Sir Laurens Van Der Post

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a writer, traveller and philosopher. His crowded life has experienced many episodes, a childhood in South Africa, a period as a member of the Bloomsbury set, several years as a Japanese prisoner of war, and after all that, another life almost as a writer, filmmaker and adviser to a prince and a prime minister. Now almost ninety, he's revered as one of the great spirits of our age, a man whose wisdom and experience, as well as his belief in the therapy of wilderness and solitude, make him a commanding and respected figure. He is Sir Laurence van der Post. I have this this image of you, Sir Lawrence, as as a small boy, because I know that you were a dreamer, Joseph the Dreamer, they called you, sitting in your mulberry tree dreaming. What d what did you dream about? Did you dream that you were going to do wonderful things in your life, or were they idle dreams?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post1:21

I don't think dreams were ever were idle. In my Mulberry Tree I usually I spent reading and thinking there, but I had already been launched in the direction.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post1:34

of listening to stories and telling stories and having a feeling that the whole of life was a story. What kinds of stories? Well, the first ones that lodged deeply with me I heard from my nurse.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post1:48

She was the first and most important people in my life. She was one of the few surviving authentic Bushmen.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post1:56

That is first people of Africa, one of the oldest races in the world, which has been cruelly made extinct. And she launched me in that direction of stories.

Presenter2:08

But you read classic boys' own stories as well, did you? And you had a sense of adventure even then?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post2:14

Well the their first book I read was a book called The Coral Island.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post2:19

which has been a great book of my life because it's a story.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post2:22

of three young people cast away on a coral island in the Pacific.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post2:27

Perhaps a desert island we concerned with today.

Presenter2:30

But did you dream, then, when you read those books, did you dream of being an adventurer yourself?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post2:36

Yeah.

Presenter2:38

Glan it.

Presenter2:39

But you did resolve, didn't you, when you were really very small, a very small boy, that you were going to rediscover the bushman.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post2:47

Yes, that came from Clara, from my nurse. I felt ve very concerned about the Bushmen, and when I heard they were still

Sir Laurens Van Der Post2:57

Some of them left intact in the Galahari desert. I said one day when I'm grown up,

Sir Laurens Van Der Post3:03

I'm going to go to them and beg their pardon for what we've done to them in the past.

Presenter3:09

Because your forefathers had killed them.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post3:12

Yes, my grandfather, in fact.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post3:14

had bled.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post3:15

one of the r raids which exterminated the last of the Bushman people, simply because he said they wouldn't tame. They were always killing his cattle, he said. Well, cattle to them were just animals, and from the beginning of time they had a right to kill animals for food.

Presenter3:33

And how old were you when you resolved to go out and apologize to them one day?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post3:38

It happened just after the First World War broke, nineteen fourteen. I was just getting on for eight.

Presenter3:45

And how old were you when you eventually found them and apologised?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post3:48

and not until long after the war I felt terribly ashamed of myself it took so long.

Presenter3:54

Tell me about your first record that you'd like to take to this desert island of ours.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post3:58

But could I begin with the Bushman one?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post4:00

It's a bushman's song of women sitting as they sit in the huts in the evening waiting for the hunters to come back. I call it the grass song.

Presenter5:06

The Bushman of the Kalahari and The Song of the Rain.

Presenter5:10

You say that your grandfather, Sir Laurence, was responsible for organizing the raid which exterminated, really, I think was the word that was used, the last of the Bushmen in the Orange Free State, or the Orange River Colony, I think as it was called then.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post5:22

Yeah.

Presenter5:23

But not quite, was it, because didn't he bring back two of them with him?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post5:26

Yeah. He heard some singing.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post5:29

some crying after the bushmen were killed, and he found two little bushmen.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post5:35

the young bushman, which he brought back, and they grew up in his home.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post5:39

And when I was a boy they were little old men.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post5:43

with grey hair. They were very great pals with my nurse, because they formed a little community.

