Jack Mapanje

Speaker 10:00

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 two thousand and four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Cosaway this week is a poet. He's been described as the most important African poet writing in English to day, but his journey to such a distinguished position has been a hard one.

Presenter0:40

Brought up by his mother in the British colony of Nyasaland, his childhood was poor, but he was clever enough to win a decent education and went to university in the New Malawi and later in England. At the age of thirty-nine he returned home and became head of English in his country's university, but a few years later he was arrested by Malawi's dictator Hastings Bander and thrown into prison. No reasons given, no charges brought, no trial.

Presenter1:06

God, laughter, and composing poetry kept him sane in jail. He was, as he's put it, one of the desperate voices of fractured souls.

Presenter1:15

Pressure from international literary figures including Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard eventually secured his release, and to day, aged sixty, he lives here and he teaches at Newcastle University.

Presenter1:27

The legacy of his incarceration remains with him. Dictators create artists, he says people who protest. He is Jack Mapanji. How long, in fact, were you in prison, Jack?

Jack Mapanje1:40

Three years, seven months, sixteen days and more than twelve hours.

Presenter1:44

And this was late eighties and into the nineties, not that long ago. And you didn't know why you were there.

Jack Mapanje1:47

Yeah.

Jack Mapanje1:50

I was not told why I was there. I was able to speculate, but um it was just pure speculation.

Presenter1:56

And you didn't know if you'd ever be let out.

Jack Mapanje1:58

At that time they just grabbed you, threw you into prison.

Jack Mapanje2:02

I never told you how long you're going to be there because you have not been charged or tried.

Presenter2:06

Mm. And the no communication with each other.

Jack Mapanje2:08

No communication with the outside world took about twenty-two months before my wife was allowed to visit me and the family.

Presenter2:16

And sometimes at night they came and took people away.

Jack Mapanje2:20

They took six.

Jack Mapanje2:22

Condemned prisoners.

Jack Mapanje2:24

twice every year. And so they came in the middle of the night and there was a lot of halo baloo as to who was coming in, people marching in the middle of the night and and um chained and thrown onto trucks and um shipped away and so on to scare everybody into submission. And that was more painful even for those of us who are political prisoners was more painful than any form of torture.

Presenter2:44

Or if

Speaker 22:44

Uh

Speaker 22:49

Yeah.

Presenter2:49

Why?

Jack Mapanje2:50

Effectively it was psychological. It was not you, but you thought they were coming in for you.

Jack Mapanje2:56

Because you did not know. They could easily and they had done several years before taken political prisoners and got them executed and um told the world they they passed out or they died in prison.

Presenter3:09

Hmm.

Jack Mapanje3:09

And there will be no trace whatsoever.

Presenter3:11

Accidentalized is a word you use.

Jack Mapanje3:13

Accidentalize was a word that the writers' group in the university invented.

Presenter3:18

What does it mean?

Jack Mapanje3:18

It means um to kill somebody and pretend it's an accident, officially kill and tell the world it's an accident.

Presenter3:26

You've written a lot of poetry about how it was in there, and really the best way of describing it is to ask you to read a bit of this one. I wonder if you'd read the first stanza of of this poem for us. It's it's called Scrubbing the Furious Walls of Mikuyu. Mikuyu is the is the name of the maximum detention centre you were in.

Jack Mapanje3:43

That's right, yes. Scrubbing the furious walls of Mikoyu.

Jack Mapanje3:48

Is this where they damp those rebels? These haggard cells astinking of bucket shit and vomit and the acrid urine of yesteryears?

Jack Mapanje3:58

Who would have thought I would be gazing at these dusty, cobwebbed ceilings of Mikuyu prison, scrubbing briny walls and riddling out impetuous scratches of another dang beetle locked up before me here?

Jack Mapanje4:14

Violent human palms Wounded these blood blotted mosquitoes and bugs To survive, leaving these vicious red marks.

Jack Mapanje4:24

Monstrous frying cockroaches.

Jack Mapanje4:27

Crashed here, up there, the cobwebs trap dead bumble-bees.

Jack Mapanje4:33

Where did black wasps get clay to build nests in this corner?

Presenter4:39

And so it goes on, just the first stanza there. I mean, I y y you know, it's perfectly obvious you know exactly what it's like to be on a desert island, the kind of desolation, the loneliness.

