Trompsburg

Trompsburg
Originally uploaded by Wildebeast1.

Trompsburg is a peaceful little town in the Free State where a number of friends of mine bought this house for R250 000 (less than £15 000's or $30 000).

The town has one famous inhabitant, writer Karel Schoeman. I have only read one of his books, By Fakkelig, which was about the Irish struggle for freedom from the British, and an allegory for the Afrikaner but also black South African's struggle for freedom.

According to my friends, the best book written in Afrikaans the last couple of years is also one of Schoeman's books - Afskeid en vertrek. (Take leave and go)

In The New York Times George Packer described it thus:

" "I AM trying to keep a soul alive," says the dying narrator of J. M. Coetzee's novel "Age of Iron," "in times not hospitable to the soul." In the violence and decay of Cape Town, the setting of Karel Schoeman's "Take Leave and Go," the time is now and the times are the concern of the novel: how one can continue to live inwardly, love and create in a society that appears to be disintegrating."

Do even Afrikaners have a right to their Proust?

I was quite struck the last paragraph of Packer's review and what it shows about views of Afrikaners circa the 90's.

"Those readers of "Take Leave and Go" who expect some token of protest or guilt will be disappointed; perhaps even protest and guilt are assumed. Adriaan and his friends aren't ignorant, nor are they apologists. They're bewildered by the destruction going on around them; they neither approve nor disapprove, but find themselves painfully estranged from a country they once knew.

Do even Afrikaners have a right to their Proust? Do their inner lives, too, deserve autonomous treatment? I would have had doubts; I would have heard the passionate voice of Nadine Gordimer proclaim the unity of private and social destiny. But then I read Karel Schoeman."

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African Hairstyles

Hairstyles
Originally uploaded by von_brandis.

Von Brandis, is a Cape Town based graphic artist and brother of Konradski.

(Konradski is one of the legendary founders of Bitterkomix. The ground breaking Afrikaans graphic novels started in the early 90's, packed with acerbic social commentary.)

Von Brandis has been uploading interesting work on Flickr for some time now.

Of hairstyles Von Brandis says: "A parody of traditional African barber signs to poke fun at bad Afrikaner hairstyles."

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Ingozi: A few days to the Rugby World Cup

ingozi
Originally uploaded by von_brandis.

Mhambi thinks its unlikely that the Springboks will win the Rugby World Cup (RWC), considering the difficulties they have experienced of late.

Yet, they have a team with real class and pace to go with their passion. A team that in many respects - bar the key position of flyhalf - superior to the one that won the 1995 cup.

One senses this team has not shown all they can do. And if not the favourites, they are much better placed than all bar New Zealand and France.

But such is the pessimism around the future of Afrikanerdom - the traditional font of Bok rugby - that some predict this is the Springboks last great team.

Luckily South Africa has a history of confounding pessimists. Lets hope for the best. Hoekvlag toe.

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Goldblatt revisits some Afrikaners

Watching home movies
Originally uploaded by Wildebeast1.

The Michael Stevenson gallery will present David Goldblatt's Some Afrikaners Revisited from 24 October - 25 November 2006 in Cape Town. It's an expanded view of a body of work first published in 1975 as Some Afrikaners Photographed.

Between 1961 and 1968, Goldblatt photographed Afrikaners initially around small-holdings near Randfontein, next in the Marico Bushveld and then more generally. Some of the black and white photographs were reproduced in specialist magazines, but it took Goldblatt until 1975 to find a publisher for the book that he envisaged - today a much-sought-after collector's item.

Of his decision to revisit this work and publish a new book two decades later, Goldblatt writes:

I have frequently been asked why I didn't produce a second edition. There were two reasons. First, I had done what I set out to do and was strongly disinclined to go over the same ground again. Second, since the reproduction negatives and plates and many of my original prints no longer existed, I would have had to produce a new set of darkroom prints, a hugely time-consuming task, especially unattractive when I had other projects in progress.
But then in 2004 I again visited Gamka's Kloof (Die Hel) and met Annetjie Mostert Joubert, the last of the Klowers still living there. Her infectious love of the place and of the community that was no more moved me greatly, and when I got home I looked carefully at the work I had done there in 1966-67 and 1967-68. There was quite a lot that I hadn't put into the 1975 book and it seemed sufficiently interesting to merit publication now, particularly since that unique community had completely disappeared. This led me to think not simply of a second edition but of an expanded book bringing into it various photographs from the work of that time as well as commentaries by two people whose views I value: Antjie Krog and Ivor Powell.

The possibility of a new book was made far more attractive by the experience I had gained in the past few years in digital reproduction of photographs. This technology obviated the need for me to produce a new set of hand-prints, while attaining subtleties and qualities in the new reproductions comparable to anything I could do in the darkroom.

See some of Goldblatt's Afrikaner photos here.

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