Presenter5:49

What did they look like when you described the bushman to me?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post5:51

They were only about five foot in height. They tended to be, when they were well fed, for the tummies to stick out. But they had this extraordinary behinds.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post6:02

It's a behind it which in the good season.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post6:05

accumulated fats. It's rather like a hump to a camel. It's stuck out behind.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post6:12

And my old grandfather used to say that in his day

Sir Laurens Van Der Post6:16

They could stick out so far behind that you could stand a bottle of brandy on them. I don't know why a bottle of brandy.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post6:22

And they're Uh

Presenter6:22

Bye.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post6:23

Small. Quite small. That was so endearing to me as a child, because they weren't dwarfs, they were beautifully formed, beautifully shaped.

Presenter6:30

And what about facially?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post6:31

Oh, lovely faces They had something Mongolian about the eyes. In fact, the early Dutch

Sir Laurens Van Der Post6:38

They called them the Chinese looking people.

Presenter6:42

And they were very gentle people, and you you they were your friends.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post6:46

Yes, very gentle people, this the whole history is one of gentleness.

Presenter6:51

And they taught you about their culture. They they told you about their history.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post6:55

Yes, they of course yes, they told me a lot from their point of view about their stories and history.

Presenter7:00

And this I suppose would have been very important to you because you you were one of, I think, fifteen children, weren't you? Yes, I was number three.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post7:06

Yes, I was number thirteen.

Presenter7:09

So so that you needed somebody else to talk to. Presumably your mother didn't have a lot of time to do it.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post7:13

Well, and also my father was rather an important public person, and my mother had to accompany him, and she was away a great deal. So in a sense, you see, it's interesting that I remember

Sir Laurens Van Der Post7:27

Clara, really before I remember my mother visually. I remember, first of all, the necklace that she always wore.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post7:35

I'd see the necklace first, and then a lovely sort of apricot skin, and then a face.

Presenter7:42

Do

Sir Laurens Van Der Post7:42

A beautiful face forming above it, but an ancient face.

Presenter7:46

And how old were you when she died?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post7:48

And my daughter died I was about twelve.

Presenter7:51

And the two little bushmen had died.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post7:53

Oh, they died they died first. One died of pneumonia it was used to be a great killer in my part of Africa and the other one died soon after of a broken heart and loneliness.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post8:05

People gone and now his best friend gone.

Presenter8:08

So as far as you were concerned, by that stage, as I say when you were still a small boy, that was the end of the Bushman.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post8:14

That was the end of the Bushman, yes.

Presenter8:16

When did you discover, then, that he might still be out there somewhere?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post8:20

It was a time just after my father had died.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post8:24

There were always uh great hunters and pioneers calling in on our home.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post8:30

And I remember a great white hunter.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post8:33

Kami Lausan was deadly.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post8:35

That he had recently come from the Calahari, and he was amazed to find.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post8:40

On the fringes even of the Kalahari, the Bushmen, as they were in our history,

Presenter8:45

So that was when you really knew you could fulfil your ambition.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post8:47

Then I fulfilled the condition.

Presenter8:51

And indeed, as time went on, eventually you made a B B C documentary about them. You wrote a book, The Lost World of the Kalahari, and you taught the world about the Little Bushman. But a lot was to happen in your life before then, which I want to talk to you about. So let's just pause there and have your second record. Tell me about that.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post9:08

Well, this Japanese music was very important because it was the first country I went to outside Africa, and I travelled in a Japanese trampship.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post9:18

And at night I used to lie on the deck in the tropics, looking at the mast, staring along at the star, and then unfailingly the principal Shakuhachi player among the crew would play this wonderful eternal bamboo of the Far East.

Presenter10:32

Goro Yamaguchi playing Yugure no Kayoku on the Shakuachi flute.

Presenter10:37

Japan, Sir Laurence van der Poe, has played a a large part in in your life. You went there, you learned its language and its culture. That was in the twenties, many years, before you were to end up being starved and beaten as a prisoner of war.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post10:48

Uh

Speaker 410:48

Yeah.

Presenter10:51

But was there a connection for you there, do you think? Do you think in a sense when you were asked to fight in Java you you'd always been prepared for that moment?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:00

Yes, it's extraordinary.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:03

I found myself

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:05

Summoned by Wavell.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:06

to join him in Java.

