 
### Farewell to Innocence: The full uncensored saga of Hannah Zeeman

### Vincent Gray

Smashwords Edition 2018

Farewell to Innocence

Published by Vincent Gray

Copyright © 2018 Vincent Gray

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

This book is a work of fiction. All the characters developed in this novel are fictional creations of the writer's imagination and are not modelled on any real persons. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

ISBN: 9780463800348

Author Biography

As a son of a miner the author was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg during the 1960s and matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school he was conscripted into the South African Defence Force (SADF) for compulsory national military service at the age of seventeen. On completion of his military service he studied courses in Zoology, Botany and Microbiology at the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree he worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. Following the initial conscription into military service in the SADF, like all other white South African males of his generation, he was then drafted into one of the many South African Citizen Military Regiments. During the 1970s he was called up as a citizen-soldier to do three-month military camps on the 'Border' which was the operational theatre of the so-called counter insurgency 'Bush War' during the Apartheid years. Before and in between university studies he also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales representative. The author is now a retired professor whose career as an academic in the Biological Sciences has spanned a period of thirty-three years mainly at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Before retirement he lectured and carried out research in the field of molecular biology with a special interest in the molecular basis of evolution. He continues to pursue his interest in evolutionary biology. Other interests which the author pursues includes radical theology, philosophy and literature.

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Dedicated to my wife Melodie and my daughter Ruth

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Who Am I?

Chapter 2: Hotazel and Puberty

Chapter 3: Awakening of Adolescence

Chapter 4: Teenage Years

Chapter 5: My First Year

Chapter 6: My Second Year

Chapter 7: First Overseas Trip

Chapter 8: Student Bible Group

Chapter 9: My Third Year

Chapter 10: Sodwana Bay Adventure

Chapter 11: Student Politics

Chapter 12: Zoology Field Trip

Chapter 13: Honours Year

Chapter 14: Cause and Effect

Chapter 15: University of Cape Town

Chapter 16: The Underground

Chapter 17: Nonhlanhla's Silhouette

Chapter 18: Reunions

Chapter 19: Arrest and Detention

Chapter 20: My Childhood Bedroom

Chapter 21: Yael

Chapter 22: Sailor Boy Seamstress

Chapter 23: Final Disclosure

Preface

As Aristotle said in his Poetics, the plot is the soul of all narratives, and I leave it to the reader to discern any underlying plot hidden in this autobiographical narrative, a narrative composed of a series of interpolations: That is textual interpolations capturing moments which embody discrete and scattered scenes all of which were born from sudden dreamlike, yet vivid bursts of memory. I can assure you that the chronology or plot or story line or 'narratology' of this autobiographical narrative has emerged quite unintentionally, possibly even contingently, purely as the result of a fairly mechanical process on my part as the creative editor or redactor of the story of my life. You don't keep a personal journal or diary to intentionally narrate the plot of your life as you have lived it moment by moment, especially at the end of your life. That would be presumptuous. Yet I am not entirely innocent regarding the textualization of my life, even if I never felt that my life was extraordinary. Even the most mundane existence hides in its own closet an infinity of secrets which are the private possessions of their holder. We all bear the burden of our own secrets. Confession is an unburdening of secrets and it's the first step towards forgiveness and absolution. I forgive myself.

Hanna Zeeman

Chapter 1: Who am I?

1

My name is Hannah Petronella Hendrina Wilhelmina Zeeman. I am no longer ashamed of my name. I am no longer uncomfortable with the fact that my family became Anglicized Afrikaners. My great grandfather died fighting in the anti-colonial Anglo Boer War against the British. He died in Ladysmith. I am also a direct descendent of a Mr Ambroos Zeeman who settled in the Cape of Good Hope in 1661. He was a slave trader connected with the Dutch East India Company or Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie which was founded by the Dutch in 1602.

2

By the vagaries of descent I have been assigned to that demographic group of South Africans who are recognized as being white. I also belong to that subgroup of whites who are not fully Afrikaans nor fully English. I grew up living in the interstitial spaces of two languages, two cultures and two white ethnicities, while never been fully at home in either language or culture or ethnic group. So in a way I am one of those white South Africans, an umlungu as they call us, the kind of person who does not really have a mother tongue or an unambiguous sense of ethnic identity. By sheer contingency and not by choice I have become predominantly English speaking. So in a real sense English has become my adopted language. In South Africa, like many Indians, Coloureds, Whites and now also many Blacks, I have also become 'English' without having any intimate or special kind of ancestral connection to England. My relationship to England, an island which I have been fortunate enough to have visited many times, is one without any sense of rootedness. Yet when staying or travelling in the UK everything felt both alien and familiar at the same time. Is this something experienced by all non-British English speakers? Viewed from the vantage point of the global south England for me exists as a remote and distant country. This remoteness and distance is cultural and social, and it's this kind of distance and remoteness which reinforces its foreignness. Two kinds of Britain have always lived in my mind the one shaped and coloured by novels authored by English writers, and then the actual country that I have experienced at first hand as a visitor, a country which always failed to live up to my expectations, especially as a speaker of the English language. England never felt like home in any sense of the word. I felt more foreign in England than in Spain or France or Holland or even America. Outside of Africa I felt most at home in France, a country that I have had the opportunity to also visit regularly. However, I do not feel European in any way, and I do not feel any connection with Europe. Except for Africa I am a foreigner everywhere in the world.

So in fact, I am not really English nor do I wish to be English. Maybe English speakers outnumber the English. English as a world language belongs to anyone who cares enough about the language to claim it as their own. English knows no nationality, race, colour, creed, country, culture and ethnicity. English as a language is at home in the world no matter where that home happens to be. English has colonized my mind. English is a language which assimilates foreign words and concepts. It is a language which has colonized the minds of natives and aboriginals, filling their minds with words that embody foreign concepts and meanings which cannot be decolonized. So I reconciled myself to speaking English as my preferred language. I don't really know why I am expressing these thoughts about English, but English is the language in which I now live, and it is also the language which I have taken ownership of without being English, it is now my language.

3

I was born in Johannesburg and for the first years of my life I grew in up in City Deep, a mining suburb in the south of Johannesburg. It was while we were still living in the mine house at City Deep that my father bought the two-door 1934 Riley Nine Lynx Tourer. As a young child I watched them push the car into the garage. After my father had counted out the British or English pounds, also the currency of the Union of South Africa at that time, the men who had towed the car to our home left after counting their money. Give me one hundred English pounds and you can have it. One hundred English pounds, cash! Give me a hundred. This is the memory I cherish in my mind when I think of that day when he paid for the Riley which he had wanted so badly. Corelle also loved the Riley. Eventually I inherited the Riley, but that is another story. Alone with my dad I watched him take ownership of his purchase, taking possession of his baby which he wanted so badly, yes he wanted it so very badly. Standing next to him in the garage I watched as he lifted the bonnet and began examining the engine under the bright leadlight which he had clamped to the underside of the open bonnet. I must have asked him a thousand questions about the Riley. Without becoming impatient he took the time and made the effort to satisfy the curiosity of his little daughter. Overhauling the engine, he said, was the first job that he was going to tackle, but first we must inspect the engine. He placed a large wooden block in the front of the car and lifted me onto it so that standing on the block I could also peer down on the engine lit up under the spotlight beneath the hood. After he had finished his examination of the engine he ran his palm lovingly over the front fender. He explained that he had to fix the engine so that it would work again. This meant that he would have to lift the engine out. To me this seemed to be a task too daunting to even be considered as a possibility. He wanted to start right away. While he was draining the oil from the engine, mom came into the garage with Elsabe in her arms. She did not look very happy. She said that we could ill-afford such an extravagant hobby, a hobby which involved the restoration of vintage sports cars. That was all she said after glancing at the Riley. Before leaving she looked at me and asked if I was coming. I replied that I wanted to stay with daddy and watch what he was going to do. She left without me, carrying Elsabe she walked back along the concrete footpath that separated the house from the backyard lawn over which the washing lines were strung, slamming the kitchen door behind her. I did not follow her, I stayed behind with my father. After draining the oil he leaned over the engine, clutching a spanner in his hand, he began to deftly unscrew bolts that were hidden from sight in every nook and cranny of the engine, all the time speaking to himself. Standing on the wooden box, leaning over the fender I too peered down at the engine, observing what he was doing. I listened while I watched him work under the glare of the bright light. I asked him if the car was a girl or boy because he keep on referring to the car in the gendered terms of 'she' and 'her'. He replied without hesitation that the car was a she. He said all cars were she's. It was a bewildering revelation to learn that all cars were girls. No car was a 'he'. Out of curiosity I began into interrogate him on whether all machines were also girls. Yes, he confirmed, all machines, all cars, all trucks, all boats, all ships, all aeroplanes and all steam engines were girls, they were all 'she's', not one was a boy. The feminization of all machinery was something that astonished me as a child. And it took a conscious effort on my part to accept that this was the reality of the world of machinery and engines and all things with mechanical moving parts, covered in grease and oil, they were all girls. So the Riley that my dad was going to restore was a girl. Should we give her a name I asked? Yes, you can give her a name he answered with a distracted look on his face. I thought and thought. Eventually I came up with Doris. The car will be called Doris after Doris Day, the singer of 'Que, Sera, Sera', which was my favourite song at the time, together with Patti Page's 'Doggie in the Window'. On second thoughts it was going to be a toss-up between Doris and Patti. When I finally informed my father that I had decided to name the car Doris he asked if the car was going to have a surname I immediately answered that Patti would be her surname. So the Riley was baptized 'Doris Patti'.

He disconnected all her wires, pipes and hoses. He unbolted and removed her radiator, carburettor, and alternator. He jacked up Doris Patti so that he could unbolt her transmission and unbolt all her remaining bolts which fixed her engine to her chassis. Once her mounting bolts were removed he hoisted her engine out. While her engine hung suspended in the air I helped my father push the car out of the garage. He lowered her engine so that it rested on blocks of wood which he had arranged on the floor in the middle of the garage. Bathed under a cone of light in the dim garage he stared at her engine. Now the engine by itself had become a she. He had to do this and he had to do that to her to get her working again.

By nightfall he had disassembled the entire engine into its component parts. I learnt that the engine block had to go to the machine shop. Some of the engine parts had to be replaced with new parts and other parts had to be reconditioned, and other parts had to be remade from scratch from blocks of steel using machine tools such as grinders, drills and laths. After overhauling the engine he then single-handedly put the engine back using the chain, block and tackle. Hoisting it up high and then lowering it down so that it rested comfortably in its place on the chassis. I have never forgotten that distinctive metallic sound of the ratchet as my dad pulled on the chains. Once everything was reconnected including the battery he turned the ignition key and to my amazement the engine started. Now he could drive the car in and out of the garage.

4

As usual, after he had fetched us from Sunday school he continued working on the Riley. And also as usual Malcolm and I joined him outside by the garage while his was busy with the Riley. Malcolm generally made a nuisance of himself. Once fiddling with the bonnet he managed to collapse it on dad's head while he was busy working on the engine. On another occasion also after Sunday school while dressed in his Sunday best Malcolm began to kick the front tire of the Riley with his shiny new black shoes. 'Stop kicking the tire with your new shoes', I heard dad's voice coming from under the car. I was sitting in the front seat playing with the steering wheel and dad was busy working on connecting some cable under the car. Corelle was also present. On most Sundays Corelle, who was my mom's best friend, would visit us for the entire day. She and mom had been friends since their childhood days. They often joked that they were sisters. While mom was busy preparing the Sunday roast Corelle would often join us outside. Sometimes she would bring dad some tea on a little silver tray that she had given to my mom as a birthday present. I always called her auntie Corelle. While she stood holding the tray I was my usual loquacious self:

'Look auntie Corelle I am driving daddy's Riley. Auntie Corelle do know that I have given the car a name, her name is Doris Patti.'

The Riley resting on four jack trestles had been lifted high off the ground. I climbed down from the passenger seat and crawled under the car.

'Hannah you going to get you nice Sunday school dress all grubby and dirty,' I heard Corelle say. My dad spoke Afrikaans to Corelle. Corelle spoke English like a Boer, the same as my Mom. My dad's English was unaccented. It was the English of Johannesburg.

Lying on my back next to my father I looked up Corelle's dress. The whole world was upside down from my vantage point. I could see her stocking encased legs, her suspenders and her panties as her skirt billowed in the light fresh breeze. Then I could see Malcolm's knees, socks and shoes. He was standing next to Corelle. Ignoring dad, Malcolm continued to kick the front tire and the toe cups of his shiny black shoes were becoming increasingly damaged with each kick. Dad was becoming increasing irritated with Malcolm's constant kicking of the tire and reprimanded him again, this time angrily, telling him to stop destroying his shoes immediately. Malcolm ran bawling to mom who was busy in the kitchen preparing the Sunday roast. Knowing that mom would soon storm out of the kitchen I quickly crawled out from under the car and climbed back onto the front seat. Corelle also quickly climbed into the passenger seat next to me just as mom came screaming out of the kitchen wanting to know why dad had yelled at Malcolm and why he had upset the child by threatening to take away his new Sunday school shoes. It was a lie, dad did not threaten to take away his shoes. Corelle smiled sweetly at me. Her eyes sparkled with conspiracy. I smiled back at her as mom dressed in her apron over her Sunday best outfit walked back to the kitchen with Malcolm, still snivelling, holding her hand. As soon as mom disappeared into the kitchen Corelle hugged me, kissing me on the cheek.

'You are definitely daddy's little girl hey? You are such a pretty little girl I wish you were mine.'

Then mom called from the kitchen. Lunch was ready. Dad crawled out from under the car, took his greasy and oily overalls off. After washing his hands and face he would join us at the table still smelling of grease and oil. We ate our Sunday lunch at the kitchen table. It was the same table on which they had cut Malcolm's hair. He had a shock of dark curly locks which covered his ears and almost reached his shoulders. I don't think that he ever had a proper hair cut since his birth. Ouma Zeeman had brought her scissors and clippers. Dad and Oupa Zeeman had to hold him down on the table as he screamed blue murder, kicking and twisting. Lying on his back on the kitchen table with his head hanging over the edge of the table having his locks shorn off, with his body writhing about violently like a captured wild animal, it was a sight to witness, and I could not help imagining the likeness of the scene to the sacrifice of Isaac. On the same table Oupa Vollenhoven deftly butchered the carcase of a sheep with a sharp knife and hacksaw. When he first laid the skinned carcase on the table I thought the carcase was from their dog. The head was missing so I could not tell what kind of animal the carcase belonged to. I was convinced that Oupa and Ouma had killed their Alsatian and that the carcase belonged to their dog. It took a lot convincing before I believed that they had not slaughtered and skinned the Alsatian and that we were not going to eat their dog for supper. During Sunday lunches Dad sat at the head of the table and Elsabe sat in the highchair next to mom and mom feed her in between eating her own meal. Malcolm sat next to me and Corelle sat on opposite side of the table. We ate the roast lamb with mint sauce that mom had prepared from the mint which grew in the garden next to the tap. It was also during lunch that Corelle announced:

'Did you know that Hannah has given the vintage car a name?' 'Nooo, I did not know that,' my mom replied with a frown on her forehead. 'Yes she has, such a clever girl, the car's name is Doris Patti. Don't you think that is so sweet?'

After lunch dad would go back to work on the car and then at three-o-clock Oupa and Ouma Zeeman or Oupa and Ouma Vollenhoven would arrive. After the visitors had arrived mom would stick her head out of the kitchen door, yell at him to stop working and come in. She would have to do this several times, each time reminding him that it was time to stop working on the car as his tea was getting cold, also reminding him that he was being very inconsiderate working on the Riley while Oupa and Ouma Vollenhoven were visiting. Eventually Corelle would also get up to tell him to stop working, adding that mom was now getting really agitated. At five-o-clock Oupa and Ouma would be ready to leave. It was also time for Elsabe to be bathed, fed and put to sleep.

5

The sun had already set. At seven mom complained that she could barely keep her eyes open. Elsabe and Malcolm were fast asleep in bed, but I was still up, wide awake. It was getting late, as usual dad had to take Corelle home. Mom looking weary would apologise for being such a bad host, barely able to keep her eyes open she excused herself. Apologizing once more for not coming along on the drive, but then someone had to stay behind with the kids. Instead I would go with. The drone and motion of the car made me sleepy and I would fall asleep on the back seat. I would wake up again when we arrived at Corelle's flat at the edge of Hillbrow. Dad would park the Hudson next to Berea Park across the road from Corelle's flat. Leaving me behind in the car he would reassure me that he would be back very soon. I would fall asleep again on the back seat of the locked car. When we got back home mom would already be in bed dead to the world. With me submerged in a deep asleep he would carry my sleep-limp body cradled in his arms into the house, unbuckle my shoes, and tuck me into bed. In the morning I would wake up still wearing my Sunday school dress and white socks.

Soon it was Christmas again. The Christmas before we had driven in the Hudson to Germiston Lake where dad, unseen under the shrouding cover of a rapidly descending twilight, surreptitiously sawed off the top portion of a young sapling conifer which became our Christmas tree. Now we had bought a real Christmas tree from the nursery, a cone shaped grey-green conifer, perfect for decorating with its horizontal branches bristling with brushes of spikey prickly needles. It had been planted into a large green painted tin drum and dad decorated it with tinsel and coloured lights. After that Christmas he planted it in the middle of the front lawn. Years later when we drove past the City Deep mine houses we would spot our old home among the other houses. Our Christmas tree had grown into a towering cone shaped grey-green pine tree with thick horizontal branches sprouting long brushes of spikey prickly needles.

6

Out of the blue I learnt that we were moving. Just before we moved from City Deep to Stilfontein Uncle Roger moved with his family to Empangeni to establish a sugarcane farm. I thought that I would never see my cousins again. However at the end of grade one during the December holidays we went to visit Uncle Roger on his sugarcane farm. One morning we woke to a huge commotion. We heard Auntie Anna shouting.

'There is a rhinoceros in the backyard!'

We jumped out of our beds and run barefoot into the kitchen dressed in our ankle length nighties, and sure enough there was indeed a black rhino in the backyard facing the kitchen door. We climbed onto the kitchen counters next to the sink, kneeling on the counter with our faces pressed against the window panes we stared in total disbelief at the rhino. Auntie Anna brandishing the kitchen broom standing her ground under the threshold of the doorway began to shout: 'shoo, shoo, shoo,' while waving the broom in a menacing manner. After a few minutes the rhino turned around and trotted off, disappearing into the surrounding bush.

7

It felt like that we had barely settled down in Stilfontein when we learnt that we would be moving once more, this time to a place called Hotazel, which my mother pronounced as follows: Hot-as-hell. So we going to move to a very hot place. I felt quite perturbed at the prospect. Before we moved from Stilfontein to Hotazel I remembered that my mom had said something about the mine houses in Hotazel that struck me as being quite odd especially as a child. She said that the houses in Hotazel had floors covered with Marley tiles. As a young child I could not understand why she seemed to be so thrilled that our new home soon to be in Hotazel had floors that were covered with Marley tiles. I tried to imagine what a Marley tiled floor looked like. For some weird reason the word 'Marley' made me think of marbles. I developed this mental image that the surfaces of the floors of the Hotazel houses had marbles stuck into concrete.

Our house in Stilfontein had polished wooden parquet flooring which I liked. I was not very happy about leaving Stilfontein, especially leaving my room which had just been painted pink. I was also leaving behind the newly built Strathvaal Primary School.

However, my older brother Malcolm was ecstatic. If anyone wanted to escape from Stilfontein it was my brother. For some unexplainable and mysterious reason he had decided to fling fist sized clods of red earth at the white washed walls of the home of Dr Simon Cohen our neighbour. Dr Cohen a medical doctor was the local general practitioner in Stilfontein. He lived with his wife and two young daughters in the neat little house next to our home. His wife, was a sophisticated Jewish woman as I remember her. Being a housewife was her main job which involved supervising the domestic servant and looking after their two daughters.

As a friend of her daughters I was a frequent visitor in their home. We would listen for hours to LPs of 'The Snow Goose' and 'Alice in Wonderland' on their brand new Pilot Radiogram. Compared to my mother Mrs Cohen was a wonderful mother to her two daughters and an excellent host to me as a regular visitor, a Gentile intruder into her kosher home. Malcolm was mom's favourite. Elsabe and I often felt like second class children. My mother was always on our case. The bonds between my mother, Elsabe and me were never strong as far as I can remember. There were the odd moments when my mother become our wonderful friend and indulged our ever wish.

An act of vandalism had been committed and the suspect was Malcolm. I had to go and find Malcolm who had disappeared off the face of the earth after committing the deed. Malcolm's friend Kevin and I set out on a search for Malcolm while my hysterical mother Mrs Amanda Zeeman was having one of her dramatic cadenzas. Kevin reckoned that Malcolm was playing pin ball at a Café up the road on the bult (hill) which was next door to the old Strathvaal Primary School where I had been first enrolled as a grade one pupil. The memories and smells of that first year of school are still vivid in my mind, the apricot jam sandwiches wrapped in wax wrap, the little plastic bottle filled with Oros orange juice, the little black slate board, pencils, exercise books and the English reader. Every day I would walk home down the bult along the tar road with my big brother Malcolm and his gang of friends. Every day we had to contend with the harassment of a pet crow that would be waiting to ambush us.

We saw Malcolm coming the downhill walking with his hands in his pockets quite nonchalantly as if he did not have a care in the world. My instruction from my mother was to tell Malcolm to come home immediately. I was to say nothing else. Kevin wanted to embellish on my mom's message with other threatening information like for instance that he must come home immediately because the doctor was going to give him an injection.

Before I could inform Malcolm that mom wanted him to come home right away without any dilly-dallying along the way, Kevin immediately blurted out that Dr Cohen was going to give him an injection. Malcolm instantly put two and two together and his face turned ashen white with apprehension. I became livid with anger at his stupidity and insolence. I began to shout at him in the street so that the whole neighbourhood could hear what he had done. How could he spend the afternoon playing pin ball with not a care in the world after he had defaced the walls of the Cohen's home? How could he entertain the possibility that his act would have no consequences for him?

It was pathetic to watch him. He howled for the remainder of the afternoon until nightfall while he washed down the Cohen's wall down with a hose and tried unsuccessfully to mop and wipe away the red stains from the walls. Dad had to pay for the repainting of the outside walls of the Cohen's home. Malcolm did not get a hiding. His punishment was the humiliation that he had to endure as the Cohens, mom, Kevin, Elsabe, the domestic servants and I stood watching him trying to clean the red stains from the wall.

8

After a while I made peace with my fate that my new bedroom in Hotazel would have thousands of different coloured glass marbles stuck into the concrete floor. Mom always exaggerated. She said the manganese mine was in the Kalahari Desert which was covered in sand dunes for as far as the eye could see. They were flown in a small aircraft to the desert to visit the mine. My dad who was a mechanical engineer seemed to be some kind of bigshot on the mines. They wanted him very badly in Hotazel. So they flew my mom and dad to Hotazel to see the huge open cast crater of a mine from which broken rock was hauled out by huge yellow coloured Euclid trucks which were as big as houses. They were away for a few days. We had to stay with family friends across the road from our house while they were in Hotazel. I stayed with my friend Edith Malherbe. For three nights we slept in the same bed. Her parents took us to see Sleeping Beauty in Johannesburg at His Majesty's in Commissioner Street.

My mom loved the Marley tiles. And even though my dad got very sick on the roll-coaster flight to Hotazel and vomited into a paper bag he still took the job even after having to go through that ordeal. Anyway I managed to form a mental picture of the house with Marley tiles in Hotazel after we saw a short documentary of a desert in Arizona which was screened before the main movie. I couldn't believe that we were going to leave our nice face brick home in Stilfontein to live in a desert like the one in Arizona that I had seen on the movie screen, which included scenes of primitive dwellings possibly with marbles stuck into the concrete floor, surrounded by tall cactuses, and a desert filled with rattle snakes, rats, eagles and coyotes. Our home in Stilfontein had become very special to me.

9

Just before we moved to Hotazel I had an experience which in a way changed my life for good. While I stood on the lawn trying to come to grips with the fact we were going to move to a desert like the desert in Arizona I saw a chameleon walking, or was it crawling, along the top of the diamond mesh fence. A low diamond mesh fence separated the row of mine houses from the main road that connected Klerksdorp and Potchefstroom to Stilfontein. I had never seen a live chameleon before. Fascinated and filled with wonder I watched it crawling along the top strand. It looked so exposed, so awkward and vulnerable. Its eyes mounted on mobile conical turrets eyed me out warily. Where was it going? Where did it come from? What was it thinking? I was curious beyond belief at the sight of this mobile sentient being which filled my visual world with such unspeakable mystery. What did it eat? Where does it sleep? What does it do with itself all day? What was it thinking? It kept its wary little eye focused on me as it began to crawl faster along the fence towards our neighbour's property which happened to be the home of Dr Cohen. Yes, what could it possibly be thinking or feeling? It must be able to think I thought to myself as I gazed at its anxious looking little reptilian eyes. I didn't realize it then, but I had asked the questions that were going to preoccupy me for the rest of my life. I knew it was thinking. It had to be thinking something at the very least. I could see that it was aware of my presence. It was very obviously a fully conscious being. It was a sentient being that was very much aware of its surroundings which included me, a very curious little girl, who had become enthralled by the sight and presence of the chameleon on the fence. It looked so vulnerable exposed on the top of the fence. I followed the chameleon until it vanished into the shrubbery in the Cohen's garden. I was born with an innate fascination for animals. There was something electrifyingly magical about living creatures, especially wild ones, which captivated me. I immediately began to search for more chameleons in the foliage of our garden. The search for chameleons became an obsession. From that day on I was always on the lookout for chameleons wherever I went, but I never found another chameleon in our Stilfontein garden. Little did I know that the first animal which I would encounter on our arrival in Hotazel would also be a chameleon?

Where was it going? Where did it come from? Where did it sleep? Did it have a home? What did it eat? What did it think about? These were the questions which began to fill my head as a small girl whenever some animal happened to catch my attention such as a lizard, a toad, a snail or a caterpillar. I did not realize at the time as a young girl in Stilfontein while I stood gazing at the chameleon in an emotional state which could only be described as a mystical rapture of enthralment that I was going to build my future career on trying to find answers to these questions as a zoologist. Nor did I realize that the answers to my questions regarding animal minds and animal behaviour would have profound personal philosophical, theological and political implications. The answers would shape my understanding of Marxist theory and my commitment to the class struggle and the Communist Revolution. Animal studies transformed me into a radical, it turned me into a materialist, a materialist with a physicalist perception of the Universe, that is, a Universe which was causally closed. For most of my life I have grappled with implications of a Universe such as ours as being one that was causally closed.

Chapter 2: Hotazel and Puberty

1

On Monday the second of January 1963 we arrived at Hotazel in the brand new Austin Cambridge just after a rare massive thunder storm had saturated the dry Kalahari sands with life giving moisture. The Kalahari did not look like the desert in Arizona nor did our new home look like the rude dwellings that I had seen in the movie. The mine manager's house that we were moving into was a newly built six bedroomed double story face brick house on an acre stand. The house was surrounded by vast lush emerald green kikuyu lawns. To my delight the garden had a fishpond. In the backyard there was a nearly built fowl run and a large aviary; it was something that my dad had organized specially for me. He also had a pigeon loft built. In Stilfontein he had become a homing pigeon enthusiast.

2

While they were unpacking the furniture truck Malcolm, Elsabe and I went exploring. We walked over to the mine recreation club, which was referred to as the 'rec'. We discovered that next to the rec surrounded by a wooden split-pole fence was a swimming pool. I left Malcolm and Elsabe and went wondering off on my own because they wanted to go back to the house. I walked across the rugby field into a patch of veld. My heart skipped a beat when I saw a large chameleon walking with its odd gait over the fresh damp white Kalahari sand. It was the second chameleon that I had seen. I bent down to take a closer look. In a threatening display it inflated its body and began to hiss furiously at me, opening its gape wide. Again like with the previous chameleon encounter questions flooded my mind once more regarding this beautiful slow moving reptilian animal: Where did it come from? Where was it going? Where did it live and where did it sleep? What was it thinking?

I noticed that it had left its spoor trail behind in the soft wet sand. I began to follow the spoor to see where the chameleon had come from. I must have followed its spoor trail for more than a 100 meters before I decided to give up and go back to our new home. I was in state of elation. I had fallen in love with Hotazel and the surrounding Kalahari Desert landscape. Does the chameleon have a mind? It was clearly very aware of me. Does a chameleon have conscious, does it have self-consciousness? Does it feel? What does it feel? What does it mean to feel? To feel is to experience. Surely it must be able to feel something in order for it to be a sentient creature. By observing its behaviour we assume that it possesses the capacity or the power to feel hungry, danger, pain, fear, cold, hot, or excited, and so on. Feeling something is the same as experiencing something. To experience something is to feel a sensation. To feel a sensation is to be aware of the sensation. In a materialist Universe it is matter that is feeling, it is matter that is aware of a sensation, to be aware of a sensation is to be on the road to full blown conscious including self-consciousness. But on the other hand we honestly don't know how 'matter' can feel and experience consciousness especially if we hold to the materialist metaphysical thesis that the physical Universe is causally closed and all physical effects have physical causes. If this is our metaphysics then I promise you that mental activity and consciousness is going to be a mystery for quite a while. If we can solve the problem of the mechanisms responsible for the emergence of mind or what we call consciousness then we will be able to build a human-like robot with a mind and with free will.

3

Sartre, the modern philosopher of consciousness, did not ask the fundamental question regarding the origination or biogenesis of consciousness, nor did Descartes who was the original philosopher of consciousness. He did not inquire into the material conditions for its possibility. The material conditions which make it a possibility for something to possess the 'power' or capacity for consciousness, includes all the molecular based causal mechanisms which give rise to the experience of consciousness or in the state of being conscious. Can we deny that the chameleon was in a state of conscious? Can it see anything without being conscious of what it was seeing? Every experience of any sentient being had to be a conscious experience of something. This is what being aware is all about?

4

The chameleon sees me! How could I possibly doubt that? The chameleon is showing all the signs that it sees me. My encounter with the chameleon resulted in the chameleon experiencing something. A human cannot be conscious without being consciousness of something. With regard to its attempts to escape from my presence the chameleon's locomotory powers were absurdly modest in the extreme. As a young prepubescent girl I realized this, yet I was too fearful to touch it and I make no attempt to capture it. For some reason the chameleon does not move, it remains fixed in one spot, trapped in my gaze, standing a full yard away from the exposed toes of my sandalled feet, bright green on the rain washed white Kalahari sand, it is exposed and vulnerable. It remains frozen. To escape it must not move. I repeat, to escape it must not move! Its immobility makes it appear inanimate, like a large leaf lying on ground. I am fascinated. But also extremely cautious.

I step forward half a yard closer and bend over to have a closer look. Now the chameleon suddenly moves, it puffs up its throat, it opens its mouth in a wide fearsome gape and it hisses aggressively. My heart skips a beat. I pull back immediately, a rapid reflex response. Eyeing me out with its tiny eyes, watching my every move, it is no longer the passively frozen vulnerable green creature, instead it has become black with anger, and it now seems ready to lunge at me with all the ferocity that it can muster.

5

In Hotazel while in primary school with my eyes glued to the ground I searched for the Kalahari Tent Tortoises (Psammobates oculifer). My father stopped me from collecting them, explaining to me that I was interfering with their lives and they should be left in peace. He made a suggestion that I should rather study their natural habits by marking them where I had found them with Cutex nail vanish. So I became obsessed with finding tortoises and marking them before I released them again. My father took an interest in my tortoise marking activities and soon he was asking me questions like: how many tortoises had I marked, how many times have I recaptured tortoises that I had previously marked. The marking and recapture of tortoises kept me busy throughout my primary and high school years.

The men on the mine sometimes went on nocturnal springhare hunting or chasing excursions. Several times dad took Malcolm and me on a night drive. He drove the mine bakkie and we sat in the cab next to him. The young men from the single quarters would stand on the back of the bakkie. One of the men used a powerful spotlight to locate animals in the pitch dark.

Years later I discovered the Formozov-Malyshev-Pereleshin (FMP) formula that Russian scientists had used for converting animal track counts or track frequency into animal density. As a child in Hotazel I had entered into the fullness of the Universe of non-human sentient beings. I was obsessively curious about animals. The evidence of the presence of sentient beings was written in the many spoors, in the tracks in the sand that I came across, which I saw everywhere as I walked in the Kalahari's sandy scrub landscape dotted with its ubiquitous thorns trees. As a child I wondered into the Kalahari that surrounded the mining village of Hotazel in a continuous state of rapture and wonder. I never ceased to experience that state of wonder and rapture whenever I discovered an animal in its wild state. I could not help marvelling at the fact that the animal was a living sentient being which somehow managed to exist all by itself, whether it was a tortoise, or frog, or lizard or even a snake, and I came across many snakes, mole snakes, cobras and puff adders. My heart always skipped a beat if I flushed a hare or duiker or a steenbok. With every animal encounter I relived that same experience which I first had when I discovered the chameleon crawling along the top of the diamond mesh fence. I was amazed and filled with joy when we flushed our first hare in the veld across the road from our house in Stilfontein. I would never forget my fascination when I first saw that large blackish coloured fish in the bath tub in the Klerksdorp flat. Without fail throughout my life, in my teenage years and when I was a student at Wits the sudden accidental discovery of a tortoise or the unexpected springing up of a steenbok or grey duiker in my path never failed to be a thrilling event for me. Why this obsession with non-human sentient beings? From early childhood I had found myself in a state of proneness when it came to animals, I was prone or predisposed to be fascinated by any encounter I had with a sentient non-human being existing wild, undomesticated in a state of nature. It was a wonder and fascination with wild animals that was unsentimental. As I have already mentioned, I never had a pet in my life, not even a dog or a cat. Except for the pigeon, bantams, geese and ducks we kept, I was not drawn to domestic animals. But both my father and I got great pleasure from keeping the homing pigeons and love birds in Hotazel. And we got a lot of enjoyment out of having the bantam fowls, ducks and geese.

6

I cannot remember the details but when I was in standard three we spent a weekend as a family on what was one of the largest cattle farms in the Kalahari. It was owned by an Afrikaans widow who was in her sixties. She lived alone on the farm running the cattle ranch with the help of a few Coloured labourers. The farm also teemed with game. One of her sons who was a medical doctor in Kuruman took us on game viewing drive. Malcolm, Elsabe and I stood on the back of the bakkie as we drove along a two track road that wound like a snake through the Kalahari scrubland. We saw kudu and gemsbok, but what we had really came to see was the huge herd of springbok. Eventually we found the herd of springbok. After stopping about 50 metres from the herd the doctor climbed onto the back of the bakkie with his hunting rifle. I have an idea that it was .303. Anyway he took a bead on a young ram. The rifle cracked sharply and the animal dropped to the ground stone dead. The dead springbok was our take home gift of venison. Back at the farm house I watched the two farm labourers' skin and butcher the buck.

7

My mother had always said that I was not a normal girl especially once we had moved to Hotazel. Instead of being housebound doing girlie stuff I would disappear for hours on end into the surrounding Kalahari scrubland. I was doing all kinds of boy stuff such as spending too much time with father while he was with the pigeons or working on his cars. My interest in animals and wildlife was taken as being preoccupied with boy's stuff. It is only now on reflection that my predisposition towards lesbianism was always there for the astute observer to recognize. While my mother was always suspicions about the sexual significance of my girlhood predilections, my father always related to me as his little girl and it was him that reinforced my femininity and female sensibilities. I always felt like his little girl and always felt very feminine when I was with him. My mother found it strange that I would insist on wanting to go on hunting trips with the men. I took no joy in the killing of animals but like Malcolm I was drawn to the adventure of being outdoors, camping and roughing it. There were times when Malcolm and I were very close as siblings and he would say that I was his best friend. Elsabe was the real girl in our family. Compared to me she was always busy with girl stuff and I could not bring myself to ever play dolls with her. I would rather be with Malcolm and the boys. Maybe my father did sense that I was different from other girls. At Hotazel when Elsabe wanted to do ballet lessons at the rec which was being organized by one of the wives on the mine my father encouraged me go with Elsabe. He said ballet would give me a nice strong, graceful and beautiful body. Well I was keen about having a beautiful body so in Hotazel I started doing ballet and then when I went to Potchefstroom Girls High I continued with private ballet lessons as an extramural activity. I hated it when my mom or others made the retort that Hannah was a tomboy. Hannah was a tomboy because she wondered by herself into the Kalahari scrubland, because she took an inordinate and unhealthy interest in the inner workings of the internal combustion engine when she was with her father in the garage, and she collected rocks and animal skulls. I never saw myself as a tomboy. I was always very happy and satisfied with being a girl. I loved my 'girlness'. I was always my father's little girl, and I loved the feeling of being his little girl, and as I said, I always felt very feminine with my dad. He did not seem to think it was unusual or something to be worried about with regard to my preoccupations with 'boys' stuff. But mom always felt that girls should not be interested in Robots or Meccano Toys. Why must the world be divided into two separate non-fusible realms, the masculine and feminine? Why do we have this Hellenic and Hebraic dualistic male-feminine partitioning of the Universe? I have never taken a strong anti-male feminist line. My father was a male person who I loved very deeply and then there were the male friends and comrades who I loved in a non-erotic fashion with exceptional fondness. My Wits diving club male friends fell into this category and so did my male comrades in the underground.

8

It was Euripides in his Medea who asked: If only children could be got by some other way, without the female sex! Maybe in the history of 'mankind' it was not only the Greeks that dreamt of a womanless Universe. The Platonic philosophical tradition which is one of the corner stones of Western civilization is imbued with the dream of a de-feminized world. The de-feminization of the world only began with the end of the Palaeolithic about ten to twelve thousand years ago with the emergence, growth and development of the Neolithic semi-permanent human settlements which was made possible following the domestication of plants and animals. In a real sense the self-domestication of 'Neolithic Man' which occurred in conjunction with domestication of plants and animals also coincided with the hierarchicalization of society and the masculinization of the world. And it was this masculinization of the world which resulted in the creation of the institutions of polygamy and slavery. With the Neolithic masculinization of the world women were demoted to a lower social status and we had the emergence of the patriarchal society and the patriarchal political order under which women have been oppressed and exploited for more than ten thousand years, and this has been the unbearable burden of women following the event of 'mans' self-domestication.

9

It has long been argued that animals cannot imagine or contemplate or anticipate their own deaths. It is also believed that it is this incapacity or lack which distinguishes non-human animals from human animals. It is this inability to imagine or anticipate their own death which demarcates the animal from the human. Consciousness of death or non-being or non-existence represents the ultimate dividing line which separates the world of humans from that of animals. What makes it possible for humans to have this unique capacity to imagine or contemplate their own deaths? It has been proposed that it is this faculty to conceive not only the contingent possibility but also the inevitability of one's own death which makes humans different from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is this difference which apparently creates the yawning chasm that separates humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom. Furthermore, it has been argued that because an animal is unable to imagine, contemplate or anticipated its own death, animals therefore do not die. By virtue of not being able to imagine their own death, death does not exist for an animal. It has been argued by many philosophers that animals in general are unable to imagine or reflectively contemplate the future or imminent possibility of their non-existence or their extinction or the termination of their lives in death, and it is these philosophical beliefs which have been taken to mean or imply by some peculiar logic that animals cannot die or that death does not exist for animals. Animals have no perception or preconception or understanding of their own mortality, and therefore of their finitude. Their being mortal is beyond their intelligence. In line with these considerations it has been concluded that animals simply 'perish' rather than die. Only humans die. Only humans fear dying. Only humans contemplate immortality or some kind of existence beyond the pale of death. Only humans entertain the belief in an afterlife. In the Book of Genesis we can read the immortal words:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'

Animals cannot die because they are incapable of having knowledge of good and evil. Consciousness of mortality and finitude, based on the knowledge of good and evil brings into existence the ontological, metaphysical, theological and religious divide which separates humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom, and it is this knowledge which also lays the burden of moral liability and culpability on the shoulders of humankind, making it possible for humans to experience guilt.

10

When I was in standard one I witnessed a goat being slaughtered on a farm near Hotazel. The goat did not seem to know that it was going to die in the next few moments. In the same vein Rousseau has also argued that animals have no conception of death and dying. Anyway the goat being held by the two farm workers on the small patch of green lawn next to the farm house did not show any overt sign which could be interpreted as betraying its fear of death. According to Rousseau the goat did not fear death because it could not imagine death. The goat did not know what it means to die, like the chickens my Ouma slaughtered in the backyard of their home, the meaning of death and dying was beyond the goat's comprehension, like the chickens my Ouma slaughtered the goat had no knowledge of good and evil, and so not having any knowledge of good and evil, it could not die, it could only perish without knowing beforehand that its life was about to be terminated for good.

The goat stood there without showing any visible signs of fear or anxiety at the imminent prospect of its own death. It just stood there quietly, filled with its own mysterious abundance of animal life, it heart beating, its brain alert, its goat eyes staring with a subtle glimmer of animal intelligence, it was a living sentient being which showed all the evidence of being fully conscious, of being aware of its surroundings but not aware of its situation, or of its predicament. It was filled with the mysterious vitality of life. With a small sharp knife they slit its throat, the blood gushed with powerful spurts from the severed jugular vein into a large white enamel tub. The goat perished before my eyes, it ceased to be a sentient being, it eyes had become unseeing and its consciousness vanished. The living creature had disappeared, it was no longer alive, it was no longer there, its absence was palpable, and all that was left was its unmoving, inanimate body, a body that was no longer aware of itself or of its surroundings. The transition from life to death was irreversible. This was the thought that whirled around in my brain as I watched them slaughter the goat. They quickly and deftly skinned, gutted and dismembered the goat. Being previously exposed to the slaughtering of chickens as a young child I had in a sense become familiar with the irreversible processes and 'phase transitions' involved in the violent death of animals. This was my Afrikaner heritage. The killing of animals was part and parcel of that heritage.

11

Animals as fully self-aware sentient beings exist outside the human world of language not by voluntary self-exile, but by the line of exclusion that has been drawn by humanity. For Martin Heidegger language is the great unbridgeable abyss that separates humans from animals. Heidegger also denies that animals have a world. They are essentially 'worldless'. Can animals really be worldless? What does having a world actually mean? What does it mean for an animal to be without a world? What is a 'world'? The idea of a world as used by Heidegger is not equivalent to a cosmos. Heidegger speaks about the worldhood of the world. The idea of a cosmos and of a universe are equivalent. The idea of the world is not equivalent to the idea of an environment. The world is more than the physical or material environment. Yet we can argue that the peculiarly human world we are speaking about only exists by virtue of the cosmos or the universe or the physical-material-causal order, the order of space-time, energy and matter, governed by the laws of nature. The world we are speaking about is an emergent property of this 'order'.

Animals can only exist as living beings by inhabiting a niche. There can be no animal life without the occupancy of a niche. Occupying a niche is central to an animal's existence and way of life. As a concept, is the niche not also some kind of a world, is it not also equivalent to the idea of a world? How does a niche differ from a world, the world of an animal or plant? How does a niche become a world? Did not humans start their evolutionary history as niche inhabiting animals before they became world possessing or world creating beings or world inhabiting beings? Do humans now have worlds in contradistinction to the idea that animals inhabit niches? Humans have worlds which they live in and animals inhabit worlds which are niches. But humans do indeed occupy a niche, they inhabit a niche, their niche is the entire planet. Their world is co-extensive with everything that exists, in this sense the human world embraces everything, it contains everything, it incorporates everything, it is a Totalizing act of incorporation, of containment, of occupation and of possession, both physically and mentally. Truth itself only exists by virtue of there being a world. Without a world truth would not exist as a consideration. For truth to exist there has to be a world. It is matter becoming conscious of the Totality of Reality as a Habitat, as a Niche of Intelligibility. This is the World that humans occupy. This could represent the real difference between humans and animals. In the world of the animal, is not the idea of inhabiting a niche central to the 'being' of an animal? To complicate matters there are several different competing ecological theories of what constitutes a niche.

But then Darwin's work shatters the distinction between the human and the animal. With Darwin the chasm separating the human from the animal vanishes. After Darwin the relationship between the human and the animal are no longer one of distinctions, of differences of kind, of otherness or alterity, but instead it becomes a relationship of continuity, of graduations, of degree, of merging, of transition, of shared ancestor, of kinship, of common descent. After Darwin the human is restored to its authentic animality. After Darwin the human animal no longer dies as before, and the knowledge of good and evil proves to be an illusion. The slow but relentless Darwinian revolution which was triggered following his publication of 'The Origin of the Species' has finally started to usher in the great reversal and the great undoing of the humanistic enlightenment. Darwin's 'Origins of the Species' presages or inaugurates the end of human history which is marked by humanities return to animality, an event which has been noted by Kojève in his reading of Hegel. The evolving world of human habitation where 'habitation' means possession, occupation, comprehension, understanding, grasping, knowing is in fact the process of matter's growing awareness of its own Reality. In this process the cosmos or universe becomes the World. And we became aware that the nature of Truth and the nature of the World cannot be decoupled or disentangled, Truth and World are inseparable, they are one. The Logos became flesh.

12

Darwin's 'Origin of the Species' destroyed the religious and metaphysical foundations that underpinned the human - animal divide. Understanding that we humans are products of biological evolution is part and parcel of the Natural Life History of Consciousness, its emergence from its slumber in the bosom of the dormant power of inorganic and inanimate matter, the elemental debris and dust left behind by dying stars, its birth in the animation of inanimate elements that took place with the emergence of life, and its journey into the Universe of Conscious Awareness, the Worldhood of the World emerged as a Reality to be contemplated, in a self-contemplation and self-reflection ignited or triggered by a growing awareness of its own collective and extensive selfhood within the awesome vastness of space and time, the Universe eventually became aware of its own Intelligibility, the impenetrable mystery of its own Being. The question remains: What is the real meaning of its intelligibility, what is the significance behind its intelligibility. This is the real origination of the big 'WHY?' that haunts our consciousness, which becomes the well spring of theology, if not also political theology. We can now see how the idea of Truth, or even the existence of Truth itself, depends on there being a World. Truth depends on the World, and the World is the embodiment of Truth. Truth is correspondence to the facts and the World consists of all the facts. This is what science is about. We can see the link between these ideas and Heidegger's idea regarding the significance of being-in-the-world. Truth becomes unconcealed or manifest only by being-in-the-world, or by being-in-a-World.

13

Unknown to us the charges have been laid, the detonators are in place, and now the chilling sounds of the mine siren fills the Kalahari skies of Hotazel announcing the threat of imminent danger. Our immediate surroundings has now become a strictly forbidden zone, but we have cycled to the perimeter fence of the open cast manganese mine, and only the locked gate has prevented us from entering so that we could gratify our curiosity. Panic takes hold of us. As the icy hand of unspeakable terror grips our hearts we immediately turn around and embark on a frantic retreat bending low over our bicycle handle bars and peddling furiously we race away down the gravel road. My imagination runs riot as I visualize rocks and boulders raining down on us, crushing us to death, I fear that my life may be over as we sped away on our bicycles in an attempt to put as much distance between ourselves and the mine. We hear the heavy artillery bomb-like booms of the exploding dynamite, the shockwaves of the blast rips the sky apart. We feel the vibrating earth tremors as the dynamite shatters the manganese bearing rock deep in the bowels of the open cast mine. The rain of rocks falling on our heads failed to materialize. Malcolm suddenly brakes sharply and skids his bike into a wide arc. He is ecstatic, his eye beam with the thrill of danger. We all stop and look back at the mine. Massive clouds of dark blue and black dust and smoke start billowing out of the gigantic crater and the fresh smell of cordite diffuses through the air. 'Dis net soos oorlog (It is just like war)!' Malcolm exclaims grinning at us.

14

The Kalahari sands of Hotazel overlays one of the largest sedimentary deposits of manganese on the planet. A year ago our Hotazel primary school teacher reminded us that South Africa was the mineral treasure chest of the world. After a geological survey of regions surrounding Kuruman the Hotazel manganese mine was established in 1954, one year before my birth. The rock sediments containing the manganese deposits became known as the Hotazel Formation. If the rich manganese ore fields of the Kalahari had not come into existence by a chain of contingent geological events I would not have landed up in Hotazel as a child. This statement does not qualify as a counter factual conditional. I am here in Hotazel by accident, by chance in fact. I came to Hotazel by accident. It was a contingent event. An accident is a contingent event. Many crossed lines or the cross-talk of multiple interwoven contingencies have shaped the fabric of my life. In many ways I am the product of chance. If my biography is the record or list of the many contingencies that have somehow determined the course of my life, then what is the plot, what is the role of providence in the predetermination of that plot? Was everything meant to be in my life? Was I meant to have love relationships with Yael and Kate? Was it meant to be that I would fall in love with Isabella? What about Angelica? What about Monique? If I had not met Monique in Paris by chance I would have never experienced something that was so incredibly memorial and I have lived with the memories of that Paris experience with Monique for my entire life. My encounter with Monique was a life changing event for me. I am haunted by Yael and I yearned for Isabella. I care so much for so many women. Was this meant to be my life?

15

In 1964 Malcolm and I spent ten days of our July school holidays with Oupa and Ouma Vollenhoven in Durban. We travelled down on the Johannesburg – Durban overnight sleeping train. From Durban station a male white porter pushed the trolley with our suitcases to the taxi rank. Oupa tipped the porter. The taxi dropped us off at the main entrance of the White House Hotel. After confirming our room booking at the reception one of the Indian hotel porters assisted us with our suitcases. Our room had a porch with a sea view overlooking the bowling greens across the road. Beyond the bowling greens stood the Lido complex with its domed roof. On the far right hand side we had a view of the bluff and to the left of the Lido we could see the peer which separated South Beach from North Beach. Oupa slept on a bed that was moved onto the porch. Ouma, Malcolm and I slept on our own beds in the room. On a number of occasions after supper we went to the Lido in the evenings for milkshakes, tea and entertainment. At the Lido we were entertained by a band whose lead singer sang traditional folk lyrics such as 'Ver in die ou Kalahari' (Far away in the old Kalahari) which became Malcolm's favourite song, but it also grew on me. The song has never failed to touch my heart, '...wyd lê die eindlose vlaktes kameeldoringboom en sand, eensame, vreedsame wêreld...' (vast and endless lies a landscape of camel thorn trees and sand, a remote and tranquil world)

In the day Scotty the photographer with his cameras would be mingling among the crowds moving up and down the promenade past the Lido taking photographs of willing subjects, handing them a numbered card so that they could collect their pictures the next day at his circular kiosk which functioned as the familiar almost timeless promenade landmark next to the Lido. On the bluff side of the Lido was the Little Top. Shops under the Lido opening onto the beach and the promenade like the Cherry Tree milk bar and the American Candy Store sold ice cream, candy floss and coloured sugared popcorn. Malcolm had brought his fishing with and it was on a grey overcast day with a light unseasonal drizzle that I stood next to Malcolm at the end of the pier while he baited a sardine to his line. We could see the dark silhouettes of shoals of fish in the rising swells shortly before they came crashing down into a churning bed of white foam at the edge of the pier. It was high tide and the Indian waiter at the hotel hinted as we left on our fishing expedition that this was when game fish could be caught off the pier. After an hour of fishing there was sudden tug on the line and then Malcolm's rod bent sharply, and the reel began to scream as metres of line were rapidly shed from the spool. A tall Indian man gave his surf rod to his son and came quickly over to Malcolm and following the instructions of a seasoned fisherman Malcolm in state of great excitement managed to eventually reel in the fish to the edge of the peer where another Indian fisherman managed to gaff it. It turned out to be a 3 kg Garrick which we took back to the hotel and they prepared the fish for our supper that night. I was so proud of Malcolm and I was also unspeakably elated with our catch.

16

Rita Hayworth: The signs were always there, and for some reason as a child I could not ignore them, but indulged them with the natural pleasure of pure innocence. I loved my own kind, l loved women. Starting from the age of nine I began to experience strong fantasy filled obsessions for female actresses. In the process I became increasing enthralled with a curious fascination for female faces, lips, eyes, hair and bodies, especially of the leading female film stars. I wanted to be beautiful and sensual like them. I became hyper-feminine as an adolescent girl but not in terms of conforming to the stereotypical-patriarchical female-heterosexual role playing in the field of the masculinized gaze, but rather in terms of being the seducing female subject in the field of the aroused libidinous gaze of the other female who I imagined to be same-sexed erotically interested in me. And so I become strongly affected by the performative and expressive physical externalities of femininity, especially in terms of the codes, signs, symbols and signals of sensuality, sexiness and glamour which would captivate the feminine gaze. I wanted to be like the female cinematic characters who I was drawn too. I wanted to be Rita Hayworth dancing not with Fred Astaire but with another beautiful woman. I wanted to be in the embrace of Rita Hayworth, I wanted dance with her, I wanted her to kiss me and seduce me. Every Saturday night was movie night in Hotazel. After supper with the sun having just slipped away and the evening star freshly visible in the darkest purple-blue Kalahari sky I joined the gang of bare-footed kids on an early evening walk to the rec hall to book our seats. For a while when I was ten Gertrude Viljoen who could barely speak a word of English was my best friend, seated on the hard foldup wooden chairs in the rec, we would hold hands in the dark while watching movies. Afterwards we would walk back trailing behind the others, arms around each other's waist. No one was the wiser, not even Gertrude, she did not know that I had a crush on her. And then her family left Hotazel for greener pastures. Holding hands and physical closeness, and affectionate kissing, was natural for Afrikaners, and especially so with Gertrude. Maybe she was also queer. I will never know.

Chapter 3: Awakening of Adolescence

1

I think of Easter. It is another Good Friday, a long weekend, I find myself wondering through the labyrinth of stables, cages and animal pens at the Rand Easter Show at Milner Park in Johannesburg. We have come up from Hotazel for the Easter long weekend. We are staying over at Oupa Zeeman's home. I am twelve. I am experiencing regular bouts of moodiness and sullenness, I am also cheeky and sometimes quite abrasive. My mom rolls her eyes and mutters something about the start of the terrible teens. Next year I will be thirteen and in an all-girls boarding school. The school in Hotazel only goes up to standard five. Boarding school is the fate of all kids growing up in Hotazel. They have already decided my fate. I will be going to Potchefstroom Girls High School. Malcolm is already in Potchefstroom Boys High School.

2

At twelve I was personally experiencing an intimate state of bodily strangeness, of being suddenly different to what I used be as an individual or to use the modern philosophical term I was in a state of otherness. And my sense of otherness increased my moodiness, which had become apparent to the whole family as we stood in the long queue to pay for our entrance tickets after miraculously finding a parking space into which my father could squeeze our car. On reflection I can now see with the wisdom of hindsight that my dark moods and adolescent sullenness was due to the fact that I was in the throes of a dramatic psychosexual metamorphosis orchestrated by a surging flood of oestrogen and progesterone. The drama of glands and ganglia within my body was invisible to me and also to the rest of world in spite of the fact that my braless breasts were mysteriously swelling under my black V necked T shirt and I had become, curtsy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, fully aware through the force of curiosity of the pleasurable secrets of my downy mound after being recently surprised by the most exquisite sensation of a self-induced orgasm. In spite of all my hints my mother did not seem to be too bothered about the fact that I had to start wearing a bra or that my first period was going to be an imminent catastrophe. I felt that my mother was leaving me in the lurch as I became overwhelmed by that peculiar girl-child's self-perception of her own budding sexuality. In the end I was delivered from further embarrassment as a result of my father's observant eye and his fatherly concern. When we were alone he said I must be proud of my beautiful body and he promised that he will speak to my mother so that my pressing needs as a young woman would be taken care of. It was through his timely intervention that I got my bras and was saved from the disaster of my first period.

3

After passing through the turnstile into the show grounds we were faced with a family crisis, a crisis of indecision about how we were going to spend the rest of the day at the Rand Show looking at the endless array of exhibitions. Malcolm now a teenager had his own agenda, Elsabe was happy to tag along with dad and mom and I wanted to go and look at the horses, the livestock and poultry that were on show. I knew that dad wanted to look at the cars, tools and machinery. I didn't know what mom wanted to do. Smiling knowingly at my bored adolescent face my father took two rand notes from his wallet and gave one of the R 2.00 notes to me. Mom raised her eyebrows:

'That's a lot of money to give to a child,' she uttered unthinkingly. He looked at his watch. It was 9.00 am. 'We will all meet at the Tower of Light at one-o-clock for lunch. Elsabe will come with mom and me. The two of you can go off and do what you want,' he said as he also gave Malcolm his R 2.00 note. 'She can't wonder around the show grounds alone by herself,' my mother said looking at my dad with alarm written on her face. 'She is a big girl, you don't have to worry, she will be OK,' he replied.

I put the folded up R 2.00 note and slid it into the back pocket of my shorts. Thinking back now, in the big city of Johannesburg, in my typical Hotazel casual after school and weekend attire, I was in reality, in a state of rural naivety, quite innocently unaware of my girl-child sensuality, made plainly visible in a very provocative getup, what with a long plaited pony tail, tiny white shorts, white ankle socks, takkies and a loose fitting T shirt which did not hide the naked contours of pert adolescent breasts, I was perfectly delectable to any would be male predator who could be cruising the show grounds on the lookout for moody faced rebellious pre-teen girls.

4

Femme invisibility. You are too attractive to be a lesbian. You look too straight. You look too heterosexual. Who gives a fuck? I don't think I was ever in the closet. I was gay from day one and somehow I knew that I was different from other girls. As a pre-pubescent girl I fell in love with Show White and Sleeping Beauty. In standard two and just on the threshold of puberty as a nine year old girl I fell in love with the fictitious cinematic character Velvet Brown played by a very young Elizabeth Taylor in the movie National Velvet. I saw the movie at a morning matinee at His Majesties Theatre in Commissioner Street Johannesburg during the September school holidays. Elsabe and I were spending our school holidays at Ouma and Oupa Vollenhoven.

Later, as an eleven year girl in standard four I paged through the Encyclopaedia Britannica to read up on Homo sapiens. At school we had been learning apartheid style about the different ethnic groups in South Africa and the teacher had said in passing that in spite of all our profound language, cultural and racial differences, which in turn was a consequence of what had happened with the building of the Tower of Babel, we were all still Homo sapiens. I was intrigued to hear that after Babel we had all remained Homo sapiens while becoming sufficiently different to make apartheid the only solution for living in harmony in spite of our differences. The teacher said that apartheid was God's solution, a solution which would enable us all to live in harmony in spite of the differences that resulted from Babel. She said that even the people who were referred to as the bushman were Homo sapiens. No one doubted, not even a small child that the bushman were humans.

In the Encyclopaedia Britannica after Homo sapiens there was: Homology, Homozygote and Heterozygote, Homosexual. I read about homosexuality and made the discovery through cross referencing to other volumes of the Britannica on topics and themes relating to female homosexuality which ignited my curiosity such as: Lebos, Sappho and Lesbianism. When Ouma Vollenhoven noticed my downy pubic hair and my budding breasts she said that I was becoming a woman and I would soon be needing to wear a bra. She wanted to know if my mother had discussed women things with me. Before she could say anything about me becoming a woman and what all that entailed I told her that I was a lesbian. The disclosure came as a surprise to her, catching her completely off guard, and for a moment she stared at me speechless.

Thinking that she did not understand I explained that I was like Sappho. She had never heard of Sappho, so full of confidence in my knowledge which I had recently gained regarding my condition, I told her that Sappho was a woman who loved only women. Sappho came from Lebos and this is why women who fall in love with women are called lesbians.

Unable to hide her astonishment Ouma Vollenhoven listened to my story. All she could do was stare at me in state of undisguised surprise. And then she found her voice again: 'My magtig, my kind, so jy sê jy is lesbies? (My God my child so you say that you are lesbian?) 'Ja Ouma,' I answered with a broad smile. 'Weet jou ma dat jy is lesbies?' (Does your mother know that you are lesbian?) 'Nee Ouma, niemand weet nie, net Ouma weet.' (No gran, no one knows, only gran knows.)

My Ouma never betrayed me. My secret was safe with her. She took it to the grave. Anyway Ouma still insisted that even lesbians need to know things about what it means to become a woman, like having periods and the danger of getting pregnant if you mess around with boys.

I told her that there would be no danger of me becoming pregnant because I had no plans for messing around with boys. I explained that to me boys are just boys, and they mean nothing to me. Later in life after Ouma Vollenhoven's death the dark family secrets of lesbianism on Ouma's side of the family surfaced. But I knew about Ouma's secret. I knew that Ouma was also a lesbian, even though she never admitted it directly to me. There was a very special and deep connection between us.

My identity was decided. But by who? Not by me for sure. I don't know why I fell in love with Velvet Brown. I collected her pictures and stuck them on my bedroom wall. But I realized that my obsession with Velvet Brown was a sign that I was different. Parmenides the pre-Socratic philosopher believed that all existing things were ultimately one and self-identical. The unity established by being one and self-identical was the precondition to be unchanging and not being subject to the vicissitudes of difference. My love for Velvet Brown meant that there were no vagaries about my identity, I had self-identified with my own sex and in that sense I was one and self-identical, I had discovered my unity, my being, my unchanging reality.

5

On that day at the Rand Easter Show I remember that I was feeling rebellious, lonely, confused and angry when I set off with the R 2.00 in my pocket to the agricultural livestock exhibition. When I told Ouma Vollenhoven that I was a lesbian she stoically accepted my confession with the fatalistic inevitability of the fearful expectation that accompanies the knock on the door late at night. The inevitable knock on the door in the deep darkness of the night always arrives suddenly, inconveniently, and unexpectedly. It arrives at the front door unannounced, bearing the bad tidings which will change the course of lives forever. Usually someone close in the family has died under strange circumstances. The knock on the door in the dead of night always means that the bearer of bad news has finally arrived and the thing that you never wanted to ever hear now rings in your ears, the echo of shocking news leaves you stunned and you wish that you could wakeup and escape from a dream that is too horrifying to endure. The realization of the thing that you feared the most has now dawned once more as a new reality and it cannot be wished away and there is no way that one can escape the full burden of the sentence that comes with the policemen's knock on the front door at the dead of night.

That is how my Ouma initially received the news that I too was a lesbian. It came to her unexpectedly from the mouth of her granddaughter as the knock on the door in the dead of night. The ghosts of the past had returned to haunt the family once more, and more specifically to haunt her and to fill her with the pain of regret and yearning, the pain of loss, the pain of a life not lived as she would have wished in her innermost depths. Half expecting it, she accepted without question what her own grandchild had confessed. She wrapped her arms around me and whispered that her mother's sister, Auntie Nelly was also a lesbian and that her cousin my Auntie Dolly was also a lesbian. I was half expecting her to also confess that she too was a lesbian. But her soft tender smile betrayed her secret. She too was also a lesbian, I could see it in her eyes. Also being a lesbian made me special to her. From family gossip Auntie Dolly and Auntie Nelly were portrayed as lonely pathetic spinsters who had lived dreadfully unhappy lives. And there had been others in the family who were lesbian she whispered confidentially. She said that she did not want this unbearable loneliness of lesbianism to also be my fate. There was no place in the world for women who loved women. But now I was part of a secret sisterhood. I tried to put her fears to rest by telling her that I was different, that I wanted to be a lesbian, that I was happy to be a lesbian, and that I could not imagine being any different. I also told her that I did to think that I was doomed to a life of loneliness, having no joy or happiness or not having friends who were also lesbian.

I had now self-identified as a lesbian to my Ouma, but I knew nothing about the secret world of lesbianism, a world that my Ouma apparently knew much about. The manner in which she received the news, was very telling in the way that she held me and kissed me on my cheeks and on my head, I felt that she was not telling me everything. She was hiding something. So I became increasingly convinced that she too was lesbian. My intuition told me that she knew about the existence of that world, that she knew it intimately in all its ins and outs, she was part of that world in which women became involved in same-sex romantic attachments or romantic friendships. But what happened between two romantically attached individuals living in that world no one knew because no one spoke about what women did when they were in love with each other. I did not know at that stage of my life what went on in the secret and impenetrable world of lesbianism. I was just aware as an adolescent that I was possessed by a powerful inclination to develop romantic attachments or feelings towards girls or women. Generally I believed that until recently it has been impossible for heterosexual people to conceive of lesbians as having any inclination or drive or predisposition or desire to pursue sexual pleasure with other women for the sake of personal pleasure. Until recently there was no vocabulary, no narrative, and no words to describe what homosexual women were doing in their same sex relationships. Many heterosexual people could not conceive of the sexual dimension in lesbian relationships. The physical of act of sexual intimacy seemed to be something which was emotionally, physiologically and anatomically only possible between heterosexual men and women. How do queer women fuck each other? It was a secret which we queers only knew about including the mechanics thereof.

6

'She is a big girl now.' The words echoed in my mind and I managed to smile. My mood lifted as I walked towards the stables. While looking at the horses I wondered how they managed to get their coats so glossy, soft and velvety. The horses that I had learnt to ride after I became completely horse mad following my falling in love with Velvet Brown did not have the short soft shiny haired coats of the thoroughbreds that were used for show-jumping at the Rand Easter Show. They were Boer ponies adapted to the harsh sandy thorn savannahs of the Kalahari. They were smaller than the thoroughbreds. But compared to the thoroughbreds they seemed to be a lot stronger, hardier and definitely indestructible.

As I walked from stable stall to stable stall I became aware that I was been shadowed by a man wearing dark glasses. He seemed to be in his late thirties or early forties. He was wearing a white short sleeved golf shirt and light brown flannels. It seemed to me that he was making an exaggerated display of interest in and affection for the horses chiefly for my benefit. Apart from the stable hands feeding, grooming and cleaning out the stalls there was no one else around, we were the only visitors viewing the horses. There were rows upon rows of stable stalls all built back to back and separated by gangways wide enough for the movement of horses in and out of the stables. The bottom half of the stable doors were bolted whereas the top half were left open so that the horses could view each other across the gangway. This arrangement also made it possible for visitors to view the horses. The parallel gangways were interconnected by narrow passages which broke the rows of stables into blocks. To get away from him I quickly ducked through a passage and quickly walked diagonally across the next gangway and disappeared into another passage, and I repeated this manoeuvre again and again until it seemed that I had shaken him off my trail.

I decided to leave the stable area and made off to the stalls and pens where the show cattle, sheep, goats and pigs were being housed. It seemed that I had given him the slip and there were streams of viewers working their way down the gangways that separated the animal stalls and pens, so I felt a lot safer. And then I saw him again. It was obvious that he was trying to draw me into his web of desire by insinuating himself into this strange pageantry of prize animals whose niche of domestication had become an absurd hybridization of zoo and circus. An invisible drama of cat and mouse was unfolding unseen in this crowded space that had been lit up with the penetrating gaze of a thousand eyes. I was not sure if he had seen me. Again I tried to shake him off my trail. I fled into a huge cavernous hall where the poultry, pigeons and rabbits were being exhibited. I was in state of panic now. He was ruining my day at the Rand Show with his persistent stalking. He soon appeared in the hall carrying a fluffy pink ball of candyfloss and made a beeline towards me. He wanted to give me the candyfloss. Still hiding behind his dark sunglasses he looked vaguely like Elvis Presley, especially the way he had styled his hair, his arms and hands were covered with a thick coat of curly black hair, and he smelt strongly of talc and cologne. When he tried to give me the candyfloss I declined and told him that I had been taught not speak to strangers and to never take sweets from strangers. I had also been warned by my parents never to get into a strangers car because I would be most certainly strangled with a belt and die the most horrible death. I then asked him why he was following me and why couldn't he leave me alone. Trying to be as charming and as friendly as possible he said:

'You looked so sad and lonely and all I wanted was to be your friend and do something nice for you, I just wanted to make you feel happy, because you deserve to be happy, especially because I think you are the most prettiest girl I have ever seen in my whole life, and I don't think a pretty girl like you should ever feel sad or be lonely. I just wanted to be your friend, is that such a bad thing? Is it such a bad thing to care about someone who seems lonely and sad?'

'I am not lonely or sad, I just want to be left alone. You frighten me.'

'I did not mean to frighten you. I am sorry if I have made you scared.'

It looked like he wanted to put his arm around me and hug me. I stepped back, agilely escaping his grasping arms, and turning on my heel I sprinted away, running in full stride, dodging through the crowd, with my arms pumping wildly, the passage of my flight hemmed in between the cages of prize chickens, I run towards the exit at the other side of the hall. I burst breathlessly into the bright sunlight, sprinting across lawns, down winding paved paths under the canopies of towering trees and between vast hulks of exhibition halls until I reached the road with the overhanging cable cars, I continued running up the steep road, frantically pushing and pressing my way through the crowds towards the Tower of Light.

Standing by the Tower of Light with my heart pounding wildly I waited anxiously for my parents. I stood there for what seemed to be hours staring at the passing stream of Rand Show visitors, looking out for the Elvis Presley look-a-like wearing dark shades. My entire day at the Rand Show had been destroyed by a complete stranger. Trying to remain unnoticed in the long shadow of the Tower of Light I became uncomfortably aware as I watched their faces that grown men with wives and children were now staring at me, furtively. That I had become an object of male interest was a revelation and realizing this, I wanted to go back to the shelter of my life in Hotazel where our adolescent female bodies even when clothed in wet skimpy swim suits at the swimming pool next to the rec club were never the objects of blatant adult male scrutiny. An angry defiance welled up in my heart: my beauty, my breasts, my legs and my body belonged to me only and to no one else. In spite of a growing awareness of the aura of sexuality that now veiled my face and body I had no interest in adolescent boys or teenage boys or youthful men. Only my Ouma Vollenhoven knew and understood the dark secret that I carried deep in my being, I was a lesbian, precociously a lesbian in my sexual self-awareness. As an adolescent girl I was finding myself increasingly erotically and flirtatiously drawn to women.

My encounter with Mister Elvis confirmed that I was now a fully-fledged sexual being. Above me the phallus of the Tower of Light stood erect as it reached upward into the blue heavens where young dark-eyed virgins dwelt, beckoning down to every Mister Elvis cruising the grounds of the Rand Show.

Chapter 4: Teenage Years

1

In high school at the tender age of thirteen I made the serious mistake of confessing my love for my best friend. I thought that our feelings for each other were mutual because she reciprocated the tenderness and affection that I had shown towards her. When I eventually confided to her that I was a lesbian and that I was in love with her she drew away from me as if she was recoiling from a reptile. The rumour that I was a lesbian spread like a wild fire and the expected summons to the office of the headmistress for a tête-à-tête soon followed. Over a cup of tea Mrs Gladys Hornsley an astute politician and pragmatist took a realistic approach to the problem of lesbianism at an all-girl school. All the time addressing me as Miss Zeeman, she referred to it as the eternal problem that would never go away and that while she did not condone lesbianism in any way, she thought it served no rational purpose to expel or persecute lesbians so long as they don't become a nuisance or create problems or trigger scandals. Lighting a cigarette she told me to be discreet in expressing my affections towards members of my own sex. But also solemnly warned me that she will not tolerate any kissing, hugging, hand holding or bed sharing between girls at the school. She did not ask if I was indeed a lesbian so I assumed she had got all the information she needed from a prior interview with my ex-best friend. Anyway things normalized pretty quickly and I ceased to be a social leper as most of girls generally accepted my sexual status and got used to the idea that there were lesbians in their midst. It was an all-girls school so what do you expect? It was inevitable that there was going to be some bad apples in the mix. This was Mrs Hornsley's philosophy, a philosophy of resignation in the face of the inevitable realities which accompanied the passage of large numbers of girls through her school, statistically speaking lesbianism would continuously rear its head, announcing its presence in whispered confessions of homosexual love between girls.

2

While I was a border at Potchefstroom Girls High we used to sometimes go for picnics at Potch (short for Potchefstroom) Dam on Sundays after church. We would go in the school bus. For me it was always like going down memory lane, while living in Stilfontein we had regularly taken Sunday afternoon drives to Potch Dam in the Riley. Who would have guessed that years later I would develop romantic memories of Potch Dam? After lunch Alice van Niekerk and I would wonder off from the rest. We would spread a blanket under a tree, lay stretched out on our backs next to each other and listen to LM on my transistor radio which I had brought along. I had known her from standard six when we landed up in the same dorm in the hostel known as North House. North House was a grand old three story building that had been built in 1937. The kitchen and dining room were on the ground floor. The dining room was used as the prep rooms in the afternoon and in the evenings after supper for studying and for doing homework. The prefects who acted as hall monitors made sure that no one talked and that everyone was either studying or doing homework. Alice was the second girl that I fell in love with while in high school. I fell in love with her when we were in standard seven, the year after the debacle of my first love affair which landed me in hot water. Alice like the rest of the school knew that I was lesbian and I had a strong suspicion that she was also a lesbian. We secretly fell in love.

3

As a standard nine sixteen year old teenager I shared the bed of my childhood with Alice. She spent the July school holidays at our home in Hotazel. I had my first real intimate sexual experience in this bed in this room with Alice. We had to hide the fact that we were in love. My mom suggested that Alice should sleep in the spare bed room. I quickly said: 'No, we can sleep in my bed in my room.' There was a naughty conspiratorial smile on Alice's face. We were randy teenagers and could not wait any longer to have sex. After supper we showered together, changed into our pyjamas, and said goodnight to everyone.

'Why do you want go to bed so early? It is school holidays, you can stay up late and get up late.' My mom said.

We are both actually very, very, tired was our answer. I locked the door. After stripping off our pyjamas I put off the light and we jumped into bed naked like two bitches on heat. With our lips pressed together and mobile tongues probing the depths of each other's mouth I fondled Alice's breasts while she fondled my breasts. In a whisper I suggested that we insert our fingers into each other's vaginas. I felt her forefinger entering my vagina. After some experimentation we both learnt how bring each bring each to orgasm through mutual clitoral stimulation.

4

Once more Saturday night came to Hotazel, and Alice and I decided to go and watch a movie at the rec club. 'From Russia with Love' was the feature movie for the evening. We were both pleasantly captivated by the Italian actress Daniela Bianchi who played the role of Tatiana Romanova.

When we got back dad was listening to 'Sing, Sing, Sing' played by the Benny Goodman band with Benny on the sax, Gene Krupa on the drums and Harry James on trumpet solo. What can I say? I had grown up with this kind of music. 'Play it again, play it again, right from the start', I cried out excitedly. I don't know what got into us, but it was so spontaneous, Alice and I started to go wild, dancing in a frenzy, the drums going crazy, the trumpet blaring. Then not to spoil our fun dad played Glen Miller's 'In the Mood'. And we did another dance performance, and in the process we woke up mom. She came down in her night gown scowling at us. 'You making too much noise, you going to wake up the whole of Hotazel at this rate'. And dad tried to pacify her. 'Leave them they having fun, they giving me a great cabaret show, come sit down and watch while I make you some tea, Hannah honey show your mom what you and Alice can do. The two of them are terrific you not going to believe your eyes, I promise you'. We gave my mom our improvised version of a 'Boogie Woogie Country Girl' and a 'Candyman' cabaret show. It was late and both of us were flushed with excitement. 'I think it is way past your bedtime girls,' my dad finally announced. 'No the night is still young and it is school holidays,' I exclaimed. I was manic. 'Look there is full moon outside, I want to go for a walk'.

5

Anyway after some arm wrestling with my parents we put on our coats and went out into the chilly Kalahari night. We were both on a high. It was one of the most unforgettable nights that I have ever experienced in my life. Even now that memory is so vivid. We walked towards the end of the road, and then followed a foot path westwards into the Kalahari savannah scrub land. The landscape was bathed in magical silvery crystal clear moonlight. As we walked we could hear the rustle of animals in the brush and in the distance we heard a jackal call. We stopped and gazed up at the star lit sky. 'Hannah honey darling kiss me.' Our bodies pressed tightly together in a warm embrace against the creeping cold of the night, we kissed each other passionately, long, lingering, and moist kisses. We eventually got into bed at 2.00 am in the morning. We lay in bed listening to Led Zeppelin on my cassette tape recorder while making love. Mine is a tale that cannot be told Alice whispered and we started giggling. 'C'est si bon,' she said just before we fell asleep.

6

Back to the present! It is December 1972 and the Matric exams are over, and I am awaiting the results. My school years had finally come to an end after 12 years (grade 1 and grade 2, and then standards 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). Just to recap, I started school in 1961 in Stilfontein and finished in 1972. Alice van Niekerk who had been my high school girlfriend has now been accepted into medicine at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and I have been accepted into first year zoology and botany at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). I will be starting university in the New Year. I feel that I am at the cross roads of my life. In retrospect I can now say quite dispassionately that it was the inevitable forces of circumstances which pulled Alice and me apart. Malcolm is still in the army. He has joined the permanent force as a Parabat officer. We are on a summer holiday in the Kruger National Park. I sent Alice a postcard from Skukuza. Dad has redone the old Land Rover, the engine has been overhauled, and the vehicle which had taken us on so many bundu bashing holidays now has a new gear box, a new clutch plate, a new set of tires, a new radio and a powerful air conditioner. For the past two days I have been driving the Land Rover. I have never driven a car before and now I am feeling quite confident behind the steering wheel, I can change gears effortlessly and I no longer stall the Land Rover when pulling off. Dad is sitting in the passenger seat, mom and Elsabe are sitting behind us on the back seat. Elsabe and I have hijacked the use of the car radio. It is constantly tuned to LM radio and I have turned up the volume because s new pop hit 'How do you do' by a local South African band from Pietermaritzburg called the Rising Sons is now playing on the car radio. Mom wants me to turn the volume down. Elsabe wants the volume to remain turned up, it is also her favourite pop song, and it was Alice's and my favourite as well. There are impala everywhere, languishing in the shade under thorn trees quite close to the road.

