I was in my favourite Saxonwold shebeen, sipping tea with some friends who sit on the bench. We had talked ourselves into exhaustion and despair around the topic of politics in the somewhat faded rainbow nation.
I must digress here with a warning about excessive tea consumption. I read in a respected newspaper (The Sun, I think) that the samurai drank tea before battle. Now if tea could fuel the bloodlust of those warriors, who were able to separate a man’s head from his body with one sword stroke, then surely it is quite conceivable that one might drive one’s vehicle into a wall after several cups of this deceptively dangerous brew. I am not aware of this actually having happened in South Africa but felt that I should issue a warning. i would also like to point out to those of you who are sniggering or guffawing that The Sun, beneath its rough exterior, is actually a fine, investigative publication. Who else does exposes on zombies - South Africa’s hidden shame? You shake your head in disbelief? I have fled several government buildings in horror after encountering these dread creatures, looking into their dead eyes and hearing them intone in sepulchral voices: “Complete these ten forms in triplicate and come back next week”, or “The computers are down”. I can barely recount this without the comfort of a strong cup of tea.
Back at the Saxonwold shebeen, one of my learned friends, grimacing after an intense sip, changed the subject.
“Do you gentlemen remember?”, he asked. “There was once this strange fad where people claimed to remember having lived a past life. Going back to their square roots, so to speak. It was way back in that era that no-one in South Africa remembers”.
How could i forget? It was a difficult and even humiliating time in my life. I recall a party where I was conversing with a charming lady in whose beautiful mind i was keenly interested. We were getting on, if not like a house on fire, at least like one with a distinct smell of melting electrical wiring. Our conversation was interrupted by a fellow loudly proclaiming that he had known someone in a previous life who was a neighbour to Cleopatra’s second maid. (In fact, he claimed that she had found the asps that ended that life of that fine lady). I expected to see the men in white coats at the door but instead, almost everyone at the party chimed in with progressively more ridiculous tales. One claimed to have been present when Marie Antoinette tossed out her immortal witticism about dietary alternatives for the masses. Another, that he had been the only one of his tribe who had been able to pull a magical sword out of a stone, for which he was awarded the kingship of this barbaric people. My comment that it was a highly irregular and even bizarre way to hold an election, fell like a stone into the strained silence that followed it. My ears burned with the heat of the scornful glances cast my way. I even thought I heard someone whisper ‘Neanderthal’ but that may have been the name of one of the guests.
My own stellar career as a brain surgeon and my clutch of olympic gold medals for fencing were as dust. After all, how could I possibly compete with the chap who edited Mark Antony’s speech for him, substituting the more elegant ‘countrymen’ for the rather overused ‘comrades’? The lady in whose statuesque..er, beautiful mind I had taken such a keen, scientific interest glided away to powder her nose. Disconsolate and bewildered, I went to a bar where I met a friend from the now defunct Herstigte Nationale Party. For those of you too young to remember, think of this as a sort of Freedom Front Plus on nyaope. (By the way, is there also a Freedom Front Minus - perhaps a sort of poor, country cousin?) He counselled me not to give it too much thought. “As long as they live their past lives in their own areas with their own kind”, he said. “There is no problem. Knights with knights and soothsayers with soothsayers. It’s when they start mixing that the trouble starts”, he said, downing his brandy and coke and wagging a forefinger in warning.
My reverie was interrupted by one of my learned friends posing a question. “If all of those people were royals and nobles”, he asked. “Then who did the menial work? No-one admits to having been a slave or a scullery maid”.
That night, I was awakened out of a fitful sleep around midnight. Sweat beaded my forehead. My heart pounded out a kwaito-like rhythm. The answer to the question about the hewers of wood and drawers of water and had come to me in a troubled dream. That’s why the rest of us cannot remember. We were it.
https://www.amazon.com/Richard--J-Mann/e/B085P3QPMH?ref_=pe_1724030_132998060
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