Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" (27 page)

On Friday morning Secretary of State George Shultz addressed the second convocation. This was almost as long and
involved as the Prince Jug Ears get-together, and the security
arrangements verged on the maniacal. A UPI reporter told me he'd
counted fourteen different law enforcement agencies so far. While
we sat in Harvard Yard, nearly a dozen Secret Service agents
roamed the aisles staring intently at us. Outside, the protestors
were back but this time double-teamed by cops. They carried signs
protesting not only apartheid but also aid to Israel, involvement in
El Salvador, and aggression against Nicaragua and Cuba; one sign
said "Remember John Reed," the pro-Lenin U.S. reporter (and
Harvard grad) buried in the Kremlin wall. Inside, a few protestors
had scattered themselves through the audience. About every five
minutes one would bob to his feet and yell. Then police and Secret
Service agents would come and stand in front of him and glower
until he sat down.

Just as the convocation got under way, a low-flying plane
began to circle the Yard dragging a banner with the message "US/
HARVARD OUT OF SOUTH AFRICA SANCTIONS DIVEST
NOW." This drowned out the Call to Order and a long-winded
prayer by the Chaplain of the Day (a Mick, this time) and part of an
address by the Mayor of Cambridge-so disrespect for freedom of
speech has its rewards. Governor Dukakis spoke next and did some
Kennedy quoting. He was followed by Tip O'Neill, who seems
determined to break Sarah Bernhardt's record for farewell appearances. It's not often that I have any fellow-feeling for the Buddha of Bureaucracy, but I must hand it to Mr. Speaker; he began by saying
he remembered Harvard Yard very well-at fourteen he cut the
lawns here. And he went on to point out that when he was first
starting in politics and Harvard was celebrating its 300th Anniversary, only 3 percent of high school graduates got a chance at
college, leaving it unsaid how it's no thanks to Harvard that more
do today. The rest of Tip's speech was, of course, blathersgate, and
was followed by a bland student oration and a bad poem by Seamus
Heaney, professor of Rhetoric and Oratory.

Finally, they got around to George Shultz. "This magnificent
institution stands for a great tradition of intellectual openness, free
inquiry and pursuit of truth," Shultz said, while protestors in the
audience tried to drown him out. He talked about the advantages
free nations have over communist societies in the "Information
Revolution." "How can a system that keeps photocopies and mimeograph machines under strict control exploit the benefits of the
VCR and personal computer?" Shultz asked the unresponsive
audience.

Shultz proposed that freedom is a revolutionary force, and
there were mixed noises when he mentioned resistance groups in
Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and Nicaragua. "In South Africa,
the structure of apartheid is under siege as never before," he said.

"Not by you," screamed someone in the crowd, and there was
scattered applause.

"Today the validity of the idea of democracy is the most
important political reality of our time," said Shultz and received
some yells of dissent. Shultz spoke cogently against government
central planning-no response. Shultz argued persuasively that
"America's weakness makes the world a more dangerous place"no response. Some conservative listeners bestirred themselves at
the mention of the Libyan air strike. Others booed. ". . . [A] better
future is likely to take shape if, and perhaps only if, America is
there to help shape it," said Shultz-no response.

Shultz made an attack on the neo-isolationism that has formed
the basis for liberal foreign policy since the early seventies. He
condemned "the illusion that we can promote justice by aloof selfrighteousness, that we can promote peace by merely wishing for
it." There was no response to that either. He damned economic protectionism and got some hand claps until he said, "Another form
of escapism is self-righteous moralism," and the booing began
again. Then Shultz went into the debate about congressional cuts in
the foreign affairs budget, but this seemed too deep for the audience and they quit booing or clapping and started rifling through
the program notes trying to figure out where lunch was.

"Those who built a college at the edge of a boundless forest
were not fearful, timid people," said Shultz at the end of his
speech. "They did not shirk their responsibilities. They were
practical men and women. They were earthy and realistic. . . . Let
us honor that tradition." Maybe George was mixed up. Maybe he
thought this was the 350th Anniversary of Ohio State.