'How do you do...then we became...give me more...hey that's what I'm living for...' In Matric Alice and I shared a room, now while listening to the lyric in the Kruger National Park I could taste Alice's lips, tongue and the inside of her mouth with my probing prehensile tongue. I never ceased to be amazed by the heated interior of Alice's vagina. Her own probing fingers confirmed the same sensation of heat inside my vagina. In standard ten, at night, with the door locked, cuddling under the covers in the same bed, hours of deep intimate kissing and inquisitive erotic exploration of our teenage bodies brought us to the Eldorado of the most exquisite orgasms. During our high school at Potchefstroom Girls High at the ages of 14, 15, 16 and 17, we were hot and as randy as hell, and madly in love. We accused each other of being nymphomaniacs, we were both sex mad. We had been going steady for four years, since standard seven. Now I felt a tinge of depression, my silence, and I suppose my pensive mood had become visible, palpable to my father..

'Hannah are you OK?' My dad asked. I smiled back at him. We were on holiday, it was supposed to be a happy occasion, my high school years had come to an end, and I was going to university, I had every reason to be happy and carefree. Objectively speaking I did not have a real worry in the world, life could not have been more perfect at that moment sitting next to dad in the front of the Land Rover, yet there was a bitter sweetness to the festive month of December.

'I am happy,' I said to my father.

'I am happy for you,' he answered.

Outside in the open savannah woodlands the mid-morning temperature had already soared into the late thirties, degrees Celsius. Inside the Land Rover the cool interior was washed by the sounds of a never ending stream of LM radio hits, both current and from the recent yester-years of 1968, 1969, 1970, and 1971. The turbulent nineteen sixties were now behind us and their contagion never threatened to disturb or destabilized the stifling tranquillity that appeared to reign in apartheid South Africa, a country that had become increasing remote and isolated from the rest of the world.

And of course our favourites filled the air waves: My Sweet Lord. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Spanish Harlem. Woodstock. Riders On The Storm. Love Her Madly. Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again. Me And Bobby McGee. Venus. Bridge Over Troubled Water. Let It Be. Mama Told Me (Not To Come). Get Back. I Heard It Through The Grapevine. Crimson & Clover. Bad Moon Rising. Come Together. Everyday People. Something. Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye. Magic Carpet Ride. Cry To Me. Monsieur Dupont. Marrakesh Express. Conversations. Angel Of The Morning. Pictures OF Matchstick Men. Hey Jude. Might Quinn MacArthur Park Hurdy Gurdy Man. Jumpin' Jack Flash. Piece Of My Heart. You Keep Me Hangin' On. With A Little Help From My Friends. San Francisco Nights. The Wind Cries Mary. Ramble On.

Different strokes for different folks...Do you come here often...Baby...Baby...

Elsabe did not want to go to Potchefstroom Girls High so dad gave her a choice of other boarding schools and she chose St Andrews School for Girls in Johannesburg. Having the over-confidence and brashness of a typical Zeeman, she took to her new school like a fish to water. Adapting effortlessly to a social environment characterized by overweening poshness and preoccupation with status, she adopted all the preppy airs of private school kids who were the progeny of the English speaking white elite. In her own mind dad practically owned the manganese mine and we lived in palace in Hotazel, and this placed her in the same class as everyone else at the school. For me it was relief that she went to St Andrews. I did not want my kid-sister to know anything about my secret life.

At 'Olifants' (elephants) Rest Camp we booked into two thatch roofed rondavels. We arrived at Olifants just after midday. We had spent our first night at the Sukuza Rest Camp after the long journey from Hotazel. The rest camp at Olifants overlooked the Olifants River and from our elevated rondavel stoop we could observe elephants on the white sandy banks of the river drinking water. Elsabe and I were restless, dad and mom wanted to have a siesta and dad expressing confidence in my driving skills suggested that Elsabe and I take the Land Rover and spend the rest of the afternoon on a game viewing drive. Heading northwards we soon found ourselves driving through the unique Mopane Veld dominated by the seasonal fruit bearing small mopane trees known by the scientific name of Colophospermum mopane. In the distance the tar road shimmered. Bored and listless in the air-conditioned interior Elsabe hiding behind her sunglasses showed no interest in the surroundings. I glanced at her and this prompted her to say something.

'You are really weird'.

'I beg your pardon,' I replied.

'You are weird,' she repeated while staring straight ahead. I wondered where this was going? 'I really don't get it,' she said as if talking to herself.

'What don't you get?' I asked.

'Just look at you, you have a body, hair, eyes and a face that any woman would die for,' she retorted.

'What are you implying?'

'You can get any boy or man you like,' she said.

'I can say the same about you,' I said.

'Yeah, but we not talking about me,' she answered.

'So, what is the point you trying make?' I was curious to know what she thought.

'I don't know, it just that it is so weird.'

'What is so weird?'

'You being not interested in boys,' she said, flashing me a meaningful look.

'How do you know that I am not interested in boys?'

'It is so obvious,' she said. 'You have never expressed any interest in the opposite sex and I find that really weird.'

'I have never met the right person.' That was all I could say at that moment, she had caught me totally off guard.

7

'When do you think it is a good time to start having sex?' Elsabe asked that night while we wilted under the thermal radiation from the white washed rondavel walls.

'You should postpone surrendering yourself to sexual penetration for as long as possible,' was my adamant answer to my sister, a fifteen year old girl in standard eight.

'Anyway I would like to go on the pill next year, Marcia's mother has put her on the pill and she is having sex with her boyfriend even though she is still fifteen.'

'Well you better speak to your mother about that,' I said. I could just imagine mom's reaction. I returned to my book.

'Were you in love with Alice?' She asked out of the blue.

'What kind of question is that?' I said not looking up from the book I was reading, pretending to be completely disinterested in where this line of interrogation was going.

'I am serious Hannah. You can tell me, your secrets are safe with me, I am not going run to Mommy and tell her that you are a lesbian, I just want hear from your lips the truth, I am your sister you know, and you never share anything with me. I have told you everything about myself. This could be such great holiday for us if we could just open up to us other.'

I looked up at her, and she smiled at me. It was conspiratorial smile.

'You can tell me all your secrets, they are safe with me, I am your sister, I have been very open with you about myself and my plans to have sex with boys, times have changed you know,' she reiterated. I smiled back at her. Having sex was on her agenda. Teenage sex was a rite of passage into adulthood.

8

As I said the turbulent 1960s were now behind us, only the reverberations of its echo in the form of rock music remained to remind us of that decade which in the words of Theodore Roszak represented the youthful counter culture sparked by a radical disjuncture between the generations. Roszak writes about the authoritarianism operating overtly and subtly at every level of society, and here he is talking of the deep underlying conservativism of America society, where even in the medium of comics the boundaries of what was permissible in the expression of human sexuality especially in the line drawings of cartoon characters was constantly reinforced, as succinctly captured in the words of Searle, a spokesman for the Black Panthers - 'Archie and Jughead never kissed Veronica and Betty. Superman never kissed Lois'.

The Black Panthers were rejecting the values of white America. Those values included an intolerance towards anything which did not resonant with white American culture and the logic of that intolerance was expressed in the collective condonation of acts of genocidal criminality in the face of perceived threats of the Other, extermination of the enemy in the embodiment of the Other, in the form of the Communist was the only solution. As the curtain fell on the 1960s, bringing the decade of the moon landing, Mary Quant and Muhammad Ali to an ignoble end, the Vietnam War loomed large as a massive and ignominious defeat for the good ol' US of A. Like everyone in my generation, we who were born in the 1950s in good old SA, had experienced the distant moods and rhythms of the 1960s through the echo chamber of LM Radio. It was not really our decade.

9

Going back at Olifants that morning at breakfast mom said that ever since Malcolm had been in the army he had become a bookworm and he especially loved Robert Ruark. During that December on our holiday in the Kruger National Park I read all of Malcolm's paperback books that he had accumulated after leaving school. Remembering the Robert Ruark books that I read during that December holiday, I was later struck by Ruark's complete lack of critical insight into the social-political dynamics of Africa under colonial rule. His writings showed no grasp of the social, economic and political forces that were at work in ravaging the continent. His African novels were a paean to white supremacy.

At night in the stifling heat at the various rest camps in the Kruger National Park I devoured Malcolm's books which I had pilfered from his room. Elsabe listened to LM Radio. Every now and then she let out a:

Ooooh yeah baby..!

Malcolm had indeed become a bookworm. And I was surprised at what he had read. After Robert Ruark I read Norman Mailer's 'The Naked and the Dead.' In these books the Universe was heterosexual. It was the Universe in which Elsabe wanted to be on the pill. She did not see herself as becoming objectified as a sex object in the form of a very delectable sixteen year old with a very fuckable cunt ready to be impaled by some randy teenage boy's prick.

10

When we got back from our holiday, I began to page through all my the high school magazines, starting from when I was in standard six in the year 1968, pausing to gaze at the glossy black and white photographic plates in which I featured. There I was in the hockey team, in the swimming team and in the debating society. In my final year, the Matric class of 1972, in spite of having received colours for hockey and swimming I was not among the school prefects in their photograph. I had a tainted past and with the passing of time my stigma clung to me like a shadow, the school's collective institutional memory like that of an old elephant matriarch never lapsed into the kind of forgetfulness that erases the deeds that marked the passage of our individual journeys through high school. My non-selection as a prefect represented the final judgment. I was beyond the pale, quite literary, as you will discover. From the sun my skin tone was a shade too dark, and my name was wrong. Whispers of the tar brush, whispers of miscegenation had haunted my entire high school life. I am the dark Afrikaner outlier. The whispers at high school still echo in my mind – 'she is actually Afrikaans I would have you know...she is from Hotazel wherever that may be.' 'Hotazel?' 'Yes hot-as-hell, some God forsaken place in the Kalahari near Kuruman'. 'Kuruman?' 'Can't say I have ever hear of a place called Kuruman'. And then it would slip out – 'It was only Afrikaners who happened to be darker than the norm'. But ironically I was whiter than the driven snow. Whiteness clung to me like a ghostly shadow. I was condemned by my history and my upbringing to be White. But Whiteness worked for me, I used my Whiteness to get where I am. But as I have expressed from the depths of my heart there were many moments in my later life when I would wish that I was not White. While at University fellow students often said that they thought that I was either Spanish or Portuguese or Italian or Greek and so on and so forth, but what they really meant was that I appeared to be Coloured.

Chapter 5: My First Year

1

During my first year in 1973 at Wits Dr Kate Jolly lectured on the plant kingdom for a full semester. As a mycologist the fungi were her passion. However she was also a highly knowledgeable overall botanist with side interests in the algae, mosses (bryophytes) and ferns. She made botany exciting in more ways than one. She was also a fitness fanatic and very health conscious, she also did weight training, modern dancing, ball room dancing and participated in vaudevillian female competitive bodybuilding or female physique 'pageants'. While being well build, she intentionally avoided developing excessive muscle mass and focused more on the eye-pleasing contouring of her figure. She presented her shapely calves, thighs, buttocks, hips, arms and bosom to the appreciative gaze with the poise and elegance of someone whose vanity needed constant inflation and the stroking of admiring gazes of both sexes served this function.

In the lecture theatre she exerted complete control over the first year class of neophytes of which I was a wide-eyed and impressionable member. Her intimidating presence made us all comfortably submissive and pliable. This dominatrix did not suffer fools gladly. She would gladly whip you with the cane which she flourished like a sabre while pointing it at her artistically drawn coloured chalk diagrams of the gametangium of a fungus, alga, moss, fern or plant. Despite all her theatrics, her lectures were riveting as she expounded on the sex lives of the fungi, algae, mosses and ferns, wearing a starched bright white lab coat over her chic clinging slip of a dress that barely reached her knees. She always wore sensible low heeled shoes, not quite high heels and not quite flat soled shoes, which allowed her to pace before the black board with the fluid mobility of dancer while she lectured. I sat right in the front and she made frequent eye contact with me, seemly addressing her lecture to me. While she spoke I found myself nodding my head.

2

In the very first botany practical class the exercise for that afternoon involved learning how to use the microscope. At our work stations we were given Pasteur pipettes, slides, coverslips and an Erlenmeyer flask filled with greenish pond water. Using the Pasteur pipette we were instructed to put a drop of pond water on the slide and then carefully mount a coverslip over the drop following which the drop would then spread out into a thin film of liquid trapped between the coverslip and slide. We placed the slide with the mounted sample on the microscope viewing stage fixing it into position with the two clips on the stage. After positioning the lowest power objective lens (x10) over the slide I peered down the eyepiece tube (10x magnification) and turned the coarse focus knob and then the fine focus knob until I could clearly make out the suspended particles floating in the thin film of liquid.

At 20x magnification it was the small crustaceans belonging to the genus Daphnia that caught my attention. Their swimming or motility in the water was powered by the beating of their second antennae. Their bodies were enclosed in a transparent carapace. Under the 40x objective lens all their internal organs were visible. In some I could even see the eggs in the brood pouch. They had large distinctive compound eyes. While perched on the ancient wooden lab stool, hunched over my microscope completely engrossed, lost to the world, with my eye fixed on the swimming Daphnia I felt a presence looming close up behind me, in fact too close if you measure closeness in terms of the invisible boundaries of personal space. Turning my head I saw that it was Kate. It was my very first encounter with Kate, she asked if I had seen anything interesting. I told her I had been observing Daphnia and I added enthusiastically that I could even see their eggs. She asked if she could have a look. I slide off my stool and stood to one side to make space for her. She sat down on my stool, bent over and peered down the eye piece. Her left elbow make contact with my right arm, pressing against my arm, I did not move away, in fact I pressed back against her arm. I could smell the fragrance of her hair and the perfume that she had applied to her neck. She stood up, smiled at me and said:

'They are such cute little animals aren't they, the ones with eggs are female, and what's so interesting the eggs are produced asexually, they can reproduce without having to mate with males. That is so queer don't you think.'

'Yes that is so queer, so definitely very queer indeed, I did not know that, so they can breed without having to mate,' I said feeling very flushed and excited as I smiled back at her.

'Queer indeed,' she responded.

'Indeed definitely queer,' I agreed.

She touched my hand and said: 'Keep up the good work Miss Zeeman.'

'I will thank you,' I replied politely, almost feeling the absurd need to curtsy or bow or whatever one is supposed to do before such a potent presence.

I was pleased with myself. I congratulated myself on being such an astute observer. I had guessed right from the start that she was queer, that she was a lesbian, no one else could see it, all the guys in the class fantasized about fucking her, they sat in her lectures with perpetual hard-ons. She now also knew that I was queer. A bond of lesbian solidarity had become fixed between us. There were many of us floating around, an invisible sisterhood of queer girls.

3

We were duly informed by Dr Jolly that while the attendance of the Saturday botany field trips which she had taken on herself to organize was not compulsory it was strongly recommended that we make every effort to attend all of them. And the first field trip would be at Melville Koppies. 'Be there at nine-o-clock sharp and bring a hard cover notebook, pen and pencil, sticky tape, food and cold drinks. We will have a picnic lunch afterwards which will give us an opportunity to socialize a bit.'

Come Saturday Dr Jolly looking very sexy in hiking boot, ankle socks, shorts, T-shirt, bush hat and sunglasses takes command, radiating a no nonsense attitude, reinforcing the serious nature of the exercise which we are all about to embark on. A couple of postgraduate botany students doing their BSc honours, MSc and PhD degrees in plant taxonomy and plant ecology have come along to assist with plant identification. We are divided up into groups and a postgraduate student is assigned to each group. With thick string marked at meter intervals we set up 100 m long transects across the interface of veld and bush. At meter intervals we identified all the plants in a square metre quadrant. We spend the entire morning until just past midday crouched over the quadrants in the hot late February sun counting the number of different plant species and the frequency of each species. Using sticky tape we fixed labelled samples of specimens into our notebooks creating our own field herbarium for plant identification.

4

No one is concerned about the anti-colonial war. The 450 miles or so of our journey from Lourenço Marques to Vilanculos has been incident free. We have arrived in a Kombi and a Land Rover which was used to tow a trailer with a large rubber dinghy equipped with a fifty horse power Johnson outboard motor. We have a tonne of equipment with us, we have brought scuba equipment, spear guns, underwater cameras, a generator and a compressor. In Vilanculos the air is thick and heavy. It is July 1973 and I am a first year student on holiday in Mozambique with the Wits diving club. I am free, my June exams are behind me, and I don't have a single worry in the world. Tomorrow we will set up camp on some remote beach somewhere on the Bazaruto Archipelago. It is midday and it is surprisingly hot and humid for July. At the small harbour we learn that except for Paradise Island there are no ferries going to any of the other islands. I'm thousands of miles from home, and I am the happiest person in the world. I don't care that there are no ferries going to the other islands. We have a quick debate. Should we travel back to Inhambane or Xai Xai, or should we go to Paradise Island? We were also hungry, so we drove around the small seaside village of Vilanculos looking for a place to have lunch. We eventually decided on the art deco hotel Dona Ana which was perched like a marooned ship on the headland overlooking the jetty of the small Vilanculos harbour. The sea facing aspect of hotel presented us with a tropical view of the palm tree fringed shoreline with an odd assortment of boats serenely moored on the beaches and along the jetty. We were soon quaffing back quarts of Laurentino beer while feasting on prawns on the hotel patio. My cheeks began to tingle pleasantly in response to the alcohol, and my fingers smell of garlic. As an eighteen year old fresh out of school I am not used to alcohol. I am drinking alcohol for the first time in my life. I am feeling wild and reckless, and my head is full of knowledge, I have worked my butt off and I know I have done well in the exams, I was driven, I did not want to let my dad down as he was paying for my university education. But I felt that I earned the right to let my hair down and enjoy myself. We discuss our diving options. We have almost given up on our initial plan to set up camp on some remote beach somewhere on one of the islands on the Bazaruto Archipelago. Carlos Santiago has a brainwave, he goes over to speak the manager of the hotel. Thanks to Carlos we are able to communicate with the owner who cannot speak any English. Carlos' family happen to be politically well-connected in Mozambique, he makes a few phone calls and comes back to join us. Before he could finish his beer the phone rings. It is for Carlos. We are told that we have permission to camp on the beach on Paradise Island. We listen as Carlos expands on the history of the hotel. The hotel was built in the 1950s by Señor Alves in honour of the beautiful and glamorous Dona Ana, the woman he loved. Carlos a keen scuba diver is a fourth year medical student at Wits. His family owned a dairy and citrus farm close to Xinavane. It was one of the biggest citrus farms in the southern hemisphere. We slept over at the Santiago farm on our way to Vilanculos.

5

While relaxing at the Hotel Dona Ana it felt as if the dreamy seaside village of Vilanculos occupied a place in space and time that was too remote to be touched by any kind of worldly concerns. The anti-colonial war raging between FRELIMO and the Portuguese seems so remote and unreal. As I have said our road trip from Lourenço Marques to Vilanculos via our Xinavane stopover at Carlos's family farm had been incident free. Carlos had explained that the anti-insurgency war was localized mainly in the northern Cabo Delgado, Niassa, and Tete provinces. Tete was close to the Cabora Bassa Dam and FRELIMO was endeavouring to disrupt the construction of the dam. The Rhodesian counter-insurgency war had also spilled over into the Tete province. In spite of the fact that my father was not happy about me going on this diving trip to Bazaruto especially because of the guerrilla war in Mozambique he eventually relented and paid for my trip. I signed the indemnity forms and paid the money. Now in the hotel lounge in Vilanculos the rapidly rotating blades of the ceiling fan above our table makes a pleasant unobtrusive purring sound.

6

We ordered more prawns and another round of Laurentina beer. I am in heaven. I am free of every care in the world. Nothing seems to bother me. I find myself laughing at the silliest remark. I am slightly tipsy and I am finding everything so amusing. I am on my way to paradise. And on top of everything I am also feeling well educated, my brain is bursting with knowledge after six months of studying zoology and botany at Wits. They say there are between thirty six or thirty eight different phyla in the animal kingdom which is the same as saying that there are thirty six to thirty eight different recognizable animal body plans in the animal kingdom. Our zoology lecturer, Professor Max Nudelman, a short plumpish balding homosexual atheist Jew was a honey and a genius, and could be a sarcastic bitch if he wanted to. He said: 'Don't believe what your text books have to say about animal phylogeny, they have got the whole story wrong!' This was my first lesson in science. The conventional wisdom may in reality be completely false. I did not miss one of his lectures. I always made sure that I was early so that I could get a seat in the front row. I hang onto every word that fell from his lips. To me he was the perfect man mainly because he was not interested in women. On the sexual level I have always found men physically revolting. I was a nascent feminist, ripe for recruitment. I think he knew that I was queer, I'm convinced he could see that I was a dyke. He was perceptive enough, more so than the guys who tried to hit on me. He could also see that I worshipped him. My face must have radiated a dazzling glow of sheer joy as I listened to him. I wrote copious notes in class, and at night after supper while lying on my bed in my room at the Sunnyside Women's Residence, a room I had to share with a girl I did not care much for, I rewrote and expanded on the lecture notes in a black A4 sized hardcover notebook labelled Zoology I. Yes I was in heaven, life could not be more perfect! Tomorrow we will be in paradise. Paradise Island, on the Bazaruto Archipelago awaits us.

7

At sunrise we unpacked and off-loaded all our equipment including the rubber dinghy with its fifty horse power Johnson outboard motor onto the jetty near the hotel in Vilanculos. The Land Rover and Kombi was driven away to be parked at the hotel until we got back. Standing on the jetty looking out over the vast expanse of ocean in the direction where I thought the tiny island of Santa Carolina (Paradise Island) would be located according to the map it seemed be an impossible fifty miles away. We were told by the ferry skipper that it was going to take us at least five hours to get there, and they wanted to still get back by night fall. I began to feel breathless with excitement. I realized that I was on the brink of an adventure that only comes once in a life time. Someone on the ferry said that for a person of average height the sea horizon is 4.7 km (2.9 miles) away and nothing beyond that distance could be seen. Soon Vilanculos disappeared below the horizon, proving that the earth was round, and we now seemed to be lost in the vast shadowless expanse of Indian Ocean with only the sun as our guide. Colin Brown the leader of our diving expedition told us to keep our eyes focused on the horizon if we don't want to become sea sick. There was hardly any swell and the sea was as calm as a lake. There was no breeze to create even the smallest ripple, only the slow chugging of the ferry's passage disturbed the tranquil ocean. I was so enthralled by the sight of turtles, dolphins, colossal whale sharks and huge manta rays, I remember saying to no one in particular that I could easily become a marine biologist. My enthusiasm was almost childlike and brought indulgent smiles to everyone's face. For a moment I was not an adult. I had become everyone's little kid sister. Five hours later the tall palm tree of Santa Carolina pierced the skyline of the seemingly infinite oceanic horizon and the island gradually emerged from nowhere out of the vast ocean like a magical and mysterious remote oasis in the middle of a desert. As we drew nearer to the island the sea which had turned from deep blue to turquoise and was as calm as a mirror on the leeward side of the island. After the ferry had moored at the small pier Carlos walked over to the hotel while we unloaded our equipment and gear onto the peer. Half an hour later Carlos returned and we were faced with the odious physical task of carrying all our equipment to our designated camping spot about half a kilometre from the pier to our own private patch of brilliant white beach in the shade of gigantic palm trees. It took until night fall to pitch the tents, setup the gas fridge, freezer, compressor and all the camping equipment. There were seven of us on the trip and I was the only female. I had my own tent and even though I was a tomboy I was worried about becoming a bit of eye candy for the boys. Having made no arrangements for supper we walked over to the hotel as twilight descended over the island. We all agreed that we deserved a celebratory party for managing to get to Santa Carolina against all odds. And we were also all starving having not eaten all day.

8

Each day after an early morning breakfast we dragged the heavy dinghy packed with our diving equipment into the sea, standing metre deep in the sea we held the dinghy steady while Colin with the manual choke pulled out yanked the starter cable turning the cold engine gone sluggish overnight, with each turn the engine gasped for air through the carburettor, at the third vigorous pull the engine would wake up with a deep throaty cough and begin to throb, which was the signal for us to jump up out of the water and roll over into the dinghy, with all of us aboard Colin would open the throttle and with the engine roaring we launched off, speeding across a tranquil sea, the dinghy planing smoothly as we sped off for the coral reefs. Before six-o-clock each morning we would be out at sea, and we would only return after three-o-clock in the afternoon. After midday while diving the hunger would set in. On most days I would have eaten a fish raw I felt so hungry, and what with the fact that we had been scuba diving, snorkelling or spearfishing just about the entire day without a bite to eat. It was while we were spear fishing off the edge of the coral reefs that I saw the marlin, it was huge, it had suddenly materialized seemingly from nowhere, it was so close, mere meters away, and its eyes were as big as saucers.

Daily I lavished my body with a deep layer of sunblock but unlike the others I still tanned as brown as a berry, my skin tone became a luxurious deep coffee brown, glowing healthily in the sunlight with an exuberant abundance of melanin. I practically lived in my black Speedo for days on end. Fresh water had to be rationed and we just did the necessary bathing. While drinking Laurentino beer at the hotel Dona Ana in Vilanculos the anomaly that I was the only female became apparent in a teasing but innocent remark about the male:female sex ratio of our group. I can't remember what led to me to disclose my sexual proclivities but I distinctly remember uttering:

'I only like girls'.

To which someone replied: 'We also like girls.'

'Well at least we share something common,' was my response.

'Well let's say cheers to that,' someone said.

And there was a clinking of bottles as everyone toasted the desirability of women. I was one of the boys from that moment onwards.

That was that, I was a dyke, and that was the reason that a girl like me would be wanting to go on a hazardous diving trip with a bunch of fellows. I came to believe that I was not really a girl in their eyes. At least the talk of liking girls never came up again as a point of discussion for the rest of the trip, even though I could not escape their libidinous gaze. It was impossible for me not to be seen naked given the practical logistics of the situation. I also saw their testicles and their drooping flaccid penises, circumcised, uncircumcised, small, medium and large. Being naked in each other's presence was unavoidable, and we got used to it. I guessed that they had all fucked me countless times in their private imagination while masturbating whenever they had the opportunity for a quick wank on the island. Boys will be boys and they will spank the monkey out of primeval necessity.

9

While scuba diving for the very first time among the coral reefs in the close vicinity of Paradise Island in the Bazaruto Archipelago close to Vilanculos I was amazed and fascinated by the stunning brilliance and inconceivable variety of coral and coral fish colouration made possible by the streams of sunlight which bathed the blue crystal depths with a luminosity that made every living thing glow with a fluorescent radiance that gave new meaning to the words in Genesis: 'Let there be light'. It is only the visible and the ultra violet wavelengths of the spectrum of the sun's electromagnetic radiation which has made it possible for the rainbow carnivalesque queer world of the coral reefs to vibrate with the energetic motions of sentient life. The shockingly colourful world of the coral reefs was alive with the most exquisite range of queerness: invertebrate and vertebrate hermaphrodites and fish that change their sex, females becoming males and males becoming females. As a young first year zoology and botany student, only eighteen years old, my mind literary exploded with wonder and with questions which I was unable to answer at the time. What was the function of all this colour? Why did so many different species of fish have various blue and yellow colour combinations? What did the fish see? Did they see the world of the coral reef in the same way that I saw it? Was the retinal system of their eyes different from mine? Blue was the most prominent light wavelength of the aquatic oceanic world beneath the waves, and yellow was the most conspicuous colour in this aquatic world of blueness. In the terrestrial environment humans are excellent at distinguishing yellow from blue. When under water, I noticed that for human eyes there was a good match between the blue background dominating the aquatic world of the ocean and the blue colour of many of the reef fish and other predatory fish which patrolled the open waters of the ocean surrounding the reefs. Predatory fish or what fishermen call game fish, often invisible appeared suddenly from nowhere. The pure blue background of the sea provides a perfect camouflage for bluish coloured fish. The coral reefs are characterized by an inordinate range and bewildering diversity of habitats or niches and corresponding life-styles and living life-forms. And as a consequence of evolutionary adaptations an unimaginable variety of behaviour, forms and colours facilitated the occupancy of the rich assortment of coral reef niches, and it was that which resulted in an explosive adaptive radiation of speciation which coral reefs have triggered. The sheer plenitude of different animal and algal species is what makes the coral reef an Edenic paradise for the biologist, within the world of the coral reef there is everything which makes biology a fascinating discipline: camouflage, communication, defensive warning, mimicry, unpalatability and so on and so forth.

10

At night drinking Laurentina around our communal fire we made a variety of fish and shell-fish dishes which we ate with rice, rice being our carbohydrate staple. While some of us were scuba diving and others would swim off and spearfish for our dinner, we literally lived off the ocean. I also tried my luck at spearfishing with mixed success. We would chop up onions, garlic, tomatoes, lemons, and then stuff the ingredients into the gutted cavity of the fish, spice the fish and then wrap them in aluminium foil, and bake them in the coals. We used paper plates which we burnt afterwards. The boys loved cooking over an open fire but hated dishwashing!

The glowing coals of the fire would eventually die and our eyes would become accustomed to the dark. We would lie on our backs and gaze up at the star lit night sky. It was the first time that I learnt about the Big Bang Theory for the origin of the Universe. The phrase 'Big Bang' was first coined by Fred Hoyle a British astrophysicist. Hoyle did not believe in a Big Bang origin of the Universe. He held to a steady state theory of the Universe. He argued that the Universe was eternal, unchanging and in a steady state. He explained the observable expansion of the Universe as seen by the receding galaxies moving away from each other as being due to the continuous creation of matter between the galaxies over time. As older galaxies move further and further apart new galaxies emerged apparently out of nothing and developed in the empty space that was continuously being created by the receding flight of surrounding galaxies.

Staring up at the pitch black star bedecked night sky I tried to visualized in my imagination that all of the stars in my field of vision were racing away from each at increasing velocities and that the Universe has been rapidly expanding from an initial unimaginably small invisible point non-stop for billions and billions of years.

The students studying engineering, geology, computer science and applied mathematics, chemistry and physics in the Wits diving team debated the various versions of the Cosmological Argument for the origin of the Universe. The most rational basic statement of the Cosmological Argument could be reduced to the following simple syllogism: Whatever begins to exist has a cause, the Universe began to exist, and therefore the Universe has a cause.

One of the guys said that nothing can cause itself. Another guy said only something can cause something. Then someone said that the laws of nature are something. Someone else said that you cannot assume existence in order to prove existence. Something being contingent means it could have been otherwise. But something being contingent always means being contingent on something else being the case, that is a given state of affairs, rather than nothing. So it has always been necessary that there has to be something rather than nothing. There is never nothing. There is always something. Can a state of affairs we call nothing ever exist? Nothing can never be the case, nothing cannot exist as something. 'Nothing' cannot 'exist' as a possible state of affairs, there always exists something rather than nothing. So we agreed that all possibilities exist by virtue of something or by the virtue of the existence of something else, and that nothing cannot exist as a state of affairs. Therefore nothing always gives rise to nothing. Every existent in the Universe exists contingently by virtue of something else. And then there was the question of what kinds of things have to exist necessarily rather that contingently. Someone responded: 'The existence of numbers is necessary'. Someone said that numbers are something, and numbers are not nothing. And since we had concluded that nothing causes nothing rather than something, what causes the existence of numbers, or in other words by virtue of what do numbers exist? Then someone chirped: 'There must be a God'. I surprised everyone when my voice broke the silence: 'I believe in God, I don't see any problem with believing in God, why is it so difficult to believe in the existence of God.' And then followed the usual spluttering's of 'Yeah but...if there was a God...then there would be...and so and on, blah, blah.'

The conversation would drift on to other topics and the soft drone of male voices made me sleepy. Every night I fell asleep on my towel on the beach sand. A hand would gently shake my shoulder: 'Hannah wakeup, we are going to bed now.' I would get up half-asleep, switch on my torch, scratch around in my tent for my tooth brush and tooth paste, stagger back out into the dark to the water drum, open the tap and fill my plastic mug, brush my teeth, gurgle and spit out water, and stumble back to my tent, crawl into my sleeping bag still wearing my shorts and Speedo and fall instantly asleep.

11

When I crawled out of my tent in the morning at sunrise the fire was already going. The fire and smoke blackened kettle would be boiling on the coals. After a breakfast of instant coffee and cold fish that was left over from the previous evening we prepared our gear for another day of scuba diving and spear fishing. The boys did not shave. Their sun tanned faces were prickly with stubble. Just before we set off I had to comb my hair and one of the guys had volunteered to plait my hair each morning, and he became quite good at it. Every morning he said the same thing:

'Girls with long hair should never be allowed on a camping diving trip'.

I would answer: 'Yeah, Yeah.'

They had all done their military service straight after matric. But I was young and sassy, and I had a lot of lip, not scared to speak my mind. Five years of high school dorm living and six months in Sunnyside Residence at Wits had equipped me with a sharp and mobile tongue, and with a matching vocabulary. I could out jab any guy punch for punch when it came to a verbal sparring bout. The male mind was slow when it came to words and self-expression. They tended to be lumbering and a bit clumsy. In general I did not find males very attractive or enticing, and this sentiment also applied to the guys of the Wits diving club who happened to be very nice humans, and as animals they were OK. In that sense I liked them and could get on with them. But nothing in a male's being did anything for me, and I think they could sense my physical and psychological aversion to intimacy with maleness. They were good looking and very physical but it did not work for me. No palpitations, no hot flushes, no blushing, no lingering looks or fluttering eye lashes, no arousal, no attraction, just nothing. It is hard for most heterosexuals to know what it feels like to be homosexual, and what it feels like to experience no sexual attraction towards the opposite sex, and to find the opposite sex complete un-erotic. This was the vibe they got from me. Our relations had to be 'organized' on an asexual basis, they liked me as a person and I liked them on the same basis, and of course it goes without saying that we needed teach other, we were mutually dependent on each other especially while diving, and we had to look out for each other and be concerned about our collective welfare and safety especially when out at sea. A real bond of comradeship did develop between me and them, a bond of asexual comradeship, the kind of bond to be expected between sister and brothers, and this is how it worked out on the trip. Somehow all of this happened and it was to their credit. The boys were fantastic, in spite of the other things that might have been going on privately in their minds.

12

Gazing at the star lit sky every night reinforced my belief in God. I was not alone in the Universe. God was there. The guys were not religious. When I said I believe in God, they asked if I believed in the Bible. What does it mean to believe in the Bible? How does one link one's belief in the existence of God with one's 'belief' in the Bible? I put belief in inverted commas because to believe in the Bible is not a trivial intellectual or spiritual exercise. As a work of literature the Bible is ridden with dialectical tensions: 'So God created mankind in his own image; in his own image God created them; he created them male and female' (Genesis 1:27). God in 'his' own image is bisexual. 'He' is both male and female. God is the archetypical hermaphroditic being, 'he' is both man and woman, a fusion of masculinity and femininity, without one being subordinate to the other, because within the Godhead there is no hierarchy of being or persons, which is in accordance with the Triune formula articulated in the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed is both rich in theological, metaphysical and historical content, and it is beautiful when sung during Mass.

Can't help thinking about the deep paradox of Easter. The Nicene Creed, Good Friday, Good News, and God being dead. How can all of this be possible as a confession of faith? To put this altogether you need some key concept such as: One Substance and Incarnation. The full meaning of God Incarnate means God actually died on a Roman Cross at Golgotha. Can God die? Yes God can die according to the Nicene Creed. Christianity is the most paradoxical faith on the Planet. The Nicene Creed goes as follows for the benefit of readers who have not been exposed to the Nicene Creed:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father [and the Son]; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

13

My journey into discovering the essential nature of my sexuality and then the full realization of my lesbianism and homosexuality has been a deeply enriching and wonderful experience. Along the road of my homosexual adventure into queerness I have had to work my way emotionally, religiously (spiritually) and intellectually through many conflicting and contradictory lesbian and feminist narratives. And the various narratives of the deep history of women in love with women, and women having sex with women are not necessarily co-extensive or seamlessly continuous with the prevailing content of the modern orthodoxy of feminist lesbian narratives. Women have been in love with women, and women have been having sex with women for tens of thousands of years preceding the Neolithic. And I think that feminine or femme lesbianism has been under-represented in the dominant feminist lesbian narrative not because femmes were ever absent or did not exist in any significant numbers. They have always been there but they have not contributed to the public construction and performance of lesbian identities. As a biologist I came to realize that there were significant deficiencies in the theory of gender in relation to same-sex love and same-sex desire. Visible performative expressions of femininity frequently coincide with same-sex love and same-sex desire. This means there are feminine women who love and desire only women and who also have sex only with women. Homosexual women who self-identify as being feminine rather than masculine have always existed. These homosexual women are expressively and performatively feminine not only by choice and but as a result of an irresistible impulse and also as a consequence of a reflexive compulsion that arises naturally as an inviolable biologically conditioned predilection or predisposition. Women want to be women and not men! In other words they do not have any choice in the matter, their love for women and desire for women and their need to have sex with women is governed by something which has all the features of a law of nature. In this sense same-sex orientation with respect to love and desire is a natural and morally-neutral condition.

14

We often hear that God is there and he is not silent. But where do we find God, if God is to be found anywhere at all? We can only find a faint trace of God in the marginalized faces of the infinite Other, that is, we find God in the faces of the widow, the orphan, the sick, the dying, the prisoner, the poor, the destitute, the weak, the forlorn, the sad, the melancholic, the depressed, the exploited, the oppressed and in the faces of those who live without any hope. We don't find any authentic trace of God in the shining and gloating egotistical faces of the super-rich telly evangelists who collect buckets filled with cash sucked from the pockets of the hypnotised assemblies of the credulous who under the spell of the evangelist's beguiling charisma are inspired to lust after the numbness that comes with the promised magical windfall of prosperity, which could be theirs, but only if they believe the theologically-suspect voodoo message peddled as the Gospel. But what must we believe 'in' in order to be rewarded with God's cash bailout from a wretched life trapped in failure and poverty. What must you believe in? Must you believe in a simple formula? Will that save you? Will that be your redemption? Is this any different from pure magic? Believe this message and you will be saved. Believe this narrative and you will be saved. What does it mean be saved? From what are we saved? What does it mean to believe in a message? And what is the message? The message is the Good News. But pray tell, what is the Good News? We hear that the Good News is that Jesus died for our sins. It is as simple as that, or is it in fact that simple? But in reality the message is not that simple, however the apparent message, the putative message, the convenient message in all its illusionary simplicity, has been distilled from a narrative that is profound, enigmatic, paradoxical and totally unbelievable. God died on the cross at Golgotha. The God incarnate died on Good Friday on the Roman cross at Golgotha, the place of death and suffering. While on the cross witness was 'borne' by women regarding the visibility of the suffering face of the Other in the form of the incarnate God, and finally, when it was all done, the death mask of the incarnate God bore the traces of the marginalized Other. And women throughout the ages have borne and worn the face of the marginalized Other. It was women who recognized themselves as the marginalized Other in the face of Jesus. Jesus was their lover, husband, brother, son, father and their God as well. Women gathered themselves round the body of Jesus, on the shores of lakes, in villages, in the pastoral landscapes of Galilee, at the well, in the street as adulterers, at his feet weeping, along the road to Jerusalem, at Golgotha on God Friday and at his tomb on Easter morning. It was a woman that carried the message to the disciples: 'He has risen.'

15

As we gazed at the star lit night sky the relationship between God and abstract objects such as numbers and mathematical truths came up once more. There are abstract objects or entities which exist necessarily, eternally, independently and therefore have not been brought into existence by invention or creation by some creative agency. In Latin these abstract objects exist 'a' (from) 'se' (self). From these two terms we get the word 'aseity' which describes the property of something which exists underived or uncreated 'in' and 'of itself' and 'from itself'. It self-subsists necessarily and independently from all eternity without ever being brought into existence by any kind of external and independent agency. Aseity applies to anything that has not been caused to exist or brought into existence from non-existence by the action of some external agency. In a sense aseity applies to something which is self-causing or self-grounding. Abstract objects such as mathematical and logical entities or theories possess the property of aseity. What is the relationship between God's aseity and the aseity of abstract objects? If God is the Ultimate Reality which includes the Ultimate Ground of Everything including Being and if all Truth supervenes on Being then why should the being of God not also include the immutable truth that 2+2=4 as a property of God's essential nature? In a manner of speaking God 'IS' actually 2+2=4 in all possibility worlds and in all possible realities. God 'is' also the Abstract Universe of all Truth. The guys were happy to accept the two ideas, if God exists and God is truly God then God is also every immutable truth and so God in a manner of speaking is also 2+2=4 because all truth is inseparable from God's being.

16

In 1974 tragedy struck the Santiago family. FRELIMO confiscated the citrus farm. Mr Santiago refused to leave the farm. An altercation ensued on the veranda which ended with him being shot dead. In the late-1980s a few weeks before my arrest I bumped into Carlos in Rosebank and we had coffee and lapsed into reminiscing about all the good times we shared with the Wits diving club excursions. We spoke about Paradise Island and we speculated on what would constitute paradise on earth. Shortly after the Nkomati Non-Aggression Accord that was signed in 1984 Carlos and some family members travelled to Mozambique to see whether an agreement could be negotiated regarding the return of their farm. The farm had gone to complete ruin. The vast citrus orchards which seemed to stretch beyond the horizons had been reduced to an arid graveyard of dried-out stumps sticking out of bare sun hardened red earth. The farm which had been asset stripped and abandoned after the death of Mr Santiago and had now vanished from sight as a consequence of the steady and unremitting bush and thicket encroachment. As Carlos said: 'Once upon a time the farm was indeed paradise on earth'. And I asked: 'What about before that?' Carlos smiled ironically: 'Before that it was really paradise on earth, virgin savannahs teeming with elephant, rhino, buffalo, giraffe, in fact with all the wild life that you see in the Kruger National Park today.

Chapter 6: Second Year Student

1

Dressed in his usual khaki shirt and shorts Benjamin Schlossheimer had pitched up at Johannesburg Park Station to see us off on our second year botany field trip to Belvedere in the Blyde River Canyon in the Eastern Transvaal. He was an atypical Jew in every respect, especially for a Jewish student at Wits. The majority of the student Left at Wits were Jewish. It seemed that being Jewish was synonymous with being Leftist in political orientation. Benjamin was the Jewish political outlier. He leant strongly to the political Right, which may explain why he had been befriended or adopted by a clique of second year botany students in my class which also included some guys from Rhodesia. What was odd was the fact that he was in his third year also majoring in zoology and botany, one year ahead of us and older than us. So why he had chosen to be part of this clique of second year students was beyond my comprehension. Why had he latched onto a bunch of racist and anti-Semitic guys in our second year class?

The shrill sound of the whistle announced our imminent departure and at that precise moment something took possession of Benjamin, he boarded the train seconds before it jerked into motion.

2

I had not integrated very well with the botany class. I had been friendly with Yael Toledano during our first year but she had drifted away and was now part of a whining Jewish kugel clique who were destined to be absolutely miserable for the full duration of the field trip. In South Africa the Yiddish or Ashkenazi meaning of 'kugel' had undergone a mutation. Anyway the kugels who taken a major in botany for reasons I could only guess had all very quickly booked themselves into one of the compartments on the train. I decided not to join them and moved down the corridor looking for a compartment that I could join without feeling uncomfortable. Anyway on the train journey down to Nelspruit I ended up sharing a compartment with three guys who were definitely not part of any of the charmed circles in our class. They eventually become my lifelong friends and we have remained in touch with each other for years. My new friends to be were Roger Ho, Wayne Bernstein and Michael Livingstone, and they welcomed me into the compartment when I asked them if I could join them for the overnight journey. Wayne was a Jew who had converted to Christianity and was one of those Jews for Jesus people. Michael was a newly born again Christian who belonged to some or other Pentecostal church and Roger was Chinese and a devout Catholic. The three had become excluded from the class's social network on account of being highly religious and strict teetotallers.

3

It was drizzling when we left the railway station in Nelspruit on the bus which had been hired to transport the thirty four botany students plus the four botany academics (Dr Bruce Wallace, Dr Kate Jolly, Mr. Reinhardt Muller and Professor Keith Midas). Our destination was near the edge of a deep yawning canyon. Leaving the tar road the bus drove into the gloom of a man made forest. Skidding dangerously we started our winding ascent up the steep muddy and slippery gravel road which had been carved into the contours of the steep mountain slopes, flanked on both sides by towering trees which blocked out the sunlight. Chugging through the early morning wisps of mist we finally arrived at what seemed to be some kind of mountainous summit or lofty ridge. At this remote spot between the edge of a vast dark pine plantation and what seemed to be nowhere the bus skidded to a stop. We disembarked near a low concrete bridge that barely cleared the small river which was now in flood with rain fed water flowing down the slopes of the surrounding mountainous landscape. Flowing over the rocks and boulders the river had become transformed into a dangerous churning white-water rapid before plunging down a waterfall at the jugged rim of the canyon. Parked on the other side of the river in the Wits Botany Department Land Rover to meet us were Dr Glen Songbird and Professor Gladys Turner. After disembarking from the mud covered bus we lugged our luggage across the bridge in the soft rain which had begun to fall. The kugels began to complain bitterly as they realized that a great ordeal lay in store for them. The first trial which lay ahead of us was the steep descent over rough and rocky mountainous terrain into the valley. After packing our sleeping bags, kit bags and various personal effects into the Land Rover and the trailer we all trudged behind the Land Rover as it was driven slowly down an almost impassable rocky track into the canyon. Following the slow moving Land Rover on foot we descended into the canyon strung out in single file, spectral silhouettes slipping and sliding through the early morning mist which under the force of gravity was now rolling down from the cloud covered mountainous ridges, descending like a silent ghostly army. Baboons began to bark. Visibility was poor, we could not see the troop. Also hidden from sight the basin of the Blyde River Canyon was cloaked in a blanket of fog. After the long march into the bowels of canyon we finally reached the base camp soaking wet, foot sore and covered in mud from all the skidding onto our butts. It turned out to be a torturous five kilometre hike over difficult terrain which had taken it toll on those female students who were wearing footwear not suitable for hiking over rough terrain. All along the route we had to endure a chorus of constant wailing and moaning.

4

It was Good Friday, the drizzling stopped, the mist lifted and the sun broke through the clouds. The base camp consisted of an ancient farm house fortified with a flat cement roof. We all had to take turns in preparing meals. Our meals were to be cooked on portable gas stoves in the small kitchen according to the recipes pasted on the wall of the little kitchen. Our names on the chef's roster for cooking duties had been pasted on the lounge wall. Portable steel foldup tables were set up in the lounge and dining room which now functioned as our field laboratory and the mess for our meals. We unpacked all the equipment and apparatus including the dissecting and compound microscopes, which were set up on the tables. The large covered veranda which overlooked the valley was where we socialized after dinner in the evenings. Most of the female students chose to sleep in their sleeping bags on the concrete floor in the two bedrooms. The rest of us were accommodated in the backyard behind the house in tents. The four of us took over one of the tents. There was one long drop toilet but no ablution facilities or running tap water or electricity. We were given the afternoon off to settle in, wash off the mud from our limbs and generally get cleaned up and spend the reminder of the afternoon on exploratory walks. Most of us trooped down the steep valley to the river to wash and change into clean dry clothes. At the river, for the sake of modesty, we all changed behind bushes into our bathing customs before plunging into the deep ice cold crystal clear rock pool. Being Good Friday Wayne, Michael and Roger wore very solemn expressions on their faces. They had brought their Bibles along. When we had finished swimming they asked if I would like to join them for Bible readings and prayers at some quiet private place among the rocks and boulders. I declined and decided instead to go on a walk into the canyon by myself along a path which followed the river.

5

I was soon joined by Dr Jolly who was now quite blatantly showing a sexual interest in me. In those days there weren't any policies or constraints for the prevention of sexual harassment. In her late-twenties Dr Jolly who was a mycologist was definitely not an unattractive woman and I was a mere nineteen year old second year student feeling very vulnerable when alone with this woman. The previous year I had been with a bunch of guys to the Bazaruto Archipelago in Mozambique on a ten day diving trip without ever being bothered by even the faintest hint of sexual interest, and now I had to deal with someone who was forcing herself on me. In fact, she had a stunning body and an eye-catching face. She was hot. Anyway I felt that just because we were both queer gave her no right to make any kind of sexual overtures or put pressure on me. I was beginning to feel awkward in the aura of her chumminess. Then out of the blue we both heard heavy breathing and the loud trudging of boots. We turned round to see who was trying to catch up with us. It was Benjamin Schlossheimer, oddly enough by himself. I could have embraced his sweaty khaki clad body and kissed him all over on his ruddy cheeked cherubim face which glistened with perspiration, he was my knight in shining armour racing to save me from the clutches and evil designs of Dr Jolly. There was a flash of unmistakable irritation on her face. Anyway I flashed him a dazzling welcoming smile. His ebullient personality quickly subdued a flirtatious Dr Jolly who retreated back into her normal respectable academic self in the role of the fungal virtuoso. I had learnt my lesson, and decided to make sure that I was never alone without companions. And also that I should never go walking by myself as this could be interpreted as a signal for her to act on.

6

I had not brought any alcohol of my own on the field trip and so I did not participate in any of the nightly raucous partying on the veranda which only ended in the early hours of the morning. Every day bleary eyed hungover students staggered into the field after breakfast. After supper and lab work the four of us retreated with mugs of steaming coffee back to our tent. Now at the end of a busy day filled with botanizing we lit the hurricane lamp and reclined on our stretchers sipping our coffee while reviewing the day's events. Inevitably every night our conversation sooner or later converged onto religion or philosophical topics which had a strong theological flavour. After brushing our teeth and washing our faces we climbed into our sleeping bags and fell asleep while under the spell of discourses on the nature of God and His salvation for us, and so on. Our day always ended when one lone voice was left with no listeners as we slipped one by one into a blissful sleep. The vibrant faith of my three friends seemed to be anomalous compared to Father Francis Digby who while being an Anglican clergyman under holy orders with a BA in history and theology under his belt from Rhodes University lost his faith. In the wake of losing his faith his life fell apart, his marriage broke up and he fell in love with an Indian woman who became his lifelong partner. In sharp contrast to Francis Digby whose faith was eroded by the corrosive acids of the higher criticism of the Bible the faith of Michael, Wayne and Roger proved to be resilient against the full intellectual onslaught of the enlightenment and twentieth century modernity. Their faith held firm within the intellectually hostile environment of the biological sciences in which Darwinian evolution reigned supreme as the comprehensive and established paradigm in the biological sciences. In the scientific establishment Darwinian evolution was treated as an established fact beyond all rational dispute. There was no other explanation for the diversity of life and the diversity of adaptations and the three had been exposed to the scientific and empirical underpinnings of the theory of evolution. With regard to the theory of evolution they could without hesitation recite chapter verse regarding the verification and verisimilitude of Darwinian evolution of the species by natural selection. Yet their faith stood strong and solid, and they believed in the literal truth of the Bible including the whole of Genesis.

7

As I have said before, I have never been an atheist and I am intellectually comfortable with the idea that God does indeed exist. And I am not too worried about whether or not there is an after-life. I am able to accept the oblivion of the finality of death and I have come to terms with my own extinction and eventual non-existence. I did not believe that the existence of God necessarily entailed the existence of an after-life following our deaths. But then God being God, anything was possible, even something like life after death, whatever form that life would take. Our nightly discussion generally revolved around whether science ruled out the existence of God. We debated the nature of the logic and evidence used in the ontological and cosmological arguments for God's existence. And we debated the logic and evidence which had been marshalled from the findings of science to support the idea for the non-existence of God and the truth of evolution. I did not wish to become involved with arguments regarding the truth or falsity of the Bible. I accepted that Bible was composed of great literature and the problems brought to bear on the status of the Bible was not only about its literal truth or falsity with respect to ideas regarding matters of faith and confession. For me the Bible did have meaning and significance independent of whether or not it was thought to be divine revelation. The three were immune to the clear and obvious conflicts between a fundamentalist view of the Bible as the divine, authoritative, inerrant and infallible revelation of God and the facts of evolution. Evolution was part of the BSc curriculum in zoology and botany so they had to study Darwin's theory, but in a sort of intellectually divided, compartmentalized and quarantined fashion, so that it's corrosive contagion could be kept safely in check. They managed to cultivate a state of intellectual schizophrenia while still appearing to be perfectly sane and academically functional, passing all their class tests and examinations on the theory of evolution. It was an achievement to be admired, maintaining in one brain two mutually exclusive frames of mind or systems of thinking.

Scientific based arguments for the non-existence of God are generally dependent on the claim that the physical universe is closed under causation which is the same as stating that every physical effect has a physical cause. This is the fundamental thesis of a position that has come be known as 'physicalism', which is basically the position of all materialistic views of the universe and the world. This was also more or less my position on the field trip in our nightly discussions. The central logical implication flowing from this claim is that nothing in the world or universe exists other than the physical. Yet I believed in God. I just had to figure out how everything fits together at the time.

8

As I have already alluded Dr Jolly was definitely not bad looking, she had a nice body including shapely and powerful legs. Unless I was misreading everything, all the signals suggested that she was determined to fuck me. I knew that sooner or later she was going to get what she wanted, she was going to have her way with me. She had been subtly pursing me at every opportunity. At meals she always sat next to me at the table and took an interest in me as a person. To my own surprise I began to gradually warm up to her and started to enjoy the special attention that she was showering on me, and so I soon discovered that she was actually a very nice person, and I rationalized that there was really no harm in playing along with her plans and allowing myself to be seduced by this older more experienced woman. I began to encourage her with my own subtle flirtatious responses. The ball was in her court, it was now up to her to make her move, and she would have her reward with me. She told me to call her Kate and not Dr Jolly.

9

As it turned out we were given an afternoon off to do our own stuff. Most of us wanted to collect insects for our second year entomology insect collection and insect identification project. The autumnal sun was still warm and Kate asked if I would like to go swimming with her. I packed my toiletries, fresh underwear and clean clothes into my hiking bag. And I also packed my insect killing jar, and grabbing my insect net I ran down the path to meet Dr Jolly who was waiting for me with her hiking kitbag strapped to her back. Slightly out of breath I joined her and we hiked at a solid pace like amazons for a good five kilometres deep into the canyon until we reached a remote and secluded rock pool that only she knew of from her previous fieldtrips. Kate was known to be obsessive about health, exercise and fitness. She was not only a formidable squash player she also did body building, ran marathons and did ball room dancing on top of all these physical pastimes. At the pool as we stripped to skinny dip I began to feel breathless with sexual excitement, my whole body began to shake and shiver uncontrollably with nervous anticipation, and my mouth suddenly felt incredibly dry and I also began to leak involuntarily, a conspicuous yellow stream of urine run down the side of my inner thigh, I realized that I had lost complete control over my body. I was peeing myself. And I had never lost control of my bladder in my life. I quickly turned my back towards Kate so she would not see that I was peeing all over myself. I was in such a state of nervousness to be alone with Kate, an older and more experienced woman who was going to do all kinds of pleasurable stuff to me which at that moment I could not even imagine. Because I did not want to cause any further involuntary embarrassment to myself I immediately dived naked into the crystal clear deep pool and the sudden shock of the chilly waters seemed to calm me down somewhat. After swimming for a while we soaped ourselves down, shampooed our hair and brushed our teeth in the shallows, and then rinsed our bodies and hair by swimming back into the deep rock pool. With our toilet done, after applying lotions and creams to our bodies, and after applying deodorant and spraying with perfume, we finally sat down on the blanket that Kate had spread out. Kate gently pushed me down so that I was laying on my back, she wiped the wet hair from my face and while smiling at me she stroked my forearm. She leant over me and began to kiss me while gently fondling my breasts. Her hand moved down and gently explored the anatomy of my vulva. Satisfied that I was ready for what she had in mind she sat up in a kneeling position and reached into her backpack from which she retrieved a tube of lubricant. Instructing me to lay back she knelt down between my legs which she spread wide open. I was surprised by an unexpected and sudden wave of incredible pleasure as I felt her tongue probing and licking my vulva and clitoris. She stopped for moment. I lifted my torso and resting on my elbows I looked to see what she was doing. She gave me a mysterious smile and unscrewed the lid off a tube of lubricant and squeezed the contents onto the pad of her left forefinger. After instructing me to lay back again she went down on my clitoris again with her mouth. I felt the cold cream of the lubricant on my anus as she worked in the cream over my anal orifice and the sides of my anus. She applied the pad of her left forefinger to my anus moving it in a gentle rotatory movement. Pressing her finger down on my anus I felt the sphincter relax and her lubricated left forefinger slipped deep into my rectum. Moving her finger in my anus I could feel the pressure of her finger moving in my rectum. She kept her finger moving in my rectum while she inserted the index and middle fingers of her right hand into my vagina, she rubbed the inside walls of my vagina beneath the root of my clitoris. While licking my genitals and clitoris she began to move her fingers vigorously. In response to an overwhelming surge of pleasure I began breathing heavily, I began to pant, my heart pounded in my chest, and then I began to feel the most overwhelming and exquisite orgasm that I had ever experienced. My toes curled spontaneous, my legs writhed about wildly, my back arched, my gyrating hips lifted, I threw my arms back behind head, and moving my head from side to side I began to make the most strangest mewing sounds.

10

Whenever the opportunity arose in the late afternoons we would slip off for some wild and passionate sex. When it came to lesbian sex Kate knew everything that was needed to be known and she was an excellent, knowledgeable and empathetic teacher and I became her enthusiastic student. She loved to hump me, getting on top of me she would press her vulva against my pubic bone, she would rub herself against me until she climaxed, crying out involuntarily as the thrill of exquisite pleasure consumed her.

I confessed my feelings for her while on a fungal foray in what turned out to be an enchanted forest filled with the faint but pleasant musky fragrance of leafy and woody decomposition. In the dimly lit understory Kate open our eyes to an abundance of secret niches populated with the most dazzling variety of lichens, mushrooms, mosses and ferns. We were kneeling close together on a moldy bed of leaf litter next to a decaying tree trunk completely absorbed with the lichens, mosses, molds and bracken fungi which covered the trunk when I murmured: 'I have fallen in love with you'. Her answer without looking at me: 'I fell in love with you from the very first time I set my eyes on you sitting in the front row writing down every word that I uttered'. I answered: 'I loved your lectures.' A worm-like creature moving on the trunk caught our attention. 'That's a velvet worm, Onychophora!' Kate exclaimed excitedly.

'Wow!'

Chapter 7: First Overseas Trip

1

The story of my life is the story of the restless heart that Saint Augustine writes about in his Confessions. I have a queer woman's heart beating in my breast and it is desire and passion that makes it restless. The heart is the wellspring of desire and passion. At Vilanculos I felt the same kind of excitement being churned up by the restlessness of my heart. Now at Jan Smuts International Airport a full hour before our flight to Madrid I felt the awakening of my restless heart. To kill time before boarding we wondered about in the international departure lounge. I struggled to contain my excitement. This was the first time that I would be embarking on an aeroplane flight. I had become breathless with erotic desire and passion, I suddenly want Kate to make love to me in the women's toilets.

I feel as hot as hell with pure physical lust. I am in state. I am completely wet between my legs. I want to experience an orgasm. I am overcome with feelings of sensuality. Like Kate I am a sensual person. Kate literary oozes sensuality. Now I am feeling so hot that I am panting like an animal on heat. I want Kate to fuck me, I want her to bring me to a climax. I am a wanton woman. I feel like whispering my fantasy in her ear: 'I want you to fuck me in the public toilets.' I know she would comply with my pressing and urgent need. Instead I follow her into the Central News Agency, she says that she wants to buy a book or two to read on the flight and on our holiday. She is oblivious of the state that I am in. I gaze distractedly at the shelf stacked with classical fiction. The title 'A Thief's Journal' catches my eye. I flip through pages. I am surprised, I am stunned and I am amazed. What is this book doing on a bookshop in South Africa, how did it escape the surveillance of the censors? The book by Jean Genet is dedicated to Jean-Paul Sartre and Sartre has composed a foreword to the novel. I decide that I will buy the book. I scan the other titles, thinking that maybe there is a book written by Sartre. I know about Sartre, his name has been dropped in conversations that I have inadvertently eavesdropped on while quietly drinking coffee in the student union's cafeteria, from its high perch on the ridge it overlooked the lush leafy northern suburbs of Johannesburg. Now suddenly the name SARTRE jumps out among the titles. It belongs to the novel called 'Nausea'. I decide to purchase the two paperback books. At the cashier Kate looks at my two books. She has never heard of the authors. She pays for her two murder mysteries. I find pulp fiction boring. I make a pretence of interest while remaining silent about my personal opinion regarding her literary tastes.

2

The boundary between the human and the animal is artificial. It can be breached. Language and textualization cannot fix the boundary between the human and the animal. There is something that it is like to be a particular living creature. Every living creature has its own peculiar kind of unique experience of the world in which it finds itself. Living creatures have conscious states, they each have their own kind of awareness, their own kind of mental states. Insentient matter. How did consciousness arise from insentient matter? It is a fact that life arose from inanimate and insentient matter. The elemental constituents of matter possess all the powers, predispositions, properties and relations by virtue of which life and sentience could emerge.

3

Humans are fallible. So we are all indeed capable of sin. It was in our nature to be sinners. Kate as a practicing Catholic was also fallible as I soon discovered. She suffered from all the human foibles. Her greatest character flaw was her vanity. My parents thought I was going on an overseas tour with fellow students. Instead I was going on a secret honeymoon holiday with a woman in her late twenties with whom I was having a clandestine affair. They wanted to see me off at Jan Smuts Airport. Having much to hide about myself I insisted that it was not necessary. Anyway I was an adult, I was grown up even though I was still nineteen. I had experienced stuff with Kate that most adults could not even imagine in their wildest erotic fantasies. And going overseas with an experienced traveller would be a walk in the park compared to going to Vilanculos and the Bazaruto Archipelago in Mozambique. Anyway Kate was one of my lecturers, so how was I going to explain my relationship with her to my parents? As I said, I was only nineteen years old at the time, and I was having sex with an older and more experienced woman. Our relationship had to remain a secret, it was best for both of our sakes.

4

As our plane circumnavigated the edge of Africa flying at a high altitude offshore over the rolling swells of the Atlantic Ocean I imagined that the lights I saw were the lights of various seaside cities of African countries including Angola. In my mind I imaged that the lights I saw were those of Luanda, the capital city of Angola. After the military coup had removed the Portuguese Marcello Caetano regime in Lisbon Portugal the sun was setting rapidly on centuries of Portuguese colonial rule in Africa. Twilight was beckoning the old order farewell and the promise of a new dawn was on the horizon.

After three hundred and thirteen years I have become the first Zeeman to leave the African continent after our family's three century sojourn on the continent. My grandfathers who had fought in the Second World War did not leave the continent, they did not go beyond the Sahara Desert. As a nineteen year old second year BSc student Europe was a foreign continent. I did not know what to expect. My barely containable excitement was contagious. Kate felt my breathless exhilaration and was as radiant and flushed like a teenager on her first date. I could see that she had spent considerable time and effort on her makeup. Her perfume was expensive and she made an extraordinary effort to dress as youthfully and stylishly as possible for an academic. I sensed her vulnerability and I felt a sudden surge of love for Kate. I kissed her on the cheek and whispered intimately that I loved her so much. As an older woman it was exactly the kind of thing that she wanted to hear not once but a thousand times from me. She held my hand tightly. I had the window seat as she had promised. I pressed my forehead against the cabin window and stared at the night sky and then down at the Continent clothed in darkness. Africa lay supine below us, she lay waiting for her lover, she lay reclined in exotic and mysterious splendour, and she lay in erotic repose somewhere below us at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. To me Africa was a beautiful black woman, her loins fertile, her strong thighs parted in enigmatic anticipation of pleasure and her breasts full like ripe fruit, her lips like honey, her breath like the scent of an orchard in full blossom, her eyelids like butterflies. I also felt a surge of love for this continent which was my home. The home of Hannah Zeeman. I was one of Africa's many wayward daughters. I had lied to my parents. My own audacity astonished me. My parents would not have guessed in a thousand years that their daughter was going on her first honeymoon with her lover and would be enjoying four orgasmic weeks of European summer, European sunshine and sex and sex and more sex.

5

Shortly after sunrise we landed in Madrid. I had no idea of our travel itinerary. It was all rather vague and up in the air. During the flight she had said that we would hire a car at the airport and travel down to the Mediterranean and follow the coastline to Barcelona. After Barcelona we would travel across the border to France. From France we would go to Italy, Greece, and Switzerland. From Switzerland we would travel back to France. After spending some time in Paris we would return to Madrid. She said we would be criss-crossing many international borders during ours travels across vast chunks of European countryside. Getting through the early morning peak hour traffic and finding the main road from Madrid to Valencia took some time. Being the navigator I sat with the map on my lap. Travelling in the bright summer sunlight across the vast open plains of Spain we reached Valencia by midday.

6

Irreducibility of being to knowledge. Irreducibility of lived reality to knowing. And we have a question of priority, consciousness or being. Truth supervenes on being.

7

It was past midday, feeling famished we found ourselves on the outskirts of Valencia driving through the suburbs in a seawards direction. We continued driving seawards until we found a restaurant that spilled out over onto a stony beach with the Mediterranean Sea lapping languidly onto a sleepy shoreline. I realized that it was a Friday afternoon. Chairs and tables had been arranged in a scattered sprawling fashion on the uneven sloping surface of the beach. Sitting down at a table I felt the back legs of my chair sinking into the sand. Kate suggested that we order paella and a bottle of red wine. Two or three metres from our table sat five young men, possibly in their late teens or early twenties, lounging lazily round their table, leaning back in their chairs drinking wine and chatting amiably. They had finished their meal, which seemed to have been paella. Having removed their shirts they sat bare chested in their jeans enjoying the summer glow of the warm Mediterranean sun on their bodies.

Like the boys sitting across from us we were in no hurry to go anyway. The meal, the wine and the sun made me feel pleasantly sleepy. We felt completely unburdened of care and worries. Falling under that contagious and liberating sense of seaside holiday freedom we felt no urgency do anything or be anywhere.

Soaking in the eve of the weekend mellowness, the late afternoon sun seemed to have stalled, the moments passed with the slowness of motion of a foreign art movie. I cast a languid eye over the ancient horizons of the Mediterranean Ocean. How different from Paradise Island, how different from Durban. What shores lay beyond that horizon? Across the Mediterranean south-east from the beach where we were sitting lay Algeria, a bit more to the left lay Tunisia. Close to where modern Tunis now stands Carthage once existed as an ancient African city. Oh Carthage, the city of the Phoenicians! Hannibal the great African general was a Carthaginian. Saint Augustine another great African was born in what is now Algeria. As a young man he went on to study at the university in Carthage. For Augustine love or Eros represents the appetite of the soul. Eros ultimately seeks union with the Good and in seeking union with the Good, Eros seeks union with Logos, for the Good exists by virtue of Logos. Eros and Logos belong together.

Eventually after coffee and vanilla ice cream we set out to look for a place to spend the night. After travelling for thirty kilometres or so we found lodgings in a suitably modest and cheap beachfront establishment in a small town. We booked into a single room with a double bed and balcony overlooking the ocean. Even though it was the peak of the European holiday season we managed to find similar kinds of lodgings in small towns or villages along the coast away from the popular tourist beaches and hotspots. Every morning at six before breakfast Kate insisted that we go for a run. Kate was obsessed with exercising. We ate breakfast and we ate supper, and we ate nothing else in between. I lost quite a bit of weight, not that I was bothered about losing weight. While I was generally fit from swimming, all this other daily physical exercise left me feeling as strong as a lioness. But being with someone like Kate also made me feel as randy as bonobo chimpanzee on heat.

In Europe for the first time I became aware of the existence of pornography. My gut reaction against pornography was that it misrepresented and possibly displaced the naturalness of human sexuality whether it be homosexual or heterosexual. For me personally homosexuality was not unnatural. Eros was natural love. Eros and Agape were bound together as two sides of the same coin.

8

As a lesbian I have often swam against the current. I am conscious of the fact that writing about my own life experiences in the so-called spectral realm of lesbian love and romance has been unavoidable. I say spectral realm because historically speaking lesbians have mostly lived hidden lives as ghosts who are plainly invisible in the midst of life. We are like the Naiads of Greek mythology, nymphs or female spirits, inhabiting niches associated with water such as springs, streams, fountains or ponds, and water is a feminine symbol.

9

Kate as a feminist was vehemently critical of pornography. I agreed with her that pornography represented a degradation of women. But later in life as a Marxist I came to view pornography as the commodification of sex through the economic exploitation of the female body, this form of sexual exploitation necessarily entails the degradation of women under the rule of the patriarchy.

10

Kate was a fashion-conscious feminist. She was critical of the stereotypical view that lesbians dressed like slobs and did not worry about their bodies or appearance. Kate was conscious of her appearance. Like her I was also appearance conscious. If I looked good, I felt good. I enjoyed feeling sexy, and to feel sexy you had to look sexy. I have always been interested in the erotics of the visual pleasure associated with the lesbian gaze. There is a definite non-heterosexual or homosexual specificity to what excites the erotic visual pleasure of the lesbian gaze especially when it comes to female fashion magazines. Lesbians do in fact enjoy same-sex visual pleasure when looking at heterosexual fashion magazines such as Elle or Vogue. Lesbian fashion has not really undergone any creative developments mainly because the female garment market sees the lesbian consumer of clothing as a bad and risky financial bet. Hence the neglect of lesbian fashion consciousness and the intrusion of heterosexual femininity into the lesbian same-sex gaze. The feminist political agenda has not helped lesbians in their natural quest and desire to express same-sex queer eroticism and sexuality through clothing, dress and fashion. Lesbian feminist activists have made heavy political and social investments into anti-fashion politics. Even as a budding Communist I could not support feminist anti-fashion politics.

11

Lesbians as a community have much to learn from gay men who have led by example in their creative expressions of 'sartorial savvy' when it comes to the gay discourse on taste and the visual pleasure of the same-sex erotic gaze. Clothing, fashion and dress function essentially as visual and erotic codes with regard to queer identity and recognisability.

12

It is impossible and also unnatural for a lesbian not to look narcissistically at a beautiful woman, which means to experience that mysterious erotic desire to look like her and at the same time to possess her sexually. And this happens when a lesbian looks at a women's fashion magazine. There is a profound paradox and irony to the lesbian experience of visual pleasure when looking at female fashion models in women magazines. Very often all the erotic codes, symbols and imagery which animate any women's fashion magazine become visually apparent within a textual context that is characterized by the conspicuous visual absence of any form of male iconic or pictorial presence. Yet from a Darwinian perspective the fashionably clothed female body exists only as a sexualized and erotic ornamentation for the visual pleasure of the male gaze. While the female body is a familiar topography and terrain of erotic pleasure for the lesbian this is not the case for men since they are incapable of experiencing or knowing what it feels like sexually to be a woman. To men a woman's body and mind are terra incognita.

Lesbian homoeroticism or same-sex eroticism also inadvertently animates the pages of women fashion magazines. The lesbian gaze excites the twofold goal of erotic desire, and that is the desire to be like the smiling glossy image of beauty and the desire to possess the living being behind the glossy picture. In this sense the males heterosexual gaze is forever frustrated, trapped in a state of alienation and estrangement, because to truly possess the object of desire one has to become like that mysterious object of erotic desire in every respect, truth supervenes on being, and the male heterosexual objectification of the female body ends up frustrating the experience of erotic fullness or completeness and consequently male Eros exists in a state of perpetual deficit. 'Being' in this sense is possessing, and possessing is becoming, becoming supervenes on being, which constitutes the homoerotic experience of knowing what it must feel like to be a woman, a woman that is in that state of erotic excitement and erotic ecstasy. In this sense queer sex attains completion or 'Totality' in a way that heterosexual sexual experience can never attain. For me lesbian homoeroticism rocks! And sex can never get better than sex between two women.

13

Freed in minds and bodies forever from the phallocentric construction of our civilization so flagrantly described in the sexual antics of Val the hero in Henry Miller's 'Sextus' we travelled in a state of unabated arousal from Barcelona through the night by train via Nice to the French Rivera. Submitting to the pleasures of our bodies on the white sheets of those warm moonlit Mediterranean nights in Spain the bed sheets became damp and clinging with the intensity of our erotic passions for each other. In the bright sunlight of a hot summer's morning we arrived in Nice still basking in the radiance of our voluptuous emotions, we were intensely in love. From Nice we hired a car and travelled to Cap d'Agde's world-famous naturist resort for two days of nude sun tanning. After Paradise Island on the Bazaruto Archipelago I was comfortable with being naked in the presence of others. We experienced at first hand the well-known phenomenon of the banality of nakedness which in all its fleshly excessiveness and abundance satiates the voyeuristic gaze, quenching it of its libidinous excitement, even when hidden behind the uncensored view of sunglasses. However Kate broke the numbing spell of banality and stirred a constant ripple of lustful interest as heads turned in the vortex of her sensuous turbulence, heads possessed by both male and female turned and gazed in the wake of her procession across their visual field. There was no doubting that Kate had a magnificent body, something which seemed to be foreign on European shores. Naked she was breathlessly spectacular and she was aware of this. Topless we explored the beaches of the Rivera, lingering in Saint Tropez for a day and a night before departing by train to Italy. From Turin to Milan and via Verona and Padua we traced the rail route across Italy to Venice. From Venice via Bologna we travelled by car to Florence.

14

In Florence we visited the Loggia dei Lanzi on Pizza della Signoria where we spent some time in the arena of rape and decapitation. A monument of sculptured forms celebrating the capture and violent subjugation in marble and bronze of the erotically voluptuous feminized bodies under the eternal order of patriarchical power. Pio Fedi's 'Rape of Polyxana'. Giovanni Bologna's 'Rape of a Sabine'. Benvenuto Cellini's 'Perseus and Medusa', with its slain headless feminized body laying sensual and erotically supine with legs and arms bound to the pedestal under the feet of a triumphant Perseus. The message is that rape makes women the weaker sex, rape subdues the feminine body under the reign of the patriarchy. Subjugation through the perpetual violation of the feminine body embodies the essential nature of law, rule, order and governance under the patriarchy.

And in stark contrast to the patriarchical infliction of pain, rape and death on the feminine body we experienced the discordant intrusion of a misplaced anomaly in the sculptured form of Donatello's 'Judith and Holofernes' which destabilizes, and threatens to cancel and erase and make impotent the subjugating reign of the masculine over the pacified and supine feminine body. Does this confrontation of opposites symbolize the politicization of sexual identity, the feminine versus the masculine? Kate had bought Henry Miller's 'Sexus' at the station in Barcelona. She could not put down Henry Miller's ghastly and horrid book as she called it. On the drive to Florence after flipping through the book which seemed to be borderline pornographic I asked her if she ever had sex with a man. I was surprised when she said that she had had sex with men on several occasions, the first time was when she was eighteen. 'How was it?' I asked. 'Bloody awful, I won't recommend it,' she answered. 'Did you ever want to have children?' I asked. 'Yes there were times that I did think seriously about having a child, a girl or a boy, I think I would have made fabulous mother. I suppose the ideal situation would be have a child while in a permanent lesbian relationship,' she said.

15

I had finished 'Nausea' and 'The Thief's Journal'. I liked Jean Genet. I liked the fact that he was both male and female. But I had a problem with Genet's view of the feminine as being passive and submissive. With Kate this may have been true in the beginning with me. I was the passive and submissive partner. She would initiate sex with me. She was more experienced, more confident and she knew how to bring me quickly to a climax, she could do things to me that were exquisitely pleasurable. But my confidence as her lover was also growing, I also learnt what she liked, I was learning about her body too, I was learning fast on how to please her. In fact I was a very fast learner when it came to sex. In lesbian sex there is no intromitting sexual organ which can function as the instrument of power and domination as in heterosexual coitus or male homosexual simulation of coitus. In male homosexual anal coitus the penetrated partner experiences all the emotional and physical asymmetrical distribution of vulnerably, passivity and powerless of a woman as when mounted by man. Male homosexual sex involving anal intercourse is essentially equivalent to heterosexual coitus. In heterosexual coitus the politics of sexual consent reinforces the asymmetry of the male versus female distribution of actual power. Asymmetrical sexual consent is the foundation of patriarchical socialization, and Val in Henry Miller's 'Sexus' is an exemplary model of this socialization phenomenon based on engineered or contrived female sexual consent. In this sense Henry Miller's literary oeuvre is paradoxically politically conservative rather than progressive or radical.

16

We listened to a loud-speaking-American recommend to another equally vocal American tourist that they should go view Artemisia Gentileschi's 'Judith slaying of Holofernes'. Later in Naples we did go to the Museo di Capodimonte and viewed the painting of Judith decapitating Holofernes. On Paradise Island in the Bazaruto Archipelago I eventually became after a bit of practice quite skilful at abusing my expensive diving knife by throwing it into the trunk of a coconut palm tree. It was quite a big double bladed knife, with a very sharp blade on one side and also a serrated edge on the other, and I wore it while diving and I am sure I could easily decapitate a man with it. I had witnessed the slaughtering and butchering of goats and sheep, so I knew that a man's throat could be easily slit in a flash with my diving knife, despatching a man in this fashion would be much easier than slaughtering a goat. Severing a man's carotid artery with a well delivered vicious slash of my diving knife would drain away his life in seconds.