Presenter11:08

General waiver.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:09

General Wavell. Just after Pearl Harbor it happened. I went.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:13

I felt quite weird at the sense of calling.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:16

It's something an experience I always thought of as being a sort of fairy tale experience going to Japan. It wouldn't come into my life again. Sudden

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:26

and candly it was in possession.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:28

And what was more?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:30

I was to find in the jungles of Bantam.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:33

that by buying two cups of coffee.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:36

for the Japanese in nineteen twenty six in a restaurant where it had been thrown out because the woman said she couldn't have colored people in there, and I interfered and asked them to

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:47

Come and have coffee and waffles with me. I was saving my life in the jungles in nineteen forty two.

Presenter11:55

Boy.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:55

Yes, indeed, because I was coming down.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post11:59

A mountain when I walked into a Japanese trap.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post12:03

and from all sides the Japanese came with their bayonets at me.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post12:08

I'd forgotten my a lot of my Japanese, but certainly the highest degree of politeness in Japan.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post12:15

came back to me, and I called out as loudly as I could

Sir Laurens Van Der Post12:19

Would your gentlemen please be so kind as to condescend as to wait an honourable moment?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post12:25

And they were expecting to be shot at and fired at, but not the highest degrees of politeness. It was better than a bomb.

Presenter12:32

So it did the trick.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post12:33

Yes, they stopped because

Presenter12:33

Yeah.

Presenter12:35

Many people of course will have read your your book about your experiences in the Japanese prison of war camp and others will have seen the the film version Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence with Tom Conte and David Bowie.

Presenter12:46

It did seem, as represented there, that your understanding of the Japanese culture in as in the story you've just told helped diffuse all sorts of difficult, potentially very dangerous situations.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post12:57

Well, it uh of course my Japanese came back to me in prison.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post13:02

And I think the people in the camp, we were able to do things, I think, in a way.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post13:09

Very which was creative.

Presenter13:11

You did see a tremendous amount of terrible temperature.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post13:15

Oh yes, oh yes, yes, yes.

Presenter13:16

Death by all manner and the use of Harry Geary included. I what effect does that have on a man to witness such such horrors with regularity?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post13:27

I had a period when I was technically condemned to death.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post13:31

and where they took me out to see other people die.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post13:34

And I found that what was very important

Sir Laurens Van Der Post13:37

for our officers when we were taken out to witness this.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post13:41

That

Sir Laurens Van Der Post13:42

You must not look away.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post13:44

From the people.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post13:46

who are being killed.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post13:48

For instance, one man had his head cut off, and the other was bound between trees, and they treated him for bayonet practice.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post13:56

And there was one officer between me and my fellow commanding officer, a wonderful RAF officer called Nichols. We both simultaneously put our hand round him, because he was about to faint.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:08

and said, Look, Harry, look.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:11

Nope.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:12

And we felt that we must go through.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:15

Otherwise the death would be pointless.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:18

And one got a certain strength from that.

Speaker 414:20

Uh

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:20

and everybody read it.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:22

And I think it communicated itself to the Japanese because on one occasion when they had done this,

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:28

The Japanese officer in charge came to me and he said, Now I will show you Japanese respect for the dead.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:37

And they actually sounded bugle songs over these two people they'd killed so horribly.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:43

Strange, isn't it?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:46

Record number three.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:48

I think

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:49

It would be a good moment, perhaps, to have some Indian music.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post14:53

Because it reminds me of a period when I was quite young, I was in Natel and knew a remarkable Indian family.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post15:01

who brought the Upanishads, the sacred books of India, and above this music which is concerned with the greatest mythological story in Indian history.

Speaker 415:49

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Presenter16:06

Ragh Kantse Kara played by Huriprasad Chao Rasia.

