15+ questions for Herman Lategan

Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only ...

1. Describe yourself in a hashtag.

#diegrootverlange

2. Your favourite radio shows?

I don't listen to the radio much, except in an Uber if Kfm 94.5 is on. When I work, I listen to Spotify in the background. Anything from old French Café Society, Weimar-era German cabaret and music from Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, Russia, Malawi and Zimbabwe, to local. The music from Zimbabwe can be quite sad, hey? I don't understand a word, but you can feel those people are sad; they are yearning. Also Johnny Cash, Laurie Anderson, Nina Hagen, Etta James, Klaus Nomi, Yoko Ono, Creedence Clearwater Revival; there are not exactly any radio stations that play the latter.

I like melancholic or avant-garde music. As an only child, the radio was my friend, I listened to Springbok Radio. It was lovely, all those radio dramas. Dans van die Flamink, Father dear Father, Tales of Antiquity, too many to mention.

Midnight affairs minister Robin Alexander was like a friend. He spoke through the night, in a kind of higher English, then he switched seamlessly to Afrikaans. I was never able to sleep (read too much) and listened to his absurd stories. It had to be a certain type of dark personality that was able to host such a programme every night for so many years. Alone in the studio while the country slept or lay awake, perhaps in hospitals, nursing homes, alone on farms, security guards – his voice was everywhere and through the night.

3. Which international and local publications do you read every day?

Oh, my list is probably going to sound pretentious, but I read quickly and in between while I'm working. Already start at 06:00 on my phone, then throughout the day I dip in and out of publications, and then in the evening at the Vasco da Gama Taverna between 17:00 and 18:30. I get a lot to read there, it might seem like I'm sitting there doing nothing, no, I'm whizzing it.

Local: Obviously Vrye Weekblad on Fridays and weekends, News24 for local news, Daily Maverick (also the newspaper), GroundUp, Financial Mail to read Chris Roper, MyBroadband, Moneyweb, Versindaba, The Mail & Guardian, SA Jewish Report. I stopped reading the Sunday papers, simply can't, can't, can't. Then there are the wonderful community newspapers that Caxton publishes. Crazy about a community newspaper. Just look at the Hoëvelder  with stories like: “Runaway truck causes chaos in Ermelo." Then the intro: “The truck apparently rolled backwards in Voortrekker Avenue, where it hit one vehicle before causing chaos in the parking area."

Ordinary news about ordinary people.

In my teenage years I already started writing stories about people who'd died in Sea Point, ordinary people, or when they turned 100, and such stuff, written by hand, given to Atlantic Sun. For free, nothing paid to me, but great fun, learned a lot.

International (my Vasco reading list): The New York Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph for its epitaphs, Spectator for its art pages, The Standard for interesting words, The Times, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, The Village Voice, Interview Magazine, The Atlantic, Vice, Gourmet Traveller, Unherd, Attitude and Esquire.

4. Your favourite authors?

Many, don't feel bad if I left you out.

Local: Sheila Cussons, Barend Toerien, Zakes Mda, Dianne du Toit Albertze, Jolyn Phillips, Daniel Hugo, Njabulo Ndebele, Chase Rhys, Joan Hambidge, Etienne Leroux, Hans Pienaar, Theunis Engelbrecht, all the Sestigers, Richard Rive, Fred Khumalo, Sonja Loots, Damon Galgut, Lynthia Julius, Tom Dreyer, Corné Coetzee, Pieter Odendaal, Athol Fugard, Hedley Twidle, Ivan Vladislavić, Jonny Steinberg, Mark Gevisser, Fourie Botha, Miriam Tlali, Herman Charles Bosman, K. Sello Duiker, Bessie Head, Johann de Lange, Koekie Ziervogel, Rian Malan, Lin Sampson, Mary Renault, Stephen Watson, Jacob Dlamini – just to name a few.

Abroad: Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Gerrit Komrij, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Haruki Murakami, Getrude Stein, Isabel Allende, Toni Morrison, Willem Frederik Hermans, Orhan Pamuk, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Kazuo Ishiguro, James Baldwin, Doris Lessing, Herta Muller, Bertolt Brecht – too many to list.