After a celebratory banquet Holofernes the commander of the great Assyrian army waits in expectant anticipation for the imminent arrival of Judith, he waits alone, secluded in the privacy of his tent, he has stripped off his armour, his sword, helmet and shield now lie in a heap on the ground next to his bed on which he now lays prostate in comfortable repose. In response to his expectation that she was going to have sex with him, and in a parody of heterosexual femininity, she first performs the ceremonial bathing (mikveh) of her body in a nearby stream. While waiting for her his eyes have now grown heavy from the wine and he falls into a deep dreamless asleep, his drunken body sprawled out on his bed. In the rendition of the Midrash aggada for the festive celebration of Hanukkah the story line for the dramatic fiction of Judith avenging Dinah's rape is inescapably 'queer'. The decapitation of Holofernes by a woman is a symbolic act of castration. The general of the Assyrian army is reduced to a eunuch, a feminized man. Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith is depicted as strong and powerful and she is as determined as a lioness in the act of pulling down a struggling bull, and for the occasion of the decapitation she is beautifully and splendidly dressed up in drag, she and her slave are lesbians, that much is clear to the discerning and knowing eye. With the strength of their arms and bodies they quickly subdued the panic stricken general on his bed, holding him down with their bare arms, Judith first slits his throat with his own sword and then severs the head from the body. Judith and her slave woman carry away the severed head of Holofernes covered on a platter. With a donkey loaded with the war booty that they have looted from Holofernes' tent she and the slave set off for Jerusalem. At the gates of Jerusalem she presents the head of Holofernes. With the help of her slave, she has otherwise single-handily liberated the men of Israel and now she too sets her female slave free before taking her to bed and making love to her. Mythos and Logos blended together in unveiling the truth.

17

As I have said, my grandfathers never made it out of Africa, they got no further than Egypt in the North Africa desert campaign against Rommel during the Second World War. They did not manage to cross the Mediterranean and reach Italy. I am the first Zeeman to leave the shores of Africa since the first Zeeman settled in Africa, who was one of the first Dutchman to set up home in the Cape of Good Hope. Now I find myself in Italy, and I am only sure of one thing and that is that I am queer. Apart from God I am not sure about anything else. I am not sure of my race, and neither is Kate sure about what I am. She laughs at the darkening of my pigmentation under the dazzling Mediterranean's summer sun and jokes that I could be a North African or maybe a Phoenician woman. A Phoenician woman! She found her own joke very funny and laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks. Objectively speaking I am an Afrikaner if I really have to define my ethnicity. But I speak mainly English. And now in Italy I feel half-Catholic. And I have become a Phoenician woman to boot.

So now I am living my own myth, recreating myself as that mythic being and living out my fantasy with Kate. I am now a dark Gentile Hellenic lesbian woman at home in the homoerotic atmosphere of the Mediterranean seaboard. Across the ocean lies the great continent of Africa, my actual home and the place of my birth. Africa has always been part of the Mediterranean cultural and social milieu. The blood of Africans has mingled over thousands of years with the people that lived on the shores of this ocean. And like my ancient Hellenic lesbian sisters who were the very first Christian converts of Saint Paul I am joined by faith and confession to what has been characterised culturally and socially as the Orient and the Semitic. Culturally I am a fusion of the African, the Hellenic and the Hebraic. I am from the Old World. Ironically Saint Paul was the first real liberator of Gentile women in the villages and cities along the coast of the Mediterranean.

I identify with the great sisterhood of Hellenic and Hebraic women. The paradigm of heterosexual marriage was not the essential defining attribute or the inexorable destiny of the female mythological and historical figures who populated the crowded and dazzling galaxy of heroines and goddesses who carried the torch of hope for all womankind. Mythos and Logos becomes welded together in the great narrative of women breaking the chains of chattel slavery and bondage under the patriarchical regime of men. Again I am comfortable in my nakedness under the Mediterranean sun, minimally dressed up in the sartorial symbols constitutive of being in drag, in a conscious parody of masculinity and femininity, wearing only sheer stockings and shining stilettos, my double edged sword sheathed in its scabbard fixed to my leather suspender, strapped over my shoulder I carry a quiver of arrows, and in my right hand I carry a bow, my lips painted bright red with lipstick. I am all things Greek. I am Penelope weaving, I am the maid servant from Thrace, I am Demeter the great mother, I am Diotima of Mantinea the woman who is wise in matters of the erotic, including love and sex, I am Hestia the maker and sustainer of the home. I am at home in my Hellenic sisterhood.

I am now reading Kate's Henry Miller book. It is a bulky volume of a book. I am not like Val in Henry Miller's 'Sextus' who can only speak of his prick. Instead I am the alpha female Hyena with powerful jaws capable of great violence, and a giant clitoris that is constantly erect, on the brink of an orgasmic eruption. All males quiver in submission, trembling they cower before me, I mount each one of them with impunity to show off my dominance as the female, the great matriarch. They cower castrated before me as my clitoris hangs heavy between my legs.

Under the Mediterranean sun I have become black and lovely. Now I am an Hebraic woman. The patriarchy lays decapitated in passive supine repose, now laying headless at my sandaled feet.

Judith cuts off Holophernes' head, a dramatic event which is contrary to the kind of events which unfolded in the Book of Esther. The story of Esther in the writings of the Zohar paints a very different picture. It would seem that in the story between the lines of the Bible and the Zohar, Esther had laid with Ahasuerus, using sex to acquire benefits for herself. In contrast to Esther, Queen Vashti refusing to debase herself before Ahasuerus even though he was her husband, emerges as a towering figure from the Book of Esther as the real Biblical heroine. According to the Mĕgillāh which is read during Purim, Esther was one of the four most beautiful women, and the four women of surpassing beauty were Sarah, Rahab, Abigail and Esther. On her way to Ahasuerus' bed Esther recited from Psalm 22 in which she referred to herself as the 'hind of the morning' (Aijeleth hash-Shahar), meaning that her vagina was tight and narrow, and would remain tight and narrow for the pleasure of Ahasuerus every time he mounted and penetrated her with his sword. On each occasion that Ahasuerus had sex with Esther it was like fucking a virgin for the first time. If certain mitzvah/mitzvot should never be transgressed then why did Esther enjoy sex with a non-believing heathen rather than choosing martyrdom? The 'Tractate Sanhedrin' recommends that the betrothed girl should rather be slain than ravaged by a heathen. Well such are the paradoxes that emerge in the creative weaving of Mythos and Logos that goes into the creation of literary fiction. And is this not what literature should wrestle with in its narration of things, in its struggle to say something of ultimate significance about something. Can any serious literary endeavour ever escape from addressing things of ultimate concern, can it escape the reach of Mythos and Logos and still be able to say something about something? To say something significant about something involves a transubstantiation because all meaning represents the incarnation of the Word of God, the Logos. This is my body, this is my blood, eat and drink ye all of it.

In terms of the Hebraic I am Judith, I am Deborah, I am Tamara dressed as a harlot on the dark side of the road. I am Ruth bathed and perfumed and in my wedding dress I lay at the feet of Boaz, waiting to seduce him. I am bathed in the sun of the Mediterranean. My skin is dark, I have been touched with the tar brush stroke of miscegenation. Kate knowing eyes tease me with every glance at the secret hidden in my glistening body.

I am also a Hellenic maiden. I am Sappho from the island of Lesbo gazing at my sisters as they bath in cool streams. And in the case of the Greek goddess Hestia, the word sustainer used to describe what she does is a deeply theological term. God is the ultimate sustainer of all things. And in Italy the sound of church bells reminds the faithful of Mass.

18

Sitting naked on the hotel bed in Rome I am beautifully tanned, dark as a berry, and my hair which shimmers in the Mediterranean sun is now glossy, long and shines raven black after Kate has brushed it. Kate is in a state of saintly rapture. As a devout Catholic she joyfully confesses that to really find God one has to come to Rome. Saint Paul came to Rome, Saint Peter came to Rome. We are in the City of Saints. She reminds me that we are in the Eternal City, we breathe with every breath the Vatican's heavy presence. Kate speaking passionately in a tone filled with missionary zeal, confiding urgently that every true believer eventually takes the road to Rome even if it is only metaphorically. Finished with my hair she tells me to stand up. Kate has become my mother, my sister, my best girlfriend, my lover. Obediently like her slave, I stand up and she applies creams and lotions to my naked body. Rubbing in the creamy lotions, her hands caressing every crevice, every curve, and every hollow of my body, she brings me to a state of pleasant arousal. She mutters like a mother that I have been exposed to too much sun, and I tell her that I have never been sunburnt in my all life. She whispers that she has never felt such a beautiful smooth silky skin in all her life. I burst out laughing. Now standing behind me she puts her arms around me and she pulls me tightly against her body, I feel her hands caressing and fondling my breasts while rubbing in the lotion. She feels my arousal in my erect nipples. She rubs my swollen and engorged vulva and my clitoris which now fully erect has popped out of its hood and waits in eager readiness for her mouth, for her tongue. She kisses the back of my neck and nibbles my ear lobes. Her hand slips down again to my vulva which has now become moist. She forces me down onto the bed, while lying on my back she is all over me with her mouth and she makes love to me while the warm morning sun shines down on us through the open window, and the bustling sounds of the Eternal City filter into our small modest hotel room, and the Cathedral bells ring for morning Mass. Inside the cathedral it is always cool. I have lost count of all the cathedrals that we have visited in Spain, the south of France and now in Italy. I have lost count of the number of candles that we lit at the feet of the Virgin Mary. I now also whisper the prayerful petition before the Blessed Virgin who has also become my Mother: 'Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of death. Amen'.

What pathos: 'pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of death'. At the hour of our death Mother Mary will meet us and point to us to Jesus, to our Lord, the God who died on a Roman Cross on Golgotha and rose on the third day and left Jerusalem on foot to meet up with the disciples on a beach in Galilee. I think I am going to become a Catholic. As an Anglican I am halfway there.

19

Dear reader you have been my faithful companion on a long and tortuous journey. Male or female I view you, dearest reader as my romantic partner. We have got this far together. On a quiet day when the wind blows in a particular direction I can hear the flow of traffic in Rome like the coming and going of the tides or like the distant sounds of crashing surf. After making love with Kate I fall asleep thinking about artificial intelligence and machine existence in which sex and desire no longer feature in that timeless state of machine existence. The absence of sex and desire is the essential feature of timelessness or immortality, and that idea goes all the way back to Parmenides' poetic critique of Hesiod's Theogony. Beyond time, beyond becoming and beyond sexuality we have immortality. In Rome, the Eternal City, shadowless the day becomes night and the night fades imperceptivity into day disappearing in plain sight. Late at night in the unremitting glare of the tungsten100 watt light bulb hanging from the ceiling in our hotel room, lying naked close together, we read before we sleep. While in Spain and also on the French Riviera with the break of each dawn I woke up hearing the distant sounds of surf rushing up the beach. The echo of the percussion of the rolling swells reminded me that I was still on the shores of the Mediterranean.

I have bought a note book and I am keeping my journal, early each morning before our mandatory run I write notes, while my mind is fresh, the recollections of yesterday I rework in my mind before jotting them down like Penelope who reworks her tapestry each day. What I have woven during the day I unweave at night in my sleep. I hide my journal from Kate in its secret compartment in my suitcase. Having finished reading 'Sexus' which I read late into the night, the only English book I could find in Rome was an English translation of Plato's 'Phaedo' in which the scene for a dramatic dialogue has been set within the walls of a prison cell, where Socrates has been left to languish on the shores of infinity with nothing else to do other than to drink his cup of hemlock. I did not realize that Socrates had a wife, who he hastily had removed from his prison cell because he could not bear the aggravation of her weeping. Oh the poor woman!

Under the spell of Rome I often found myself wondering about existence beyond the body, beyond the material, beyond the physical. Why else believe in the resurrection of the dead. There were times I found myself praying to God and realized that deep down I was a true believer and I could not understand why Father Francis Digby let it all go so easily. In Rome on our last day in Italy Kate made the sign of the cross in the Sistine Chapel. Following the graceful movement of her hand I too signed myself with the sign of the cross and Kate looked at me in askance surprise and I too wondered for what reason as I had never before signed myself with the sign of the cross. I was still only half-way to becoming a Catholic.

Kate had beautiful hands, her fingers were elegant, whenever we laid together her fingers found their home in my vagina where they explored the familiar spaces unseen. She crooked her fingers and pressed them towards my pubic bone against the base of my clitoris while her tongue caressed the swollen protruding hemisphere that had emerged shining with the lustre of a large pink pearl from its bed of soft folds, at the same time she began to move her fingers inside me, overwhelmed with intense and uncontrollable excitement my pelvis rose, my vulva with unremitting urgency pressing, pushing and thrusting against her lips, my thighs spread wide apart, my feet and calves writhing on the sheets, my toes curled, my chest heaved, my arms splayed out and my ears filled with the most unbelievable voluptuous moans as I gave myself over like an animal once to more to the depths of a bottomless orgasm. Kate also in a heighted state of excitement brought herself to a climax with her left hand between her thighs she rubbed, stroked and fingered herself while bent down over me. Cuddling in each other's arms, awash with tenderness and lips pressed together in soft kisses, breathing in her fragrance, with her moist silky skin against mine we fell asleep naked in our embrace.

20

It was a hot Sunday afternoon when we arrived at the Gare du Nord in Paris from Zurich. Like a child I kept on asking Kate if we could go up the Eiffel Tower after sun set. She agreed but only after having an afternoon nap. At the station I bought a French phrase book, a street map of Paris and a Paris tourist guidebook. I was now equipped to conquer Paris. From the station our taxi dropped us off in the Latin Quarter by the Hotel du Levant Paris in the Rue de la Harpe. While Kate had her nap I decided to go for a walk. It was with some reluctance that she allowed me to go. It was the first sign of her wanting to cling to me and control me. She was hoping that we would take a nap together like we had often done so far and afterwards feeling fresh and amorous we would make love, shower, get dressed and go out until past midnight. She had got into a routine of how we would spent our days and nights. She tried to plan everything to death on what we were going to do next. So it was a relief to be alone for a while and free to do what I felt like doing, without having to second guess what Kate had in mind. Going down the lift I flipped through pages of the tour guidebook. Getting out of the lift I continued to browse through the guide while walking through the foyer to the glass hotel entrance/exit door. The name of Sartre and a café called Les Deux Magots caught my eye. I had finished reading 'Nausea' and I had become an instant fan of Jean-Paul Sartre. From Rue de la Harpe I walked to the intersection with the Boulevard Saint-Germain and within minutes I was standing on the pavement outside Les Deux Magots. The tourist guide book said that not only Sartre, but also Simone de Beauvoir, Earnest Hemingway, Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Bertolt Brecht and James Baldwin among many others had frequented the now famous café as their chosen rendezvous and place of literary labour. In the bright light of a Parisian summer it felt as if I was standing on holy ground.

21

A day after my last exam and a few days before I left for the overseas trip I went home to Hotazel. At dinner it was just mom, dad and myself at the table. It was then that she raised the issue that the most money had been spent on me. My holiday the year before to the Bazaruto Archipelago had cost a fortune and now my trip to Europe was also costing a fortune. My dad just smiled at me when my mom was not looking. I did write a long letter of thanks to my parents from Spain and I sent it to them by airmail, I also sent Elsabe and Malcolm postcards almost every day. This did help a bit to salve my feelings of guilt.

22

Now a year later after my Vilanculos trip I am standing outside the Les Deux Magots in the Latin Quarter of Paris, I am nineteen years old and I am in a love relationship with a woman who is approaching her thirties, and who is also one of my lecturers, lecturing mycology and crytogamic botany. Once again I felt highly educated and very worldly in a wanton fashion especially after reading 'Nausea', 'The Thief's Journal', and Henry Miller's 'Sexus', and also because of the fact that I was being fucked by Kate day and night at almost every opportunity. I don't think that any girl in existence has ever had as many orgasms as I have experienced on a daily basis while being on holiday with Kate. Having perpetual sex had become a way of life it seemed. Henry Miller's Val has nothing on us and we don't even have pricks.

Paris was another universe compared to the innocence of turquoise seas, palms tree and the white beaches of Santa Carolina Island. Vilanculos and the Bazaruto Archipelago was a holiday of beautiful innocence and perfect purity. Now light years away from Santa Carolina I was alone, less innocent and less pure, on the streets of Paris for a few hours on a glorious summer's afternoon while Kate was getting her beauty sleep. Compared to last year when I was still a very young and naïve first year student I have now become a young woman of the world, experienced in the ways of the world and the female body thanks to Kate's prodigious appetite for sex.

I sit down at one of the tables on the sidewalk and quickly open my French phrase book. I open the book by the section on ordering beverages in a restaurant, and I read as fast as I can through the different ordering options:

Waiter!... Garçon! ( garhsawn!)

I'd like...je voudrias ( zhuh voo-dray)

A white coffee...un café au lait ( uñ ka-fay oh lay)

The waiter arrives at my table, he sees the map of Paris and notices my French phrase book. Obviously I am a tourist, but a very young tanned and sexy tourist with nice legs and a nice sensual body, and a pretty face, long glossy dark hair and bright red lipstick lips. I am one of those very feminine lipstick lesbians, but he does not know that.

I smile the most flirtatious Parisian smile and say as sweetly as possible:

'Je voudrias un café au lait....'

His face breaks into the most beatific smile. It is the first time in my life that I have ever flirted with a man.

23

Kate has made me her confidant. After we have made love we lie in each other's arms. She is vulnerable, she tells me that I am so young and beautiful, and she confesses that she loves me with all her heart and cares for me deeply. She wants to hear that I love her too, and so I tell her that I love her. I do love her. I have 'feelings' for her and I care for her. At the same I also wondered whether one day I will be like her clinging desperately to the body of a younger woman as I too began to feel my fading youthfulness slipping away with the creeping onset of the autumn of my own life. Kate spoke a lot about her struggles with her career ambitions. She was a senior lecturer and had submitted her ad hominem application for promotion to become an associate professor.

24

I hear the percussion of high heels. I turn and see an attractive woman possibly in her late thirties wearing a summers dress. She sits down by the table across from me. After she has ordered coffee she lights up a cigarette, she draws and exhales, we exchange curious glances, our eyes remain fixed on each other and I smile spontaneously at her, she returns my smile and cocks a questioning eyebrow at me as my smiling gaze remains fixed on her face. We both know that we are queer. She quickly sizes up the situation, seeing the French phrase book and the map of Paris. She asks me in perfect but French accented English.

'Are you on holiday in Paris?'

'Yes,' I answer.

'Where are you from?'

'I am from South Africa.'

She is surprised. She asks if I would like to have another coffee. I join her at her table. I feel my knees pressing against her knees, she does not move her knees away. We talk and her hand soon covers my hand. She asks if I like sex and tell her I love having sex. We go to her flat which is in the Latin Quarter close to the Sorbonne, close to our hotel. In her flat I explain that I don't have much time because my family expects back soon for supper. We make love. She wants to use a dildo on me, I resist explaining that I don't want a dildo in my vagina or anus. She understands. I feel her fingers slipping into my vagina and also probing into my anus. Afterwards we lie naked on her bed. She lights up a cigarette and we speak. She is a writer and a journalist. I tell her that I am a student and I am studying to be a zoologist. I also tell her about my new found interest in Sartre and Genet. She laughs good-naturedly and then tells me bluntly that Sartre is now passé, he is a senile old man, and that no one thinks much of him anymore. She explains that there is a new generation of philosophers, and she rattles off the names of Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze. She asks if I am a Marxist. Without thinking I say yes and she chuckles. You are such as a sweet girl she tells me. She then says: 'I suppose you going to tell me that you are also a Communist'. Again I say yes without knowing why, and she laughs, her eyes are dancing with humour.

'You are a sweet, innocent and pure girl, do not ever change, the world can only become a better place with people like you.'

She then held me tightly in her arms and whispered in my ear saying that she wished we could be lovers forever.

'You better be going, my partner will soon be coming home from work,' she says, releasing me and getting up from the bed she slips on a night gown.

It was seven-o-clock when I left her flat. When I got back to the hotel Kate was in a state. She was extremely angry, verging on the brink of hysteria. We had our first serious fight.

'Where have you been, I was worried sick, I am responsible for you, and why do you smell of cigarettes?'

I shouted back at her: 'We always just do what you want to do and you never ask me what I would like to do. Everything revolves you and what you want.'

'You know that that is not true! Tell me now what you would like to do for the rest of our holiday.'

She then burst into tears, sitting down on the edge of bed she began to sob. I sat down next to her and put arm around her shoulders and kissed her on the neck and cheek. I felt bad and said that I loved her.

'I love you too,' she answered as she turned and embraced me tightly.

'I love you so much,' she repeated, as she pressed her hot tear soaked cheek against mine.

It is still our very first day in Paris and the day shows no promise of ever ending, in spite of all of what has already happened to me. After a quick shower and a fresh change of clothes we step out into the streets of a city that were still bathed in golden sunlight. In the space of two hours I have made love to two women before the sun has even set. Paris the city of lights and the city of love seems to have lived up to its reputation. And neither of the two will ever know of the existence of the other unless we bump into her. I hope not, but I would like to see her again, the French woman. Her name is Monique Brouillet. Was I going to fall in love with Monique before nightfall descended on Paris?

We debate whether to have supper now or later. Kate is careful to let me decide what we should do. We are both famished, I think it would be good idea if we eat first before walking along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower. I open the Paris tourist book. I suggest we go to the Café de Flore. What if Monique happened to turn up at the Café de Flore? Kate meet Monique. Monique meet Kate. Who I am? What kind of person am I? I am a mystery even to myself.

25

Journal entry: Dear reader you may feel inclined to judge me harshly regarding my infidelities with Kate. Have I not expressed strong views on the foundations of morality and responsibility as something that concerns the conscience? Have I not hinted that morality or moral action or moral agency is actually caused by the awakening of conscience when gazing upon the face of the Other? I do not wish to excuse myself. I did feel bad at the time given the facts of the situation. In a way I did betray Kate. I can imagine just how shocked she would have been if she knew what I had done behind her back while she was napping.

26

You may think that I have no conscience, that I have been sluttish and immoral.

27

But the operative word here is 'cause'. The expression on the face of the Other causes the awakening of conscience and having gazed upon the face of the Other we feel compelled to act responsibly as moral agents to uphold what is good and true and beautiful. Was it uncontrollable lust or was it curiosity that drove me into Monique's bed? Was it a lapse of conscience? I don't think it was mere lust or desire. Ok then, I do admit that I did find Monique desirable, I did feel the awakening of desire, I did entertain the prospect of what it would feel like to be with her in bed. Maybe she could sense it. Maybe my face was filled with unmistakable lasciviousness. Women don't feel lust. It is men that lust after women. In a way I was acting out of curiosity and not lust. I did not give in to desire. I just felt like having sex. I was in the mood for a sexual encounter and wanted to be fondled, kissed and caressed and brought to an exquisite climax by a beautiful and interesting woman. I also wanted to feel what it was like for me to make love to this woman who was a perfect stranger in a strange city. I was ready for adventure. And I suppose I was hot. I was a bitch.

But still, as I write these journal entries I cannot help thinking about the operative words that are key to understanding the drama, or in other words the dramatic event which took place one afternoon in Paris, and the two specific words that I happen to be thinking of are 'cause' and 'effect' and the role they play, a role in explicating the relationship between consciousness and the body or the mind and the body. My act of adventurous infidelity with Monique was a mind-body problem that needed to be solved. Other thoughts begin to intrude, I must also write them done. There is the issue of empathy, empathy can be viewed as a faculty, the faculty which makes the experience of conscience possible. The experience of empathy and conscience are themselves forms of consciousness. And still more thoughts intrude themselves into my mind, new thoughts which I know are somehow all interconnected with the drama of my little Paris adventure.

28

Also in terms of the mind-body problem I can say for sure from my own experiences that many women enjoy being touched, felt, 'fingered', fondled, kissed and caressed by another woman. I love being brought to a climax by another woman. A woman's body is designed for pleasure, it is superbly adapted for the physical experience of pleasure, ecstasy and orgasm, and it is for this purpose that the entire body of a woman, every part of her anatomy has been adapted, adapted to experience erotic pleasure and in this sense a woman's body is the perfect sex organ, it is erotic in its entirety from head to foot, especially for a woman who happens to be a lipstick lesbian like myself. A woman, and especially a queer woman, is the full and perfect embodiment of a sexual being, of an erotic being, of a being seeking erotic pleasure and ecstasy.

29

In his Theogony, Hesiod expounded on the myth of Pandora. It was through Pandora that the race of women brought both sex and death into the world of men. Pandora the first woman was not born she was crafted from mud by Hephaestus the master craftsman of the gods. The unborn Pandora came alive from clay, from matter as it were, as an artefact, as an artistically created artefact, shaped into a sensual being who was not supposed to become an erotic body for mere sexual reproduction. Before Pandora there was peace and harmony on earth among men. But then Prometheus stole the fire from the gods, an act more audacious than the building of the Tower of Babel, and Hephaestus was instructed to make Pandora the instrument for the punishment of Man. With the coming of Pandora humankind became divided into two races, divided into two different kinds of separate beings, men and women. And sexuality entered the world through the agency and being of women, it was this which also brought about an asymmetry into the world of conscious beings, resulting in the difference between the self and the Other, creating a rupture between the self and the Other. The asymmetry of sexuality resulted in the dualism of identity and difference which in turn transformed humans into a divided beings, male and female, man and woman, and the estranged 'self' emerged as a consequence of this event, and self could only become self-identical with the Other through LESBIANISM. So while Man represents mankind women represent only their own sex and it was through this self-recognition, this self-representation, this self-identification with the Other, this self-mirroring in the face of the Other, that women overcome the dualism of self and Other, and the dualism of identity and difference, and the dualism of being and difference. Difference vanished in women with the being of women becoming self-identical to itself through the recognition of self in the mirror of the Other. And so, only women can fully know the body of women, especially when it comes to the pleasure of sex. For men the women's body as an artistic creation from the formlessness of mud remains forever a terra incognita. As terra incognita it can only be ploughed by men like the conquered and domesticated earth and sown with seed or semen. This is how men punish women for dividing humanity into male and female. Men punish women by penetrating their bodies with their swords, filling their vaginas with ejaculum, just as the husbandman tears the earth open with his plough in order to sow the seed, and the earth like the woman's body lays supine and spread out in passive repose ready for the husbandman to do his work.

30

Travelling through Europe and coming to Paris the idea of the City has caught my imagination again. As a child I became aware of the notion of the City for the first time when we were stranded in the city of Springs and slept overnight in its streets. Yet I was born in the city of Johannesburg. What is a City? As a child I was surprised to learn that Springs was a city. It was an unlikely city, a city which existed remotely at the very eastern end of the great Witwatersrand gold fields of South Africa. But as with all the cities in South Africa it was a city that like Prometheus died every day when the sun went down, as night fell over its streets, the city became empty, and in the morning the city arose again with new Promethean life with the breaking of each day. The City is where Prometheus dwells. I remember saying to my mother that real cities don't die when the sun goes down. In a very interesting Evening Song sermon Father Digby when he was still a priest spoke about the first city rising up phoenix-like from the collapsed ruins of the Tower of Babel. From the domesticated earth and the ploughed bodies of women the post-Palaeolithic City rises from the ashes of Babel as an edifice of man's subjugation of women and earth and of all its creatures. Dialectically a vibrant feminism emerges from the ancient myths of the Greeks and the Hebrews to reclaim the rightful status of women in God's Universe as supreme and wonderful beings. But women still need to conquer the Promethean City of men.

31

As a young child I did not know that the golden age of ocean liners was on the brink of coming to a sudden end. Standing on the quay of Durban harbour less than ten meters from the towering moored hull of a gigantic metallic ship with its row of tall smoke stacks was an awe inspiring experience. In my mind the Union Castle was majestic beyond belief and I envied all the waving passengers looking down on us from the deck. As the tugboat towed the ship to sea hundreds of passengers crowded on the deck above and began to throw thousands of coloured paper streamers overboard which rained down over us as we stood on the quay watching the ship slowly slipping away from the dockside into the deep still greyish waters of the harbour. Across the harbour beneath the dark looming densely vegetated bluff filled with chattering monkeys a whale lay dead on the slipway. And a gulls' flight away a sly Indian gentleman in the Victoria Street Market would wink and whisper at passing teenage boys and young men: 'I have a good price for genuine Spanish Fly, guaranteed to work'. One little pinch of the aphrodisiac in a girls tea or soft drink would transform her into a randy nymphomaniac allowing you to give her the urgent relief she desires for her hot vagina, itching to be impaled, itching for relief that comes from the rhythmic thrust of penetration. In the playgrounds the boys entertained these fantasies as they gazed at the wind tugging, lifting and whipping at the short gym skirts, exposing the smooth sun tanned virgin thighs of girls who mysteriously embodied in their enchanted beings the very landscape of the promised land overflowing with milk and honey, the fabulous topology filled with the lure of the sirens, the fantastic geography of gratification, the destination of dark of rewards, and the terra incognita once more, of that promised land where the golden sun of pleasure never sets. And so we remain the gatekeepers of dark sexual mysteries and irresistible sexual pleasures. Our consent is a riddle without solution and the tantalizing prospect of our conquest beckons like the treasures of Eldorado. And so the myth never seems to die as generations of teenage school girls and young women continued to be secretively plied with heaps of Spanish Fly. As a pre-adolescent and adolescent girl who spent several July holidays with her grandparents in Durban I was never privy to the secret male dream world of Spanish Fly which was sold at the Victoria Street Market. My childhood and adolescent holiday memories of Durban are stilled filled with white colonial perceptions that are still deeply etched into my brain. I have vivid recollections of the image of the bright red neon Coca Cola sign at night on the Fairhaven Hotel which stood across the road from Addington Beach. I can still smell and taste in my mind that wonderful and very unique aroma and flavour of the 'Durban-beach-ice-cream-cones' sold by Indian vendors who patrolled the hot sands of the coloured umbrella crowded South and North Beaches with their white ice boxes packed with dry ice that puffed clouds of cold whitish grey smoke when the lid was opened. And in my mind I can see parked along the Marine Parade and Snell Parade the sight of the coloured beaded ornamented rickshaw carts pulled by Zulu men wearing fantastic beaded head gear adorned with large white elegantly curved horns of Nguni cattle.

32

On our second day in Paris we visited the Louvre. I had become distracted, preoccupied with my midyear exam results. I had finished the first semester of second year botany and second year zoology in which courses in mycology, phycology, crytogamic botany, invertebrate zoology, and comparative vertebrate anatomy were covered. Kate had lectured a course in introductory mycology, and as you may have gathered I was a student in her class. She noticed that I was preoccupied. When she asked if I was OK, and I replied that I was wondering about my exam results. She announced that I shouldn't worry, that I had no reason to worry about anything. She said she was very of proud me as I had done exceptionally well in all my exams. Of course she had breached the professional ethics of an academic in telling me this before the official release of the examination results. In botany I had learned about monoecious and dioecious sexual reproduction and in invertebrate zoology I had learned about hermaphroditism and amphimictic sexual reproduction. In our botany and zoology lectures we had also covered topics on the evolution of sex and sexual reproduction in the fungi, algal, mosses, ferns, gymnosperms, angiosperms, invertebrates and vertebrates including humans. And as you can imagine, in biology sex or reproductive biology as it was called, turned out to be quite a complicated business and the topic of sex from a biological perspective proved to be wide ranging in its scope to the interested and curious student.

33

What about gender? In order to differentiate between sex and gender it is important to note that: Firstly, sex deals with: a) the anatomy, biochemistry and physiology of the male and female reproductive system, and b) with all the male and female specific secondary sexual characteristics which also includes both anatomy and behaviour. When specific or selected characters and attributes associated with a) and b) are taken together as a package of characters and attributes for a given individual, this package of features then characterizes the specific sexual dimorphisms associated with what is typically a male and what is typically a female for a given species. At the cellular level sex involves meiosis, the generation of haploid sex cells or gametes (sperm and ova) from the diploid primordial germ line cells and the fusion of the haploid nuclei of gametes (sperm and ova) derived from the two sexes results in the formation of a diploid zygote. So this is what is entailed in the meaning and reference of the word 'SEX'. You can now appreciate that the idea of sex is actually quite a complex concept. The ancient Greeks and Hebrews had no idea just how complicated sex actually was. Nor could they have imagined that the fundamental first step in the evolution of sexual dimorphism resulting in the male and female versions of a species necessitated the prior evolution of meiosis. The evolution of the process of meiosis triggered the evolution of sex in all eukaryotes. If we want to know where sex came from, then a good place to start would be solving the problem of how meiosis evolved in the first place. Sex in itself as a process of reproduction is neither good nor evil. It is just matter in motion. Sex is purely a matter of biology and evolution, nothing more than that. In general the biology of sex is commonly conceived as a binary state of affairs. But there are interesting and very significant biological exceptions which break this rule.

Secondly, gender deals with the psychological and social construction of how femininity and masculinity are perceived and experienced in a given society, and how biologically rooted or biologically determined behaviour influences sexual preference for a given gender. Biologically rooted also includes the genetically rooted specific predispositions with regard to sexual attraction to a specific gender irrespective of whether the individual is male or female, meaning that genetically rooted sexual attraction could be in the form of male/female (heterosexual) or male/male (homosexual) or female/female (homosexual). Gender is what we experience as individuals in response to the femininity and masculinity of other individuals within a psychological, behavioural and social matrix or context or framework. Gender is defined by what we do sexually in terms of sexual preference. It is the result of how we are neurologically wired-up and it is nothing more than that. It is purely a matter of the brain and the nervous system, and nothing more than that. It is wholly neurobiological, having nothing to do with good or evil. Again, what we do in terms of gender perceptions and gender preferences is just a matter of matter in motion. There is nothing good nor evil about being queer, one is simply queer by birth. However, there is a little rider here that I have allowed to slip surreptitiously into the explication of the concept of gender versus sex. Biologically rooted behavioural and neurological based predispositions with regard to sexuality or sexual preferences may be the over-riding factor in gender determination, and this would mean that the role of external social influences may only play a small secondary role in gender determination or sexual preferences or the externalization of one's sexuality or sexual identity. If this is the case then the sex vs gender dualism may be a false dichotomy. Personally I think it false. There are different kinds of sexuality which are biologically based and therefore predetermined before the event of nurturing. In a real sense we cannot choose our gender or sexuality, we cannot choose to be or not to be lesbian or gay or transsexual. We are born that way.

34

Personally, as a biologist, I am persuaded that homosexuality is a biologically predetermined disposition regarding sexuality and sexual preferences. I am biologically queer, I am neurobiologically queer, I have a queer biology, I have a queer nervous system, I am wired up to be queer, this is my internal or innate or intrinsic constitution, it is my essential nature, I am queer by virtue of my biology, by virtue of my genes, this is the way my internal nature has been biologically and developmentally predetermined. I am phenotypically queer. I was predestined to be queer. There was no other kind of future for me. I have no problems as a scientist with the idea of essentialism. I am essentially queer. It is in my essential nature to be queer. When we did elements of animal behaviour in zoology, I had to believe that I was essentially queer. It was in my nature to be queer. It was not by choice. In fact I had no choice in the matter of my sexual orientation. Growing up as child through adolescence I gradually discovered that I was queer. But all the signs that I was queer from early childhood onwards would have been clearly evident to the knowledgeable observer. It was my nature not my choice: This fact is important with regard to the nature versus nurture dualism. No amount of corrective nurturing would have 'cured' me of my queerness. For my queerness there was no cure or corrective therapy.

35

Going back to this idea that gender is a social construction, it could be that the social may play a role in gender expression or the externalization of perceived and experienced gender identity. This is fine in my mind. Externalization of queerness increases the visibility or perceivability of one's gender orientation and sexual preferences.

36

There are tacit signs by means of which we advertise our queerness. Kate realized very quickly that I was queer. In a matter of moments both Monique and I realized that we were both queer. We knew by instinct and not by social conditioning or by nurture that we were queer, all the signs were screaming out that we were both queer. At a glance she saw that I was a lipstick lesbian.

37

When did Kate realize that I was queer? I think it was after the very first few lectures when we both eyed each other out.

38

The dualism of the naked body versus the clothed body makes its first fictional debut in the mythological drama of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The story is fraught with contradictions, irony and paradox which emerged with the transition from Palaeolithic to Neolithic forms of sociality. The authorship of the Hebraic Edenic myth coincides with the rise of the patriarchical forms of sociality in more or less settled agrarian communities or pastoral communities in which sexual identities were rigidly mediated through the 'costume style' of the clothed body, in which the clothed bodies were assigned rank and identity according to the style and cut of dress. And so the clothed body dressed in its assigned uniform bearing all the signs, symbols, emblems and codes of rank according to sex and social status reflects and confirms the social ordering of status, of the hierarchies of social domination, and especially of the roles and identity of individuals within the City, firstly of women and then of slaves of both sexes. It is hard not to see that the Edenic myth together with the rest of the Torah serves to this day a deeply ideological and propaganda function in the perpetration of Noble Lies. The Noble Lies are embodied in and communicated by means of fictionalized histories, myths, similes and allegories. Fictionalized histories, myths, similes and allegories all represent literary inventions, created to primarily serve a hegemonic purpose in the structuring and functioning of the City. The City and the Noble Lies which serve the hegemonic and ideological interests of the City co-emerged and co-evolved and co-adapted with the formation of Neolithic and post-Neolithic societies. Like the rest of the Bible its true revelatory character can only be dialectically disclosed or unveiled once its ideological and hegemonic function is grasped and subjected to criticism. As with all literary works of myth, allegories, similes and historized fiction, the literary purpose of the Edenic Myth and the various narratives embodied in the literature of Pentateuch propagandized the 'ontologization', 'naturalization' and 'theologization' of social status and social roles according to the visible sexual dimorphisms which had been imposed upon women and men through the medium of the clothed body. Imposition of socially constructed sexual dimorphisms on bodies through the medium of clothing serves a structural and functional purpose in the political organization of the City. The body is clothed in a uniform or costume and through the wearing of the costume the sex, social status and social roles of the body of the wearer are made visible and recognizable, and fixed. Through the clothing of the body, the various assignments of the body of different individuals are fixed, standardized, ordered, organized, controlled and governed by means of non-egalitarian institutions, that is, by institutions which enforce the stratified and hierarchical ordering of power and domination. Dialectically speaking the 'divine revelation' embodied in the mythological or fictional narrative of the Edenic story of the clothed body versus the naked body is not the meaning of the literal story, but the exact opposite, and this how revelation becomes manifest in irony. So the divinely inspired message that is authoritative and infallible becomes dialectically manifested only in irony.

In this context, that is the context of the Edenic myth the lipstick lesbian's homoerotic feminization of the 'costume' of the clothed female body in the form of drag presents a direct challenge and subversion of the patriarchy and the City through irony and parody. The feminized homoerotic lesbian body subverts the body of the patriarchy by rendering it impotent, the feminist rejection constitutes a castration, the decapitation of the patriarch's bearded head and thereby places the status of the City in jeopardy.

Of course the feminist lipstick lesbian reading of Holy Scripture is necessarily a non-canonical reading based on a non-patriarchal hermeneutics and non-patriarchal deconstruction or destruction. The same goes for a feminist lipstick lesbian's reading of the Hellenic canon, both pre-Socratic and post-Socratic Greek philosophical literature. It is taken for granted that the Western philosophical and theological canon is masculine. However this does not disqualify a non-canonical lipstick lesbian feminized re-reading of the Western Canon. This would constitute a serious challenge to the masculinized conceptualization of the City, the World and the Universe. Sexual dimorphism has been too rigidly conceived in terms of differences in kinds, that is, in a dualistic or dichotomized fashion. However, differences between feminized and masculinized bodies and minds should not be conceptualized as differences in kinds or in terms of dualism or dichotomies but rather in terms of degrees of differences along a continuum, in fact a seamless continuum of variation and similarity. This will remove the dissymmetry or asymmetry of kinds or essences that have been imposed on the sexes by men, and also whereby dichotomies of kind are used to differentiate the status and roles of men and women in the world of human sociality.

39

In nature nothing is cut and dry when it comes to sex. In this regard we need to distinguish between two types of differences. There are quantitative differences in degree along a continuum and there are qualitative differences in kind. In nature we see relative differences in degree along a continuum rather than as absolute differences in terms of kinds. To repeat with some elaboration, in nature because of evolutionary descent from common ancestors with modification, everything differs quantitatively in terms of degrees of relative differences along a continuum and never qualitatively in terms of sharply distinct kinds. In nature everything is related through the sharing of genetic and phenotypic homologies. Humans differ from the rest of the animal kingdom only by differences in degree along continuum of differences and similarities, but never in terms of a dualism or dichotomy of differences in kind. The same applies with sex. Reproductive systems differ only in degree along a continuum.

We can view isogamy, heterogamy and oogamy as sexual reproductive systems which differ only in degree along a continuum and not in kind: isogamy → heterogamy → oogamy. Sexual reproduction in Chlamydomonas can be by way of isogamy or heterogamy or oogmy, so here we have an exemplary case or paradigmatic example of different sexual reproduction systems in a collection of species belonging to the same genus but varying only by degrees along a continuum of differences and similarities. The oogamous sexual reproductive system evolved from the isogamous reproductive system.

To complicate matters further sex-change in nature is also a natural occurrence in many species especially among the gaily coloured coral reef fish. In protogyny, egg producing female fish change into male sperm producing fish. In protandry, sperm producing male fish change into egg producing female fish. So the same individual fish can be both male and female in its lifecycle.

40

What is the relevance of the evolution and the existence of a wide variety of sexual reproductive systems in nature to a critique of Patriarchalism? Patriarchalism is based on an ideology of male entitlement. It seeks to justify male entitlement on the belief that in the order and nature of things men are ontologically speaking superior to women. Given the nature of sex in the animal kingdom, and given the fact that man is part of the animal kingdom, differing only in degrees from all the other animals, there is no rational, ontological, genetic, evolutionary, logical or empirical foundation for the belief that men are superior to women and that Patriarchalism corresponds to a divinely ordained ordering of relationships between the sexes and that the nature of sexual or gender identity is governed by some divine ordinance. We exist, we are here, only because the Universe in terms of the fundamental laws of physics and chemistry possessed the power to produce us. When we look up at the dark night sky and are able to see billions upon billions of stars this fact should not surprise us, we exist by virtue of the fact that there are stars, because it is through the birth, life and death of stars that we came into existence and are what we are. We are governed by nothing else other that the intrinsic powers and properties possessed by some of the elements of the Periodic Table, elements which are constantly being generated throughout the Universe as by-products of the birth, life and death of stars, in a constant dance of being and becoming.

Given the fact that in nature the natural order of things when it comes to sex was not strictly always dichotomist but variable and intermediate with subtle changes along a continuum of similarities and differences, and therefore all rather complicated, and often counter-intuitive. So it should therefore not be very surprising that homosexuality has always existed as something that was perfectly natural with its own characteristic forms of same-sex sociality. And it is not surprising that homoeroticism is governed autonomously by its own system of queer ethics and morals and that homosexual acts between two consenting individuals is as natural as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Patriarchalism is based on the imposition of power over women by men which was made possible when Palaeolithic systems of sociality broke down following the domestication of animals and plants which resulted in the global agricultural revolution between 10 000 and 12 000 years ago. There are no grounds for denying that sexual queerness or homosexuality existed since the dawn of human evolution and there is no rational grounds for claiming that sex between two women or sex between two men is immoral or sinful or unnatural. In fact homosexuality is natural. God is not going send lesbians to hell for having sex with one another. I cannot think of anything more absurd and stupid.

41

Kate was manipulative and overbearing, she could not help it, it was in her nature, she tried to change, but she slipped quickly back into being bossy. The status and age gap between us was too big, and it was telling, and furthermore, the gap made it difficult for her to treat me as an equal. I think in her mind I was going to be her pliant and submissive little mistress or even her own personal sex slave whom she could enjoy at her leisure. With regard to sex because of this age and social status gap, I ended up being the submissive party and she liked that, she liked to overpower me and dominant me physically. But even though I enjoyed it, I was beginning to desire sex that would less asymmetrical, where one was not always on top and the other one not always under, laying passively on her back, being fucked all the time. I wanted something less masculine more feminine. When we first got to Spain Kate insisted on shaving my vulva so she could trib her own shaved pussy against my freshly shaven vulva while sitting on top of me while I lay on my back with my legs spread wide open scissor-like, with my right leg being held vertically in the air and my left leg splayed outwards on the bed. Even though she was hurting my vulva with her rhythmic thrusting abrasive action she continued wanting to hump me in this fashion, dominating me, always getting on top of me after she had climaxed me, I felt that she needed to subdue and conquer me in a sadistic fashion, not caring that I was hurting and in pain, taking her turn with me, and with energetic gusto, extracting as much pleasurable fun from me and tribbing was what she liked to do. She loved tribbing her shaven pussy roughly and vigorously against mine, she mistook the pain on my face and my cries as expressions of ecstasy. She was incredibly strong and fit with a hard muscular body and she enjoyed wrestling with me, and holding me down, and that really got her hot. But she underestimated my strength. I did not do weights but I was a swimmer and one evening she began to wrestle with me on the bed and she started hurting me with her rough manner and I began to get angry with her bullying, and we really got physical. To my surprise I managed to overpower her and I sat on top of her holding her arms down behind her head. And she began to laugh at me and this made me angrier.

Anyway I was sure that tribbing could be fun and pleasant if done nicely, but it could also be unpleasant if done rough in the dominating and grinding manner that Kate liked. She spoke often about making sex an erotic adventure and hinted about exploring sadomasochism. She said that sadomasochism (SM) can be incredibly enjoyable once you get into it. In the end, while we were still in Italy I decided to give SM a try. Kate took out all the SM paraphernalia that she had stashed in the bottom of her suitcase. I was going to be the submissive. She took great pleasure in the role of the dominatrix. After covering the bed with a plastic sheet which was then overlaid with a large towel. She told me to take my clothes off and lie on my side on the towel on the bed. She gave me an enema. Afterwards I expelled the water into the toilet bowl. It was the first time in life that I had experienced having an enema. After expelling the water I was told to lay on my stomach on the bed and then she strapped my hands to the bed stand. She explained that she was going to whip my buttocks with a riding crop and she would incrementally increase the intensity of the lashes until I told her to stop. That was the rule. If I told her to stop she would stop immediately. I had a low pain threshold and was soon yelping in pain shouting for her to stop immediately after a series of sharp lashes inflicted painful red welts across my bum. Then I had to get on my knees with my buttocks in the air. She lubricated my vulva and when I felt all five digits pressing into my vagina I realized she was going to insert her entire fist into my vagina and I screamed for her stop. I insisted that she immediately loosen the straps from hands but she baulked. She asked for one more chance to do something, something which was not going to be at all painful and which I would end up enjoying thoroughly, even begging her not to stop. If I allowed her to surprise me while I was remained restrained she would then unstrap me. I agreed. That was when Kate rimmed me for the first time. I have to admit that it was exquisitely pleasurable. I have never again engaged in SM sex. That was the first and last time. I did not have sadistic or masochistic sexual inclinations.

42

Kate was not feeling well. She believed that she was suffering from a virulent dose of food poisoning, but I had my doubts, I think it was a case of a bug that she picked up from me while engaging in some serious anilingus, kissing, sucking, licking and rimming me, she penetrated the depths of my anus with her tongue. Waves of stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea had reduced her to a miserable state of painful incapacitation. As the morning wore on I was getting tired of playing nurse maid. It was now ten thirty. She could see that I had become unsympathetic, quiet, sullen and moody as I sat in a chair next to the bed idly flipping through a magazine while a glorious summer's day was rapidly drawing to a magnificent zenith stripping Paris naked of all her shadows and holding her in the warm embrace of radiant sunshine beneath an azure sky. Stuck in the hotel room I was going to miss out on a whole day of exploring Paris. It was hot and boring in the hotel room and the air con recycled the stench of stale, acrid cigarette smoke contaminated air.

Kate loved doing the real kinky stuff with me. In this respect rimming had become a bone of contention, with Kate doing it to me it was an exquisitely pleasurable experience which I looked forward to in secret anticipation every time she went down on me, but I could not do it to her, I could not return the favour, even though the fragrance of her whistle clean rosebud was like a thousand perfume gardens filled with the sweetest nectar that would entice a thousand nectar seeking fluttering butterflies.

I made up my mind that I was not going to be bullied into rimming her. I was not going to give her the sadistic pleasure of forcing me to lick and rim her anus.

She couldn't hide her disappointment. I was depriving of her pleasure. She said that I was selfish, she was doing all the work and I was lying on my back or stomach or side moaning, screaming, gasping and panting like a randy bitch on heat soaking up all the pleasure while she fucked me, and giving nothing of myself back in return. I was convinced that she saw herself as my mentor, I also felt she wanted to own me and control me, especially with all the subtle hinting that there was a lot that I could learn and benefit from her. She spoke about me going in the direction of mycology, becoming a mycologist like her. She wanted me to do honours in mycology when I had completed my BSc and then a PhD in mycology under her supervision, and that there were huge opportunities in the world for mycologists and she could really make things happen for me, and so on and so forth, like as if we were a married couple, or like lesbian penguins who had mated for life. She honestly believed that this was the case with us. She hinted about things becoming more permanent between us. She mentioned her loneliness and constantly affirmed her love for me. She even spoke about us having children together. We could have ourselves artificially inseminated, and also because the old biological clock was ticking on one should not delay too long in having children. It would be so nice having a little daughter, just think, she would often muse.

43

'If you really want to go it is OK, you don't have to stay here with me, I am going to try and sleep anyway.'

After having a shower and changing into shorts and blouse I put on white ankle socks and the new pair of running shoes that I had bought. I decided to put on makeup, lipstick and perfume. In the back of my mind I entertained the possibility of visiting Monique.

I could not fathom Kate, one moment she was vulnerable and weepy, and then suddenly she would slip into the role of a dominating bully. Now she was sick and wanted to be nursed like a child. I couldn't bring myself to play along. I felt indifferent to her suffering. But then again as I was putting on some lipstick I suddenly felt conflicted, I felt that I had an obligation towards her. But then I wanted to escape from her so that I could go and see Monique and enjoy an afternoon of lovemaking in her bed.

After saying to Kate: 'Are you sure you will be OK?' I left, grabbing my handbag with my tourist guidebook, closing the bedroom door behind me.

I was glad to be alone. The only person I would have really liked to be with in Paris was my father, he would have been the ideal companion on this holiday. It would have been so much fun if it were just the two of us. Just thinking of not being in Paris with him made me feel melancholic. Suddenly I missed him terribly. He was my favourite human being. My mom would sometime say sarcastically that I was wife number one and she was number two. It was a terrible thing to say and it made me so mad. How could she make such a remark? It was disrespectful and horrible. How can a father not love his daughter? How could any parent not love their child? Why would she make something like this so ugly with her remark? Was my own mother jealous of my father's affections towards me? It made me feel so depressed just thinking of it. It is a blessing to have a wonderful relationship with one's parent or parents and she could not see that. This has bugged me my whole life. She always made me feel that I was choosing my dad over her, even as a grown woman she made me feel this way. I could never have a conversation with my mother without it ending in an argument. Yet with my dad we could speak to each other for hours about anything.

44

Kate said I was glutton for sex, I was always the one who took but never gave anything back. What the bloody hell I thought. She was the glutton not me!

Being a fungal person she did not seem to be too keen on visiting the National Museum of Natural History. Skeletons and bones did not hold any fascination for her. I had just finished a semester in comparative and evolutionary animal anatomy so I wanted to wonder amongst animal skeletons and gaze at bones. Now that I was free to roam the streets of Paris on my own, my very first stop was going to be the museum. Heading down the Boulevard Saint-Germain until I reached the intersection with the Rue Saint-Jacques I took a slow walk pass the Sorbonne in the direction of Notre-Dame, and then turning right into a Quai de Montebello I walked along the Seine towards the museum grounds until I arrived at the Galerie de Paléontologie et d'Anatomie comparée, which is part of the French Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle complex of museums situated in the grounds of the Jardin des Plantes.

45

How is the subject gendered? As a student of zoology I could not see how the subject can be gendered independently of physical events which take place at the level of genes. And the gendering of the subject becomes a species of the mind-body problem whenever consciousness is assumed to have causal efficacy without even knowing definitely what kind of phenomenon consciousness might actually represent or happen to be. And this is the problem with any theory of gender formation with respect to the development of the love-object or the sex-object inclination that happens to be based on a reading of Freudian psychoanalysis. Freudian psychoanalytical theory is irremediably mythological with regards to its narrative of causation. Gender inclinations regarding the preferred object of love or the preferred object of erotic interest necessarily arises independently of the unconscious or conscious as a purely physically based gene expression driven developmental process.

46

I have tried to fathom why I was homosexual or lesbian. I believe that science will eventually unravel the causal genetically based developmental processes which result in heterosexual or homosexual phenotypic orientations with regard to the gender or the sexual identity of the preferred loved object. At bottom of this there will a protein and protein-ligand binding interactions behind the formation of gender identities. In other words the gendering of the subject is the outcome of the physical or material effects of matter in motion under the governance of the laws of nature, independently of what is going on in the mind or consciousness of the infant or prepubescent child.

47

As a second year student of zoology I had an amazing epiphany. While deeply engrossed in the Galerie de Paléontologie et d'Anatomie Comparée with the diversity of vertebrate skeletons on display I realized that nothing else other than chemistry and physics, that is matter in motion, was behind the mystery of my lesbianism, and I knew that I could not change my state of homosexuality. It was a wonderfully liberating experience. I did not choose my sexual orientation or my gender. It was nature and not nurture. My gender had been imposed genetically on my being as a person. I had no decision in this genetic matter which was shaping my life and my behaviour as a woman. I resolutely reaffirmed who I was, I was irredeemably queer. I was happy to be queer. I could not imagine being different. Lost in thought it felt like I was awakening from a dream when I realized that I had been in the museum for several hours and it was already late afternoon. Standing on the floor above the ground floor looking down on the display from the balcony above I noticed that the light filtering into the museum was beginning to fade. Going down the stairs I stopped again to examine the mounted skeleton of the giant Irish elk called Megaloceros giganteus. The size of its massive antlers appeared to be an exemplary textbook case of runaway sexual selection of secondary sexual characters. Like the peacock's tail the elk's antlers were hypothesized to be exaggerated examples of sexual ornamentation.

48

I walked slowly back to the Latin Quarter. Timewise on my watch it was late in the afternoon but in reality it was hours before sunset, the day was far from done, I could not get used to how late in the evening the sun set, the sun had barely moved, it seemed to be stuck high in the west. With all this northern hemisphere summer light stretching the day to an interminable postponement it was too early to go to back the hotel. One thing that I had to endure on the trip to Europe with Kate was hunger. We had been going on our regular early morning jogs and then after a continental breakfast we spent the rest of the day sightseeing which literally meant walking and after supper we would also go walking again, so all in all we were walking distances of more than twenty kilometres each day. I continued to lose weight, I did not have an ounce of fat on my body, and now walking past Notre Dame I began to feel the hunger pangs, my empty stomach started to rumble. It was the same hunger that I endured the year before on the Bazaruto Archipelago.

49

And now in Paris my skin tone after countless hours of sunlight on the Mediterranean beaches had again taken on that deep melanin flavour of rich coffee. I had never before taken much notice on how deep I could tan. Later that night the women I met in the nightclub, the women who wanted to fuck me asked if I was an Arab, and when I said no, they wanted to know if I was Egyptian or Algerian or Tunisian or Moroccan or even Senegalese. Senegalese! The word being used was noire. Was it the dim light, the makeup and my deep dark tan? Elle est noire. She's black. I had been mistaken for a black person, a lesbian Negress or an Arab lesbian in the dim lighted nightclub that throbbed to the rhythm of rainbow showers of floating lights that danced non-stop over every surface in the club, with the mobile flashing multicolour lights projecting the illusion of a sunlight dappled tropical coral reef on the walls, ceiling and floor. I felt hot and aroused like a rare and exotic orchid, with my wet vagina becoming a delectable nectar chamber. I imagined probing desiring fingers of women hovering over my vulva in a dance of exquisite excitation, their tongues unravelling and their fingers twitching in the anticipation of pleasure, like the prehensile proboscis of flower fertilizing moths that flitter through perfumed gardens at night. I imagined drowning in an orgasmic ocean of pleasure. I will have more to say about this experience shortly.

50

Walking past Notre Dame, I crossed the road, feeling now extremely famished I quicken my pace as I headed for Les Deux Magots for something to eat and drink. Sitting at the same table as before I ordered a glass of water and a glass of orange juice. I can't remember what I ordered to eat but it was something with ham. I gulped down my meal in what seemed to be similar to the nervous displacement reaction often shown by crabs when engaged in courtship. I was hoping that Monique would turn up at any moment. My state of arousal increased as I nervously glanced around searching for the face and figure of Monique among the early afternoon pedestrian traffic. I waited in vain. I felt the rising tide of disappointed, yet my heart continued to throb with the beat of desire. I was hot and ready for sex.

I had felt no shame, on this trip to Europe with Kate, I had learnt to succumb to the compulsions that had taken possession of me, and in a real sense Kate was to blame, and so I could no longer linger a moment longer at Les Deux Magots. I had only one thought on my mind and that was to be with Monique. I was gripped by an urgency which I could not resist, after quickly settling the bill I went straight to Monique's flat looking neither left nor right like a wanton bitch on heat. The lift seemed to be stuck on the seventh floor, I run up the stairs, when I reached her floor I was out of breath and my mouth was dry, adrenaline was surging through my body. Standing in the shadows at the edge of the stairs I breathed deeply for a while, and when I had finally regained my breathe and allowed sufficient time for my racing pulse to slow down, I walked calmly over to the door of her flat and knocked three times.

After the passing of several eternities Monique opened the door. She was surprised to see my excited and flushed face. Happy to see her new young friend once again she invited me in. Her partner was away, she was alone and we spent the remainder of the afternoon in her bed. The day light began to fade and just before the falling of twilight she switched on the bedside lamp and asked if I would like to go out with her to a gay nightclub for supper, cabaret and dancing.

The fact that I no clothes or heels was not a problem, her wardrobe was overflowing and she was confident that some of her glitzy nightclub outfits would fit me. Well I had to let my family know about my plans for the night. Leaving her flat for the hotel I promised I would be back before nine-o-clock. At the hotel reception I left a note for Kate explaining that I had met some of my old school chums and that we had decided to go out together for dinner, to celebrate a reunion and catch-up with the past and present. It was clearly a patent lie. Then there was the little problem of a tooth brush and toothpaste. I asked the receptionist where these could be purchased as I did not want to go up to the bedroom and have to deal with Kate. I would do my toilet at Monique's flat. Well before nine-o-clock after purchasing a tooth brush and toothpaste I was back in Monique's flat and into the shower. She had already showered and had laid out a selection of outfits for me to choose from on her bed. I had never seen so many beautiful dresses before.

She recommended that I should wear the very short tight fitting body hugging black dress with a low top for cleavage display because she said I had a pleasing body to show off. In the end I put on the dress that she had chosen since I could not make up my own mind. It's almost paper thin soft fabric composed of a mixture of rayon, nylon and spandex felt sensual against my skin, and Monique pulled the back zip up. The light fabric fitted comfortably like a glove. I slipped on the black satin and lace panties she handed me from her drawer and then I stepped into the black patent leather stilettos that she had selected.

Now for the makeup. Monique insisted that a dark foundation was going to work best. And now for the blush, but remember Hannah, she said, we not doing heterosexual, we doing lesbian drag, and so we need to choose the blush that works best for that kind of look and the same goes for the eyeshadow and also the lipstick.

We breaking the conventions, we breaking all the makeup codes. Doesn't my face look a bit too dark Monique? No Hannah you have a dark tan, your shoulders, arms and legs are dark, they are very dark and your eyes are also dark, Hannah you are a dark sensual woman. Maybe you should wear black stockings. Yes I think black sheer stockings will work. It gives me great pleasure dressing you up my little darling, please indulge me. Monique don't you think that I look too much like a slut, like a whore?

'My dear lovely Hannah, you look like a sweet ripe transvestite, you look like a girl harlot, you look like a teenage street prostitute, you look like a young nymphomaniac, you look like an innocent nymphlet, you have surely read Vladimir Nabokov's 'Lolita', no? Well then you must, a terrible book of sexual abuse, of a young girl you know. And tonight my little dear young friend you definitely look like a teenage pornographic film star, so delectably enchanting. You are the incarnation of the Eros, you are the daemon that has the power to ignite the most terrible desire in any woman.'

It was funny to hear this in her French accented English.

51

I have remained in contact with Monique and by December 1975 I had saved enough money to fly to Paris to visit her. On reflection both Kate and Monique have been important mentors in my life. They were older and more experienced women who in spite of their own foibles and various shortcomings they had each in their own way contributed to my understanding of queerness, especially with respect to the sexualization or eroticization of homosexual relationships between women, and also, more especially with regard to the erotic power of attraction between women, and the deeper appreciation of the experience of lesbian sex and lesbian sexuality strictly in terms of the female body and its capacity to experience erotic and sexual pleasure. The female body and its pleasures was something that feminists have generally overlooked in their struggle against the patriarchal oppression and repression of women. The simple human pleasures of sex has suffered considerable collateral damage in feminist theory and the women's liberation struggle. Feminists who were also lesbian were not having any fun fucking each other. And if they were straight, they were celibate or dull sexless creatures, and were not even being fucked by men, so they were missing out on a deeply human experience.

52

Going back to Monique's ideas about lesbian drag and lipstick lesbianism, there is much to say about the significance of this. It was about masquerading femininity. Pure and simple lesbian drag is a playful eroticized homosexual parody of heterosexual femininity. In this sense it breaks up the gender based binary schema imposed by patriarchical ideology regarding the nature and representation of female sexuality. Lesbian drag as a hyper-representation or exaggerated display of eroticized femininity destabilizes or undermines the view that lesbians are men trapped in the bodies of women, and thereby, challenges the binary butch/femme representation of lesbian female sexual identity inversion. Lipstick lesbian drag is a homosexual and erotically rich pantomimed-allegorization-parody of the mundane realities of female heterosexualized genders, performed to excite same-sex desire in women.

53

I put on some of Monique's perfume, spraying also in the region of my pussy, between my breasts, behind my ears, on my neck and in the crevices of my buttocks. She raised her eyebrows.

She embraced me, her tongue probed the depths of my mouth. We were ready for nightclubbing the night away, she called a taxi, and soon we were speeding through the neon lit streets of Paris to our destination. We sat close together in the middle of the back seat holding hands like teenagers. It was strange situation. We had been physically intimate yet in reality we were still strangers who were enjoying a crazy romantic adventure without any encumbrances.

Kate had probably read my note. Maybe she was feeling a bit better. She would definitely be in bed waiting for me. I was not sure what time I would be getting back to the hotel and I didn't even want to guess what kind of reception I was in for. Then there was the little problem of the keys. She would have the keys for the door. Would the door be unlocked? If that was the case I could quietly slip in without putting on the lights. I would slip naked into the bed and cuddle against her back, she would wake up and say sleepily: 'You back.' Or something like that. I would kiss her on her neck, put my arm around her and whisper: 'Love you Kate.' And she would fall asleep again oblivious to the harsh hurtful realities of love and infidelity. I had turned out to be just like my father. Just like him I loved women. Was I a bad person? Was he a bad person? Monique smiled at me: 'You look so pensive and thoughtful.'

'I am OK,' I replied.

The taxi turned into Rue Sainte-Anne, the street of gay Paris and stopped outside the club called Le Sept (Seven). We were hungry so we made our way to the restaurant. Afterwards we went to the nightclub in the basement. I was introduced to her circle of lesbian friends as Hannah from République d'Afrique du Sud. It seemed that the only word that stuck in their minds was 'Afrique'. I was from Africa was all they heard, and I was an African. To my amusement they did not see me as a white person from Africa which would have been just another mundane expat or colonial. Instead they perceived me as someone truly exotic like a North African or an Arab from Egypt or Algeria or Tunisia or Morocco.

Then someone wanted to know whether I was from Senegal. After that Monique jokingly introduced me each time as her Senegalese lesbian friend. And that is how I became a lesbian Negress that night, curtsy of the dark base that formed the foundation of my makeup. Monique laughed: 'you are a truly beautiful black woman my darling young friend'.

My lack of French proficiency transformed me into one of those delightfully too-shy-to-speak-childlike-aboriginals, like one of those female natives from the old French African colonies, whose face in true aboriginal fashion, was always drawn into that perpetual friendly smile in the presence of patronising Europeans, always with a ready flash of white teeth breaking the dark impenetrably immobile mask of her face, and like an infant in response to the cooing of an adult, she smiled, as she always politely smiled when spoken to by a white person. Anyway this aboriginal lesbian from Africa danced the night away mainly with Monique, but she had to work hard to prevent me from being stolen away from her by a bevy of lipstick lesbian admirers who flirted openly with me, the smiling native girl from Senegal, and I played the role to perfection of a young naïve lesbian black woman, an African visitor from Senegal who was going to be a fashion model in Paris, well that was the storyline that Monique had concocted, and that it was her job to act as my chaperone until I had learned the ropes. I was her responsibility. Unlike Cinderella we got back to Monique's flat long after midnight. I showered again and put on my own clothes. Monique wanted to call a taxi, but I insisted that it was not necessary. The hotel was minutes away. When I got back to the hotel the doors were locked and the foyer was dimly lit. I rang the doorbell several times. Eventually one of the hotel staff opened the door and let me in. The bedroom was locked. I knocked softly on the door. Dressed in a short nightie a sleepy Kate opened the door. I expected her to start shouting at me. Instead, all she said in a forlorn voice was that she had been worried sick about me and that I had behaved very strangely towards her and then sighing deeply she said that she was not sure any more whether she really knew me, and that I had made her feel so very sad and so very worthless over the last couple of days. Sitting on the edge of the bed burying her face in her hands she began to weep. I went again through the whole ritual of trying to comfort her and telling her that I loved her and so on. It was a terrible situation to be in. I felt extremely rotten.

54

I slept fitfully next to Kate. I woke up feeling exhausted and depressed with the whole situation. For most of that day Kate remained docile and melancholic, she was a shadow of her normal forceful personality. Love hurts, and love lost can break even the most forceful personalities.

She said later that day that all my expressions of love were just empty words, and that I had never really loved her. I was hollow and unfeeling. I was selfish and was only concerned with my own desires and needs. Kate was a personality that you could not reason with. I failed dismally to exonerate myself from all blame. She twisted and distorted everything that I said in my defence. She did this in all our arguments always twisting and distorting what I had said. It was the same when I expressed a difference in opinion regarding some matter between the two of us. Everything always boomeranged back at me with a new twist. That was Kate for you.

55

In the 1980s the whole issue of sex became more and more complicated, contradictory and idiotic in the feminist movement. Feminists seemed to have lost the plot regarding sexual relations between women. I was not interest in heterosexual relations. In the women's liberation movement female and lesbian understanding of their own sexuality became increasing overshadowed and distorted by concerns with sexism, male construction and representation of female sexuality, sexual oppression and exploitation of women, gender construction and so on, to the extent that feminists began to appear grotesquely asexual and 'erotophobic'. Feminists found it difficult to deal with sex, especially sex between women, and consequently they could not engage creatively and imaginatively with the realities of sexuality including desire, lust, eroticism, fantasy and the sweaty, hot, pleasurable, exciting, physical entanglement of sex. When I happened to be with these radical feminists I felt like a freak, none of them were into fucking anybody, they were not doing any sex, they were all so sterile, dried out, hung up and joyless, they were missing out on so much fun, adventure, excitement, and pleasure, and not to mention joy. There was an aura of sterile stern joylessness sexual repression that cloaked their minds and coloured the rhetoric of these de-eroticized radical feminists. They could talk passionately and endlessly without end about the social construction of sexuality and gender but they could not talk about erotic desire or the pleasures of sex. The feminist debate focused mainly on the oppressive nature of sex within the context of patriarchical power over women. This was all good and well, but in the process they had thrown out the baby (sex) with the bathwater (patriarchical power). Their suffocating and stifling sexlessness left me feeling very sad and depressed.

56

Now that Kate was feeling better we continued with our early morning runs. Before breakfast we went on long runs along the right bank of the Seine and in the evenings after 8.00 pm while it was still light we went for our usual long evening walks on the left bank of Seine. It was twilight and Kate had become quiet and reflective. It was now our fifth day in Paris and the next day we would be flying back to Madrid for a three day stay in Madrid before returning to South Africa. It felt like I had been in Paris for an eternity. There was a melancholic expression on her face. When I asked if she was OK. She said that she loved me. I said: 'I love you too.'

And then she said:

'I will never be able to ever visit Paris and walk along the Seine ever again like this evening.'

I was taken aback and asked why.

She answered:

'Because it will be without you and the memories of having been in Paris with you would be too painful for me to bear if I had to walk along the Seine without you by my side.'

Her eyes were brimming with tears of sadness. Then she tried to smile through the tears.

'I am being silly, please forgive me.'

I said: 'I will always love you Kate.'

'I know,' she answered.

I put my arm around her waist and kissed her on the cheek. She sighed.

57

For the sake of the rest of the holiday I have managed to patch things up with Kate. She became happy as a child holding my hand tightly on the flight from Charles de Gaulle Airport back to Madrid. She fussed over me, showering me with affection, showing concern for my every want and need. I reciprocated her demonstrations of affection. Glowing with radiant joy, she chatted incessantly about this and about that. We would be staying in Madrid for the next three days before returning home to South Africa. What would I like to do in Madrid she wanted know. I could only think of visiting the Prado Art Museum. Maybe we could spend a night and day in Toledo she suggested. I agreed with her suggestion, confirming that I thought it was a great idea, she showed her appreciation by squeezing my hand and kissing me on the cheek. On the flight Monique constantly intruded into my thoughts. I had become infatuated with her, I was falling in love with her, I was falling in love with another older woman. She was completely different to Kate. If I had to choose between Kate and Monique, it would be Monique. She was not kinky like Kate. I am thinking of Monique, she was like me, we were the same, we could wear our hearts on our sleeves, or so it seemed, we both lived guilty lives. She too had a partner who she was cheating on. I was caught up in so many triangles. Now there was concern written on Kate's face:

'You look so sad, is everything still OK with us,' she asked, her brow knitted in a serious frown of concern over our relationship. How could such a stunningly attractive woman like Kate be drowning in her own insecurities? She was the most fuckable creature on earth.

I smiled and I lied: 'I feel sad because our holiday will soon be over.'

58

Compared to Monique, Kate was very one dimensional, she was an academic, a scientist, but she was definitely not an intellectual. Apart from mycology she had no other intellectual interests. She was more of a physical person who enjoyed going to the gym, playing tennis, jogging, keeping fit and dancing. She was a superb ball room dancer. And of course she was beautiful, in fact extraordinarily attractive, especially for a woman in her late twenties, and that was the sad thing, she was so beautiful! The other sad thing was that we had run out of interesting things to talk about. Our conversations revolved around trivialities. With Monique our conversations while intensely intellectual and probing were at the same time humorous, exciting and intriguing. When I was with Monique I was always on the brink of laughter. She was a fun person with an incredible sense of humour which revealed a razor sharp and a very observant mind. I loved her French accent when she spoke English. There was a continental broad mindedness and cynical secularity to Monique, all of which Kate lacked. Kate carried with her the aura of sincerity and Catholicism. I had nothing against Kate's Catholicism or sincerity, I found it endearing. And she being a Catholic made her a moral person. In spite of all her faults she was faultless when it came to integrity and genuineness. You could trust Kate. She would never dream of cheating on someone she cared for.

Kate was more attractive than Monique. Kate had the kind of body that men wanted fuck. She would be any man's dream fuck. But Monique had a sensuality and erotic aura which Kate while being physically sexy in an eye pleasing pinup girl fashion lacked. In spite of her obvious physical attractiveness Kate lacked that natural erotic sensuousness which Monique possessed. Monique was alluring, I felt aroused by her presence in a way that was never the case with Kate, in spite of Kate's almost dazzling physical beauty. To be sexually aroused by a woman involved all kinds of triggers and physical beauty was not on the top of the list. An indescribable, but discernible sensuality that makes its presence felt as a mysterious, mystical, erotic aura and which exists as something which is subtle, enigmatic and unfathomable is what makes the erotic encounter between two lesbian women something almost deeply spiritual and sacred. And this what I experienced with Monique.

59

From the airport we drove in a hired car into the centre of Madrid where Kate had booked a room in the Hotel Regina Madrid. I sat in the passenger seat with the map of Madrid on my lap acting as the navigator. Franco was still alive in Spain while Hitler and Mussolini had long ago died ignominious deaths.

60

The Prado in Madrid like the Louvre in Paris proved to be overwhelming. We stared for a long time at Goya's Naked Maja. I looked at Kate. I wanted her to speak to me. Tell me your impressions? I felt impatient with Goya. What does he know about that foreign continent that no man will ever discover, the other Universe of feminine sexuality and the nature of the female erotic being which has been cut free from the bondage of masculinity, a non-passive-female -sexual-being which has broken free from the stifling and smothering sweatiness of masculinity?

At night we walked the streets of Madrid for hours holding hands. Kate is my lover, she is my mother and I am her daughter, I put my arm around her waist and she puts her arm around my shoulders, we kiss each other with genuine affection, but she is constantly on the brink of tears. Paris had pulled me away from her, driving a wedge between us, and now Madrid has brought us close again. We have left Paris behind us, the secular city of love and secrets, and we are now once more in the warm motherly bosom of a deeply Catholic city. Kate is tangibly Catholic. I feel it. There is a prayerfulness to her demeanour and bearing. I know she is praying for our relationship. She wants God to salvage our love and make it permanent. She want us to be like a married couple. I am filled with guilt.

After going to evening Mass we have a beer before our usual long night walk. Twilight has given way to darkness and we find ourselves joining in a local Catholic fiesta in the square in an old suburb on the outskirts of the city. I try to imagine a sacred life of erotic love within the cloistered conjugal bed in response to Kate's musing about us becoming nuns. Our day would be structured by observing the divine office or the liturgy of the hours. Like the Apostles in Jerusalem we would observe the same Jewish customs of praying at the third, sixth and ninth hour and at midnight. At Matins after prayers we would make love, at Lauds just before the break of dawn we say prayers and then we would make love before rising again for Prime, the early Morning Prayer. Prayer, orgasm, study, love, work, readings from the Old and New Testament, reciting the creeds and confessions, singing of canticles and Psalms will fill the hours of our day. Kate did not appreciate my profaning of the divine office by co-mingling it with the shared orgasmic celebration of the female body in all its divine beauty. I tried to explain to Kate that as queers we were in fact technically celibate. Without male sexual penetration of our bodies we were essentially non-sexual in our erotic and orgasmic intimacy. I told Kate that I was still as pure as a virgin, that I was purer than any nun. This shocked her.

61

I wanted go back to the Prado to look at 'The Sleepers'. I was intrigued. Why make the queer world of lesbianism the ambiguous theme of art in paintings or writing? The lesbian image of women in love has always been an object of male erotic obsession, and it has also been a general object of social approbation, so it came as no surprise to discover that since the nineteenth century lesbianism had become an object of high art and popular erotica. It was obvious that the public display of paintings of erotic images of lesbianism was more acceptable to the heterosexual male than images of male homosexuals in a sexual embrace. Gustave Courbet's painting called 'The Sleepers' attracted our interest.

Looking at 'The Sleepers' on our second visit we both agreed that it was a failed heterosexual representation of putative female homoeroticism. It was obviously created exclusively for the heterosexual male gaze. And the symbolic representation served that objective only: 'symbolic lesbian sex' for masculinized erotic consumption. The misrepresentations of lesbian sex by male artists or male pornographers is a direct consequence of limitations imposed by the male heterosexual consciousness. It simply lacks the power of perception which would be necessary to have meaningful access to the reality or even the revelatory iconography of female homoerotism. It also lacks the corresponding mental capacity to assimilate or appropriate the visual phenomenon of the lesbian subject as a non-heterosexualized or non-masculinized mental picture. It thus fails to represent the actual subjective reality of what it means to-be-lesbian-in-the-world. What I am trying to say is that the heterosexual male cannot experience what it feels like to be a lesbian. This is why the male heterosexual depiction of female homoeroticism inevitability suffers from an under-determination of representational realism. Also as a being the male is sexually impoverished by the constraints imposed by his own mind and body. Sexually speaking the male is an ephemeral creature. The gun shot of the male hard-on-ejaculation-orgasm is nothing but a brief flash in the pan which cannot fail to echo the disappointment in the woman who has been mounted by a man. The masculine heterosexual sex act lacks physical stamina and sensual power and orgasmic endurance. Any pretence of physical stamina or sensual power evaporates in the over-exertion of effort, an exercise which differs very little from the physical endurance displayed by an emotionless-mindless automotive mechanical thing. That is why it is described as a bang as compared to the rising tide and the rolling swells of a woman's capacity for a multiplicity of orgasms breaking wave after wave on that magical white beach of exotic tropical pleasures. The male sexual act suffers from an embarrassment of physiological-emotional-psychological weaknesses. These limitations and deficiencies defines the essence of the male sex act, it simply lacks erotic substance and erotic power. When it comes to sex, women are the stronger sex by far. So much for Val's prick in Miller's 'Sexus'.