Jack Mapanje4:49

I have already in fact part been on a desert island. It's it's horrific.

Presenter4:53

But it's it's

Presenter4:54

But in this one you get eight records to play, so

Jack Mapanje4:56

Okay, well that's it's a consolation.

Presenter4:58

What's the first one you'd like?

Jack Mapanje5:00

It's Jimmy Cliff's I can see clearly now. There was a time when, to be honest, prison was the only place we understood what was going on.

Jack Mapanje5:08

So that we were actually singing as prisoners, political prisoners, I can see so this is why I love this.

Speaker 25:20

It's gone.

Speaker 25:25

I can see all obstacles in my way.

Speaker 25:33

Gone of the dark cloud.

Speaker 25:36

Let me go.

Speaker 25:39

Wanna be around Sunshine in there

Presenter5:46

Jimmy Cliff and I can see clearly now. So poetry was crucial to your survival, Jack Mepanjee in Makuyu detention centre. You turned cockroaches into metaphors, as you've put it. But you couldn't write them down. Did you hold them all in your head and just fish them out later, or were they still there, intact?

Jack Mapanje6:02

After about year one there I had written in my head about twenty five poems, and these were complete from the title to to the last line. By the time I was uh released from prison after three and a half years, I only remembered the titles. I can tell you right now that I have recovered about uh twenty out of the twenty five. I still are there's still five somewhere hanging around somewhere looking for somebody to incite them into sh

Presenter6:24

So there's five still.

Presenter6:31

The fact though, is it not? It was your poetry that got you in there in the first place. And we say there was no reason, and certainly writing poetry shouldn't be a reason, but you were essentially accused of writing subversive poetry, weren't you?

Jack Mapanje6:44

That was the nearest and the clearest accusation. And it wasn't even accusation in the sense of um being taken to court and saying you know written root poems or whatever. But we lived in Malawi, we lived in a world where the government of Dr. Banda did not want us to achieve. Anybody who achieved anything on their own terms was looked at with a lot of suspicion.

Presenter7:07

But what you were doing was using metaphor to criticize the regime, wasn't it? I mean g give me an example of the kind of thing. It was kind of code between you all, wasn't it?

Jack Mapanje7:12

I mean

Jack Mapanje7:17

Well everybody was writing indirectly. You talk about the story of the hyena and then the hyena takes on a political shape and you point in the system who the hyena is.

Presenter7:29

And the hyena was Hastings Vandal, I presume.

Jack Mapanje7:31

Presumably, yes. That's the most explicit poem, to be honest.

Presenter7:33

That's the most ex

Presenter7:35

But that you know, it would not be beyond their understanding, and to that extent, you were tempting fate, weren't you?

Jack Mapanje7:42

To that extent, um, on h on hindsight, I was tempting fate. But then

Jack Mapanje7:48

We needed somebody needed to take the bull by the horn, as it were, and put one's foot down.

Presenter7:53

But that's a brave decision. Are you saying you actually took that decision? I mean, again, even the chameleons and gods, I mean, let me say this, is that you have talked about basking in your brilliant camouflage. I mean, what we're saying here is it was no camouflage.

Jack Mapanje7:58

I was not the only comedian.

Jack Mapanje8:05

Yeah.

Jack Mapanje8:08

There was no camouflage, but it was camouflage according to them because they did not understand poetry, they didn't even care about poetry.

Presenter8:09

Dividend.

Presenter8:14

But did you take that decision? Did you think I am going to take these guys on as best I can using the tool that I have, which is the ability to write?

Jack Mapanje8:23

Today I can say yes is the answer, but in fact, it was a joint thing. We established what was called a writers' group, who simply said we're going to meet and help each other write and write well. And I can tell you now that

Jack Mapanje8:38

About seven from the Writers Group are all over the world having written some of the best poetry in the world.

Presenter8:46

Dictators create artists, as you said.

Jack Mapanje8:48

I did say.

Presenter8:49

Tell me about record number two.

Jack Mapanje8:50

Well r rec record number two is Cecilia by Simon Garfunkel. The story is very simple. Doctor Banda's concubine or mistress was called Cecilia, and the only way anybody could fight back is to sing this song. The thing is, after singing it for some time, everybody thought this song referred to Cecilia and and Banda, and as a result, it was banned.