DECEMBER 1986

I'd been told South Africa looks like California, and it looks like
California-the same tan-to-cancer beaches-the same Granola'd
mountains' majesty, the same subdeveloped bushveldt. Johannesburg looks like L.A. Like L.A., it was all built since 1900.
Like L.A., it's ringed and vectored with expressways. And its best
suburb, Hyde Park, looks just like Beverly Hills. All the people
who live in Hyde Park are white, just like Beverly Hills. And all
the people who work there-who cook, sweep and clean the
swimming pools-are not white, just like Beverly Hills. The only
difference is, the lady who does the laundry carries it on her head.

I was prepared for South Africa to be terrible. But I wasn't
prepared for it to be normal. Those petty apartheid signs, NO DOGS
OR NON-EUROPEANS, are rare, almost tourist attractions now.
There's no color bar in the big "international" hotels or their
restaurants or nightclubs. Downtown shopping districts are integrated. You see as many black people in coats and ties as you do in
Chicago. If I'd really tried, I could have spent my month in South Africa without noticing any hint of trouble except the soldiers all
over the place. South Africa is terribly normal. And this is why, I
think, we get so emotional about it.

Everywhere you go in the world somebody's raping women,
expelling ethnic Chinese, enslaving stone-age tribesmen, shooting
Communists, rounding up Jews, kidnapping Americans, setting
fire to Sikhs, keeping Catholics out of country clubs and hunting
peasants from helicopters with automatic weapons. The world is
built on discrimination of the most horrible kind. The problem with
South Africans is they admit it. They don't say, like the French,
"Algerians have a legal right to live in the sixteenth arrondissement,
but they can't afford to." They don't say, like the Israelis, "Arabs
have a legal right to live in West Jerusalem, but they're afraid to."
They don't say, like the Americans, "Indians have a legal right to
live in Ohio, but, oops, we killed them all." The South Africans
just say, "Fuck you." I believe it's right there in their constitution:
"Article IV: Fuck you. We're bigots." We hate them for this. And
we're going to hold indignant demonstrations and make our universities sell all their Krugerrands until the South Africans learn to
stand up and lie like white men.

Forty miles from Jo-burg is Pretoria, the capital of South
Africa. It looks like Sacramento with soldiers, like Sacramento will
if the Chicanos ever rebel. And on the tallest hill in Pretoria stands
the Voortrekker Monument, a 120-foot tower of shit-colored granite
visible for twenty miles in every direction. The Voortrekker Monument is to the Afrikaners, the controlling majority of South African
whites, what the Salt Lake City Tabernacle is to Mormons. It
commemorates the Great Trek of the 1830s when the Boers escaped
such annoyances of British colonial rule as the abolition of slavery
and pushed north into the interior of Africa to fuck things up by
themselves. The Voortrekker Monument's rotunda is decorated with
an immense, heroic-scale bas relief depicting the entire course of
the Great Trek from Bible-kissing sendoffs in Cape Town to the
battle of Blood River in 1838 when 3,000 Zulus were killed vs. 0
dead Boers.

It was with unmixed feelings about Afrikaners that I climbed
the wearyingly dramatic steps to the monument. One stroll through
central Pretoria and one walk through the memorial's parking lot were enough to see that they're no-account people-dumpy women
in white ankle socks and flower-print sundresses, skinny, quidspitting men with hair oil on their heads and gun-nut sideburns.
Their language sounds like a Katzenjammer Kids cartoon: Die
telefoon is in die sitkamer ("The telephone is in the living room").
Die dogter ry op n' trein ("The daughter rides on the train"). And
their racism is famous for its high degree of international deplorability. Liberal pinkteas, unreconstructed Stalinists, cannibal
presidents of emerging nations and fascist military dictator swine
all agree on this point.

