Nadine
Gordimer: Chronicler of Apartheid And South Africa’s Transition
Saeed Naqvi
The world was in ideological transition when I met Nadine Gordimer in her bungalow in a Johannesburg suburb. Nelson Mandela had been released that very month after 27 years in the “White Man’s prison”. Earlier, the Soviet Union had collapsed.
Wild victory celebrations across South
Africa did not seem to touch her in quite the same way as it did other members
of the African National Congress. “I am overjoyed she said”, but didn’t look
it. There was a silent school which thought too many compromises had been made
with the White establishment. When I met Gavin Relly, Chairman of
Anglo-American mining giant, he was openly critical of the ANC’s economic
vision. And he was a hovering presence.
In that hyphenated entity called the
South African Communist Party and the African National Congress there were some
skeptics. In the first flush of Mandela’s release was, Joe Slovo an
extraordinary Jewish intellectual, like Gordimer. He was commander of the ANC’s
armed wing and a long time leader of the Communist party. He died in 1995 and
at the memorial meeting in Sweto I saw Mandela and Nadine Gordimer together,
tears rolling down their cheeks.
Her spontaneous hospitality, organizing
canapés to go with drinks, was a function of her curiosity. I was the first “Indian-Indian”
in her house. How does one explain this “Indian-Indian” bit?
Well, Indians were not allowed to travel
to South Africa until Apartheid was officially lifted. In the Ministry of
External Affairs, the Joint Secretary dealing with Africa, Arundhati Ghosh was
as excited about Mandela’s release as I was. Rather than wait for Apartheid to
be officially lifted, she thought it would be only fitting for an Indian
journalist to be in South Africa in time for Mandela’s release. So she helped
me overcome passport and visa complications.
This is how I happened to be the first
“Indian-Indian” in the Gordimer house. South African Indians came in two
streams. The first ship, Truro, docked in Natal in 1860 with the indentured
Indian. Then, until 1911, 262 vessels set sail from Madras (Chennai) and 122
from Calcutta (Kolkata), to Natal, with Durban as the growing metropolis.
The second stream were Merchants from
Surat, an overwhelming majority of whom were Muslims. Leaders of this group
like Baba Abdullah and Mohammad Cachalia developed an urgent need for a trained
Barrister to fight some of their cases. They did not look for religious
affinity. They looked for a fellow Gujarati. That is how Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi landed in Natal in 1893 as lawyer for fellow Gujaratis. Children of these
Gujaratis, educated in the finest Western universities, formed the backbone of
South African resistance.
Gordimer had all these facts on her
fingertips. But much of this was history. The current African Indians she knew
were “comrades”, in leadership positions of the ANC.
It was a remarkable feature of Nelson
Mandela’s first cabinet that eleven of its members were of Indian origin. Other
than Jay Naidoo and Mac Maharaj, there were nine Muslims and a Parsee in the
cabinet. “You have noticed a fact that has probably never occurred to Mandela”.
In the ANC-Communist struggle “they were only comrades”. Ahmad Kathrada was the
Minister in Mandela’s office. Later, Essop Pahad replaced him during Thabo
Mbeki’s Presidency. Both had long years ago stayed in Ajoy Bhavan, CPI’s Delhi
head quarters because of their old Communist affiliations.
She was aware of the paradox that
Mandela was released only after the Soviet Union collapsed. In the course of her
Jawaharlal Nehru memorial lecture in New Delhi in November 1995 on “Our Century”
she said as much: “the fall of communism and the end of colonialism were both
linked in contradictory ways”.
The collapse of the Soviet Union
enfeebled the internal struggle in South Africa to such an extent that there
was nothing to fear in the ANC-Communist combination, both in the country and
externally, in strategic terms, particularly after the White regime had put
away all the nuclear assets.
F.W. De Klerk found in Mandela “a man I
can trust”, exactly as Mrs. Margaret Thatcher discovered Mikhail Gorbachev as
“a man I can do business with”. There must have been considerable give and take
in both instances, she thought. She spent a long time lamenting the fact that
V.S. Naipaul had taken to travelogues and that he would not write novels any
more. “What a waste of a great imagination!” She threw up her hands.
Nadine Gordimer, a remarkable chronicler
of life in Apartheid South Africa, left behind many insightful observations.
During her India visit she was invited to stay in the Raj Bhavan in Mumbai
where she received a note that the Governor, P.C. Alexander, expected her for
tea in the garden. A surprise awaited her when she turned up. “I walked towards
the Governor and his wife, expecting to be greeted. I kept walking towards
them: they would neither greet me nor rise to receive me. I then realized that
he was following, to the last syllable, some antiquated rule of the Raj –
Governors don’t rise to receive commoners.”
“Those who impose colonialism, quite as
much as those who accept it, over a period of time, get addicted to colonialism’s
trappings and fixtures.” She put her head back and laughed.
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