Presenter16:11

We hear a lot these days, Sir Laurence van der Poe, about post-traumatic stress syndrome and counselling after witnessing terrible events like the ones you've just been describing, but

Presenter16:23

You didn't need any of it, it seems. You stayed on, I think, in Indonesia for some time. But you did, nevertheless, some years later, go into the bush. You needed to. It was some kind of therapy for you. Can you describe to me

Presenter16:36

What happens when you do that?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post16:37

That's right.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post16:38

After about two and a half years, when I got to Johannesburg on a cold evening,

Sir Laurens Van Der Post16:45

I felt I didn't want the CP.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post16:47

I've had enough of human beings. So next day I got a truck and I got supplies. I hired a gun.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post16:56

And I took two the black people with me, and I took off into the bush. There was a certain place that came to my mind I must go to.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post17:05

And there I

Sir Laurens Van Der Post17:07

Camp.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post17:08

and while my people were making camp I walked out.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post17:13

And out of the bush stepped an enormous kudu.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post17:17

with that lovely head of

Sir Laurens Van Der Post17:19

Horns, it has, as most beautiful horns could have, perhaps the most beautiful of any antelope.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post17:25

and it walked out of the bush. It was quite unafraid of me. It stood there. It looked at me and it sort of sniffed the air like that. And I thought, Oh, my God, I'm coming home.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post17:36

The point was, I spent three weeks there.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post17:40

And by the day the war seemed to slip away from me, until one day I felt, Yes, I'm okay now, I can go and see you people.

Presenter17:47

But that has therefore I think helped you form one of what I believe to be one of your very profound beliefs, isn't it, that we twentieth century men have lost contact with nature. You've said I think words to the effect I don't think a man who's watched the sun go down could walk away and commit a murder. It's that thought that we need we all need.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post18:05

Yeah.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post18:07

Yes, we need we need to rediscover that. I still feel it more than ever.

Presenter18:07

Yeah.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post18:13

that our survival now depends upon rediscovering that in ourselves.

Presenter18:17

What is the consequence of not rediscovering that in ourselves?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post18:20

Well, what what is going on now? Nature is terribly under attack simply because we've become fundamentally metropolitan.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post18:29

civilization, and we no longer know what nature is about. And I think if you ignore nature without, you also, as my experience taught me, you ignore nature within.

Presenter18:41

Record number four.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post18:42

But this is music of which I think often.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post18:46

It reflects something very ironic that happened to me in the war.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post18:51

I was sent.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post18:52

to create a college for teaching guerrilla warfare when I came out of Abyssinia in Palestine.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post19:01

and the place in which I had to teach it was a small monastery.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post19:05

and this monastery was built

Sir Laurens Van Der Post19:07

there originally by the Crusaders, because it was the place.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post19:13

where they maintained Christ showed himself first to his disciples after the resurrection.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post19:21

And there the irony of it I was really taught basically what became in a mature form.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post19:28

commando tactics. It seemed to me so ironic. This is the place where I'm teaching people how to kill. And I often think back because uh I went particularly to a Greek Orthodox church.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post19:43

Where?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post19:44

They had what I call the resurrection music they played, and this reminds me of Byzantine resurrection music of that period and brings it vividly back.

Presenter20:52

Part of the Byzantine chant Passion and Resurrection sung by Sister Marie Carouse.

Presenter20:58

The wilderness, the bush, um, as you've described, is obviously a great source of strength to you, Sir Lawrence. It's also a place of dreams and of myth and of legend, isn't it? Because isn't it the case when you went eventually in search of the bushman, you trespassed, you broke certain taboos, and strange things happened to you as a result?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post21:18

There was a particularly extraordinary thing that happened to me at some hills I discovered in the Galahari desert. As far as I know, no European had been to them before.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post21:30

And they

Sir Laurens Van Der Post21:31

But witch doctor one day told me

Sir Laurens Van Der Post21:34

About these heels.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post21:35

And he said to me, I'll tell you how to get there, because I feel it's important you go there.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post21:41

But you must promise me you will not go there with blood on your hands.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post21:46

and when I set out for these hills ultimately,

Sir Laurens Van Der Post21:49

with this man's son to guide me.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post21:52

I always travelled behind, as we'd been taught in the war, and I suddenly heard some shots.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post21:59

In France.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:00

And I'd forgotten I hadn't told the hunter.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:03

who hunted for our food, not to shoot.