5. Books you've reread and can recommend?

Everything from: Charles Dickens, love his work, he focuses on the poor, Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, Raymond Chandler, John Steinbeck, Raymond Carver, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, Dorothy Parker, Chinua Achebe, Langston Hughes – again too many to mention. For rhythm and musicality, the 1933 translation of the Afrikaans Bible and the King James.

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6. Your favourite poems?

There are thousands, but this simple poem by Barend Toerien always stays with me:

Laagwater

En die seun soek vondse met sy voete,
vroetel met sy tone deur die wieren alikreukels, periwinkels,
met die glip van klipvissies oor die bloumossels.
Wat het van daardie kind geword
waar hy daar sit in die son
en stip staar na sy vingers rumatiekerig krom?
Klipvissies met slap stertjies
bly gly gewoonweg in die rotssplete rond
met laagwater.

7. If you could choose one poet to visit tomorrow, who would it be? Living or dead. And why?

I would like to visit Sheila Cussons for a long time, Amanda Botha has to be there too. We shall talk about the old days and Sheila will read us some of her poems. She would give me her shopping list again like she did every week and I would go buy her provisions. Then when I go back, we'll unpack and I'll sit and talk for a while.

She could also give good advice and talk about food. As Amanda once mentioned to me: When we were friends with Sheila, we were young; only now do we realise what a great person she was. Big heart, big intellect. I miss her very much.

8. Overrated writers? (And books?)

Jirre, I have respect for any person who can sit down and write. This is one very brave act, I have only respect. Of course, there's a lot of fluff out there, but I'll pass. Okay, that whole genre of Afrikaans Christian fiction. It's the biggest pot of bollie imaginable, isn't it, full of little messages that they can shove up their arses. Elsa Winckler, keep passing, as in forever and ever.

9. What is the most terrifying aspect of journalism for you?

There are too many people who work in an echo chamber at the bigger companies. People start thinking, talking, dressing the same, no, oh jirre. Then there are senior journalists who tell you: “Write closer to home, look your reader in the eye, remember you are not writing for the bohemian in Melville." Puh-fucking-lease, how parochial.

I'd rather go clean toilets than listen to shit like that. I blame the Afrikaans “mainstream" press for keeping many Afrikaners in a metaphorical laager (and stupid) for too long with articles that do not challenge and where people are too afraid to offend. How many more times does one have to read about a rugby player's wedding, pink feet, and a singer who has now found Jesus so that his career can get a boost?

Read this piece about good journalists who currently are suffering and have to make new plans to survive. 

10. If you could only choose one topic to write about, what would it be?

I would quite like to die, but then I have to be able to come back and write about it. Now that would be a scoop. Death fascinates me. I once booked into the Salvation Army to stay there for a month and interview the people. Also to make peace with my late father, long story.

When I looked up again, I'd stayed there for a whole year and listened to everyone's life stories. There was a cat that knew on which floor to get off. He enters the elevator with you, and then you have to press number three, and he gets out there.

Then one morning I woke up and thought, you're crazy. Get out of here. You've taken it too far. It taught me a lot about poor people and poverty. There is nothing glamorous or romantic about it.

One more topic? There are hundreds, but I would like to spend a day in a mortuary. While the bodies are being carried in; at night when the lights go out. I just don't want to die from the cold, I have to write the story first.

11. Would you say you are an empath or do you just have a sorry heart? Tell.

Something of both, I can be quite paralysed with pain when I see outsiders suffering and no one cares, no one understands them. I can put myself in such people's shoes and it can have a negative effect on my own mental health.

12. How many fucks do you give?

Nothing anymore. But I do give a fuck about the future of South Africa.

13. Is there someone who intimidates you? Who you won't take on if you don't agree with him or her?

When I was about 14, a friend (nowadays terribly grand) and I delivered newspapers over there at the old Hendrik Verwoerd building next to parliament. I sometimes delivered John Vorster his newspapers early in the morning, he was already in the office by that time. He was friendly, but I was very afraid of him. He could shout wildly on the phone. Not long after that I also met PW Botha, I think I was actually even more afraid of him.

14. Is there anything you regret?

Yes, I probably should have kept my big white mouth shut at times, but my mother was like that. She said anything that came into her head and swore a lot. She came from Namaqualand, where swearing is part of the language. But when I think about it, why should I censor myself? In any case, it's too late now to do anything about the past, it's only onwards and upwards and to hell with the rest.

