Politics Notebook | It was a Breyten kinda thing to say: ‘Ons vat die skrum’

IN 1975, I did a two-month military camp in Bloemfontein. Early one morning, I was listening to the news on my little transistor radio in the tent when the newsreader said Breyten Breytenbach had been arrested by the security police and would be charged with terrorism.

I remember how furious I was. At the time, I worked for Beeld and was quite comfortable inside my white apartheid bubble. But Breyten, whom I hadn’t yet met, was already a symbol to me — of the right to think differently, to be simultaneously Afrikaner, African, global citizen, and democrat.

I walked to my captain and said those bastards had locked up Breyten, and I refused to be a soldier that day. It only cost me a week of extra guard duty, but it was a milestone in my political awakening. (Later, I joined the End Conscription Campaign and refused to do further camps.)

I met Breyten in person 12 years later when I was part of his and Van Zyl Slabbert’s Dakar safari to meet the exiled leadership of the ANC in Senegal. When I told him the story of my mini rebellion, he just smiled and replied: “They should’ve locked you up with hard labour for a month; it would’ve made you a better person.”

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In Senegal, and later during our visits to Ghana and Burkina Faso, I was amazed at how comfortable Breyten was in his African skin. The politicians, writers, artists, and intelligentsia of those countries embraced him and accepted him as a son of Africa.

Breyten founded the Gorée Institute – a pan-African institute for culture, development, and democracy – on the old slave island of Gorée outside Dakar. I’ve been there several times, once with his older brother, the legendary soldier Jan, and a few former West African generals. On that occasion, Breyten wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan of his project “Imagine Africa”.

For many cerebral women, Breyten was a sex symbol. He wasn’t just a very handsome man who took good care of himself and dressed with exceptional taste, but also extremely charming. Several women have told me over the years his words, his voice and his smile were pure seduction.

But above all, Breyten was, for me, a powerful symbol of the disconnect, the decoupling between Afrikaans as an indigenous African language and Afrikaans as the tool of Afrikaner nationalism.

Although he also wrote in French and English, he was primarily an Afrikaans writer. Like André P. Brink and Antjie Krog to some extent, he was proof that Afrikaans wasn’t just a silly little dialect at the southern tip of Africa but a fully-fledged, rich and evolving language in the community of world languages.

Once, long ago, I attended a writers' conference in New York where some of the world’s leading contemporary writers were present. I was amazed at how celebrities like Salman Rushdie pushed through the crowd to reach Breyten and embrace him.

Not always saw eye to eye

The news of his death was widely covered by media in America, Canada, Britain, and Europe. Several American and British radio and TV channels asked me for commentary on him.

Breyten and I clashed badly a few times. After I wrote an open letter to him in the original Vrye Weekblad in June 1991, we had no communication for a long time. I took issue with his dark prophecies – that South Africa was inevitably doomed – during every visit home, but then he’d fly back to France. You can’t just come here, shit on all of us and then flee back,” I said. I even wrote that perhaps he had romanticised the struggle so much that now, with the glamorous part of the struggle over, he had lost interest.

Later, I regretted the tone of my letter, and looking back at what he said back then – especially about the ANC – I must admit he was right, and I was the one who had over-romanticised things.

Breyten and Ariel Sharon

Breyten always cared about the rights of minorities and oppressed communities. He sometimes spoke passionately about the plight of the Catalans in Spain – he spent much time at his home in Girona in Catalonia.

But he also felt strongly about the Kurds, Bosnian Muslims and Palestinians. After a visit to the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel, he wrote an open letter to the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, in 2002, which was published in several international newspapers.

He wrote, among other things and is still as relevant in 2024: “The underlying assumptions informing your actions are racist. As was the case with the South African regime, the methods by which you hope to subjugate the enemy consist of force and bloodshed and humiliation."

And: “It is blatantly averred, again and again, that any criticism of Israel's policies is an expression of anti-semitism. With that assertion, the argument is supposed to be closed. Of course, I reject this attempt at censorship by thus disqualifying the grounds for debate. No amount of suffering – be it of the Tutsis, Kurds, Armenians, Vietnamese, Bosnians or Palestinians – can confer immunity from criticism. No reference to some ostensibly sacrosanct Greater Israel can camouflage the fact that your settlements are armed colonies built on land shamelessly stolen from the Palestinians, festering there as shards in their flesh, or snipers' nests, intended to thwart and annul any possibility of Palestinian statehood. There can be no way to peace through the annihilation of the other, just as there is no paradise for the ‘martyr’.

“Why should we look the other way when it is Israel committing crimes? A viable state cannot be built on the expulsion of another people who have as much claim to that territory as you have. In the long run, your immoral and short-sighted policies will furthermore weaken Israel's legitimacy as a state. As provocateur, cold-blooded and cruel, you stand out among your peers. In your dogged attempts to subvert previous agreements and scupper the possibility of peace – except for the peace of the graveyard and of exile, premised on the ‘total transfer’ or disappearance of the Palestinian entity – you are bringing turmoil to the region. It remains to be seen whether the growling of your principals in Washington will inflect your campaign of calculated terror and wanton destruction – or whether it is but a smokescreen behind which to better align the ‘free world's' war on ‘terrorism' and for the domination of resources and a global control of markets, cheap oil and ‘democracy'."

Rassie, he’s in your head, Rassie

There cannot be many true rugby enthusiasts in the world who would disagree that Rassie Erasmus, and not some rather obscure French Sevens coach, is the best coach in the world in 2024. By far.

Rassie not only ensured that the Springboks are world champions, ranked first and widely regarded as one of the very best teams in decades, but he is an exceptional innovator and experimenter – more so than any coach before. He is pure rugby brain. And he is a national hero.

His award was lost purely because of bitterness and vindictiveness after Rassie’s verbal sparring with the international rugby establishment.

I agree with veteran rugby writer Dan Retief on Twitter/X:

P-S wants the scrum

Maybe it’s just me, but I read much more than just a few words in Rugby Player of the Year Pieter-Steph du Toit, boerseun from Riebeek-Kasteel, telling the international referee during a recent test against Australia (in Afrikaans): “Ons vat die skrum.” (We'll take the scrum.)

It’s a philosophical statement that belongs on a T-shirt.

♦ VWB ♦

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