Lessons from life

SUNEET CHOPRA

Pebbles in a Tin Drum by Ajeet Cour, HarperCollins, 1998; pages 190; Rs. 145.

THIS work, a series of clearly subjective memoirs strung together as the author wants them, makes a fitting chronicle for a fractured country teeming with insecure people blindly following the path of success which they confuse with that of happiness. For a society opening up to the market principle at the cost of its humanity, a process that is equally the driving force of consumer-packaged globalisation as the neo-Hindu swadeshi, her chronicle is a stark warning that India should take note of.

It starts off with an account of the death of her daughter Candy, in France, when she seems destined for success in a world of academic plums, scholarships and the like. It is to the credit of Ajeet Cour that she raises it above the level of a tear-jerker by linking the youthful tragedy with her own long-drawn-out experience of life in the framework of that very Punjabi ethos of happiness and success being one and the same thing.

One is amazed at the price an individual pays for this. The abandonment of her first love, Baldev, whose inspiration seems to bring out the best in her, for the illusory security of a loveless marriage that ends after eight bouts of exile, is the first of the many episodes in this atomised search for a secure life heightened by the backdrop of Partition in 1947.

This is followed up by an equally disastrous attempt to get published by succumbing to the blandishments of a Delhi publisher who seems to be given to mixing business with pleasure to the detriment of those he does business with. With growing horror one realises how that liaison is mistaken for love by her and she pays a terrible price for it. The book ends after a futile aeroplane chase from Delhi, to Mumbai, Bangalore and back, and a glimpse of Satya Sai Baba thrown in, with only a fever to keep her company. As she puts it: "It kept me constant company for twentytwo days. Maybe it realised I needed a companion. Maybe it had come to know how lonely I was."

One is left wondering what price the publisher paid in his search for success as happiness, or for that matter those hundreds of Punjabis still scouring the corners of the earth on the lookout for this elusive mix? For many it brought on sudden death, like the young men thrown into the sea off the Aegean coast in 1996. And it is to the author's credit that the vignettes of her life take on the character of a Victorian cautionary tale.

It is no accident that the book has come at a time when Indian society is being torn apart at the seams by a force no less than the one that Frederick Engels wrote about in his book on the conditions of the British working class or Dewan Chamanlal in his two-volume study of Indian bonded labourers, which a fellow Punjabi, Mulk Raj Anand, gave a literary life to in his book, Coolie.

However, Ajeet Cour drags one through the other side of the picture, as it were, with Ministers (only at the end of a telephone), bureaucrats, money-grubbing businessmen, drink-sodden hangers-on and utterly respectable middle-class people actually submitting to these marauders in the silence behind their bamboo screens in their search for respectability, while upright characters like Baldev drop out and are replaced by Oma, who sometimes appears to be only a shade different from Fagin in Dickens' Oliver Twist.

The modernity in Ajeet Cour's memoir lies in the fact that it is a Ramayana without a Rama. The wife throws herself out of the house and into the hands of the Ravana. And with remarkable courage the author spells out how things should not be done.

Ultimately one is left wanting to know more about the Baldevs, grandmothers, dairy-owners, servants, the millions of peasants and workers around one, or even gentle Toshi, the friend who stands by at all times. And one is repelled by the "successful family man", Oma. This is a book that every would-be yuppy ought to read - before it is too late.

A true revolutionary

ANTJIE KROG
M.S. PRABHAKARA

Bram Fischer: Afrikaner Revolutionary by Stephen Clingman; David Philip and Mayibuye Books, Cape Town/University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1998; pages 500; Rands 110.

BRAM FISCHER, christened Abram but known by the shorter form of the name, is an enigma in South African history. Many people find themselves drawn, connected and bonded in various ways to him than to any other figure in our past. People who feel thus come from a variety of cultures, countries and backgrounds. Bram Fischer also seems to have become one of the most quoted examples of a model of commitment to the cause of liberation of all the people of South Africa by the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC), one of the greatest heroes of South African history. This excellent and well-researched biographical study provides some answers to why this is so.

The life of Bram Fischer (April 23, 1908-May 8, 1975) has haunted Afrikaners for years. Born into a well-known and politically influential Afrikaner family of Bloemfontein in Orange Free State, he had ahead of him the best possible future that Afrikanerdom could offer at the prime of its power and dominance. His grandfather, Abraham Fischer, was the first Prime Minister of Orange River Colony and his father, Percy, was the Judge-President of the Free State. On his mother's side, the "extremely wealthy" Fichardt family was "European but belonging to no European country", a cosmopolitanism that could equally fit the Fischer family. At the same time, the family was also steeped in the anti-imperialist traditions and memories of Afrikaner nationalism - though one should always bear in mind the limits of that anti-imperialism, informed as it was by opposition to and hatred for the British, which was understandable in the context of Britain's unspeakable conduct during the Anglo-Boer war. Ignored (except as providers of cheap labour) in this contention between British imperialism and the colonialism of the settler was the majority of the truly indigenous people, not to speak of "the Cape Malaaier (Malay) and the stinking Coolie", in the words of grandfather Fischer.