Presenter22:06

So there was blood on your hands?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:07

Yeah.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:08

And so we arrived there and found the word go.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:12

Everything went wrong.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:14

The camera after going wrong blew up.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:17

In our camp every morning we were attacked by bees.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:20

All sorts of things went wrong.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:23

In despair one evening I walked to Reinhardt. Now what can I do?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:27

And I went back.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:29

And I told this trainee witch doctor.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:33

I said suppose I wrote a letter to the spirits of the ill, begging their pardon.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:39

And we go and bury it.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:42

at the foot of a lovely panel it's called the Vanderpost panel today of ancient rock painting.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:49

And we went up early the next morning, and I'd written this letter.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:54

begging the pardon of the spirits the dawn had just fully broke.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post22:59

and the herd of the calahari from the height

Sir Laurens Van Der Post23:02

was visible. It looked lovely. And I said to them, Man, do you think we will be forgiven?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post23:08

He said,'Would you like me to ask the spirits'? I said,'Yes to.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post23:12

and he went into a kind of trance.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post23:15

and then said to me,

Sir Laurens Van Der Post23:16

Yes.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post23:18

The spirit says

Sir Laurens Van Der Post23:20

Well now.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post23:21

everything will go well for you. It does go well.

Presenter23:25

Were were these the theories, Sir Lawrence, and and and wilderness therapy and so on, and this this deep respect for nature that that you've talked about and an understanding perhaps of what might happen if

Sir Laurens Van Der Post23:31

Yeah.

Presenter23:35

If you didn't respect it, were these the sorts of things that you taught Prince Charles as a young man? This is what you talked to him about.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post23:42

Darny, I I would rather not talk about it, if you wouldn't mind.

Presenter23:46

Right. Right. I think it's well known that you've been a great friend for many years now. What sort of king do you think he will make?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post23:54

I think he'll be a great king.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post23:56

He's a great prince already, and he'll be a great king.

Presenter24:01

Tell me about record number five.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post24:03

This Piece of Music by Brendel

Sir Laurens Van Der Post24:06

has meant an awful lot to me. I think Brendel is of course an incomparable

Sir Laurens Van Der Post24:12

pianist. He was a particular friend also of one of my greatest friends, who died much too young of cancer.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post24:22

He died very painfully.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post24:24

and the drugs had ceased to take the pain away.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post24:27

At Brenda.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post24:29

Presented him.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post24:30

for the whole range of the Beethoven sonatas, and my friend, when the pain was too much, would get the nurses to play Brendel to him.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post24:40

And the pen went.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post24:42

and when he died

Sir Laurens Van Der Post24:43

at his funeral service in Saint Paul's Cathedral.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post24:48

Brendel played this piece and it tells us a lot about Brendel, about the power of music.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post24:55

and the sort of things that he sums up in life for me.

Presenter26:00

Part of the second movement of Beethoven's sonata No. Seventeen in D minor, played by Alfred Brendel.

Presenter26:06

It's always said, Sir Lawrence, that you had a great deal of influence on misses Thatcher when she was Prime Minister. You talked a lot, I think, during the Falklands War. Would you say you helped her come to terms with the moral dilemma of making war?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post26:24

Nobody deplored the dilemma more than she did.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post26:28

But I think she dairy felt out of a deep moral conviction.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post26:33

that there are moments in life

Sir Laurens Van Der Post26:36

when in defence of life.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post26:38

Life has to be if necessary has to be taken.

Presenter26:41

Do you still see misses Thatcher?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post26:43

Yes, of course she's a friend. I see her from time to time. Not as much as I did before she went into politics. Alas.

Presenter26:51

The one public person you've most famously criticised is Nelson Mandela, who on his release

Sir Laurens Van Der Post26:57

I haven't criticized him. I never have criticized him. Who says so?