Gazing at the portrait I can still remember saying to Kate that sex could not exist without the female body and that the female body constitutes the very conditions of possibility for the existence of male sex and that female homoerotic sex in turn represents the annihilation of men as sexual beings. In Greek mythology is was through Pandora that sex and death became the dominating reality that cast its dark shadow over the masculinized world of men. The need for men to have sex with women was a symptom of their twofold deficiency as a masculinized race. Firstly without having sex with women they could not perpetuate themselves as race, so in this respect they were deficient beings. And secondly, males were sexually incapable of satisfying their own erotic desires in the absence of woman. The male race were no longer self- sufficient with regard to procreation and the satisfaction of erotic desire. This was the punishment that the gods meted out to men because of Prometheus' deed. The crafting of Pandora as the first woman from mud symbolizes the conjunction of sex and death for the male race. In the absence of the female body the race of men are as good as dead, this is the real punishment of the gods because of Prometheus. Man lives in thrall to female sexuality and the female body. The female is the gatekeeper of sex and sexual pleasure. This fact confirms the ultimate insufficiency or deficiency of the male as a being in the Universe. This is the punishment of Pandora that has been visited on the race of men.

Kate looked at me. From the expression on my face I suppose she could read my mind.

'The picture has really got to you,' she said.

'Yeah it really pisses me off.'

The painting irritated me. I felt belittled. It was patronizing.

'I think the painting serves an important educational function, there should be more paintings of naked women in love in art galleries,' Kate said.

'Why do you say that?'

'So the public can become enured to lesbianism and homosexuality,' she said

'Enured?'

'Yes habituated.'

'Habituated! Like habituated to something that is undesirable, something that is unpalatable?'

'No that is not what I mean,' Kate answered.

'Then what exactly do you mean?' Was my question.

'Pictures of lesbians in museums like the Louvre could result in the banalisation of homosexuality, and that would be good thing,' she said with an ironic smile.

Banalisation of homosexuality! I must say that was a stroke of genius coming from Kate.

62

What is immanence? We think of something being immanent in something else. Being immanent it to be inherent, to be indwelling, to be integrated or to be integral, to permeate, to be contained within, to be embodied, and not be externally imposed. Plainly the meaning of immanence entails that something is in something, and that this something does not exist outside the boundaries of something. In this sense immanence signifies the idea of containment, or of being inside, rather than outside, which is to be integral, possibly integrated. Immanence signifies the quality of being contained within something. To be incarnate is to be immanent. For God to be revealed God becomes immanent. God is revealed by virtue of becoming immanent. God is immanent in everything by virtue of God's omnipresence. Immanence is immanence by virtue of omnipresence. God's omniscience requires God to be omnipresence. To be omnipresent and omniscient and omnipotent means that God is everything and is everywhere because for God to be truly God there can be nothing that could possibly existence independently of God outside the realm of God's omnipresence and omnipotence and omniscience. And so we have the opening words of Saint John's Gospel: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made'. God is therefore immanent in all things and all processes. Everything exists by virtue of God's immanence. Since God is omnipotent, all power exists by virtue of God's omnipotence. For God to be truly God, God is necessarily omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. By virtue of God's omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence all physical events in the Universe are causally overdetermined or omnidetermined. Hence the causally closed Universe exists by virtue of God. This is the best way in which I can conceive the immanence and transcendence of God in relation to the existence of everything. I am not a pantheist. Immanence is the counter-concept to the idea of transcendence. Being and becoming, transcendence and immanence represent the dualism which makes the contingent possible, which unites chance and necessity in the dance of being and becoming. Hellenism and the Hebraic merge as one in the thing that we call Christianity. And Christianity could not be Christianity without the absorption of Plato.

63

Human thinking and reasoning are immanent activities by virtue of the fact that human consciousness cannot exist independently of matter. Matter is endowed with properties or powers or innate predispositions which are the conditions of possibility for the emergence of consciousness as a property or power of matter. It is in this sense that thinking and reasoning are immanent activities, because the capacity to think and reason is ultimately reducible or explainable in terms of the properties, dispositions and powers of matter which include the motion of particles. It has been proposed that thinking and philosophy are immanent to reason in the sense that they are ultimately involved in the application of reason to reason, which is the application of reason to itself. Reason in this sense is pure immanency.

64

The immanence of reason! A nice idea. In the application of reason, what is reason applied to? In metaphysics reason becomes self-referential. The word 'meta' in this context means reason reasons about reason or reason reasons about the nature of reason. In short, reason deliberates over the meaning of reason. All metaphysics is ultimately reducible to this meta-problem. Reason is ultimately deliberation, specifically rational deliberation and rational deliberation rests on inference. To deliberate or reason over something is to apply one's mind rationally in a process of deliberation. Reason exists by virtue of the rational deliberating mind. The rational deliberating mind represents the embodiment of reason, or the realization of reason, and in all of this reason is immanent in the rational mind, and rationality or mind exits by virtue of what? This is the big question. Why does reason exist at all? Reason exists by virtue of God. For this to be, God is reason, for God to be reason, God's own being, God's own nature, is the condition of possibility for the existence of reason, and therefore the possibility for rationality, and rational deliberation. 'Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool'.

Kate believes earnestly in God. She asks if I too believe in God. On her face I can see that she wants to hear that I believe in God.

'I do believe in God, I believe very deeply in God, you don't realise how deeply I believe in God,' I reply.

'I am so happy,' she smiles thankfully at me, this deeply Catholic lesbian woman who teaches Darwinian evolution and the evolution of sex in fungi, algae, mosses, ferns and higher plants.

65

On our final day in a square in Madrid we watched some young Spanish women, or they could have been teenage schoolgirls, they were dancing the flamenco. I was enthralled by the spectacle and Kate noticed. She said that she would teach me to dance the flamenco, and the tango, and any dance, the rumba, the samba and the waltz. She could teach me everything. She was a certified dance instructress. I was like a child, radiant with delight at the prospect that Kate would teach me how to dance the flamenco.

'Will you really!' I answered like an excited little girl.

Kate bursting with joy, smiled indulgently as she saw the lure and I could read her mind as she spun her web of bondage to entrap me deeper into a relationship with her.

'When we get back to the hotel I will teach the tango and the basics of the flamenco, the tango is easy, it is like walking, you will love it.'

'Without music?'

'Without music, I will be your music, I will be your tempo, your rhythm and your beat, we will dance to the pulse of my body,' she exclaimed jubilantly.

66

'We will dance to the pulse of her body.' That statement has stuck in my mind forever. Kate always said that I had the perfect body of a swimmer. She had the full measure of my strength and this excited her. She could not let me go, even when Janet and I were together. Kate would still ask if I would be her dance partner for some clandestine high-heeled lesbian get-together of the Johannesburg rich and famous. And I would go with Kate as her partner, and Janet would be sad and forlorn and she would cry. I would say to Janet: 'I have too, I have to go with Kate.'

'Do you love Kate?' she would cry out, hot tears running down her cheeks.

'I don't love Kate.'

'Then why, then why?' she would wail while crying. Her heart wrenching plea for understanding went unanswered.

'I love only you Janet, but Kate I only love in a manner of speaking.'

'What do you mean?'

I had no answer to Janet's anguished filled questions. I could not answer it myself. Kate needed me in a deep human sense. I had a history with Kate. I felt an obligation to look after her in a manner of speaking, in a practical manner and in an emotional supportive manner. I would be lying to myself if I said I did not care for Kate.

Driving in the red Porsche that she had inherited from her grandfather we would visit Truworths, Foschini and Stuttafords to find an outfit for me. She loved to spoil me. I still have all the outfits and high heels that she had bought for me. Until I left Wits for UCT I was Kate's whore. Afterwards we would go back to her flat for sex. In her bed we were like tigresses on heat, pain merged with pleasure, as we wrestled for dominance over each other.

Kate was a Catholic ever sure of God's existence and His divine presence in everything. Sunday mornings refreshed from a night in each other's embrace we would rise early to go Mass. Praying the prayer before receiving Holy Communion.... 'Master and Lord, Jesus Christ our God, You alone have authority to forgive my sins, whether committed knowingly or in ignorance, and make me worthy to receive without condemnation....' I would fall down on my knees before the priest and with bowed head and raised hands I would receive the elements of the Mass.

Much to Kate's dismay and disapproval I would partake, as a non-Catholic, in the Catholic Mass. My defence was that no one could be turned away from the Lord's Table.

67

Many years later it was twilight and I was strolling once again on the left bank of the Seine this time with Samantha, it was summer, and I began to feel melancholic as I thought about what Kate had said. I told Samantha about my holiday with Kate in Paris.

'Well maybe it is inevitable that we will always feel sad on our return trips to Paris as the past comes back to haunt us with forlorn memories and nostalgia, maybe it is our fate to mourn the loss of past love whenever we visit Paris,' she said laughing, her eyes bright with joy.

Chapter 8: Student Bible Group

1

It was one of those unforgettably beautiful evenings. A full moon had just risen and the spring evening air was filled with the fragrance of fresh jasmine. For some time now they had invited me to join their Bible study and prayer group which they held weekly on a Wednesday evening. I usually sat with them for supper and out of curiosity I finally accepted their invitation. After supper Susan spread out a blanket on the lawn beneath the towering silver oaks in the gardens of the Sunnyside residence for women on the campus of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits for short). When I arrived the four of them, Susan, Charmaine, Barbara and Moira were already there sitting on the blanket, they had just finished their prayers. I heard Susan say 'Amen'. I felt that I was the object of their prayers and maybe my arrival was an answer to their prayers. We had been in the Sunnyside women's res since our first year and so we were not strangers. Charmaine asked me about my overseas holiday. I gave them a very short edited version of where I had been and what I had seen and what I had experienced. Of course I told them nothing about my travelling companion and my escapades in Paris with Monique or Kate's attempts to get me interested in playing sadomasochistic games of bondage and domination with her in our hotel room in Rome while the Cathedral bells were ringing, inviting the faithful to evening Mass. Instead I told them about the Cathedrals that I had visited, Notre Dame in Paris and Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. To my own surprise I found myself speaking about Catholicism and the Catholic Mass. I suddenly realized that I had absorbed a lot of Kate's Catholicism as in some kind of spiritual osmosis. Kate's Catholicism was a complete anomaly given her lesbianism and her sexual predilections which were invariably kinky, learning to the dark side of feminine sexuality.

2

With Kate in Madrid for three intense days I had lived, breathed and experienced an intensity of Roman Catholicism that left me feeling giddy and light headed. In Madrid Kate was in a state of profound penitence and existential angst. Her mood in Madrid contrasted sharply with her spiritual elation in Rome which bordered on the manic. I am not sure if it was because of the row which we had in Paris that had transformed her into some kind of spiritual pilgrim in Madrid seeking atonement and absolution.

Now sitting on the blanket on the res lawns with my four Evangelical Protestant friends from the Baptist Church I found myself speaking about Madrid as my memory became alive with the vividness, with the illuminative brightness of a spiritual re-awakening. The light was fading fast, the evening star had become visible, and in the surrounding shrubbery I was aware of cape robins and thrushes' busy filling up on their last foraging foray before retiring to their secret roosts. Bats taking advantage of the warmer evenings now also flitted overhead and the sweet night fragrance of jasmine settled over the gardens. It was a profoundly Zen moment. Everything that could be attached to the meaning and significance of the two words, Transcendence and Immanence, become palpable. I have never been a spiritual person in the religious sense. This is not because I am agnostic or atheist. I had no problem in believing in God. Intellectually I was already a Marxist and I saw myself as being a radical with regard to my political beliefs. I had an open mind and willingness to hear the other side of a story. But I also had a strong antipathy for dogmatic positions whether they were religious or political. That evening I spoke reflectively about my experiences and insights following my summer holiday in Europe with Kate, and they listened intently.

3

I spoke about the Cathedral experience which I had shared with Kate on our last day in Madrid. After entering the Cathedral, we both curtsied and made the sign of the cross before the altar before taking our seats in the second row of pews in the front of the Cathedral. I instinctively slide into the kneeling position and found myself closing my eyes in a prayerful attitude. On opening my eyes I gazed at the altar, three alb-vested servers who had just emerged from the sacristy. Remaining in the kneeling position I watched them carrying out their duties in the sanctuary. One of the servers began to light the liturgical candles. He lit the six altar candles, and the two procession candles usually held by two acolytes. Every Easter a new Paschal candle would be lit. The name 'Paschal' is derived from the Hebrew word Pesach, which means Passover. The Paschal candle symbolizes the Hebraic Paschal mystery of God's salvation. As a towering large white candle it symbolizes the pillar of the cloud that lead the Israelites in their Exodus from slavery in Egypt to the promised land of Canaan. Canaan being the land originally promised by God to Abraham. When the Paschal candle is lit, its burning flame symbolizes the column of fire which led the Israelites at night during their Exodus from Egypt. The flame of the Paschal candle which burns before the altar throughout the year, from Easter to Easter, represents the presence of the Messiah, the Alpha and Omega, the Light of the World, which burns in the midst of His people. My four friends from the expressions on their demeanours indicated that I should not stop. So I continued:

'For the ordinary Catholic believer there is always another reality behind every appearance encountered, behind all accidents of colour, sound, taste, fragrance, and behind all the textures that excite the manifold feelings of touch. To the question, 'where is God?' the answer to the Catholic is that God is everywhere. God is transcendent, but also immanent. Everywhere in the world and cosmos God's fingerprints have left their impressions for everyone to see with the eyes of faith'.

I then remembered a familiar passage from the Gospels which was relevant to the point I was making, so I decided to quote it for effect:

'Show us the father and we will be satisfied.'

The four listened and I continued:

'How can we see God? How can God become visible to the naked eye? How can God appear to the five senses? How can God become a visible and sensible materialization behind the accidents of colour, sound, taste, fragrance and touch? To the Catholic, even if God can never be seen or perceived directly, God is always present in the form of a Real Presence. God is always perceived as being essentially present even if God, in His essential Being always remains invisible and hidden from sense perception. Yet God's existence converges with God's essence, and the being of God or the 'isness' of God in the sense of God is love, God is ever present, God is the Truth, God is the Logos, all constitute the essence of God, which we are able to perceive from time to time as being present in the World, as a Real Presence, so 'show as the father and we will be satisfied' requires a very special kind of seeing, a very special kind of awareness or consciousness, a seeing that is mystically attuned to the omnipresence of God in everything, but not as a pantheist.'

4

I told them what I had learnt in Madrid, but I also told them what I had learnt in Rome and in Paris:

'The Catholic sacramental view of the world has played a fundamental role in the formation of the Catholic imagination. In the Catholic imagination the presence of the invisible and hidden God becomes manifest to the sensibilities in the signs and symbols of speech, gesture, music, vestments, art, colour, fire, water, bread, and wine. Catholics live in an enchanted world of grand church architecture, of altars and sanctuaries, of rite and gesture, of the Blessed Sacrament, of tabernacles, of vestments, of processions, of chalice-ciborium-patens, of holy water and stained glass, of candles, incense and bells, of saints and rosaries, of bread and wine turned into the actual body and blood of Christ'.

As an Anglican I also knew about this stuff, because before Father Digby lost his faith he had spoken about his experiences on a Catholic spiritual retreat, so I expanded on an idea that interested me:

'Catholics are sustained by the Real Presence of God in the Communion Host. For Catholics the whole world is filled with the awesome holiness of God, every good thing is a sign of God's grace. While ignoring the sensibilities of the Catholic imagination for a moment, it is not unusual from a purely philosophical or even a strictly scientific perspective to conclude that something else must necessarily exist behind the veil of sensory perception. In everyday practical life everyone lives and eventually dies as hard-nosed empiricists, trusting in nothing but the senses, the only reality that everyone can trust is the one that is accessible to the general public through sensory perception'.

And I continued to elaborate:

'The results of ordinary sensory perceptions seems to suggest to us that every sensible or perceivable effect, including every incident or every event or every emergent complex property like consciousness, which has ever occurred in the Universe must be connected as an effect to a preceding series or chain of events or causes which are not directly visible or perceivable. This idea follows from the view that nothing can happen by itself, something is always the result of something else. Something cannot arise from nothing. Nothing cannot give rise to something. Nothing gives rise to nothing. So we are led to believe that behind any event there always exists an interconnected chain of preceding events. Every event must then be the outcome or culmination of such a series of preceding events. If every event is the culmination of such a series, then how far back can any chain of events go? If we go backwards down any chain of cause and effect will it ever, out of metaphysical necessity, eventually terminate in some first cause? The idea that there could be such a thing as a Universe that has a past history which terminates at a beginning is not irrational or logically inconceivable. A non-terminating series of events will go on backwards forever and never end at any beginning, whereas a terminating series of events will run backwards until the beginning is reached. In the latter case a series of events could begin as the result of the action of a first mover. This was something that I personally found hard to dismiss or ignore. For me there was no logical reason or empirical proof that could compelling demonstrate in a transparent self-evident manner that the series of perceptible events such as the unfolding Cosmos should not have a beginning. For me, the reasons for the existence of the Universe were not empirically self-evident. The Universe was a wonderful mystery, an unexplainable enigma, I say this even though I consider myself a radical and a Marxist'.

I continued:

'While we cannot be sure about the logical or even empirical status of such a terminating series of events we do know that the effects of gravity are universal and ubiquitous. We now know from physics that without the law of gravity the solar system would not have come into existence; nor would have Mendeleev's periodic table of elements have come into existence. Nor would have life on earth have emerged from the dust and ashes produced by the massive explosions of countless stars after they had reached the end of their lives. Nor would the gold mines on the Witwatersrand have come into existence. And nor would I be sitting on this blanket on this beautiful evening with you guys here on the lawn if it had not being for the interactions between star dust and gravity'.

'So ultimately we are just star dust' Susan suddenly blurted out.

'Yes,' I answered with conviction. It seemed that what I had spoken about regarding my recent experiences had secured my ambiguous Christian credentials with the four and it did remove the slight underlying tension which I had sensed when I had first sat down on the blanket.

5

My four friends being evangelical Baptists knew nothing about Anglicanism or Catholicism. Susan who seemed to be the leader of the group had spent the July student vacation in Switzerland at a place called L'Abri. It turned out that L'Abri was a Christian evangelical organization founded by an American Presbyterian minister called Francis Schaeffer.

Susan had brought back from her overseas trip cassette tape recordings of the lectures that Francis Schaeffer had given and which had covered the themes he written about in his books. Over the next couple of weeks we listened late into the night to Susan's cassette tape recordings of the lectures of Francis Schaeffer on what he had written about in his books 'Escape from Reason', 'The God Who Is There', and 'He is There and He is not Silence'.

We normally ended the evening together by kneeling on the blanket in a circle and while holding hands each one of us would get a turn to pray. I was the only one who did not pray. I bowed my head and closed my eyes and listened to their prayers. Sometimes we sang hymns in between the prayers. Then one evening during the prayers I decided to pray as well. I was emotionally and psychologically unable to pray a spontaneous prayer from my heart so instead I prayed from memory one of the Anglican Evening Song prayers of supplication and penitence. I prayed the following prayer:

'Almighty and most merciful Father,

we have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.

We have followed too much the devices and desires

of our own hearts.

We have offended against thy holy laws.

We have left undone those things

which we ought to have done;

and we have done those things

which we ought not to have done;

and there is no health in us.

But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.

Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults.

Restore thou them that are penitent;

according to thy promises declared unto mankind

in Christ Jesu our Lord.

And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake,

that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life,

to the glory of thy holy name.

Amen'.

As I prayed I felt my hands being squeezed tightly. After ending the prayer with the Amen, they all responded with their own resounding Amens. We stood up and they hugged me and kissed me on the cheeks and on the lips. I was completely taken aback by the sudden intense and spontaneous display of warm affection. It was the kind of Christian response reserved for a new convert to the faith, and I realized this immediately. I was a baptised and confirmed Anglican, who was leaning towards Catholicism, but here I was being treated as a new convert to Christianity. I heard myself defensively saying: 'Hey guys, I am actually a Christian you know!'

6

And now it was a warm evening in October and it was the last week of the term. The November exams were approaching, the Jacarandas would soon be in full bloom and 1974 was rapidly coming to an end. Susan held her arm tightly round my waist and I put my arm around her waist just above the cleft of her rump and I spread the palm of my hand over her hip. She had showered and washed her hair before what now had become our regular Bible study and evening prayer meeting get together on the lawns of the res under the tall and magnificent silver oaks which were now ablaze with the early summer flush of orange-red flowers. The erotic fragrance of her hair and her perfume was intoxicating, I kissed her on the cheek, and her arm tightened around my waist. But from her side our intimacy was holy and not sexual. I felt sexually aroused by our closeness. As we moved apart we grasped each other's hand, and we stood together holding hands tightly in the sacred joy of holy and blessed sisterhood. Susan presented herself as being heterosexual and I had fallen secretly and painfully in love with her. At night as I lay in my bed I yearned for the closeness of her body in the bed with me. She was also a keen swimmer and we swam almost daily in the Wits pool and afterwards we showered in the communal showers together. She was innocently and virginally beautiful. We were sisters and our love was one of agape and not Eros. She had beautiful thighs, a very sexy butt and no one had yet caressed and fondled her lovely virgin breasts. They were beautifully shaped like firm ripe pomegranates. We spoke about love and relationships and she said that she had high standards and expectations regarding what she wanted in a man. He had to be a devout Christian.

She said she was against premarital sex and was saving herself for her wedding night. She believed that as a Christian she should subject herself to her husband with regard to his sexual needs and it would be his right to have free sexual access to her body at all times except when she was menstruating. To me this situation was something too ghastly for me to even contemplate. When I asked her what would happen when she was not in the mood for penetrative sex but he insisted on having sex. She said that it was her duty to submit at all times to her husband's physical needs. I remarked that this would give the husband the right to rape his own wife. It was her belief that within the bonds of marriage rape does not exist. Given the way our discussion was going she asked if I was a feminist. It was the first time that anyone had asked if I was a feminist. Up until this stage of my life I had not given feminism much thought. However I felt that I was morally obliged to defend the cause of feminism, so I admitted to being a feminist. At that moment I could read her mind, she was going to ask me if I was a lesbian. She couldn't bring herself to say the word so instead she asked if I was heterosexual. I had to say no.

'Are you a lesbian then?'

'Yes I am a lesbian.'

She smiled and asked if I had developed feelings for her. I confessed that I had feelings for her. She admitted that she was flattered and that it was OK, she valued our friendship and she wanted us remain friends with me irrespective of my sexual preferences. Anyway we were sisters in Christ and this was what was important to her more than anything else. It was clear that she was bound by a sense of Christian duty to preserve our friendship no matter what. She mused that in all likelihood many of the nuns in convents must be having lesbian relations, possibly even sexual relations, and in spite of this they had to be Christians, even if the Bible forbade same-sex sexual unions. I quoted Saint Paul that in Christ we are neither male nor female, and that biology casts a whole new angle on the essential and real nature of sex in all of its genetic, metabolic, physiological, psychological and anatomical complexity.

7

I drew Susan's attention to the fact that Bible did not forbid the institution of slavery. Slavery was one of the most morally reprehensible institutions ever invented by man yet it was condoned by the Bible. If anything was unquestionably evil, it was slavery. So obviously the Bible was morally flawed and inconsistent or alternatively the Bible was not a reliable manual for morals and ethics. If the Bible had failed to forbid such a serious moral evil as slavery then the moral condemnation of same-sex sexual relationships was irrational. What possible moral harm could lesbian sex cause between two consenting partners? How could it possibly offend God? Also how could slavery not offend God, it does not make any sense.

After listening to my argument she conceded that the Bible could not be used as a consistent moral guide if it had failed to speak the truth to one of the most serious moral issues confronting humanity which happened to be the ancient institution of slavery.

I explained that I could not find any rationally justifiable reason for why it could be morally wrong for two women to enjoy having sex with each other especially if that act was not going to hurt or harm anyone. I explained that I was a lesbian by birth, I explained that I did not chose to be a lesbian, I did not chose my sexuality or gender orientation. I could not change it. If God was omnipotent and omniscient then ultimately He made me a lesbian and if I was a lesbian according to the will of God then it would be a cruel act of God if I was forbidden the love and sexual pleasure of women. Furthermore, if God was rational, if God was the God of reason, if God was reason itself, then it would have been against His nature to create me as a lesbian and at the same time forbid me from being a lesbian, which would be irrational and incompatible with God's own nature.

Susan was taken aback by what I said. We were both standing naked together under the hot showers. I felt the luxurious streams of warm water over my body. Standing under her shower she asked whether I believed that Jesus had died for our sins and whether he rose from the dead on the third day. I said yes. I confirmed my belief by reciting the Nicene Creed.

When I had finished affirming my faith by reciting the Nicene Creed she said: 'That is so beautiful, I have never heard something so beautiful.'

'I care for you,' she said.

'I also care for you deeply, I will always be there for you, you can come to me anytime you wish, my door will be open and I will be waiting for you,' I answered. What I said just come out. I had invited her to my bed. She smiled indulgently. She was in her final year of her medical BSc in physiotherapy. Every evening we continued to train together in the pool, swimming over fifty lengths. Our bodies were magnificent. She had received her provincial colours for swimming. We were fit and strong like Amazons. Again I felt as strong as a lioness. We continued to shower together, standing naked under the warm water while enjoying the pleasurable sight of our bodies, we debated theology and we debated the will of God.

8

Every night I waited expectantly in my bed for Susan. I fell asleep dreaming that our bodies were intertwined, our lips pressed together, filled with passion. On the other hand there was the complicated situation with Kate. My relation with Kate had not quite ended. We were still in a strange kind of relationship.

And then as if in a dream Susan came, she carefully turned the door handle and silently pressed the door open, she gently closed the door behind her. Shrugging her shoulders she shed her gown, the sleeves slid from her arms, and the soft satiny fabric flowing from her body gathered into a rumpled heap around her ankles. Bathed in shafts of moonlight I could make out the silhouette of her body. Lifting the covers she slipped into the bed as I moved away to make space for her to lie next to me.

'Are you awake,' she whispered as I embraced her, drawing her into the bed against my body.

We kissed and as we kissed my mind was racing: 'Was this an erotic adventure for Susan or was it something more?'

'Is this what you really want?' I asked her.

'What do you mean by that?' She replied.

'Do really want to be with a woman?'

'Yes, I want us to make love,'

'Are you straight?'

'What do you mean?'

'Are you heterosexual or are you queer like me?'

'I think I am actually queer. I want to be queer like you,' she said.

'You want to be queer?'

'Yes I want to be queer. I want us to have sex.'

'So there is going to be sex with no regrets, no guilt, and no hang ups?' I asked.

'There is going to be no guilt and no regrets. I have feelings for you.'

'What kind of feeling do have for me?' I asked.

'I am in love with you,' she answered

Later after we had made love she asked:

'Why do you think God made lesbians?'

'Maybe it is because there is nothing more beautiful in human sexuality than queer sex. Maybe there is nothing more beautiful than two women kissing, than two women making love to each other. In my opinion it is wrong to look at sex dichotomously, masculinity and femininity are not a difference in kind, but rather a difference in degree along a continuum of sexual variability. But I personally think that female sexuality is far more flexible and plastic than male sexuality. I don't think God is a God of dichotomies, God is One even though we believe in a triune God, the trinity is not a trichotomy consisting of three gods bound together into a Godhead. Going back to the reality of queerness I think that it is far easier for females to explore same-sex eroticism than males, and there may be biological or evolutionary reasons for this. Same-sex eroticism may have had adaptive value in human evolution. Being queer may be a legacy of natural selection in animal evolution. Maybe God created same-sex eroticism as a property embodied within the potentialities of matter itself. So queerness or propensity for queerness does not fall into any category of good or evil. Being queer and engaging in queer sex outside the bounds of the heterosexual marital bed is neither good nor is it evil, it is morally neutral like eating, drinking and sleeping.'

'Wow what you saying is really radical. Could it possibly have any truth?'

'True with respect to what?'

'I don't know, maybe true with respect to the moral order of the Universe or true to human nature or true with regard to morals,' she replied.

'There is no moral order to the Universe.'

'How can you say that, how do you know that there is no moral order governing the Universe, it flies in the face of all the facts,' Susan exclaimed.

'Describe one fact that provides proof for the existence of an externally imposed transcendental moral order governing the Universe.'

'What about everything that Francis Schaeffer has spoken about,' Susan countered.

'He has not made a sufficiently compelling case that convinces me.'

'But you do believe in God?' Susan asked.

'Yes I do.'

'And you don't believe that homosexuality is a sin?' She asked.

'Homosexuality and queer sex cannot be sinful. This is no rational basis for believing that queer sex is morally wrong or that it can be construed as a sin.'

9

During the nineteen seventies and eighties the cinematic voyeuristic commodification of lesbian sex including women kissing had been created solely for male consumption. As a 'biological' lesbian I became increasingly critical of any form of cultural or social depiction of 'lesbian chic' especially in the form where straight women indulged in whimsically contrived demonstrations of lesbianism. Having lived in the secret world of lesbianism I had experienced the social and emotional cost that was involved in being queer. It was in all likelihood that because I had self-identified as a lesbian in high school that I was not made a prefect in spite of getting my colours for swimming and being one of the top academic achievers. Being queer was not a choice that could be freely made. It was not an option among many options. I did not decide to be queer. Queerness was not just ontogenetic, it was ontological, and it was metaphysical, because it problematized the very idea or the ideology of what was 'natural' and what was abnormal. Throughout my teenage years I had to live with the prejudice that queerness was abnormal and that I was a freak of nature. Coming to Wits changed all this. Some very vocal students were openly challenging anti-queer prejudices and suddenly I was in place where I could be myself.

10

Inadvertently it was through Susan introduction of Francis Schaeffer to the Christian study group which she had led, which in turn had awakened my life-long interest in philosophy. From listening to the Francis Schaeffer tapes and reading his books I became familiar in the context of Schaeffer's Christian apologetics with names such as: Kant, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Paul van Buren, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Aldous Huxley and Julian Huxley. I was already familiar with Sartre and of course I was familiar from first year with the names and work of Bergman, Fellini and Antonioni as film directors from the Wits Film Society which I had been a member of since my first year. Barth, Tillich and van Buren were some of the prominent Protestant liberal theologians who have played a role in shaping twentieth century theology. Paul van Buren was one of several of the 'God is dead' theologians who rose to the summit of notoriety in the nineteen sixties. Also in the context of Schaeffer's Christian apologetics I learnt a bit about existentialism, the Nature-Grace dualism, the relationship between the One and the Many which was basically another name for the particulars versus universals problem. Of course it was too early for me to recognize the towering figure of Plato as the key to unlocking the problem of the One and the Many especially in the relation to between Being and Becoming, and also in relation to the Idea of the Good, which was ultimately embodied in the true nature of God. Plato understood who God really was. If ever there was a contest on the nature for truth involving Moses versus Plato, Plato would always wins hands down in the moral battle on the Idea of the Good in which all truth is embodied, and this has been the verdict of my life. This is why I have remained a Hellenic 'pagan' and also why I could never become a Jew.

11

It was the writings of the God is dead theologians and other theologians such as Thomas Altizer, William Hamilton, Paul van Buren, and Paul Althaus which had played a role in triggering the crisis of faith that Father Francis Digby experienced. His crisis of faith had in turn resulted in the failure of his marriage and in his resigning as a priest from the Anglican Church. I felt a kind of connection between Francis Digby's personal crisis of faith and the intentions behind the Christian apologetic work of Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer's Christian missionary project was to reverse the modernist and enlightenment induced crisis of faith which had taken root in Western or European Christianity. I had my doubts on whether Schaeffer's fundamentalist based apologetic mission would become a lasting legacy in the Church.

12

I was now having regular sex with Susan who was self-identifying as bisexual, and like Francis Digby her faith was falling apart and she was undergoing an existential crisis on the eve of her final exams. The fact that I did not find Francis Schaeffer's apologetics or defence of evangelical Christianity compelling had a negative impact on Susan. I had just finished reading Jacque Monod's book 'Chance and Necessity'. Susan also read the book and it had the same negative impact on her faith as the writings of Altizer and Hamilton had on Francis Digby, it shattered her faith.

She could see Schaeffer's apologetic edifice collapsing under the burden that Darwinian evolution was true and that the case for a materialist view of reality and the Universe was perfectly rational and reasonable in terms of the available empirical evidence. She could now see my point that a simple biological evolutionary based critique of Francis Schaeffer was not easy to rebut. In her despair she seemed to take heart in retreating into the refuge of fideism. This was not intellectually a viable option, no sane person should consider retreating from reason in order to find security in pure ungrounded and quarantined faith.

Her weeping over her loss of faith in the early hours of the morning, in the pitch darkness before dawn, woke me up from a deep slumber. I had fallen asleep after we had made love. All this time she had been lying awake in anguish. In desperation she asked me like a child:

'What must I do now if there is no God?'

It felt like the chickens of Susan's guilt and regret had finally come home to roost squarely on my shoulders. I was in my second year of study and now I had to deal with Susan's emotional breakdown. Was it guilt over our sexual relationship or was she really losing her faith for sound intellectual reasons.

'God exists, God is there,' I said trying to comfort her.

'How do you know that God exists?' She asked as I held her in my arms.

'I have my reasons.'

'What are your reasons?' She asked

'Necessity, metaphysical necessities,' I answered.

'I don't understand, what do you mean?' She asked.

'Necessities in Nature depends on the existence of law-like relations that are not self-evident nor self-explanatory. The intelligibility, the encounterability and the knowability of the Universe is not self-evident or self-explanatory and this gives me sufficient reason to accept that there is a God,' I argued.

'Do you really believe in God, you not just saying this to make me feel better?' Susan asked.

13

I found myself in an ironical reversal of roles. I became Susan's lesbian lover and Christian spiritual councillor. At the end of the exams she returned to her parent's home in Durban. I went home to Hotazel for Christmas. We spoke a few times over the phone. While on a holiday in Jefferies Bay she had met a wonderful guy who she eventually married.

We have remained in regular contact over the years. After marrying her wonderful guy she had a brood of children. We have always ended our letters with the phrase: 'Love you deeply forever'. The bonds that developed between myself and the women that I have loved have endured the ravages of time, even with Kate. Breakups were always painful affairs but for some reason we managed to mend and rebuild broken relationships and re-established them again in the form of a deep and abiding Platonic commitments of caring friendships.

14

If I have to think of any year that was really decisive in my life it would be 1975. You may think it should have been 1974. Yes 1975 was definitely the decisive life transforming year of my life. In 1975 I changed. I became a different person. I was a Marxist and I was learning strongly towards Communism. I saw Marxism and Communism as the only means by which the world could save itself from the ravages of capitalism. I was also now a certified scuba diver and I had also received my scuba diving instructor's certificate. By the end of November 1974 my affair with Kate had thankfully evolved into an amiable friendship. We continued to be goods friends and remained dancing partners for years. In 1975 she took her sabbatical leave and was away for the entire year in the USA.

And then diving classes began at the Wits swimming pool on the first Saturday morning of the first semester of the new academic year. That was when I meet Janet Middleton for the first time. She was eighteens year old and was a first student majoring in zoology and botany. As the only female among the new diving club members she was given to me as my first scuba diving pupil. It turned out that Janet like Kate was also a devout Catholic and she later discovered like Susan that she was a lesbian. How many of us are out there?

Chapter 9: Third Year Student

1

It was on the botany field trip in January 1975 that Yael Kaplan joined me in a second class single sleeping berth on the Johannesburg-Durban overnight train. It would be just the two of us sharing the berth for the night. The leather upholstery was the usual green for second class coaches. I sat down next to the window. The seat was facing the direction in which the train would be travelling. I was familiar with the overnight sleeper train journey from Park Station to Durban, having on previous occasions travelled as a primary school child with Oupa and Ouma Vollenhoven on holiday to Durban mainly during the July school vacations.

Both of us were not really interested in joining in the drinking and partying at the other end of coach with the rest of the third year botany class. Yael was pretty, dark eyed, petit, and very inquisitive. She was also an Orthodox Sephardic looking Jew who had been my Friday afternoon lab partner in our first year physics class in 1973. I originally thought that she was Portuguese. Then she was Yael Toledano, now she was Mrs. Yael Kaplan. At the end of our second year she had married a Rabbi while still being at the tender age of nineteen.

'I saw you at Stuttafords with Dr Jolly, the dress that you were trying on was gorgeous, you looked fabulous,' she said, after pouting the word 'fabulous' she flourished her bright pink tongue seductively, its sharp pointed tip briefly curling up in the corner of her slightly parted lips, before slipping behind lips that had now closed into a teasing smile, a sweet smile that betrayed an elusive invitation, an invitation just elusive enough, so that I would be sufficiently intrigued to contemplate its real, real, meaning. She had not missed anything, she obviously knew that something had been going on between Kate and myself. How many others were also in the know? Was this the reason for her coming onto me, the wife of a Rabbi? In our first year at Wits when I first got to know Yael as a very likeable friend I could not help wondering what it would be like to be physically intimate with her, as she was a truly delectable creature. If something was going to happen between us then she would have to live with the secret knowledge of a homoerotic transgression for the rest of her life. She seemed to be so ripe for the taking that it was impossible not to test her resolve, and a little inner voice whispered 'why not'? Prompted by the temptation I remarked in an offhand manner that Leviticus does not explicitly condemn women for having sex with women. To emphasize the logic or rationality of this legalistic omission or oversight in the Law of Moses, I added that women do not possess intromitting sex organs which ejaculate semen. I elaborated on the matter with further evidence and supporting argumentation. And finally I summarized my conclusions.

So strictly speaking, in the case of women making love with women, they were technically not actually engaged in having true biological sex. They were engaged in doing something else, something that could be construed as morally neutral, something that had the innocence of doing something for the sake of pure reciprocal mutual sensual pleasure and above all for the sake of fun, and in this context the words 'pure' and 'sensual pleasure,' and also 'fun', carried no moral or ethical burden or encumbrance. Thus sex between women carried no liabilities, mainly because the patriarchy could never have imagined that some women may prefer to have 'sex' only with other women, and not with men. Furthermore, the fingers of a woman's hand could hardly be classified as sex organs. It was all so very Talmudic this line of reasoning. It was impossible for women to have sex with each other.

Now having settled this no small matter regarding the interpretation and application of the Law of Moses, and having done so outside the domain of the Rabbi's court, I invited Yael's response with an interrogative legalistic tone in my:

'Well?'

She shrugged her shoulders non-committedly, but her wanton demeanour spoke otherwise.

In the New Testament, Romans 1:24 condemns the act of women engaging in physical love with each other. In Acts 25:11 Nero who outdid Caligula in acts of sexual perversion acquitted Saint Paul of all charges of subversion. And to return Caesar's favour, Paul did not condemn the Roman political establishment, instead he endorsed it as God ordained. In spite of what Saint Paul thought, lesbianism was something sacred to me and was not something to be trifled with for amusement or sexual curiosity. Yet it seemed clear that Yael wanted to engage in a lesbian sex act with me.

Yael was sitting close to the door, there was a wide space between us, and so I patted the seat next to me inviting her to sit closer to me. She got up and sat down next to me. Finding herself at the threshold of the great unknown she confessed that she was feeling extremely nervous.

'I need to have a smoke my whole body is shaking like a leaf.' She got up and rummaged in her bag for a packet of cigarettes. With visibly shaking hands she lit the cigarette. I didn't know she smoked. She said that no one knew she smoked, not even the Rabbi. After flicking the butt out of the window she rummaged in her bag for her mouth spray to freshen her breathe. Sitting down again next to me she turned her face towards me and said:

'You can kiss me now if you want to.'

'I think you better first lock the door.' As a teenager I never had the typical heterosexual teenage experience of no-strings-attached-getting-off in a dark corner at a party or session as it was called in those days. Listening to the high school girl talk, getting-off involved sustained intimate boy-girl smooching for the duration of the party. Yael and I after the botany field trip had a secret love affair which lasted the full six weeks of the first term and then she suddenly broke it off just before I was due to go on a diving trip to Sodwana Bay during the Easter recess. She told me then that she was pregnant and that she was going to be a mother. But anyway that was not the end of the story of Yael and me, so let me continue.

A rattling at the door interrupted our smooching. The door slide open. The steward wanted to know if we needed bedding for the night. While our two bunks were being made we went to the dining saloon for dinner. While waiting for the first course which was going to be soup we ordered two glasses of red wine. Yael sipping her wine had a mischievous secretive look on her face.

'What?' I asked.

'In first year I was infatuated with you,' she confessed.

'I was infatuated with you too,' I also confessed.

'Then our feelings for each other are mutual?' She asked.

'Yes.'

2

Back in our berth after switching off the lights we pulled the crisp cool sheets on the lower bunk over our naked bodies. I made love to Yael as the train sped into the night that cloaked the vast steppes of the Highveld plains in mysteries that were too deep and invisible to ever fathom. While enjoying the intimate closeness of our bodies we whispered and giggled like two schoolgirls. As the night wore on we succumbed to the almost narcotic-erotic lulling rhythm of the train's swaying and rolling and the continuous unrelenting clickety-clack of the spinning steel wheels. Our limbs intertwined, our lip pressed together we were oblivious to the progress of its steady passage as it snaked through the thick silent darkness. Yael's tongue penetrated softly into the passage of my ear, she nibbled and sucked my ear lobe, she bit my neck until the pleasure mingled with the sharpness of pain made me cry out, she moved her moist vulva rhythmically against my thigh until she climaxed once more. Reaching over me she opened the window blinds, I gazed up at the black bejewelled night sky, and put my arms around her and held her tight against my breasts, I could feel the rise and fall of her breathing, and the strong beat of her heart. We communicated with the constant flutter of moist kisses, we chuckled softly to each other as our nocturnal journey of love was punctuated intermittently by the rough bashing sounds of berth doors sliding back and forth, by the rapid thudding of running footsteps, by the kicking of a football in the passage way, by sudden bouts of boisterous shouting, by the eruptions of raucous laughter, by bursts of wild guitar strumming and then by an intense passionate rendition of Jethro Tull's 'Locomotive Breathe'. In a sleepy voice I heard Yael say before we both fell asleep: 'I love you.'

With the night-train journey of drunken revelry between Park and Durban Stations behind us, we boarded a second train for Port Shepstone. From Port Shepstone a bus took us to the Oribi Gorge Nature Reserve. The rest camp with its rondavels had been booked by the Botany Department for our 3rd year botany fieldtrip, and would be our base camp for seven nights. On the way to Port Shepstone, the train stopped at seemingly remote and strange looking railway stations serving all the familiar towns with their holiday beaches along the Natal south coast, on our way down we shunted passed Isipingo Beach, Amanzimtoti, Warner Beach, Winklespruit, Illovo Beach, Umkomaas, Scottsburgh and Hibberdene. Following the coastline of the Indian Ocean the railway line cut through the dense dune bush.

At Oribi Gorge we as the five misfits, that is, Yael the lesbian Jewess married to an Orthodox Rabbi, Wayne Bernstein the Jew who had become a Pentecostal Christian, Roger Ho the Chinese Catholic and Michael Livingstone the Protestant, all ended up in the same rondavel. There were only four beds, so Yael and I shared a bed. Each night as the only students who were sober we eventually returned to our rondavel. In the dark we lay in bed chatting until we fell asleep. Our sleeping quarters became a theological hot house with no holds barred jousting over the nature of truth and the meaning of the idea that salvation was from the Jews. Yael under extreme duress eventually confessed that she was a borderline atheist but preferred to call herself an agnostic just in case there was something actually out there. When asked why she was hedging her bets she replied that there could still be something- 'out-there' as it were. When pressed to be more specific she replied:

'Well you know what I mean, God and all that kind of stuff'.

'Why did you then marry the Rabbi if you are an atheist?' Wayne wanted to know.

'Well strictly speaking I am not completely atheistic, but I have problems believing in God especially given the facts that support the theory of evolution, which also means that I do not believe in the literal truth of Genesis anymore, I do not believe in Adam and Eve, and also I do not believe in Noah and the flood. There is so much stuff in the Bible which is not based on any certifiable historical facts, even Moses at Mount Sinai receiving the ten commandments seems like a legend to me, and the story of Abraham could be a complete myth,' Yael explained.

'If you don't believe in the Bible as the revealed Word of God, then how could you have married an Orthodox Rabbi,' Wayne said, in his interrogation of Yael.

'It is a lot more complicated than you could ever imagine,' Yael replied.

'I don't understand why it should be so complicated,' Wayne countered.

'I was sort of trapped by force of circumstances over which I had very little control. The marriage was sort of half-arranged, even in spite of the fact that my faith had collapsed completely. He, the Rabbi, was also pursuing me and well there was so much pressure. I did not want hurt him or my parents, and then there were all these expectations, I was under so much pressure, you can't imagine, coming from an Orthodox family and all that. I did not have the strength to cope with everything, I was literally drowning, and I thought that maybe I could learn to love him, he was handsome and so debonair, and then also there was always the possibility that I could find God again, especially if I was married to a devout Rabbi.'

'You got to be joking!' Wayne exclaimed, his face a picture of astonishment.

'So you married the Rabbi, hoping that he will help you find God again, even though you don't really love him, I mean you married the Rabbi as a complete unbeliever,' Roger asked.

'Well maybe I do love him, who knows!'

'Maybe you love him! What kind of answer is that,' Michael exclaimed.

'Well I sort of love him. He is my husband after all, and he is kind, considerate, loving and gentle, he is a very nice person, and therefore in a way it is impossible not to sort of love him, and I don't want to hurt him.'

'To sort of love him, what do you mean by that, how can you sort of love your husband, it does not make any rational sense?' Wayne questioned.

'I do love him, he is my husband,' she insisted.

3

One night we spoke about the fig tree. Actually Wayne brought it up. Well actually Yael's husband the Rabbi brought it up in a public debate with Wayne at Wits in the lecture theatre SS1 in the Social Science's building. Wayne as part of the nascent Jews for Jesus movement had created a bit of storm amongst the Jewish students on Wits campus. Wayne accepted the challenge to debate with the Rabbi the status or significance of Jesus with respect to the Jews. As Wayne's friend I attended the debate. The Rabbi's attack on Jesus was particularly vicious and quite strange. It was also strange because he said Socrates was greater than Jesus. Socrates the great homosexual, the lover of Alcibiades the big trouble maker, was apparently greatly admired by the Rabbi. The main plank in the Rabbi's dismissal of Jesus as a man of no significance or consequence was the story of his cursing of the fig tree, which subsequently became a withered fig tree. The story of Jesus cursing the fig tree was taken from the Gospel of Mark. In fact the Rabbi had a copy of the New Testament and he read the relevant passages, which went as follows:

12 The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. 14 Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard him say it.

15 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, 16 and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. 17 And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written: 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'? But you have made it 'a den of robbers.' "

18 The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

19 When evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

20 In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. 21 Peter remembered and said to Jesus, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!"

Later that day, after the lunchtime debate with the Rabbi, while we were busy with our Zoological Lab, Wayne (Wayne was my zoo lab partner) mentioned that the Rabbi's reference to the story of the withering of the cursed fig tree was deeply ironical, and that the Rabbi had completely missed the plot surrounding the fig tree.

What did the fig tree mean, what did it symbolize, why the fig tree, it was not even the season for bearing fruit, in what way was the Rabbi blind, what could he not see hidden in plain sight? What is the eschatological or apocalyptic significance of the fig tree? How could the Rabbi overlook this? How could he misread a portion of scripture that was Hebraic in its very essence?

Wayne was also intrigued. Why did Jesus curse the fig tree when by its very nature it could not possibly bear fruit out of season? Of course the tree was 'barren', but only because it was out of season. To be out of season is to be out of history. To be out of season is to be irrelevant. This was Wayne's interpretation. Could the curse that causes the barren tree to wither be a symbolic act that embodies a metaphor of Israel's cultural-social-political irrelevance to the Reign of God, to the Kingdom of God, especially on the threshold of the first century when the entire Mediterranean world was practically under Roman colonial occupation? Was Israel in a state of irreversible spiritual atrophy and decline, a spent force, unable to fulfil its side of the covenant that God had originally made with Abraham? Was Israel doomed? Was this the message of Jesus' dramatic acts of 'street theatre'? In all three synoptic Gospels the fate of the fig tree is linked to the fate of temple, and ultimately to the fate of Israel, and the fate of the Jew. Symbolically the withering fig tree is critically related to the fate of the temple, and the fate of the temple was linked decisively with the future cultural-social-political prospects of first century Judaism as it faced the infinite horizon of history. In Jesus' judgment of the temple, the temple and the temple rituals, and the entire cult of the temple, including its sacrifices' had been found to be barren like a fig tree out of season. It was barren within and out of season. According to Wayne's analysis of the meaning of the fig tree, Judaism is not only barren, but because of its barrenness it is condemned to wither away, into an ahistorical ghetto as it turned increasing inwards on itself, and because of that it will always be out of season, the Jews in the opinion of Wayne are no longer 'in season', they are living outside of history, they have left history, they have become the unseasonable people. He believed strongly that Judaism's season had passed forever. For now it can only exist as a memorial to the past. It can only look back and not forward. It has cut itself loose from history and has been left to drift without direction in an ocean of uncertainty, to be tossed about by violent and unpredictable storms, to be finally shattered and wrecked on the rocks. Because of this the Jew has no home in the world, not even in the land of Palestine, the Jew is condemned to be a wonderer, a stranger, the eternal Other, a people condemned to be oppressed by all nations. I saw this in Yael's eyes in our mutual reciprocal moments of affection and tenderness when we were caught off guard in each other's embrace of vulnerability. It was her destiny to be a Jew, not mine. I could never be a Jew. I was already living in my own state of exile as a radical.

4

By mid-morning after the botany field to Oribi Gorge we were back once more in Durban. Our train to Johannesburg would be departing at five-o-clock so we had time on hand to kill. Walking down West Street to the Marine Parade Yael and myself wanting to be alone together broke away from the rest of the class and the academic staff. It was like going down memory lane. The atmosphere was different. The beaches were empty, the holiday season was over. On the North Beach side of the peer there were some surfers. At the end of the peer there stood a lone fisherman. We walked past the Lido, past the Small Top and stopped by Arlington Beach. Since primary school I had spent so many of my school holidays walking up and down the Marine Parade. I wanted to say something profound about this fact, but I could not think of anything. Being on the Marine Parade out of season made the whole experience different, it was not the same as the experience one has when being on holiday during the holiday season. I was strangely aware of this. I even turned to Yael and asked: 'Doesn't it feel strange being here now?'

She thought for a moment and then agreed with me: 'Yes it does feel strange. It feels empty, different, it does not feel like we are actually on holiday in Durban. We just killing time.'

Being-on-holiday involves the novelty of de-localization and re-embodiment which gives another sense to the experience of the passage of time, to the experience of location or place and the experience of dwelling in that de-localized fantastical geography in which one has become re-embodied with that peculiar holiday-sense-of-self. This is what makes being-on-holiday such a magical experience and gives it that feeling of unreality, the feeling of unreality is brought about by the erasure or the removal or dislocation of that ordinary sense of everydayness that characterises the average or normal state-of-affairs of our daily lived lives while we are at home. To be away from home when home comprises an entire world of being and existence is to be dislocated as in de-localized and to be away from home allows for us to become re-embodied in a different experience of self, different from the self that is being constantly reconstituted and re-shaped by the forces of circumstances and situations that goes with being at home, but another sense of self emerges when we are away from home. By being-on-holiday as a result of de-localization we have placed a distanced not only in terms of space and time between ourselves and but also in terms of the circumstances and situations which characterises the physical, emotional, social and psychological state-of-being-at-home or the-world-of-being-when-at-home. Maybe wanderlust is also connected with these social-psycho dynamics of at-home-ness versus the constant experience of novelty through de-localization and re-embodiment.

5

We turned back. Yael lit up a cigarette. She had tried to cut down on her smoking mainly because I strongly disapproved of smoking, but now she seemed to have given up trying. She had become increasingly curious about Kate during the field trip, she was insatiably inquisitive, always digging for titbits. My alibi was that because Kate was a keen dancer and needed a dancing partner. I had done ballet and modern dancing in Hotazel and in Potchefstroom while in high school as an extramural activity, and I happened to be good on the dance floor, and I enjoyed dancing, and so on and so on, and the long and short of it was that we had become dancing partners, mainly because we had a serious interest in dancing. I was uncomfortable about her buying that dress for me. Kate bought the dress at Stuttafords because I actually did need a decent outfit for a dance competition and I could not bring myself to ask my father for more money on top of all the money that had already been spent on me. My mother would have a fit. Yael wanted to know more about Kate being a lesbian and whether we had an affair. I denied having an affair with Kate. Of course Yael did not believe a word of what I said. My trip overseas with Kate remained a secret. The only person who ever learnt about my affair and my overseas holiday with Kate was Samantha. Samantha was one of those rare persons who you could trust with intimate personal information. I managed to convince Yael that my relationship with Kate had always being strictly Platonic. In spite of all our ups and downs my friendship with Kate has endured, like my friendship with Angelika. There were others in my life that Yael would never know about. I had my secrets and Yael had hers. When it came to the Rabbi I was her secret. There were things that the Rabbi would never know about his own wife. I personally don't like having secrets. But who can we trust? Sometimes the truth is too inconvenient for comfort and it is best left alone. You don't have to poke the snake.

6

To change the subject away from Kate I asked Yael if she had ever visited the Fitzsimons Snake Park. 'No never, I have no fascination for snakes. I think I lean more to botany than zoology. I am not really an animal person. I find viruses, bacteria, fungi, algal, ferns and all the cryptograms more interesting,' she said.

'Kate is my favourite lecturer, she is the best, I really love her, as a lecturer that is,' Yael admitted with mischievous smile play on her lips.

'Yeah, yeah,' I thought in my head. Yael was playing games with me.

'I should have taken Microbiology instead of Zoology,' she mused as she exhaled a cloud of smoke.

'But it is too late now. I am trapped,' she added.

'What do you mean?' I asked.

'You know, being married and all that, I have responsibilities now,' she said smiling ironically.

'Does being married change everything, your personal hopes and dreams, who you are as a person?' I asked.

'It does, I am no longer really me,' she said.

'Who are you really?' I asked.

'You should know, you know me intimately now,' she said.

'I do?'

'Yes you do, since you have made love to me, you know me in the biblical sense of knowing someone. Do you love me?' Yael asked.

'I love you Yael,' I said with conviction.

'I love you too Hannah. I just wish things could be different,' she added, lighting up another cigarette.

'Should we take that walk to the snake park?' Yael suggested.

Walking towards us we spotted the familiar figure of Mrs Raisa Brodsky.

'Oh my God not her, she is going to want to join us,' Yael whispered.

7

Mrs Brodsky was a very cultured, almost aristocratic Jewish woman, who was probably in her sixties and who had emigrated from Russia to South Africa as a young woman. Her English was heavily accented in that typical Eastern European Jewish-Yiddish manner. Except for the compulsory attendance of the third year botany field trip she had completed all the requirements for a BSc degree majoring in botany and now that she had earned that credit she could finally graduate after enrolling as a botany student three years ago when she was in her late fifties or had just turned sixty, anyway she was in her early sixties now. She and her husband owned a chain of hotels and liquor stores in Johannesburg. She had been a keen botanist her entire life, and now she spoke about doing her honours, and then an MSc and finally a PhD in botany.

Anyway she came along with us to the snake park. We caught a bus. Later that evening while we were travelling back to Johannesburg there was a knock on the door of our berth, it turned out to be Mrs Brodsky, she invited us to join her in the dining coach for dinner.

After we had sat down at our table Wayne arrived. Seeing the unoccupied seat next to Mrs Brodsky he asked if he may join us. When the soup arrived he asked whether we would mind if he said grace before we ate.

Immediately Mrs Brodsky answered: 'Yes, why not, go ahead my dear.'

Bowing his head he prayed in Hebrew:

Ba-ruch a-tah a-do-noi

elo-hai-nu me-lech ha-o-lam

ha-mo-tzi le-chem min ha-a-retz...

(Blessed are You, L-rd our G d, King of the Universe, Who brings forth bread from the earth...)

Mrs Brodsky bowed her head and closed her eyes. I glanced at Yael while Wayne prayed. Her eyes remained open. When she saw me looking at her she raised her eyebrows and rolled her eyes.

8

After our first night of love in the train I had no doubt that Yael had woken up to the reality that she was a lesbian, that she was queer, that she was completely homosexual. I was her safe harbour, and her first real love, she had never experience real love before this. On the night journey back to Johannesburg, lying in the dark next to Yael while holding her hand I listened while she tried explain her situation regarding her marriage to the Rabbi and my heart ached for her. On the field trip I fallen deeply in love with Yael and felt protective towards her. In fact we were now desperately in love, but there was a strange unreality about the situation. In our intimate moments when we were alone she began to hint that I should come to Shul and that her husband the Rabbi would surely sponsor my conversion. She was also sure that he would have a positive influence on the Rabbinate who would constitute the Beth Din which controls the gateway to the waters of the mikveh in which my submersion would miraculously transform me into a Jew. I could initiate the whole process by attending Shul and begin observing the Shabbat. If I started observing the Shabbat I would have practically crossed the first hurdle in converting. It was her belief that if I converted to Judaism and became a Jew then it would be as if we were married, we would be bound together forever in the bonds of our love for each other, because it was only as Jews that we could be together, that is, being really together in the most meaningful way possible. She did not say this, but it was obvious. There was something so desperate about her plan. In the eyes of her husband I would be like her sister, her best and dearest friend, her friend for life. And then she hit on the crazy idea that once I had converted I could possibly move in with them, her and the Rabbi. They would build a cottage for me in the yard. It seemed to me that Yael was going insane. For a moment I found her plan tempting. Then I said: 'Surely I will have to make an oath of religious belief before the Beth Din?' 'Why would that be a problem?' She asked incredulously. 'Well I believe that Jesus was God incarnate'. She answered: 'If there is a God, and God is really God, then nothing, not even the Beth Din can prevent God from being anyone He chooses to be including Jesus, it is as simple as that, I can't imagine that God would really be upset with you for wanting to become a Jew, if this is really a problem for you, then for your own peace of mind regarding the actual truth about who God really is, then could you pray to God confirming your belief in that truth while at the same time expressing your heartfelt desire to be a Jew. Even if you became a Jew you could still believe in your heart that God is indeed Jesus, so I don't see any reason why becoming a Jew would upset God, God knows what is in our hearts and he knows what you are thinking every moment and he knows with certainty what you really believe, so you can't fool God, but you can fool the Beth Din!' So this would be Yael's solution to the dilemma of me misrepresenting myself to the Beth Din. In Yael's mind I would strike this deal with God: Let me become a Jew so that I could have Yael as my lesbian lover, and whatever oath of belief I would have make before the Beth Din, I will still secretly believe that you are Jesus. In Yael's atheist mind she believed my problem was a non-problem, and the solution to my non-problem lay simply in an exercise of make-belief and pretence.

9

For the sake of our love I went to Shul every week until Yael broke up with me. I went to Shul to be with her and because I was in love with her. Ironically I went to Shul because Jesus said: 'Salvation is from the Jews.'

But I had no desire to convert to Judaism, in fact I had a strong antipathy towards Judaism as a religion and I could not see myself as a Jew. I did not want to become a member of a race or an ethnic group, I was happy to be without an identity that was anchored in the history of a people who self-identified as Jews. For the sake of our relationship while it lasted I went to Shul, but I made no effort to keep the Shabbat, I only pretended to keep the Sabbath. She kept on urging me to speak to her husband the Rabbi about my desire to convert. She had confused my love for her with my conversion becoming a natural and inevitable consequence of my love for her. I was going through the motions of being Jewish just to be with her, just to please her and make her happy. In the end it was a relief when our relationship ended. It was a release, even though it was so incredibly painful. I could be myself again. Jesus was once more my brother, my father, my husband, my lover, he was the only man that I could fall in love with. To love Jesus not like the evangelicals or the Christian fundamentalists profess, but to love him like Mary Magdalene loved him. To love Jesus was to love God the creator of the Universe, the only way we could love God was to cling to the man Jesus. For me to love God was the highest form of erotic love that could be attained by a finite being. Ultimately authentic erotic love could only be completely fulfilled in the erotic love of the Good. As Saint Augustine wrote Eros and the Good belong together, and God is the Good, so Eros and God belong together, the Hebraic and the Hellenic, belong together as the two sides of the same coin, and the currency of that coin is Christianity. When I run these ideas past Yael her typical Jewish answer was: 'So Plato and Moses were the first Christians!' My answer with a smile was: 'Yes except Plato was not present at the Transfiguration on the Mount.' Her reply: 'And which Mount may that be?' 'Why, Mount Sinai, my dear!'

It had become increasingly painful for me to go to Shul and be forced to listen to the Rabbi while having this 'ironic knowledge' that salvation was from the Jews. That salvation was from the Jews was a Christian belief. Jesus himself said salvation was from the Jews! Had the Rabbi not read that passage from the Gospel of John? Had the Rabbi not read the Gospel of Matthew? In the Gospel of Matthew it is apparent that the Gentiles wishing to follow Jesus where encouraged to convert to Judaism in order to become a true believer in Jesus the Messiah. Why would he use the story of the withered fig tree to dismiss Jesus and the message that he was preaching, not only did the Rabbi dismiss Jesus but he also implied that Jesus was inferior to Socrates? Jesus consistently acknowledged his own Jewishness. He did not deny his Jewishness. Of course Jew and Christian have been at enmity over Jesus for 2 000 years. We have been at enmity with each other over the real identity and significance of a single Jew, over the identity and significance of that Jew. It was completely ironical that a single Jewish individual, who was the King of the Jews according to Pontius Pilate, who was executed on a Roman cross at Golgotha, that this Jew had now become the centre of our historical enmity. This same Jew informs us Christians: 'Salvation is from the Jews'. This is the creed of the Christian, our salvation is from the Jews, it is a gift from the Jews. While sitting in Shul it was difficult for me to digest this hard truth. Here were all these Jews holding the salvation of the human race in their hands and they were completely unaware of their huge eschatological responsibility. Through God Abraham founded a nation who became the Jews, a nation which was supposed to become a blessing to all nations and this blessing conferred by God through the Jews on all other nation would be their adoption as Abraham's children. The Jews were God's appointed mediators of his salvation and his blessings on the whole of humanity. What an awful responsibility! And what horrible consequences may flow from their failure to fulfil their soteriological, covenantal and prophetic obligations. Was not God the God of all nations? Did not God care for all nations? Was not his salvation for all nations? Just think of the story of Jonah and the people of Nineveh, and of course the story of Naaman the Syrian. There were lots of lepers in Israel, but God decided to heal Naaman, a non-Israelite of leprosy. Salvation is from the Jews. But God chose to save the Ninevites from certain destruction and God chose to heal the Gentile Naaman. God chooses those he wishes to save even though salvation is from the Jews.

10

During this time I read and re-read the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, it was a time of incredible soul searching. In the Gospel of John the idea of a new place for the followers of Jesus is made clear. This place is the entire world in all of its universality, it is not a specific place, it is not Canaan or Israel, the place is everywhere, it is the whole world, it is the entire Universe, it is the entire realm of reality, it is not a localized geography, it is a place that transcends localized space and time. This is the Promised Land, which is the house of many mansions, the house of infinite dimensions, the home where Jesus was preparing a place for us who have decided to follow him. So why would I want become a member of a specific ethnic group, a specific nation linked to a specific island of land, living outside of history? We read in the Gospel of John 14:2-12 (NIV):

2 "My Father's house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going." 5 Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" 6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." 8 Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." 9 Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? 10 Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father."

11

And of course we have the ironical reading of the Gospel of Matthew, which from a literary perspective represents a Midrashic repetition of the essence of the Torah. Yes, obey my laws and teachings, for I am the Lord your God. I demand respect from the people of Israel, so don't disgrace my holy name. Remember, I am the one who chose you to be priests and rescued all of you from Egypt, so that I would be your Lord. (Leviticus 22:32). Don't disgrace my holy name. (Leviticus 22:32). Listen, Israel! The Lord our God is the only true God! The Lord God is ONE. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength. Memorize his laws and read them to your children over and over again. Talk about them all the time, whether you're at home or walking along the road or going to bed at night, or getting up in the morning. Write down copies and tie them to your wrists and foreheads to help you obey them. Write these laws on the door frames of your homes and on your town gates (Deuteronomy 4: 6 – 9).This is how you are supposed to love God, to be constantly aware of his Word and Will which is the Law, the Torah, and the whole of the Tanakh. But when you have eaten so much that you can't eat any more, don't forget it was the Lord who set you free and brought you out of Egypt. Worship and obey the Lord your God with fear and trembling, and promise that you will be loyal to him.

And I remember that our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and we have learnt to put our trust in the Word of God, and so we read in the book of Deuteronomy 4 from verse 10 onwards: 'The Lord promised your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that he would give you this land. Now he will take you there and give you large Cities and large towns, with good buildings that you didn't build, and houses full of good things that you didn't put there. The Lord will give you wells that you didn't have to dig, and vineyards and olive orchards that you didn't need to plant. But when you have eaten so much that you can't eat anymore, don't forget it was the Lord who set you free from slavery and brought you out of Egypt. Worship and obey the Lord your God with fear and trembling, promise that you will be loyal to him. Don' have anything to do with gods that are worshipped by nations around you. If you worship other gods, the Lord will be furious and wipe you off the face of the earth. The Lord your God is with you, so don't try to make him prove that he can help you, as you did at Massah. Do not put God or the Word of God to the test'. In the Book of Leviticus in the Torah it can be read: 'I command you to show respect for older people and to obey me with fear and trembling'. 'Memorize his laws, and tell them to your children over and over again, whether you're at home or walking along the road or going to bed at night, or getting up in the morning'. 'Cleave always to those who know him. As it is written in Deuteronomy: Respect the Lord your God, serve him only, and make promises in his name alone'. . 'Someday a prophet may come along who is able to perform miracles and tell you what will happen in the future. Then the prophet may say, 'Let's start worshipping some new gods – some gods, that we know nothing about'. If the prophet says, this don't listen!' It has been said in the Torah that no commandment of the Torah should be taken away, modified, revoked, removed or erased. The laws of the Torah as it is stands forever from all eternity as the Word of God.

12

Know your Bible, both Old and New Testament. It seems that God's covenant with Israel made at Mount Sinai stands. The Law of Moses remains binding. Not even the smallest iota of Torah can be changed. The New Testament Gospel of Matthew 5:17-32 (New International Version (NIV)) makes the fulfilment of the Torah a non-negotiable obligation. That much is clear from Jesus' own Midrash of Torah which can be read as follows:

17 "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. 21 "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, 'Raca,' is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell. 23 "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you. 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift. 25 "Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. 27 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.'28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell .30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. "It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.' 32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. 33 "Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but fulfil to the Lord the vows you have made.' 34 But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37 All you need to say is simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. 38 "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.'39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.43 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

13

It is worth emphasizing, Jesus proclaimed: 'For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished'. In the original Greek text of the Gospel of Matthew uses the phrase 'not one iota' which has been translated into English as 'not the smallest letter,' I think a case can be made that the original Gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew from within the community of Jews who were followers of Jesus and this would be consistent with the view that the Greek letter iota in the Greek translation was derived from the Hebrew letter yod. Yod which is as small as the little finger and is shaped like a little finger was derived from the Hebrew word yod (יד) which means 'hand' because it is shaped like a little finger, and because it is so small scribes were tempted to omit it from text so as to save space. And Jesus as a typical Jewish sage made this Midrashim to emphasize that the whole Torah was binding on the Jew. Yod as the smallest and most trivial letter in the Hebrew alphabet should never be left out of the Torah. 'Even not one yod will pass from the law' means that not even the smallest detail may be eliminated from the Torah. Thus Gospel of Matthew makes an ironical claim. For a Gentile to follow Jesus, means becoming a 'spiritual' Jew.

14

Since the age of Homer under that peculiar prevailing cultural climate which reigned in the ancient Mediterranean world, a cultural climate characterized by the complete absence of a coherent theory of truth or science of history, truth and particularly 'historical truth' always seemed to be seamlessly inseparable from ideology, fiction, tales, myth, legends, genealogies, folklore and sagas. For the Greeks and the Romans and also with the Hebrews, history seemed to merge with a distant mythic past. And consequently it should not seem strange when it was taken for granted in the ancient Mediterranean world that a nation's ancestral lineage could go all the way back to Adam and Eve or Abraham or even Romulus and Remus. The critical or subversive questioning of the historicity of ancestors and founding events was not something which was seriously entertained in the mind and imagination of the Jewish scribal elite during the Babylonian Exile, nor during the post-Exile Second Temple period nor after the destruction of the Second Temple and the Roman sacking of Jerusalem. It was possible that only the Greeks and Romans possessed the mind and imagination to question the historicity of a nation's ancestors and it founding events.

In this context it is ironical that Celsus' critical writings disputing the resurrection of Jesus could only survive for prosperity in the writings of the Origin, one of the Fathers of the early Church. If it were not for Origin we would have no idea of what was passing through the mind of writers like Celsus. We have to read the Church Fathers in order to find out what the ancient enemies of the Church thought about Christianity. It was in the shallow unforgiving sun-parched arid earth of the Mediterranean, a soil encrusted with deep-set stratigraphic layers of fiction, myth, tales, folklore, sagas, genealogies and legend, which the Gospel, Letters and Epistles had survived, establishing their own roots in the same cultural substrate among the choking weeds of fabulous fictions, myths and legends. Origin himself as the defender of the veracity of the writings of the New Testament was in turn sceptical about the historicity of the war in Troy between the Greeks and the Trojans. In saying all of this, what is the real point which I am trying to make? What I am saying is that the subject matter of the Gospels, Letters and Epistles were written and took root in the first century, before the destruction of Jerusalem, in a literate, intellectually critical and sophisticated Hellenistic and Roman urban environment. It was a social environment in which there existed a heathy scepticism regarding the truthfulness of various kinds of historical, fictional and mythological narratives. Many of these narratives had been in circulation for hundreds of years becoming in the process fairly well entrenched in the minds of popular culture. Yet they were known to be fictitious, and yet in spite of this, they were read as mirrors of reality unveiled, revealing what lay behind the mere appearances of life. So why did the Gospels not also eventually succumb to the same kind of literary fate which befell much of the Greek and Roman literary legacy? It must have been that the public memory of the historical Jesus was a living one which endured with a lively freshness as it spread by word of mouth, and the news that he had risen from the dead ignited the world. The realization struck home, God had tarried awhile with us and now he has gone to prepare a place for us and he has sent the Comforter. Yes Jesus has risen, he has wiped our sins away. Oh happy day! My Lord, Yeshua Hamashiach, the roaring lion of Judah! The news spread, it spread like an infectious contagion of hope mingled with cosmic wonder, it spread like a viral epidemic, it burnt with the blazing virulence of an unstoppable plague, not even the might of the Roman empire could smother the rising flames witness, belief, conversion and certitude of faith across the Mediterranean, from city, to village, to homesteads, a new community was born.

Chapter 10: Sodwana Bay Adventure

1

In the July school holidays of 1965 when I was ten years old we went on a family holiday to Sodwana Bay in the Land Rover that my dad had just finishing rebuilding from scratch. At night while he was working on the Land Rover in the garage I would join him, passing him tools and generally speaking his head off. I knew he loved my company and he listened attentively to what I had to say. I don't how many times I said to him 'I love you daddy', and he would always answer: 'I love you too Hannetjie'.

My dad was the only person who was allowed to call me Hannetjie. Everyone else had to call me Hannah.

We left Hotazel at 2.00 am for Sodwana Bay but later that morning our Land Rover broke down in Springs. It was a disappointing anti-climax to the start of our holiday. Here we were stranded seven hours later at ten in the morning in Springs of all places. The generator had burnt out and we were informed by the motor spares shop that we would only get the new generator at about midday the next day. So for the next 24 hours we would be stranded in the central business district of Springs while we waited for the delivery of a new generator. I was surprised to hear that Springs was a city. But the prospect of having to spend the next twenty four hours stranded on the streets of a city at the far end of East Rand like Springs felt like having to endure an excruciating eternity in purgatory. 'Twenty four hours! How can anyone wait out twenty four hours with nothing to do except wait?' I moaned bitterly.

My father the eternal optimist made good use of our immobilized situation as an opportunity to educate us about the noteworthy architectural features of the façades of the surrounding buildings, the mute porticoes which surrounded us from a bygone era, from which there was no escape while we remained held up in our involuntary imprisonment in this strange far-flung East Rand city built on the back of the now receding gold rush. Initially when my father graduated from high school he wanted to study architecture at The University of the Witwatersrand, but he ended up studying for a BSc degree in mechanical engineering. However, he maintained a layman's interest in architectural design. I was surprised when on our way to look for a place where we could have a sit down breakfast he pointed out the characteristic 1930s art deco architecture style of many of the buildings. They were clearly identifiable by their distinctive fasciae, motifs and embellishments which had first became fashionable in the 1920s in Paris. The message that stuck in my mind was the fact that the central business district of Springs had many architectural features which it shared with Paris. Paris had come to Springs of all places! To my ten year old view of the nature of the South Africa urban world, whether it be the City of Durban or the central business district of Johannesburg, both environs which were familiar to me, this seemed to be so incongruous. 'How could Springs share any likeness with the City of Paris?' I asked with a scowl on my face, a scowl which made my father laugh. Anyway, my scepticism did not deter him, he was on a mission and we were his captive audience, and so he went on to explain that the great gold rush which erupted at the turn of the century on the most extensive and richest gold fields ever discovered in the history of gold mining had facilitated almost overnight the de novo creation of the modernist Witwatersrand cities and towns in the very heart of the vast Highveld plains of South Africa. Town and cities which bore in the architecture designs of their buildings and houses features which had been transplanted directly without any indigenous adaptations from England and Europe. The lesson which I had leant while we stranded in Springs was that the modernist architectural renaissance of the heady 1920s and 1930s following the devastation of the First World War had left its faint imprint like a fading echo of bygone age on the gold mining city of Springs.

2

On that frozen July morning the blocks of aging relics of modernist art deco architecture from the so-called age of modernism meant nothing to a modern kid like me as we braced ourselves against the icy head wind that whipped through the streets of Springs as we followed the directions to a café with a 'tea room' that served breakfast as well. After we sat down Malcolm asked why the buildings were called art deco. My teeth were chattering and I felt the deep chill in my bones, but I wanted to hear what our dad, a man full of surprises, had to say about these buildings which were now bathed in the weak sunlight of the Southern Hemisphere winter at the bottom of the African continent.

He said the buildings had a peculiar artistic construction in which the geometry of curves and lines were fashioned to capture the essence of progress, science, technology and everything that represents the dynamic and progressive modern world which has come of age in our century, the twentieth century. He said the buildings were modelled on the geometric shapes and forms of motor cars, aeroplanes, ships and great machines. He said we were lucky to be living in a modern world, the world of modernity, in which progress never ceased to advance, where the old rapidly gave way to the new. It was in one of these architectural monuments to modernity and progress that we had found a café that could serve breakfast an English breakfast of bacon and eggs. Apart from the previous occasions that we had sit down meals in the dining halls of hotels, this was the first time that we as a family had eaten out. While we ate breakfast Dad examined the roadmap that he had got from the Automobile Association (AA). His forefinger traced out for us the road to Ermelo, Piet Retief, Pongola, Jozini, the Lebombo Mountains and finally the road that cut through the Savannahs of the great Makatini Flats to our destination Sodwana Bay.

It was well into the night when we reached the gravel road which would take us over the Lebombo Mountains. It had started to rain and the road had become muddy and slippery, and on many of the winding turns and steep inclines the Land Rover skidded quite treacherously. I sat in the front with dad, everyone else was asleep. Dad's cool head and driving skill got us safely over the mountain pass. It was past midnight as we drove deep into the darkness of the pristine Makatini Savannahs along a two track road which seemed to have no bends. In the beams of the bright headlights the rain had subsided to a light drizzle. I sat up alert scanning the road ahead for the luminous eyes of any wild animal. But unlike our many Kalahari night journeys we did not see a single animal next to the road or on the road. I felt extremely disappointed. Just before dawn we decided to stop at a remote trading store in order to catch up with some sleep. After 8.00 am we continued our journey into the rolling plains of the coastal grasslands. In the distance lay the dune forests and behind the dune forests the rolling swells of the vast Indian Ocean crashed onto the beaches of the long subtropical Natal coastline.

3

After an absence of ten years I am back in Sodwana Bay. So much has happened within these ten years. The twenty fours that we had to wait for the generator in Springs seemed like an eternity. But the ten years that have gone by since 1965 seemed to have passed in a flash and so much has happened within these ten years. That thought did actually cross mind when I was walking with Janet on the beach. I thought to myself then: 'Wow, ten years ago I was here and in ten years Sodwana has changed so much.'

It was our turn to stay behind while the others left in the dinghy for the Two Mile Reef. We watched them launch the dinghy after they started the outboard motor. Cedric the skipper skilful navigated the dinghy through the heavy surf of crashing the breakers.

Yael had broken up with me. She was pregnant with the Rabbi's child. And now I had become infatuated the Janet. Was I on the rebound? We set up our umbrella, spread out our towels, smeared on the sunblock and put on our sunglasses and broad brimmed straw beach hats. It was low tide and the sun climbed rapidly on its way to the zenith. Two olive green army Bedford trucks belching clouds of diesel smelling black exhaust fumes, packed with citizen force soldiers, emerged dripping from the yellowish coloured waters of the shallow lagoon. The lagoon was the only access by means of which vehicles could get to the beach. From early in the morning the traffic of four by four bakkies (SUVs) emerging from the lagoon towing ski boats on trailers seemed endless. Following the early morning launching of the Wits Diving Club dinghy we watched the launching of ski boat after ski boat into the churning white surf which lifted the ski boats like bucking broncos as the fishermen cranked the outboard motors. The early morning air on the beach reverberated with the deafening roar of outboard motors been revved against the constant onrush of booming surf.