IN his own mind Bram Fischer remained loyal and true to what he viewed as the staunch and noble anti-imperialist traditions of Afrikaner nationalism and saw his commitment to Communism not as a betrayal of his Afrikaner identity but rather as its fulfilment. But Afrikaners believe that in his commitment to Communism and active membership of the Communist Party he turned his back on Afrikaner nationalism, forfeiting things most Afrikaners would die for. They saw him as having betrayed his own people. Among ordinary Afrikaners familiar with his impressive heritage, Bram Fischer was the ultimate example of how impeccable breeding can go wrong; how a family can have everything right and do everything right, and yet in the same family, "the one is Abel and the other Cain".

Clingman's delineation of this moral and political journey from a narrowly perceived Afrikaner nationalism to Communism along a convincing sequence of events shows that Bram Fischer's later life was not necessarily a break with his past; that his commitment to Communism was a natural consequence of the deepest positive values he believed was within Afrikanerdom. However, Bram Fischer was not merely an 'Afrikaner Revolutionary' (of the subtitle) but an Afrikaner Communist Revolutionary, a member of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and, after it was banned in 1950, of the clandestinely restructured South African Communist Party (SACP), occupying leading positions in both the structures. His Afrikaner heritage was as central to his personality and politics as his commitment to Communism as an ideology and its practical application in his membership of the Communist Party. There is no way in which these can be separated.

This rather obvious point needs to be stressed because there is a tendency to view Bram Fischer's life as somehow "wasted" because of his commitment to an "outdated" ideology like Communism. Following this is the further wistful perception that had he not been a Communist and had he not so drawn the vengeful wrath of the regime, which carried on its vendetta against him even after his death, he could have contributed so much to South Africa. This is a perspective which this account too, in particular the judgmental Epilogue, reflects. Situating Bram Fischer in the tradition of the heroic but flawed characters of classical Greek tragedy (the epigraph from The Poetics of Aristotle is central to this perception), Clingman says that "Bram Fischer's flaw was that he was swayed by a morally compromised ideology."

Given his heritage and intellectual accomplishments, it is true that had Bram Fischer not been an active Communist and put his political convictions into practice in a manner he judged best and most effective, he might have had a very successful career on the Bench. Further, had he chosen to be false to what he viewed as the true Afrikaner heritage and made common cause with the thugs of the Nationalist regime, he may even have made a successful career as a politician. But then, who remembers all the legal luminaries and politicians of the old South Africa except in disdain of the former, for their acquiescence in and active dispensation of apartheid law and justice, and loathing of the latter?

The biography provides several access points to the human factors that animated that life - not of the saintly or politically correct but of the vulnerable kind. Bram Fischer was indeed an Afrikaner and a South African whose life, in the words of his first biographer, Naomi Mitchinson, was "a life for Africa". But his life also captures and encapsulates the minds of the lonely, of those who "dis-belong". Political heroes usually have followers, have possessed crowds or enthusiastic groups around them; they usually have "their own people" standing by them. Bram Fischer, however, stood alone. He never had "his people" standing by him. Those who did, like his family, paid a very high price. The rest around him were those who adopted him, mainly black and Jewish comrades in the Communist Party who took him to be one of their own.

Asked if the blacks had any heroes among the whites, Steve Biko, the raison d'etre of whose Black Consciousness movement was the liberation of the black people from dependency upon even well-meaning whites for their liberation, simply said: "Yes, Bram Fischer." According to the judge who presided over the Treason Trial, Bram Fischer (who had led the team of advocates for the defence) would be remembered long after he himself and many others are forgotten. For Edwin Mofutsanyana, an old black comrade of Bram Fischer from Lesotho, responding to a question from Clingman whether he ever thought of Bram Fischer: "I think of all the Afrikaners I have known, Bram Fischer was always the best... He was always in... my mind. As I say, he was a very good person."

One of the most fascinating, indeed poignant, aspects of the book is what is revealed through the letters that Clingman has gained access to. These, between parents and children, between wives and husbands, reveal a family life in which the members had open, warm and intelligent relationships and interactions, where a son's progressive thinking into politics is shared openly with his parents - though only up to a point. Bram Fischer was indeed a revolutionary, but he was no mindless rebel. He lived his life by the book; he worked hard, studied the correct courses, followed the chosen career in which he achieved great material success. He lived out the logical conclusions of his upbringing which, perhaps inevitably, perhaps nevertheless, led to the destruction of his life because no other Afrikaner, not even his open-minded parents, felt themselves bound by these codes. "Ultimately, it is because this story is about finding a home, which turns out to mean how one defines oneself. It becomes a story of identity - of how that, in its origins, transformations and destination, becomes inseparable from the journey it undertakes."