Presenter27:01

I thought you said, when he was released after twenty seven years, that he was more a myth than a man, and that he was coming out with moth eaten platitudes.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post27:12

No, there I've never said that. It's completely untrue. What I did say to a meeting I addressed of the press in Cape Town.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post27:20

I said to them, You all

Sir Laurens Van Der Post27:23

Must have been disappointed.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post27:25

by the speech mister Mendera made when he came out of prison, that instead of talking to us out of his heart and out of his vision of Africa, he presented us with a piece of moth-eaten Communism. I said now, why couldn't he, when he came out, do what Martin Luther King did in America?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post27:45

And say

Sir Laurens Van Der Post27:46

I've got three.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post27:48

spoke to the Americans about the dream that he had.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post27:51

Of a society without racial prejudices. Why doesn't he come and talk to us about the dream?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post27:58

and he sent me a message to say

Sir Laurens Van Der Post28:01

It was quite right. He did have a dream, but the time hadn't come to talk about it yet.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post28:06

What happened then?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post28:08

The press interprets that that is an attack on Mandela, but can you see an attack in what I said?

Presenter28:14

I think that because he'd been in jail for twenty-seven years that people felt that even to say you were disappointed in him was rather.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post28:21

No, I said yeah, I didn't say I said I was disappointed in the speech.

Presenter28:23

I didn't

Presenter28:26

Do you think that events now have proved that he is a man of profound integrity?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post28:32

You know that one hears very disquieting things. Why is Johannesburg?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post28:37

called the Murder Capital of the World.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post28:40

That didn't happen before.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post28:42

I don't know. I've not been there. And I'd rather not talk over.

Presenter28:44

But are you suggesting that you're pessimistic about the future for South Africa?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post28:49

No, I think South Africa has broken out of apartheid. That's so important.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post28:54

and it's on the road again. But it's a difficult and it's a dangerous road.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post28:59

Record number six.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post29:02

It's boardropes and boardropes and

Sir Laurens Van Der Post29:05

Was um

Sir Laurens Van Der Post29:07

one of my gang in London before the war.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post29:11

And for me he had a voice.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post29:13

which is being uh unequal.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post29:16

It was lovely to hear him sing.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post29:19

And I thought of this one because The Lazy Bones in the song so reminds me of the black people in Africa who suddenly

Sir Laurens Van Der Post29:28

They're working very hard, would go and sit

Sir Laurens Van Der Post29:31

In the sun.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post29:32

And people say, Oh, look how lazy they are

Sir Laurens Van Der Post29:35

But they were sitting in the sun all day long.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post29:38

They were an area of themselves between their conscious and their unconscious self.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post29:45

And then the next day they would be working as hard as ever. They they've healed something in themselves. Well, Lazy Bones makes me think of all those things.

Speaker 429:56

Sleepin' in the sun.

Speaker 429:59

How you expect to get your day's work done?

Speaker 430:04

Never get your day's work done.

Speaker 430:09

Sleeping in the noonday sun

Speaker 430:17

Deepen in the shade, how you spec to catch your corn?

Presenter30:25

Paul Robeson and Lazy Bones. What if the Bushman to day, Sir Lawrence, banished once again from his land because the Botswanans want it free of humans, they want to create a national park?

Presenter30:36

What is the world losing as a result of that?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post30:40

Oh, I think it's losing something very, very precious. So the campaign still goes on.

Presenter30:46

But do you accept perhaps any responsibility for the beginning of the end of the Bushman? Because of course it was you who rediscovered him as you've described forty years ago, who filmed him and showed him to the world. Once that process had begun and he saw the world and the world saw him, wasn't that always going to be the beginning of the end?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post31:06

Well, he was going to be exposed to the modern world sooner or later, and my series

Sir Laurens Van Der Post31:12

on the last world of the Kalahari. I did it to save him, naively, to save him.

Presenter31:18

Is there anything that can be done to save him now, really?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post31:21

Well, I think leave him.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post31:23

and let him emerge in his own way into the modern world now. They're very intelligent people, and I think he'll find his own. It's the only way, if you victim from the desert and you put him in some settlement.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post31:37

He loses this life which goes very, very deep.