Speaker 29:21

You're shaking my confidence daily.

Speaker 29:26

What to see young, come down on my knees.

Speaker 29:31

I'm begging you please to come home.

Speaker 29:36

Celia, you're breaking my heart, you're shaking my confidence.

Presenter9:44

CICELIA, by Simon and Garfunkel. I have no doubt, Jack, that in prison you dreamed of your childhood on the shores of Lake Malawi. Can you describe it to me, the scenery, the scents?

Jack Mapanje9:56

Half of the country is the lake and I was born um c very close to it. Uh we say back home I was born in the lake. Uh you couldn't do anything without fishing and so on and so forth. So I was born of a very poor family. My mother was not educated, but she was a very good

Jack Mapanje10:14

Uh short story, Taylor. She used to gather us at night to

Jack Mapanje10:20

tell us stories and folk tales and so on about animals and so on and so forth. My father left my mother when she was pregnant of me. He went to South Africa with my uncle and um never returned.

Presenter10:33

Had he left to search for work?

Jack Mapanje10:35

Well because everybody went to South Africa or Zimbabwe then to the mines to to work and get money and uh so they can feed the the children.

Presenter10:43

Did he relate to you? Did you hear that?

Presenter10:57

So you've never met him?

Jack Mapanje10:58

I've never met him.

Presenter10:59

I see.

Jack Mapanje11:00

Yeah.

Presenter11:00

So he never came back in the middle of the morning.

Jack Mapanje11:01

He never he never came back.

Presenter11:02

I was alone.

Jack Mapanje11:04

I was alone with my mother and my mother

Presenter11:05

Three small children she had.

Jack Mapanje11:07

Three small children as it were, and my mother used to brew beer to send us to school, to get to get the fees for the school. She was a very imaginative woman, so um here I am.

Presenter11:17

And what did you live in? What was the house?

Jack Mapanje11:19

We lived in an ordinary house, grass-thatched and mad house.

Jack Mapanje11:24

had um the usual garden uh where we planted maize and other um types of food, pumpkins and various things that we we did. And and um my late brother and I were effectively the fishermen of the house.

Presenter11:40

Crocodiles on the

Jack Mapanje11:40

Crocodiles, yes, lots of them. Sometimes amongst the reeds you'd see the noses of um crocodiles. And it's very easy to to know them because then they breathe through their noses. You see ripples around. Once you see ripples, you know there is a crocodile s there. So the thing to do is not to run away, but take your paws and splash them on the water and the crocodile run runs away and um and you laugh.

Presenter12:04

But education was the thing. Your mother was very keen that you should have the kind of education she had never been able to have.

Jack Mapanje12:09

Absolutely.

Presenter12:10

And it was available, but how would you do your homework? There was no electricity.

Jack Mapanje12:15

There was no electricity. We used l tin can lamps, like tins of cocoa or tins of coffee. You put a little string on top of it and put paraffin in. And that was your your electricity and that's how we survived.

Presenter12:28

And that's how you did your study.

Jack Mapanje12:29

That's how I started my romantics, that's how I started whatever. I got my LF was this way, my Olive was that way, and and so on. So for that we we s we worked hard to to get it.

Jack Mapanje12:43

Next

Presenter12:43

Yeah.

Jack Mapanje12:43

Yeah.

Presenter12:43

Yeah.

Jack Mapanje12:45

Next record is um a typically Malawian one. And one of the Malawian singers who li now sings in South Africa is called Wambari Mkandawiri, and this is a prayer.

Jack Mapanje12:55

This is a traditional African prayer done in modern guitars and modern instruments.

Speaker 213:01

We can we can

Speaker 213:05

Dreamby

Speaker 213:08

Wow my

Speaker 213:11

Who we

Speaker 213:14

We can we can

Speaker 213:18

Chamber

Speaker 213:21

Welcome back.

Speaker 213:26

Oh free.

Presenter13:31

Wambali and Muikitemba, let us pray. Um you were a very bright boy, Jack Mapanji, weren't you? And you passed a kind of eleven plus, you passed a scholarship, went to your secondary school. But you were rocking the boat even then, weren't you? Didn't you get expelled from the secondary school?

