed homosexuals, and drug addicts, psychotics and potential psychotics. In 2015, this counts as a substantial demographic of the South African population, so they stuffed this one up.
The story is told from the present, by a Greefwald survivor,
to a third person who is our narrator. The survivor, Lloyd, wants to drum up
support for a lawsuit against Levin, the psychiatrist, who is being expedited
from Canada. Levin masterminded the camp based on outdated research and with funding from a government spooked by long-legged spiders. The camp is a bit like the retreat in which Sandra Bullock lifts a horse's hock to prove she is better, except the aim is to break you not free you so I shudder to think about the poor horse. A former Greefwald doctor pops up to add perspective on Lloyd’s
character.
I hope I have this right. The story is dense
and mostly innuendo, so I gave up trying to understand the chronology or characters
about midway. (I convinced myself I was living in the moment. In a book about the past.) It is divided into chapters headed by names of people and places.
Sometimes the chapters are one page long and cuddle some heavy plot-point that
is never alluded to again (or that I could follow - always blame the author, you - have I taught you nothing?). I couldn't match places to
people’s names to characters to contexts, so I mostly drifted along, picking up
flotsam and fashioning it into a cabin.
What makes my cabin pretty pathetic is that it is made of an
incredible story told by an expert writer. His images and constructs
are slick, and his sentences and paragraphs well-crafted. (Don’t get a big
head, now.) I imagine someone wandering in, saying the book is too long and whittling away at it, so well that they have translated it into a dialect of very concise, very urgent English that turns this book
into flotsam on a sea that I pick up and fashion into a cabin (I almost wrote ‘sandwich’) because I can't tell that the pieces are part of a puzzle that is actually a map to land.
All this flotsam bobs around the conclusion. Often, I feel like the writer has spent so long on the rest of the book that the conclusion is,
well, far gone. (Maybe I am projecting.) Too far gone. They are so sick of the tripe they have expelled
that they wrap everything up with the first piece of rope they are given. Now, this
writer ties knots so good they cannot be unpicked and the rest of the book is bound separately by string not rope and the parcels are accidentally sent to different continents.
Two major ideas play out in
the last thirty pages. I want to reset my reading to find the links to the ideas that are right up my street (don't worry, I don't need a pass), but
that’s like scouring the Arctic Ocean without a wetsuit. The first idea is psychological and gives
insight into the divide between what was planned and what did happen, and so, so much more. The
second idea is so extraordinary that it mows the prime neuroses
of the SADF and its decision-makers with lime into the flora of the Lowveld. I wish I could just tell you what these ideas are, but
spoilers are on the ‘don’t’ side of the bibliophile code of conduct - teasing you with them, however, is in the ‘you may’ column. Perhaps we could play Jacky
Hangman? (That in itself is a double clue.)
Word 1: l_ _ _.
Word 2: _ s _ _ _ _
n _ _ _.
There is a third idea I can talk about. The narrator
mentions that the camp was on the site of Mapungubwe, a thousand-year-old Shona kingdom along the Limpopo. The apartheid government was by the 70s so invested in
its delusion that it needed to invest in maintaining its delusion. Here was evidence that the land had already been ‘claimed’ - yikes, let me get you a crane to lift those reparations - and that African people had a history of
civilisation that the NP government had said didn't exist as they broke champagne bottles and heads against the borders of the so-called homelands - we'll have to make multiple trips with that crane.
Traitors to their archaeological profession (under the 'don't' of their code is 'knowingly fudge history'. I am pretty sure about this) uncovered
thousands of artifacts, then locked them in a room at Wits University and literally threw away the
key (someone found it, fyi – the room, not the key). I am taking bets that they
also played target practice with or made ashtrays out of some pieces. With decades of practice in self-protection (my thesaurus reads 'delusion'), the NPers did a good job of burying history. Today, I know as much about Mapungubwe as I do about those decades
of conscription – although unfortunately, I know more than I want to about the types of
atrocities the SADF's victims suffered and how the government justified them via the TRC, which is a whole other can of worms.
One last clue about the clues in this can. I know intelligent people who
believe the Kingdom of Mapungubwe is a myth drummed up by well-meaning liberals, based on
tenuous evidence collected by easily manipulated academics. Counter-counter-history *knowing look*. Which would perhaps
be more effective if the liberals publicised their discoveries instead of building casinos and BnBs on the bones. But then again, Jewish elders made and buried fake
dinosaur bones… in… everywhere, and invented carbon dating and convinced everyone it had something to do with time - and Greefwald was a constructive attempt to
rehabilitate deviants. Where 'constructive' means that the deviants lug rocks (artifacts?) around like Sisyphus and his eagle.
*sarcasm hand*