Now the beach was quiet again. For a while the only sounds that broke the mid-morning silence were the calls of seagulls and the ever present background drone surf. The peaceful tranquillity that had settled on the beach was not going to last for very long. Some of the citizen force soldiers ran off with their surf boards to take advantage of the rising swells advancing against the retreating tide. Soldiers sitting close by in small groups began chatting like troops of baboons while leering shamelessly at our black Speedo encased torsos.

Ignoring the soldiers we retrieved our reading material from our bags and began to catch up with some reading. But before we could make any headway with our reading three tall figures arrived in front of our umbrella. They stood before us blocking out our sun, casting their shadows over us. While gazing up at the men one of them began to speak.

'We see that your boyfriends have left you behind today.'

On hearing this stupid remark I suddenly began to feel extremely annoyed that they had the temerity to invade our privacy and still pester us with their stupidity. It was enough that we had to put up with gawking baboons on the side lines. Initially we were tempted to pack up and move to another spot. But I could not bear to listen to their whistling and cat calling if we stood up and gathered our things, so we stayed put, laying low, ignoring them with our noses buried in our books. So I snapped at the three:

'They are not our boyfriends, we have no interest in boys, we are queer we are only into women!'

Janet laughed. She thought I was making a sarcastic put down. They turned out to be students from Tukkies who had been spear fishing in the waters around the rocks and they obviously knew that we were members of the Wits Diving Club. I could see that the three were caught off guard by my blunt remark and my abrasive manner. With an apologetic tone of voice one of them said:

'We don't mind if the two of you are queer, we just wanted to let you know that some guy who owns a ski boat has offered to take us to Nine Mile Reef in his boat so that we can do some spear fishing there, and also check out the reef, and we thought that maybe the two of you might want to join us.'

In my own mind it was obvious that they were making a move on Janet and me. After making our acquaintances we learnt that two of them were final year medical students and the third was studying to be a dominee in the NG Church. We had been scuba diving off Two Mile Reef and that was where the Wits Diving Club were scuba diving. We had heard a lot of stories about Nine Mile Reef and it seemed like an opportunity not to be missed. So we told them to wait for us while we took our stuff back to our camp. Fifteen minutes later we joined them with our diving gear for snorkelling and spear fishing.

4

After negotiating through the barrier of rolling white surf we were finally past the line of breakers and the open ocean lay before us. With the twin outboard motors screaming at full throttle the ski boat planed over the surface of the waters, sometimes bumping up and down with a thumping sound as it skimmed almost clear out of the water over the crests of choppy patches of sea, creating huge showers of white spray. We could only communicate with each other by shouting above the noise of the engines. It was the first time that I had ever been on a ski boat.

At Nine Mile Reef, we had barely been in the water for more than half an hour when we noticed the skipper waving his arms frantically to get our attention. Swimming back to the boat I noticed it was lying unusually low in the sea and water was sloshing over the sides into boat, my heart skipped a beat, it seemed that the ski boat was going to sink. We were nine miles from Sodwana Bay and just under one kilometre from the shore. The boat was taking up water into its hull. Diving under the boat we discovered that the plastic screw-in plug for draining water which had accumulated in the hull have been removed. The plug hole was between the two engines almost flush with bottom of the hull. It did not seem that the boat was going to sink immediately and they could beach the boat on the shore off Nine Mile Reef. They had already sent an SOS message to Sodwana Bay and a convoy of four by four bakkies (one with a trailer) were on the way. We decided to swim back to the shore as the boat would sink with all of us on board. They started up the engines. We followed the boat as it chugged sluggishly over the reef back towards the distant beach. Close to the shore the swell was high and the breakers were huge. Unable to escape the powerful under tug of a massive breaker that had curled up like a towering cliff behind the boat, the boat plunged nose down the sheer incline of the wave into the deep valley of the trough just as the wave collapsed over the boat burying it an avalanche of boiling white surf, which ripped and pulled at the boat with the violence of an angry sea monster, the boat rolled over and over in the surf as it was swept away towards the beach. Miraculously the two engines had not been ripped off and lost in the sea. Several bakkies eventually pitched up and we managed to get a lift on the back of one of the bakkies back to Sodwana Bay.

5

After the adrenaline rush of our adventure had subsided I sensed with the keenness of finely tuned antennae that an unmistakeable mutual homoerotic attraction had formed between Janet and myself. While sitting close together with our wet bums on the sand, enjoying the pleasant sensations arising from the physical contact of our bodies we continued to engage in an excited and lively reliving of the Nine Mile Reef experience. I put my arm round Janet's shoulder and she leaned her head against my shoulder. I kissed her softly on her salty cheek and she turned her faced and smiled. Pouting my lips slightly I kissed her on the lips. We held hands and sat in silence watching the rolling swells of the incoming tide.

She asked about Yael. She knew about us and had seen us together on campus. I told her that Yael was married and was pregnant and that she had broken off the relationship, possibly because she could not envisage us being together. In turn, I asked her about Nathan Coetzee her boyfriend. She replied:

'He is lovely, sweet, gentle and sensitive and I really care a lot for him, and I definitely don't want to hurt him, but then you know how things can become so very complicated. It feels so nice being like this with you, and it was never like this with him. I have not had sex with him or anyone before for the matter. Believe it or not I am a perfect virgin. He is a very serious Catholic and has been so respectful toward me, it was almost comical. Maybe it would be better for him to become a priest, he would make such a wonderful priest.'

'And you, could see yourself as nun?' I asked, feeling a bit whimsical.

'I have had a Catholic upbringing, I went to an all girl's convent, and to be honest I did at one stage consider becoming a nun after a visiting nun from Ireland spoke to us about becoming a nun. She had visited Catholic communities all over the world encouraging young women to pray about entering the novitiate. She spoke about young Indian women in India who expressed keen interest in becoming nuns'.

'The Church would never have got off the ground without the sisterhood of believers. The biggest irony about Christianity is that it is a women's religion and this fact has been overlooked, suppressed and erased,' I said.

'That is why the blessed virgin is such an iconic symbol and role model for Catholic women,' Janet added.

'I think Catholicism has imposed a construction of Mary on the Church that is not rooted in the historical Jewish Mary? I think the appellation of virgin is unfortunate. Jesus had siblings, he had brothers, so I cannot imagine Mary not enjoying having lots of sex with Joseph. There was nothing else for them to do at night except fuck,' I said.

'Do you think that many of the women that followed Jesus were lesbians?' Janet asked.

'I would not be surprised. I would also not be surprised if many of the women who were linked to Saint Paul's mission work were also lesbians.'

'Maybe Christianity is the religion of lesbians,' Janet said laughing.

'Yeah, maybe.'

Later that night, we got slightly tipsy after having a few slugs of Southern Comfort while sitting round the fire at our camp site. Wanting to be alone together we decided to leave the lads who were engaged in army talk and spinning yarns about their diving adventures, and go on a night walk along the beach. Taking a blanket with us we set off through the dark dune forest to the beach.

On the beach under the light of hurricane gas lamps the men had purged the outboard motors with litres of oil to prevent sea corrosion of the piston, cylinders, and all working parts. Now they were cranking the two engines like crazy and too my amazement they actually managed to start both engines after they had been submerged in the churning surf. It was a feat that my father as a mechanical engineer would appreciate and admire.

The Southern Comfort, the cool sea breeze, the sound of the rolling surf, the rising moon all conspired with the many secrets which lay hidden within the voluptuous bosom of the night, secrets which included our breathless love making as we climbed that magic mountain with Janet experiencing who first orgasm ever as she discovered that paradise of pleasure which existed in the valley between her own thighs.

6

Of course the discourses articulated by every postmodernism project turns on the axis or pivot or fulcrum of some central or founding idea. The distinguishing difference between postmodern discourses and other discourses such as science, is that postmodern discourses are non-self-correcting, and this makes them dogmatic. The way I understand Foucault's intellectual project is as follows: Foucault's founding idea or central idea that underpins all of his thinking is actually very simple. His founding idea that structures his thinking can be stated as follows: the different forms or disciplines of discourse all emerge within some kind of institutional framework or within some kind of context or economic-social-political-cultural setting which not only provides the conditions of possibility for the production of the various kinds of 'knowledge' which becomes articulated within the discourses of that age or milieu or epoch but also controls or exercises power over the same discourses with respect to what can become known or what counts as the contents of knowledge or what can emerge as new knowledge. So power controls the content of knowledge or what can be known or can emerge as new knowledge. Power controls the production of knowledge with respect to its content. Power controls that the saying of something about something. So it is the existence and dynamics of power relations within society or operating immanently within societal institutions, whether personal or impersonal, which controls the content of knowledge or the nature of the knowledge produced within the various institutional settings or systems of institutionalized relationships. Power relationships mediated through the agency of institutions determines the scope, reference and content of knowledge. Really? And it is this what makes the content or subject matter of all discourse and knowledge relative to the dynamics of power and control through the exercise of power. So what we believe or think we know is always shaped by external powers and controls exerted through the institutional systems and institutional based agencies which determine or provide or mediate the conditions of possibility for the production of discourses concerning the known and knowable. What is knowable or what can be known or what can be the object or content of knowledge or the field of knowledge or the field that demarcates the objects of knowledge is subject to these systemic/institutionalized controls through the powers and agencies vested within institutions. These institutional powers and agencies mediate or control or determine not only the production of knowledge, but also the content of that knowledge and the nature of that knowledge. This view in essence shares many similarities with Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science in which paradigms exert control over the scientific discourse within the scientific community of practitioners regarding what is known and knowable or what is true. Knowledge is then always determined or mediated by relationships of power within some kind of institutional setting or framework. This idea of the relationship between Power and Knowledge, with Power play a critical role in the mediation and shaping of content of knowledge, also suffers from all the deficiencies and short comings of Thomas Kuhn's image of science and the production of knowledge. How do we account for the institutional mediated self-correction of false hypotheses and theories or the growth of new knowledge which undermines previous claims? The peer review system may function as the gate keeper of what gets published and what enters the public domain as a credible contribution to the advancement or growth of knowledge, but reviewers and referees do not have power to ultimately prevent new knowledge or novel findings from ever being published. Competing schools of thought, theories or ideas constantly find their way into journals. The jury cannot be rigged all the time. Everyone gets a chance to serve on the jury as a gate keeper of what gets published. The actual realities of intellectual labour in the pursuit of knowledge differs sharply from what Kuhn and Foucault believe.

The theses put forward by Foucault and Kuhn have deficiencies, contradictions and short comings which provide grounds for concluding that what Foucault and Kuhn are claiming to be the case is obviously not true or in other words – not the case. They are making fake claims about how knowledge is generated. Nor is the existence of epistemic relativity the rule in the life of the mind. The widespread or universal existence and occurrence of comparative reviews or critique of ideas in which we see the realization of the open or public contestation of the relative merits of conflicting ideas is the characteristic institutional dialectical dynamic which underpins all modern intellectual discourses and it is the actual existence of this state of affairs which conclusively refutes the Foucaultian and Kuhnian thesis of power controlling discourse or controlling what can be known or controlling the content and production of knowledge. Given that conflicting ideas can co-exist does not by itself make knowledge relative. Kuhn and Foucault have cleverly contrived a portrayal of the knowledge production enterprise which is based on their preconceived and ideologically motivated ideas of the nature of the knowledge production enterprise.

Contrary to Kuhn and Foucault, in the form of multiple discursive platforms, from the lecture theatre to the conference symposium, institutionalized facilitated conflict or contestation between opposing ideas has actuality always existed, and in actual reality it has always been present as the real immanent 'motive power' or the engine or mechanism or the norm for the self-correction of scientific discourses on the nature of reality, and which also constantly undermines the control of discourse or the control of what can be known or what constitutes the content of knowledge. Conflict over the merits of competing or opposing ideas has been institutionalized within scientific discourse as the rule rather than the exception. Conflict and competition and contestation within the institutionalized market place of ideas is what drives the self-correction of scientific discourse – and this reality contradicts the claims of both Foucault and Kuhn. So we can dismiss the founding claims of Foucault as having no basis in the realities of actual knowledge practices within the community or society of scientists working within their institutional settings and disciplines.

The case of Derrida is a bit more subtle and his project cannot be as simply dismissed in the way that I have dismissed Lyotard and Foucault. But still, Derrida's ideas are also similarly infected with the logical problem of self-referentiality that is also the characteristic incurable self-defeating logic we see in the works of Lyotard and Foucault. Every time I have brought this up during question time at seminars I have been dismissed as an ignoramus. Putting Lyotard and Foucault aside I would like to revisit Descartes as a kind of detour into what interests me as a zoologist.

7

The Cartesian dualism is based on some sort of physical and material separation of the mind and from the body, with the body viewed as a machine. As I have already stated, Descartes in his own thinking had fixed a chasm between animals and humans. In doing so he had by implication also fixed a chasm in his philosophy, or metaphysics if you like, between machine and mind, and in the way he saw things, machines could only exist as mindless or unthinking automatons. An automaton does not possess consciousness as one of its properties or capacities or powers or dispositions. If the human body is a machine what does it take for a machine to become conscious and to be able to think reflectively and to be able to deliberate, reason, and to consciously or mindfully carry out chains of logical inferences from premises and assumptions to conclusions? Can a man-made or human-engineered machine ever achieve this capacity? Is it possible that thinking robots will ever be created? Automation of simple tasks is already a technological reality. Machines have replaced workers in factories. Mechanization can replace human labour for many productive processes in industry and agriculture. What is the difference between a complex machine and an animal? Animals are sentient beings and apparently machines are not or can never be. Animals demonstrate an awareness of their environment and a capacity to learn so they are not 'mindless' or 'unthinking' automatons. Contrary to Descartes we know with unassailable certainty that there is no chasm, physical or metaphysical, or differences in kind, that separates humans from animals. Instead the differences between humans and animals is always in terms of degree and not one of kind, indicating that a seamless continuity rather than a chasm exists between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. The continuity between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom embodies the idea of continuity in terms of relatedness and similarity and homology (both genotypic and phenotypic). We are related to all animals in the sense that we share a common ancestor. Humans and the rest of the metazoans making up the multicellular animals have descended from a common ancestor. This makes our phenotypic differences, including our minds or our capacities for reflective states of conscious awareness, differences of degree and not of kind. We are the same kind of things. How does this relate to the emergence of mind and consciousness?

The short answer would that when the following elements: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, chloride, calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, zinc, cobalt, iodine, and so on, become the elemental building blocks or elemental constituents of a self-initiating, self-evolving, self-organizing and self-replicating macromolecular polymeric machine-like complex or configuration then the emergence of sentient awareness, consciousness, intelligence and mind becomes almost a certain inevitability. Each element possesses law-like dispositional properties or dispositional powers and when the different elements are combined covalently and ionically into complex macromolecular biopolymers, the biopolymers acquire new dispositional powers such as a catalytic agency for transforming substrates into products or mobility such as in rotational or translational molecular machine-like behaviour or the capacity to transduce and amplify various kinds of physical or chemical input signals. To cut a long story short awareness or mind or consciousness or intelligence or even purposeful or goal directed behaviour emerges as an observable phenomenon across the entire animal kingdom from the protozoan to humans. Awareness, consciousness, intelligence and mind are all physical effects caused by an interconnected chain of events in which biopolymers and biomolecules participate as catalytic agents or as agents with the capacity for directed rotation or translation mobility, or as agents for signal transduction and amplification, or as agents for the transformation of substrates into products through the process of biocatalysis.

I am not a biophysicist, but I have a deep interest in biophysics. I am not a hard core reductionist, but I believe that a co-ordinated and directional system of intermolecular and intramolecular motion underlies in a causal mechanistic fashion the emergence of awareness, consciousness, intelligence and ultimately the phenomenon of mind itself. The entities involved or participating in this co-ordinated system of intermolecular and intramolecular motion are macro-biopolymers such as proteins and nucleic acids. At the molecular level motion is the predominating reality. It is the continual motions of electrons, nuclei, atoms and molecules that underlies biological reality. Without the motions of electrons, nuclei, atoms and molecules neither life nor mind would have emerged in the Universe. All physically and chemically significant kinds of molecular motions which have been responsible for the emergence of both life and mind have occurred within the regime of the Brownian Universe or the microscopic realm of thermal fluctuations. Without motion there can be no catalysis or chemical transformation of substrates or reactants into products. Molecular motions slow down with decreasing temperature. Conversely, molecular motions increase with increasing temperature. Temperature is linked directly to the motions of atoms and molecules motion. What are thermal fluctuations? Temperature related motions are what constitute thermal fluctuations. Brownian motion is caused of thermal fluctuation, and thermal fluctuations occurs in the form of atomic and molecular agitation. Agitation involves the different kinds of atomic or molecular motion, that is, rotational motion, vibrational motion and translational motion. Heat is thermal fluctuations and thermal fluctuations involve the rotational, vibrational and translation motion of atoms and molecules. In a real sense heat is nothing more that the motion of atoms and molecules. Motion is initiated and transmitted by the transfer of momentum as a consequence of collisions. Motion arises from the impulse generated by collisions. Life, mind and conscious emerged ultimately from the cauldron of molecular motions that prevailed and still prevails in the Universe of the Brownian realm. Heat and thermal motions were necessary for the emergence of life from inorganic substrates. So as you may have realized, I have given you some idea of where I am philosophically speaking. Everything was supposed to be reducible to the motions of fundamental entities. This was my position as a materialist holding to a form of materialist monism. Who is saying this? It is me Hannah Zeeman.

8

Having said this, is there any place for theology and thinking about God within a physicalist or materialist view of reality, and also having a faith in God which would be consistent with this view of reality? My immediate answer stemming from my heartfelt conviction is yes. Are my convictions warranted? I would believe so. As a scientist for me truth always involves saying something (X) about something (Reality) to someone, and if what is said is true, then what is said corresponds to reality. In short, truth is what corresponds to reality. Truth is one thing and reality is another thing. However there must be something in the nature of reality which makes it possible for us to say something about something which also happens to be true regarding the nature of reality or corresponds to reality. There must be something in the nature of reality which allows it to be experientially accessible so that reality is knowable for what it is. Reality itself necessarily possesses properties, powers and predispositions which facilitate its empirical accessibility and which thereby makes it knowable as something which is X. It is in this sense that one can state that truth supervenes on being, where being is everything in reality or everything regarding the nature of reality which makes discovering the truth about reality something which is possible or attainable for science.

9

In a profound sense the reception of God's revelation regarding the truth about the nature of reality, including the vicissitudes of humanity's evolutionary prehistory, not to mention the evolution of stars, solar systems and life, would have been humanly impossible to comprehend within the period of the post-exilic Second Temple times which coincided with the historical Jesus in Roman occupied Jewish Judea, especially with the benefits of twenty-first century hindsight. According to the modern scholarly consensus the canonical version of the Old Testament only emerged in its current form after 586 BC, possibly during the periods of Persian and Hellenistic conquests between 538 and 200 BC, it is reasonable to accept that the final compilation of Torah emerged round about 400 BC. The Torah was compiled from various secondary sources, it is possible that the Torah contains a kernel of truth within all its embellishments. The kernel of truth in say Exodus would be what places that event in history in spite of all possible slippages in the historical details. It is impossible to reconstruct the real history of the Israelites from their founding mythologies and historized fictions which constitutes the plot of Jewish salvation history as narrated in the books of the Old Testament. We can now appreciate in a profound sense that the reception of God's revelation regarding what was the actual truth with respect to everything in the Universe was something that would have been humanly impossible in first century Judaism. The actual truth regarding everything in the Universe would also include the devastating and annihilating truth that what the Jews believed about themselves as ethnic group was nothing more substantial and credible than their own self-invented founding mythologies and historized fictions regarding their historical origins, status and significance. Jesus as God incarnate, the infinite Word made flesh, engaged through an act of kenosis with the Jews. It was by virtue of God's kenotic act of incarnation in space and time that the Jews became God's chosen people retroactively and that the founding myths and historized fictions of the Old Testament acquired retroactively its revelatory status in spite of it being human-authored literature, and also by virtue of the eternal Word of God becoming human flesh, Jesus as the God of all creation re-read himself into the literal words of the Old Testament conferring on the Old Testament through an act of 'transubstantiation' the status of it becoming the divinely inspired, authoritative, inerrant and infallible Word of God, in a way similar to bread and wine in the Mass becoming the body and blood of Jesus. And in the sacrificial celebration of the Mass we able to consume the paschal lamb which has been sacrificed on the altar as an offering to God for the remission of our sins. This represents a divine action of transubstantiation made possible through God for our joy, good pleasure, comfort and salvation. It addition, this action also confirms the entire Bible as God's divine revelation, since all meaning exists only by virtue of a divine transubstantiation, a divine transubstantiation in which the meaning, significance, and reference embodied in human-created words acquires the meaning, significance and reference as embodied in the Word of God. This something in which the dead letter becomes the living Word is realized in the event of a revelatory reading. And the event of the revelatory reading is only revelatory by virtue of it always pointing to or showing that Jesus is the life, the truth and the way. Jesus being the life, the truth and the way is the subject or reference or field of correspondence for all possible meaning regarding salvic significance. It also provides the terms of reference for any relationship which humanity may have regarding God. Before this revelatory event in which the reading discloses or unveils the historical Jesus as risen from the dead in real space and time, human-written words can only exist as dead letters in the same manner that human-baked bread exists only as bread and nothing more than that. No one comes to the Father except through him who was crucified, dead and buried, and rose again from the dead on the third day.

The following scripture reading from the Gospel of Luke is consistent with the case I have made regarding God's revelation coming to us by virtue of God's kenosis: Luke 4:16-21 New International Version (NIV): 16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour." 20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

10

If a narrative is not anchored in space and time or in real geography and actual history or in the actual prevailing material conditions of life in a causally closed Universe, then it is a myth. In order for it to be empirically accessible as a public event to finite beings, God's self-revelation has to be anchored in space and time. How does the Infinite become revealed to the finite individual in space and time without obliterating the recipient in the very act of revelation? How can a finite being see or perceive God or even communicate with God? No one has seen God? What does it mean to see God? It is not possible to perceive God, the infinite being and nature of God is not empirically accessible to any finite human existing in time and space. The finite cannot appropriate the infinite, whereas the infinite can appropriate the finite, the finite can be appropriated as a part of the whole. An alternative why of presenting the problem would be to ask: How it is possible for a finite being to survive in the presence of the sheer power of the Being which brings everything into existence from nothing? How does a finite being witness with the aid of sense organs the Big Bang at the exact instance of its occurrence? To fully comprehend God one has to be God. Christianity articulates radical answers to these perplexing questions and the answers also embody an unavoidable paradox, which can be formulated as the paradox of revelation, a paradox which accompanies every event of divine revelation. What is this paradox? Simply put, it is the paradox of doubt and uncertainty. God reveals, humanity doubts. God reveals, humanity is trapped in uncertainty. Jesus embodies the paradox of God's revelation. For God to be fully revealed to humanity, humanity has to become one with God, but this is impossible. Thus the paradox entails that God in response to human finitude, can only reveal the presence of the Infinite Divine Being as incarnated in a finite person who is in the likeness of any other finite human person. The theatre of God's revelation within space and time is thus always an occasion cloaked in radical doubt and uncertainty. Doubt and uncertainty is what characterizes the finite mind. In the face of doubt and uncertainty, in order to 'become revealed' to humanity once and for all, God as the Infinite Being in an act of kenosis or self-emptying became incarnated in the life of a finite being as the man Jesus. This astounding claim appears in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. The Word or the Logos became flesh. This event not only forecloses but destroys all revelatory claims which are severed from this single transcendental and therefore over-arching claim. This claim which stands above all other claims concerning the scope of God's revelation. It takes priority over all other claims that have previously been made concerning the being, nature and purpose of God. The purpose of God is revealed in Jesus. It is by this one claim that all other claims of revelation are either certified as true or discredited as false belief. The Word made flesh is indeed the ultimate and final revelation of the Infinite Being. Nothing more can be added or subtracted. It is finished. The final and ultimate revelatory Word of God is not a propositional statement or written words or speech or a book, it is a person, and that person is Jesus. In Jesus we encounter none other than God, the Infinite Being. In Jesus we find that an unconditional personal invitation has been extended to the whole of humanity. The invitation even if extended unconditionally from God does NOT require a suspension of rationally structured inquiry or questioning. The invitation is unconditional because it is God who extends the invitation, an invitation without any terms attached, without any strings attached. Why? Well Martin Luther and John Calvin were right to note that nothing can be done to earn God's favour, the very idea is absurd, because to be able to earn God's favour would mean that God is not God. To earn God's favour one has to become God. It is God who invites all men and women regardless of who they have been or who they are or what they have done.

Chapter 11: Student Politics

1

Now in my third year I took philosophy of science as my arts subject and of course I developed a serious interest in philosophy. It 1975 the student Left on Wits campus was particularly vibrant and heavily influenced by the recent trends in neo-Marxism. Also in 1975 I had joined the ecological society at Wits called Ecosoc. Ecosoc functioned as a student society under the auspices of the South African Student Union (SASU). The political agenda of SASU was clearly Leftist and the apartheid government believed that it was a front for the propagation of Communism and for fomenting revolution. The executive of SASU had a reputation for being Leftist radicals. There were Ecosoc branches on all SASU affiliated campuses. Nathan Coetzee was the chairperson of the Ecosoc at Wits. After our Sodwana Bay diving trip I started having a secret 'affair' with Nathan's girlfriend Janet Middleton and our affair began only after Yael had broken up with me. Janet was also a member of Ecosoc. When she finally came to terms with her sexuality she informed Nathan that she was a lesbian and of course that was the end of their relationship. He struggled to come to terms with the disclosure. The revelation seemed to increase his insecurities and exacerbated his feelings of inadequacy. He suspected that something had happened between her and me after we came back from our week long Wits diving club trip to Sodwana Bay. In spite of being slightly buxom Janet was very attractive. As you already know, she was in her first year and had joined the diving club. We explained to Nathan that we still wanted to be on best friend terms with him and we still wanted to serve on the Ecosoc committee. Janet told him that she still loved him but she also loved me. I felt sorry for Nathan, my heart went out to him because he really loved Janet. And I also liked him very much. I actually said to him: 'Nathan I like you very much and I don't want to lose your friendship, I do kind of love you also.' He was the kind of male that you wanted to like.

'Let's rather speak about this later, someone is coming to see me,' he said as he stood up from behind the small desk. We also stood up to leave the Ecosoc office in the Student's Union building.

Nathan was tall and gangly with broad shoulders, but not ungainly or awkward in his movements. He had strong sinewy arms and legs. He was often dressed in an extra-large faded black T shirt which hung on his lean frame. Even though he wore a black leather belt he was constantly pulling up his size 32 faded blue jeans that seemed to be always slipping down over his hips. A total stranger seeing him and Janet together as a couple would have wondered what they saw in each other. With his long thin slightly aquiline noise, sallow face, bushy eye brows and short cropped untidy hair he was not particularly handsome. Janet did confess to me that she found something attractive in his dark piercing eyes and full lips. Before we left Janet hugged him. It was visibly a very stiff and awkward hug which promised nothing more than Platonic friendship and comradely loyalty. I remember Janet asked if we should close the door behind as we left.

'No it is OK, leave the door open, don't forget the meeting this afternoon,' he said as we left.

'Ok, see you later then,' she said a bit too cheerfully.

Once outside in the corridor we looked at each with rolling eyed expressions of relief. We had crossed the bridge and now we were free to be with each other as a couple.

'Shoo, I am glad that is all over,' she said once we were out of earshot as we went down the stairs.

2

Later that afternoon we all trooped into the SASU local office and settled down round the meeting table. Before Nathan could sit down Sheldon Swift from the SASU head offices in Cape Town arrived at the door. Nathan introduced the committee to Sheldon who was responsible for coordinating the Ecosoc programmes and projects on all the different English speaking university campuses in South Africa.

Sheldon was originally from Durban and went to the University of Natal where he eventually obtained an MSc in marine biology. Dressed also in an old T-shirt and faded blue jeans, he was tall, well built, athletic with curly sun bleached blond hair, he was the perfect image of a surfer. He was charismatic, charming, jovial and good looking. He shook all of our hands vigorously with a firm hand shake. After plonking himself down in a chair he leaned back in the chair and grinned broadly at all of us.

'So tell me, what have you guys being doing?' he said as sprawled his muscular sun tanned frame in the rickety chair which he managed to balance on its two creaking back legs.

'I understand that the Catholic students at Wits have hijacked Ecosoc as their own organization,' he said laughingly. Almost everyone on Ecosoc were also members of Cathsoc, the Catholic Student Society at Wits. Nathan and Janet were Catholic. In a way I was an honouree Catholic as I had started going to Mass with Janet who in spite of everything remained a devout Catholic. A defensive look arranged itself on Nathan face as he started to explain the situation, but before he could say anything Sheldon interrupted him.

'Don't worry I was just joking. It is good to have the involvement of the Catholic students. You should try and build up the membership by getting more Christian students involved in Ecosoc at Wits. Christians are usually very committed and sincere,' he said with an ironic smile on his face.

'So tell me what have you guys been doing?' He asked again still with that broad but increasingly patronizing grin on his face. He was obviously being very condescending towards us.

'We have the Jukskei river clean-up project next to Alexander Township and we have the wattle tree eradication project in Melville Koppies and in Mondeor in the south of Johannesburg,' Nathan replied.

'That is great man! I heard you guys were very active. Hey man you can't image the apathy we have on the other campuses,' Sheldon exclaimed.

'Tell me more about your Jukskei project. What exactly are you guys doing?' Sheldon asked.

3

It was difficult to fathom Sheldon. He did at times come across as a hard-line Leftist or Marxist, and then at other time he was ambiguous about where he stood politically. This was confusing for me and for the others. Was he phony or was he genuine? I could honestly not tell at the time. Anyway, whatever misgiving we may have had regarding his Leftist credentials, we were awe struck and quickly fell under his spell as he gave us an impromptu lecture on environmental activism. He spoke about 'guerrilla gardening' which involved planting seeds of indigenous trees in any open space within towns, cities and suburbs. At the end of the meeting he asked if anyone could give him a lift to Hillbrow. He had flown up from Cape Town and did not have any transport. I volunteered to give him a lift to Hillbrow where he was staying over with some friend. On the way to Hillbrow he spoke about saving the whale campaign and the research that he done on sharks for his MSc. At High Point just before Twist Street he told me to pull over into a vacant parking spot. I thought he was going to get out but he remained seated in the passenger talking about sharks. He presented himself as a very nice person and without any effort he managed to fulfil the role of a captivating conversationalist, but I immediately realized it was all a ploy to seduce me. When he asked if I would like to go for supper and maybe take in a movie I knew that he was hitting on me. I remember stupidly and naively responding to his invitation along the lines that he was really a yummy guy but that I was a lesbian and guys were not my scene. This disclosure, which was a valid reason for rejecting his advances, seemed to have momentarily taken the wind out of his sails. But he was not going to allow this to put him off. There was always a plan B. So he quickly managed to defuse a potentially awkward situation with astonishing aplomb decorated with persuasive smooth talking that shined and glittered with the illusion of unpremeditated innocence laced and spiced quite heavily with empathy and meaningful understanding. At the end of which he asked with an angelic expression on his face if I had ever tried a shuvarma at Mi Vami. That was the bait for our dinner date. He was persistence, even explaining that Mi Vami means 'who's who' in Hebrew. I asked him how he knew this and he said he was Jewish, and that he had leant Hebrew while staying on a Kibbutz in Israel, and Mi Vami was just around the corner. I found it hard to believe that he was Jewish. How could someone who was so blond and also a Durban surfer be Jewish? And what kind of a Jew would want to be a marine biologist and study sharks of all creatures, these were the most un-Jewish preoccupations, and the most un-Jewish predilections in my mind. And on top of this I was sceptical about his surname, Swift. I had my doubts about Swift being a proper Jewish surname. He tried to laugh off my scepticism. However the persistent disbelieving smirk on my face began to irritate him. Losing patience with me, he accused me of stereotyping Jewish people. He insisted that Swift was a genuine Jewish surname and that the world was filled with Jewish Swifts. I remained sceptical – it must have been written all over my face. The message that I was communicating to him was this: you are blond and blue eyed, your surname is Swift, you are a surfer to boot, you are tall, strong, athletic and well-built, you studied marine biology and on top of all of this you have an interests in sharks – this guy was definitely not Jewish! In my mind the only thing that would make him Jewish in my eyes was if he showed that he was really a Marxist and also that he was a Communist. That would make him a Jew in my mind.

'What do you know about Jewish people?'

'Enough to recognize a real Jew,' I replied abruptly.

'What do mean by a real Jew?' He asked looking very piqued.

I was not going to tell him about my personal life and especially about my affair with Yael the Rabbi's wife. I was not going to let this jerk bully me or treat me like some brainless 'shiksa'. He must have sensed that because he immediately softened his tone.

'I apologize for being so touchy about my Jewishness,' he said.

'I accept your apology, and for the record I have nothing against Jews,' I replied.

I could sense, call it female intuition, that in his mind things between us had become sort of friendly. He took this as a positive signal, and the fact that I had nothing against Jews was very encouraging. So as an exemplary example of an authentic, albeit unusual Jewish person he elaborated on his prowess as a surfer, spoke about his great passion for marine biology and enthused over his fascination for sharks. In a moment of weakness I told him that I too was no stranger to sharks having scuba-dived off the Bazaruto Archipelago and the Nine Mile Reef at Sodwana Bay.

And of course when I mentioned this he initially could not hide his surprise. But immediately he realized the value of this information, it could be used as a bridge for kindling intimacy with me, and if he read the drift of the situation properly, it could also imply all kinds of wonderful possibilities for the rest of the evening. He managed to pretend to be very impressed with the fact that I had experienced encounters with sharks while diving. But he was putting his own spin on this information. I could read his mind: If a girl had dived with sharks, then what else would she be prepared to do? Maybe she was indeed highly 'fuckable' if handled properly. And so we continued to sit in my car discussing sharks until it got dark and Hillbrow having dressed herself up in flashing multicolour neon lights was now ready like a slut for anything which the night could offer. He was not interested in talking politics or revolution or any highbrow philosophical topic, so sharks remained our topic of conversation, sharks and marine biology, and of course the sea and surfing. He was not interested in the class struggle or the revolution or Communism for that matter.

4

So I have to admit, he did actually managed to sweet talk me, against my will, into having a shuvarma with him. Clearly he also took this as a sign that I had given in to his good looks, his irresistible charm, his charismatic personality, his love of sharks, and just maybe his Jewishness had also counted in his favour. And also there was this little women problem, women are essentially sexless creatures, they have only one function when it comes sex, they possess in a very passive manner, between their thighs the velvet scabbard, the sheath, the rightful home for the almighty sword, the giver of life: so how could any woman have proper sex without the rigid shaft of an erect penis being plunged into their bodies? And he was certainly cocksure about his abilities. Again my feminine intuition led me to believe that he was banking on the possibility that my sexual curiosity had been sufficiently kindled and that maybe I was actually entertaining the possibility of having some kind of sexual adventure with this very interesting, exciting and yummy fellow, which would end up with me being screwed over. And to screw a self-confessed lesbian would count as some kind of great sexual feat or victory for him. I was convinced that he believed that I would eventually roll over and let him fuck me before the night was over. And in all likelihood he may have even considered the possibility that for a 'shiksa' like myself to be fucked by such a wonderful and intriguing Jew would be an added bonus for me. I could read his mind. But I shuddered at the thought of having his erect circumcised cock ejaculating his semen into my vagina, and anyway I was not on the pill. The very thought of his circumcised cock left me cold, I couldn't do it, not even with the handsome shark-loving Sheldon. I did not have the stomach to be mounted and penetrated by any male no matter how good looking he happened to be. It was not going to happen ever. I found the prospect repulsive. I was definitely allergic to any kind of physical closeness to the male body.

5

Anyway we got out of the car and walked around the block to Mi Vami where we each had a shuvarma. It was the first time that I had ever eaten a shuvarma. After that we ended up having a beer at the Café Florian before taking leave of each other. During the early 1980s it was rumoured that he was a spy, possibly even a double agent because of his strong links to Israel. I was astonished to hear this. But in retrospect I realized that he had shown all the signs of being a non-believer when it came to the Marxist project. But at the time I chose to ignore all the obvious signs that he was not the real McCoy. He came across as a highly individualistic and colourful maverick with Leftist pretensions that were comical because of their obvious shallowness. It seemed that he enjoyed cruising the grey shadowy margins of the student radical movement of the 1970s fucking any fuckable young bright eyed and gullible female student who fell for his charms. What I mean by fuckable is: any cunt who had the capacity to give anyone a hard-on, that is, if you were a male. I had never allowed any woman to fuck me with a strap-on cock or dildo or vibrator or anything that looked like a cock. If she wanted fuck me then she had use her fingers and feel the inside of my hot vagina or she had to go down me with her lips and tongue. Going back to Sheldon, if he was a spy for the South African state then maybe in this capacity he was also a double agent for the Israeli Mossad or possibly even for the CIA. Before his cover was eventually blown he had already left for Israel and then the last we heard of him was that he had immigrated to the USA.

6

An all-powerful state under the ideological mantle of democratic centralism stifles freedom and promotes the emergence of a self-serving dictatorial political elite through the progressive and insidious hierarchicalization of society. But this pattern of social domination by a hierarchicalized elite has been the dominant trend in human history since the Neolithic. In later life even while I was member of a Communist Party that was orthodox in every sense of the word I never stopped entertaining the idea of Anarcho-Communism as critical for the success of socialism and democracy.

Chapter 12: Zoology Field Trip

1

Shortly before the June exams in 1975 Yael who was now visibly pregnant wanted to speak to me again after our breakup. We went to my room in Sunnyside Res, the place that used to be our love nest. She said it pained her heart to see me so happy with Janet because she still loved me, and would always love me no matter what. She said that she had made a mistake to breakup with me when she fell pregnant. She broke up because she felt that God had let her down. She said she felt so stupid because she had prayed so earnestly and desperately that God would speak to my heart so that I would convert to Judaism and become a Jew. She laughed sadly saying that she had made a bargain with God that if I converted she would devote our lives to him.

How would we devote our lives to God? Well she would divorce the Rabbi and we would move into our own home where we would live as a devoted married couple. We would be a family, we would be sisters, daughters, mothers and wives to each other. We would observe the laws of Moses, we would observe the Sabbath, and we would do all the things that God fearing Jews needed to do in order to please God. We would live in the perpetual shadow of Mount Sinai, we would live according to the Torah. The holy Torah would be our light, our guide and our life. We would bring up her children together. She suggested that maybe I would also have child. I wondered how this would be possible, maybe in my conversion process I would seduce the Rabbi and get him to fuck me and impregnate me so that I would conceive a child who will be a real Jew and not a Goy, and then we would live happily ever after as an oppressed people, with our bags packed, ready to flee the pogroms at any moment. What could I do, what could I say? I promised that I would be her friend for the rest of our lives no matter what, and I really meant it. I told her that I had not forsaken her. But I also said that I could not leave Janet, I could not do that to her. I told her that I had also been deeply hurt when she broke off her relationship with me. In the end we tearfully made up, restoring our friendship and promised each other that we would be friends for life no matter what. And she understood that I could not breakup with Janet.

2

Yael did not go on the third year Zoology trip to Inhaca Island, mainly because of her pregnancy and the political uncertainty reigning in Mozambique. Frelimo had taken over the government. In all likelihood this was going to be the last Wits Zoology fieldtrip excursion to Inhaca Island. The Frelimo authorities had given Wits permission to visit the Island and safe passage was guaranteed. With my heart torn between Yael and Janet, I boarded the train at Park Station with the few Zoology students who had decided to go on the trip despite the political uncertainties in Mozambique. I shared the sleeping berth on our coach with Wayne, Roger and Michael. The night journey to Mozambique was subdued. There was none of the usual drunken revelry on the train. At the crack of dawn the train rolled into the grand old Central Railway Station which was located next to the Azeredo Square in Lourenço Marques (LM). After disembarking we gathered outside the station in the square in the sombre early morning winter's light to admire the classical architecture of the station's facade with it wide Roman arch gracing the main entrance of the station. Raising high above the arch was the ornamented turret which supported a semi spherical roof, a green stained copper coated copula. Below the copper copula the large clock facing the square indicated that it was 6.30 am in the morning. On either side of the main façade stretched the two wings of a second story structure supported by a row of arcades on the ground level. The upper floor consisted of a gallery of porches which overlooked the square. The station building was completed in 1910. Now 65 years later our presence on the Azeredo Square was the only sign of life at this hour, whereas before in colonial times it would have been bustling with activity. Now it was eerily deserted. It felt as if time had come to an end in LM. We had all spent our teenage years listening to LM Radio which was broadcasted from Lourenço Marques. We sensed the passing of an era. The curtain had been drawn on 400 years or so of colonial rule, and now a new dawn was breaking. The surprising suddenness of the ending of Portuguese Colonialism in Mozambique and Angola was unexpected, it had not been predicted. No one had thought that it could happen so quickly, changing the entire southern African landscape almost overnight. The unreality of the situation was palpable. Scott Everton and Alex Muggeridge, the two Rhodesians glanced warily about with dark scowls. Their worst nightmares had now become their grim certainty. With Frelimo in power it was just a question of time before Rhodesia would fall under the cumulative effect of falling dominos. We exchanged knowing glances.

'You must be happy now that your communist dreams are coming true,' Scott said sarcastically.

I raised my clenched fist in the air and exclaimed: 'Viva Frelimo.'

'Stupid communist bitch,' Alex muttered.

I could feel that the sympathies of the entire zoology class were on the side of Scott and Alex.

3

Carrying our stuff we walked to Gorjão Wharf. In spite of the recent revolution the coal terminals and wharf cranes were busy loading coal and cargo onto the ships in the harbour. Under grey skies and across a choppy seas the ferry took us to Inhaca Island. Benjamin Schlossheimer who had failed his third year was now in our class and was doing the Inhaca fieldtrip for the second time. He hang out with the Rhodesian lads who were racist and anti-Semitic. He was as happy as a pig in shit, completely garrulous and glorying in his role as 'mister know it all second time round'. Rocking, rising and falling, the ferry see-sawed over the heavy swells, and very soon everyone was seasick and vomiting spasmodically into the sea, including the dyke from Israel who was a PhD student at Wits. Standing on sea accustomed legs I took in the spectacle. The dyke from Israel was in her late twenties. She was being supervised by of one our professors who was collaborating with the Israelis. Having a good knowledge of Mediterranean marine invertebrates she had been asked to come along as a teaching assistant. We had exchanged knowing glances and smiles before boarding the ferry and I assumed that she was planning to fuck me. I guessed that if we going to do it, it was going to be rough sex, wrestling and all that kind of stuff. Even though she was bigger than me I was still a tough little lioness. The thought of being pursued and eventually fucked by this dark eyed Zionist Sabra, a veteran of the Israeli army left me in a state of pleasant arousal. With nothing left to vomit up, she was now overcome by uncontrollable convulsions as she retched violently over the side into the sea.

4

On the island we started flirting openly with each other. She had nice strong legs, a big bust, a nice swell of tummy and a sexy butt. She was voluptuous, but emotionally fragile, in spite of her exterior Israeli 'machismo'. There was a delicate and vulnerable woman beneath the armour of her exterior self-presentation of tough Zionist womanhood. I had misread her completely wrong. She would initiate nothing. She was queer but completely virginal. I would have to make all the moves if I wanted to fuck her. I would have to seduce her if I wanted to screw her.

It was Saturday, a week on the island had already passed, and our field trip schedule informed us that we were going have a fish and shellfish braai and party that evening after we had finished our work. Her name was Shachar Mizrahi and she was a completely atheistic secular Jew whose religion was the nation state of Israel. At lunch I sat down next to her and during the course of our meal I asked her if she would like to go for a late afternoon walk on the beach before the braai when we had finished with the day's work. The sun was already setting when we set off. There was a jersey, a small picnic blanket, tissues and a tube of suitable gynaecologic lubricant in my knapsack. The necessity of the lubricant for the mutual masturbation of our vulvas was something which I had learnt from Jean Genet and Kate. Shachar had showered and washed her hair. I could smell the fragrance of her perfume. She had put on makeup, lipstick and eye shadow. I put our sandals in my knapsack and we walked barefoot along the shore line, the surf racing up washing over our feet. I asked her about her PhD research. She was working on the embryogenesis of Xenopus laevis. She was using mutagenic agents to knock out gene expression and was trying to correlate protein profiles with visible phenotypic mutations in the developing embryos. We exchanged autobiographic details of our life histories and as we talked I took her hand.

5

In American literature and movies the burlesque has become associated in the popular mind with cabaret in which the overtly sexual is mixed with comedy and strip-tease or with the staging of the obviously whimsical comic trope within which the visual spectacle of scantily dressed females bodies are choreographed for the sole purpose of exciting the masculine libidinous gaze. The burlesque as travesty and parody is part and parcel of creating the feminized homoerotic excitement between two women. It is the absence of the masculine presence within the sexual entwinement of two female bodies which caricatures the reality of male erotic insufficiency. The female body is the emblematic mirror of male sexual deficiency, it is constitutive of male sexuality, which can only exist by virtue of the female body, and in this sense male sexuality suffers from a deficiency of being, and has no potency within itself. Sex only came into existence with the evolution of what we call the 'female'. The orgasmic self-sufficiency of the homoerotic female body is a parody and a travesty of heterosexual reality. The orgasmic for its own sake can only exist by virtue of the female body. In the Kantian framework the transcendental question is always reducible to: 'What makes X possible, whatever X may be?' It is Y which makes X possible. Y is the conditions of X's possibility. X exists only by virtue of Y. And Y is not the male sex chromosome. Heidegger's work revolves around this kind of questioning. This kind of questioning is ultimately and inescapably metaphysical. And it is this kind of questioning which constantly gives new life to metaphysics, and so contrary to Heidegger there will never be an end to metaphysics or ontology. What is art? What makes art possible? Here we are confronted with ontology and metaphysics. What makes the erotic possible? Somehow the erotic can only exist by virtue of the female body. Plato spoke of knowledge and truth as being feminine. And the meaning of Eros cannot be fully grasped without understanding what knowledge is.

6

Shachar put her arm around my waist and kissed the side of my head. We spread the blanket in the shelter of some brush and made love. Twilight arrived and we found ourselves basking in the euphoric warmth of our mutual affection. I also felt guilty. I have been unfaithful to Janet, just like I had been unfaithful to Kate in Paris and now I was in danger of falling in love with Shachar. Why was I getting mixed up with these Jews? Like Yael (well before Yael's illness), Shachar had no religious interest in Judaism, her Jewishness was irreligiously ethnocentric and Zionist, and she was very patriotic. Yes salvation was from the Jews, and this meant that God chose Israel as a people and as a nation for the sake of the salvation of all nations on earth. This is what we Gentiles had been taught. In my own conceptualization of the Hebraic I realized that there were no compelling grounds to conflate the world view of Second Temple Judaism with the Old Testament scriptures. Second Temple Judaism and its further evolution into Post-Jerusalem and Post-Temple Judaism represents a significant theological and religious paradigm shift.

The next day I told Shachar that I had a girlfriend. She said that she was a 'big girl', and she had thought as much, but it would be nice if we could still remain friends, and anyway she would be going back to Israel as soon as her lab work was done, which would be very soon. Seeing that we were both zoologists, maybe in the future I could considering coming to Israel and do a postdoc there, possibly in her laboratory. I said: 'Yeah that would be nice.'

'You will like Israel, you would fit in well,' she said.

'Yeah, yeah, maybe someday I will visit Israel,' I said.

'Yes you would like it, Tel Aviv is the gay capital of the world,' she said.

'You don't say,' I answered.

'You must come, you will be pleasantly surprised!'

'I am sure I will be,' I said while thinking salvation is from the Jews.

Chapter 13: Honours Year

1

As a consequence of the 1976 Soweto student uprising I had become even more deeply politically radicalized. At the end of June 1976 in my radicalized state I set off on a long journey to do the field work for my BSc honours project. My supervisor had organized for me to do the project at the Gobabeb Research Institute in Namibia. I drove in my old Volkswagen Beetle to the research station which was situated on the banks of the ephemeral Kuiseb River in the Namib Desert in Namibia. On my way I stopped at Hotazel so that my dad could service the Beetle for the journey. My parents were not happy about me driving alone all the way to Gobabeb in Namibia. I reminded them that we had done the journey to Windhoek before for Malcolm's wedding, and I had been driving between Johannesburg and Hotazel by myself for years without incident. Leaving Hotazel at five in morning the long drive turned out to be a wonderful adventure, driving via Upington to Keetmanshoop through a rock strewn pristine desert wilderness dotted with the Kokerboom or Quiver Trees. Passing through Mariental and Rehoboth, I decided to book into a hotel in Windhoek. The next morning after buying groceries, I was on the road again to Swakopmund, and then to Walvis Bay. From Walvis Bay I followed the gravel road through the Namib Desert to Gobabeb.

2

As a result of the recent rains the Namib Desert had been transformed into a vast ephemeral grassland which carpeted the desert landscape for as far as the eye could see. Grasslands stretched all the way to the deep blue silhouette of a rocky mountain range strung across the western horizon beneath platinum skies and in the east the grasslands petered out in the rain shadow which marked the start of the sand dunes of the actual Namib Desert.

3

We know intuitively what science is about. Science is not about the meaning of reality, it is about the so-called objective nature of reality. Science has to assume quite a lot of things and ideas in order not to be a self-defeating endeavour. In this sense science is never fully 'objective'. A convergent theory of truth is also quite a nice idea. Science as an endeavour necessarily involves the self-justifying belief that the work of science is converging asymptotically onto the truth, whatever the truth may be. Whatever the truth may be, science would be impossible without it being a self-correcting enterprise. However, this truth does not include a coherent, logical or rational statement of meaning, or the meaning of meaning. "Meaning" cannot be expressed in terms of the conclusions generated by deductive-nomological models of scientific explanations. Maybe one of the aim of the arts is to fathom what the meaning of everything is. In this connection there are only a few answers: 1.There is no meaning. 2. There is meaning. The work of the artist is to give aesthetic form to how we answer these transcendental questions. At its simplest the nature of reality is determined by the dance of chance and necessity. Can meaning in the metaphysical sense emergence from the dance of chance and necessity. Maybe, and somehow meaning is possible by virtue of necessity.

4

At the end of my stay at Gobabeb, on the evening before my departure to Swapkopmund for a short holiday before heading back to Hotazel, I was invited to join the braai hosted by the botany honours students from Wits. In the past Lake Kariba in Rhodesia had been the destination of choice for the botany honours fieldtrip. However because of the bush war in Rhodesia Lake Kariba was no longer a viable option for student fieldtrips, hence the reason for their visit to the Gobabeb Research Station on banks of the Kuiseb River in the Namib Desert. The male students in the botany honours class who were from Rhodesia knowing my support of the liberation movements had taken to calling me 'Comrade Hannah'. We had all majored as undergraduates in botany and zoology and knew each other from first year. My political radicalization from first year onwards had not gone unnoticed by my classmates. I was always in the frontline of the pickets during anti-apartheid student demonstrations on Jan Smuts Avenue. Scott Everton, a tall handsome and athletic Rhodesian was a full Lieutenant in the Rhodesian Light Infantry and could speak fluent Shona, which was ironical given his strong right-wing political proclivities which bordered on raw fascism. He was two years older than the rest of us. While I did not advertise my homosexual orientation they had correctly guessed that I was queer and that I had no interest in men including studs like Scott who was in fact a beautiful male specimen with his magnificently sculptured body, rippling six pack, lovely biceps and broad shoulders. The June 1976 Soweto student uprising signalled a turning point in the southern African liberation struggle. Things were never going to be the same again. On the back of the Carnation Revolution following the military coup in Portugal, FRELIMO under the revolutionary leadership of Samora Machel had come into power in Mozambique. In Angola a civil war was raging. The South African Defence Force (SADF) had opportunistically invaded Angola in order to reverse the MPLA revolution and at the same time destroy SWAPO which was currently fighting the bush war for the liberation of Namibia from South African colonialism.

Much to the extreme and incredulous mortification of Scott I stated that I supported ZANU PF. Scott was a great admirer of Ayn Rand. At the braai I noticed that Kobus van Wyk who had also been invited to the braai listened with great interest to the political banter between myself and Scott as defended Ayn Rand's version of capitalism. Kobus was one of the park's game rangers or nature conservation officers. He was also responsible for exercising oversight with regard to my honour's research project which entailed an investigation into the invertebrate biodiversity at Gobabeb. I had spent a lot of time with Kobus in the desert setting up pit-fall traps to catch spiders, scorpions and crawling insects, and we had developed an excellent working relationship. He was incredibly shy, but also a supreme gentlemen, a wonderful mentor and a bush craft genius. I enjoyed his company immensely as I accompanied him on his daily rounds inspecting all the traps that he had set up to capture lizards and snakes which was part to the research station's catch-and-release-reptile biodiversity-research programme. After listening to our political debate round the fire Kobus later confided to me as we stared at the dying embers that in his opinion Bram Fischer was a great man, possibly the greatest Afrikaner that had ever lived. When the others turned in Kobus and myself remained behind looking up at the star bedecked clear desert night sky, listening to the calls of jackals and talking about the political future of southern Africa. We spoke about Bram Fischer who had died of cancer the previous year in May 1975 while serving a life sentence as a convicted Communist.

5

At dawn the next morning I set off for Swapkopmund. After I had booked into a beachside bungalow for two nights I drove to a nearby pub where I had lunch. Sitting alone at the bar on a high stool was a Scandinavian looking woman with deep blue eyes and long blond hair who seemed to be in her early thirties. Seemingly impervious to the approaching cold she was dressed in a thin woollen black pullover and tight jeans. I noticed that she was not wearing a bra. We were the only women in the pub without partners or friends. She must have sensed that I was staring at her. I smiled spontaneously with a radiance of admiration when she turned her head and gave me a curious glance. It was a bold reflex of flirtation over which I had very little control when in the company of my own sex. I am sure this almost uncontrollable predisposition of erotic desire was something that I had inherited from father.

6

After lunch I drove back to the bungalow, I parked the VW Beetle, retrieved a windbreaker from my suitcase and then set off for a walk along the beach. About a hundred metres from the jetty a large male cape fur seal lay dead washed up on the beach just above the high tide mark. The seal was a fine specimen and the stench of decay had not yet taken hold of the cadaver. The cause of its death was a mystery. On my return from my walk I stopped again to have another look at the dead seal. It was while I was inspecting the seal for the second time that the Scandinavian woman suddenly also appeared on the beach and spotting me, being curious she walked over to have a look at the dead seal, and we began speaking. She introduced herself as Angelika Karlsen. I learnt that she was from Norway and was an actress by profession and she was taking a short break from a film shoot. Afterwards she continued on her walk along the beach towards a distant beached ship wreck while I walked over to the nearby jetty. It was now late afternoon and the restless Atlantic Ocean had turned a sombre steel grey. I had been standing on the jetty for some time watching the wind whipping the crests of the choppy sea into a froth of foam that dazzled brightly in the fading light. It was a sight that had inspired poets to see galloping horses with their spray white manes floating high above the dying swell, like chargers racing towards the shores of eternal sublimity, towards the crashing thunder of battle, where heroes fall, never to rise. A sudden gust of wind tagged urgently at my windbreaker, reminding me of the advance of a cold front rolling in from the Antarctic. Just before the sun set I severed the seal's head from its body with a carving knife that I had taken from the kitchen cutlery drawer in my bungalow. After skinning the seal's head on the kitchen table I dissected away most of flesh from the skull.

At about 10.00 pm that night after cleaning up the mess in the kitchen there was a knock at the door. It was the woman, the Norwegian actress. A cold wind was howling outside. Apologizing for her late night intrusion she explained that she had seen me severing the seal's head from its body and carrying the head back to the bungalow. She had been drinking and was in a terrible emotional state. Her jeans and pullover were soaking wet and she was bare foot. She confessed that she attempted to commit suicide by walking into the sea in the dark but had lost her nerve. I invited her into the bungalow and insisted that she take a hot shower. Because of her drunken state I had to help her undress. While she stood under a hot shower I hung her cloths in front of a heater. Once I had dried her with a towel I managed to get her into a bed, pulling the covers over her as she lay in a foetal position with her head on the pillow. Laying naked under the covers her pale face was filled with anguish. She complained that she felt cold. She began to shiver uncontrollably. I felt her forehead, she was feverish. Like a sick child she took the two Disprins I gave her, swallowing then with a sip of water from a glass. In response to her plea that I hold her I stripped, slipping naked into the bed, I pulled the covers over both of us, and cuddling against her back I put my arm around her and pulled her tightly against my body. She passed out in my arms and I eventually fell asleep holding her.

7

The percussion of heavy surf and Angelika's soft kisses on the back of neck lifted me gently from the depths of a peaceful slumber. Her hand was caressing my breast. I lay with eyes closed.

'Are you awake?' She asked, her warm body pressed pleasantly against mine.

I did not answer. Instead I turned over and kissed her gently on the lips. I whispered:

'Have you ever been with a woman?'

'No.'

'Do you want me to make love to you?' I asked.

'Yes.'

As the enveloping mists disappeared into the dunes and the weak morning sun filtered through grey opaque skies the headless seal rolled with stiff flippers in the surf of the retreating tide. We ate a sumptuous breakfast at her hotel and I felt the guilt of my betrayal of Janet. I had become Angelika's new found love. Colour had returned to her face and I was awe struck with her Nordic beauty. She was thirty one years of age and she felt young again like a love-struck teenager and I was barely twenty-one, living at that precocious threshold of adulthood. I knew that I was infatuated with the older woman but I loved Janet, and I knew that in a days' time I would be leaving Angelika with feelings of regret and relief. We have managed to maintain a deep friendship over the years.

Chapter 14: Cause and Effect

1

Back to the over-determination of causality. Do laws of nature remain constant or do they change with time. Are the laws of nature immutable or timeless in other words? If they are not immutable or timeless, then why should this be the case? Not being timeless is naturally contrary to our expectations. If they are not timeless in-themselves, can the immutability or timelessness of the laws of nature be contingent on something else? What would cause a law of nature to change or remain constant? Can something like a law of nature be caused to remain constant? Can we speak about causality in this sense? Can be we speak of a cause which is responsible for the invariance of the various laws of causation. Are the unchanging properties of a law of nature something metaphysical, in other words is the unchanging character or the immutability of the laws a metaphysical necessity? What does it mean to say that something is a metaphysical necessity? Can we state with reason that anything which exists including a law of nature will always be contingent on something else? Personally I have always preferred an essentialist account of the laws of nature. As scientists it is natural for us to project the notion or idea of 'lawhood' onto well-established facts. Of course for a regularity to be a genuine law of nature it cannot be an accident, and an accidental regularity cannot support a counterfactual conditional. But if the laws of nature are mutable and not timeless then what makes them different from accidents?

2

Say the laws of nature do indeed change and are not invariant over time. How is it possible that they can change? What causes a law of nature to undergo a change? Any change occurring to a law of nature must have a reason, a reason why. If the Universe is casually closed then any change in a law of nature represents a physical change and a physical change must have a physical cause, therefore a law of nature cannot change without reason, where the reason would be those physical affects which cause physical laws to change. In this sense Poincaré's general argument that the laws of nature cannot change is basically correct. If they could change then they would not be laws of nature, they would be contingencies and not necessities. They would be accidents. The question which seemly cannot be answered physically or materialistically is: 'Why cannot laws of nature change or what prevents a law of nature from changing?' Something must be the reason for something. Are the laws of nature timeless or immutable due to some kind of inexplicable metaphysical necessity? Science cannot answer this question. We use the phrase 'metaphysical necessity' because we do not have any empirically-based means to show why laws of nature are timeless or invariant over time, and why they don't change from one moment to the next. Maybe they cannot change, maybe they will remain unchanged for all eternity. Why can't they change, why are the invariant, timeless, eternal? In this sense the Universe is not self-explanatory and Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Mind' is physically impossible and we cannot reduce the idea of Totality to something which can be apprehended or grasped by the finite mind. In this sense I would say that metaphysically the Universe is necessarily causally overdetermined and in that case I do believe in God, even as a Communist.

3

What can we say about God? If God does exist as the Being who made the Universe metaphysically intelligible by virtue of God's existence then it is reasonable to say to something about God's nature which is both meaningful and rational. For example, it is rational to comprehend God as a Being who is omnipotent and omniscient. If God is omnipotent and omniscient then God cannot be harmed, injured, offended, wronged and threatened, or limited in any way that is contrary to His or Hers essential nature.

4

Next, if humans are animals who belong to the animal kingdom and who share a common primordial ancestor with all the members of the animal kingdom and who differ only in degree along a continuum from the rest of the animal kingdom and not in kind, then humans are animals who do not differ in kind from the rest of the animal kingdom. Humans are 'essentially' animals in the same way that a mouse is 'essentially' an animal which is also a member of the animal kingdom. The truth of these propositions are self-evident, they are indubitable. The fact that humans have the capacity for language and speech and possess something which we call MIND does not change anything. Humans are still animals, animals which can reflect on the rational possibility of God's existence.

5

What does this mean or what significances does this have with regard to political theology or just plain theology as an intellectual or academic discipline? It means that theologies have be articulated from a naturalistic or physicalist or materialist perspective. The first 'metaphysical casualty' of this approach will be the validity of our ideas regarding the ontological status of good and evil. If humans evolved then good and evil do not exist, and the Universe is not governed by a moral order nor does God impose a moral order on the Universe. The Universe is not Manichean, matter cannot be good or evil. The next 'metaphysical casualty' is the idea of a theodicy. It is a conceptual error to try and reconcile a God who is good and loving with the existence of evil. In a sense neither good nor evil actually exists as deeds that earn merit or condemnation in terms of some transcendental moral order governing the Universe.

If we accept the fact of evolution then there no reason to believe in the existence of a transcendental moral ordering governing human behaviour in terms of good and evil. The possibility of evil and good is something which we become aware of in the faces of humans. In this sense good and evil are human creations, made possible by speech and facial expression. In the cries and in the expression of pain and suffering we see the corporeal manifestations of the mystery of evil and the possibility of good. In the expressions of the human face we are able to see or discern or recognize the existence of: pain, anguish, agony, angst, anxiety, despair, desperation, hopeless, injury, suffering and defeat, and from within our conscience we have the capacity to respond to an inner call of moral decision, the source or origination of which is a mystery. When I say that without this emerging capacity for moral agency which is linked to consciousness and language the evolution of humans would not have been possible. And the question of good and evil would not have risen. All ethical action responding to this mysterious moral imperative which is based on the idea that humans should not be treated as means to an end but only as ends in the Kantian sense represents an act of transcendence, because it is not conditional on any reciprocal settlement. It is transcendent because it is 'God-like'.

6

If there could at all be the possibility for the actual existence of a moral order it would necessarily have to be a new creation, brought into existence creatio ex nihilo, by virtue of God's kenosis. Without God's kenosis there can be no moral ordering in the realm of human existence, humans remain members of the animal kingdom existing in continuum with all animals beyond good and evil. In the light of this view, with regard to Dostoyevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov', the meaning of the phrase 'If God does not exist, everything is permitted,' can be deconstructed quite differently from the popular interpretations.

7

A reading of Exodus chapter 3 is consistent with what I have been proposing with respect to the moral foundations of political theology and theology in general:

Exodus Chapter 3: Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. 3 And Moses said, "I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned." 4 When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." 5 Then he said, "Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." 6 And he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.7 Then the LORD said, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. 10 Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt." 11 But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?" 12 He said, "But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain." 13 Then Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" 14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel: 'I AM has sent me to you.'" 15 God also said to Moses, "Say this to the people of Israel: 'The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. 16 Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, "I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, 17 and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey."' 18 And they will listen to your voice, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, 'The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; and now, please let us go a three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God.' 19 But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. 20 So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go. 21 And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians; and when you go, you shall not go empty, 22 but each woman shall ask of her neighbour, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewellery, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians."

9

How do we respond to this passage of scripture? Firstly, we can state that God is free. Secondly, God in a self-emptying act identifies with the faces of the oppressed and decides to take the side of the oppressed against the oppressor because he sees their faces and hears their cries. Kenosis is the word used for God's self-empting act.

10

The absence of archaeological data is not a sufficient or even a compelling argument for questioning the underlying historicity of the Exodus and Exile narratives documented in the various books of the Old Testament. We need to understand that all reading is haunted by a longing for something to be true. Why is this? In the case of the books of the Old Testament and New Testament this longing is rooted in an inherited or socially acquired belief that the Bible was not a work of literary fiction but a collection of narratives which were true and were firmly anchored in history, involving real historical persons who existed in real space and real time. The Bible in it's entirely was believed to be the revelation of God and this meant that each word in the Bible had been divinely inspired, and that the Bible in its entirety was authoritative, inerrant and infallible. As a primary school child in Hotazel I could never have entertained the possibility that the entire canon of the Old Testament and New Testament was not literally true. Our social and cultural environment in Hotazel was a hothouse for the incubation of Biblical based beliefs. We grew up in this milieu or ethos in which the literal truth of the Bible was taken for granted and no one could have dreamt of claiming otherwise, such was the respect for the Bible. As a child in Hotazel I could never have contemplated that the historicity or truth of the Old Testament or the New Testament was questionable. In was natural to believe in the truth of Bible and to respect the Bible and hold it in awe. And it goes without saying that the person and being of Jesus commanded unquestionable respect and deep heartfelt adulation. Jesus was God, God the Son, the second person the trinity.

Our parents where not church goers when we were children or teenagers. Yet, if asked about their beliefs they would have without hesitation affirmed their belief in God, in Jesus and the Bible. But they made no effort to nurture any kind of religiosity in us. So in practice our home life was secular. Our parents were not exemplary or observant Christians. Their worldliness was quaint and benign, and politically conservative, shaped and moulded by the distinctive urban conditioning which was very peculiar to the white South African cultural and social environment. It was the cultural, social and political environment which characterised the white working class and middle class neighbourhoods of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Neighbourhoods such as Malvern and Belgravia, suburbs of the city of Johannesburg, which was the metropolitan heart at the very epicentre of the sprawling Witwatersrand.

11

My parents where teetotallers. Alcohol consumptions was frowned upon. This was odd given the fact that in their youth they had been keen dancers and as teenagers they had frequented dancing halls, ice-rinks, roller skating rinks, hot-rod stadiums, drive-inns and the cinemas of Johannesburg, venues of entertainment and recreation which reverberated and resonated with the music and cultural ethos of the United State of America. They were Afrikaners who undergone a process of Americanized acculturation. As a child I grew up with the sound of big band dance music, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller, blaring from the Pilot Radiogram, at parties at our home, the carpets rolled up, dad and mom dancing on the polished parquet lounge floors in our house at Hotazel or at a social function at the rec club hall. Personally I loved the excitement of Glenn Miller's 'In the Mood' and Benny Goodman's 'Sing, Sing, Sing'. I loved the big band ensemble of trumpets, trombones, saxophones, guitar, piano, double bass, and drums. I loved the strophic form with the same chord structure repeated several times.

12

And at supper time we almost never ate a meal without some LP on the turntable, always classical music. Where am I going with this? I don't really know. Within the context of being born white in South Africa I am in many ways a product of white South Africa. White South Africa is a social, cultural and political anachronism, and as such it is completely maladapted socially and culturally to the realities of its geo-political situation in Africa and also with the world at large. White South Africa has always defined itself in terms of racial, social, cultural, economic and political differences in relation to the African indigenous communities. As a self-defining community it turned in on itself and in the process turned away from the aboriginal inhabitants, not making any effort to learn their languages, customs, traditions and world views. It severed itself from the indigenous people. As a racially based white community it could only exist in remote isolation, disconnected from it historical and ancestral roots. Its isolation is something which happened progressively after being transplanted and cast-off onto the southern tip of Africa as a purely contingent consequence of British colonial imperialism, when Britain was once a world power.

Chapter 15: University of Cape Town

1

After I had completed my MSc in Zoology at Wits at the end of 1977 I decided to do my PhD at the University of Cape Town (UCT). I drove down to Cape Town from Hotazel in my old white 1961 VW Beetle which my dad had completely reconditioned, fitting it with a new gear box, tires and suspension. He also overhauled the engine. Listening to the blearing of rugby commentary in Afrikaans on the transistor radio in the garage I helped my dad remove the engine. Together we disassembled it. Wearing yellow latex kitchen gloves, old T-shirt and jeans, I cleaned all the parts with petrol. Afterwards he inspected every part. Repaired what had to be repaired, replaced what had to be replaced which included spark plugs, carburet, points, hand break cable, clutch, wheel bearings, brake shoes and finally the exhaust. The piston cylinders were honed and the engine was reassembled with new piston rings, bearings, gaskets, and oil seals. It was practically a new engine. It was the same car that I had been driving since my first year at university. It was also the car which got me to Gobabeb in Namibia for my honours research project in 1976. He said that I had really hammered the car mercilessly over the years, but now it was practically brand new. And I should stop being such a 'cowboy' with my driving! In Afrikaans he said that I must stop being a 'windgat'. That is not something you would normally say to girl or woman. The car was now ready for the long journey and for my sojourn in Cape Town.

In spite of my continuous clashes with my brother over politics and my hatred of the South African Police and Military I decided without asking Malcolm's permission to liberate his precious olive green army steel trommel (steel trunk), so it became mine curtsy of the South African Defence Force (SADF). In fact I took possession of the steel trunk which was still theoretically the property of the SADF. It was clearly marked as the property of the SADF. The steel trunk had been gathering dust in the garage and was filled with Malcolm's old army kit from the time when he had done his military service after he matriculated from high school. Under the apartheid regime national military service was compulsory for all white males in South Africa. I unpacked all his old army stuff which included a steel battle helmet, bush hat, beret, a rifle cleaning kit, a bayonet, water bottle, dixies, boots, socks, gloves, scarf, bush jacket, jersey, trench coat, sleeping bag, poncho, uniforms and webbing into a large cardboard box. Everything I touched had that strong musty army smell. After cleaning the army smell from the trommel I took it up to my bedroom where I packed my collection of books into it. I had to take all my books with me to Cape Town. I could not live without my books. Packed brim-full with books it was too heavy for me to lift, I had to drag it, grasping the trommel by one of the metal handles on the side. My father shook his head when he saw the steel trunk filled with what he called my Communist books.

2

As a person with strong military inclinations Malcolm had not shown any interest in going to university. He showed no signs that he had any academic inclinations or academic interests. After completing his army training in the Parabats he did a stint in the Selous Scouts in Rhodesia. After 1976 he came back to South Africa and signed up with the permanent force and became an officer in the 1 Reconnaissance Commando otherwise known as the Recces. He had become a career soldier. Every now and then I got snippets of information from my dad regarding Malcolm's meteoric rise in the military. It was so ambiguous, my dad was proud of Malcolm's achievements in the military as well as my own academic achievements. But I remained my dad's favourite child. The family knew this and had come to accept it. I was the one he confided in regarding his differences with mom and the rest of family. There was an unshakable bond between us even though he was very doubtful about my politics which gave him much anxiety.

He always said that I was going to get into trouble. He warned me that I was playing with fire with all this Marxist stuff and talk about socialism and so on. But he was not a man who was given to making moral judgements, he was honest about his own failings, and he knew that he was a flawed human being. In that sense he was a man of integrity and a good man in my opinion. I knew that in spite of everything my father was a good man. What about Malcolm? Malcolm was an adventurer, he was fearless, but he was not a cheat or womanizer, when it came to relationships with women he was faithful and when it came to friends he was loyal and affectionate. In spite of everything Malcolm was deeply religious. As you may have guessed by the end of 1976 Malcolm and I had stopped talking to each other. Our political differences had become irreconcilable.

We all suspected that our father had been unfaithful. We first moved from City Deep to Stilfontein and then we moved from Stilfontein to Hotazel and I know that one of the reasons for our west-ward migration was to put as much distance between Corelle and my father. It was ironical, Corelle had been my mother's best friend from childhood until she married my father. Corelle grew up in the same street as my mom, in Belgravia. My father had an affair with Corelle and somehow my parent's marriage managed to survive all this time in spite of my father's infidelities. Anyway, we had moved to Hotazel so that my parents could make a fresh start at rebuilding their relationship and salvaging their marriage. After standard five my own migrations from home began. First to Potchefstroom, then to Johannesburg and now I was leaving for Cape Town, but always returning to Hotazel. Hotazel seemed to be the fixed point on the compass, a sort of metaphorically North, the point of reference from which I could plot the course of my life, a fixed from which I could measure my progress.

3

When I arrived at UCT I had to struggle single-handedly to get the trunk out of the back of the Volkswagen. Then I had to drag it and it made a loud metallic scrapping sound as I dragged it first across the tar road and then over the pavement into the foyer of the newly built Leo Marquard Hall student's residence. After checking it at the residence with all my details as a new student I dragged the trommel into the lift. I stayed in the residence which looked like a giant toilet roll for a month before moving into a bachelor flat in Chester House which was in Chester Road in Rondebosch. The flat was small. The divan sized bed was situated in the small enclave between the kitchen's sliding door and the front door. The front door when opened wide touched the foot end of the bed. The lounge had a bedsitter, two chairs and a small round coffee table. The tiny kitchen had a service hatch opening into the lounge. The service hatch had a counter which functioned as the table for meals and the two high stools in the lounge served as the seating arrangement for meals. The spacious lounge had a massive north facing window, it was wall to wall in breadth, and floor to ceiling in height. During the day the flat was bathed in golden sunlight and the yellows walls endowed the interior with an illusion of infinite space, a mood of warmth and the glow of optimism. So as you can image the flat fulfilled all conditions which made it a fitful place to be called home. I was really happy with my new home and with the way my life was turning out. I felt that I could not ask for more out of life. And in an absent minded moment of thankfulness I made the sign of the cross. A habit I had a first acquired from Kate and which Janet had helped to perpetuate.

4

Up until moving to Cape Town I had been staying since 1973 in Sunnyside Residence for women at the University of the Witwatersrand. I remained in Sunnyside until the end of 1977 which was when I had completed my MSc, and before 1973 I had been in boarding school living in a dormitory for girls since standard six. The only place I could really call home was my bedroom in Hotazel. Moving to Cape Town also meant that I had to open a new bank account at a Nedbank branch in Rondebosch. All the usual amenities, the bank, the movie theatre, the pub, the pizzeria and a Pick-n-Pay supermarket were all within a few minutes' walk from the flat. The pub called the Pig and Whistle was a popular student hangout. The Hard Rock Café another favourite student hangout was also just down the main road within walking distance. And two block away across the main road was the Baxter Theatre.

But now for the first time in my life I had to worry about having enough money to survive as a postgraduate student. I had a CSIR bursary, but I soon discovered that I could not make ends meet with the bursary. Once I had paid my flat rent I had almost no money left for food or petrol for the car, not to mention money for movies or eating out. After a plea for financial help my dad bailed me out by paying for the flat rent. After this very brief period of financial hardship I was offered a two year contract as a temporary lecturer. I jumped at the opportunity. My job involved giving some first year lectures in zoology and also lectures at the second and third year level on animal behavioural ecology and animal ecophysiology. I had to give up the bursary but the salary more than compensated for the loss of the bursary.

