Achmat Dangor: 1948–2020

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Achmat Dangor (photo: Gerrit Rautenbach - https://www.litnet.co.za/us-woordfees-2018-fotoblad-5/)

On Sunday 6 September 2020, writer Achmat Dangor died in Johannesburg at the age of 71. His death came shortly after that of photographer Jürgen Schadeberg and days before advocate George Bizos died. In those few weeks, we lost three major witnesses of our history; but at least we have Dangor’s poetry and fiction, Schadeberg’s rich photographic legacy and Bizos’s three books, including his detailed memoir, Odyssey to freedom.

For 50 years, Achmat Dangor was one of the constant voices of South African literature, a voice that told what it was to live in apartheid South Africa and in the new country as it struggled to gain an identity. His impact on the literary scene started in the 1970s when he emerged as both a writer and an activist. During that turbulent decade, he founded Black Thoughts with other writers in an attempt to have the voices of black authors heard in the townships. (Later, in 1987, he would also be one of the founding members of the Congress of South African Writers.) For five years, from 1973, Dangor was banned by the apartheid state and prevented from attending public gatherings. As it was during that period that I met him at reading events held in Braamfontein and at the University of the Witwatersrand, he clearly hadn’t been intimidated by the banning order. He was also publishing poems and short stories in such literary magazines as Izwi and Staffrider.

It was in the 1980s that Dangor hit the publishing scene with a succession of high voltage books. Although he had been born in Johannesburg and raised in Fordsburg, his first book used District Six in Cape Town as its dramatic and traumatic setting. Dangor had moved there in 1966 during the malevolent forced removal that systematically destroyed that part of the city. From his experience there came Waiting for Leila, a novella (cut out of a 400-page manuscript) and five short stories published in 1981. Two years later came a collection of poetry, Bulldozer. Then, in the anthology Modern South African poetry, three of his poems appeared, including the vibrantly iconoclastic “Slave song”, the last stanza of which reads:

Haai moenie hier innie
aisles kom spoegie
jy met jou
skiewe tong.

In many respects, Dangor’s was always a skiewe tong, subversively seeking the truth. And he did so in Majiet (a play, 1986); the novel The Z-town trilogy (1990); Private voices (poetry, 1992); the excoriating Kafka’s curse (a novella and three short stories, including “Jobman”, which was made into a movie; 1997); the novel Bitter fruit (2001), which gained him a wide international readership; Strange pilgrimages (short stories, 2013); and Dikeledi: Child of tears, no more (novel, 2017).

Along the way, he gathered a number of awards, starting with the Mofolo-Plomer Prize for Waiting for Leila in 1979; then the Herman Charles Bosman Prize for Kafka’s curse in 1998; with Bitter fruit, two shortlistings for the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (2003) and the Booker Prize (2004); and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the South African Literary Awards in 2015.

As is the case with most writers, Dangor had another life, much of it spent in what is known as the “development sector”. He was a founding executive director of Kagiso Trust and worked for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. From there, he was persuaded by Mandela to serve as CEO of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and did so from 2007 to 2013. After that, he was Ford Foundation’s representative in southern Africa until 2015, responsible for the allocation of grants in the region. He was also a director of advocacy, communications and leadership at United Nations Aids in Geneva, Switzerland. And, back in the 1990s, he taught creative writing and South African literature at New York State University, New York.

Yet, to meet Achmat Dangor was not to meet a man full of self-importance. He was the epitome of the quiet writer. I remember coming across him in a room at the Nelson Mandela Foundation staring thoughtfully out the window at the garden. We greeted one another, but those were the only words I remember. For some five minutes, we stood there in silence, because no other words were necessary. Again and again, I have heard others remark on this quality in him, as below:

Ben Williams, editor of the Johannesburg Review of Books: “A more thoughtful, engaged and humane writer you would be hard-pressed to find. He was a person of quiet purpose, but also sly humour – his presence illuminated any room he chose to walk into.”

Writer Ivan Vladislavić: “He had a streak of magic in him, and a fearless imagination, tackling subjects most writers shy away from. His passing is a huge loss to the writing world.”

In paying tribute to Achmat Dangor, there is one thing we shouldn’t forget: his own words. He was a master of the first sentence, and so here are a few:

“In the end, Amina left her husband because he breathed down her neck.” – Kafka’s curse

“The note requesting Andrew to report to John Vorster Square was delivered by a fat coloured man.” – “The visit”

“When after a long while the policeman did not return, Amina Mandelstam stood up and went to the window.” – “Nothing to confess”

“It was inevitable. One day Silas would run into someone from his past, someone who had been in a position of power and had abused it.” – Bitter fruit

The thoughtful writer who exuded calm when he appeared at book festivals will be missed – most sorely by his family: his wife, Audrey Elster; his children, Yasmin, Zane and Zachary; his grandchildren and his brothers and sister. The last words should be his. This from his poem, “Swansong”:

Listen,
do you hear
the wind ransack
the open plains
of my heart,
do you hear
the crack of that bell?

Totsiens, farewell,
sien jou weer.

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Kommentaar

  • Fanie Olivier

    Baie dankie, Mike, vir jou pragtige huldeblyk aan Achmat. Hy was inderdaad 'n voortreflike mens, sy werk vol insig en liefde; sy onbevooroordeelde omgang met Afrikaans tussern mense is nooit na waarde geskat nie. Indien ons ooit wil weet hoe 'n aktivis behoort te lyk, is hy die skoolvoorbeeld.

  • Reageer

    Jou e-posadres sal nie gepubliseer word nie. Kommentaar is onderhewig aan moderering.


     

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