The most eloquent and moving description of this political journey from Afrikaner nationalism to Communism is to be found in Bram Fischer's political testament - the "statement from the dock" he made at the beginning of his trial in Pretoria on March 23, 1966. He was then 58 years of age, a distinguished and highly successful barrister who had never concealed his political commitments, standing trial for his life on charges of sabotage (a capital crime) and membership of the illegal Communist Party - on which charge he had already been on trial.

He had joined the party in the 1930s when he was a student at Oxford, though the clandestine nature of the recruitment has been so well preserved that even Clingman's thoroughgoing researches have not been able to establish precisely when or under what circumstances Bram Fischer joined the party. The closest we get to this is the view ascribed to George Bizos, the well-known advocate, that Bram Fischer "considered himself" a member of the party by 1938; and that the late Dr. Yusuf Dadoo was the one who recruited him. One would have been even more interested in knowing the circumstances under which his wife Molly Fischer joined the party, for given the strength and independence of her character, it is most unlikely that she simply went along with and adopted her husband's political beliefs. Her death in a motor accident, a day after the Rivonia trialists were sentenced, was a loss from which he never recovered.

The trial at which Bram Fischer made his "statement from the dock" was as it were his second trial. He had been on trial, with 11 others, on charges of belonging to the Communist Party. The peculiar awe and hatred that he provoked in the Afrikaner establishment and more specifically in the National Party Government is perhaps best exemplified in the fact that he was allowed, while on trial on charges that could well lead to a life sentence, to travel to London to argue a complex case on behalf of a leading mining house before the Privy Council. Despite some expectation and perhaps hope that he would decide not to return - and so spare the establishment from prosecuting the case further and providing it with further proof of the "extra-territorial loyalty" of the Communists - he chose to return, only to deliberately "absent himself from the remainder of the trial" at the moment of his choice and to continue the struggle in a manner he judged necessary and appropriate.

Clingman's account of that decision provides some new insights, including a discussion in a London park with the SACP leadership in exile on whether he should return and face almost certain imprisonment or break conditions of his bail and stay outside the country. Again and again, the 'code' operates: he had given his word that he would return; returning to South Africa, certain in the knowledge of what that would entail, was a matter of personal honour. But it was not merely a question of codes and personal undertakings.

As Joe Slovo recalled later, Bram Fischer convinced the leadership that he had to return. He explained this in the letter read to the court on January 25, 1965: "I believe that it is the duty of every true opponent of this Government to remain in this country and to oppose its monstrous policy of apartheid with every means in his power. That is what I shall do for as long as I can." The "emphasis added" is important, explaining as no "rational" reading of those hard days can, the choices that Bram Fischer made; and for which he paid with his life.

He remained "underground" - in fact very much in Johannesburg for most of the time - for almost nine months and was captured on November 11, 1965. Sentenced to life imprisonment on May 9, 1966, he was subjected in prison to very harsh and degrading treatment - a chosen object of the wrath of the regime which could never forgive the treachery from an Afrikaner, far more unforgivable than the treachery of the recognisable enemy. He was very nearly on the point of death, and despite appeals from his family, the state would not release him; a life sentence meant exactly that. He was finally "released to the custody" of his brother Paul in Bloemfontein in March 1975, with the house being declared a prison. He died there on May 8, less than two months after his "release" and exactly nine years after he was sentenced to life imprisonment. But the state was unrelenting in its vendetta even after his death. Since he died a prisoner, his ashes were seized as "state property". A brick-sized slab in the Garden of Remembrance outside Bloemfontein (Panel 3, Row 4, Slab 7, from the left entrance) bearing the name A. Fischer, with the dates of his birth and death respectively preceded by a star and a cross, is the only memorial that physically exists in South Africa. But he lives in the memories of the people.

Memories. Here are two incidents that reflect the fragility of human memories, true and false, enduring and evanescent.

On May 8, 1995, the 20th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a joint session of Parliament in Cape Town paid tribute to those who died in the fight against Fascism and Nazism in Europe. Representatives from all political parties spoke eloquently. Not one of them, not even known members of the SACP who quite correctly paid tribute to the heroic role of the Soviet Union in that struggle, even so much as mentioned the fact that the day also marked the 20th anniversary of the death of one of the greatest fighters against the same evil forces within South Africa, a true Afrikaner Communist revolutionary.

Antjie Krog, who writes poetry in Afrikaans, is the parliamentary editor for SABC radio. Until recently, she headed the SABC radio team covering the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Her book Country of My Skull (Random House, Johannesburg, 1998) presents a personal and professional narrative of her interaction with the TRC process.

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