Therefore my heart sank when I saw the Great Trek sculpture.
It was, God help me, "Wagon Train" carved in stone. There was no
mistaking the pokey oxen and Prairie Wagoneers parked in a circle
for a combat-ready campout. The gals all had those dopey coalscuttle bonnets on and brats galore doing curtain calls in their
skirts. The fellers all wore Quaker Oats hats and carried muskets
long as flagpoles. Horses pranced. Horizons beckoned. Every man
jack from Ben Cartwright on down stared off into the sunset with
chin uplifted and eyes full of stupid resolve. Every single give-mea-home-where-the-buffalo-roam bromide was there, except the buffalo were zebras, and at that inevitable point in the story where one
billion natives attack completely unprovoked, it was Zulus with
spears and shields instead of Apaches with bows and arrows. The
Zulus were, of course, doing everything Apaches were always
depicted as doing before we discovered Apaches were noble ecologists-skewering babies, clobbering women and getting shot in
massive numbers.

South Africa's bigoted, knuckle-headed Boers turn out to be
North America's revered pioneer forefathers. And here I was, a
good American descendant of same, covered with gore from Indian
slaughters and belly stuffed to bursting by the labor of kidnapped
slaves, ready to wash up, have a burp and criticize the Afrikaners.

Now, if the horrible Afrikaners resemble us-or me, anyway-what about the English-speaking white South Africans?
They're better educated than the Afrikaners, richer, more cosmopolitan. They dress the same as Americans, act the same as
Americans and, forgiving them their Crumbled Empire accent,
speak the same language. What are they like?

I'd heard about the sufferings of the blacks in South Africa.
I'd heard plenty about the intransigent racists in South Africa. And
I'd heard plenty more than enough about the conscientious qualms
and ethical inconveniences that beset whites who go to South
Africa and feel bad about the suffering blacks and intransigent
racists there. But I'd never heard much about the middling sort of
ordinary white people with Mazdas to keep Turtle Waxed and child
support payments to avoid, the ones who so resemble what most of
us see when we brush our teeth. What's their response to the
quagmire of apartheid? How do they cope with the violence and
hatred around them? Are they worried? frightened? guilty? bitter?
full of conflicting emotions?

I stayed a month in South Africa, traveled five thousand
kilometers, talked to hundreds of people and came back with a twoword answer: they're drunk.

The South Africans drink and open their arms to the world.
Before I left the States I phoned a lawyer in Jo-burg, a man I'll call
Tom Mills, a friend of a friend. I called him to see about doing
some bird hunting. (Just because you're going to a place of evil and
perdition is no reason not to enjoy it.) And when I called him back
to tell him what hotel I'd be staying in, Tom said, "The hell you are.
We've got a guest house and a swimming pool. You're staying with
us." This was a sixth-generation white African, no radical or pal of
the African National Congress. He knew I was an American reporter and would do to South Africa what American reporters
always do and which I'm doing right here. And he didn't otherwise
know me from Adam. But Tom insisted. I was his guest.

"It isn't like you thought it would be, is it?" said Tom as we
walked around the lawn with enormous whiskeys in our hands. "It's
like California, isn't it?" Except the sparrows are chartreuse and
the maid calls you Master. "That doesn't mean anything," said
Tom. "It's just like saying `boss' or whatever." And that barking
noise, that's jackals on the tennis court. "Mind your step," said
Tom. "This is where the yard boy got a cobra in the power mower."

The South Africans drink and make big plans. Tom's plan was
to put a property qualification on the vote. "Do away with apartheid
and the Group Areas Act and all that. Let anybody have whatever he can afford. If he can afford political power, let him have that,
too. That's about how you do it in the States, isn't it? It doesn't
change things much."

Tom's friend Bill Fletcher had a plan for splitting up the whole
country into little cantons, like Switzerland's, and federating it all
back together again some way or other-togetherheid.