Now for the first time in my life I had a bit of extra cash for discretionary expenditure and also for a tiny bit of sartorial extravagance. So I could now afford to add some interesting garments and accessories to supplement my modest wardrobe. I did not tell my dad about my financial windfall and he continued to pay the flat rent. The rhetoric of the real. In this connection I had acquired a taste for doing lipstick lesbian drag. And so now that I had for the first time in my life a bit of extra cash for discretionary expenditure I could afford to add some interesting garments and accessories to my wardrobe. Doing lipstick lesbian drag is also a performance of the rhetoric of the real. The lesbian body as a female homosexualized or homoerotized body as I have already said exists in state of social and political tension because it happened to be a deviant body, a sexualized body embedded in a feminized Universe, existing in a state of conjugation with the female body. As a deviant body it can only exist in a state of exclusion as a non-compliant body, as a supremely ethical body, as a sublimely desiring body, and as a sacredly engendered body. The adornment of the lipstick lesbian body is always a whimsically performed symbolic parody of heterosexual femininity and this is the essence of lipstick lesbian drag. Lesbian drag is not only a parody, but also a caricature, a subversion, a distorting, a perverting and an undermining of the 'cultural costume' which has been imposed upon the bodies of women under the rule of the patriarchy to distinguish women by means of their clothed bodies so that they can be set apart from men in terms of identity and socio-political rank in the hierarchy of power relationships between men and women. So what does it mean or symbolize to dress up the lesbian body in feminized apparel? In terms of the rhetoric of the real it means to be dressed in drag. To be in drag involves the symbolic construction of lesbian identity which in a fashion necessarily entails the parody of heterosexual femininity. A femme lesbian's exaggerated femininity, with lipstick and high heels, cleavage and curves, slip of a short clinging dress with lots of exposed thigh encased in stockings, represents a parody of heterosexual femininity and is a form of playful imitation, but with a subtle hint of seductive intentions and sufficiently sensual to excite and arouse. The exaggerated femininity of the lesbian femme dressing up is a refined art which follows its own subtle drag code, which screams lesbian in its purposeful emphasis on the sensual and erotic, it is meant to be seductive, it is meant to enthral the libidinous female gaze. Lesbian femme fashion involves dressing up like a woman to seduce a woman, to arouse a woman, to have sex with a woman, to exhibit an interest in the bodies of women, by mirroring the female body as an image or reflection of desire. I dress up, I go out, I am cruising, I know I am cruising, I walk with intent, with purpose, the percussion of my high heels attracts the attention of women, they hear that distinctive sound of an approaching woman, a woman who walks with purpose in her step, a woman who is in command of her feminine sensuality, a woman who wants to be seen and heard by other women. I am the talented pick-up artist. I am the temptress. I am sexually indulgent. I know the ways of the feminized erotic underworld. I am the appealing luscious and lascivious bowl of voluptuous fruit picked from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This is me and I make no apologies. I notice a woman looking at me, she stares at me and I look back, I catch her eye, I continue to stare back, she is like Lot's wife, she cannot withdraw her face from Sodom and Gomorrah, she is fixated, I hold her gaze longer than what would be natural or even necessary between strangers – too long in fact, and I smile, it is an unmistakable invitation, and invitation to what? She doesn't know, she could not imagine in her wildest dreams, she is a stranger to herself, she does not know why she is aroused, but she smiles back. We see each again an hour later. I am back, I have come flying in from the darkness, I hold the reigns of unbridled sensuality. I am transformed, I am the stunning and sexually wanton Lilith. I have come to seduce the beautiful Eve away from Adam. Adam is a fool! He is also weak, so weak indeed, compared to Adam we are perpetually orgasmic, this is the measure of the strength of our appetite for pleasure, compared to us Adam is a weakling, he expires in a spurt of futility, in an ejaculation of death, he dies, he is spent. We are both trying on shoes. I sit down right next to her to try on a stiletto. We are close, very close. Our hips touch, our thighs touch. I am in her space. We physically close. Close enough to breathe each other's perfume with each breath, to take in the fragrance of each other's presence. I don't intend buying, I try on one set of high heels after the next, and we become friendly, we make small talk, we exchange a torrent of compliments as we take turns to perform pirouettes, turning on the foot of a stiletto, admiring ourselves before the mirror, displaying our calves and thighs to each other. I have made up my mind, I want to have sex with the stranger, having sex with a random stranger is a fantasy I have been toying with for some time. She is an attractive woman in her late thirties, she takes great pride in her appearance, she is married, she has children, and we continue speaking about this and about that. I ask if she would like to go for coffee. We find a place nearby and we sit down and we order coffee. She works as an actuary for Old Mutual. She graduated from UCT with a degree in actuarial science. She won the faculty gold medal for being the best actuarial student to graduate in her year. I inform her that I am busy working on my PhD in Zoology and that I have a temporary lectureship in the Zoology Department. She is very impressed with me. I am in her class of persons. She makes a joke that I don't look like a zoologist. She relaxes, she is now at ease knowing that I am not just a young delectable scallywag who is going to lead her astray and take advantage of her. She informs me that her husband is an orthopaedic surgeon and that she has two young children, a boy and a girl who are at primary school. They live in a mansion in Constantia and she is the boss of her division at Old Mutual. Her name was Elaine Redfield, Redfield was her maiden name which she had decided to keep. She joked that she decided to keep her surname because it happened to be a posh English name, apparently she had deep roots in the English aristocracy?

Here I was the paradigmatic exemplification of a seductive presence, filled with the fantasy of having sex with a strange woman, sitting across the table before Elaine, possibly looking like a Coloured in her eyes, pretending to be White in her mind. I felt a sudden urge to pretend I was indeed Coloured.

'Actually I am of Coloured ancestry (I knew in my heart and on the basis of very personal physiognomic or anatomical clues that this was true) but we have managed to pass for White, so officially I am classified as a White,' I said smiling as seductively as possible. The admission carried an enormous freight of meaning and significance. If every word spoken, every deed done and every act committed, had been written down in some transcendental book, and on the day of judgement when that book is finally opened on my page I will be surely judged as a Coloured by God, and as a Coloured I be would be welcomed into Her rest.

But it was all a deception. Yet having made the admission, it was not really a lie, in fact it was a very noble truth indeed, a truth which now allowed me to be a Coloured woman with a clear conscience. I saw the spark of recognition in her eyes, she see with the eyes of a born and bred Capetonian that I was indeed Coloured without a shadow of doubt. Remarkably I was a Coloured, with all the sexual energy, sexual excess and sexual vitality which the Coloured body possesses. With Elaine I could finally unashamedly be a Coloured for the first time in my life, I could now play the role of a real Coloured in the eyes of this posh White woman, someone who now believed that I was indeed a Coloured. With me now being a Coloured I suddenly became a subject of compelling sexual interest and value to this woman. I touched her calf with the side on my high heel. She moved her leg slightly away. I pursued her calf and touched it again, firmly this time, my intensions were unmistakably clear. She did not move her calf away. I began to caress the inner side of her calf with the side of my high heel. I smiled sweetly at her with an innocence that extended to the horizons of the infinite. I had the mystical knowledge for the Idea of the Good, I had emerged from the Cave into the Sunlight. What she did not know in spite of all her poshness and English aristocracy was that this little Coloured slut with all her dark ancestral history of miscegenation to boot was going to fuck her. I had worked hard to get to this point in my fantasy of being a Coloured. I place my hand over hers and we clasped each other's hand. 'Should we go to some place private?' I asked innocently. 'We could go to my flat,' I quickly offered. 'No that will not be necessary, we have a very nice rustic little cottage in Llandudno, very secluded and private,' she said, making a counter offer. I followed her in my VW Beetle driving behind her Mercedes. It turned out to be a lovely little cottage nestled in the bush at the foot of the mountain with a neat little front lawn surrounded by a bushy hedgerow. It was close enough to the sea to hear the constant faint drone of crashing surf. Once inside after nervously fiddling with a bunch of keys she asked if I would like a little shot of scotch, adding that she had an unopened bottle of a 21 year old Glenfiddich single malt Scotch whiskey. 'I am not a big drinker but maybe a very teeny-weenie scotch would be in order,' I said, raising my hand to eye level, holding my forefinger almost against my thumb. 'With ice?' she asked. 'Yes with a cube of ice if possible,' I answered. 'We've got ice, we have a potent little gas freezer-refrigerator.' I followed her into the tiny kitchen and watched her pour half a tot into a tot measurer which she then emptied into a heavy crystal whiskey glass before dropping a cube of ice into the yellowish fluid which swirled in the glass, barely covering the bottom. Using the tot measurer she poured herself a stiff double, recklessly overflowing the scotch into her glass before adding several blocks of ice, after swirling the ice in the glass she took a deep sip. I followed her into a tastefully furnished and thoughtfully decorated main bedroom with a queen sized bedroom suite. In the room the moment of truth had arrived for her. She now stood at that existential threshold where warning lights begin to flash and sirens wail with a pressing urgency reminding her of every conceivable consequence which would inexorably flow from this momentary lapse of will power. What was she prepared to sacrifice in order to spend an afternoon in the arms of this smiling Coloured temptress with the bright red lipstick standing before her in stockings and high heels, wearing a slinky dress, perhaps a bit too short and cheeky for decency? Hypothetically she was facing the future prospect of profound regret if she took the next step. But she was no longer in command of the situation and seemed flustered and undecided, and I guessed that she was on the brink of saying that she was sorry but she could not go through with this. And that was precisely what she did. She said: 'I am sorry I can't go through with this.' 'With this?' What did she mean by 'with this'. The 'with this' was a homosexual physical act with another woman. She must have previously entertained the fantasy of having sex with another woman. I put my glass down on the dressing table and then took her glass and put it down next to mine. I embraced her and began to kiss her. I could taste and smell the whiskey on her breath. She had succumbed, the line had been crossed, there was no going back, I could savoured it as my tongue probed the depths of her mouth, the vapours of her lust filled my nostrils and excited my taste buds. I felt for the zip of her dress and pulled it down to the small of her back, just above her buttocks, kicking off her high heels, she allowed me to help her out of her dress. I laid down naked next to her on the bed wearing only my stockings, she was still wearing her bra, panties and panty-hose. I began to kiss her while I slipped my hand under the top of her panty hose and panties. Her vulva was engorged and moist. This woman was hot and now fully aroused, but she just had no idea of what lesbian sex entailed. 'Elaine my honey, my dearest darling, do you want me to stop what I am doing?' I whispered earnestly, affectionately, and sincerely, between kisses. 'No it feels fabulous, don't be afraid to touch me, I want you too.' Our secret affair lasted for an entire year. I developed genuine feelings for Elaine. I cared for her and I would never dream of hurting her or harming her in any way. Elaine was eager and insatiable when it came to lesbian sex. We met regularly for a romantic tryst at the cottage. She became vulnerable, clinging and jealous. During our affair she would phone me several times a day. After saying 'I love you Hannah' she would put the receiver down. She wanted to know about the other women in my life. I told her that the only other woman I was seeing on a regular basis was Bridgette who was heterosexual and our friendship was based on common intellectual interests which revolved around a mutual fascination for Djuna Barnes and Virginia Woolf. I had become friendly with Bridgette within the first week of my arrival in Cape Town. She was a mere two years older than me and was a lecturer in the English Department.

When Elaine heard that Bridgette was heterosexual and was not sexually interested in women that calmed her down. And as things turned out Bridgette was doing research for a paper on the anti-Semitism of Djuna Barnes. What kind of work was Nightwood, a vicarious confession or what? What about the Jew in Nightwood? The Jew is anywhere and everywhere, anywhere and everywhere always seeking where it was important and advantageous to be, the Jew is always drawn to the City like a moth to the bright flame of a candle. The Jew always desires to insinuate himself into the great courts of the Gentile Oligarchy. The Jew as the archetypical calculator becomes a necessary cog in the machinations of the Oligarchy in every age. At the elbow of the raising Gentile the figure of the Jew is ever present, like the ever present mutualistic, commensal and symbiotic presence of the pilot fish clinging to the shadow of a shark, without the spoils of the marauding shark the Jew cannot exist, the Jew exists by virtue of the Gentile. This was my intellectual contribution to Bridgette's research on Nightwood, which dealt with the essential nature of the Jew in Nightwood, possibly in the way in which Djuna Barnes perceived it. And the Jew is everywhere, yes the Jew constantly intrudes into my life. I cannot escape the Jew. I constantly find myself in situations where I am befriending the Jew, where I am the friend of the Jew, where I am in love with the Jew, where I become deeply involved with the Jew. I would make the perfect Jew.

5

So with a bit of extra money in my bank account I continued to explore the rhetoric of the real more fully during my free time, which was usually Friday and Saturday nights when I visited gay hangouts. In this connection I developed my taste or my erotic predilection for doing lipstick lesbian drag. Doing lipstick lesbian drag is what I mean by doing a performance of the rhetoric of the real. Contrary to the lay opinions of those who are completely uninitiated about the secret life of the lesbian body, let it be known to all that the lesbian body as a female homosexualized or homoerotized body exists in a state of social and political tension as a deviant body, as a non-compliant female body. And as such, the lesbian body cannot escape from being an ethical body, a desiring body, and an engendered body. And to repeat, the adornment of the lipstick lesbian body because it is always a whimsically performed symbolic parody of heterosexual femininity, a performance, an enactment, which captures the very essence of doing lipstick lesbian drag, the adornment of the femme lesbian body subverts the mirror surface in that it does not reflect an imitation, it subverts and brings into tension the idea of the female body. It is an exercise in mime and mimicry, which was something I knew a lot about from animal behavioural ecology. Lesbian drag is not only a parody, but also a caricature, a subversion, a distorting, a perverting and an undermining of the 'cultural costume' which has been imposed upon the bodies of women under the rule of the patriarchy to distinguish women by means of their clothed bodies so that they can be set apart from men in terms of identity and socio-political rank in the hierarchy of power relationships between men and women. So what does it mean or what does it symbolize to dress up the lesbian body in feminized apparel? In terms of the rhetoric of the real it means to be dressed in drag. To understand the meaning of the 'rhetoric of the real' is to comprehend the ironical representation of the 'real'. The real is not the real. To be in drag involves the symbolic or ironic construction of lesbian identity which in a fashion necessarily entails the parody, mime and mimicry of heterosexual femininity for homoerotic purposes. This is the exact opposite of the psychiatric fallacy of the female 'invert'. The rhetoric of the real means that in our self-representation of femininity we want to be women for the sake of women only, and masculinity is erased in a comedy of irony and futility, which is a castration and emasculation. Men have no existence.

6

As I have already said, in the patriarchical oligarchy, the body is always clothed in its culturally, socially and politically designated 'costume', thus the clothed body is accordingly assigned it social rank in the structure of power relationship of domination between the sexes. The social ranks according to the costume worn by the clothed body become fixed and cemented into a social order of hierarchical exploitation, firstly of women and then of slaves of both sexes. The male slave became a version of the feminized body. In this fashion the patriarchical enslavement of souls and bodies involves the exploitative process of 'feminization'. In many ways the Edenic myth fulfils to this day a deeply ideological or propaganda function and also a hegemonizing purpose in all Neolithic and post-Neolithic societies' right up to the so-called age of modernity. Like the rest of the Bible the true revelatory character of the Edenic story in Genesis can only be dialectically disclosed or unveiled once its ideological function is grasped and subjected to criticism. As a work of fiction its purpose was to 'ideologize', 'ontologize', 'naturalize' and 'theologize' social roles and relationships of power based strictly on sexuality or sexual identity, where sexual identity was made phenotypically visible in terms of the male-female anatomical dimorphisms associated with the distinctive male-female secondary sexual characters. Secondary sexual characters have the biological function of sexual ornamentation, which is the kind of anatomical ornamentation that is visually attractive to the libidinous gaze. Therefore, secondary sexual characters represent the kinds of natural bodily anatomical ornamentations which make the sexes appear erotically attractive to each other and thereby facilitate the production of desire which leads to sex, where sex results in the reproduction of progeny. However, sexual identity, visually based on secondary sexual characters has also resulted in social roles been imposed on women and men. The social roles are imposed through the medium of clothing, where the overt visibility of clothing style is used to veil or conceal the secondary sexual anatomical ornamentation which serves an erotic function in the sexual biology of the human species. Thus the female body is clothed in a costume befitting the social roles to be performed by feminized bodies. And visualization of or the visibility of sexualized status through the specifications of the 'costume' also becomes the means for exerting power and control over the female body, especially in societies that have become organized, controlled and governed through non-egalitarian institutions based on the stratified and hierarchical ordering of masculinized power and domination. Dialectically speaking the 'divine revelation' embodied in the mythological or fictional narrative of the Edenic story of the clothed body versus the naked body is not the meaning of the literal story, which includes shame, but the exact opposite, and this is how revelation becomes manifest in irony. So the divinely inspired message of truth that is authoritative, inerrant and infallible only becomes dialectically manifested or unconcealed or unveiled or unclothed in the aesthetic forms of irony, which when the literal is undressed, the truth in the form that opposite to the plainly literal meaning, is revealed in all its visibility. Hello Hegel!

7

In this context, that is the context of the Edenic myth the lipstick lesbian's homoerotic feminization of the 'costume' of the clothed female body in the form of drag presents a direct challenge and subversion of the patriarchy through irony, mimicry and parody. The feminized homoerotic lesbian body subverts the body of the patriarchy by rendering it impotent, the lesbian body in homoerotic drag destabilizes the power of the costume imposed on the female body by the ruling patriarchy and this act of feminist lesbian moral agency constitutes a castration of the male body, and the decapitation of patriarch's bearded head. This is why God created lesbians!

Of course the feminist lipstick lesbian reading of Holy Scripture is necessarily a non-canonical reading, a reading based on a non-patriarchical hermeneutics and a non-patriarchical deconstruction or destruction. The same goes for a feminist lipstick lesbian's reading of the Hellenic canon, both pre-Socratic and post-Socratic Greek philosophical literature. It is often falsely taken for granted that the Western philosophical and theological canon is masculine, especially in its Hellenic and Hebraic renditions. However this does not disqualify a non-canonical lipstick lesbian feminized re-reading of the Hellenic-Hebraic Canon. This would constitute a serious challenge to the masculinized conceptualization of the World and the Universe. Sexual dimorphism has been too rigidly conceived in terms of differences in kinds in a dualistic or dichotomized fashion. However, differences between feminized and masculinized bodies and minds should not be conceptualized as differences in kinds but rather in terms of differences in degree along a continuum. This will remove the dissymmetry or asymmetry of kind that have been imposed on the sexes by men under the institutions of the patriarchy.

8

In literature this dissymmetry/asymmetry in 'kind' rather than 'degree' always involves the objectification of the female body with respect to a male subject in an unending 'ad infinitum'. The male subject rules! The male subject is the moral agent of objectification. We see this in the relationship between Zeus and Hera, Odysseus and Penelope, Faust and Gretchen, Don Giovanni and Zerlina, and more recently in Humbert Humbert and Dolores Haze (Lolita). All the feminine heroines are suppressed, we only have the masculine Prometheus, Odysseus and Faust. The feminist lipstick lesbian seems to lack a mythic heroine, a mythic feminine subjectivity in which she could recognize her potency and moral agency in the world. But is this absolutely true? No, I don't think so! There has to be mythic figures that embody the feminine subjectivity of a female heroine on par with Prometheus. So where does the Hebraic and the Hellenic lipstick lesbian stand? What is her standing as a mythic heroine figure? Where is superwoman? Maybe Mother Mary should be our superwoman our Hebraic heroine. Ironically it was through the singing or chanting of the Magnificat that my political awakening and eventual radicalization took place while I was still a school girl at Potchefstroom Girl's High.

And Mary said: "My soul glorifies the Lord

and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,

for he has been mindful

of the humble state of his servant.

From now on all generations will call me blessed,

for the Mighty One has done great things for me—

holy is his name.

His mercy extends to those who fear him,

from generation to generation.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;

he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

He has brought down rulers from their thrones

has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things

but has sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel,

remembering to be merciful

to Abraham and his descendants forever,

just as he promised our ancestors."

Mary's Song was so political subversive that the British colonial authorities found it necessary to ban the chanting of the Magnificat by the Christianized aboriginals during Evening Song. When Father Francis Digby mentioned this he had inadvertently planted the first seeds of my own political radicalization while I was still in high school. Father Francis also preached more than once on the Song of Mary. The Song captured not only the revolutionary hopes of freedom of the ancient Israelites, the Song is also deeply Hebraic, rooted in the Psalms, and in Hannah's prayer and also in the Song of Moses. The Song is ultimately about the reversal of the asymmetric distribution of power in the hierarchical rule of all forms of patriarchy. Why else would a woman sing it as a prayer? The Song can also be viewed as the prayer of the Anarchist calling for the visitation of Divine Violence on all rulers and for the full restoration of sovereignty directly to the people. After high school I become a lapsed Anglican. But I have remained a closet Christian in spite of self-identifying as a Marxist and as a feminist lesbian. I felt no reasonable or rational moral, philosophical or scientific compulsion to be an atheist. I saw no reason for such a dramatic disclamation of belief.

9

As I have mentioned to Elaine, Dr Brigitte Cook was one of my friends. Brigitte was anti-Semitic for various metaphysical reasons. She didn't explicitly admit to being anti-Semitic for personal reasons. She merely projected an intellectual aura that made it cool to be anti-Semitic once more. The world had changed that much. Hers was a sophisticated form of anti-Semitism relative to Henry Miller's more vulgar and raw expressions of anti-Semitism. I had read the draft to her paper on the image of the Jew in Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, and in a critical reading of her paper, I made some critical responses to Barnes' characterization of the Jew. Responses which embodied my own reflections on the psycho-social-dynamics of anti-Semitism. Yet it was through Brigitte that I discovered Eric Auerbach's 'Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature'. She had her ideas about realism and I had my own ideas about realism. Realism by convention usually means the representation of reality as it actually is in both science and literature. I knew what I meant by realism from a philosophy of science perspective. We debated the meaning of artistic realism in literature. In artistic realism all representations of the world and of the self as subject where the self is also part of that world arises from the creative imagination of the self. Which means the self has to represent itself as subject and the world in which it exists as a subject realistically. Which means representing in words, both the self as subject and world, as it actually is. Simply put, the self is the source or the creative or the imaginative origination of all representations of reality. And the hope of the writer as a literary realist is that these representations are indeed depictions of the way things are in actuality. The problem that arises in this context concerns the question of whether the self, or the conscious self or the mind of the self has the power or capacity to also capture itself as a self rather than as a subject within its own representation of the world. Can the self-capturing representation of the self as it actuality is within its own representation of world be achieved in a totalizing act of representation which includes its own self-representation? Is this what a totalization of all representation really means? This is what Brigitte wanted to know. She wanted to know whether the eye of the self could be an object within its own field of vision. Does the perceiving eye or the representing self necessarily fall outside of the frame of its own vision or perceptive representation of the world? Could it be argued that the eye itself be an object, among other objects, within its own field of vision only as a reflection in a mirror? But it can be argued that the self constantly exists as a subject within the world of its own representations. The twist here is that the self does indeed constantly find itself in the field of its own perceptions, but only as a subject. The self, transformed or metamorphosed into a subject happens to be an inexorable consequence of a process of objectification, a process of objectification which is realized as a mirroring reflection, in which we indeed see ourselves in manner of speaking through the eyes of others. We see ourselves with other people's eyes. This transforms us into a subject. We feel ourselves or we even experience ourselves as they see us, as if their eyes are mirrors of our reflection or reflective images of ourselves as subjects. So we do in fact appear as subjects in our own field of vision or in our representation of the world within the frame of our own vision. But it is always an alienating vision. We become the subject in our own field of vision or field of representation in an act of self-estrangement or self-alienation in which we lose ourselves in our self-reflection in the eyes of the other. The self is split from itself as a subject in the process of self-objectification. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the view that while we only can experience or feel what it is like to be ourselves, there is no possibility of representing this in words so that others can experience through the medium of speech or writing what it feels like to be ourselves. Words fail to achieve full representation of reality. Reality cannot be captured verbally, reality overwhelms language, and words fail. Language cannot represent reality in all its fullness and richness, or meaningfulness or significance. Totalization lies beyond the scope of language. If the self is the absent cause of the world coming into the fullness of presence as representation to the self-conscious mind at every moment, and in this context, it is only the self, but not the subject split from the self, which can exists as the blind spot at the very centre of the picture of the subject and its world which forms in the imagination. The self in this sense is always an absent presence, a presence which escapes representation, because it is by virtue of the presence of the self that presence of a representation is achieved. Something becomes the condition of possibility for something else, but maybe not the condition of its own possibility. The conditions which make the self a possibility lie outside of the self, the self, the human self as the centre of sentience and conscious is something which emergences contingently as a consequences of the essential nature of the properties, capacities, powers and predispositions of the elements out of which matter is constituted. The self alone is not the condition of its own possibility. These views have a bearing on how we can conceive the relationship between God and World. It was Bridgette's thesis that the literary modernists like Virginia Woolf and others dealt with the ambiguities and problematics of the self as a representation and the world as a representation through the medium of irony, where irony is saying one thing but meaning another thing.

10

Later that year, in September 1978, I told Bridgette that my good friend Dr Kate Jolly was going to spend a few days with me. The three of us went out for pizza in Rondebosch. Kate was keen that we visit Sandy Bay, and fortified by several glasses of wine Bridget volunteered to join us. Anyway that Sunday carrying towels, picnic basket and beach umbrella we found a sheltered sandy spot hidden amongst some colossal grey granite boulders and fynbos at the furthest end of the beach wedged between the foot of a steep sloping 'mountain' and the vast Atlantic Ocean. Kate and I disrobed. Looking awkward and apologetic Bridget said: 'I can't do this guys.' Sitting down on her towel beneath the umbrella between the two of us still dressed in her T-shirt and shorts she put on her sunglasses and gazed silently at the surroundings.

11

I discovered for myself that Virginia Woolf belonged to that category of writers who we classify as terribly difficult. I don't think she could ever have become a best seller in her own life time. She wrote for the university students who were going to study English literature. As a writer she placed huge demands on the reader. As one critic has said, Mrs Woolf in her writing had managed to create a world of luminous twilight. In fact Virginia Woolf succeeded in creating a very queer world indeed, a world which became vivid in its felt presence, yet at the same time remained strangely remote, and while it had all the qualities of being real it remained strangely elusive, and yet it was beautiful, almost tangibly so, yet it was also beautiful as a floating bubble in the bright sunlight, mysterious in its evanescence. This was my experience in reading her 'Jacob's Room' and 'The Waves'. After reading 'Mrs Dalloway' and 'To the Light House', what can I say? Her writing rather than being merely pictorial turned out to be a kaleidoscopic of ever changing detail. She writes for the eye. Yet her vision remained queer in its all its diligent exactitude even at the very brink of oblivion. Of course Woolf was queer. They were queer, all of them, that is the Bloomsbury crowd. But Bridget was not queer. She did not have a glimmer of queerness in her being.

Kate listened politely as Bridget began to speak about her literary research. The name Virginia Woolf only registered vaguely with Kate. A lot of what Bridget was saying about Virginia Woolf's oeuvre was going straight over Kate head and I struggled not to smile or laugh. The whole situation had become quite absurd. I uncorked the bottle of rosé. It was still chilled and I poured the wine into the three glasses.

12

Shortly after Kate left Elaine phoned me early in the morning. She sounded very agitated. While taking her two Irish setters for a walk she had spotted us at Sandy Beach. I explained that the two women I was with were Bridget and Kate. I also explained that Kate was visiting me and we were all just good friends, there was nothing sexual going on between us. Elaine asked if we could meet at the cottage after lunch. When I arrived at the cottage she apologised for being so jealous and insecure. We went to the bedroom and spent the afternoon making love. We fell asleep in each other arms and the sun had already set when I woke up. I was concerned by the fact that her family would be wondering where she was. She answered saying that she had told her husband that she would be working late and would be only getting home after 8.00 pm. She said that she and her husband, both of whom who were completely secular and spoken about taking up a religion because they felt it would be of some value for them as a family. And she wanted my advice as she was entertaining the idea of converting to Judaism as a possibility for her family. I instantly sat up in the bed and told her straight out that that would really be a bad idea. Why would I want discourage her from becoming a Jew? Saint Paul was the reason. God had called Saint Paul to be an Apostle to the Gentiles for good reason. Paul himself was not a convert, he remained a Jew. I told Elaine that my friend Kate was a Catholic and that Catholicism or Anglicanism were good religious institutions and that she rather consider becoming a Catholic. She was shocked at my recommendation.

'Why would we want to become Catholics? That is the last religion which I would consider converting too'.

I was firm. 'Forget about becoming a Jew,' I insisted.

I told Elaine that I had briefly contemplated that possibility when I was passionately in love with Yael. I described my roller-coaster seven week experience with Yael and Judaism. I described my troubled flirtation with Judaism and Jews. And then I said:

'It was emotionally and intellectually impossible for me to become Jew.'

'But why?' Elaine wanted to know.

13

Ironically even though I viewed myself as a Marxist and a Darwinian I was still self-identifying as an intellectual adherent to Christianity in the broadest and deepest terms. It was difficult to explain to her how deeply I was intellectually entrenched in an Anglo-Catholic tradition and heritage of Judeo-Christianity which made Judaism as a religion completely unpalatable. It was a result of my primary and secondary schooling. I had deep roots in Protestantism and my church background was in Anglicanism. I had a good understanding of the Christian narrative. During my seven week odyssey into the wilderness of Judaism I realized that I could not contemplate the irrevocable renouncing of something which was so awesome and monumental as the metaphysical, philosophical and theological edifice of Christianity with its deeps roots in both Hellenism and the Hebraic. It would have been an exercise in intellectual self-destruction for me. Technically or practically I could become a Jew through conversion if I really wanted to, that much was very easy, but I could not become a Jew for emotional, psychological, metaphysical, philosophical, theological or scientific reasons. These were issues of spiritual, moral and intellectual integrity all of which revolved round the deeper questions of Truth and the nature of Reality. The fact of evolution changes everything and furthermore, I could not bind myself to the founding myths of Judaism or modern Israel. With regard to becoming a Jew I would have to face an irreconcilable conflict between the Mythos of Judaism and the Logos of my Hellenic soul.

14

There were also many unbridgeable intellectual barriers. Orthodox Judaism had a literalistic and fundamentalist view of the Old Testament and the Jewish heritage. I was aware fully aware and also appraised of what was embodied in the Hebraic Heritage as perceived through Jewish eyes. It was a religiously flavoured historical-ethnic-cultural-social and political heritage inextricably interwoven into the complex, mystically-mysterious and intriguing fabric of a language (Hebrew), a text (the Torah), a mind blowing massively intricate tradition of thinking and writing (the Talmudic, Midrashic, Kabbalistic literatures and so on and so forth), a complex and intricate religion (Judaism), and not to mention membership of a very peculiar people with its own history and founding myths. Conversion was about acquiring ethnic membership, it was about acquiring 'citizenship' to tribe of Judah, it was about becoming an Israelite, it was about becoming a member of the Jewish nation with all its psychological, social and political ramifications, it required a radical changing of one's personal identity, it meant acquiring and living a completely new identity, it was about becoming someone else, someone completely different from who one was before the conversion, it meant undergoing a rebirth, becoming reborn as a new Jew, it meant the long heart-breaking struggle to become accepted as a Jew by Jews who were Jewish by birth. But personally all this stuff about ethnic membership, nationhood, new identity and ethnic citizenship left me cold, nothing from a theological and a philosophical perspective made any sense independently of the Christian prism. To be honest like Brigitte and possibility like Heidegger as well, if I were indeed an anti-Semite it was from a purely philosophical or metaphysical perspective, but not from a theological or religious or ethnic perspective. I was fully aware that the entire Christian New Testament canon was actually Jewish in the deepest possible sense and this had escaped the notice of both Jew and Christian. The entire New Testament resonates profoundly with the contemporary Judaism that prevailed during the time of Jesus and the apostles, right up to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. The early Christians lived and believed within the framework of Judaism. This is a fact that is hard to digest.

15

Of course Elaine could not get her head fully around what I was telling her.

16

My most radical criticism of Judaism as opposed to the Hebraic as embodied in the Bible centred mainly on the founding myths of Judaism as a religion. It was a religion based on an underlying mythology which shaped the worldview of the Orthodox Jew. But the influence of the life of Eros and the Hellenic Universe of Parmenides, Heraclitus and Plato had always made me critical of Judaism as a religion, mainly because of its metaphysical foundations. The erotic dimensions of a lipstick lesbian life would have created unbearable tensions between myself and the irrationality and absurdities embodied in laying the yoke of Moses on one's neck. How could the yoke of the Law and be reconciled with the eroticism of femme lesbianism, Marxism and Darwin's theory of evolution. How could the yoke of Moses be reconciled with the idea of the Good in Platonism? How could an ahistorical mythology as embodied in Judaism inform or articulate or engage historical existence? Ironically performing the mitzvot would have brought me into a state of extreme sexual arousal for all the wrong, deviant, transgressive, strange, dangerous and inexplicable reasons, like the auto-eroticism of self-asphyxiation which leads to an inevitable and untimely death. Living under the yoke of Law would have been impossible and also irrational.

17

In the end Elaine asked if I was anti-Semitic. My criticism of Judaism had seemingly turned me into an anti-Semite in her eyes. My answer: If non-acceptance of any ethnic group as being peculiarly special in terms of divine selection is anti-Semitic then I am an anti-Semite. I also added: 'Knowing who I am deep in heart is what matters most, and I would never trade that for another identity or for the membership of another nation. I am who I am and I want to remain that person with that identity'.

Chapter 16: The Underground

1

After a year I had settled down completely in Cape Town and at UCT. Also after a year Elaine's possessiveness and jealousy had made it impossible for me to continue our relationship. Brigitte had left for Oxford University for a year-long sabbatical to work on the journals of Virginia Woolf. Anyway I allowed myself to slide into the sleepy, unhurried routines and rhythms which characterized the dreamy cycle of Capetonian life. With Elaine out of the picture and Brigitte away, I had to re-calibrate my social bearings, which meant I began to attend all the advertised seminars and meetings that were linked to the activist agenda of the UCT Left. Slowly but surely I made friends and acquaintances with fellow students and postgraduate students who belonged to the Left. I even became involved with the stop conscription campaign. It was while I was involved with the stop conscription campaign that I first became acquainted with the South American liberation theology after participating in a series of seminars organized by some radical Catholic students. There was also the Rosa Luxembourg study group that I joined which in terms of membership overlapped with the radical Catholics.

I was invited to an anti-conscription campaign workshop which a radical Anglican priest had convened at his parent's home. He stayed on the property, living in a rustic open plan studio cottage which had a high steep sided thatched roof under which was cleverly hidden a spacious upstairs loft. One had to access the loft via a rickety wooden ladder through a trap door in the wooden floor of the loft. Just before breaking for lunch some female students belonging to the radical Catholic group invited the other workshop attendees to go skinny dipping in the swimming pool. I accepted the invitation. We peeled off our T-shirts and shorts or jeans or our dresses and we dived naked into the pool. None of the guys wanted join us. So it was just us girls who ended up frolicking naked in the pool. While in the pool one of girls asked if I would be interested in coming to a Marxist study group that night. We became lovers and it was through her that I was eventually recruited into the underground South African Communist Party.

The memory of that day in the pool became fixed in my mind as one of those special snap shot memories filled with blue skies, hot sun, green lawns, blue swimming pool and images of our frolicking, splashing and flirting. My girlfriend soon to be was the exquisitely beautiful seductive convent school educated, Samantha MacGuire, who had done a BA majoring in philosophy, politics and economics and was now doing a PhD in politics. I learnt that she had relatives who had a long historical association with the Irish Republican Party. The home with its beautiful swimming pool was set in a magnificent garden with huge trees. It was located in the elite and luxurious suburb of Constantia which contrasted so starkly with our socialist ideals.

2

Once Samantha had become fully acquainted with where I stood politically on the Left she began to make frequent oblique references to the Party. I sensed that I was being targeted as a candidate for recruitment. It was after a small intimate dinner party with a few friends on the Left who I had met before that Samantha asked me outright if I would like to become a member of the South African Communist Party. I immediately put two and two together and asked if I had passed the interview. She laughed and said: 'Yes!'

Before accepting the offer of membership I asked Samantha straight out:

'How can you be a Catholic and a Communist?'

'It is because I am a Catholic that I am a Communist,' Samantha replied.

So I joined the Party. I joined the Party as a lipstick lesbian. I joined the Party but I had my reservations about the Party. I was concerned about it having become intellectually moribund and incapacitated. I was worried about its revolutionary competence and I was worried about whether it subscribed to an outdated vision of Marxism and Communism. I was worried about the Party having declined into a state of stagnation. I was concerned about what kind of Communist Party I was joining. I was hoping that through my membership of the Party that I would be able to contribute to the re-vitalization of Marxism or Communism within the Party. These were my concerns and I expressed them without pulling any punches. And I said as much to Samantha.

'Well we just have to make do with the Party as it is with all its flaws and short-comings, it is like the Church, we cannot imagine the existence of Christianity without the Church, a Church that is deeply flawed and full of short-comings,' Samantha replied.

'Well I would like to believe that Communism as a project could be realized without the Party,' I replied.

'Maybe and then maybe not. Look, like you I became a Communist before I joined the Communist Party, the Communist Party will only be as good as the calibre of the Communists in its ranks,' Samantha mused.

3

Talking about love and Eros. An understanding of the meaning of Eros is a powerful antidote against the modern ideology of love. In the modern ideology of love, love is equated with sex and sex is equated with the erotic which is supposed to be about Eros. Eros and knowledge of the Idea of Good are the two sides of the same coin. The erotic is about knowing and about the love of knowledge. The love of knowledge is the highest form of erotic desire, and this love in the ultimate meaning or goal of Eros. The erotic is not necessarily synonymous with the sexual, nor is the sensual which we generally associate with Eros necessarily synonymous with the sexual. The erotic can manifest itself in relationships, especially in relationship and in pure friendships, without being overwhelmed with the sexual or with sexuality. We should be able to be erotic in relationships and friendships without being sexual. Skinning dipping for the first time with Samantha was a pleasantly erotic experience, seeing her naked and being naked with her in the pool was pleasurable, but it was not sexual. Thinking about love, Eros, sexuality and sensuality, we cannot help thinking about the physical and emotional act of sexual intimacy. Douceur as in sweetness and pleasantness was what turned me on. Sweetness, pleasantness, gentleness, tenderness, considerateness, warmth and affection were the things that turned me on and make me want to be physically and emotionally intimate in a loving relationship. Other things in a woman which turned me on were intelligence, vitality, charm and gaiety, and of course a natural sensuality which could not be reduced to physical beauty, sensuality does not necessarily always manifest itself in physical beauty. Many women, both lesbian and straight, who may seem plain can be more sensual, charming and erotic than someone who is unquestionably beautiful from a physical perspective.

4

When it came to Marxism and Communism there was very little the Party could teach me. Of course the official Party line on Marxism and Communism was archaic, rigid, dull and stuck in the Stalinism of the 1930s. Journalistic criticism of the Party portrayed the senior leadership as having a certain fixed mind-set that was clearly out of date. And we also knew, especially after 1976, that the liberation movement as a whole had been fairly pathetic at igniting and leading the Peoples War of Liberation or the Proletarian Class Struggle. Well in spite of all the obvious practical and political short-comings, including the rumoured ideological, theoretical, and philosophical backwardness of the Party with regard to its understanding and articulation of Marxism and Communism, I still felt honoured and privileged that the Party had considered me worthy of recruitment into its ranks. And I took my membership of the Party and my official standing as a 'real' Communist very seriously. I realized that membership of the Party came with a huge responsibility and required the utmost dedication, and also personal sacrifice. Now that I was officially a Communist I believed that I had what it takes to make a difference in the movement. And we debated these issues in our cell meetings. Samantha and I both became self-appointed exponents of the Class Struggle in the form of the Peoples War.

We had ironically become inspired by two movies that hit the movie circuit in Cape Town: 'The Deer Hunter' and 'Apocalypse Now'. These two movies triggered our interest in the Vietnam liberation struggle and we began to do research on the Viet Cong and that is when I came across the idea of the People's War and the necessity of following multi-dimensional strategies for prosecuting the People War. We managed to get copies of General Võ Nguyên Giáp's pamphlet and discussed it in our cell meetings.

5

In my discussions with my cell group I wanted to unpack the multi-fold meaning of reproduction in the Marxist context, reproduction means: becoming, continuation, restoration, resuscitation, persistence, perpetuation, renewal, maintenance, survival, time, the same, the existing, existence, totality. What is being reproduced? The social totality is being reproduced. What is the social totality? The social totality includes the relations and forces of production.

The vibrant and self-sustaining emergence of revolutionary proletarian class consciousness is a very definitive and radical achievement. It is impossible to wage the people war without the working class first acquiring the necessary cognitive powers and cognitive capacities for seeing all things in a new and revolutionary light. This entails the perception of all things in terms of the asymmetric distribution of power, a distribution of power which is realized, perpetuated and reproduced through the private ownership of the means of production and the means of accumulation.

The emergence of class conscious and the articulation of class interests is tantamount to the undistorted and demystified cognitive appropriation of the essential nature of the realities or conditions which make possible the asymmetric distribution of power. Articulating, promoting and furthering the proletarian class interests can be realized through the critique and demystification of the ideological defences for the continued existence of an asymmetric distribution of power. This is the intellectual component of the class struggle. And it needs to proceed hand in hand with the actual practical prosecuting of the proletarian class war by means of a multi-dimensional strategy which will dismantle and destroy the asymmetric distribution of power through: the mass general strike, the mass consumer boycott, the mass stay away, the mass occupation, the mass demonstration, mass actions of civil disobedience, the setting up of barricades, the creation of no go zones, and so on. The ultimate goal of these actions which constitute the peoples war is to drive the country into state where it becomes ungovernable or impossible to govern by the ruling class. Once the country has become ungovernable the perpetuation or continued existence of the prevailing social totality which can only exist by virtue the maintaining the asymmetric distribution of power will collapse. It will no longer be able to reproduce itself. This is why I made such a big deal about understanding what factors and forces drive the reproduction process of a social totality based on a specific economic formation. I was seeing things with the eyes of a Zoologist and I was viewing things 'ecologically'.

6

The emergence of proletarian class consciousness which is a necessary prelude to revolution includes what can be best defined as a process of cognitive mapping – a process by means of which the individual proletarian and the proletariat as a class is able to understand and see where it stands in relationship to the distribution of power, to see where one's place is, where one is situated, within the social totality relative to power, relative to the relations of production, relative to the forces of production and relative to all the determinations and moments which play such vital and critical roles in the reproduction of that very social totality with all its definitive power relationships and power structures. Here we have the resuscitation of the György Lukács' early ideas of historical materialism articulated in the form of an identification or in terms of the relationship of the subject and object of history.

How does proletarian class consciousness emerge? What factors and conditions drive the emergence of proletarian class consciousness is open to all kinds of theoretical analyses and it is in this context that the practical role of 'vanguardism' becomes politically prominent. The Communist Party has taken upon itself the multi-dimensional role of the proletarian vanguard, as the midwife of proletarian class consciousness, as the midwife of the proletarian class struggle and also as the midwife of the proletarian revolution. At the practical level in performing or executing its leadership role as the revolutionary vanguard the Communist Party engages in the mobilization and organization of the masses through active politicization and conscientization. The class struggle has to be won in the realm of ideas, which is the realm of the mind, it has to achieve this if it is going to succeed in the genuine and authentic revolutionary transformation of the social totality that is constitutive of Capitalism. This struggle in the realm of the mind, in the realm of the conscious awareness of one's class interests and one's class position within the social totality, is not simply reducible to the Lacanian idea of the Communist Party acting in the role of the analyst as in the therapeutic setting of the psychoanalytical treatment of a patient.

Rather we can learn more from Plato especially in relation to the pedagogic of the oppressed. In Plato's 'Theaetetus' Socrates talks about the role of teachers as pedagogical midwifes whose chief role is facilitate the birth of knowledge in the mind of the pupil. With the ancients pedagogical matchmaking and pedagogical midwifery went hand in hand. The Party fulfils its revolutionary vanguard role in pedagogical matchmaking and pedagogical midwifery.

7

As part of the Party work that I shared with Samantha I became involved in an adult education programme in the informal settle of Crossroads. Towards the end of 1979 Samantha was served with banning orders. But I was not even though we were always together. Shortly after her banning two security policemen pitched up one night at my flat. They bashed on the door loudly. It was 11.00 pm and I had just got back from seeing Barney Simon's Cincinnati played at the Baxter theatre. It was a play about a multi-racial discotheque club in in Fordsburg near the Oriental Plaza. When I opened the door they asked if I was Comrade Hannah. My heart skipped a beat, and I felt the immediate rush of adrenaline and my mouth became cork dry. They repeated the question:

'Is jy Comrade Hannah, Comrade Hannah Zeeman?' (Are you Comrade Hannah, Comrade Hannah Zeeman?'

'I am Hannah Zeeman,' I answered in quiet voice that sounded very timid and almost frightened in my own ears.

They pushed past me and walked into the lounge. They both reeked of alcohol. They both lit up cigarettes and I did not like anyone smoking in my flat. Pulling up the stools by the counter and they sat down with their elbows resting on the counter. The lounge lights were dim but the kitchen light was on. One of them had a brown folder which he opened. He read out the number plate of my Volkswagen and asked if this was the number plate of my car. I said yes it is. He then read out addresses, street names and dates. And asked if I had a visited any of the addresses or had driven along a certain street on a certain day at a particular time. I could feel that I was in a state of shock. In order to answer the questions I walked into the kitchen and standing on the opposite side of the counter I began to stupidly examine the calendar on the kitchen wall next to the fridge. He asked again if I had driven down a particular street on Thursday the 16th of August. I stared at the date on the calendar wracking my brain, trying to remember where I had been on that day. Then I remembered. Samantha and I had been invited to attend a workshop on liberation theology at a Coloured church in Mitchells Plain. I then confirmed that I had driven down that street on that day at that time in Mitchells Plain.

He asked what I was doing as a White woman in a Coloured township. I told him that I was going to a church meeting and they both burst out laughing. But they seemed to be happy with my answer and they became very amiable as I continued to examine the calendar while confirming where I had been at the various dates and times. It seemed that they knew everything about my movements. I was expecting that they were going to arrest me. Then out of the blue they asked me if Malcolm Zeeman was my brother. I replied yes.

Speaking in English they said they had been in the army with him, and that they had been on various military operations with him before joining the security police. They said he was a good man, a fine soldier, straight as an arrow, and he was a man who you could trust your life with. And it would be good for me to follow his patriotic example as a good and loyal citizen of our beautiful country.

He was as straight as an arrow!

They then got up to leave.

'Good night Comrade Hannah, but remember we are watching you, we know everything about you. You owe your brother big time. He is your protector.'

'We will tell him that we have warned you. Remember bad friends can corrupt your soul.'

Chapter 17: Nonhlanhla's Silhouette

1

Having arrived in 1978, I had just finished the second year of my PhD at University of Cape Town (UCT) and I travelled up to Hotazel in the last week of November 1979. At the beginning of November Samantha MacGuire had been served with banning orders and had immediately skipped the country crossing the border into Botswana and flying to Luanda in Angola. The Party instructed us who had escaped the dragnet to go to ground, to lie low and cease all overt involvement in public activism for the next couple of months.

2

Nineteen seven nine was a roller-coaster eventful year. We had witnessed one of the first conscientious objection trials at the Winfield military base in Cape Town. We crowded outside the courtroom following the proceedings through the open windows. I experienced my first frightening encounter with a huge white and black killer whale while diving in the Atlantic in a forest of kelp with other divers who were research scientists based at UCT and who were somehow linked to the Department of Sea Fisheries. Samantha and I were also cinema fanatics and went to movies several times a week at the Labia Theatre. We also saw 'The Deer Hunter' and 'Apocalypse Now' which had been released on the Cape Town cinema circuit. And then there was the Cape Town Film Festival. I was already familiar with Luis Buñuel cinematic work and was interested in viewing his insouciantly surreal movie 'That Obscure Object of Desire' starring the mouth-watering Carole Bouquet and the equalling attractive and sensuous Ángela Molina, both of whom played the beautiful 18 year old flamenco dancer named Conchita who was being pursued by Mathieu played by Fernando Rey. Bouquet and Molina alternated in the two character roles of Conchita. And Mathieu the frustrated sexual pursuer of Conchita often finds himself being cruelly and sadistically reduced by the sexually tantalizing and erotically provocative Conchita into the humiliating, powerless and almost impotently passive role of the voyeur. Sexual possession of Conchita's body becomes a frustratingly unrealizable erotic fantasy, possession which can only be realized in the act of sexual penetration forever eludes Mathieu, and he burns with unrequited desire for the young flamenco dancer.

3

My sister Elsabe and her boyfriend invited me to share the costs for a weeklong holiday in Durban just before Christmas. We rented a two bedroom holiday flat and travelled down in the boyfriend's car. Elsabe was living with her boyfriend and our parents accepted this without batting an eyelid. She did not listen to my advice and started having sex with boyfriends when she was still only sixteen. She had no idea that I was lesbian, she just thought that I was a stuck up prude who was only interested in having my nose always stuck in a book and not having any life outside politics, studying and reading. It was to be my last real beach holiday. We spent each day on North Beach enjoying the sea and the sun. I remember this holiday for many reasons. I read Habermas' 'Knowledge and Human Interests' and I read Radnitsky's 'Contemporary Schools of Metascience'.

4

I was also thinking of Yael all the time and the botany field trip to Oribi Gorge. I had to deal with the fact that I may never see Samantha again. Walking alone along the Marine Parade filled with nostalgia I traced the path that Yael and I had followed that day after the Oribi Gorge botany fieldtrip. Also visiting all the spots that I had once frequented as a child and as an adolescent girl when on holiday with Oupa and Ouma. On these walks into the past along the Marine Parade I sank into a state of deep melancholy. I felt strong emotions of nostalgia and forlornness and yearning. I found myself longing for Yael now that Samantha was gone. I also thought a lot about Mrs Brodsky and Wayne. She was such a fine old lady. In a way I also loved Wayne, as students we spent a lot of time together, it was not a romantic love but a love of agape, and he was my brother in the Lord in a manner of speaking. At night Elsabe and her boyfriend went clubbing and when they invited me to join them I declined. It was incredibly hot and humid at night and I tossed and turned in the bed, only falling asleep in the early hours of the morning.

5

One night unable to fall asleep I got up, I showered, put on makeup, perfume and a slinky clinging short party dress and low heeled sandals. Before I left the flat I left a note on the table informing Elsabe that I had gone out. I felt like having sex and I decided to go out on the prowl and see if I could get-off with someone. There were no gay joints that I knew of. I bought a gin and tonic at a popular pub at an up market beach front hotel. I asked the barman if he knew of any gay nightclubs. He gave me directions to a club frequented by gays and lesbians in a remote part of the city. Anyway fortified by the drink I hit out for the club. The streets were well lit but deserted and in spite of it being a hot and humid night it felt strangely eerie. On my way to the club a block ahead of me two girls crossed the street and began walking in the same direction. Clutching my hand bag I quicken by pace to catch up with them. Before I could close the gap they disappeared from sight down an alley, feeling nervous all alone I run after them, to the spot where they had disappeared. When I reached the dimly lit alley there was no trace of the pair. They had vanished into the night. Standing at the entrance of the alley I had this sensation of being in a dream. I also felt the grip of panic. Here I was alone scantily dressed like a hooker in a remote part of the city. I decided to enter the cobbled alley. In the middle of the alley there was a very ordinarily looking wooden door that was slightly ajar. There was no sign on the door. I could hear the faint sound of music. I pushed the door open. The door was the entrance to a down stairs basement. The stairs were illuminated by the diffuse glow of a naked red light bulb hanging from the ceiling at the bottom. Convinced that this was the club that the barman had spoken about I pushed open the door I descended the stairs. At the entrance of the basement was a small reception foyer. I paid the entrance fee and entered the dimly lit nightclub which throbbing at that moment with the sounds of 'We are Family' by Sister Sledge. At the bar I ordered a double gin and tonic, the cost of the drinks were criminally exorbitant. As my eyes became accustomed to the dim light I noticed that it was indeed a gay and lesbian club and it was multiracial, there were Zulu lesbians, Indian lesbians, Coloured lesbians and White lesbians dancing on the crowded dance floor or drinking at the tables and bar. I started dancing to Joan Armatrading's ' Love & Affection', I danced my own chorographical interpretation of the lyrics, I exchanged meaningful glances with a young pretty Zulu woman who was watching my every move, we smiled at each other, she was dressed in drag, wearing a wig, dressed in a shining sequined black micro mini dress with suspensors, stockings and panties which under the UV tubes glowed with a dazzling white phosphorescence in the dark, coming closer to her I moved my hips erotically at her while singing in accompaniment to the words '...make love with affection...' Smiling brightly she joined me in a loose embrace as we quickly found a mutual rhythm which allowed us to tighten our embrace so that we could feel the heat emanating from our bodies, and breathe in the erotic fragrance of our skins pressed against each other together '...make love with affection...' And then we found each other's mouths with our bright red lipstick lips and moving tongues.

6

At 4.00 am the club closed its doors. Outside it was still dark, however I could hear the sparrows, starlings and Indian mynas beginning to stir. Given the state of our mutual arousal the need to have intense orgasmic sex was urgent. Outside in the alley we continued to smooch while fondling and caressing. Soon everyone was gone and it was just us in the alley. In the dark purple-blue shades of dawn just before sunrise when the moving shadows before first light start to play tricks with the mind we made love under tall palm trees beneath the early morning star-lit sky while lying on the dewy lawn in some garden near the harbour. High above the Indian Ocean in the east the morning star still shone brightly against the dark violet skies which began to turn into shades of pastel magenta at the edge of the horizon. Breaking out of a passionate clinging embrace I tried to pull away, I had to leave her. She was reluctant to let go of me and held onto me. Our lips still swollen from a night of love we began kissing each other once more. While getting back up onto our feet and smoothing out the folds and ripples from our rumpled dew-damp dresses she asked if I was Coloured. It was such a strange question, especially at the crack of dawn, and I said yes. If she thought I was Coloured then I must be Coloured. I did not know what else to think or say, I definitely did not have the words to say that I was White. Kate had once said jokingly that I was actually Phoenician, but right at the moment I wanted to be Coloured, and in the back of mind I desperately wished that I was really Coloured, and it was obvious that in the hours of our physical intimacy she had not experienced me as a White woman, and it was possible she had been with a White woman before. In her eyes I was Coloured, and I thrice before the proverbial cock had crowed to usher in the new day, I had denied my race, once more I was experiencing my lack of fixed identity, my identity was again fluid, I was neither English nor Afrikaans, neither White nor Black, neither European nor African, I was overcome with a sense of otherness in relation to who I was, it was like in the gay nightclub in Paris, when I did in fact start pretending that I was really the girl from Senegal who was going to be a young Black fashion model in Paris, I bought into the fantasy of being Black, it was a lovely fantasy, I took ownership of that fantasy of being somebody else, a dark woman from Africa. Maybe this fluidity of identity like the shifting shades of the skies at dawn was a hidden blessing, a mixed blessing, but also a precious gift, and this gift of being a chameleon was something that I should cherish and thank God for. But in leaving her standing there alone I felt down to zero. The words of Joan Armatrading echoed in my mind. The sky was now beginning to blaze a fiery orange over the bluff, I turned and waved, and she was still standing there under the towering palm trees, a dark silhouette which merged and melted, blending into the colours that were slowly becoming visible with the rapidly fading away of the night, she waved back from the shadows of bushes and blooms as the thrushes scurried about the edge of the shrubbery. Bathed in the mid-morning sun I woke up refreshed with the fragrance of her body still on my skin like as if she was still lying next to me. I did not shower, I wanted her scent to linger on my body. 'Down to Zero' was still going through my head. 'Oh the feeling...' It was a lesbo lyric definitely.

7

Later that morning I joined Elsabe and her boyfriend on the beach at our usual spot where they had erected the umbrella. And also as usual for that week the two delectable young women in bikinis who were about my age were sunbathing close by. They had been camping at the same spot for most of the week. When we exchanged glances they smiled broadly and gave me a friendly wave. Elsabe noticed our exchange of greetings and wanted to know if I knew them. I answered that I had never met them before and that I thought that they were just being friendly because we had been seeing them the whole week at the same spot across from us. In the course of the morning they walked the short distance over to me and asked if I would like to join them for a swim. I closed the book by Radnitsky and covered it with my towel. As we walked to the sea one of them said: 'We saw you at the nightclub last night, we loved watching you dance, you and that other woman, both of you were such stunning dancers, we were spell bound, we could not keep our eyes off the pair of you, it was quite a show watching the pair of you'.

8

The penny dropped. They were the two young women I had seen walking ahead of me. They were the two women who had vanished down the cobbled alley so mysteriously into the night. They were partners in a romantic relationship, and also lawyers, well rather candidate attorneys at some big shot legal firm in Johannesburg. And they had also studied at Wits, and they had recognized me from their student days, and we shared so much, we had come from the same generation, the same Matric class of 1972. Three gay women cavorting together in the surf on North beach Durban, near the peer across from the Lido, what were the odds? We agreed to meet for supper. Later that evening after supper while having drinks we reminisced about our undergraduate years at Wits and in due course the name of Carlos Cardoso cropped up in our conversations about what we remembered during our undergraduate years at Wits, and so on and so on. We had all fallen under the spell of the charismatic radical student leader Carlos Cardoso from Mozambique. It turned out that they were now involved in the firm's legal defence team in a number of ongoing political trials. We were kindred spirits brought together by chance. I have forgotten their names.

9

Her name was Nonhlanhla. She did not want to let me go, she held onto me with strong arms before the break of day. She feared that the rising sun was going to take me away from her forever, and it was so. We were wet from the dew, we were wet from love. We had tasted each other. Her arms were strong and I did not want to wash the scent of her body from my skin. Her name was Nonhlanhla. The towering palms supported the tent of darkness above our heads as we lay in each other's arms. The bluff lowered its horns like a giant piebald Nguni bull against the rising sun, but the red oxen pulled the sun from its deep sleep beneath the earth and they dragged the sun, ploughing the sky, scattering the stars, and in its fury the rising sun drove the night away. As the stars slunk away one by one vanishing into the deep blue vault of the infinite sky Nonhlanhla's dark silhouette merged with the colours that started to fill the day with shafts of light laden with gold. At night I searched the streets of Durban for Nonhlanhla, but she was gone.

10

In January 1980 I drove back to Cape Town. I was not in a hurry to get back. Driving slowly through the Karoo while listening to taped music in the old faithful VW Beetle, thoughtfully taking in the vast arid landscape, meditating on my PhD, stopping frequently along the way. I made Beaufort West by nightfall and booked into a hotel. I was haunted by Nonhlanhla. I was advantaged and she was disadvantaged and powerless. Almost a month had passed and I still could not stop obsessing over her and her situation under apartheid. There could not be any genuine multiracialism while there was apartheid and capitalism, there could only be intense emotional pain, alienation, disempowerment and exploitation. There could never be any genuine non-racialism until every human irrespective of race was completely empowered. A genuine non-racial society could only be achieved in a classless society. As long as class divisions exist with respect to the ownership of means of production and the control of the state it would be impossible for a non-racial society to exist. The more I thought about my intimate experience with Nonhlanhla the more I realized that the real goals of the class struggle was not non-racialism or multiracialism or racial equality or equal opportunities for all races, these were bourgeois and liberal ideals, the goals of the class struggle was a classless society, and a classless society can only be brought through the full and genuine empowerment of every single black person in South African, and it was only through Communism that this could be fully achieved. I reminded myself that as a Communist I had to focus on the real goals of the class struggle which was the overthrowing of the existing capitalist order in South Africa, and this could only be achieved though the seizing of social, economic and political power, and only this will make building of socialism possible. I reminded myself that this is what I needed to focus on. Therefore I had to work through my own all too human guilt feelings regarding Nonhlanhla by refocusing, revising, reorientating, realigning and subordinating my emotionally clouded thinking about her to what was most important for her life. I had to be a revolutionary. And the work of a revolutionary involves securing the objectives of Nonhlanhla's class interests which is a classless society. Her very human needs could only be satisfied through the Communist struggle, and that this was the only way that I could express authentic or meaningful solidarity with her as my sister instead of succumbing to feelings of bourgeois White guilt and a sense of bourgeois moral wrong doing.

11

Shortly after I graduated with my PhD in December 1980 I found myself at a loose end for a while. A lectureship post in Zoology at the University of Witwatersrand had become vacant and I had applied for the job. I had a quiver full of papers in international journals on behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology so I felt pretty confident about my chances. I had made the short list and was flown up to Johannesburg for an interview. A few days later after the interview I received a phone call informing me that I had the job. I also received the official letter confirming my appointment as a lecturer in Zoology, starting in February 1981. It was strange to hear myself being addressed as Dr Zeeman on the phone.

I also found a suitable flat in Bellevue which on my father's advice I bought under sectional title and I became a member of the Powder Puff in Hillbrow. The Power Puff was a new popular and posh lesbian nightclub frequented by well-heeled fashion-conscious lesbians who were seriously into social dancing. On the last Saturday night of every month the Power Puff hosted a lesbian Argentinean tango milonga evening. Out of curiosity heterosexual women often visited the Power Puff especially on the milonga nights. I have often danced the tango and other dances with heterosexual women and I could sense that they were rarely comfortable with the erotic closeness of the female body, especially if the body belonged to woman who was overtly queer. It was easy to identify a heterosexual woman. Mode of dress and cut of dress often was often a strong indicator of feminine heterosexuality.

On the dance floor and at the bar there were differences in queer and heterosexual feminine erotics. Dancing the tango with a competent lesbian tango dancer is always a novel bodily experience for a heterosexual woman. Normally the lesbian would lead the heterosexual woman in the tango. Once the heterosexual woman had gained confidence and had made the necessary psychological and emotional adjustments to accommodate the closeness of the queer female body then she would be able to lead her lesbian partner in the tango, and this would be a unique experience for her. In contrast to same-sex lesbian sexual desire, in the heterosexual women sexual desire is not usually awakened by the closeness of the female body. Heterosexual women often visited the Power Puff mainly because they had become sufficiently curious to explore the boundaries of their feminine sexuality and gender identity. They often became regular visitors and I once spent the entire milonga evening with one such woman, who I guessed was exploring the wild untamed frontiers of feminine sexuality. Maybe she was in search of an exotic sexual adventure. At the time I did not know what her motives were. I just guessed that she was seeking some kind of sexual adventure. She possibly wanted to explore the unknown dimensions of her feminine sexuality. At the end of the evening I asked her if she wanted to come home with me and after some hesitation she agreed. In the course of the evening on the dance floor at the Powder Puff nightclub our embrace had become comfortably close and we were eventually dancing with our cheeks pressed together. I kissed her neck and her cheek and she then turned head so that I could kiss her lips. She followed me to my flat in Bellevue in her car. Once in my flat she became incredibly nervous and unsure of herself. She suddenly announced that she was not certain whether she could go through with this.

That is what she actually said. She said: 'I am not sure whether I can go through with this.'

I hugged her and held her in a tender and affectionate embrace and after a while she put arms around me. I told she was in safe space and that I would not do anything that she was not comfortable with. I suggested that maybe we should talk about what she wanted and where she was in terms of her sexuality. I remember asking her if she was coming out of the closet and whether she was gay. She was adamant that she was not a lesbian. She admitted that she found me attractive and that she felt safe with me, and that she trusted me. I had never been in this kind of situation before. She keep on insisting that she was heterosexual and could not understand why she felt attracted to me. Okay if she was heterosexual why had she come to the Powder Puff? I had seen her there before, in fact she had visited the Powder Puff a number of times. She said she had come to the Powder Puff out of curiosity and because she liked the vibe of the club and it was an exciting place to visit. I began to gently interrogate her about her motives.

Was she sexually attracted to me, did find me desirable? Yes she did!

Does she like having sex? Yes she likes having sex!

Does she want to have sex with me? She doesn't know, but maybe.

What kind of answer is that?

You either want to have sex with me or you don't. Is it yes or no?

She thinks it is yes!

Are you sure you want to have sex with me? Yes I am sure now.

I ask her: Are you absolutely sure that you are not gay?

She answers: I am definitely not gay, I not a lesbian, I am heterosexual.

I shook my head. It must have been a comical gesture because she burst out laughing and the tension evaporated.

In the bedroom we undressed and lay on the bed for a while just kissing and caressing each other's breasts. When I eventually placed my hand on her vulva, it was moist, she was wet. I told her that I going to go down on her with my tongue and lips, and that I would also be penetrating her with my fingers, including in places where she had possibly never been probed and penetrated before, and that she must tell me to stop immediately if she feels uncomfortable with what I was going to do to her. I explained that everything that I was going to do to her, I would want her to do the same to me. But if she felt uncomfortable, she must feel free to tell me to stop immediately. After we had made love we fell asleep in each other's arms. In the morning we made love again. I was not convinced that she not gay or bisexual, but she could not bring herself to admit it even though she was wildly enthusiastic with having queer sex, she could not get enough of it, she was insatiable. We fell in love and were together for six months. She did not know I was living a double life. It was because of my underground responsibilities that I eventually stopped going to the Powder Puff and began to live increasingly as a celibate recluse.

My family and friends were my comrades in the cell that I belonged to. The long dark night of the violent 1980s had begun in earnest. The revolution which would bring down apartheid had begun in all its fiery fury.

12

It is 1983 the revolution has started in earnest, the long night has begun. It is hard to remain completely celibate. I feel restless, I need to get out, I need to find a release from the tension and anxieties.

I can't stay away. Once again I step into the Powder Puff Night Club to the sounds of Thelma Houston's 'Don' leave me this way'. Baby my heart is full of love. I spot a beautiful young Coloured woman with an amazing body, dressed in stilettos, stockings, a miniscule skirt, G-string panties and a white satin bra. She has a wild jungle of purple dyed hair teased up in an electrifying Afro style and we smile sweetly at each other, I take off my coat and we both see that we are similarly dressed, that is we are both barely dressed to be precise. The Pointer Sisters 'Jump for my Love' blasts away and we are dancing. I am smooth, moisturized, silky to the touch, delicately perfumed, and calomel in tone, and her pleasantly fragranced satiny skin is a shade lighter than glossy black in the dim club light. She is the splitting image of Kathy Sledge, I suddenly feel hot. I am feverish as hell with passion and desire. I know she feels the same about me, we dance close until the end of time to Donna Summer's 'I feel love', and our lips are pressed together. When we go to the ladies she tells me that she is a hair dresser and I tell her that I am a teacher. We dance the night until just before dawn, it is three-o-clock in the morning we are both a bit tipsy, and the club management wants to close. Her name is Vanessa Booysens. Her friends want to leave. She asks if I am also from Eldorado Park. She thinks I am Coloured! I tell her that I am originally from Kuruman, the Northern Cape. My convenient fiction is that I grew up in a Coloured location outside the White town limits of Kuruman. Her friends want to leave. I tell them that I will take Vanessa home. We put on ours coats. We stand on the pavement outside the club, I am not too sure where I have parked the VW. We burst out laughing holding onto each other. We finally find my car and I ask her if she wants to sleep over at my place. She is hesitant. She is living with her parents in Eldorado Park. We have been speaking a mixture of Afrikaans and English in the club but now we are speaking only in Afrikaans.

She suggests that I sleep over at her place. It is already Sunday, and it will soon be sunrise. In Eldorado Park we fall asleep cuddled up together on the small divan in her tiny room. Just before we fall asleep she tells me that her parents don't know that she is queer and that they are very conservative and religious. The late morning sun wakes us up. Her parents and sibling have left for church. We make love. I am a woman of the world and she is only twenty two years old. I laugh when she remarks that I am very educated and I speak 'baie op gepompte Afrikaans' (very posh Afrikaans). I need to leave before her parent come back as I am under dressed. We exchange phone numbers before I leave.

13

The nature of truth is something which has been an all-consuming concern to me. In fact it has been an ultimate concern, 'the' ultimate concern, because to be ultimately concerned about the nature of truth or the question of what is truth, is to be concerned ultimately with God. Truth is something that needs explaining. Explaining the nature of truth has been the endless mission of philosophy. Truth depends on there being a world. Is this not what Heidegger was actually proposing in 'Being and Time'? Without a world there can be no truth. What is the World? So the existence of truth necessarily depends on the existence of a 'World'? Everyone who has been involved in science knows that truth is something which corresponds to the facts. In relationship to this there are things or states of affairs which function as 'truth-makers', and it is by virtue of these truth-makers that some claim about something is truth.

14

Logos and mythos: We associate Logos with truth. Mythos (or Muthos) and Telos belong together. A narrative often acquires its meaning by reference to a larger more 'meaningful' narrative, a narrative which represents the order or disorder or chaos or purpose or purposelessness or rationality or absurdity or irrationality of the Cosmos or the World as lived or perceived. Meaningfulness here means saying something about something by someone to someone else. This telling of something about something may be utopian or dystopian in its plot thrust, with regard to its Telos or Mythos, which has become thematised in the fictionalized account, or in the novelistic work of fiction. Fictionalization always involves a representation of a representation which involves the verbal process of speech or writing in a retelling and it is the retelling which constitutes the narrative. In this we see the relationship between story, narrative and plot. The theme may be utopian or dystopian. The theme is plotted out in terms of or within a framework of a Mythos and a Telos. Now does the question of truth feature in this? What is the relations between Mythos and truth? The story which has unfolded in the page of the book so far is true. It is not innocent with respect to the truth. By affirming the truth I have made my farewell to innocence. Like Eve I have eaten of the fruit and now possess knowledge of good and evil.

Chapter 18: Reunions

1

Years later, just before my arrest I got word that Scott (he was in the same botany and zoology class while we were undergraduates) had died in a boating accident on Lake Kariba while working on a freshwater fishery project. For some unfathomable reason I felt a deep sense of loss with his passing away, and for days I was depressed and tearful. The way I felt about his death was weird because he embodied all the worse features of the Rhodesian white male. He was selfish, self-obsessed, sexist, chauvinist, racist, fascist, anti-Semitic and an incorrigible philanderer. He embodied the full meaning of the patriarchy. Yet women loved him! In spite of his attributes as a white male, there was always this out of character uncertain flicker of angst in his eyes and a shadow of vulnerability in his handsome demeanour and it was this I think that drew women into his bed. It was Benjamin Schlossheimer who phoned to let me know that Scott was no more. I asked Benjamin if we could meet for coffee. When he asked where, I suggested Dominic's in Braamfontein across the road from Wits University. News of Scott's passing seemed to be a good excuse to phone Yael after all these years since we broke up. Even though we had made up we hardly ever saw each other. We had never really been able to get back together as friends. It was tearful reunion for all of us. We sat at the table and wept together unashamedly. I don't think we were weeping only for Scott.

2

PW Botha had made his Rubicon speech and he had declared a state of emergency. The United Democratic Front (UDF) had become the vehicle for waging the people's war through rolling mass action. Even though I had often joked that I was a part-time revolutionary, doing a bit of revolution here and doing a bit of revolution there and so on, I was actually secretively deeply involved in the struggle. There were days that I did not sleep as I produced round the clock thousands of 'Study, Learn, Teach and Act' pamphlets for distribution in the townships, at funerals, at mass meetings, at churches, at bus stops, at railway stations, at football stadiums and at music concerts. I packed the pamphlets into boxes, supervised and coordinated their dispatch and distributions. I was travelling hundreds of kilometres at night in the old VM Beetle to deliver boxes of pamphlets across the country.

3

Wiping away our tears we reminisced over our undergraduate years. We talked about the lads in the zoology and botany Class, they were the guys who hung out together and drank with Scott in the downstairs Devonshire Hotel pub (called the Dev) almost every night. How they managed to pass their exams was a mystery. In 1975 Scott who had a room in Phineas Court was going out with a pretty medical student. I think her name was Alison. Phineas Court was just around the corner from Dominic's Coffee Shop. In 1976 after breaking up with Alison, Scott moved into a flat with Tracy who worked as a technician in the Department of Genetics. However, Scott still kept his room in Phineas Court for the occasional secret trysts with other females. If I can recall Tracy's flat was at the bottom of Stiemens Street close to the Civic Theatre. Both Benjamin and I often had coffee with Scott and the lads at Dominic's in 1976 during our lunchbreak while we were doing our BSc Honours.

4

The event that both Benjamin and I vividly recalled was the day when the lads, Scott, Tracy, Benjamin and I were all together drinking coffee outside Dominic's. Unknown to all of us Alison was busy purchasing a medical text book at Campus Bookshop which was just around the corner located directly under Phineas Court. She had parked her car in Stiemens Street opposite Dominic's. Coming round the corner she immediately spotted Scott and radiating a smile she made a beeline towards Scott and sat down on an empty chair next him.

We all just sat there watching this unbelievable drama unfolding before us.

Tracy's face freezes up. Alison in the meantime has taken hold of Scott's hand and has shifted her chair closer to Scott cuddling up to him, Scott reciprocates and puts his around her.

All we could hear was Alison bubbling away non-stop: 'So nice to see you again. What have you been doing? How are things with you?'

And so on and so on, Alison carries on with Scott without any knowledge that he has a relationship with Tracy who sitting on the other side of Scott. Then Alison suddenly asks: 'Can we go to your room?'

Yael with her eyes still red from weeping listens with a look of disbelief on her face to the story that Benjamin and I are recounting in turns.

'Scott and Alison get up and leave the table. We all remain seating, including Tracy,' Benjamin recounts.

'We all sat around the table saying nothing, wearing the most solemn and beatific faces of pure innocence,' I said.

'Tracy, her face now livid with bewildered anger, gets up from the table, almost falls while trying to escape from the humiliating situation,' Benjamin continues.

'Stanley jumps and runs after Tracey as she runs back to her flat down the street,' I said.

'Brian then quips what's the bet that Stanley is going to fuck Tracey now that he has the opportunity to help Tracy take her revenge out on Scott,' Benjamin said.

Yael just sat there shaking her head.

Benjamin looks at his watch: 'I have go now.'

5

Yael wearing a headscarf and a long plain dress which reaches her down to her ankles looks at me plaintively. She is now a mother of three children, two boys and a girl. Her face wore the tired signs of motherhood and kosher housekeeping. We too get up from the table to go after Benjamin's departure. I need to get back to my office and I assume that Yael has housewife domestic kinds of commitments, and of course she has children that need her care. But Yael lingers.

'I am so unhappy,' she said looking at me with her tear stained eyes.

'Can we go to your flat?' She asks. Her car is parked just down the block, she offers to drive me there and bring me back later to Wits.

I unlock the flat door and let her in. Once in the flat I followed quietly behind her as she inspected my flat room for room. She first went into the tiny kitchen, then into the small bathroom and shower near the front door, after that she went into the open plan dining room and lounge, and then we went into the bedroom where I sleep. I followed her into the closed off balcony that housed the huge Xerox machine for making the 'Study, Learn, Teach and Act' pamphlets. I followed her back into the lounge-dining room area. She picked up the seal skull and examined it closely with her brow knitted in a frown, putting the skull back in its place she began to inspect the book shelves which occupied the spaces against the wall between the lounge furniture. She spent some time reading through the titles, sometimes taking a volume from the shelf and flipping through the pages before putting it back. All the time I stood next to the dining room table watching her.

Finally turning to me she said: 'I have lost my life.'

6

Yael then gazed at the painting hanging above the sideboard. It depicted two women erotically embellished in a dramatic decorative tango embrace. I had commissioned the painting some time ago. It was a picture that had been painted from a photograph taken of Kate and myself. In the picture a woman (myself) is executing a tango adorno (embellishment or decoration) known as the gancho (hook) with another woman (Kate).

'It is so beautiful,' Yael said wistfully. I could see that she did not recognize the dancers.

'The two women are strangers,' I decided to say.

'What do you mean?' Yael asked.

'The two women met at a club.'

'Are implying that there is story behind the picture, that there is actually more to the painting than one can see from the surface layers of oil paint, something which is hidden deep within the picture beyond what is plainly visible to the naked eye on the canvas surface like some hidden-invisible reality lurking behind the appearance of the two dancers?' She asked with an indulgent smile. It seemed that her mood had changed for the better.

'Yes, there is and it is quite an interesting story, would you like to hear it?'

'Yes,' Yael answered with a sudden show of child-like willingness to indulge in a game of make belief.

'Well at the beginning of time the girls had grown tired of staying at home at night while the men went out carousing with each other, so the girls or women began to meet at a social club only for women where they could go to once they were finished with their household chores. At least once or twice a week they would spend the evening dancing the tango with each other in an old hall that some kindly landlady allowed them to use. Now there was this very beautiful young woman who had heard about the club where the women danced the tango with each other. She worked as a seamstress at a women's garment factory and from the offcuts which she stole she made herself tango dresses. Out of love and respect for the tango the poor working class women did the best they could to put together a costume for their tango evenings. After dressing she did her makeup and when she was finished she put her high heels in a brown paper packet, slipped on her sandals and put on her garment workers knee length factory jacket over her tango costume, locking the apartment door behind her, she hurriedly descended the dimly lit flight of stairs until she reached the dark ground floor foyer which opened onto the pavement of a busy street in the centre of the city. The evening star was already high in the dark purple night sky as she made her way to her rendezvous.'

'As she entered the women's social tango dance club a strange woman sitting alone on one of the chairs against the wall of the hall noticed her arrival. The wooden floor of the hall was crowded with women dancing. She hung up her overall and stepped into her high heels. While looking for a place to stand or sit she spotted the lone woman sitting on one of the wooden foldup chairs which were arranged against the wall around the perimeter of the hall.

Their eyes met, and their gaze lingered as when two strangers find themselves drawn to each other for the first time by that faint indiscernible fragrance of mutual attraction which comes wrapped in that enigmatic blend of mystery, uncertainty and eroticism. Standing up the older woman who had been sitting at the edge of the hall signalled with that subtle suggestive gesture of the slight nod of the tilted head and the raising of the eyebrow whether the young women who had just arrived would like to dance with her. The young women keeping her eyes fixed on the other woman walked quickly around the rippling margins of dancing couples towards the other woman in response to her invitation, the invitation of a stranger, an older but attractive woman. Smiling she stood in front of the older woman.'

'The older woman seemed to glow with a sultry sensuous passion that seemed to be out of place with the drabness of the hall that was filled with the sweet aroma of cheap perfume and women. Her tango custom fitted her body seductively like a glove accentuating the shape, curves, and contours of her body, accentuating the perfect proportions of her breasts, waist and hips. She had taken good care of her appearance.'

'The stylus of the ancient radiogram moved along the black shining revolving vinyl tracks and the melancholic opening cords of the next tango track filled the hall. The music became increasingly powerful, dramatic, emotional, intense, sensual and erotic. The young woman was drawn ineluctably by an irresistible but familiar rising acoustic tidal wave that had been stirred up an ensemble of the accordion, the violin, and the guitar, which working together produced the compelling rhythms and syncopated beats of the tango which never failed to excite every nerve in her young body. She noticed the exposed firm cleavage of the older woman and the long slit in her skirt which terminated tantalizingly midway up her well-formed muscular thigh. The older woman in turn noticed the pleasing curves of the young woman's shapely sheer nylon stocking encased legs, accentuated by the stilettos. The older women also noticed at the top of the younger woman's stockings the suspender clips, the triangle of dark naked skin of her upper thigh, bare and satiny above her stockings. She inhaled the heady fragrance of the perfumed body of the younger woman who was now standing before her, the exquisite embodiment of that dark Spanish beauty which carries that unmistakable touch of the African and the Moor. Without saying a word they stepped into the mutual embrace of the tango.'