Jack Mapanje13:47

I was lucky because I was chosen a prefect, but the head teachers always wanted us to report our students who are making a lot of noise during study, and um I refused to report them.

Jack Mapanje14:01

And on that basis they said we're going to throw you out. You got expelled. So there I got expelled. My late uncle then protested to the Mahayan Congress party to protest to the headmaster. And so I went I went back after three months.

Presenter14:03

He got expelled.

Presenter14:14

But he helped you in other ways too, that uncle, didn't he? He I think he looked after you and your education

Jack Mapanje14:20

If it had not been for my uncle, I would not have been where where I was. My uncle had a herd of cattle and was rich by African standards. So he bought us my brother and I bought us a brand new bicycle.

Presenter14:20

Had not been for my

Jack Mapanje14:35

And we cycled every day, seven miles, for four days in a week to go to the primary school and and so on. On the one bicycle. On the one bicycle. I was sitting on the carrier. He was cycling away and and that's how we did it.

Presenter14:41

Uh

Presenter14:43

How do you matter?

Presenter14:48

But that uncle, as I say, did help you in preference to some of his own children. You're now helping some of his descendants, aren't you? He had that sort of feeling that what what goes around comes around.

Jack Mapanje14:53

Yeah.

Jack Mapanje14:56

I think

Jack Mapanje14:58

Absolutely. What he did was this. He gathered all the children, his children and ourselves, and he told us this. He said,

Jack Mapanje15:07

I don't want anybody to start thinking that I support my sister's children more than my own.

Jack Mapanje15:13

My own children, you've been spending all your time drinking milk, living in luxury, as it were, in a traditional sort of surrounding. I sent you to schools, but you've failed.

Jack Mapanje15:24

What I'm going to do now is I'm going to send these two and my hope is, and I'm telling them here and now, I don't want them to pay back what I'm going to give them. I am hoping that after one of them or both of them, after they've done their school, they can help your children.

Jack Mapanje15:40

Which is exactly what has been happening.

Presenter15:43

XP music.

Jack Mapanje15:44

When I was a student in London, we loved Jerry Raft. There was an album which he published called City to City. And on this album, there's a track, Island, which was critical. It was critical in prison, especially. I loved it. My children loved it. And everybody in the family knew that this. We actually called it Shalala because there is a the thing which says Shalala as part of the part of the record. But what was fascinating about it is this was the link record between me and my family when I was put in prison. On my first birthday, for instance, in prison, the children wrote me a letter which was smuggled in and they said, Dad, we're going to put Shalala for you on your birthday.

Speaker 216:32

Bye one

Speaker 216:36

Since we've been on this silent year, it's felt so right. It's getting closer now every day.

Speaker 216:46

Now that I feel like I know you again

Speaker 216:53

On stay.

Presenter17:01

Jerry Rafferty and Island or Shalala, members of that bit of communication between you and your children when you're in prison. That's.

Presenter17:08

One of the most terrible things, I suppose, being in prison and fearing for your family who are out there and what's happening to them. That's right. You you wrote one a poem about that, Fears from Mikuyu Sells for Our Loves. I wonder if you could just read us the second half of that, which is about exactly that.

Jack Mapanje17:25

I remember when our neighbor was taken eleven years ago, the secret tears on my wife's cheeks, because visiting his wife and kids, or offering them our sweet potatoes in broad daylight,

Jack Mapanje17:42

Was he crying?

Jack Mapanje17:44

Her husband.

Jack Mapanje17:46

Had just been invented Rebel.

Jack Mapanje17:49

On the third day University Office quickly issued her

Jack Mapanje17:54

Exit visa.

Jack Mapanje17:55

To her husband's village.

Jack Mapanje17:58

The fears of our singular friends.

Jack Mapanje18:01

We also rerun.

Jack Mapanje18:04

His detention was overdue, thus poems

Jack Mapanje18:08

Don't mention that name in my office.

Jack Mapanje18:11

I hear he refused to apologize. How typical

Jack Mapanje18:16

Why is that woman and and her kids still occupying the university house?

Jack Mapanje18:21

Those conferences he loved it's us going now.

Jack Mapanje18:26

Has he reached Mikuyu, then?

Jack Mapanje18:29

We thought it was another temporary joke.

