The Journey to the Interior

“Kalasinga explained to him the mysteries of the engine, and Yusuf grasped something of this but was happier watching him magically coax the tangle of pipes and bolts into life. He heard about India, where Kalasinga had not been for many years, and South Africa, where he had lived as a child. It’s a madhouse in South. All kinds of cruel fantasies have come true there. Let me tell you something about those Afrikander bastards, though. They’re crazy. I don’t just mean wild and cruel, I mean round the loop. Hot sun has turned their Dutch brain to soup.

“For us Afrikaans was a deed of rescue. You wanted to use it as well as you could to rescue yourself and other Afrikaners from poverty and misery. Teachers saw to it that we mastered scientific and classical Afrikaans. We had to learn Afrikaans poems and Bible verses off by heart, and so pure sentence structure and vocabulary were bedded in us. Anglicisms were like cursing. You delighted in storytellers who could play with language. They were heard again and again and their stories retold so often that the unique expressions were extended to everybody.”

Poets are the last heretics of the world. We flung our country, our trodden, deeply divided land, open like a delightful carpet at our feet. The many colours shot out across the floor and a newborn land slipped from its membrane of languages. And it lay down. Our country lay down among us, translated into parables palpable with light.

Went for a walk this evening— it is bone-white outside with snowflakes falling gently, and everywhere in the houses are Christmas lights. My feet scuff the snow like when you scoop flour with a cup.

With the black government being so corrupt— dear Lord— the amount of shame and embarrassment that it causes black people, almost a second humiliation after apartheid— I never criticise along with white people. Never. Even though I can see they want me to.