WHEN I returned to South Africa earlier this year after rather more
than a decade away, I received a phone call from a friend and former
colleague.
"Hello," he said, "is that Rip van Winkle?"
Having
moved around quite a lot, I’d gotten used to the attitude South
Africans often take to compatriots who live overseas. Geographically,
this country is far from the major economic and cultural centres of the
world. Even if you maintain contact, if you relocate it’s as if you
vanish altogether.
Still, my friend’s question made me realise how
long I’d been away. Long enough to justify a comparison to the
character in the famous story who falls asleep one day and wakes up
nearly 20 years later to find himself in a different country.
In
the old story, Rip van Winkle is a Dutch/British burgher of a sleepy
feudal colony. One day, escaping work on his little farm and his
scolding wife, he goes out walking in the hills. He comes across a party
of men in old-fashioned clothes who are playing nine-pins and drinking
liquor from a barrel. He takes a drink himself and falls asleep.
When
he wakes up, everything is different. Nearly 20 years have passed. The
country, formerly a colonial possession, is newly independent; a new and
colourful flag is flying. At his old pub the sign with "the ruby face
of King George" has been replaced with that of George Washington. "The
very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling,
disputatious tone about it."
He finds that an election is
nearing. The citizens are full of patriotic fervour. One of them wants
to know which party he votes for. Rip makes a mistake, declaring himself
a "loyal subject of the king. He is accused of being a tory, a spy, a
traitor. To deflect the hostility, he tells his tale of having been
asleep all those years.
Most of us probably think of the story as a
simple moral tale. And there’s something to that. But read with an
appreciation of its historical references and context, it is more than
an amusing observation to the effect that life can pass very quickly,
that change can happen in the blink of an eye. As Prof Arnold Goldman
argues, it can also be read as a story relevant to a society undergoing
rapid and fundamental change.
Its author, Washington Irving, was
an American writer and businessman whose personal and family business
interests kept him abroad many years in Europe. On the one hand he was
deeply interested in his American identity; on the other, he was
personally committed to the traditions he found in European literature.
In revolutionary America, meanwhile, there was a strong emphasis on
patriotic commitment to the new country. Living away from America and
involvement in foreign ideas were perceived as a kind of betrayal.
On
one level, Prof Goldman argues, Rip van Winkle is an allegory of its
author’s personal fear of rejection by his new society. On another
level, it was the author’s attempt to bridge his apparently
contradictory commitments through humour, wit and insight.
Rip’s
explanation of his long absence involves an inventiveness, a "crafty
madness" that appeals to the shrewd new Americans. Bustling and
disputatious as they are, they can recognise a good story.
And, as
it turns out, the insights he can offer actually derive from the fact
of his long absence. Rip van Winkle represents a knowledge of the past
that is to some degree innocent of the fervent arguments of the
revolution. By telling his story, he cleverly invents a role for himself
in the new world. (And in the process, incidentally, Irving invents
American literature.)
Having read the tale again, it occurred to
me to ask what Rip van Winkel — to give him a suitably South African
name — would observe if he’d suddenly gone to sleep in South Africa 14
years or so ago, and had just woken up.
The first thing he’d
notice, I think, is that the parallels with the tale about his American
cousin aren’t exact. The main difference between then and now, for our
Rip, is not that people have suddenly acquired a new civic awareness and
become busy, bustling and disputatious: they always were. The main
difference is in the quality of that disputation.
Back then, the
public discourse was full of ideological moralism. Drunk with new power,
the new government refused to be held accountable to anyone but itself.
It took strange turns that negated the high ideals that had brought it
to power. There were dark taboos regarding what might be said or not
said. Real debate based on content and not on social markers was not
possible. There was a lot of hostility and hot air. The atmosphere was
oddly similar to the oppressive system that had gone before.
Now,
by contrast, he finds everywhere a new and often vibrant public debate.
The government, though still ideological in orientation, is being made
to be more aware of the realities of power. There are some exceptions,
such as recent episodes involving the current president’s luxurious
living arrangements and ubiquitous penis.
But on the whole, the
old tone of ideological righteousness, with its atmosphere of
entitlement, has become harder to deploy. This, Rip observes, is
probably simply through overuse; time will wear any coin away, no matter
how thick.
Citizens and civil society have found that their
voices can be heard, that their actions can make a difference. Big
business is making its views on dubious economic policies publicly
known. Art, literature, music, theatre, film, TV drama and sport are
burgeoning, despite the difficulties they sometimes face. All of this is
translating into a very different atmosphere in society.
Rip took
a walk in the park on Gay Pride day, for instance, and found the smoke
of a hundred braais rising and hundreds of families enjoying themselves
in the sun; no one turned a hair at the sight of him and his shaggy dog.
And when the Boks are playing, he knows he’ll find a crowd of people of
different backgrounds, colours and persuasions at the Bowling Club
happily celebrating the fact of their existence.
Sure, he
recognises the problems — manifest problems. Bent politicians.
Unqualified ministers. Venal cops. Arrogant civic managers. Ignorant TV
news editors. Attacks on freedom of speech. Violent strikes.
Unemployment. Ill-considered land reform. Dumped textbooks. And the
rest.
Living in the new South Africa ain’t easy; it involves many
contradictions. But at least the old sense of political entitlement has
been replaced by a new and vital sense of engagement. People from
different backgrounds are converging in the same places and on similar
points of view. They have not allowed themselves to be cowed into
obedient or sullen silence.
Stroking his long white beard, Rip
likes to think that his long absence has at least this point — it
enables him to see how different things are. He sees a country that is
becoming too complex and too sophisticated to allow itself to be
dominated by the narrow interests of politicians alone. Urgent, vibrant,
informed, energetic and committed challenges to complacency will
continue to be necessary. But he observes that this new atmosphere of
possibility was not possible before.
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