Jack Mapanje18:33

Today

Jack Mapanje18:35

I see your delicate laughter.

Jack Mapanje18:38

and what abuse they will hurl at you.

Jack Mapanje18:41

Dear children

Jack Mapanje18:43

Dear mother, my dear wife

Jack Mapanje18:47

As your rebel dad confronts the wagtail shit of Mikoyo Prison.

Jack Mapanje18:55

Show up their brittle feet, Lord.

Presenter19:00

You mentioned your mother towards the end. Did she ever come and see you in prison? Could she? Was she allowed?

Jack Mapanje19:06

No, I'm afraid to say that my mother actually died um when I was in prison.

Presenter19:12

It must have broken her heart as well.

Jack Mapanje19:15

She was extremely broken hearted. But also my mother and my son he was five and a half years old were the only people who protested about my arrest when I was arrested. And so I remembered that. She shouted her head off and said

Jack Mapanje19:31

You insensitive people, what has my son done? Take me and kill me instead, but leave him alone. Why are you scattering this peaceful house?

Jack Mapanje19:44

And I will never forget those words.

Presenter19:48

There was one man, wasn't there, in prison who seemed to be on your side, one of the guards who helped you?

Jack Mapanje19:55

There were several guards, but there was one we I'm sorry to say, but we nicknamed him Noriega. He because um he was a wild man. He just did things that you never believed a prison guard for the dictatorship would actually do.

Presenter20:09

Blackwater.

Jack Mapanje20:11

Well, we we we wrote notes on toilet paper, we wrote notes on sunlight soap wrappers, life boy soap wrappers, and then passed them on to to take them home. So he would smuggle them out. He will he would smuggle them out for us. And he was super the other thing he did, after I think about two months,

Presenter20:22

So he would smile.

Jack Mapanje20:30

is one day he came to the cells and shouted at me, saying the officer in charge would like to see you and so on, and he took me away, pushed me around, and took to the offices,

Jack Mapanje20:44

And there he says you sit here.

Jack Mapanje20:47

And then he picked up the telephone and said, Here, Professor, talk to your wife.

Jack Mapanje20:52

He was able to give me that telephone and I talked to my wife. I said, It's amazing what humans can actually do to help other humans in situations of this sort.

Jack Mapanje21:03

Yeah.

Presenter21:03

Yeah.

Jack Mapanje21:03

Record number five. This one is um is very special to me because it talks about love and so on and occasionally and on this island I would like to to remember my o memories of um of the lo loved ones. And so three the three degrees, when will I see you again, is a special and has always been special in my heart.

Speaker 221:21

Well I see you again

Speaker 221:29

When will we share that precious moment?

Speaker 221:35

Will I have to wait?

Speaker 221:39

Forever

Speaker 221:42

Will I have the summer sunlight and crow?

Presenter21:50

Three degrees and when will I see you again? You've written, Jack, what dictators do is abduct you and wait for the world to shout. If the world doesn't shout, they kill you.

Presenter22:01

The world did shout for you, not that you knew it for months inside Mikuyu Detention Centre.

Presenter22:06

How did the world know to shout for you?

Jack Mapanje22:09

The day I was arrested, as I was being taken away from home to to be interrogated, a priest friend of ours walked in. I showed him my handcuffs.

Jack Mapanje22:20

and um effectively said good afternoon and bye-bye or whatever but this is what he then went on to do he rang up his friend

Jack Mapanje22:29

in Galway, Republic of Ireland, and he spoke in Gaelic so that the special branch in Malawi would not understand what he was talking about.

Presenter22:37

If the line was taped.

Jack Mapanje22:39

If if if the line was tapped

Jack Mapanje22:42

So he says, my friend

Jack Mapanje22:44

Can you rename Aplandic White at the University of York?

Jack Mapanje22:48

Tell him Jack Marpanje has been arrested. I have seen him at the back of the police van, and we do not know where they are going to take him.

Presenter22:56

But all this in Gaelic

Jack Mapanje22:57

All this in Gaelic. And Landy Gwyde immediately tells the BBC, tells Amnesty International, tells the whole world, so that the following day I was arrested on a Friday, on Saturday morning, everybody was talking about a young poet who might have been abducted and people do not know where he is, including radio stations throughout Africa. That, I think, may have saved my life, because what they normally did, they abducted you. They put you away for a bit and w waited for the world to make any noises. If the world made no noises, then they eliminated you.