'That evening they did not let go of each other. The manner in which they danced could only be described as being like a motion picture painted in the most intense shades of the tango's enduring pathos. That is, the kind of palpable pathos which one can only experience with the tango. They clung desperately to each other, afraid that they would be pulled away forever. The older woman had lived long enough to know that the tango embodied the paradox of life and love, she knew that in the tango the dancers lived fleetingly all the moments which could be lived, they lived those moments all at once, in an instance at each step to the rhythm of the tango's beat they lived all the moments which filled the entire drama of a human life. In the tango she knew that bound in each other's embrace they lived in each step and in each embellishment, they lived the eternal beat, in each beat they lived the finite moment filled with an inexplicable transient effulgence, which allowed them to experience almost mystically all at once as in a dream the unfathomable and countless indiscernibles that crowd a finite life, a life lived at the threshold of the unattainable infinite, a finite life in which the deepest of enigmatic mysteries are experienced in moments of pure ecstasy and in moments haunted by the inevitability of unbearable pain, agony and sorrow. The older woman knew about the sweetness of life lived in the constant shadow of melancholy which is the tango. Tonight she would rather die than not wake up with younger women in her arms. They embraced the first embrace of strangers, but immediately succumbed to the electrifying effect of each other's body. Their embrace became urgent, and she the older woman felt the younger women's warm smooth cheek pressed against the side of her face. Leading the younger woman she pressed her palm against the back of her naked shoulder so that her firm breasts pressed against her own bosom and the younger woman reciprocating the intimacy of the older woman by caressing the exposed silky skin between her shoulder blades. The older woman kissed her softly on her cheek and the younger woman turned her face inviting the older woman's lips to her youthful mouth.'

'And then what happened?' Yael asked when I stopped the story at that juncture.

'Apart from love, they had much to give to each other. The older woman from an aristocratic family that had known better times could give the younger woman dignity, security and commitment, and the younger woman would infuse the older woman's life with that invigorating and life sustaining nurture of hope and meaning.'

7

'Hope and meaning, that is precisely what I lack in my life, but going back to your story is there any truth to it?' Yael asked.

'Is there any truth to any story? What does it mean for the story or anything to be true?'

'I don't know, you tell me,' Yael countered.

'Any particular thing or situation or state-of-affairs or the story for that matter could be perfectly true in its own particular or peculiar fashion if it can be seen or visualized or even imagined in some realistic way as being part of the Whole Truth.'

'The Whole Truth, what is the Whole Truth?' Yael asked with a sceptical look.

'There has to be something which is the Whole Truth in order for us to ultimately distinguish the particular truths from falsehood and spurious beliefs on all matters that concern us and also for that matter the real from the unreal. The Whole Truth represents the Absolute, for Absolute Knowledge, and it's the Absolute with is Ultimate, in the sense of being the Ultimate basis for distinguishing the Truth and the Real from the illusionary and the ideological,' I expanded feeling a bit silly and over the top using words like the Whole Truth, the Ultimate, the Absolute and Absolute Knowledge. In my mind all these words represented the Totality. In my own ears I sounded religious. I could see from the expression on Yael's face that what I was saying sounded foreign to her ears.

'Hannah, I am a simpleton, this is all too much for me to grasp, I have become dumb,' she said.

'No you are not dumb,' I quickly added.

'Well that's the way I feel,' she replied despondently, her mood sinking once more.

'I always thought I believed in science, but now I am not even sure about science, what is science anyway?' she continued.

I did not know where all of this was going to take us.

'Science is concerned with the real,' I tried to clarify.

'The real with the big R such as the REAL, in capitals?' she asked.

'The real with the small r as in what is contingently real,' I replied.

'And what is the REAL with the big R?' She asked.

'The REAL with the big R as everything that is real non-contingent or necessary, and it is this which makes whatever is contingent in the Universe real or actual.'

'So the capitalized REAL is what must be necessarily True for any contingency in the Universe to be real and by virtue of being real it can become the object of scientific investigation,' Yael said summing up.

'Yes, I could not have put it better. Because the capitalized REAL exists necessarily, and therefore non-contingently, it has to be self-grounded, in other words not dependent on anything else but itself,' I expanded on what Yael had summed up.

'This sound like Platonism,' Yael said, finally smiling again, allowing the gloom to lift from her face, the gloom that we both felt and which we recognized in each other's eyes.

'I suppose so, Plato rules the moment we start reasoning along these lines, embracing ideas such as self-grounding, non-contingent and necessity regarding the nature of the REAL and TRUTH.'

'Please hold me,' Yael said suddenly, moving towards me.

8

I embraced her, hugging her tightly to my body. I kissed her on her cheek and she turned her mouth so that I could kiss her on her lips. Before she drove me back to Wits we spent the rest of the afternoon making love. In spite of the lines and stretch marks of child-bearing etched on her body she was still beautiful.

She asked if I was with anyone. I said No, which was the truth. What about Kate she asked. I confirmed I still saw Kate from time to time but only in connection with dancing as her dance partner. Kate also had no one else to support her when she participated as a contestant in a physical beauty pageants, so I inevitably went along as a spectator to provide morale support. Was Kate lonely? Yes Kate was lonely, like the rest of us. What do I mean Yael asked. I admitted that it would be nice to share one's life with another woman on a permanent basis as life-partners, and also be part of a broader organic queer community. Couldn't I have this with Kate? No it was not possible, we were not emotionally compatible. That is so sad Yael said.

I don't know why, but I said it:

'If you divorce the Rabbi, I will live with you and your kids. I will look after you and the kids. I can provide for you and your children.'

'What about the politics, what about the struggle, what about the revolution?' She asked.

'I would give it all up for the sake of the family.'

Before I met Isabella I fell all over again in love with Yael, Scott's untimely death had reunited us. I was earnest. Divorce the Rabbi and we would be a family. Just like Ruth I told her I would become a lover of her people. I who am Electra the Gentile Hellenic daughter of Agamemnon, and my father has been murdered by my mother Clytemnestra, I will flee and hide in the shadow of Mount Sinai, and as my refuge I the Gentile Hellenic woman will also embrace the Hebraic, I will not turn my face away, I will embrace that withered fig tree, that spectacle of barrenness, for God will never abandon his chosen. Your children will be mine also, I will be their mother and their father and together we take on the yoke of Moses and feast on the sweetness of Leviticus and the Shabbat with be our mistress.

9

It was not to be. Yael dropped me off at the robots at the intersection with Jan Smuts Avenue outside the University of the Witwatersrand. It was late. From Jan Smuts Avenue I walked back to my office which was on the ground floor of the Old Biology Building. I did not want to go back to my flat without Yael. Instead I worked on a draft manuscript that one of PhD students had been preparing for publication. Feeling tired, distracted and mildly melancholic, I called it a day at 10.00 pm and drove back home to my flat in Bellevue. A few weeks later I flew via Swaziland to Mozambique on a clandestine trip. In Inhambane I met Isabella, a Mozambican. We fell in love.

Now Isabella has saved me from Yael. She knows nothing about my history, she does not know about Yael. She has healed my heart that had become torn apart by an impossible love, and yet deep down in my heart I still loved Yael, I still yearn for her. But I who am Electra the daughter of Agamemnon, the goy, and I will yearn after Yael the Rabbi's wife, even though Isabella has healed my heart with her love and tenderness and care.

10

Yet in the midst of revolution and the underground, I was also living another life separated from my secret life. It was from the mouth of Father Francis Digby that I first was exposed to the question of the inscrutability of other minds. Father Digby had been the priest at the Anglican Church at Potchefstroom during the time that I was at Potch Girls High. After the passage of many years our paths crossed again. I recognized him at the Total Garage. It was a Friday afternoon in late January, he was filling his car. I had stopped at the garage to fill the Toyota microbus while the students walked over to the nearby bottle store to buy booze for the evening. We were planning to have a braai on the beach that evening. I gave a student some money to buy a bottle of Southern Comfort and a six pack of Castle Lager. We had just come back from a zoological excursion into the forest and the mangroves where the Umzimvubu River flows into the sea near Port St Johns. I planned to chill the bottle of Southern Comfort down in the deep freeze.

A school bus stopped by the garage to load off high school teenagers. As they went their separate ways they shouted back and forth to each other. For them it was a Friday afternoon filled with the promise of so much including the weekend – and this was important. It was a sultry afternoon, the air was stifling, still and heavy, filled with humidity, and I thought then that nothing would be better than an ice cold Castle beer. And I stood next to the Combi as it was being filled, I remember clearly the 'words I love you' ringing out from across the road. It was from one of the teenage girls in school uniform who had got off the bus. And I thought about the time when I was like her – a teenage girl in high school. The afternoon light was dazzling, brilliantly bright white cumulous clouds against the deep azure blue sky, the feeling of it being a Friday afternoon was so pregnant with the kind of possibilities which tugged at the yearning heart, it was the end of a week of school, they had been set free, they were free in a way that I had not been at their age. As a teenager I was listening to 'Crimson and Clover' with Alice in the dormitory on a Friday afternoon in dim dorm room. Being stuck in boarding school for most of my teenage years I felt that I had been robbed of so much. I felt a poignant feeling awakening in my soul, a feeling coloured with a longing for something so vague and undiscernible, of having missed out on something important in my teenage years which I now felt in the form of a deep emptiness at that moment. Now I was in my thirties in charge of a field trip of third year zoology students. In many ways I had become like Kate.

I gazed at the school kids across the road, going home. She stood there waving at the side of the road. A boy walking away down the road away from her with a group of his friends stopped, turning around, he shouted back 'I love you too.' Walking backwards with a knap sack slung over her shoulder she shouted again for everyone to hear 'I love you,' and the boy laughing shouted back 'I love you too'. At that moment I felt a sense of unbearable loneliness and I also felt an inexplicable pain in my heart. I also felt an incredible sense of deja-vu, what was unfolding before me, a silent witness, which had caught my attention embodied a tableau of something so familiar, so dreamlike, yet so foreign and so unattainable. I suddenly felt that I had missed out on something beautiful and significant in my life. I felt a yearning for something so mysterious that I could not put my finger on it. I was yearning for something which I had experienced with Alice. I was also yearning for something that I had felt with Yael. I also felt guilty about Janet and Kate both of whom had loved me so deeply. I thought of the beautiful times that I had spent with Monique in Paris. But still deep in my heart I yearned for Yael, especially at that moment, on that Friday afternoon. I thought about the start of Shabbat. This was just before I left for Mozambique.

It was then that I spotted Francis Digby. It was such an incredibly moment. We instantly recognized each other. I walked over to him and we began talking. I learnt that he was no longer an Anglican priest and was also divorced. After leaving the ministry he got a job as an English teacher at a local High School. An Indian woman was sitting in the passenger seat of his car. She smiled at me when I glanced at her. I guessed that they were in a relationship.

In standard nine I was confirmed. On the completion of our confirmation classes we each had to make an appointment to do confession before our first communion. The confession was nothing like I expected it would be. Instead it was like an interview. We sat at a table in the vestry and while we drank tea we chatted. I clearly remember the topics of our discussion. I spoke about my interest in animals, and of course the question of whether animals have minds arose. In was in the context of whether or not animals have conscious awareness and minds that the topic of the inscrutability of God arose. I was a young teenage girl and I was in awe of him. He had become an important father figure to me while I was in high school. He was different to my own father, but intellectually he was the perfect complement or counterpart to my dad. He was also keen birdwatcher.

At the time the book 'Honest to God' by the Bishop of Woolwich was all the rage. The book had awakened an interest in religionless Christianity and it had a great influence on me as teenager. We discussed the mind of God and whether we could know anything about the mind of God. Father Digby proposed that if consciousness existed in any sentient being, it had to be a phenomenon which was more than the sum of the physical parts which made its emergence possible. What he meant was the conscious awareness as an emergent phenomenon had to be an irreducible capacity. The ability to discern the capacity for experiencing consciousness or consciousness awareness in some sentient being was dependent on whether we could discern in the sentient being the ability for purposive behaviour. Consciousness and purposive behaviour had to be causally correlated. As critical scholarship between strip away Jesus' divinity and God became more remote and removed in the new God is dead theology Father Digby began to cling to the idea of conscious as being something that was extraordinary significant. Man's possession of consciousness made man special. Falling under the influence of the German theologian Rudolf Bultmann he started to read Heidegger and then he started to study Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness'. He spoke about Camus. In retrospect, I believe that his interest in the writings of Camus coincided with the onset of his agnosticism. He no longer believed in the God of the Anglican confession. At the end of my Matric year he left the priesthood under a dark cloud.

Then there was the politics. As an impressionable teenage girl Father Digby had not only awakened my political consciousness he had also planted the seed of political radicalism in mind. As he lost his faith and began to fall apart as a clergyman.

And each day I remember what has been written and what has been said of old, when I lay down my head to sleep and also when I rise just before the first light of dawn. Not to eat blood - Leviticus 3:17

11

Finally from the built in cupboard in my bedroom in Hotazel I retrieved the last sealed cardboard box. On opening it I discovered my old Meccano set still in its original box. Also lying in the box was Mr Robot Man and next to Mr Robot Man was a transparent plastic packet filled with the plastic dinosaurs. I pick up Mr Robot Man and I began to examine him closely. I looked up at the mirror. I saw my smiling reflection in the mirror. After a moment's thought, I felt the need to sit down at my desk and start writing down what I had been thinking. This has become the habit that I had acquired while in prison. New habits die hard. I have to capture my thoughts and the only way I can do this before losing them through forgetfulness was by writing them quickly down while they were still fresh and warm in my mind.

I wrote the following entry in my journal:

Words fail to convey the flood of emotions that I am experiencing at this moment. Even if Mr Robot Man could demonstrate any of the signs of artificial intelligence (AI), no language could make transparent the full contents of his artificial mind if he were indeed capable of artificial intelligence, and if we equate demonstration of intelligence with the existence of mind.

I have become aware of a paradox that infects this entire human project of speaking and writing. We can only experience or acquire intersubjective knowledge of private worlds of thought and emotions by virtue of spoken or written language. Language often fails to convey what is intended in speech and writing. This cannot be disputed. It can be argued that language often fails to fully convey what was intended. But language still conveys something that can on all accounts be taken to represent knowledge, even knowledge of private experiences and emotions, knowledge which can trigger empathy and conscience in the hearer or reader. Through the medium of language we can act on other people's minds, we can influence their thoughts; using words we put thoughts and ideas 'into' their minds. With words we change their minds. By using words we can act on the brains of others. Words can put ideas in the brains of others, brains that are external or not directly connected to our own brains. How is this possible? How can this be explained scientifically? Seeing or hearing words also involves experiencing sensations which create mental impressions or mental images in our brains. What we mean the word 'in' is problematic. How can a mental impression or mental image or even an idea or thought be 'in' our brains?

When Derrida and Lacan argue that language ultimately fails to successfully refer, and thus fails in its capacity to convey or articulate truth, they are caught in their own trap, the trap of the self-referential paradox. They are using language to refer to the incapacity of language to convey or articulate truth, they using language to make a truth claim about language's inability to convey truth or even ultimately convey anything at all. Intersubjective claims to truth are only possible by virtue of language, whether it be in the form speech or writing. So whatever our private world of thoughts and emotions happens to be about we remain trapped in language and therefore in the symbolic whenever we desire to express ourselves. Language is the medium or vehicle of desire made apparent. Language communicates desire and makes the intentions of desire apparent.

What do we really mean when we claim that words, language, ideas, sensations, experiences, thoughts, intentions, consciousness, awareness, intelligence, or the entirety of mental life, are only possible by virtue of having a brain. Are we able to unravel every link in the chain of causality that connects physically induced sensations with thoughts, emotions and consciousness via brain processes or by virtue of processes taking place in the brain?

And each day I remember what has been written and what has been said of old, when I lay down my head to sleep and also when I rise just before the first light of dawn. Not to eat certain fats of kosher animals - Leviticus 3:17.

Chapter 19: The Arrest and Detention

1

In my confession I held nothing back. I answered the questions about stuff that they wanted to know. I was surprised to discover how little they knew. I did not volunteer anything. In retrospect the 'interrogation' was an exercise in futility. Malcolm had obliquely hinted that something completely unforeseen was going to happen. I had a premonition that it was going to be the collapse of apartheid. It was in the air. But the imminence of the unforeseen did not stop them from letting me languish in detention for two years waiting every day for my trial date to be set. Now in retrospect I am sure that they knew that there was not going to be any trial.

In December 1986 shortly after Samora Machel's tragic and untimely death in an aircraft crash a comrade and myself entered Mozambique clandestinely via Swaziland for a special meeting with the Party. One of the items on the agenda was to discuss the Study, Learn, Teach and Act pamphlets which I had been producing and distributing with the zeal of a missionary. There were concerns about the Communist narrative that I was propagandizing to the masses. There were hints, allegations and murmurings about my apparent Trotskyite leanings. I was also surprised to hear about my Trotskyite leanings. Of course they were baseless. From Swaziland we flew to Maputo. At the airport in Maputo we were met by Party comrades who told us that we had been given clearance to 'hitch a ride' almost immediately to Inhambane on a Russian plane that had been charted for transporting Russian officials and FRELIMO government officials to Inhambane for some business meeting on the growing of cotton and other crops in that province. We were fetched at the Inhambane airfield and driven in a Kombi to Tofo. A beautiful pastel pink villa close to the beach was going to be our home for the next ten or so days. We learned from reliable sources that it used to be owned by some wealthy Jewish South African avocado pear farmer from Tzaneen whose son was a keen elephant hunter. It was a weird story, so much detail about a family who had last visited their villa in July 1972 before immigrating to Australia. And anyway who had ever heard of a Jewish elephant hunter in Africa? I had a strange feeling of déjà vu about the villa. It felt that I had been a guest or a visitor in the same villa before. But I had not! I may have walked past the villa before, but I had never been inside it before. On our way back from Vilanculos in 1973 towards the end of July on the eve of the revolution in Mozambique we did stay overnight at Tofo. We found the place eerily deserted, almost spooky. How could I have ever guessed that after so many years I would be again visiting Tofo but in the capacity of my membership of the South African Communist Party on official political business.

We were informed that we had been officially invited to attend a special 'international' social function later that evening at the governor's home in Inhambane. Much to our amusement we were also informed that we had been invited as VIP guests. We had been assigned special political status as 'officially recognized' South African representatives. So because of this we decided to postpone our business meeting to the following day. There was nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon except laze around in the villa. I decided to go for a walk on the beach, but none of the comrades were in the mood to join me so I decided to go by myself. On the short gravel road to the beach I was greeted in Portuguese by a tall grey headed man who turned out to be a Russian agricultural engineer on holiday at Tofo. When he realized that I was English speaking he switched to English. He spoke English fluently, but with a distinct Russian accent. Out of politeness I was friendly and we started chatting. I introduced myself as Allyson Cooper. Without batting an eyelid I informed him that I was working for the World Health Organization (WHO) as a malaria epidemiologist and I happened to be working on the containment of malaria in Mozambique, and I also mentioned I was also taking a holiday break with colleagues, and I was on my way to take a walk on the beach. He confessed that he thought I was either Cuban or Portuguese and he was genuinely surprised to hear that I was from England. He told me that I looked very Cuban or South American, because my skin tone was much darker than that of a typical English woman from England, yet to his ears I was speaking such a beautifully articulated and such a richly accented or 'intoxicating' toned English that he could not link such beautiful English to any country in the world. I guessed he initially thought that I was a mulatto woman and he was trying to cover up his mistake with a bit of good humoured flattery. It was my English accent which floored and confused him. According to the Russian gentleman, even the English could not speak such beautiful English as I was speaking. I laughed and he also laughed. And from his openly guileless demeanour and spontaneous laughter I knew that he was not being flirtatious. For all I knew he could have been working for the KGB. He asked if he may join me on my walk along the beach. We set off down the pot holed gravel road to the beach.

His name was Dr Alexander Kuznetsova and he told me to call him Sasha. He was in his fifties, he was also tall, handsome and he had a dignified bearing. He reminded me of my father. Walking over the loose beach sand we proceeded past the old abandoned beach hotel which looked neglected and derelict. We headed northwards walking on the firm damp sand along the shoreline behind the retreating tide. The wide arc of the narrow beach was flanked by high dunes covered in dune vegetation. After walking about two kilometres we were completely isolated. It felt like that we were the only two people left on the planet. If it were not for the percussion of breaking waves and the boiling foamy white surf racing up the steep beach we would have been engulfed in that same kind of impenetrable human-free silence that would blanket the end of the world. We had been touched by our common humanity and we had discovered a spontaneous and open comradely liking for each other, and this had happened between us in spite of the fact that a wide abyss of culture, geography and history had originally separated us before our chance acquaintance. He was a mature man and I was a young woman. There was no evidence of any ulterior motives, we felt free to like each other without any encumbrances or expectations. At that moment on that isolated and remote strip of narrow beach I suddenly feel incredibly free and happy. He saw that I was happy and he smiled indulgently, this Russian man. He began to speak freely and intimately about himself. In fact he told me his entire family history. His father had been a tank officer in the war against the invading German forces. For outstanding and brave service in the armed forces during the Second World War on the Russian front his father and mother were allowed to relocate to Moscow where they lived in a small flat. He studied at the University of Moscow. He had worked in several Eastern European countries and had spent a stint in Cuba as well. I told him nothing about myself except that I had grown up my entire life in London and that I went Cambridge University. I was very familiar with the geography of London and was able to invent a life as a girl who had grown up in England. The story seemed to be credible and it seemed that I had managed to convince him regarding the broad biographical details of my life.

2

I had listened with great interest to his life story. Now standing next to him on the beach I am smiling. I don't know why I am smiling, but I am smiling. I am living in the eternal moment. I suddenly feel elated. Right now at this moment in time, I am happy to be in Mozambique. I do not know what the future holds. I am living on the edge. I have taken on greater responsibilities and commitments with regard to the Party. My life has become centred round the mission of the Party and my academic work as a Professor at Wits. I no longer have a normal social life. It has been years since I have been to the Powder Puff dance club. I live the life of a celibate. I do not have a girlfriend, I am not in a relationship. Instead I am focused on revolutionary work. But now on the beach watching the rolling waves I realize just how emotionally and mentally exhausted I have become over the last few months. I am aware of the fact that the burden of the underground has taken its toll on me. I also realize that I needed this break in Mozambique and I am entertaining the idea that I should consider whether I could spent a few more extra days at Tofo. I need to rest, to recover, to recuperate my strength.

Standing on a dune overlooking a calm channel sheltered behind baked barnacle and limpid covered rocks still exposed to full sunlight, waiting to be rescued by the incoming tide, we gaze silently at the breakers crashing over the jutting ledges of rock on the seaward side of the channel. The sounds of the breakers has a calming effect. We are lost for the moment in the privacy of our own thoughts. I feel the sea breeze against my face, I inhale the salt laden oceanic air. I am fully aware just how burnt out I have become. The revolution is taking its toll on me. I realise how close I am to that proverbial breaking point. Yet in spite of this, I now also feel a surge of happiness coming from nowhere, I sense the pleasant liberating release of stress, my head begins to clear as the tension drains away. I begin to feel almost manic. Was this a warning symptom that I was on the brink of madness? Could the onset of madness be the cause of this inexplicable sense of elation? What else could be the reason for this peaceful and tranquil surrendering of myself to the inevitable consequences of my life choices, choices which have made me the person that I have become? I have made my choices, there is no turning away, I have no regrets. I want to talk to the Russian, but I keep quiet. The Russian is like an angel, he is a lot like my father. Sasha makes me think of my father, he is nice man. Reminded of my father I begin to feel a sentimental yearning to be with him. A sense of forlornness awakens a melancholic ache in my heart. I think of the moments we have shared. In Hotazel as child I would stand with him every evening just before supper and we would both become fixated on the flight of the flock of homing pigeons. Transfixed, our head tilted back, our eyes following the flight of the flock as they flew in wide circles high above our home, and every now and then the flock would make a figure of eight, changing the direction of their flight. It was a mesmerizing experience that I never grew tired of. Above the noise of the crushing surf I hear Sasha speaking. I turn my head towards him. He is pointing to a school of juvenile yellowfin needle fish trapped in the tidal pool of the channel in crystal clear metre deep water. 'I saw the same kind of fish in Cuba,' I hear him saying. 'I'm not surprised, they occur throughout the topics,' I answer. 'Have you ever been to Cuba?' he asks. 'No, but I would love to visit Cuba, I am a great admirer of Fidel Castro.' He smiles. 'I have met Fidel Castro.'

I have made peace with the fact that Yael and I do not have a future as a couple. I realized that I had to let go no matter how painful it was going to be. As the sun set behind the dunes I walked back with Sasha to our villa at Tofo. At the villa I bid Sasha farewell. It is a relief that we do not have to worry about supper. We will eat at the function in Inhambane. I linger a bit under the hot spray of the shower. After drying myself, I spray spurts of perfume on my neck, and also between my breasts. Standing before the mirror I slip on one of my Powder Puff dance club high-hem low-neckline sleeveless party dresses. It happens to be a shining-glittering red outfit. Red for the Communist Revolution. Sitting down before the dresser I do my face. My skin is a shade darker from the sun. 'Dark am I, yet lovely, daughters of Jerusalem, dark like the tents of Kedar, like the tent curtains of Solomon'. Before we took leave of each other I noticed that Sasha's face, neck and arms were red from sunburn. To match the dress I put on bright red lipstick. Before leaving the villa I slipped on a pair of self-holdup black stockings and stepped into my black shining patent leather stilettos. I was now ready to party the night away in Inhambane. I feel sensually reckless. I am going to make the most of this short reprieve, before the looming storm, South Africa is burning, South Africa has become ungovernable, South Africa was on the brink of revolution. Who knows what tomorrow holds? Girls beware, fathers lock away your daughters. I am now on my way and I look deadly. Girls, I can give you the time of your lives if you are willing to let me.

3

It was Isabella Sabina the daughter of the governor and FRELIMO party boss of Inhambane who told me that the town of Inhambane had been established on the sheltered shores of the Bay of Inhambane as a trading destination since the 10th century. As I have said we had been invited to this social function of leading party officials and foreign diplomatic representatives from Cuba and Russia, at the Sabina residence which had originally been the residence of the colonial governor of the Inhambane Province, and was known as the Governor's Palace. The guests kept on mistaking me for Isabella who was a mestizo woman with a light caramel skin tone. She was dressed in a black sleeveless cocktail dress. I was struck by the fact that apart from being attractive, she had the most beautiful shoulders and arms that I had ever laid my eyes on. We were immediately drawn to each other. She was immensely amused that the guests kept confusing me for her, and once they realized their mistake they quickly observed that we looked like twins. Oblivious to everyone we spent the entire evening riveted to each other in conversation. After all the speeches we escaped into the cool night air of the perfumed gardens. Her cheeks were like satin and her breath was sweet like strawberries and peaches. We spent the weekend making love in the dunes of Tofo and then ten day later we were torn apart. My comrades disapproved of my relationship with Isabella and said that it could become a problem for the Party.

Before I left Inhambane I gave Isabella the address of Angelika so that we could stay in touch. We even entertained the possibility of going together on holiday to Norway. I felt that I had finally met my life partner. We were sisters, we were lovers, we were best friends, we were comrades, she was my mother and I was her daughter, and in turn she was my daughter. We were 'blood' sisters. We felt a deep and satisfying intellectual and emotional connection. We could read each other's minds. Isabella, Isabella, I love you so much, the pain of separation becomes more unbearable with the passing of each day. Will we ever be together again?

When I got back to Johannesburg I felt stressed about Yael. A lot of things were going on in my life and I couldn't deal with additional emotional complications, and I did not have the strength to phone her and speak to her and let her know that things had changed. It was a relief as the days and then the weeks pasted without her phoning or trying to make contact with me.

4

I actually did not want to leave Cape Town. Anyway in February1981 I moved into Callisto Court in Natal Street Bellevue. It has been my home ever since. That brings me back to the telephone call. Now the persistent ringing of the phone woke me up from a deep sleep. I fumbled with my hand in the dark to find the bedside table lamp switch. Thinking it was the alarm clock, I grabbed the clock to switch off the alarm. The ringing persisted it was coming from the phone in the lounge-dining room. I glanced at the time. It was 1.30 am in the morning. Before I could get up the phone stopped ringing. I lay back in the bed and waited for it to ring again. It began to ring again. I sat up and quickly jumped out of bed and made for the lounge. As I picked up the receiver and said 'hello' I heard the metallic sound of coins one or two falling down the slot of a public pay phone. I listened while saying 'hello, hello, hello...' The voice on the other side, an African accented voice asked: 'Is that Hannah Zeeman?' I answered in the affirmative. There was a brief silence on the other end of the line before the caller spoke again.

'This is a warning, the security police are on their way to your flat to detain you.'

The caller put the phone down immediately before I could ask any questions. It had been raining the whole night. I went back to the bedroom and pulled on a pair of denims, slipped on a pair of takkies and grabbed a blouse off the hanger in my cupboard. My purse was lying on the dresser. I did not have much cash, but I had credit cards. I could not remember where I had left the car keys. I was beginning to panic. After a minute or so I found the car keys on the kitchen counter where I had left them when I came home. And then I remembered the prewritten letter to Angelika. I rushed back to my bedroom and scratched about in the draws of my bedside pedestal. I found the sealed letter. The airmail sticker had already been stuck on. I needed stamps. In the study I found stamps. Folding the envelope in half I stuffed it into my back pocket. Locking the flat I went down the fire escape stairs to get to the car park of the complex.

I immediately noticed that all the car tires had been punctured. It meant the security police had already arrived or where playing some strange game with me. I looked around the car park, but I could see no one. I was undecided about what I should do. Should I go back to my flat and wait inside? Or should I try and make a break for it? Where could I possibly go? I had made no escape plans for such an eventuality. Maybe I could catch a train. I knew it was unwise to try and phone anyone.

Leaving the car park I began to run down Natal Street towards Hillbrow in the pouring rain. I had no idea of where I was running to or what I was doing. I was in state of panic. I remembered I had to post the letter. Looking around I saw no one and there were no cars, I was completely alone. I quickly stuffed the letter into the post box at the street corner and turning left at the next corner I ran to Cavendish Road. Following the road downhill I continued running until I reached Harrow Road. Breathless, my lungs burning I run across Harrow Road into Abel Road. Out of breath I started to walk past the wrought iron fence of Berea Park. I walked into a pool of light under a streetlamp. It was the same wrought iron fence and the same streetlamp where my father had parked the car when we still stayed in City Deep.

They had left me in the car. As a child I watched them through the car window, I watched my dad and Corelle crossing Abel Road, I watched them enter Sussex Court and disappear into the foyer. Over the years I wondered whether Corelle still lived in Sussex Court. Many times while sitting in the car as a young child I had watched them as they climbed up the stairs and entered the foyer of Sussex Court, at 29 Abel Road. For years I have walked down Abel Road past Berea Park and looked across the street at Sussex Court and I would think about those nights that I sat alone in the car across the road. Sometimes I fell asleep on the back seat and only woke up while my father drove the car back to City Deep. Now many years later I can still vividly remember those nights that I had spent waiting in the car across the street from the flat where Corelle had lived, I waited and waited for my dad to return to the car. After they had disappeared into flat I would gaze for a while through the car's window at the surroundings. I could see the wrought iron park fence and I could see the huge trees in the park. When I became bored with waiting I would lie on the cold leather back seat and stare up through the back window at the overhead streetlamp's light glowing brightly against the black dome of the night.

As I said, many were the occasions that I had already fallen asleep by the time my dad got back to the car. Lying on the back seat in my sleepy state I can still vaguely recall the motion of the car as my dad drove back to City Deep. He always made a sharp U turn in Abel Road in order to get back to Harrow Road. Turning right into Harrow we drove past Saratoga Avenue and Gordon Terrance, past Charlton Terrance, down through Doornfontein until we reached Commissioner Street, turning left into Commissioner Street, and then turning right into John Page going past Jeppe Station, and then into Main Reef Road and then right into Vickers Road we eventually arrived back at City Deep. My dad would lift me gently from the back seat and carry into the house. He would pull back the covers and lay me down in my bed with my head on the pillow. Pulling the covers back and tucking me into bed he would kiss me on my forehead and say: 'Hannah my little angel I love you so much, you are my sweetest darling child.'

5

Why had the car tyres been punctured? The car tyres must have been punctured before the phone call. I knew it was pointless trying to escape on foot, but anyway I found myself running in the light drizzle that was falling, I run down the road towards Hillbrow, it was downhill all the way to Harrow Road. Breathing heavily, my heart pounding, I stopped to catch my breath and think, I was in state of panic, standing on the pavement outside Berea Park in the rain I stared across the road. Across the street was the flat. At night, even on this wet night, it looked suddenly so familiar. The right thing to do would have been to keep on running. Putting as much distance between myself and them. I should just keep on running, run into the night, sticking to the shadows of dark streets, head for Langlaagte (deep and narrow valley) Railway Station in Mayfair, catch a train at first light to Springs. Absurdly given my situation I played with the possible English rendition of the Afrikaans word 'Langlaagte'.

Yet I did not move, instead I lingered in a state on indecision. I was aware that I was standing again on the threshold of the great unknown, the place where you feel all your life options slipping away with each passing minute. Now fixated on the flat entrance it seemed that time was going into reverse, and the past come rushing back with all its death bed vividness. The flat, Sussex Court a mute witness to the passing of time was anchored in that past. I was once again a little girl looking out of the window of the old Hudson across the same the street. The intensity of the rain increased. I decided to run across Abel Street to seek shelter in Sussex Court, running up the stairs for the first time in my life, I pushed the glass door open, entering the dim foyer of Sussex Court, the same foyer into which Corelle and my father had disappeared so long ago while I watched them from the Hudson. I was now soaking wet, rivulets of water dripped from my clothes collecting into a pool around my shoes on the polished red tiled floor. I could now keep watch from behind the closed glass door. The street outside remained deserted, the rain continued to pour, driving down in slanting sheets which appeared to be stationary, trapped as frozen slivery lines in the glare of the streetlights. Waiting for whatever was going to happen, I remained in the shelter of the foyer, my gaze fixed on the empty street framed within the double glass doors. Except for the barely audible drone of falling rain, the empty silence of the unchanging street scene presented itself like some strange movie picture. Staring blankly for so long into the soulless raining streetlight lit night I began to feel mesmerized, so much so that it began to feel as if I had become lost in a dreamlike world of thoughtless awareness. It felt as if I were the only person alive on earth. Where were they? Could they see me? Did they know that I was holed up in the foyer of Sussex Court? Why were they not closing in on me?

Folk psychology tells us that not only murderers but also arsonists often return to the scenes of their crimes. I have returned inadvertently to the scene of my father's infidelities while trying to escape my own 'crimes'. This was the foyer into which my dad and Corelle had disappeared into as I watched them with my face pressed against the window of the Hudson parked outside Berea Park. Watching from the confines of the foyer for any sign of life I am aware that the parking spot where the Hudson once stood now stands empty under that same streetlamp's light which I had stared up at as a kid. Standing here in the foyer I have no idea what I am going to do next. I have no escape plan. Instead of concentrating on matters at hand or focusing on plans of escape action, I allow my thoughts to wonder. Corelle van der Buys was an attractive blond. She was single and had been my mom's best friend from their schooldays. Thinking back over the past from time to time, I had become aware over the years that something indeed had been going on between my dad and Corelle. When we moved to Stilfontein from City Deep Corelle faded from of the scene. Now suddenly all the recollections of the past have returned, and I realized afresh that my dad had been having an affair with Corelle right under my mom's nose. I was amazed that I could remember so much, that I could discover dark secrets hidden in the recesses of my memories. Jacob Zeeman my father was an enigmatic man.

I began to feel cold, still staring blankly into the night through the glass doors I continued to experience vivid flashbacks. We were driving Corelle home. Earlier she would have arrived at our home by bus. Even though she was attractive she was lonely, so she spent most Sundays with us at our home in City Deep. We had not yet moved to Stilfontein. One night on the way to drop Corelle off at her flat dad stopped at the Mobil petrol garage to fill the Hudson's tank. I was lying down on the back seat. The leather seat felt comfortably cold against my bare legs and through my thin dress. I stared up and saw Pegasus the flying red horse with wings. Earlier that afternoon, after Sunday lunch, we watched dad and mom doing an impromptu jive in the kitchen to 'Shake, Rattle & Roll' by Elvis Presley. Corelle still sitting at the table clapped her hands excitedly. And then mom urged Corelle to dance with dad when Elvis Presley's 'Good Rockin Tonight' came on the radio while we were having our pudding. It was strange to watch dad dancing with Corelle in front of mom. The strobic kaleidoscopic images of vintage sport cars, animals and Elvis had all become mixed up in my childhood recollections of City Deep. Pegasus, Elvis Presley, rock 'n roll, bulldogs and bull terriers all merged in a dreamlike tapestry. Also in those early days at City Deep I learnt about Jock of the bushveld, and my memory of Jock of the bushveld was inseparably linked to a Sunday afternoon drive in the Riley, Corelle was with us, we were going to visit people who kept race horses and also bred bull terriers somewhere in the vicinity of Rosettenville. We looked at the dogs and puppies. Then we visited the stables to admire the race horses, and then the sounds of Elvis' 'All Shook Up' played while we drank tea afterwards.

How old was I? I must have been four years old. How was it possible that I could remember the details of those nocturnal journeys to Corelle's flat? As a child I plotted the progress of our night journey by watching the lamps of the streetlights flashing past against the star lit night sky as I lay stretched out on the back seat of the Hudson. We turned into Harrow Road. I sat up on the back seat just in time to see the house flash past, the house where we had visited Dad's friends with Corelle. Dad always took me with to visit his friends who stayed in that house in Harrow Road.

We sat in the little lounge watching 8 mm movies of their holidays to the Kruger National Park and also of their holidays to other game reserves. For my birthday Corelle gave me a plastic rhino and a plastic lion. They become my favourite toys. I took them with, resting them in my lap as I sat cross-legged on the carpet at my dad's feet. The projector clicked and whirred in the smoke filled room.

Now I also remember another home we used to visit. It was the home of Mr Harry Radman. When we visited Corelle sat next to dad. I would sit on Corelle's lap. She would hold me snugly in her arms. Again as a threesome we, that is, dad, Corelle and me, watched animal movies in Harry's spacious lounge. He showed his films on a 16 mm projector with sound. I don't know how many times we visited Harry Radman's home. Why this obsession with animal movies? I don't know. He was also a big game hunter. Maybe that must be the link? The animal movies which were mainly of African wildlife and his hunting expeditions was something which I remembered and it did have a long lasting effect on me. Later in life as a zoologist, and mainly because I remembered those film evenings where wildlife was a focus of shared lay interest, I became interested in the philosophical aspects of what grew into the academic discipline which became known as animal studies. The Radman home was also filled with stuffed trophies of all the animals that he had shot, which included elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo, rhino and all the different species of antelope which roamed Africa. In their lounge I sat on a stool made from an elephant's foot. In the entrance there was a pair of huge elephant tusks on display. Everywhere their home was filled with the remains of dead animals. Yet we gazed in wonder at the depiction of living animals projected onto a screen set up in their plush lounge with its elaborate and dramatic baroque furnishing, which struck a lively chord with Corelle who could not speak enough about how beautiful the Radman's home was as we drove her back to Sussex Court. The Radmans must have been very wealthy. Harry and his wife lived in a palatial double story mansion built in 1890 with a fireplace in every room. In the yard the original coach house and stables had been retained. The property was once the residence of a prominent Randlord. As I remember the house was in Parktown situated on a high ridge which overlooked a panoramic view of Saxonwold, Forest Town and the Johannesburg Zoo. Strange that it was the life of animals which brought this odd assortment of acquaintances together. Animal studies is not strictly speaking zoological, its subject matter dealt more with the study of human perceptions regarding the significance of animals.

When we arrived at Corelle's flat, dad would without fail always park the car in the same parking spot under the same streetlamp next to Berea Park close to the heavy wrought park gate. Berea Park of all places! It was by pure contingency that I now find myself across the road from the park once more, almost a life time later. When I was a child the future did not exist for me with all of its possibilities as I lay on the back seat of the Hudson next Berea Park while he was fucking Corelle in her flat. I once looked up and saw my father move the curtains and peer down at the car to make sure that I was still OK. He had taken his shirt off. He always wore a white vest under his shirt. He stood looking out of the window dressed in his white vest. Why had he taken his clothes off? Could the future be pre-arranged in advance to eventually become instantiated in a deterministic fashion in which as a grown woman I would be standing in the foyer of Corelle's flat having a vivid recollection of my father standing by the window dressed in his vest looking down at me while I waited below in the car? Or did the future for my life at that very moment not yet exist in any specific foreseeable pre-arrangement while I laid on the backseat of the car staring up at Corelle's bedroom window and seeing my father standing in his vest framed in the window. I remember that I waited for an eternity for my dad to return. He had left me alone in the middle of the night in the car. Bored and tired of waiting I pressed my face against the window and stared out at the wrought iron fence mounted on the stone foot wall that surrounded the perimeter of Berea Park. How could I possibly know that many years later I would be arrested by the security police in the early hours of the morning in the same Berea Park close to the spot where my dad had parked his car and where had I waited for him so many times? Why had I been warned? The tires had been punctured, but there was no sign of anyone anywhere outside my flat in Bellevue. After my arrest in Berea Park I wondered about the truthfulness of Malcolm's version of my arrest. The possibility dawned on me that I had been made the unwitting victim of a sadistic cat and mouse game played out much to their great amusement, and also for the sake of Malcolm's own personal entertainment, as there was no doubt that he was the chief orchestrator of the way the events eventually unravelled. The details of the events which lead to my arrest remained shrouded in mystery. I could not connect all the dots which ended with that early morning phone call.

As I was soon to learn, Malcolm lived in a world of shadows, smoke and mirrors, where truth and falsehood seemed to merge seamlessly. It was a world in which men and women lied shamelessly. I remember my dad saying something about the police along the lines that you have to have the mind of a criminal to catch a criminal.

6

Outside the rain continued to fall. I don't know how long I had been hiding in the foyer. After staring for some time through the closed glass door of the flat foyer while in a state of reverie something began to prompt me regarding Corelle. I turned round and walked over to the flat tenant post boxes which were fixed to the wall on one side of the foyer. I began to read the names of the tenants and I was stunned with surprise to discover that Corelle van der Buys' name was still on one of the post boxes. She was obviously still living in the same flat. So Corelle who had been fucking my father behind the back of mother had remained a tenant in Sussex Court for all these years while our own lives had move on. It seemed that she had not married; if so, she had remained single or so it seemed. Now she had become an old spinster, an old spinster who had once been my dad's lover and mother's best friend. He had abandoned her when we moved to Stilfontein. Maybe Corelle was the reason why we left City Deep. Maybe it was also the reason why my mother was so excited about moving to Hotazel. All these moves were driven by the need to put as much distance between our family and Corelle. This had to be the real deep underlying reason for my mother embracing Hotazel with such enthusiasm? Hotazel did offer her a new life and it provided her with a refuge and a chance to save her marriage. While staring at Corelle's name on the post box the thought flashed through my mind that I should take the lift up to her floor. I could knock on her door or ring her door bell until she woke up and opened the door. What would I say to her?

'Hello auntie Corelle, I am Hannetjie Zeeman, I was the little girl who sat on your lap, the daughter of the man you were once having an affair with a very long time ago. As you can see I am all grown up now. Can I hide in your flat? I am a fugitive on the run from the police. They want to arrest me because I am a Communist. I have my wallet with me. I have cash and credit cards. Could I please lay low in your flat for a few days? You could help me dye my hair blond and buy a dress and some clothes for me. I could catch a bus or train to Nelspruit and walk across the border into Swaziland. Or you could drive me to Swaziland. Or I could hire a car to make my get away. I just need a place to hide while I plan my escape.'

I was now applying my mind to possibilities, I was now considering all the options that were open to me. Corelle could be my saviour. In theory if I managed to cross the border into Swaziland I could contact Isabella and she would arrange for my escape to Maputo and then I could be with her in Inhambane while plans were being for me by the Party regarding my re-deployment. Maybe the Party will send me to Luanda in Angola or Lusaka in Zambia. Maybe I could stay in Maputo and then I would be close to Isabella. Maybe we could share a flat in Maputo, we could live as a couple, we could settle down like a married couple.

The rain seemed to have stopped. I left the flat foyer and walked across the deserted street back to the gates of Berea Park. The gates were open, I walked into the park, sat down on a wooden park bench under a towering fir tree. Still soaking wet I began to shiver with cold. Just beyond the southern border of the park a flash of lightning lit up the fifty story cylindrical skyscraper known as Ponte City. The upper part of the tower was hidden from view in a blanket of dark heavy cloud which now covered the entire city of Johannesburg. It began to rain again. In another flash of lightning the silhouette of the Hillbrow Tower emerged from the inky darkness towering for a split second above up the Hillbrow skyline before vanishing in the slanting rain.

As the rain continued to pour I remained sitting on the park bench. I caught sight of the headlights of an approaching car cutting through the sheets of rain as it travelled down Henden Street towards the park. It stopped momentary at the red robots at the bottom of the hill, ignoring the red lights it crossed over Harrow Road into Abel Road. I watched as the car stopped and parked in the street in front of the park entrance. It was parked under the lamplight at the same spot where my dad used to park his car when he gave a Corelle a lift back to her flat. Two men got out, dressed in raincoats and carrying umbrellas they entered the park and walked towards me. In the rain they stopped in front of me and asked in heavy accented Afrikaans:

"Is jy Hannah Petronella Hendrina Wilhelmina Zeeman?" (Are you Hannah Petronella Hendrina Wilhelmina Zeeman?)

I answered in Afrikaans:

"Ja, ek is Hannah Zeeman." (Yes, I am Hannah Zeeman.)

They then asked politely:

"Sal jy saam met ons kom?" (Will you come with us?)

Their comportment towards me signalled that they took me for an Afrikaner. I stood up and walked between them to the car. I felt a strange sense of relief. I somehow knew that this day would eventually come. I sat in the back seat. The two of them sat in the front. They did not seem to be too concerned that I could open the back door and jump out and make a run for it. They were complacent in their absolute certainty that I would not attempt to escape from the car into the night. I felt strangely numb, outside it was still raining, visibility was periodically restored by the slapping beat of windscreen wipers squeaking to and thro, the unmarked police car's radio cackled intermittently, the night gleamed wet in the headlights. The car eventually turned into the familiar street in which I lived and stopped in front of the main entrance of the flat complex. I noticed that I left the lights on in my flat.

I left them on because I did not think about putting them off in my rush to escape. The lights being left on was a signal that I left the flat in a state of haste. The flat was empty. They saw this and when they saw this they also saw or realize that an externalized self, the subject that was taken to be me, was no longer in the flat. But the subject that they had under their surveillance, the subject they perceived was only an appearance, not a real person with an inaccessible self, I was now fully objectified as something which they could comprehend as the embodiment of evil, as a dangerous transgressor, as a social deviant. In their eyes I was the unfathomable Communist, something reptilian, therefore dangerous, something from which one recoils in horror or distaste, being reptilian I was now the captured quarry of their pursuit, but being reptilian I was not to be trusted, I had to be handled with the utmost caution. This was the image of me in the mirror of their minds. I could see it in their eyes.

The car halts in the street outside the block of flats where I live. Except for my flat the entire building is in darkness. The rain pours down steadily. I see and feel everything as an externalization of myself in terms of the objectification of who have I become as a captive. But 'the I' which I consider to be the self has been split off from the subject which is an objectification of the self but not the self itself. Others can see me but they can never experience what it is like to be me, therefore if they are denied this experience, an experience which they can never really have, then they cannot know what it is like to be me, and this is the great limitation to what we can know by means of reason and also by means of experience. There is a limit to what we can experience and know in an absolute or ultimate sense. In this sense we can never grasp the totality of things as something about which we can say something in an absolute or ultimate fashion. Yet we know something about the totality in a provisional or partial fashion. Some of us believe that a natural knowledge of God is possible, and we accept this belief as justifiable or warranted, and we even have sufficient confidence to view it as credible knowledge. We can know things, even if only partially, because of warranted inference. We infer many things on the grounds of evidence that is broadly circumstantial, and often this is not an exercise in unmediated or transparent access to something. There are things that we believe we can know to be the case, but only on the basis of circumstantial evidence, and on this basis we feel entitled to believe in their existence, we believe that we know that they do in fact exist, these things or these entities. We believe that these entities or things do indeed exist or have to exist, especially entities like the inaccessible self of others for example, or even the states of minds of others. Yet we know that while we are certain that there are such things which do in fact exist, they remain beyond direct access, yet for us they exist. They have to exist, even if we are not sure what they are. For example, mind exists even if we are not sure what mind is in itself. Similarly we know that a thing called consciousness exists even if we are not sure what consciousness actually is. States of affairs such as the thoughts or consciousness or minds of another self or another person do in fact exist, even though we cannot know the contents of someone's mind, thoughts or consciousness. We are unable to experience directly what it is like, or what it feels like to be the self of another person. So there are limits to saying something about something. In these instances we are faced with both the limits of reason and experience. But in spite of these limitations we know that something is the case. There are minds, there are thoughts and there are states of consciousness. We find that we have sufficient warrant to believe, maybe even with metaphysical certainty that a given state of affairs does indeed exist. We know that there is something and it has being. We know that other minds do indeed exist. Possibly we know it by faith alone, but without necessarily foregoing reason, we know it by faith alone only because reason gives us the assurance that our faith that something does exist is not an illusion, it is not about something that does not exist, but it 'concerns' something that is there indeed. It does 'concern' something. Knowledge has a dimension of 'concern' in order for it to be knowledge. Here we use the word 'concern' in a very pregnant sense. And this could be what the theologian Paul Tillich meant about the 'concerns' under the designation of 'ultimate concern.' Our faith is about concerns, reasonable or rational concerns, concerns about something, a something that is indeed there. God is there indeed and She is not silent, because the silences speak out, out of the silences we hear that which cannot be heard without the voice of reason, without the inferences which have rational warrant, rational warrant that reason supplies. It is for this 'reason', I use the word reason in its most paradoxical sense, that I am Christian in spite of everything. Well I have been a closet Christian all along in spite of appearances, in spite of being a sex loving lesbian, in spite of being a Communist. I have lived my lesbianism to the fullest, I lived it as a gift. I have lived as a feminine lesbian, or a femme lesbian, because I enjoy being pretty, being beautiful, being attractive and above all I take pleasure in being desirable, to be the subject of desire of another woman. I know I am good looking and desirable. I have been blessed with good looks. Nature has been generous to me in that sense. And I am thankful for this. It is God's gift to me. It is something I enjoy, in the same way that a person who can ran very fast, enjoys the sheer pleasure of being a gifted sprinter, or a talented singer enjoys the pleasure of singing like an angel.

After my arrest in the park we drove back in silence to my flat. Waiting outside my flat were several members of the security police all dressed in plain clothes, including a young woman in her twenties who was very casually dressed in faded jeans and an oversized jersey which she wore over her T-shirt. I unlocked the front door and we all went inside. They began to ransack my flat, unpacking cupboards and emptying the contents of draws onto the floor, they went through every book I owned, flipping the pages for hidden notes. Their excitement became comical when they discovered boxes of Party literature lying unhidden in plain view on the floor in the spare room which functioned as a guest room for visitors who happened to be staying over. They behaved as if they had hit pay dirt. The young woman had a camera and she was taking shots of everything, the camera flashed almost non-stop like a strobe light. Another security policemen had a video camera, he was recording sound and visual footage of everything. They were joyful, their faces beamed with elation. To their amazement they had discovered the mother lode of the most incriminating evidence imaginable. Their faces lit up with disbelief. They could not hide their astonishment. And the camera continued to flash incessantly.

The girl with the camera eventually spotted the cape fur seal skull on the sideboard. She immediately began to take pictures of the skull from various angles. Intrigued she picked up the skull and began to examine it. She run her figures over the sharp pointed white teeth. Two other security policemen also took an interest in the skull and took turns to examine it. The identity of the skull began to puzzle them. The girl asked her colleagues if they thought it was a dog or leopard or bear skull. The fact that it was a seal skull did not enter their minds.

Eventually they turned to me and asked about the animal to which the skull belonged. After telling them that it was a seal's skull I could not stop myself from giving an impromptu lecture on the carnivore skull and the characteristic features of carnivore dentition. Taking the skull from girl I pointed out the carnassial teeth and which are typical for all carnivores and which represent a specialized dental adaptation for shearing meat or flesh. Holding the seal skull in my hand so that they could all see it, I briefly showed them by pointing out the key features of the seal's skull and how these features vary in the various species belonging to the Order Carnivora. I explained why and in what way the skulls and teeth of the seal, lion, leopard, wolf, hyena, jackal, mongoose, skunk, weasel, civet, genet and bear all differ from each other. When I had finished with what I wanted to say regarding the carvinoran skull the girl looked at me and said: 'Ek het gehoor dat jy 'n professor is.' (I heard that you are a professor.)

After confirming that I was indeed a professor she wanted to know what kind of a professor I was and so I naturally told her that I was a professor of zoology (dierkundige). Then she wanted to know where I had got the skull from. I told her that I got it from Swapkopmund from a dead seal that had washed up onto the beach. All this time my eyes where focused on her face alone, I only addressed her and did not bother with engaging the faces of the two men who were standing on either side of her and who were also listening to what I had to say. I could see from the expressions on their demeanours that they acknowledged in their minds the fact that I was an educated person, a scientist, a real professor and so on and so forth. But there was still an element of cognitive dissonance in their perceptions of me. What they saw and heard did not tally completely with what they had in mind regarding the character and comportment of a Communist. Yes I was obviously a Communist in their eyes, the evidence for this was abundant and compelling, but I was also someone who had another life, another side to who I was. There was the mystery of who I really was and what it was like to be me. As the subject under arrest and investigation I was a Communist, and that was all that mattered. In this sense I as a person had become objectified as something else. I did not exist as a self, but as a Communist, as something which could be objectified and characterised as one would characterise a species in terms of essential attributes. Its very existence as that specific species was by virtue of all of its attributes and properties. Without those attributes it could not existence as that species. It exists by virtue of its essence, existence and essence converge and merge and cannot be separated. In their minds I have been classified as a Communist, genus and species. In me as a person the existence and essence of a Communist converged. Truth supervenes on being. I was a Communist and a transgressor and an enemy of the state, and that was all that mattered in their minds, my knowledge of the carnivore skull was only incidental to who I really was in their eyes. It was an accidental attribute, something purely contingent. But being a Communist was my essence. It was what defined me as a subject of investigation, as a person and as an existent. I was a Communist by virtue of all the attributes that could be objectively attached to my person, to my personal being.

I looked at the girl. She was actually quite attractive.

They began to carry out boxes filled with past and current issues of 'The African Communist,' and also boxes filled with banned SACP literature and with the 'Study, Learn, Teach and Act' propaganda pamphlets. I had also accumulated for fun and interest a massive stash of Trotskyist newspapers, magazines and periodicals which I had managed to bring back illegally from my visits to the USA. I was not a Trotskyite and had no inclination towards Trotskyism. I was merely using the Trotskyite literature in a blatantly opportunistic fashion as a resource for the production of my own Party propaganda news sheets and pamphlets which I had been distributing.

And then there was the shout of great excitement coming from the covered porch. They had found the Xerox machine. The girl with the camera and the man with the video camera rushed to the porch, the camera flashed continuously. Stacked against the wall were more than a dozen boxes filled with realms of paper. This was the Party's media production centre. Here all the flyers, newsletters and pamphlets were produced for distribution in the townships, on trains, on buses, at funerals, at churches, at shebeens, at mass meetings, among the labour unions, at football stadiums, at hostels and at mining compounds. Next to the Xerox machine stood open boxes filled with freshly produced flyers, ready for distribution.

There was a lot of work to be done, in addition to the many books they were removing from the book shelves, they also confiscated the old typewriter and my computer, now they were faced with task of removing the Xerox machine and all the boxes of paper. The mountain of evidence had to be carefully documented and then removed.

I no longer had a captive audience. The seal's skull had been returned to its pedestal on the sideboard. They were not going to indulge me any further as a person, I had now been reduced to my proper status as the subject of an arrest, as the offender, as the perpetrator of serious crimes against the state.

I stood in the lounge in my soaking wet clothes taking in the spectacle that was unfolding in my flat. I began to shiver not only with cold, but also because of shock and trauma. I was consciously aware of the fact that I was now in state of shock and it was not because I felt any fear or terror, it was more from the traumatic experience of personal violation that I was undergoing, it felt like I was being gang raped by strangers, by people that I had never seen before and who were now strutting about my flat, gloating like morons.

I needed to change into dry clothes. I just muttered that I was going to change into dry clothes. Someone said to the policewoman: 'Gaan saam met haar, bly by haar, hou haar dop.' (Go with her, stay with her and keep an eye on her.)

I could feel that I was being treated as a non-person, I was being treated with the mistrust and suspicion that was normally reserved for a dangerous criminal. They were now referring to me in the third person in my presence.

'Sy is dit, sy is dat!' (She is this, she is that).

Still holding the camera she followed me into my bedroom. Her attitude toward me had changed completely. I stripped off my clothes. My nakedness became a weapon. I was in no hurry to get dressed nor did I feel any need to be modest and cover my nakedness, I was comfortable in my nakedness, and being naked before her helped me to reclaim myself and take ownership of my selfhood. I knew that I was attractive and in my nakedness I was not modest or prudish. What could she do? She had been caught off guard, she had to stare at me as I paraded my nakedness, my breasts and my bush. I needed to dry myself so I walked naked to the bathroom in full view of everyone. She followed me and stood by the open bathroom entrance averting her gaze while I dried my body in front of her. I then took my tooth brush and a fresh tube of tooth paste back to the bedroom. After dressing in a blouse and an old pair of jeans I put the tooth brush and tooth paste in my back pocket. I took a small clutch handbag from the cupboard and put in my cheque book, credit cards, purse, small notebook, pen and ID book into it. I was now ready to go.

As a person I had lived in a world that was uniquely mine, I had a history which was uniquely mine, and I have a mental life that was uniquely mine. I was a conscious self-aware person, I think, I reflect, I remember, I recollect, I perceive, I analyse, I cogitate, I experience sensations, I feel, I have emotions, and I exercise agency, I realize goals, I act, I do, I will. All of this has been made possible because I possess a cognitive apparatus, because I possess a mind, because I am conscious. I am a sentient being. I experience awareness. I eventually had the opportunity to write this write down while locked up in a small prison cell in John Vorster Square. I wrote this down while I had nothing else to do but think, reflect, remember and analyse. All I had was my mind. In having a mind I told myself I was in full possession of who I was. I am not a subject. My mind was free to range where it wished.

When they were finished we left the left. I left my flat with them, locking the door, putting the keys into my bag. I was under arrest. I did not know what to expect. Was I going to be tortured? Was I going to die? Oh dear I thought to myself at that moment. I was now really stepping into the great unknown. How was I going to survive this? I felt like I was drowning in an ocean of contingency.

8

I was kept in solitary confinement for two weeks after my arrest before Malcolm had me brought to his office for the surprise interview. While I did not expect to meet my brother in the flesh at John Vorster Square after my arrest, I had known for some time that my brother Malcolm had become a member of the South African Security Police, but I did not know that he was working at John Vorster Square. I had learnt from my parents that he had been promoted to a Colonel. He worked hard to reach the rank of Colonel. But no one told me he was stationed at John Vorster Square. None of my comrades in the Party knew that my brother was a Colonel in the security police. It was something that I had kept secret. No one in the Party suspected that I was related in any way to any Colonel Zeeman. This was mainly because Colonel Malcolm Zeeman, even given his illustrious career in counter-insurgency, had not become notorious or 'famous'. He was not a public figure. He had maintained a very low profile, he functioned below the radar. He was a talented and knowledgeable specialist in counter-insurgency and counter-intelligence. He was a dedicated professional, and a supremely gifted hunter of men. Because he worked with 'turned' ANC insurgents or 'Ascaris' as they were called, it was necessary for him not be in any kind of media limelight. He worked in complete anonymity behind the scenes. No one knew anything about Colonel Malcolm Zeeman. I later learnt from Malcolm that it was one of his loyal Ascaris, an ex-MK operative, who had phoned me on Malcolm's instructions to warn me of my imminent arrest by his colleagues in the security police. This was typical of the audacity of Malcolm Zeeman.

Malcolm liked to work in a world of shadows and death. He seemed to have acquired some kind of transcendence. It was clear that he had earned everyone's respect, and because of this the system or the military-security establishment allowed him to do what he liked, and he knew how to work the system with impunity. From long experience he had learnt that in the dark semi-criminal underworld of state security work and counter-insurgency, if you were clever enough, like he was, you could exercise God-like powers of intervention in matters of life and death. Of course no one should have power over others. Why should anyone have power over anyone else?

It seemed that Malcolm knew what it was like to have God-like powers over the destiny of anyone that fell into his web. Speaking about God both Malcolm and I both had maintained a belief in God. This was unusual given the fact that we were born into a secular home but I grew up is a religious or Christian ethos. In the back of my mind I have always assumed that God existed, first as a child and then later as a teenager I just went with the flow, taking it for granted that there was a God. As an adult I always entertained the possibility of God's existence. I believed that the Universe as a dynamic and evolving system was causally closed, but also held to the private belief that the Universe as a causally closed system existed by virtue of there being a God or supreme intelligent being. As I have mentioned my parents had never before been particularly religious. God was never mentioned in our home. We never said grace before our meals. But Malcolm in spite of his cynicism about the human species was always religious in a manner of speaking. After he got married he ceased to be merely religious in a general unspecific manner. He became a true believer like his wife, and as a husband and father and as the head of an Afrikaner household he became a regular church goer. After he got married he also stopped shedding human blood, he washed his blood stained hands, but he could not let go of the dark world completely, he was addicted to it. He had to live with one foot in that world. He never gave his friends up who remained in that world. In many ways he remained a member of the brotherhood, he remained a 'spiritual member' of the Recces and of Koevoet. His network in the world of darkness remained intact.

With Malcolm, in spite of his wildness as child and as a teenager, when he heard the Word, the seed of the good news always fell on fertile or good soil. The seed that was sown at the weekly Kinderkrans afternoons we attended at primary school in Hotazel took root in Malcolm's mind, and in his soul. If the soul existed then Malcolm possessed a soul that had been touched by the Word. The seed that was sown at the weekly Anglican mass while we were at boarding school in Potchefstroom also found fertile soil in Malcolm's soul. With Malcolm, the Word sown by the church would yield a big return on its investment. When the time was ripe the church reeled him in.

Anyway, be that it as it may, after languishing for two weeks in a prison, not sure of my fate, I was fetched from my prison and I was escorted by a policeman to an office on the 11th floor of John Vorster Square. When the door was opened there was my brother Malcom standing with his back to the door. His presence in the office was total unexpected, it blew me over. It came as a shocking surprise. The last person I expected to see within the labyrinthic precincts of John Vorster Square was my own brother. I had not seen him nor had I spoken to him for nearly five years. I didn't even know that he worked at John Vorster Square. I knew he had joined the security police some time ago, but that was all.

It was a beautiful morning.

He was looking out of the window at the panoramic view of the southern side of Johannesburg. The highway, the Crown interchange, the massive mine dump and slime dams in the distance dominated the view from the window. The view was far from picturesque. The window framed a grim view of a blighted industrialized landscape. The door was closed behind me and it was just us in the office. Malcolm turned around and smiled pleasantly at me. It was a friendly smile. He cordially invited me to sit down on one of the chairs. The door opened again. A tray of tea and biscuits was brought in by a black constable. While in the security police he had completed a BA, studying by correspondence through UNISA, majoring in international relations and political science. I had learnt from my parents that he had also been awarded an MA for a dissertation on the MPLA in Angola. I would never have guessed that he had an academic bone in his body.

I soon learnt that several of my close comrades and I had been betrayed by one of our close friends who had turned state witness after he had been arrested. Malcolm did not name the person who the security police had turned. With an ironic grin on his face Malcolm said:

'I tried to warn you so that you could escape. You could have got away if you had an escape plan. You were only a small fish, we caught you in the net by pure accident. You were a mere low ranking propaganda and media officer for the South African Communist Party looking after information pamphlet and newspaper distribution as propaganda and ideological recruiting tools. I was quite happy to let you slip through the net. But you basically set yourself up for the fall. I could not believe that your flat would be filled with so much self-incriminating Communist propaganda materials. You broke every rule of a professional Communist underground operative. I actually felt embarrassed when they caught you, I expected more from my sister,' he said with the ironical grin still plastered on his face. He then laughed and shook his head in mock disbelief.

'You had no escape plan,' he reiterated.

'Yes I had no escape plan,' I murmured.

'You are a bunch of amateur revolutionaries, completely disorganized, and undisciplined. Who has ever heard of underground revolutionary operatives that do not have escape plans or any kind of escape drill?' Malcolm asked me with that same ironic grin still fixed on his face.

He then burst out laughing, shaking his head in disbelief at my apparent lack of an escape plan. But I knew Malcolm. He was digging for information, for clues, because he knew that I had managed to do something, something which had unexpected propaganda consequences and he was curious to know more.

'You can't pull the wool of over my eyes. How was it possible that you have become almost overnight an anti-apartheid celebrity activist in Norway of all countries? You have become a poster girl for Communism. Your smiling photograph on some God forlorn windswept beach, wearing a black Speedo, is plastered on the front page of every major newspaper in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Holland, and also now in France and Italy. All the bloody foreign embassies are going hysterical over your arrest as if you are some kind of fucking saint or celebrity revolutionary. How did they find out about your arrest? Who has escaped the net? Why are you so suddenly well known in the international media?' He asked.

'I don't know,' was all I said. I could not believe what I was hearing, and I think the undisguised surprised showed on my face. But it was a relief. I had now become a high profile political prisoner only because of my international connections. Ironically my ancestry and my white privileged position was saving my 'white skin' from the worst depredations of the Nationalist state oppressive apparatus. But still, there was another way of looking at my situation. Being a high profile political prisoner was also another way of fighting the people's war, it contributed to the intensification of international political pressure on the apartheid regime.

'There is fuck-all the Norwegians can do for you,' he continued.

He pushed over the charge sheet for me to see.

'By the way you will be getting a minimum of seven years for this,' he said.

'The others are going to sit a lot longer, so you are lucky,' he added.

'But then again you all may walk,' he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

I realized by that remark that he knew a lot more than I could ever have guessed. I knew Malcolm, he was my brother. That shrug of his shoulders indicated that he knew more than he was letting on. At that moment for me the future was an ocean of uncertainty, but he seemed to be certain about things regarding the future which I could not even begin to imagine. I sensed this. He did not seem to be overly concerned about my arrest and pending conviction or my long sentence which I was now waiting to serve. My detention seemed to be a bit of a joke to him, as if it was the result of one of his clever pranks in which he was eventually going to say that I could go home now. But then his demeanour and attitude changed, he became very professional. Now as a brother he was going to give me the best possible advice on how to deal with my situation.

'When they interview you it would be best for you to simply state that you want to plead guilty to the charges. I want to save you from all the shit that you would otherwise have to go through. I have done this for you as my sister and because of dad and mom, so please don't let us down. I have put myself on the line for you. The prosecutor has agreed that if you plead guilty you will be given the mandatory seven year sentence, the others are going to sit a lot longer, because they were involved with the smuggling of weapons and explosives into the country. When they interrogate just stick to the fact that you were a low ranking media officer in the party and leave it at that,' Malcolm said.

The words: 'I want to save you from all the shit that you would otherwise have to go through,' rang in my head. He did not want his sister to be abused and humiliated. He did not want his personal pride to be wounded. The Zeeman name had to be upheld and all Zeemans should be treated with dignity because we were the descendants of an ancient lineage, maybe we had a bit of Khoisan blood flowing in our veins, who knows? He was indirectly instructing me not to make things difficult for myself and I could achieve this end by openly confessing to being a communist and plead guilty with regard to the charge of distributing Communist propaganda materials. I should gratefully accept whatever sentence they imposed on me, and do this as matter of honour, for the sake of our family name, Zeeman.

'Pleading guilty and receiving the seven years sentence may stand you in very good stead for the future,' he said mysteriously.

He poured tea into a cup, asked if I took sugar and milk, and then pushed over the plate of biscuits to me. I had nothing to say. I just sat there stirring my tea. All that I could think of was that I was going to get seven years, that I would be sitting in jail for the next seven years and Malcolm could not save me from that, and he thought that I would somehow benefit by confessing guilty as charged and accepting the seven year sentence as punishment or retribution for my deeds. I would be a middle aged woman at the end of my sentence. I followed Malcolm's advice. The truth was going to set me free. It was a supreme irony given the kind of world Malcolm and his colleagues in the security police lived. It was paradoxical and ironical that Malcolm who lived and worked in the shadowy world of lies told me to tell the truth. I did not know what the future held; I could not imagine that socialism and apartheid would collapse at the same time. Malcolm seemed to know that the game was up with regard to white rule in South Africa. I did not know this then, but in retrospect I am now convinced that Malcolm knew this all along. He had played me. My own brother had strung me along knowing full well how everything were going to unfold. He knew, but no one else in the Security Police knew that the game was up.

While the end of apartheid was imminent, I was none the wiser. I had to endure the long wait locked up in a prison cell writing my notes day by day, before I was eventually released into a world in which apartheid and socialism no longer existed. I lingered in a prison cell waiting for my trial date to be set. I waited in a prison cell preparing myself mentally for the seven year prison sentence that I thought awaited me. But it was not going to be. There was going to be no trial, no judgment, no sentencing and no prison.

9

A week later the interrogations commenced. I answered all their questions after first making it clear that I wished to admit guilt to the charges and I wanted to have my day in court before a judge or magistrate. I told them of my role as media and publicity officer for the South African Communist Party. I remembered the Party guidelines: Appearing in court must be used as an opportunity to further the cause of the revolution. I must demonstrate defiance. On entering the court I must smile radiantly at the supporters sitting in the courtroom gallery. The occasion of the court appearance must be transformed theatrically into an effective expression of radical militancy. I have prepare myself mentally for this. I must be emotionally strong. I must not waver or show any weakness. I must appear unbowed and bursting with patriotic pride. I must use the court appearance as an opportunity to further the class interests of the struggling and oppressed proletariat of South Africa. It must be used as an occasion to galvanise the masses. I will be steadfast when facing the enemy. I will be determined. I will go through the drill like a true and disciplined soldier of the revolution. Dressed in a red dress, wearing a red bandanna and bright red lipstick I will turn around and face the gallery, I will raise my clenched fist and shout: 'Amandla! Mayibuye IAfrica!' This is my job, my duty and my obligation, I am just doing what revolutionaries have to do to further the cause of the struggle at every opportunity that presents itself.

10

I am keenly aware that Malcolm has saved me from being betrayed by whatever hidden weaknesses that I may have carried unknown deep down within my soul or in my flesh like a brooding cancer. He has saved me from being betrayed by my body. He has saved me from having to undergo the rigours of torture reserved for Communists. As the doctor of the soul he may have saved me from myself. He knows that everyone is ultimately a stranger to themselves and it is the stranger that lives unknown deep within us that ends up betraying us in our darkest hour when we have sunk to our weakest and most vulnerable emotional state, when our bodies have been plunged into the unplumbed depths of the abyss of pain. Malcolm has removed all uncertainties. Malcolm has become my guardian, he has saved me. I have confessed my guilt as charged. I have protected the Party and the comrades, and I will be in all likelihood be sentenced to seven years in jail as a loyal Communist. This I have been told on good authority will be the verdict of the court. It is a done deal. I have been informed that I will appear briefly in court alone to be sentenced. The others, my comrades will be tried in a separate trial. Once in the court the changes will be read and I will plead guilty. The whole judicial process has been scripted and I have been coached by Malcolm to do as expected. The judge will strike the mallet or whatever he has to do and the court will sentence me to seven years for propagating the aims and objectives of the Communist Party and for Communist subversion. I will immediately be driven to prison and processed as a convicted prisoner. I will serve my sentence, seven years without the prospect of early parole. Malcolm has been pulling the strings behind the scenes. The Zeeman name apparently counts for something. In Malcolm's mind we are not a noble family. But I am sure our history is a shameful one. As a Zeeman I have confessed and as a Zeeman I have received absolution, not from the politicians or the security police or the prosecutor or the judge. I have received absolution from my own conscience. I know what to expect, the future has been unveiled. I am no longer in the icy and terrifying grip of the unknown. I am only faced with the burden of incarceration. I am filled with thankfulness that I have not been broken. I don't know how I would have fared without Malcolm's interventions. He has saved me.

Yet at the same time, in spite of the Malcolm's arrangement, I felt that I was still drifting in an ocean of uncertainty. As an awaiting trial prisoner I had been remanded in custody. Bail had been denied. I was a flight risk. And I have been kept in complete isolation from the other comrades who were in detention. I am also practically being kept in solitary confinement, even though I have been given writing materials, I remain in complete isolation. I am not even sure whether I should be kept in solitary confinement as a waiting trail prisoner. I have no real or meaningful communication with anyone. And to compound matters, my trail date now keeps on changing. From one moment to the next I did not know what was going on regarding my fate. It seems that I am being intentionally kept in the dark for some unknown reason. I have no knowledge of law. I have not yet seen a lawyer or a doctor or a magistrate or even a priest. It feels as if I do not exist. I am just waiting, and waiting, and waiting, cut off from the world. It seems like I have been forgotten by the world.

And my mind wonders. I have strange thoughts, strange recollections. I can even see things. Sometimes I see things with the vividness of a dream. In Hotazel a man almost dies drowning in his own blood in a bar fight at the manganese mine's rec club pub. There is a huge drunken commotion in the foyer that separates the pub and lounge from the hall. We hear that there has been a fight over a woman. Someone's wife was been screwed by a young man in the single quarters. I suspect that my own father has been fucking the wives of other men on the Hotazel mine. My father has a young pretty twenty five year old secretary in his office and even as a ten year old I know that they were having an affair. It is late Saturday night the movie that we have been watching in the hall has just ended. The movie was 'Serengeti Shall not Die.' As a young ten old girl in standard three I have been deeply moved by the movie. With a bunch of friends, Malcolm, Elsabe and I walk home from the rec club. Everyone is talking and joking. I trial behind them. I am wrapped in my own thoughts. The movie scenes of the Serengeti flow through my mind. I am gripped by an urgency bordering on anxiety regarding the fate of the wildlife of Africa. It is a pitch dark night. I gaze up at the swarm of stars lighting up the Kalahari night sky. I hear Malcolm shouts out: 'Hannah, Hannah, roer jou litte!' (Hannah, Hannah, move our bones!). In Hotazel he eventually stopped speaking English to me.

Now in detention as an awaiting trial prisoner I thought that I had lost my Afrikaner roots for good. As I grew up to adulthood I began to dream only in English. But in prison, as a detainee under the Suppression of Communism Act I was treated as an Afrikaner. They spoke to me only in Afrikaans. In subtle ways I was constantly reminded that I was an Afrikaner. As a re-adopted Afrikaner and as a sister of Colonel Malcolm Zeeman I was treated differently to all the other detainees. I was not a Jew and I was not a rooinek (redneck) or soutie (slang for English speaking white South African). I was now an Afrikaner; I belonged to them, even in all my weirdness I was still one of them. I knew it was only because of my brother Malcolm Zeeman that I was receiving special treatment. He had become the archetypical Afrikaner macho male; he had become the model Boer. He has been a Parabat during his national military service, afterwards he had gone to Rhodesia and managed to become a Selous Scout, he came to back South African and joined the Recces as a permanent force officer, he was recruited into Koevoet, and then when he got married to a Namibian Boere meisie (Afrikaner girl) he joined the Security Police as specialist in terrorism and counter-insurgency. He joined the security police because he wanted to be a family man with no counter-insurgency combat duties. He had survived countless contacts and now he wanted to pursue the counter-insurgency war at the level of the mind, at the level of the soul, and not on the battle field in the black townships or in the arid Savannahs of Southern Africa.

While in prison it felt as if my ancestors the Boers who had died and who now lay buried in African soil had come back to reclaim me as their own. I was the lost daughter of the Boere volk. Even though I was a lesbian my buried ancestors expected me to bear Boer children.

Hotazel had made Malcolm an Afrikaner again, but the place failed to transform me into an Afrikaner. Hotazel is in the Kalahari, the Kalahari is a vast ancient desert, in the Kalahari the night is haunted by many secrets, which only the foot prints in the sand at dawn bear a strange testimony. Does God exist or is the universe causally closed?

11

After languishing for two years in detention under conditions of solitary confinement the trial date was never set. While waiting for the trial date to be set I remained a prisoner remanded in custody. I was living with the expectation that the prison cell would continue to be my home until the trial was over. The trial would be a mere perfunctory appearance before the magistrate or judge. I would plead guilty. But then before my trial date could be set I was released unconditionally. It was an anti-climax. All charges were revoked. The tide of history had changed.

The day before my release Malcolm came to visit me in my cell. The Ascari accompanying him was carrying a cardboard box containing all my personal affects including all my notebooks which had been allowed to have. When I had filled a notebook with my writings it was taken away, and I was given fresh one in its place. With an amused grin he said that he had enjoyed reading my notebooks. He informed me that he had contacted dad to come and collect me in the morning which was going to be the next day. He asked me to pass on his greeting as he would not be available tomorrow morning to see me off.

I could see he was in the mood for chatting with me. He had that mischievous smile which meant that he wanted to shock me. He wanted to shatter my world. He wanted to destroy my hopes and challenge my deepest beliefs. He wanted to call into question everything that I believed in. This was typical of my brother Malcolm.

