One for Azazel: The paw-paw, the fan, and Eugene Terre'Blanche

“Therefore the tragic figure of our times is perhaps the one who takes the guilt on himself to validate our fear or hate,” said Dr Johns. — Etienne Leroux, Een vir Azazel

Six years ago I was Eugene Terre’Blanche. On stages throughout the country, I echoed those mad speeches that drove confused young men towards the extremes of right-wing hate with the “correct” combination of imagery, rhetoric, dramatic pause and thunderous rage. I also wrote the play, and as a result was branded either a racist or a communist, according to the narrow interpretations of journalists and Afrikaans festival-goers. The text, which was in the vein of the Hitler biopic Max, was neither, but I was happy to elicit a strong response. Today, I fear response, as I’m sure you do.

They probably won’t remember me, but I sincerely extend my condolences to his family.

We all realise this is just the beginning. Whether his death was politically motivated or because of a wage dispute doesn’t matter. Eugene Terre’Blanche, the most extreme symbol of right-wing extremism, is murdered in his sleep on the same weekend that Julius Malema once again, flaunting his disregard, sings “kill the boer” in Zimbabwe — just outside the legal jurisdiction of our courts, but very much within earshot of our nation (and is welcomed with open arms).

This is a strong enough scenario to make most shudder.

But there will be a lot more to it, of that you can be sure.

Before any confrontation, one should know your opponent. Whether it’s a boxing match, a academic debate, or a soccer match, knowing how your opponent thinks is the key to success. Cyril Ramaphosa understood this, and wiped the floor with Roelf Meyer at Codesa. The same goes for Nelson Mandela in any of the negotiations he turned in his favour during his long political career. In researching Mr Terre’Blanche, I think I also gained a fair bit of insight into his character, his always larger than life presence, his narcissism and his petty failures, the simplicity of a man of a horse, and the complexity of an actor on the stage of apartheid politics.

It seems polarisation and confrontation is the name of the South African game these days, so it’s best we get to know the playing field. Whether the battle is verbal or violent, it is coming. And as I favour the verbal variety, let me give some clues to any aspiring soldiers out there.

Until recently, I feared that Malema might be killed for his bloody remarks, and achieve an unjustified martyrdom. Now the tables have been turned. Eugene Terre’Blanche has escaped a quiet and obscure death. In life, he was larger than reality. Those who had not met him expected a giant of a man — he was actually rather short. And the real violence of the AWB was surpassed by the symbolic violence of uniform and display — balaclavaed marches, breaking into the World Trade Center, the hand-on-heart fervour of young men in khaki. In death, this will become even more true. Not least of all because of the timing of the murder.

Easter is a crucial time in any of the Christian denominations, and carries a very special meaning in Protestantism too. On this weekend, Christ died for the sins of the world, the scapegoat for all the wrongs humanity has committed. Not even the staunchest AWB member would cast Terre’Blanche in the same mould, but don’t underestimate the power of emotion in these times.

According to some, the concept of the scapegoat comes from a mistranslation of “Azazel” as “Ez ozel” in the King James Bible. “Azazel” being a goat-like fore-runner of Satan, “Ez ozel’ meaning “the goat that departs”. Leviticus describes how Aaron must cast lots on two goats — one being sacrificed to God, the other presented to God before being chased out into the desert, “to Azazel”. Of course, all these meanings carry a lot of weight in the South African situation. An even stronger text, to my taste, would be One for Azazel from Etienne Leroux’s Silberstein trilogy, which I would advise all those with one-dimensional images of Afrikanerdom to read.

The question is then: will Terre’Blanche serve as a sacrifice on the altar of political justice? Will this blood finally lead to some sort of forgiveness?

Hopefully, yes. Probably, not. In the first place, the sacrifice must not carry guilt itself, which disqualifies him. Furthermore, the blood of countless innocents has already been shed, and the violence in South Africa has long ceased to bear any relation to some twisted form of justice. But I am quite sure that some will read this murder as the end or beginning of an era.

What happens next? Simple. The violence increases. The other day I guessed that we would see right-wing terrorism attacks in South Africa within the next five years. Make it a year. That’s what happens on the extremes of frustrated minorities. And while our leader(s) keep displaying their inability to take control of polarising issues, it is once again up to ordinary South Africans to pick up the pieces. And here we can take courage. Because good South Africans have survived many decades of terrible leaders.

What do we do? We ignore the politicians. They lose their power when we stop listening to them. We avoid mass behaviour. We resist mobilisation. We drink beer, and disagree with each other. We don’t carry guns. We don’t support newspapers that want to keep us stupid. We don’t support politicians who want to keep us poor. We get off our asses and start making a difference — if they don’t know what effective transformation is, we start doing it ourselves (see Beer Adriaanse’s “Boer Maak ‘n Plan”). Most importantly, we don’t respond in the racially programmed ways that brought us to where we are. It is time for a new paradigm.

Societies can be judged by their reactions in times of crisis. And the paw-paw is speeding towards the fan. At the risk of sounding cheesy, we are the future we’ve been waiting for. Let’s bury the present.

At times like these I prefer to hear these sort of voices from Zimbabwe.

IF YOU DON’T STAY BITTER FOR TOO LONG
Charles Mungoshi

If you don’t stay bitter
and angry for too long

you might finally salvage
something useful
from the old country

a lazy half sleep summer afternoon
for instance, with the whoof-whoof
of grazing cattle in your ears
tails swishing, flicking flies away
or the smell of newly tamed soil
with birds hopping about
in the wake of the plough
in search of worms

or the pained look of your father
a look that took you all these years
and lots of places to understand
the bantering tone you used with your
grandmother and their old laugh
that said nothing matters but death

If you don’t stay bitter
and angry for too long

and have the courage to go back
you will discover that the autumn smoke
writes different more hopeful messages
in the high skies of the old country.