Presenter23:34

And then you got more and more information out on these soap wrappers, as you say. It's interesting, really. You were sort of saved by Life Boy soap wrappers and a major.

Jack Mapanje23:38

It seems

Jack Mapanje23:42

I'm afraid to say that.

Presenter23:42

And the Gaelic language.

Jack Mapanje23:44

Yeah.

Presenter23:45

Um but more and more information got out and and not that you knew it, but there was a huge campaign and as I said in the introduction people such as Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard were reading your poetry at all night vigils outside the Malawian embassy and so on in London.

Speaker 124:00

Yeah.

Presenter24:01

Um but but information was was being fed back, wasn't it? So there was a pressure put on Hastings Bandrum, information as to what conditions were like inside

Jack Mapanje24:11

That's right. We decided that we were going to tell the world about the atrocities in this prison.

Presenter24:11

That's right.

Jack Mapanje24:18

And his authorities just did not understand how these truth stories had gone out into the world of truth.

Presenter24:25

They thought they'd got a very firm lid on it.

Jack Mapanje24:26

Therefore they've got a very firm lid on it, and and this is trouble with dictatorships. It's just a little slip. Sometimes it's just a little door that they forget to close or a window they forget to close. And it's through that window everything will come out. And that's how you can do it.

Presenter24:39

Yeah.

Jack Mapanje24:40

Yeah.

Presenter24:40

It's amazing.

Jack Mapanje24:41

And the software number six.

Jack Mapanje24:45

This one is um a jolly celebratory sort of um record. I love it and um every time I I I take my car and drive to to Newcastle to teach, I put this record on. Brenda Farson.

Speaker 225:01

Yeah.

Presenter25:27

Brenda Fasse and a celebratory Zulu song, Ponsi Ponsi. So, Jack McPanjay, you and your family came here in nineteen ninety one to York University because the people there had been active in the campaign to free you. Um sadly it wasn't a a good experience at first, was it? There were you suffered a lot of racist abuse.

Jack Mapanje25:46

Well, racist abuses is part of the story of life, I suppose. We found a house on a street where they had never had a black family before.

Jack Mapanje25:55

And so the kids were throwing eggs and

Jack Mapanje25:59

whatever pieces across the road and and and sand even across the kitchen. So we it f it fell in my in Mess's

Jack Mapanje26:07

Pots and saucepans and so on. But in the end, um, we we stuck stuck it out.

Presenter26:13

But you you've written about it, haven't you? Oh yeah, I have

Jack Mapanje26:15

Oh yeah, I have written about you.

Presenter26:16

Sniggering over the hedge, spitting, throwing eggs and monkey faking without ambiguity.

Jack Mapanje26:18

Two.

Jack Mapanje26:21

Yeah, absolutely. I mean it was it was obvious what they were saying. You bloody monkeys, get out of here.

Presenter26:26

But you just took it on the chin as well.

Jack Mapanje26:28

Well we did, and um and we said, um o what what the hell I mean these people do not know where we've come from. We've had a life which is much, much tougher than that. What what is sand? What is and and as I say in the poem, one of my daughters says I wish they gave us the eggs they're throwing on our windows, because we needed the eggs ourselves and so on and so forth.

Speaker 126:46

Yeah.

Presenter26:48

Yeah.

Jack Mapanje26:51

Well, he stopped here, yeah, it stopped ages ago. But the point is I want to say that um it started badly but ended very well, because in fact the very same kids who were throwing eggs and sand and spitting and so on became friends of the children and the children started sleeping over at each other's houses.

Jack Mapanje27:09

So this is your

Presenter27:09

So this is your home now?

Jack Mapanje27:10

As far as I'm concerned, this is my home. Unless something else happens, drastic, I don't know what.

Presenter27:16

But you've sort of suggested that it still would not be safe to go back to Malawi, although it's now a b multi-party state.

Jack Mapanje27:23

It is now a multi-party state, but I have a feeling that the old hit squads are still hanging around somewhere.

Presenter27:30

Banda's cronies have kinda switched to the side of the net.

Jack Mapanje27:31

Banders Cronies still have some of the old hit squads.

Presenter27:37

Click on our seven.

