ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
Tell Me Your Story. Ruda Landman
Читать онлайн.Название Tell Me Your Story
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780624086215
Автор произведения Ruda Landman
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство Ingram
I walked in, a little ink, my ID, I put in my cross – I am not telling you where, it’s mos my secret nè, ja, it’s my secret. I put the ballot in the box and I walk out. Ruda, ek was so kwaad. So kwaad. Hoe kan dit so maklik wees?9 To change things in my beautiful South Africa. Vir jare ons het gebaklei, mense10 . . . my own brother was shot in 1985. It can’t take just an X with a pencil on a piece of paper to change that. I had imagined voting was going to be the most difficult process. It was as simple as an X. And I put it there, and I said to my wife as we were driving home, “I am nervous.” She asked, “Why?” I said, “We have a bigger task now. To look after this newborn democracy. How are we going to do this?”
Because we had to get the entire nasie [nation] to buy into it. How are we going to do this? While we are struggling with that, here were Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk and Bishop Tutu with another thing, called truth and reconciliation. Nee, wag, ek wil weet wie het my getorture when I was detained ten or twelve times. Ek wil weet wie het my broer geskiet.11 But no, there is a new way of doing this. It is reconciliation. It took time. Real time.
It took me from 1996 up to 2002 to really forgive, by writing the play Nothing But the Truth. It was a tribute to my brother, because I could now think about him, not as a dead body with three bullets through his stomach, but as a militant who was shot because he was a poet, and reciting a poem at a funeral of a little girl who had been hit by a tear-gas canister. I walked out of Grahamstown in that performance, the 4th of July 2002, almost like . . . reborn. I truly became a South African. A proud South African.
In 2016 John and Sandra Prinsloo teamed up again for the Afrikaans version of Driving Miss Daisy.
John: I get a call from [theatre producer and playwright] Saartjie Botha, who says to me, “We have an idea. Driving Miss Daisy in Afrikaans.” I said, “But I am not sure about my Afrikaans.” She said, ‘Nee, man, moenie nonsens praat nie, jy praat goed Afrikaans.’12
John: So we start. En Saartjie werk met my in die Afrikaans, die Afrikaans wat ek kan praat. En toe sê ek vir haar, “Nee, translate the script as you wish. Let me learn.” En toe werk ons vir vier weke, die translations and the rehearsals. Ek voel ’n bietjie comfortable met die Afrikaans. Nou by die Aardklop in Potchefstroom, ons eerste . . .13
Ruda: Nou is jy in die hart van Boeredom.14
John: Ooh . . . the first performance, nine thirty in the morning! We had never even had a run-through of the piece. The hall seats about 425 people. And I thought, if we get fifteen or sixteen I will be happy. The lights come up. (Throws up his arms) It is a wall of white people. Couple of black people (points) there and there.
You know what we do on Broadway: when a star makes an entrance, he or she gets a round of applause and then the play continues. And the first part of the scene is between Jacques Bessenger and Sandra. The son says to Miss Daisy, “You need a driver.” Now he’s going to interview me. It’s the second scene. I step in. Thunderous applause. It stopped. I thought, please hold on to the language [the Afrikaans]. At the end it was incredible. Toe wag die mense buitekant vir Sandra en my.15 To shake our hands. They talked about my whole career in theatre, where they had seen me, which film, whatever. Young people said, “We saw you recently in Captain America: Civil War. That’s why we came this morning.” Maar toe sê die mense, “Can you give me your hand?” I said, “Shake hands,” en toe sê die ou lady, “Ag, maar gee my sommer ’n druk.”16 It was unbelievable.
What more can I ask for in my life than an incredible career, incredible growth? I have grown with this country. From the worst of this country to the best of this country. I’ve just come back from a tour with my last play, Missing, which I also wrote. In Bogotá, Colombia, they are trying to make peace – FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] and the government. Those people have fifty years of fighting, of killing. When I was there, I was invited to the university to speak to five hundred students [in an auditorium], three times in a row. All they wanted was for me to explain truth and reconciliation. They were asking me, “You had suffered. I have read your bio, your history. How could you accept white people? How did you accept forgiveness?”And you say, “It was a natural phenomenon. You fought not for revenge, you fought for peace.”
Angel Jones: “Create change and make it happen”
Angel Jones is the founder and CEO of Homecoming Revolution, a pan-African recruitment agency she started as an NGO in her ad agency to support (and entice) expatriate South Africans returning to the country. As she says, most of us have a love-hate relationship with our country. I found her absolutely inspirational, reminding me of Anton Rupert’s words when asked why he chose to live here when his business empire was centred on Europe: “Here my life makes a difference.” Angel and I spoke in Johannesburg in June 2015.
Ruda: You majored in economics at UCT [University of Cape Town] and then did a postgraduate qualification in advertising. What attracted you to that?
Angel: I always loved talking, chatting, telling stories. At school we were told that every second person wants to go into advertising and it’s almost impossible to do that, so I remember thinking that if I took economics at varsity, then that would give me that extra edge because I needed to know how to sell stuff. The economics at the bottom of advertising, not just the pretty pictures and the lovely words.
Ruda: So advertising came first, in your head, in your heart?
Angel: Always. My mother showed me a clever ad when I was young, an anti-mining campaign for the Kruger Park. And she explained the line to me that said, “We dig the Kruger Park, and they mustn’t.” She said, “That’s a pun, and that’s how it works,” and I was fascinated by the use of clever language up there on billboards.
Ruda: You worked in London for a Saatchi company, right?
Angel: That’s right. It was M&C Saatchi, the advertising agency named after Maurice and Charles Saatchi, the two original Saatchi brothers who walked out of the big Saatchi & Saatchi agency and took twelve people with them. I managed to get in as a runner. I was the thirteenth person to join them – literally running around during the day, fetching cappuccinos and dry-cleaning for Charles Saatchi, and at night writing ads and practically sleeping under my desk. I managed to do that for a couple of months, then found a wonderful art director and again worked through the nights, and then finally managed to get a job in the industry, which was amazing.
Ruda: But after seven years you decided to come back to South Africa. Why?
Angel: I never meant to go away for so long. It was going to be a year or two of backpacking and then settling in London for a while, but after seven years . . . the trigger moment was . . . Every South African has that moment of wanting to return. I was lucky enough to see Madiba standing on the stairs of Trafalgar Square looking out over all of us and saying, “I love you all so much, I want to put you in my pocket and take you home.” And I burst into tears. I’d been getting letters from home all the time, about a shiny, new, bright South Africa . . . I grew up very conscientised; I had never been proud of my flag or the colour of my skin. Madiba was released when I was at varsity, so the symbolism of now feeling proud and free was very big in my life. So that was my trigger moment. I returned home to start the M&C Saatchi branch of the ad agency here.
Ruda: When was that – in 1994?
Angel: No, ’94 was when I just arrived in London, ironically enough. Madiba spoke at Trafalgar Square in the late 1990s. I arrived back in South Africa in 2000. Then we started the business, but we also started