Presenter31:41

Record number seven.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post31:43

When I was in prison, the only sort of music one heard outside was Malay music.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post31:49

And there was a Malay love song.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post31:51

which the even the Japanese gods played on gramophone records. That has stayed with with me. It's a a song that a girl sang to the full moon which she sees in the water in front of her. It's called Telang Bulan.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post32:07

It's so good a tune that the Malays of Malaya have chosen it for their national anthem.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post32:15

And it is one of the comforts that one had

Sir Laurens Van Der Post32:19

Uh

Sir Laurens Van Der Post32:20

Yes, there is, in spite of prison, a normal feminine life going on outside, thank God.

Speaker 432:31

Bo long.

Speaker 432:34

Tan bin tang pumb chaiya doctam nong.

Speaker 432:43

Luni Kirkintong

Speaker 432:49

Nikir Kam Tuan Yang Jia Di Mato.

Presenter32:57

Shirley Abiquer singing the Malayan love song and a now national anthem indeed, Terang Bolan, Full Moon.

Presenter33:05

As you know, Sir Lawrence, we cast you away at this point uh alone on a desert island from

Presenter33:10

Everything I think you've said, I I suspect you'll be entirely happy there, won't you?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post33:15

It'd be wonderful in a desert island not to hear people talk, not to hear the noises, but to sit back and let the future come at one.

Presenter33:23

And you are, as as we've heard, a man who's seen much death in life. Does that mean that you fear it more or less?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post33:35

I always in a sense by what I've seen of death and dying, I'm comforted by the way it confers a great majesty on the people who die.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post33:46

I don't think

Sir Laurens Van Der Post33:47

Fear comes into it. Obviously I would hate to confront it consciously.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post33:52

But I think if one's blissed

Sir Laurens Van Der Post33:54

to have it happen naturally to one.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post33:57

One couldn't ask for a better welcome to the future.

Presenter34:02

And can I ask you what you personally w would most like to be remembered for?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:08

I would just like people.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:11

Do you remember that?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:13

Whatever happened to me in life was good.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:16

And

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:17

that I think that I've loved people on the whole and I've loved life.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:23

And I think I will die with I hope I will die with that intact.

Presenter34:28

Last record.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:31

And I had lost

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:32

is to quote dear salt it is to find my end in my beginning.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:37

and I do so happily in this piece of music played for us.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:43

By Yo-Yoma

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:45

Because you'll yama

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:47

Didn't question.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:49

What use are the bushmen?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post34:51

What can they give life? He came to me and he said, You know, I'm so moved by them and what they are. I want to take my music to them and let them play their music to me. He went, and he played to them, and they played to him.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post35:06

And then when he came back, one day rang me up, he said he would like to come and say thank you to me.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post35:12

And he came to our house, and he came with that famous cello of his, and he said he was going to play something for us. And we opened all the windows and all the doors, so that the whole building could hear it as well, and he played this lovely piece of bach.

Presenter36:29

The end of the final movement of Bach's Suite No. 6 in D Major, played by Yo-Yo Ma.

Presenter36:35

Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Sir Lawrence, I wonder which one it would be.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post36:40

I think I could quite easily settle for Brendel playing the sonata.

Presenter36:46

And what about your book? You know that you got the Bible there and the complete works of Shakespeare, they're already there.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post36:51

Are there sexual

Presenter36:51

So what one other book would you like to take?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post36:56

Could I take Fraser's golden bough?

Presenter36:58

Indeed you could. And what about your luxury?

Sir Laurens Van Der Post37:01

piano, if I could, because then I can start playing again. I used to play the piano, I slightly.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post37:08

And it meant a great deal to me, but I'd love to learn to play properly.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post37:14

You know that Socrates, when he was preparing for his death, he felt that music had been

Sir Laurens Van Der Post37:20

lacking in his life, and that he would like to learn to play the lute. Well, I would like, before I die, to learn to play the piano properly.

Presenter37:29

Sir Laurence van der Perst, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post37:34

Thank you, dear.

Speaker 337:43

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.