Ah, a cause! Helen Suzman, "window dressing" and feminism

I avoided writing a piece about Helen Suzman as so many in Thought Leadership were already climbing on the bandwagon. I admired Ismail Lagardien’s piece on Thought Leadership. He put it very well — and timeously — that there are many unsung woman heroes in the apartheid struggle whose memory or lack of remembrance are actually insulted with all the praises and flung bouquets for the passing away of one feisty lady, Helen Suzman.

I am convinced Suzman, at the end of the day, as much as she did, was a bit of sweet window dressing in the hands of the NP for decades. The NP could have knocked her off centre stage anytime they wanted to. The likes of Alistair Sparks, in his book The Mind of South Africa, spent some time on the conscientising effects of the NGK on the ruling Nats. Helen Suzman was there to “showcase” the regime as one that did allow constant criticism of its policies without censorship. Utter baloney of course. The likes of Helen Suzman – and I am not denouncing the woman and the politician per se — were examples of the Nats’ oafish attempts to look democratic or liberal.

So I wasn’t going to bother responding to this great lady’s death – note I still say she was great — and toss my bouquet of flowers as I was always a tad uncomfortable with Suzman’s ultimate role, which lay beyond her reach.

I was also uncomfortable with seeing so many people in SA journalism, including the SA blogsphere, doling out the obligatory, cheesy praise and so forth for Suzman. But some recent events, such as the very strong likelihood of the Chinese censoring or intercepting comments on my TL blog and Lionel Shriver’s interesting, gutsy article “Don’t be fooled by the little woman” persuaded me otherwise.

There is nothing more inspiring or energising than having a definite cause, a fiery raison d’etre. Or at lease the sense of one.

On this note, I used to receive via email all the commentary on my blogs here in China. Then, about two months ago, I realised I was no longer receiving them. The IT staff on Thought Leadership has no clue as to why. I am the only one with the problem … and, of course, the only TL blogger living in China. I thoroughly enjoy living in this great nation – the latter said for those spi – oops nearly said it – reading my blogs. Local IT expats in Shanghai and others are swearing blind the local municipality is intercepting my blogs’ commentary.

This does not surprise me at all. Spying and collecting information is part of the Chinese culture. I know the stories here of police stations collecting all sorts of mostly useless information from foreign teacher’s students about what is said in class, the movements of teachers and so forth.

When I first arrived in China I had a very young Chinese translator and self-appointed boss by the name of Felix. Sometimes a Chinese man I knew would offer me a lift to the school we were teaching at. He asked me one day, “The students say they saw you sometimes getting out of a car when coming to school or getting into a car when leaving school. Who is he, the driver, and why is he giving you a lift? How do you know him?” Felix looked at me sternly.

Now I have one hell of a temper. It only applies if I feel someone – as in the above utterly impudent, puerile manner – is trying to mind my business for me. In public, in front of gaping students and teachers alike, I bawled at Felix to mind his own bloody business and not to forget that I was old enough to be his father and he had no goddam right to enquire into my private life. He giggled nervously and sulked for weeks after. But he never asked me cheeky questions like that again. That incident would have been recorded at the local police station.

So all my TL mail is being intercepted. It is rather flattering, giving me a sense of a rebel with a cause. Well, actually, I have no rebel cause, love living here in China, and think it is a great nation in the making. Did you hear that, dear reader, with slanted eyes or otherwise? The attempt at censorship I am apparently receiving reminds me of the Weekly Mail, which during the apartheid struggle, was a great rebel with a noble clause.

The Weekly Mail was often banned from publication. The best was when the new censorship rules were passed. The Weekly Mail, steered by Anton Harber et al., published all the blacked out photos of people and blacked out all the parts of the articles that were not allowed to be shown in the publications.

The newspapers looked like they had been drowned in black ink. And stank a bit. Shwow, something was definitely rotten in the state of Denmark , ou boet. The SA censorship board had issued a statement of what was not permitted to be shown but neglected to say how it was to be censored, ha ha!