15. Do you hold grudges against people after you've fallen out?

No, but they do hold grudges against me. I'm like a voodoo doll full of needles. It used to bother me, but I don't care anymore. I am in the last straight to the chequered flag of my life, I have too much to do. Good riddance.

16. What is your pet hate?

People who talk about poor and homeless people like they are garbage. One man wrote on Facebook that all homeless people in Cape Town should go to Robben Island. People are callous and arrogant, they are too lazy to understand the context of poverty, especially here, the history associated with it. Poverty did not arise out of a vacuum. Go read about the slaves, it goes way, way back.

17. What do you think of Melania Trump?

I think she is a smart woman who knows exactly what she is doing. Don't judge that banana by its peel, or a book by its cover. However, she reminds me of that sexy but dangerous robot in the film Ex Machina. Beautiful and fierce.

18. And Elon?

At first, I empathised when I heard he was on the spectrum, but now he's starting to act like a hologram or a robot. The interviews I've read with his father show me he probably has a primal wound. He was never going to get Errol's approval, he was never going to be good enough.

I suspect if he had to be alone with Melania in an elevator, he would pinch her butt. He is so into elevator love. Two robots making out.

19. If you could choose one person in America to interview, who would it be? And why? What do you want to know about him or her?

I would love to talk to gonzo and New Journalism journalist Gay Talese about his work. And how as a journalist you can constantly improve yourself. He did some of the most amazing interviews with Frank Sinatra.

Esquire sent him to talk to Sinatra. But Sinatra would have none of it. He then said he had a cold, which he did have, but a mild one. Talese follows him and his friends and bodyguards for a long time and interviews the people close to Sinatra.

He then writes one of the best profiles ever about someone who wouldn't talk to him. Look at this first sentence: “Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something."

He immediately draws you in, you become a camera. You are there. Read it here.

20. What makes you the angriest about South Africa?

People who are too complacent and slackers too much to really find out about people in need and why they end up on the streets. Yes, I'm repeating myself, but hell, how did we get to this point?

I have read many, many books on this subject. I have spent the night in tent cities, spoken to hundreds of homeless people and conducted many, many interviews with welfare organisations. I sound like a stuck record, but I'm not going to give up. I know what I'm talking about.

21. The South African politicians you like the least at the moment?

All those in former pres. Thabo Mbeki's cabinet when he was busy with his HIV/Aids denial nonsense. Thousands of people died, thousands of children were orphaned, while they all sat there with their pensions, medical funds, salaries, holidays, nice fat, embalmed lives and they remained silent. Here they are.

Remember, your day will come. You will go screaming into the afterlife.

22. Do you sometimes wish you weren't a South African?

No, I'm very happy here. New York could be an option, but all my friends there complain that the city has lost its creative soul. It's expensive and you work so hard, you can't go out at night. Too tired.

23. Where would you like to live and work if you could choose?

Right here in Green Point where I have lived for 40 years, minus the one year in the Salvation Army, and one year in New York. Talk about opposites. I grew up in Kloof Street boarding houses for the first five years of my life, then Sea Point and later I moved to Green Point. All those places are the places of my heart. All my roads lead here. 

24. Your favourite plays and playwrights?

Athol Fugard, because he captures ordinary people so well, in Hello and Goodbye, People are Living There and ‘Master Harold' ... and the Boys. There are many others, but he is my darling. Also Pieter-Dirk Uys, especially in the mid-eighties when Evita was still young and fresh and could castigate the Nats. All Steven Berkoff's pieces.

25. Your five favourite theatres – local and international?

Baxter, Cape Town, The Old Vic in London, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, the Emerson Colonial Theater in Boston, the Sydney Opera House. Sounds so grand, sometimes the best theatre is in strange places. I've been in a cave where people sang very beautifully, choirs, but I was plastered, so I don't remember where it was. I only remember this hellish cave and the people who sang so beautifully and the music that echoed.

26. New South African actors we should be watching?

I have to confess, I go to the theatre less and less. It was my great love. Something in me has become rotten, the earth is dry, I must water it, I must right myself. Many of these actors that I am mentioning now have already made their names, but they are under 50: Cintaine Schutte, Carel Nel, Wilhelm van der Walt, Albert Pretorius, Stefan Erasmus, Atandwa Kani, many more. Marianne Thamm's performance journalism works very well and I think that, even though she is older, she will become a bigger name in the theatre.