Jack Mapanje27:38

Okay.

Jack Mapanje27:39

It's a Dido. And and this one is special because um I've been living for the last thirteen years now in the in England. Thirteen years I've been living effectively in a suitcase, traveling from one place to another, from Leiden University to University College, Cork, to um Leeds University to Oxford University, Warwick University, Open University. I haven't had a home at all till last year when Newcastle gave me the permanent job. So I've been a sort of a wanderer, and this one just does it for me.

Speaker 228:12

I haven't ever really found a place that I call home

Speaker 228:18

I never stick around quite long enough to make it

Speaker 228:23

I apologize once again, I'm not in love.

Speaker 228:29

But I'll just sell nothing more than I can

Speaker 228:35

There's nothing I have children

Presenter28:41

That's Dido and Life to Rent. Um in the meantime, Jack, you you write poetry about these days taxi drivers in Yorkshire and having picnics on the beach in Bridlington and travelling on the train. Are you gradually leaving the prison experience behind, or does it keep

Presenter28:59

Sort of shafting through again.

Jack Mapanje29:00

It it keeps coming back in, but um one of the biggest problems of anybody who has been a political prisoner like me is how much your your prison experience is going to be left behind and whether um you're going to move on and what you're going to move on to.

Presenter29:14

But are you still a chameleon, as you described yourself in that first published book of poetry? You know, you're sort of

Presenter29:20

One could see now bright and jovial and smiling, and yet

Presenter29:24

You know, that's all just on the outside, changing all of the time. There's something else inside.

Jack Mapanje29:29

I I think that I'm changing all the time. The chameleon then meant both me as well as the politicians, by the way. So I'm still writing and I don't think I can claim that I'm going to to stop writing about Africa. There's no way you can stop writing or about the prison experience.

Presenter29:45

Or about the prison experience.

Presenter29:48

But but what is I suppose what I'm really asking is it is it the case that, you know, once a prisoner, always a prisoner? Is that what we're saying?

Jack Mapanje29:56

There is always something that comes in and it's affects your life and so on and so forth. Perhaps affects your thinking even in certain cases. It depends on the type of prison that you've gone through and the type of life that you lead afterwards. But I think the world is a little prison.

Jack Mapanje30:12

I come to think and uh what we're all trying to do is to try and make the best of of our prison experience and our prisoner situation.

Speaker 130:19

Cost record.

Jack Mapanje30:21

The last one is very special. I was once upon a time um

Jack Mapanje30:24

An altar boy

Jack Mapanje30:26

So we used to sing some of these Gregorian music and church music, and this is very special. But even more special is the fact that when I came to England,

Jack Mapanje30:36

Gillian Tyndall

Jack Mapanje30:38

Alistair Neven, and all those who had been fighting for me, invited me to celebrate a Thanksgiving service at St. Bride's in Fleet Street.

Jack Mapanje30:49

I was absolutely

Jack Mapanje30:52

Shattered by the experience, because I never thought this could happen, but I was so amazed by the type of generosity that everybody gave one. I read a little passage from the Bible and I was shivering, I didn't know where I was, I had just been released and so on. So that was very special from St. Pride's and effectively thank you to everybody who fought for me and so on, and then who are still fighting.

Speaker 231:45

Oh he was here.

Presenter32:15

of a Maria sung by Janet Coxwell, with Christopher Enston playing the organ, and that was recorded in Saint Bride's Church, Fleet Street. So three final questions, Jack. If you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Jack Mapanje32:28

What of the last one?

Presenter32:31

Quite hit the spot, that one, didn't I? Um, what about your book? You get the Bible and you get the complete works of Shakespeare, as you know.

Jack Mapanje32:39

Um will I be allowed to take Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice?

Presenter32:43

Cool.

Jack Mapanje32:43

Yeah, thank you.

Presenter32:45

And a luxury.

Jack Mapanje32:47

One luxury I would like to take is um I don't know whether it is a luxury, I would like somebody to buy me a guitar.

Jack Mapanje32:53

I've always wanted to play the guitar, so can I take a guitar as a luxury on this island?

Presenter32:59

Jack McPanjay, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Jack Mapanje33:02

Yeah.

Presenter33:02

Shut up.

Speaker 133:10

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

Speaker 233:55

Uh