He explained that the reason why he would not be around tomorrow morning to see dad was because they were going to destroy tons of evidence which would incriminate everyone, including many Communists, UDF activists and ANC cadres who had been on the South African government's payroll.

He spoke freely and I listened in silence. He spoke about betrayal. Shrugging his shoulders he smiled, it was an ironical smile. He hinted that the truth about the depth of betrayal will never see the light of day. There would be no final judgment, everyone was deeply implicated. The truth would serve no purpose, no one really had any use for or interest in the truth other than as a weapon to blackmail. There was no honour among thieves. No one could be trusted with the truth. If the truth was allowed to emerge it would be more destructive than a multi-headed medusa and once it had raised its ugly head no amount of decapitation would turn the daylight of enlightenment into the comfort of the night. So it would be best to leave things cloudy and muddy. This was the gist of his rationalization. Anyway it was in everyone's best interest. The orders for the destruction of the files had come from the highest government office and it was in terms of a deal that been struck with the consent all of interested parties, and those in the know. It had been agreed that it would be best for all to let bygones be bygones, and anyway, why should he care, he had been offered a lucrative contract private security contract with the new government to be. They needed his expertise and he was a professional, a professional respected by all. Listening to the torrent that spewed forth from Malcolm's mouth all I could do was shake my head, my brother was also a mercenary for hire, he too was an Askari.

But in his own mind he was going to save the day for those who had betrayed the movement, so that they too would have their day at playing the role of traitors, and he will feel vindicated by this. 'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone'. The day would come when some of the comrades will be in power, and once in power they too will have their chance to betray the principles that their movement fought for and for which many comrades sacrificed their lives. They too would prove in their conduct not be any different from Malcolm or any of Askari who served in the security police. They too would steal the food from the mouths of orphans. By the way the word Askari comes from the Arabic word عسكري (ʿaskarī), which means soldier.

'No, they are not going to be any different from any Askari, mark my words, dressed up in their smart suits, parading around like big shots of the revolution, in truth they are no more honourable than any Askari,' Malcolm said laughing, 'that is the way the world works, you can forget about your revolution, it is not going to happen, not in a thousand years, these guys, your comrades, are not interested in building socialism, they are only interested in one the thing and that is eating and getting fat, they are only interested in themselves. It is human nature, it has nothing to do with being Black or White. It proves that we are all the same. We all have the same rotten human nature beneath our skins. There is no difference between Black and White. And history will prove this. We are all corruptible and it is this fact that makes us the same. When you look at things objectivity, when you look at the fundamentals, the Black Man is no different from a White Man, especially when it comes to the deep things of the soul. They are the same as us. Believe me, I know, I have witness it a thousand times. It is astonishing, but it is true, deep down the Black Man is no different from the White Man. In this sense we are equal and have always been equal, we are equally bad. We lie to ourselves when we think we are different. Maybe we did evolve from the apes.'

The tall Askari who was standing in the corridor just outside the open cell door and who had been listening to Malcom started to laugh, flashing his white teeth, he could not stop laughing, he laughed and laughed, shaking his head. And Malcolm stood there grinning. The laughing Askari was the person who had phoned me. I learnt that on Malcolm's instructions he had phoned me from a callbox close to Berea Park. They wanted to flush the vixen and see where she would run. Flush the vixen! That is how they viewed me.

'Why did you go sit in the park in the rain after taking refuge in the foyer of the flat?' He suddenly asked.

In Malcolm's world we are all traitors, we are all involved in betrayal. For Malcolm it was in the nature of humankind to betray, to engage in idolatry, to fall. Man was essentially a fallible being. And it was this fallibility that makes Malcolm's job so easy. Betrayal has been his life's business, his life's work, he knows better than anyone how the dismal mechanics of betrayal works in the human mind. A man would betray everything to save himself. Knowing that this is the reality, Malcolm became the ultimate master at midwifing the inevitable birth of betrayal. He knows that death is the only escape the captive has. What kind of person can chose death? Very few! What is more precious than one's own life? The fear of death is the ultimate test of human moral frailty. He is a specialist in taking advance of human moral frailty. He is an expert at grooming the captive to become a traitor. Like the devil he understands the psychological dynamics of temptation. As a revolutionary it best to live as if we are already dead.

If I believed Malcolm, then South Africa was not going to be another Cuba. It was going to be business as usual, it was going to be another world of shadows, just a different shade of grey, but a world without moral or virtue, a world shaped by greed and self-interest. Self-interest and self-enrichment was going to be all that really matters once they had taken over the levers of power he said, and he too was going to cash in on the bonanza, he already deals sown up the 'enemy'. They were not going to be any different to the Nationalist Party. He said the MPLA was on the brink of rejecting Marxist-Leninism. He said Communism and Marxist-Leninism would be still born in South Africa. I remembered our old political arguments over apartheid at our parent's home in Hotazel when I was still a student. Malcolm would always throw out the challenge: 'Show me a true Communist. Show me a real revolutionary. They are all fakes, believe me. I have never met a real one. Maybe Ché Guevara was the only genuine revolutionary, but in the end he too took the bullet. Maybe that is the fate of all true revolutionaries, they will end up having to take the bullet. Maybe that is why we don't have any true revolutionaries.'

I had a strong feeling that Malcolm was the kind of man who had never shied away from giving the bullet. He had the courage of his convictions. I could see it in his eyes and in his demeanour, it was there in his smile, in his grin. I could read his mind. Knowing my brother I would not be surprised if he had acquired all the dark skills necessary for him to act as the sublime manipulator of the souls of men. Maybe he could do what no priest or psychiatrist could get right, who knows? It was a dirty war by all accounts, and if the captive does not buckle and bend, then give him or her the bullet. Now according to Malcolm, like the MPLA in Angola, the new leaders in South Africa saw that there chance to eat had arrived. Life was like the words from the Who's lyric: 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.'

He had finished what he wanted to say. Again he shrugged his shoulders, gave me hug and a kiss on the lips. I did not doubt his demonstration of brotherly affection. I also loved him as my brother even though I had managed for the first time to get a glimpse into the inner workings of his mind.

12

I stood outside John Vorster Square on the pavement blinking in the bright morning sun while I waited for my father. In was the year 1990 and the world had changed. Socialism was on the brink of collapsing and apartheid had started to implode. It seemed that capitalism had finally won the day. My stomach started to grumble. I felt famished. I was as pale as a ghost. I had also become a walking skeleton and health wise I was in very bad shape. The first thing I wanted was a huge Wimpy breakfast.

My father spotted me, stopping the car close to the pavement in front of me; he quickly flung open the front passenger door. I felt like a child as I clambered into the front seat and he sped away as if we were trying to escape something. After the Wimpy breakfast we drove straight back to Hotazel. We drove back along the same old route, the route that I had traversed so many time in my life in my travels between Hotazel and Johannesburg, a route that was cluttered with all kinds of sign posts that brought back recollects of my past life, towns such as Klerksdorp, Stilfontein and Potchefstroom which had been so much part of my life.

Chapter 20: My Childhood Bedroom

1

After two futile years in detention I have returned to my bedroom, where I had slept as a child, as an adolescent and as a teenager. I have come back to this bedroom, my childhood bedroom, as a guest in my parent's home at the manganese mine in Hotazel. Returning to my room was a dreamlike experience. We only return to our past in all its vividness in oneiric visitations, in dreams which are often life-like, in the kind of dreams that Descartes and the philosophers spoke about. In adulthood we only return to our parental homes, to our childhood bedrooms, to our school classrooms and to our school lives in our dreams. And while I recuperated from the ordeal of solitary confinement I spent my time collating and reworking these notes into some kind of meaningful and readable narrative.

In a world that has undergone a dramatic epochal change I have returned to my bedroom in my parent's home. I have become a child again in a manner of speaking. It seems that I need to be looked after. My parents are fussing over me. I stare out of my bedroom window. I am no longer caged in a prison cell. The tide of history has turned, the laws under which I was arrested and charged have become redundant; they no longer have any force over my life. My seven year prison sentence will never be served. I own my future again. The laws were not eternal, they were perfectly arbitrary and they have now been swept away forever. The legal and political edifice that the Nationalist Party has built has turned out to be nothing more substantial than a sand castle in the face of the rising tide of history.

2

I stare out of my bedroom window. The mantle of Kalahari sands stretches northward beyond the horizon. The sand is deep. The Kalahari sands have accumulated over the passage of eons, over the passage of geological time. Over the eons the rain fell, the wind blew, mountains crumbled to dust and the sands of the Kalahari piled up in deep layers. As I stare out of my bedroom window I am thinking about my notes. I have re-read everything that I wrote while in prison. I wonder about my life, on how I came to be here, how I came to be the person that I am. From my window nothing has really changed. The Kalahari has stayed the same in the brief window of my life. Yet as the years passed I have constantly seen the Kalahari with new eyes. My love for the Kalahari has grown over the years. I am now beginning to feel sad. I feel overcome by a strange melancholy mixed with nostalgia. The intimate connection that I have enjoyed with the Kalahari by virtue of my parent's home and my bedroom is about to be severed as my parents go into retirement. As I have said, being back in my bedroom, I can't help feeling like a child again. My parents have bought a cottage in Hermanus. They are at the cross roads of their lives. They will be leaving Hotazel to start a new life by the sea. It has been their dream and soon they will be living their dream. My father has taken care of everything. He will spend his autumn years fishing and bird watching. Mom wants to start painting.

As a child I spent hours exploring the surrounding bush and scrub land. My eyes glued to the light reddish sands. I later learnt that the grains of sand were red as a consequence of been covered in a thin skin or shell of iron oxide. As the sand became stabilized by vegetation the scanty rain which fell each year eventually dissolved and washed away the red oxide pigments, and the red sands began fade with the passage of time to lighter shades, into pinks before they finally became the white sands that glare like snow in the sunlight. With eyes glues to the sand I was drawn as a child ineluctably to the scattered clumps of low sprawling brush of candle thorn or trassiebos. On the perimeter of the candle thorn thickest there were always tunnels dug by rodents and invariable there would be a small tortoise resting in the cool shade of one of these rodent holes.

3

In January 1968 a few days before the start of the new school term I arrived in the small deeply Afrikaans town of Potchefstroom with its Reformed Church steeples, extensive system of irrigation channels, oak-lined streets and rich Calvinistic heritage. I arrived with my parents from Hotazel with my head filled with dark secrets, dressed in my new Potchefstroom Girl's High school uniform and with two packed suitcases in which I had my cassette tapes, tape recorder and transistor radio, and I might add that for obvious reasons I was comfortably happy to be in an all-girls boarding school. Potchefstroom lay smack-bang in the Western Transvaal corner of the so-call maize triangle, located 36.7 km east of Stilfontein and 40 km east of Klerksdorp. It was originally founded by the Voortrekkers in 1838 on the banks of the Mooi Rivier in the north-western reaches of the vast featureless steppes of the Highveld grasslands. With an average rainfall not much higher than 500 mm Potchefstroom had a fairly arid climate, with hot summers and icy cold winters.

4

In the early 1960s in Hotazel the mine's white community was relatively small when compared to Stilfontein or City Deep. It was too small to constitute an economical viable church congregation with its own church building, dominee and 'manse'. When I was still in primary and high school there were never more than 24 families living on the site. The unmarried white men who worked on the mine were accommodated in the single quarters close to the rec club. There were enough able bodied young men working on the mine to make up the Hotazel mine rugby and cricket teams. The layout of the township was simple. Except for our house all the other mine houses, were built according to the same simple plan. They were all three bedroomed light face brick homes, with a single toilet, a single bathroom, kitchen, laundry, dining room, and a lounge that opened into a gauze enclosed veranda.

Our newly built primary school consisted of two classrooms and toilets. It was not fenced off. One classroom was for juniors. In this class grade 1, grade 2, standard 1 and standard 2 were all accommodated in one class room. There were never more than 20 kids in this class. In the other class standards, such as standards 3, 4 and 5, all three 'senior' standards were combined in one class room and were taught by the Dominee who was also a part-time cattle farmer. In the three senior classes there also never more than 20 kids. It was a dual medium school, with the majority of pupils being Afrikaans mother tongue speakers. There were only a handful of English speaking kids. Malcolm, Elsabe and I were treated as Afrikaners, and at school we were only addressed in Afrikaans even though we spoke mainly English to each other at home.

Culturally, socially, nationally, ethnically and educationally I started my high school career as a member of that typically mongrel breed of colonial settler people who belong to the diasporic flotsam and jetsam that European Imperialism had left behind to fend for themselves as castaways amongst the aboriginals in the far off colonies. I was forced by circumstance into which I was born to self-identify as a white person. Later in life I became increasing self-conscious of the hybrid being that I actually was: a strange blend of the African, the Hellenic and the Hebraic. I was neither fully Occidental or Oriental or African, and my official status of Whiteness was coloured with the all to clearly visible morphological racial ambiguities that comes from a historical dash of miscegenation in one's ancestry which I shared with so many other persons of 'very deep' Afrikaner descent. There was no doubting that the Zeemans like many Afrikaners and also like many Italians and Spaniards had black blood flowing in their veins. In many respects I was that gay mythical dark Semitic Phoenician woman that Kate joked about even though I had grown up with all the trapping of white privilege. My official racial classification as a white person like many of my fellow Afrikaners was ironic. Strictly speaking many of us were not really white or European, we were racial and cultural hybrids or mongrels as I have already said. We carried the touch of the tar brush. We were swarthy.

5

Anyway when I left Hotazel to further my schooling in Potchefstroom my head was far from empty. Apart from the dark secrets and passions of queerness that filled my head, my head was also filled with all kinds of other things. My head was filled with the names and stories of the people who populated the drama of the Old Testament: Aaron, Abagtha, Abednego, Abel, Abiathar, Abigail, Abijah, Abimelech, Abinadab, Abishai, Abner, Abraham, Absalom, Adam, Agrippa, Ahab, Ahasuerus, Ahaz, Ahimelech, Amos, Arioch, Baal, Baalzebub (Beelzebub), Balaam, Baruch, Bathsheba, Belshazzar, Belteshazzar, Benjamin, Bildad, Bilhah, Boaz, Cain, Caleb, Canaan, Dagon, Dan, Daniel, Darius, Dathan, David, Deborah, Delilah, Dinah, Eli, Elijah, Elisha, Enoch, Enos, Ephraim, Esau, Esther, Eve, Ezekiel, Ezra, Gabriel, Gad, Gideon, Goliath, Habakkuk, Haggai, Ham, Hannah, Hezekiah, Hosea, Isaac, Isaiah, Ishmael, Israel, Jacob, Jehoshaphat, Jeremiah, Jesse, Jethro, Jezebel, Joab, Job, Joel, Jonah, Jonathan, Joseph, Joshua, Josiah, Judah, Korah, Laban, Lamech, Leah, Levi, Lot, Malachi, Mannasseh, Methuselah, Melchizedek, Meshach, Meshech, Micah, Michal, Miriam, Molech, Mordecai, Moses, Naaman, Naboth, Naomi, Nathan, Nebuchadnezzar, Nehemiah, Noah, Orpah, Pharaoh, Potiphar, Rachel, Rebecca (Rebekah), Rehoboam, Reuben, Ruth, Samson, Samuel, Sarah, Saul, Seth, Shadrach, Shechem, Shem, Solomon, Tamar, Uriah, Vashti, Zechariah.

It was undeniable that our tall, lean, dark, bespectacled and moustached dominee-teacher-cattle farmer had a deep and lasting influence on our lives. For the three years he taught us, that is, from standard three to standard five the school day began with prayers, a lengthy Bible reading, one day in Afrikaans and the next day in English, followed by a brief, artistically and cleverly analysed exegesis of the reading, pitched at a level which made it possible for everyone to grasp the essence of what made the story meaningful and significant. In this way while our minds were still fresh and our blood sugar was still high from breakfast we worked systematically through the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel 1 and 2, Chronicles 1 and 2, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. The Gospels were also read and the Word was preached at the weekly afternoon Kinderkrans meeting at the school. After morning Bible study we did arithmetic until first break while we still had enough sugar left in our blood for our brains to work.

6

Because of the religious ethos of my primary school education, in standard four I went through a religious phase and began to speak about wanting to become a Zoologist-Missionary, a career in which I would combine my interest in zoology with mission work in the remote Amazon or the Congo jungles. I would study the animals in the jungle while preaching the Gospel to the Amazonian Indian tribes or the pigmies in the Congo. I had this idea that I would erect a giant wooden cross in the middle of the Amazon or the Congo jungles. After listening to my careers plans my mother suggested I should rather study medicine and then go as doctor to preach the Gospel in the jungles like Albert Schweitzer did in Gabon. That was the first time I heard about Albert Schweitzer. But then dad ruled out the Congo as a destination because of the civil war that was currently raging in the Congo. And this was where the Encyclopaedia Britannica became useful. I read up on Albert Schweitzer in Gabon, and I read up on the Amazon and the Congo. As it turned out in my life, instead of becoming a missionary I became a Communist or a Zoologist-Communist. However as a Communist I did indeed in manner of speaking fulfil my childhood dreams of becoming a 'missionary'.

7

Why all these details? I don't know what the point is that I wish to make other than that the Bible is a work of literary art and this is where its truth lies. Please do not skip the pages as a famous author once wrote, if I remember it was Vladimir Nabokov's character, Humbert Humbert, in 'Lolita', who pleaded with his readers: '...do not skip these essential pages! Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me...' Whatever I have written is essential for you to read if you wish to imagine me. I was intellectually precocious as a kid, I was precocious in many ways for my age. It was a direct result of the kind of relationship that I had with my dad. By the time I reached standard five I had guessed correctly what he and Corelle had been up to. I did not condemn him. I still respected and loved him. I loved him because he was also my best friend and favourite human. We spoke a lot about all kinds of stuff and he never spoke down to me. We enjoyed each other's company and liked being together. He was deep a thinker and he shared his thoughts.

8

At primary school, after first break the next three periods where devoted to Afrikaans and English: grammar, vocabulary, spelling and reading. And then it was second break. After second break we did stuff which fell under the rubric of 'social studies' which included the geography and history of the Republic of South Africa. And then it was home time. There were no extramural activities after school like sport. We would go home for lunch and spend the afternoon at the rec swimming pool during the summer months or I would go walking into the surrounding scrub land. I can't remember doing much homework, but I read a lot and everything I read became the topic of conservation with my father. We all spoke a lot at the dinner table. We were actually a very close knit and balanced family, even though I was not close to my mother. She often complained that my father had stolen me from her.

In Hotazel like the rest of South Africa during the nineteen sixties there was no television to distract children after supper. After eating supper at the dinner table in the dining room adjoining the lounge the family would retire to the lounge and the children found ways to preoccupy themselves until it was bed time, usually at 9.00 pm. I for one spent countless evenings browsing through the volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica until my eye lids grew heavy and my yawns threatened to engulf the entire Universe.

9

I have made steady progress working through the prison journal writings. From my room I can smell the pleasant aroma of the roast leg of lamb that my mother has prepared for Sunday lunch. I hear her calling me. I find her in the kitchen, the roast is just about ready, and she asks if I would collect some fresh mint from the garden and make the mint sauce. I am still dressed in the gay floral frock that I wore to church. It was a white dress with a red rose floral motif. I found it in my bedroom cupboard. Ouma (grandmother) Vollenhoven had made the dress for my matric dance. She asked about my partner. I told her that officially I was going without any partner, but in reality Alice would be my partner. We had arranged that we would be sitting together at the same table. She smiled a mysteriously indulgent smile. I have knew that Ouma was lesbian. Our lesbianism was our mutual secret.

10

We had a guest for Sunday lunch. The doorbell rang, the dominee had arrived right on time for lunch. After saying grace dad carved the leg of lamb. I was happy to see that it was not well-done, but was pink and juicy in the middle.

The visiting preacher at the morning service was a dominee of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk. He had a PhD degree. His thesis was on Kierkegaard's 'Fear and Trembling'. After the morning service the congregation were encouraged to enjoy a bit of fellowship over a cup of tea before rushing home to prepare Sunday lunch. The water in the urn on a table at the back of the rec hall was boiling. White cups in sauces, sugar, milk and plates laden with sweet pastries and biscuits had been arranged on the table next to the urn. I would have preferred to walk back home to my room than stay for tea, but I acquiesced reluctantly to my father's request that I stay for the after service tea. Dressed for church I did not look like a communist nor would it have mattered anymore, what with the world having been turned upside down the Afrikaner's fear of communism had vanished. With a cup of tea in his hand the dominee walked over us. My father proudly introduced me as his daughter Professor Hannah Zeeman. He said something about knowing who I was, and extended his hand which I shook. His handshake was firm and he held my hand after the handshake longer than was appropriate for a greeting between first time acquaintances. I could sense that he was sexually attracted to me. He was not wearing a wedding ring so I surmised that he was not married. Mother who was perceptive enough to grasp the situation struck while the iron was hot and immediately invited him for lunch, and having no prior commitments he immediately and graciously accepted while smiling broadly at me. The plot was transparent. The mother wanted to marry her daughter off, a daughter who was getting on in her years. And he too was a perceptive man and understood the underground subtext of the mother's invitation, he had the tuned ear of a bachelor who was still on the lookout for a life partner. And of course I could read my mother like an open book. In her mind I needed a strong man to keep me in line, in my place, on that straight and narrow path which was the highway of marital life for any decent Boer vrou (woman).

11

To his credit the dominee was an intellectual and Kierkegaard was going to be his foil for engaging in a game of flirtation while we consumed roast lamb, a lamb that had been slaughtered in our neighbour's yard a day ago. Going back to the substance of the sermon that he preached. His sermon involved the creative and paradoxical exploration of a well-rehearsed narrative which he delivered effortless with the aplomb of a talented jazz musician who was a genius at improvising on a theme with all the nuances and subtleties that are characteristic of jazz as a musical genre. His well-rehearsed narrative was based on the text that dealt with God's 'testing' of Abraham's faith and obedience. I knew that in Kierkegaard the notion or idea of the absurd featured quite prominently in the story of Abraham and Isaac on their journey to Mount Moriah. In a reading of the Abraham and Isaac story the idea of the absurd is rooted in the impossibilities of critical outcomes regarding matters or states of affairs which are of ultimate concern for life or existence. In the Abraham and Isaac story, the notion of the absurd acquires it radical meaning or sense in the light of two opposing realities, the reality of the pure contingency of existence and the reality of intelligibility. The meaning or the meaningless of the absurd feeds on the impossibility of hope in the face of perceived realities. The perceived realities which are assumed to govern ordinary existence become paradoxical in the face of the recognizable intelligibility of the Cosmos. The absurd in Kierkegaard takes its meaning from the idea of the impossible. Technically speaking the meaning of the absurd has been traditionally based on the perception and belief that the Cosmos is unintelligible, and that human life is also intrinsically unintelligible and therefore absurd. The idea of the absurd is based on the belief or the realization that ultimately life or existence has no meaning, and that no grounds or reasons exists which would endow life with meaning. There exists no Totality or Ultimacy or Absolute by virtue of which human life on earth would have meaning. If we are willing to accept the metaphysics which claims that the causality of all physical events is the Universe is overdetermined and that every contingent event in nature depends on a non-contingency then there is an invisible reality that makes the visible reality of the Cosmos possible and intelligible. And if the Cosmos is Ultimately Intelligible and if nothing can come from nothing then we have no grounds for claiming that the Universe or life is absurd or without meaning. Yet the mysterious echo or resonance of meaning, an unexplainable meaningfulness, haunts the Universe at every turn of scientific investigation. Reason permeates and infiltrates the Universe. The absurd has no foundation if there is something because of something else. By imagining the possible, we imagine the attainable, the attainable shifts the boundaries of the impossible. We struggle but we do not struggle in vain. This was my creed as a Communist, we do not struggle in vain because our struggle is meaningful, it resonates with the reason and intelligibility which permeates and infiltrates the Universe, and in contrast, Capitalism is meaningless and irrational, and incapable of offering any hope of the good life.

12

The story of God's testing of Abraham is a fiction which describes a myth. The Kierkegaardian exegesis of the story of Abraham's faith in response to God's testing is a further elaboration of myths based on the primary myth. The myth of the impossible, the myth of the absurd, the myth of infinite resignation and the myth of the knight of faith are the Kierkegaardian mythological elaborations created from the exegetical or hermeneutical extraction and articulation of meaning from the primary mythical account of Abraham's three day journey to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah.

The subject matter of Kierkegaard's 'Fear and Trembling' was the hidden subtext of the dominee's sermon on Genesis 22: 1-19. The dominee in delivering his sermon represented that glaring embodiment of thinking which is based on the kinds of intentional contradictions and inconsistencies associated with the wilful subversion of truth for the sake of preserving and legitimating vested interests in the ordering of political power. The subversion of truth and the trafficking of falsehoods became the root cause of the moral failure and the non-Abrahamic faithlessness which has typified that Broederbond (brotherhood) linked tribe of male Afrikaner intellectuals to which the dominee belonged.

While these thoughts were running through my mind I refrained from engaging with the dominee on political issues. Sitting in the lounge listening to him speak I felt an incredible emotional and physical fatigue. I felt drained. The international collapse of socialism meant starting the struggle all over again from the very beginning. It meant the organization, educating and conscientization of the international working class, it meant the struggle had to be started from scratch, it meant going back to the trenches, back to the barricades, back to the battle fields of class war. The world was facing a new rampant resurgence of a predatory capitalism on a globalized scale. For the time being it seemed that socialism was retreating in defeat all over the world. We could not imagine what horrors awaited us in the future.

13

I stare out of the window of my room. I am digesting what I have written in my prison journals. My mother's knocking on the door of my room interrupts the train of my musing. She smiles as she enters. The dominee is on the phone, he wants to speak to me. She winks and says: 'I think he likes you, maybe he has fallen in love with you.' The dominee wants to fuck my body is the thought that crosses my mind. I am a zoologist I know what is going on in the mind and body of the dominee. I study animal behaviour. This is the first thought that always comes to mind when a man shows interest in me. I know that he has already fucked me in his mind, in his imagination he has had penetrative sex with me. He has already taken possession of me, he has climaxed and ejaculated into my vagina, he has impregnated me with his semen, now my womb is filling up with his child, now heavy with child I must keep his house, cook his food, become the homemaker, and the mother of his children. He wants to possess me as his wife. Every night I will be expected to perform my bedroom duties, with my legs spread apart I lay supine before him so that he can mount me, and thrust his sword into me. In this way he will dominate me as I lay beneath his heaving body and feel him intimately inside me, a sabre sheathed in its velvet scabbard, in me a foreign body, an invasion of my being, I am now his field, he will plough my body and sow his seed. Like a garden filled with the perfumed fragrance of brightly petalled blooms I will lay spread out, as an erotically ornamented inflorescence with the silky and satiny tissue of soft buds surrendering their promise of pleasure before him, a woman's body, submissive to his every whim. I will have to learn to know my place as the weaker sex and fulfil my role as a woman under his roof. He will want to break me in like a mare, and like a stallion he will mount me whenever it pleases him. This has been the fate of Yael, and thinking of what has become of her brings tears of sadness.

14

Reluctantly I follow my mother downstairs. I am thirty five years old and I feel like a child again who has to reason with an adult who is about to make demands on me. The dominee is three years older than me. Between playing provincial rugby and completing a number of undergraduate degrees and postgraduate degrees, a BA and a degree in theology, an MA in theology and a PhD while all the time been supported by wealthy parents he did not feel the urgency to settle down and marry any one of his many girlfriends. He had a few long term relations with one being as long as seven years. However the years slipped by without any of his relationships culminating in marriage. He was well into thirties without ever being employed in a non-sport playing capacity. When he eventually stopped being a professional sportsman and a fulltime student he found himself in the situation of being an unemployed bachelor without any marriage prospects. He did confess that he had devoted his entire life to playing rugby in the vain hope that he would eventually make the Springbok Team. He had sacrificed his relationship with women on the altar of his sporting ambitions. Now he was a dominee trapped in the role of a minister in a reformed church in Kimberley and like many reformed dominees in the region he had volunteered to conduct services at Hotazel ever so often. I suppose that realizing his good looks were fading and his strapping muscular body would soon start turning to flab he needed to find a wife who could look after him. It was obvious that among the many expectation he had regarding the role of a wife, one of those roles would also include the wife being his mother. It was actually a shame that a man with such a fine intellect and who was also good looking and athletic to boot had now eventually sunk to this level after such a promising start in life. If he had more imagination he could have been a Beyers Naude or a Bram Fischer, but instead he had become just another Christian Nationalist factory clone of the average Afrikaner male.

The heavy black phone lay off its cradle on the polished surface of the table in the entrance hall next to a large ceramic vase filled with an arrangement of fresh flowers from the garden. He wanted know if I would like to go with him and group of people on a weeklong visit to the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park. I gracefully declined invitation.

I needed to phone Angelika. I call out to my father asking him if it would be OK if I make an overseas call.

15

After dad said it was OK I asked the exchange to make the connection with Norway from Hotazel. After several minutes I was speaking to Angelika. Choking with emotion I began to cry on the phone. I heard her voice: Hannah are you OK? We have heard that you have been released. We have been trying to contact you. No one in South Africa could put us in touch with you. I can arrange for you to come to Norway. I answered her that I would like to visit her in Norway in June when it was summer. Angelika then said she have been in constant contact with Isabella in Mozambique and Isabella has been frantically concerned about me. After speaking to Angelika I then phoned Yael. Yael said she was having a nervous breakdown and could no longer cope with life. I promised Yael that as soon as I have sorted out my life I would be there for her. I told her to hang in there and not give up.

My mother had been standing all this time out of sight by the kitchen door. She has been eavesdropping on my conversation with the dominee and my conversations with Angelika and Yael. When I had rested the phone back on its cradle she came into the entrance hall. She could not hide the disappointment from her face. She began to interrogate me in Afrikaans as if I was a teenager:

'Who is Angelika, who is Isabella and who is Yael? Don't worry, I will spare you, you don't have to tell me. I know who they are and now I also finally know who you are. I have always had my suspicions about you ever since you brought Alice home during the holidays. I should have guessed long ago, but I refused to believe what my own eyes were telling me. Malcolm was right, he saw something but could not understand what he was seeing. Malcolm often said that you and Ouma had an unnatural relationship. I should have guessed then. Since when does a granddaughter always want to sleep with her Ouma, and that is not all, I never heard of an Ouma dressing and bathing a granddaughter when she was quite capable of dressing herself and bathing herself, and she even wiped your bum when you went to the toilet. And why did she put lipstick on your lips, rouge on your cheeks and eye shadow when you went to the shops with her as a little girl, you were only a child, she corrupted you, Malcolm saw all of this and he told me. It was abnormal, the two of you walking in the streets all made up wearing bright red lipstick. I just get sick when I think of it. I never ever thought that I would ever have to say that word out aloud, but I always felt that your Ouma, my own mother, was a lesbian just like Nelly and Dolly and now she has turned you also into a lesbian. As a child I knew that there was something wrong with my mother. The way your Ouma and the other women carried on with each other was so unnatural that even I as her daughter, as a young child knew that my own mother was not behaving like a normal mother. As a child I also used to go with her on her daily rounds of morning shopping. Off we would go with her carrying her basket, we would go down Jules Street to the baker, to the green grocer, to the dairy and to the butcher. It was always the same, she would get to meet all her friends, it was as if their rendezvous' at the baker, at the butcher or at the green grocer had been prearranged, and what's more, well except for Hester, they were all married women, but that did not stop them from carrying on with each other like teenage girls while their husbands were at work, working hard to put bread on the table. And then there was the War and all the men had volunteered to fight the Germans. Your Oupa was away in North Africa, in the desert fighting the Germans, and what was your Ouma doing? I as a little girl I saw things which no little girl should ever see, I saw what grown up women were doing with each other while their husbands were risking their lives in the great War. Your Ouma would hug and kiss her friends, kiss them on the mouth, and the way they kissed each was improper kissing, it was not normal, and they would hold hands and there would much gaiety and laughter, and your Ouma was so happy, more happy than when she was with your Oupa. And sometimes on the way home we would stop for tea at Hester's home that she shared with all her cats. And the women would gather in the dining room drinking tea and playing rummy. And Hester would play those big band swing records from the 1920s and 1930s, and she would dance with the women, wearing her funny hat with feathers, and the women would smoke cigarettes, and they would dance with each other, hold hands, hug each other, fondle each other, kiss each other and there would be laughter and much gaiety, and I as a child saw all of this. It was during the War and all the men had gone off to the fight the Germans. And I don't want to even think what their wives got up to with each other. And then it felt as if your Ouma had poisoned you against me your own mother. When I gave birth to Elsabe and while I was in the Queen Vic you and Malcolm stayed with Ouma, I remember on the way home from the Queen Vic after Elsabe's birth we came to fetch you and Malcolm. You gave me such a strange look, Ouma was holding you on her hip and when I reached out to take you in my arms because I had missed you so much, you turned your head away and clung to Ouma, you wouldn't come to me, your own mother. I was so hurt by that. You were always turning away from me, I could never figure out what I had done to you to make you hate me so much and I don't know why we could never have a normal mother-daughter relationship.'

'I don't hate you,' I said to my mother, and I began to weep and she began to weep too. I heard myself saying that I was sorry for everything. She held out her arms to me and we embraced, sobbing against each other, finally my mother and I after so many years had finally found each other.

'My kind, my kind, ek is so lief vir jou, en ek is so trots op jou.' (My child, my child, I love you so much, and I am so proud of you.) She said while weeping.

While she made tea I began to communicate with my mother in a way that was never before possible. She listened while I shared things with her. I told her about the reason for my phone call to Angelica. I wanted to thank her for all the support that she managed to drum up. But I was also concerned about Isabella. My mother now knows that I am in love with Isabella and that Isabella is a Mozambican and whom I had met during my clandestine visit to Mozambique shortly before my arrest. My mother also now knows all about Yael and the Rabbi, and I explained to her that I did not want to become like Yael where I would be caught up in similar situation as Yael was in a manner of speaking. I did not want to become trapped in a Hannah and the Dominee relationship in the way that Yael had become Yael the wife of the Rabbi. Angelica had established contact with Isabella and had kept her appraised regarding my situation. Now Angelica was trying organize a visit to Norway for Isabella and myself as soon as my affairs are in order and back to normal. I was hoping it would be our honeymoon. It was also now becoming my dream that with the imminent collapse of apartheid Isabella and I could become partners in a permanent relationship. It was seemingly possible that we could set up two homes, one in Maputo and the other in Johannesburg, and we could live between South Africa and Mozambique, especially if I made Mozambique the study site for my research. So I was now looking forward to going to Norway with Isabella in June or July. On a previous trip to Norway I had spent time in the remote sparsely populated north under the northern lights of the arctic sky in which the never setting summer sun hung in the sky at midnight.

16

I have parked my car at the front gate behind the furniture removal truck. We have decided to leave Hotazel together in convey until Vryburg. Everything has been loaded into the furniture truck. I have managed to pack all the personal stuff from my room into the VW Beetle. The house now stands empty and unlocked. All the keys remain in the doors. My room now stands empty. It no longer bears any trace of my life. The personal officer will come and collect the main door keys later. The mine manager position will be filled by the new incumbent in a few days' time. From Vryburg I will head for my flat in Bellevue and my parents will travel to Bloemfontein on their way to their retirement home in Hermanus. This is the last entry of the prison journal. The truth is I don't know how to end the story that I have set out to write. I suppose finally bidding farewell to Hotazel is a good way to end the story and close the notes of the prison journal.

I am filled with melancholy. It is not only because of our departure from Hotazel it is also because the international socialist experiment has run aground and now we all face the difficult road ahead that we have to travel in rebuilding the socialist project from scratch. The task seems to be an insurmountable, and just thinking of what needs to be done makes me feel exhausted. I wonder if I have the energy to continue with the struggle. Revolution is not for the fainthearted, yet I feel fainthearted. All revolutionaries have to pass through that dark hour of defeat. And now internationally this is where we find ourselves once more. As Rosa Luxemburg said: 'The road to socialism is paved with defeats...' And before he took the executioner's bullet Ché Guevara said: 'We have lost, but the revolution is immortal.'

A Luta Continua (The Struggle Continues).

Chapter 21: Yael

1

Shortly after the 1994 election I received news that Yael had been committed to Tara Psychiatric Hospital. Yael had been in Tara psychiatric hospital for more than six months when I fetched her to live with me. The Rabbi had divorced her. She had become completely destitute and had no one to turn too. I felt incumbent to take care of her and not allow her to suffer any humiliation. Yael had become quite weird. She was suffering from severe depression according to the psychiatrist who spoke to me at Tara, he also warned me that she had also become extremely religious. She did not fully comprehend her situation. I explained that I would be taking care of her and that she would be living with me.

She finally agreed that she would move in with me but only under a number of conditions, or else she would prefer to become a homeless tramp and hang herself from the nearest tree. So I made all the necessary prearrangements. The kitchen had to be renovated so that it could function as a kosher kitchen and I had bought an additional small fridge so that the meat and milk could be kept separate, and of course I had to also new pots, pans and cooking utensils. She had become fully observant, keeping the Sabbat, cooking and eating only Kosher and attending Shul. Every Saturday morning we walked together to the nearest synagogue, a Sabbath's distance from my flat. To door frame of my flat as I was instructed the mezuzah was affixed and blessed.

2

We ended up doing most of our shopping in Bellevue or Yeoville, because she did want to go to the East Gate or any of the other shopping malls. On our rounds we kept on bumping into people that she knew. At the Yeoville Checkers we always seemed to bump into Mrs Judith Höchheimer whom I had met at the synagogue. She had assumed that I was Jewish and before I could correct her mistake, Yael stopped me with a very unsubtle intervention which left me with a sore ankle. Anyway she invited both of us to join her Jewish women's book club. With the passage of time everywhere I went in Yeoville people began to recognize me. I had acquired the notorious fame as that Jew who had been arrested as a Communist, because if you happened to be white and a Communist then you had to be Jewish, being a Communist was a very Jewish thing. For many years, before all of this, I was an anonymous stranger, just another goy face in Bellevue and Yeoville, and now people because of Yael where mistaking me for just another Jew. And now I had become increasingly conscious of the sharp elbows of Jewish women pushing their trolleys down the aisles of the local supermarket while shopping for groceries. I was constantly being reminded that I was living in a Jewish enclave, a microcosm of Judaism. My kitchen was kosher, I was eating kosher, I was keeping the Sabbat, going to Shul and being constantly admonished by Yael to diligently perform all the required mitzvot. She spoke about my conversion as if it had really happened. She had slipped back into world of Orthodox Judaism with a passion that was disturbing and demanding. Yet there were moments of poignant clear headed lucidity when with her face filled with angst she would ask: 'Who am I and what is happening to me?'

3

After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in 70 AD the Torah and the Synagogue became the dominating focus of Jewish life and piety. In Orthodox Jewish life the Jewish home co-exists and is actually co-extensive with the Synagogue itself, it contains many of the ritual and ceremonial objects one would see in a Synagogue like the menorah. The whole of Jewish life is dominated by ritualistic religious practices and religious observances. Thus every detail of daily Jewish life becomes incorporated and integrated into a ritualistic act of worship. Orthodox Jewish religious life is not so much based on a radical faith commitment, but rather concerns itself with an all absorbing focus on correct religious observances as prescribed by the Rabbinic traditions which have become historically embodied in the Talmud. While not based on a radical faith commitment and confession as is the case with Christianity, the religious observances of Orthodox Judaism is based on a belief system and belief claims which have their own specific theological and metaphysical justification. In a radical sense Orthodox Judaism is a form of fundamentalism based on founding mythologies, legends and fictions which are assumed by the Rabbinic traditions and the Midrashic literature to be literary true in various senses. The Law of Moses as articulated in the Oral Torah is considered in Orthodox Judaism to be of divine origin. Religious practice and the overall concerns of general morality and justice are integrated or co-joined or enjoined in the Oral Torah. Thus all the prescriptions, commandments, rules, juridical and legal practices given in the Oral Torah for religious observance, general morality, civil law and criminal law have a divine origin. They have a divine origin in the sense that the Oral Torah and the Written Torah were both given by God to Moses at Mount Sinai. This can be viewed as the founding myth or the Noble Lie of Judaism. A Noble Lie embodies and articulates a founding myth which functions as a Mythos toward some End, which I refer to as the Telos of the myth. As the chosen people first the pre-exilic Israelites and then the post-exilic Jews were called on to be a holy nation. In terms of the Oral Torah the chosen people of God were not called to fulfil a world historical universal mission as a holy nation. God's law given to Moses at Sinai because it was God's it had to be valid from eternity for all time. But the passage of history has rendered much of the Oral Torah obsolete, meaningless, irrelevant and useless. Yet Judaism continues to exist by virtue of the same Oral Torah. The Oral Torah is the raison d'être for the continued existence of Judaism and the Jews. Unfortunately, the rise of Christianity from the womb, milk and cradle of post-exilic Judaism as a world historical religion has cast a dark shadow over Judaism and the Jews. The shadow is darkened by the fact that the Church has accepted the Hebrew Bible without revision in its entirety into its own Biblical Canon and has affirmed the founding myths of the Jewish people and ultimately of Judaism itself. In fact the Christian Church, quoting the ironical and paradoxical words of Jesus, affirms that salvation comes from the Jews. Jesus became a name that was reviled by Judaism and this exacerbated the Jewish retreat from history which increasingly became the theatre of the gentiles. The fact that Judaism has retreated from world history has not doused a flickering spark of Jewish Messianism. The idea of the Messiah haunts Judaism. But Judaism lacks a fully-fledged theology or metaphysics of a Messianic Soteriology or Eschatology. Obliquely related to these considerations of the history, soteriology, eschatology and messianism which burns as a weak flame in the heart of Judaism is the literary and fictional merging of the historical and the 'parabolic' (as in parable) in Isaac Bashevis Singer's 'Satan in Goray'. The ideal reader of 'Satan in Goray' requires a high level of Jewish cultural perspicuity, a good knowledge of the Talmudic and Midrashic literature and a profound and deep empathy for Orthodox Jewry in order to transport herself into an obscure and remote 1666 Polish-Jewish shtetl in the midst of the unravelling of the Sabbatean heresy. It requires an extraordinary proficiency in a 'Gadamerian' (Hans-Georg Gadamer – German philosopher and student of Martin Heidegger) informed hermeneutic merging of religious, cultural, literary and metaphysical horizons. Can one discover the Hassidic universe inside what is literary speaking a place so fabulous, so exotic and so remote as has been presented in the book 'Satan in Goray' without being a student of the Oral Torah, the Hebrew Bible and full canon of Judaic literature? Of course not! Singer's book is highly encoded and the ideal reader is a person who is steeped in the traditions of Judaism and especially the Midrashic literature. Singer's literary work highlights our literary illiteracy as one of our most serious modern short-comings.

In the end with Yael having lived with me for a bit more than ten years my knowledge of Judaism and what it means to be a Jew seemed to have taken over my whole life. I was caught in a trap, I found myself pretending to be Jewish. I even began to feel Jewish. I was living a dualistic life. And then in the year that Yael and I turned forty five she committed suicide. Again Kate came to my rescue. Trying to be as subtle as possible she asked whether I was going to rid of all this Jewish 'paraphernalia' and put up the crucifix again.

In truth the Hellenic within me often rebels against the Hebraic. As Plato would have it truth and philosophy is personified in his writings as being feminine. This suggests that rationality has feminine roots. In contrast to Plato's Hellenism the Torah and Judaism is personified as masculine, making the Hebraic masculine and patriarchical. This was my dilemma. I chose the feminine branch, as I believed deeply in my heart that Christianity was essentially feminine in a way that Judaism could never be. I was committed to a feminist and gay metaphysic which prioritized a feminized ontology which unpinned all of reality. If God had a gender, God would be female. The gendered asymmetry of the Judaic construction of the Torah assigned an inferior status to women. The Judaic reading of the Torah was coloured by an inherent masculine bias and a bias towards patriarchy and the Oligarchy in which women could only exist as inferior beings. The same goes for Islam.

Chapter 22: Sailor Boy Seamstress

1

Shortly after my release from detention Isabella died in an aircraft accident. The six seater light aircraft that she was travelling in was shot down by cattle rustlers in Mozambique. I plunged into an abyss of grief and depression and without Kate's loving care I would have languished. In a way having to look after Yael saved me. Now with the passing away of Yael I found myself again in that deep valley of depression and Kate once more came to my rescue. We began to see a lot of each other and Kate was a great believer in retail therapy for a broken heart. Instead of buying a new wardrobe of clothing I suggested that we should do something different like getting someone to make us some stylish but cheeky dancing outfits.

2

As Adam Smith would have it, the human desire to consume is deeply rooted, to consume without end, to consume every possible kind of thing, anything which possesses the slightest vestige of imagined utility, which would satisfy the most passing whim of fancy, was the ultimate locomotive of all economic activity. Desire ignites the unquenchable and runaway fire of our prodigal needs and wants. Prodigal because they are beyond exhaustion. Prodigal because the excesses of desire is without limit, it cannot be contained within any boundary. It is boundaryless. A forever expanding universe of human creation.

3

I listened with one ear to Kate while thinking. Professor Kate Dolly, my seducer, my mentor, and my-I-dunno-what-all, we have had this weird on and off love affair for years, was prattling on about something or other. It didn't really matter what it was about.

'Don't you find him strange?' She asked.

'Who?' I wasn't too sure who she had been talking about.

'The sailor boy,' she said. She had given him that nickname. We had meet him at the Oriental Plaza in Fordsburg in a fabric shop. Kate could not decide on the fabric she wanted, she tried to describe the textual and other physical qualities of the material she had in mind, she wanted to try her hand at making an outfit which she had designed. This was when sailor boy stepped in to help, and we got talking, and after Kate had bought the fabric which he had recommended we invited him to join us for a meal of samosas and chilli bites.

He had done his national service in the navy, where he had received training as a ship chef, and then afterwards he had joined the merchant marine as a cook. After his stint at sea he put himself through art school at the Witwatersrand Technicon across the street from Park Station in Johannesburg. And now he was a primary school teacher at Martin Primary School in Boksburg North. He could not make a living as an artist, nor could he survive on his paltry salary as an under-qualified school teacher, as he was struggling to pay off the bond on a small plot which he had bought in some remote place, and to his keep his head above water he had managed to supplement his income by making dresses for various clothing boutiques, hence his presence at the Oriental Plaza. We were so taken in with this charming homosexual man with all his sailor stories and the stories of the strange rural community that he had joined, that we undertook to never again to buy another dress but instead have him make all our clothes.

4

The white withered maize lands laid out in the autumn browned landscape were hidden under a blanket of darkness. Behind us on the outskirts of Benoni the brooding township of Daveyton smouldered. Kate asks me what I am thinking as I stared into the night.

'We are not only animals consumed with desire, we are also metaphysical animals,' I answer. She flashes an inquiring glance at me, there is a confused frown on her face. I look at her profile as she focuses her attention back on the road again. There is no doubting that Kate is a beautiful woman. I continue:

'We don't only live in a physical universe, we also live in a universe which we have created, a universe of meaning, a universe filled with all kinds of signs, signs which give rise to the possibility of meaning, signs which refer to things, everything that has been manufactured functions as a sign of something, everything that has been produced is invested with meaning, everything that we have created embodies an idea, and therefore wherever we look we see signs which refer to something, which signify something, the sign itself always standing for something, pointing beyond itself, everything that has been manufactured is also a sign, a self-referencing sign, a signifier pointing to itself, indicating it's utility, where its utility is the signified, the signifier collapses into the signified, in a semiotics of utility. When I enter my kitchen I see the kettle, fridge, stove and toaster, but I know the kettle is a kettle, and the stove is a stove, without the word kettle or stove registering in my mind. Hypothetically speaking I see the fridge in my kitchen, but even though I have forgotten that it is called a fridge I still know that the white metallic object embodies all the utilities that are signified by the word fridge. In fact I can forget all the names of the objects in my kitchen, yet from the mere appearance of the object I am able to recognize all the functional utilities which the object embodies. Maybe I don't need any language once I am able to recognize and understand the functional utilities which each object embodies. Maybe we can substitute sensory perceptions for language. The sensation of coldness conveys to us the functional utility of the fridge with respect to the role that low temperatures play in the preservation of food. In the case of the stove the sensation of heat conveys the functional utility of the stove with respect to the role of heat in cooking food. In terms of the sensations of cold or hot something stands for something, the sensation perceived is connected to a specific utility, in a something for something arrangement without any mediatory recourse to language.'

'Something for something?' She asks.

'Yes something for something, which distinguishes it from something which is a natural thing. The sign of something being something which is not a product of nature is always something which has been created or manufactured by human design and effort like a dress.'

'And a dress which has been designed with some function and purpose in mind embodies an idea and therefore a dress functions also as a sign, something which signifies something,' Kate answered.

'Yup, you right. The dress transforms the entire female body itself into a sign, into a system of signification, something which says something about something to someone,' I answered.

5

The objects of desire falls under the signifying power of the sign, irrespective of how we have conceived the nature of the sign in a system of signification or symbolism, for example it may not even be reducible to a system conforming to a Saussurean semiotics, it may not be reducible to any kind of structuralism. Desire drowns us in the infinity of our wants. Our wants, the things that we want embody signs, they signify, they speak their own language to the heart of desire, they communicate, they say something about something. We consume the signs. The universe we create is a universe of consumption. We exist under the thrall of utilities. An infinity of objects each embodying a specific form of utility shapes our world and determines how we live our lives from moment to moment. Our factories generate a constant stream of utilities flooding the market with objects we cannot live without.

Factories churn out these products of significance, capable of signification, signs of utility, objects which have the power to self-represent their significance, capable of self-communicating, capable of autonomous signification or communicating meaning unmediated by any language or grammar, specific means are linked to specific ends, in a structural-functional grammar of utility which resists any reduction to a structuralism of forms. Here we have the medium being the message. The 'significance' of the sign which is embodied in the form of a commodity expresses itself in the language of its utility.

Language is overrated. When we forget the name of something, we refer to it as a 'thingamabob', we know what it is even though we have forgotten its name, at that moment, for all practical purposes, it is a nameless object, but we recognize its practical functionality from its structure, we know in an instance its range of utilities which it is capable of realizing in our hands. Why is this? From a Heideggerian perspective we have been thrown into a world, we are always already in a world and by being-in-a-world we find the world filled with equipment which is ready to hand. Surrounded by things which are structurally-functionally recognizable as utilities in their mode of being, we experience a world filled with all kinds of things, instruments, tools, equipment, cars, roads, bridges, factories, houses, household appliances and universities all signifying an infinity of different kinds of means toward countless ends, all of which are ready to hand for a designated task in a world, and so we find ourselves in every situation always possessing a pre-understanding of the world. What is a world? A world is an order of meaningful relationships between things, between ourselves and between ourselves and things. The world is always already intelligible, even before we say our first word, before we can even speak or write. Speaking and writing supervenes on a conscious awareness of a pre-existing intelligibility regarding the nature of the world. Nothing comes from nothing. Something cannot come from nothing. Something always comes from something. And that something also includes the existence or the pre-existence of the intelligibility of the world. What do we mean by pre-existence? The world about us had to already embody the kinds of states of affairs which are intelligible and therefore knowable before utilities or language could emerge as a consequence of our various of modes of being-in-a-world through which are able to live a life.

In our mind or in our conscious awareness when encounter something it is experienced as 'that' thing or that kind of thing. We grasp its practical significance from witnessing or experiencing its utility through acts of performative demonstration. It can exist for us completely outside the scope of language as that kind of thing. What is it? It is that kind of thing. It opens tins or cans. It must be a can opener or tin opener, call it what you like, it does not really matter, you know what I mean. How am I supposed to know what you mean?

It is a 'thingamabob' that opens cans or tins. We use the words tin and can interchangeably. A tin is a can, a can is a tin. Why do you call a can a tin? Because a can is made from tin which is a metal. What is a metal? This is metal. That thing there is metal, that thing is made out of metal.

Acts of performative demonstration makes verbally based language redundant. We know what to do with it, why worry about words. We are aware, we are conscious of the fact that it is that kind of thing. Pass me that thing. What thing? The thing which can open tins. The tin opener? Yes that thing. Signifier collapses into signified. What is arbitrary about the words 'tin opener'. The mime artist mimes the opening of a tin with a tin opener. His performance is intelligible. We recognized in an instance what he is demonstrating.

What does the commentary of the mime artist consist of? Through the medium of her actions a message is communicated. The medium is the message. Performance embodies the message, the message is immanent in the medium, the signifier collapses into the signified, they are one and the same thing, the token is the world and the world is the token. The relationship between the signifier and the signified is no longer arbitrary or based purely on convention. Structuralism evaporates, content and meaning is in everything, it is one with performance. Meaning is inherent in performance. Performance without the intermediary role of verbalizable forms of language becomes the medium of intelligibility and meaning. Who said that animals are incapable of intelligence, incapable of understanding what something means?

Utilities are tethered to wants. They are utilities by virtue of the existence of wants, and wants give birth to desire or does desire give birth to wants. Do we desire that which we need? Do we desire the air we breathe or the water we drink? No we desire pleasure. Our wants represent what we desire. Wants, or the things we want, are the sources of our pleasure, they contain the kind of substances which when consumed satisfies the desire for pleasure. Gratification comes with the enjoyment of that which is pleasurable or gives pleasure. Enjoyment entails consumption. Without consumption there can be no experience of pleasure. Without consumption our joy evaporates. Are hunger or thirst equivalent to desire? It is being enslaved to our wants which sucks us into the relentless and endless infernal cycle of consumption, consumption of everything and anything which economists euphemistically call utilities. This insatiable appetite can never fill the screaming emptiness in our shrivelled up souls, souls which can only exist on a diet of fantasy and pleasure.

The sign also embodies our fantasies. Utilities become the substance of fantasies. Under capitalism everything which can be consumed undergoes a metamorphosis into a utility which can be monetized. Capitalism is the monetization of utility. Capitalism is also the monetization of pleasure and fantasy. Capitalism makes it possible to buy fantasies and pleasure, thereby transforming fantasies and pleasure into forms of utility, a process of production which involves the commodification of fantasy and pleasure, where the provision of pleasure is the source of a commodities utility, where the commodities utility is equivalent to its capacity to actualize the fantasy, or transform the fantasy into a reality, where that reality can be consumed. Our man made world, is a fantasy universe which can be consumed, and as a consumable universe of things it is universe created from the machines found in factories, factories which manufacture monetizable fantasies, and monetizable sources of pleasure, pleasure derived from the consumption of crystallized labour, living labour being the embodiment of value, consumption is then a form of cannibalism, consumption involves digesting the life forces of living labour crystallized in commodities, we eat people. Our mode of being-in-the-world is centred on the pursuant of fantasies and also on the consumption of pleasure. And our fantasies and desire for pleasure becomes the fuel which drives the economic engine, and sustains the existence of the giant fantasy creating machines of capitalism. Without the fantasy and pleasure creating machines capitalism cannot exist. Without the want-satisfying pleasure-creating machine the factory cannot exist. Without machinery there cannot be any commodity production. Without machinery there cannot be any fantasies. Without machines there cannot be history. Without the machine there can be no pleasure-satisfying commodities. The machine embodies the essence of modernity. The consumption of commodities purely for sake of gratifying the desire for pleasure represents the essence of modernity and the overriding rationale of capitalism. Modernity lives on a diet of fantasy and pleasure. A diet which is a form of starvation. This is the great void created by modernity and capitalism.

Without machinery there can only be nothing, without the machine there cannot be what Marx refers to as the forces of capitalist production. The machine and labour gives rise to the forces of production. The machine looms large in what has become known as the industrial revolution. The machine looms large in what we now call modernity. The machine has become the metaphor for technology, the means for all ends. But the internal combustion of this leviathanic machine, the processes of combustion which powers this runaway economic locomotive which churns out an entire universe of want-satisfying-utilities has be constantly stoked into motion, into the motion of its articulated moving parts, it will not move by itself, it has to be stoked into motion by humanities monstrous, ravenous and insatiable desire for gratification. Desire for pleasure is the fuel which drives the fantasy creating machines.

So what is the machine? First of all the machine is controlled motion, it is articulated motion. To move 'articulatively' something must act on something else in a mechanical cause and effect action. The machine embodies the solution to the metaphysical mysteries of cause and effect. In the machine motion is transduced, transformed and transmitted through a system of interconnected operations of articulation. To move articulatively there must be a connecting joint for the transmission of motion. In other words there must be an articulating junction. Desire is the Prime Mover. Desire is the determination or determinative factor in the last instance. Desire is the motion generating gear, the motion generating lever. Desire is the primeval articulating junction which sets the machine in motion. Desire for needs and the pleasure of wants is what ultimately constitutes the economic base and sets the economy in motion. Desire is the dominant element which determines the structure and functioning of the entire social formation.

The smooth motion, the caressing stroke, hum, push, articulation, revolution, translation of the machine, the clickety, tick, tock, slide, and whirr of the machine, the complex mechanical engagement and articulation of gears, rotations and levers of the machine is nothing more than the infinite translations of motion, and the infinite translation of motions is nothing else but the hymn of capitalism, the machine is the symphony of capitalism. To repeat again, so what is the machine, what is the machine in of all its essence, in all of its universality, in all of its applications, in all of its practicalities, in all of its logic and rationality? If we know the science of the machine, if the machine does not hide any of its secrets from us in the way it works, then what is the machine? What is the essence of the machine? Even Marx posed this searching question in his 'Capital'. And socialism has struggled with this question concerning the ultimate meaning of the machine, the liberating significance of the machine, the 'how' concerning the possession and mastery of the machine, not to mention the radical fullness of the meaning and significance of the inexhaustible 'what' of the machine. So then, what is the machine? Is the essence of the machine reducible to pure motion? Is the 'what' of the machine tied up with understanding the 'what' of the 'end' towards which the motion of the machine 'moves'. If the machine could be invested with intelligence it would 'know' towards what end the aggregations of its motions were moving towards. Without motion there can be no machine. Even Heidegger struggled with the question of what the machine is ultimately. The machine is engaged with 'becoming'. What is the machine in relation to Being? What 'is' the machine? The machine has been fundamental to the birth of capitalism. It was the machine which made capitalism possible. It is impossible to talk of the forces of production without mentioning the machine, without the idea or concept of the machine or machinery. The machine is always a means to an end, and a means towards an end is also a remedy. A technological remedy. But a remedy for what? A remedy for the incurable? This is the paradox of the machine. It cures nothing. Capitalism cannot cure itself. Machinery cannot cure anything. The markets fail constantly. Self-correction of markets is a myth. There is no cure for the infinity of wants. No remedy exists for ameliorating the addictions which stokes the machine, the machine stands defeated in the face of the eternal addictions for want-satisfying-utilities. This means that the machine which creates want-satisfying-utilities is trapped in an infernal cycle. The 'infernal' characterizes the hell of the underworld. The machine creates addictions and addictions in turn stoke the fires of the machine, the fires that power the motion of the machine on its journey to nowhere. No cure exists for the addiction which drives the infernal cycle, the infernal cycle which involves the ceaseless pursuit of gratification, which we call consumerism. Wants give birth to new wants in an infernal recycle of reproduction. Desire is aroused by a lack of something, something in the form of want-satisfying-utilities. Desire is constantly awaked by new wants. Desire feeds tirelessly on novelty. The engine of innovation is powered by desire, and by appetite. This is capitalism. Capitalism is sustained by an inexhaustible appetite for novelty, for the new, for innovation, for the fantastic. Desire in the form of an inexhaustible appetite for the new and the novel, for the fabulous, becomes the motive power of the machine, becomes the source of its creative energy, which unleashes the flood of new inventions, inventions of increasing novelty, embodying ever new utilities, stimulating ever new wants. Novelty, new inventions, new fantasies, new wants, new desires, new motivation, all of this stokes the infernal motions of the machines of capitalism opening up new horizons, bringing new worlds into existence, opening up new possibilities, finding news way for the rebirth of an interminable wanting, conjuring up new unimaginable embodiments of want-satisfying-utilities, all of which is transfused as new life-giving blood into the capitalist economy, an economy sustained by a constant stream of fantasies which inspires the creative imagination for invention of unimaginable utilities. Utilities dreamt up for the gratification of an inexhaustible and ever expanding universe of needs, needs parading as wants, wants parading as needs, needs and wants merge, awakening an infinite and endless rolling procession of desire. New desires continue to form in the mind, sustaining a universe of fantasy. The metaphysical universe becomes more surreal and dreamlike. The machines become dream machines, they manufacture dreams, and the factories exist for the purpose of wish fulfilment, and machines struggle to keep pace with the morphing of every new desires into an endless succession of pleasure serving fantasies. And in the world created by the machine and the factory we find ourselves living as powerless captives, slaves to endless consumption, vomiting so as to continue consuming, wading in a swamp of vomit and shit. Captives without agency, captives wondering about aimlessly as strangers in an infinite labyrinth of shopping mall aisles, strangers to ourselves, and strangers to others. Strangers trapped in an infernal nightmare, a nightmare of wondering in an incomprehensible, stark and impoverished landscape of plate glass and escalators moving up and down from one floor to the next, a landscape illuminated with the neon lit images of death, where the pursuit of desire seeks its gratification in the endless halls of horror filled with the infinite glittering spectacle of commodities. And in the face of the inevitable futility of a life based on the pursuit of consumption for its own sake the only comfort we are offered by the machine is an empty palliative, a palliative filled with the barrenness of delusions.

Who starts the machine? Who operates the machine? Who presses the button, who turn the key? Who owns the machine?

6

And so in spite of all this we sallied forth like lesbian vampires into the night. Tuning into the English Radio channel, Kate turned up the volume for the classical music programme. 'Comfort ye my people. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the croocked straight and the rough places plain'. We listened in silence to Handel.

My mind wondered back again to our sailor boy. Our sailor boy's name was Christiaan Joubert. I don't think Christiaan had a Leftist born in his queer body, but he planted a radical seed in the heart of Kate. The seed of anti-consumerism. Anti-consumerism resonated with her environmentalist sentiments. He spoke about the authentic life, a life of self-sufficiency, a life which did not impact negatively on the environment, a life that was not centred round shopping, a life based on sustainable consumption. I suppose we could call it a life in which the machine was no longer in command. Christiaan spoke about a life in which individual agency was restored and where we controlled the machine and the machine no longer controlled us. All of this appealed to Kate. It appealed to me too.

We wanted to short circuit the commodification of life in an exercise of parody, a parody which entailed an undisguised exercise in perversity and transgression. Considering the circumstances I told myself we would have to be inhumanly strong. It was with these thoughts criss-crossing my mind that I found myself trying to digest the opening chapter of Marx's 'Das Kapital' as we drove to our destination, a far flung hamlet where our angelic sailor seamstress lived. It was pitch dark and we were hurtling through the night at high speed along the Witbank Highway travelling due east in Kate's Porsche.

'Shit I think I have just missed the turn-off,' Kate exclaimed as the Porsche screeched to a halt. She changed the gears into reverse, wheels spinning, and rubber burning, engine screaming she reversed at high speed until we reached the turn-off. We took the turn-off, leaving the main road we drove into the country until we spotted a sign 'Bronkhorstspruit Village'. There was no village to speak of. The village consisted of a community of artists living on small holdings of between two and five hectares in size called 'plots' strung along on the banks of the Bronkhorstspruit River. We found the house at the end of a narrow sand road. I got out to the open the farm gate. The sprawling white washed and corrugated iron roofed farm house was hidden amongst tall blue gum trees. Inside the walls had been knocked down to create a spacious open-plan interior which functioned as a home and studio. In the studio which merged with the lounge, dining room and kitchen was a large fabric cutting table, a factory sewing machine, manikins, clothing rails, and a large loom for weaving tapestries. Prominently displayed on a large stark white wall was a voluptuous still life of a mixed bowl of fruit filled with mangoes, pomegranates, peaches, plums, pawpaw and bananas. When our business was done we sat down at a large rough Oregon pine table to eat a meal that he had prepared for our visit. Kate and I sat down on the side of the table which allowed us to view the painting. In the course of having our dinner we asked about the picture. It was supposed to represent Bathsheba. He painted the still life as one of his projects while at art school. The lecturer told them to paint a picture depicting Bathsheba bathing using any object except the human form. The lecturer had now become a successful and well known artist, a Jew going by the name of Joel Mandelstam. We were told by Christiaan that Mandelstam had converted to Christianity and as a dynamic charismatic personality he had become a catalyst for a veritable Christian revival at the Art College before becoming a full-time artist and popular guest speaker at Christian youth camps and churches. His conversion experience was a fascinating story which had been told countless times in numerous churches and Christian conferences. His conversion experience started with a strange and startling dream.

7

In his dream he found himself outside the ticket office booth at the Rosebank Cinema Nouveau. After buying a ticket for a movie called 'The woman who fell from the sky' he entered the movie theatre and he noticed that the theatre was quite small, the size of a church chapel. It was fully carpeted from floor to wall to ceiling in crimson red velvety carpeting. The rows of seats were also covered in crimson red velvety upholstering. He sat down in the middle row in the centre seat. He was alone in the movie theatre. On the screen stage was an altar and on the altar was large silver bowl. When the heavy crimson drape opened the screen lit up with a graphic scene of the crucifixion of Jesus on Golgotha against a dark brooding sky. A Roman soldier standing at the foot of the cross holding a spear in his hand stabbed the spear in the side of Jesus' upper abdomen below the heart and blood mixed with water gushed out of the screen into the bowl on the altar, filling the bowl, overflowing over the brim onto the altar and down the sides of the altar. He then heard a voice saying:

'The blood of Jesus shed for all of you, drink ye of it'.

It was so horrifying that he woke up in cold sweat. Lying next to him was his wife who was suffering from multiple sclerosis, she also woke because he was shivering so much next to her as if he had fever. He was shivering because he was in a state of shock.

'I had a terrible nightmare, I am OK, go back to sleep'.

The next day Joel went to the Central News Agency in Rosebank. He did not have a copy of the Bible with the New Testament, and he wanted to the find passage about the blood in the Gospels. While paging through a copy of the New Testament Prof Jeremy Isaac a theoretical physicist from Wits pitches up out of the blue from nowhere at the same bookstand packed with Bibles. He also wants to purchase a Bible. Joel recognizes him as the Jew who converted from Orthodox Judaism to Christianity, and who also appeared as a guest on some magazine programmes on SABC TV. They start chatting. They decide to go have coffee. Joel tells Jeremy about his dream. Jeremy tells Joel about his conversion experience. Jeremy convinces Joel that he has had an encounter with God. Joel goes home and before he can tell his wife about his meeting with Jeremy, his wife tells him that the new drug for the treatment of her illness appears to be working. Joel spends the rest of the day reading the Gospel of John. By evening he and his wife have converted to Christianity.

8

A mere moment after Christiaan had finished the story Joel Mandelstam himself walked through the open front door, coming in from the dark. He had taken his over energetic Border Collie for a late night walk, seeing that the lights were on he decided to drop in and visit Christiaan. His dog full of excitement bounded up to me and I began stroking the dog's head. Joel was in a jovial mood, like his dog he radiated an energetic enthusiasm for life. Christiaan then informed Joel that he had just related Joel's conversion experience to us. Joel looking at Kate and I asked. 'Do you know the Lord?' Kate answered for both of us. 'Yes we do!' He then stared intensely at me from across the table before asking: 'Are you Jewish?' Before I could say anything Kate burst out laughing and exclaimed: 'Good heavens No! She is Catholic.' Then I reaffirmed: 'I am a Catholic, well actually Anglo-Catholic'. He stared at me for a moment with a puzzled frown, seemingly wanting to say something. I had this uncanny feeling that he still believed that I was indeed Jewish.

I know what is going through his mind, so I say:

'I am not Jewish, if I seem Jewish to you I can explain, but it is a long story'.

'I have all night,' he answers.

'But we don't,' Kate answers quickly, after glancing at her watch.

Christiaan interrupts:

'Why do you think Hannah is Jewish?'

'She is not Jewish,' Kate interjects.

'I know, but I would like to hear why Hannah is not Jewish,' Christiaan said.

'I was looking after a dear friend who was Jewish and for her sake I have lived like an observant Orthodox Jew for a number of years,' I said.

'You mean you observed the Torah even though you were a Christian?' Christiaan asked.

'Yes I did. I lived by the Torah, I lived a kosher life, fully embedded in a Jewish community, I observed the Shabbat and I practiced Orthodox Judaism for a number of years even though I did not convert to Judaism. I found that I could do this without ceasing to be Christian. Acting Jewish became a habit and many of these habits I have not been able to break. For example, I still keep the Shabbat out of habit and I keep a kosher home.'

'Well that is incredibly interesting, I am ready to admit that in a very profound sense the whole Torah including Book of Leviticus are the most important books in the whole Bible. I also believe that practicing Judaism by living a kosher life as you put it does not logically entail that you cannot be a Christian. Most of what Christians claim as their belief has its roots in post-exilic and second Temple Judaism and first century Judaism including the strictly speaking non-canonical literature of Judaism such as the Babylonian Talmud. There is nothing essentially wrong with the Laws of Moses, some of the so-called 613 laws are actually mandatory to the Christian life. Take for example Leviticus 19: 18 which basically states that you should love your neighbour, whether a brother or an enemy, as yourself. Some of the Laws of Moses that deal with slavery are now completely redundant, or obsolete. In fact the slave laws in the Law of Moses are based on an acceptance of the legitimacy of slavery as a social institution. The slave laws in the Mosaic Law have now become practically null and void. All the Laws of Moses that dealt with the Temple, with priests and with sacrifices all depend on the existence of the temple and the practice of sacrifice. Without the Temple there can be no priests, and with no priests there can be no sacrifice. In a very profound sense without the Temple and with the non-practice of blood-sacrifice a huge chunk of Mosaic Law has become null and void forever, because without blood sacrifice the essential core, the very heart of the religion of the Israelites, has been ripped out. Without blood sacrifice the religion of the Israelites has become an empty hollow shell. This is why the destruction of the temple was such a catastrophe for the Jews.'

He then got up. 'I have got to go, nice meeting you.' He shook our hands and just before he left he again stared searchingly into my eyes and then said: 'God bless you my sister.' Kate looked at me searchingly after he left and asked: 'What was that all about?'

'I don't know,' I replied.

'I know you got involved quite deeply with the Jews while you looking after Yael. Did you ever think of converting?' Kate asked once we were back on the highway heading for Johannesburg.

'Yes I did,' I confirmed.

'What stopped you?'

'It was not Christianity. If I became a Jew I discovered that technically as an individual Jew, in my own private world of Judaism, I could still believe in Jesus as the Messiah, I could still believe in the Trinity, I could still believe in the New Testament, and all the claims in the New Testament,' I replied.

'I find that very hard to believe,' she exclaimed.

'I studied the Talmud and other Jewish writings, and discovered enough ambiguity in Judaism regarding the nature of God for One God to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The early Church had no option but to invent the theological idea of the Trinity, even though the Church has always been firmly monotheistic believing that God was one. The Trinity is a theological solution that shares many features with the view that light is both a particle and wave which is a theoretical solution forced on quantum physics,' I said.

'So hypothetically speaking, if you converted to Judaism and became a Jew, you as an individual Jew could still technically believe in the Trinity in your own private universe of Judaism?' Kate asked.

'I could with a clear conscience, without feeling that I have compromised my integrity.'

'Then why did you not become Jew?'

'I did not want make an oath, nor I want to make any kind of religious declaration, and I also did not want to become a member of an exclusive tribe that practices endogamy, and nor did I feel any desire to take on another ethnic identity. I was in fact very happy with my own genetic or racial identity.'

Kate gave me strange look. 'After all these years I really don't know you.' She said. 'Nor do I,' I replied.

Chapter 23: Final Disclosure

1

Many years after Yael had passed away Malcolm invited me to a family braai at his home. He said that he could now disclose information which I needed to know. I immediately guessed correctly that it had to do with my arrest. I had been drawn back into the bosom of my family. I was now the much admired aunt of my nephews and nieces. Everyone in the family knew that I was a lesbian, and that their great Ouma had also been a lesbian who had danced with other women to big band music in Malvern while her husband was fighting the Nazis in the Sahara Desert of North Africa. In 2016 it was no longer an issue to be gay. I had become the wonderful aunt who was held in awe by her nephews and nieces. I was the communist, the person who was in the underground and had fought against apartheid, I had been in jail, I was a professor of zoology, and I had caught cobras and mambas with my bare hands and I had scuba-dived amongst sharks. They don't know that I was terminally ill. I am dying of cancer.

2

I followed Malcolm to his pub, he poured two double scotches and we sat down at the bar, and I listened to what Malcolm had to say. This was the gist of the story: On his flights to Zimbabwe Benjamin Schlossheimer made a point of visiting Scott Everton and it was Scott who told Benjamin that he suspected that I was involved in terrorism. When Scott died Yael, Benjamin and I got together for coffee. At a later date Benjamin meet Yael in Hyde Park and they had coffee, and Yael mentioned the fact that I had a massive Xerox machine in my flat and she found this very puzzling. Benjamin also had commercial intelligence business dealings with Sheldon Swift who had immigrated to Israel. Sheldon also traded in information which may have intelligence value to various governments. He passed on information to Benjamin that a Coloured woman from South Africa was having a lesbian fling with the daughter of the Governor of the Province of Inhambane in Mozambique. Malcolm became the eventual recipient of all this intelligence information which the South African government had paid over a million rand for. Through the South African security police spy network in the ANC movement and the FRELIMO government in Mozambique Malcolm were able to identify the Coloured woman, who turned out to be none other than me. What was I doing in Mozambique was the question Malcolm asked, and the only answer was: on Communist Party and terrorist business. I was identified as the link to the underground and was put under twenty four hour surveillance. It was his job to join all the dots which led directly to me and through me to the underground movement. If Yael had not seen the Xerox machine then they would never have been able to arrest us. Benjamin had shopped me for money. It was Yael who had inadvertently pulled the plug on my comrades and me without ever knowing it.

Malcolm smiled his ironic smile and I shrugged my shoulders. It did not matter anymore. It was water under the bridge. The children were splashing in the pool, laughing, shouting, having great fun. I yearned for nothing, I desired nothing, and in other words, I was at peace with myself. I felt no need to hang onto life. I did not feel sad. Yes I would have another scotch. But before we got up to join the rest of the family outside by the braai I needed to tell Malcolm something. It was a beautiful day. Malcolm had made his disclosure, now it was my turn.

'I also have something to tell you which is going to change your life'. I said.

I paused for a moment. Malcolm was a man with a sixth sense. He knew immediately that I was going to show a full flush of cards, I savoured the moment.

'I have officially been Coloured since 1990. To be honest with you, in my heart during the struggle in 1980s I began to self-identify as Coloured, it was this that kept me going, and it was this which motivated me to take the huge risks. I wanted to be Coloured, I wanted to be the progeny of miscegenation. I fell in love with the word 'miscegenation'. Anyway to cut a long story short. After my detention I reapplied for an ID book and in the application forms I recorded my identity as Coloured. And then in 2000 I had my DNA analysed. You, Elsabe and I are genetically Coloured we are a mixture of Dutch, Cape Malay, Khoi San and Xhosa. We are not white genetically speaking nor are mom and dad or Oupa and Ouma. We are all Coloured'.

'Fucken Hell! So we are not white? Let's have another dop, this calls for a double or triple scotch, what do you say? I don't know whether we should celebrate this or what? Anyway I am going to get drunk, this is wonderful news!' Malcolm said as he sloshed scotch into our glasses, and then chucked in a load of ice cubes. Our glasses clinked as we toasted the new family status.

'Fokkit, ons is nou fokken kleurlinge, kan jy dit fokken glo! (Fuck, we are now fucken Coloureds, can you fucken believe it!). Man, here comes affirmative action big time for my security business, no shit!' Malcolm exclaimed as the whiskey made his face glow. His eyes twinkled I watched him process all the advantages of not being White in the new South Africa. He saw this as an unexpected wind fall. Who the fuck wants to be White anyway when being Black means a big cash bonanza. I could see he understood that with the scientific evidence no one could take away his Blackness. He was now a Black man, fuck he had hit the jackpot. This was real Zeeman luck if there was ever such a thing.

'God we have the blood of the most ancient people in Africa flowing through our veins, fucken hell, this is our country, the bushman were here first, and this bushman blood in our veins is gold, if anything it gold in this world, it is worth something, our blood is worth a lot, fuck it. I have Black blood flowing in my veins! Every lost drop is worth its weight in gold, thank God for apartheid, let the fuckers pay for all the shit we have suffered as Black people,' he laughed at the irony which seemed to favour the fortunes of the Zeemans.

'That fucken Dutchman. God bless his fucken Zeeman soul. Hell I will have to let this all sink in. I don't think we should break the news to Elsabe yet. She will be shocked to discover that she is not really White.'

Malcolm became ebullient. His face was flushed. He was pleasantly inebriated. I could see he was reliving that same opiate-like euphoria which washes the souls of the living following their miraculous survival of yet another intense and bloody fire-fight. The broken bodies of the vanquished lay lifeless scattered under the unforgiving sun hovering over the savannahs. They were Black and they had died and he had survived, now he too was Black and living, and he could once more gasp that sweet breath of life, he understood that he now stood on the threshold of renewal, a second chance had fallen into his lap. He had survived, he had survived against all odds. That was Malcolm my bother.

'Ek is 'n fokken kleurling'. (I am a fucken Coloured)

I was also now basking in the glow of the whisky. I knew my time was short so I said:

'Malcolm you can have dad's Riley, I want to give it to you'.

'Thanks, but I want to pay you for it, I know it is worth a fortune.'

'You can have it for one hundred English pounds'.