27. What TV series do you watch? And what kind of movies?

I like series and films that are dark and about loss. Film noir, kitchen sink realism, Italian neorealism and so on. I look for displaced persons, drug addicts, beggars, bar flies. I like the Jewish humour in Curb Your Enthusiasm on Showmax, and everything that the director Oliver Hermanus tackles, such as Beauty.

28. Your top 10 movies of all time?

There are thousands, but here are a few, in alphabetical order. Of all these films Paris, Texas is the one that crushed me the most, especially the last scene with Nastassja Kinski, defenceless, abandoned, and that Harry Dean Stanton with his deadpan dried ginger face. Wow.

A Streetcar Named Desire
All the Pretty Horses
Apocalypse Now
Babel
Bagdad Cafe
Barfly
Before Night Falls
Ben-Hur
Birdie
Blue Velvet
Brazil
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Brokeback Mountain
Burn After Reading
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Casablanca
Chinatown
Death in Venice
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Fellini Satyricon
Frances
Gone With the Wind
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Interiors
Judgement at Nuremberg
Last Tango in Paris
Look Back In Anger
Lost in Translation
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
Metropolis
Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Express
Mommie Dearest
Monster
My Own Private Idaho
No Country for Old Men
On Chesil Beach
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Our Man in Havana
Parasite
Paris, Texas
Pulp Fiction
Rome
Run Lola Run
Sunset Boulevard
Taxi
The Banshees of Inisherin
The Big Lebowski
The Elephant Man
The Godfather I, II & III
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Graduate
The Grapes of Wrath
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
The Last Emperor
The Postman Always Rings Twice
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Shipping News
There Will Be Blood
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
To Kill a Mockingbird
Trainspotting
Walk the Line
Zorba the Greek

28. Your celebrity crush?

Die sanger Lil Nas X (“Old Town Road”) en Pharrell Williams (“Happy”).

29. What do you find sexy?

Hoodies and dangerous men who still have the smell of prison on them. Wentworth Miller with an attitude and a knife in his ass pocket.

30. Do you believe in marriage?

No. All the weddings I've been to have ended in divorce, I'm not lying. Only one lasted. Probably can't blame the concept of getting married for that, but rather donate all that money to an orphanage.

I've been to fancy weddings, let me tell you. Helicopters, people singing at the top of their lungs. Five years later, they don't speak to each other. The one friend who divorced her husband – that man fell down the stairs of his house on the day of the divorce. These marble steps, there were many, then he rolled down them. Stone-cold dead. Double whammy. Divorce him and then he dies. Ouch.

31. What would you choose if you knew the answer was yes?

Meerlust Rubicon with ripe cheese such as Mimolette; it is riddled with tiny mites that add to its unique flavour and texture, giving it the appearance of tiny worms. I want to get really drunk, eat a lot and run amok. 

32. What does your ideal day look like?

Early out of bed, coffee, reading. Then I want to work on articles and short stories from about 08:00 to 11:00. With my jet I then fly a few people from the Cape to Johannesburg for lunch. On the plane we get champagne and oysters.

There is also a dance floor (for the return) and a Ladies' Bar with a thick carpet. Furthermore, there is a grand piano with an old queen who looks like Bette Davis and he plays this background music, maybe Liberace. It must be kitsch. We fly like this over the country and the mountains, through clouds, everything looks beautiful.

Why Johannesburg? Why not? We fly back late afternoon; if there are young people who want to dance, they can. Those dance floors from the '70s, with the coloured lights flashing from below.

The older people can go to the Ladies' Bar again. We smoke thick cigars from Cuba. It would be great if the entire jet were made of glass, then you could see everything below you. Back in the Cape, I want to see my cat and watch something on Mubi.

It's an alternative film with these takhare dying of thirst in a desert. Later I fall asleep, just as the last bloke with his cracked lips tries to say something, but no one hears him. The cat is on my lap and I sip my Meerlust Rubicon for the last time. Bliss.

33. Fantasy question: If you had to be stranded on an island with three people, who would you choose? Alive or dead?

Lyle and Erik Menendez, and Daisy de Melker.

34. What do you wish for South Africa?

That the ANC disappears and a new order takes over with fresh ideas and a love for people, not for money.

♦ VWB ♦

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