Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A writer and anti-apartheid activist who was the first South African to testify before the UN Committee on Apartheid, subjected to house arrest and a writing ba
On the island
Eight records
I chose um this magnificent duet from Rigoletto. I was in Rome during the war, and I'd been a bit of a Philistine over music. And suddenly to hear this was so fantastic, and also it introduced me to Verdi.
The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II: Prelude and Fugue No. 9 in E Major, BWV 878
In nineteen sixty five, which was one of the most dramatic, really scary years in South Africa, Mandela, Sisulu, and the others were on Robin Island, and Athel Fiogaard, who was a very close friend, and Barney Simon also, they were doing Athel's play, Hello and Goodbye, and Athel and his family were staying in the same big house that I was. And on very hot days, with the heat absolutely blazing outside, we would go into a big dark room and play Bach's prelude and fugue, and it was so lovely and calming.
Bagatelles, Op. 126: No. 4 in B MinorFavourite
I chose this particular bagatelle of Beethoven. I heard it by chance, Ashkenazi playing it on television. I hadn't any idea what it was. I got down the producer's name and found his name and the phone book rang up, and his wife told me what it was. I just fell in love with it.
Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela
Although this is a rather sad song about a mother singing to her child when there's no food for it. It's got great rhythm, and part of my choices relates to friendships. And this one I have a great friend, Phyllis, who's South African, married to an Italian, and when I used to stay with them in Italy we would play this and dance to it.
I've chosen It's Only a Paper Moon because I was in New York in nineteen sixty nine. I'd come out of hospital in London after three months after foot operations, and I had a letter from my most beloved friend Barney Simon, theatre director from Johannesburg. He was in New York. And he wrote and said only do dangerous things, there's so little time. So I tottered out of hospital into a wheelchair and flew to New York, and he found a a rather grotty apartment, and he was painting it, and I was doing what I could with the woodwork with my feeble arthritic hands, and he would sing It's only a paper moon while he painted.
Piano Sonata No. 19 in C Minor, D. 958: IV. Allegro
Alfred Brendel wrote about these three last sonatas that Schubert had written when he was dying of uh syphilis. And the third from the end I came to know when I was driving around a game reserve last November. I believe it's described as a rather dark and dramatic peace but I find this part of the last movement so enchanting and makes me laugh.
I'm sure people will find that rather peculiar. I love it, anyway, apart from what it means to me. emotionally. It has this curious break from one key to another. So whereas some of the love songs I knew when I was young I could sing easily, this one I can't possibly sing at all. I just can't recall how it goes. It's delightful, I think.
Rückert-Lieder: Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen
Joseph Von Dame, I heard him sing this beautiful Mala rucket. S Lit in the movie Le Maitre de Musique. It is just so glorious and it's so peaceful. It's talking about being at the end of his life and being alone in his heaven, in his love in his song, and for me that says everything for the ending of a life.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:25Is the realization of that dream [of a free South Africa] all you hoped it would be, or do you get depressed by the fact that it's so fraught with problems?
It's almost what I mean, in a way, it was so extraordinarily unexpected in its way when it happened, and enormously exciting. But yes, there are obvious, very unpredictable problems, I think. There's growing corruption in some spheres, but also there are some marvellous people of all ages, black and white, who are working very, very hard to counteract that. But terrible violence. I think I'm right in saying that South Africa has the worst murder rate in the world and there's a rape every twenty five seconds. I mean the the dream has brought a terrible nightmare with [it].
Presenter asks
5:23How did [your privileged white childhood] prevent you from knowing about your country?
Well, everything in those days was a question of whites really only knowing their black servants. We didn't know blacks socially at all in our world. Of course there were white communists who were in the thick of it all, but we didn't know them.
Presenter asks
5:48When you eventually became aware of the system of apartheid, and you attached yourself to the struggle against it, did that experience then shame you?
The keepsakes
The book
Athol Fugard
I thought if I could take that I would have such fun reading it'll all be new to me.
Yes, I did. It was a feeling of guilt, I suppose, more than shame, when one looked back over the past and wished that one had taken an interest even in the, for instance, the washerwoman who we called a girl, who came every week from some remote township. And when we drove to Pretoria, the family, which was a wonderful day's outing, we drove to Johannesburg. We would drive past Alexandra Township, which was a hive of black life, and we would laugh at the blacks who were trying to play golf. You know, good heavens, look at the natives playing golf.
Presenter asks
14:17How important would you say [Michael Scott] was?
Well, he was headline news in 1949, 1950 in what particularly was the extraordinary independent paper, The News Chronicle, and The Observer. And David Astra, The Observer, took up that cause in a big way and became a supporter of Michael and eventually helped him financially and eventually helped me too, which is how I've been able to write books that don't make any money ever. And I heard of Michael, I read a profile of him in The Observer, and of course I I suppose I sort of fell in love with this character and all I heard about him. And I discovered that he needed somebody to type a book and I'd been given five hundred dollars and a portable typewriter by friends. So I volunteered to work for him.
Presenter asks
16:16Were you aware then that Mandela was possibly a great man in the making? Was there anything impressive about him at that stage?
I think when I first met him he he was very tall and uh striking and handsome and he loved nice clothes. and one thought of him more as rather a playboy, although I gather that the local people greatly admired him as a lawyer, because during the treason trial there were a hundred and Fifty-six people on trial of all races. This was before the Ravonia trial. Um then he really did distinguish himself, I think. But it was when he went underground that he really and p and the press dubbed him the black pimpinel that he hit the headlines.
Presenter asks
22:45What did house arrest mean to you?
It was very, very painful, though I knew that that particularly blacks, it hit them horribly because they had no jobs, etc. But I was banned from all writing. I'd been sending material about conditions in South Africa to friends in Congress in Washington. Anyway, I struggled on pretending to write notes about Saul Bellows' novel Herzog and looking over my shoulder. And friends then, and even Brahm Fisher, managed to smuggle a message from prison to say that they felt as a writer I was more use overseas. So finally I came away. But even as the The plane was flying off. I thought maybe it's a terrible mistake.
“I think it's very exciting to think that a work of art can change your life. Even if it's music, say, or a painting, something extraordinary can happen if you're open to it.”
“I suppose something had been growing in me that at the end of the war I had worked among displaced persons in Germany and seen the absolute horror and the suffering, while never for a moment thinking that in my own country the blacks were all displaced persons.”
“One was inclined to say, No, I'm hopeful, because you can't be a South African and not be hopeful. And when you look around the world, South Africa is very extraordinary.”