By having a virtually unreadable newspaper for one or two weeks covered in black smears over impermissible information, the gutsy Weekly Mail brought to attention how little was allowed to be seen by the SA public; some in that public generally fooled by the supposedly outspoken likes of Helen Suzman who were used like puppets by the Nats, I am sorry to say.

“Nooit! Onmoontlik!” Adriaan Vlok, minister of Law and Order at the time, surely screeched as he saw the black smears on the Weekly Mail newspapers and the Weekly Mail was banned for a week or two. To be banned! Such rebel glory! Agh, a real rebel with a cause, this newspaper I first had the pleasure of writing for back in 1989!

Once the struggle was over and Mandela was in power, the Weekly Mail understandably battled to find a new newspaper identity.

The other event that inspired me to respond to Helen Suzman’s death, or more correctly speaking, to other people’s responses on her passing away, was Lionel Shriver’s article. In China, historically, women are often treated as having far less importance than men. The man is served first at the table and gets the drink poured into his glass first. Boy children are revered far more than girl children. The stories of abandoned girl children are sadly numerous, often left outside a police station in a blanket. An example of the dumped babies is Emily Prager’s 2002 memoir about adopting a Chinese girl baby, Wuhu Diary.

(As an aside, on Prager’s book, which goes into some detail about how Chinese girl children are abandoned in more remote parts of China and adopted by American and other foreign families: I can easily buy the book in Shanghai. There are also other books and magazines, such as Time, which contain material about the current and previous governments here that is most scathing and critical. Apparently it would not be the same if such material were readily available in Mandarin. Apparently. It is all confusing. I would never write anything scathing and condemning about China: this country has been truly wonderful for us, dear readers, including my Chinese …)

Once a wonderful Chinese family generously invited my wife Chookie and I to dinner in a restaurant to celebrate Chookie’s birthday. To my surprise, when the food and the drink arrived, I was offered first. Most uncomfortable with this, I politely managed to get everyone to agree my wife must be served a drink first and then have first choice at digging into the feast. In our Western culture we have – arguably also window dressing as Lionel Shriver touches on – doors gallantly opened, men taking out and pushing in the chairs for women at the dinner table, letting the ladies get a drink poured first and all the chivalric rest. I am comfortable with it and love to treat my wife like this. It gives me a meaningful, gentlemanly tingle in the gut. It helps ensure better nooky.

Agh, these are the little ways in which we blokes should be honouring “our” women. I know the commonplace chivalry is also window dressing. It glosses over the real hells of wife beating and the invisible, dubious purgatories of the “glass ceiling”, that managerial tier in many women’s careers past which they battle to climb. (As an aside I would love to know Sarah Britten’s comments on her experiences of any glass ceilings in the ad world; perhaps she already has written on this.)

Helen Suzman’s cause, admirable, unstinting in her giving, was ultimately gratuitous and ineffective. BJ Vorster’s ridicule of her and PW Botha calling her a “vicious little cat” would have been compliments to her. They are strokes on the back, ensuring she had a cause while she lived very well.

Agh, the Struggle! Such meaning! “Remember when we …” and, “Man we had to run hell for leather when the police chased us through Rhodes University with those shamboks …” Such significance!

One of the amusing bits of literary, struggle history was the need to put the length of time served in jail or detention after one’s name, a bit like a university degree. Thus we had: Breyten Breytenbach (seven years); Jermey Cronin (seven years); Ahmed Kathrada, (eighteen years) … I remember the performance poet Keith Gottschalk (a few weeks or so) getting on the “Struggle credential” bandwagon* when he, I am sure with a sense of “cause” and delight, was detained for a few weeks or so and gleefully filled a whole poetry magazine, current at the time, UpStream, with his “inside” experiences as poems.

Of course, on the back of my first collection of poetry, Gathering Light, I proudly mention my little two months “inside”. Hey, I also spent about three days in solitary then; does that get me an honorary mention?

The Struggle! Agh, bring us back that sense of meaning, but not so much pain and loss, hey?

* I emphasise that I refer to Keith Gottschalk’s case, not the three major political activists mentioned above whom I would not wish to satirise, though Cronin has done a good job of it.