Wat ek lees, is eintlik ’n binnekamersaak. Dit word deur my belangstelling en die gedrukte boeke tot my beskikking bepaal. Dit is vir my ’n verleentheid dat ek ’n lys van sommige gelese boeke openbaar het, maar dit is gedoen om ’n bepaalde resultaat te verkry.
Chigurh se boekelys (SêNet, 24 deser) is op ’n baie hoër vlak as 7de Laan. Wat jy lees, dui op die gehalte van jou gees. Na aanleiding van Rebecca West se beroemde boek oor Suid-Slawië (1941) volg hier enkele opmerkings. In 1993 is Robert Kaplan se Balkan ghosts gepubliseer. Die jaar daarna het Brian Hall se verdienstelike werk oor dieselfde onderwerp, The Impossible Country, verskyn. Dit is gevolg deur The Balkans deur Dennis Hupchick in 2002, wat ’n breër historiese perspektief bied. Eersgenoemde twee is sterk deur West beïnvloed. West se teks was inderdaad die aanleiding vir Kaplan se boek, wat op sy beurt veral Amerika (maar ook die Weste) se beleid jeens die Balkan-lande beïnvloed en selfs bepaal het omdat Bill Clinton die boek gelees het.
Ek vind biografiese werke interessant omdat hulle ’n aanduiding gee van hoe mense hulle eenmalige geleentheid in die werklikheid benut het. Carl Rollyson is die outeur van Rebecca West: A saga of the century (London: Sceptre, 1996, 442p). West was bekend om haar omstrede uitlatings, onder andere omdat sy nie ’n kuddedier was nie. Ek beperk die aandag hier tot haar drie maande lange besoek aan Suid-Afrika in 1960. “She had accepted a [British] Sunday Times offer to report on the apartheid regime of Dr Verwoerd” (p 286). In Brittanje was sy onder sterk druk om apartheid te veroordeel. Dit het sy gedoen, maar nie sonder genuanseerdheid in haar waarnemings en verslae nie.
In Suid-Afrika is sy oorval met die menings van liberales en linkses. “She did not hold with Nadine’s [Gordimer] view of economic sanctions. The country needed capital to develop. She also thought Nadine was obsessed with white guilt and tried too hard to establish friendships with blacks … Rebecca saw no virtue in economic boycotts that would impoverish blacks … Rebecca thought many of the liberals were phonies and Communist dupes, and she attacked the small Liberal Party for its advocacy of a universal franchise, because she believed that as in England voting rights should be extended gradually as the black population became more literate” (p 289).
Sy was teen die Amerikaanse swartmagbeweging gekant (p 326). “Rebecca was by no means prejudiced against Afrikaners. Indeed, she had the same affinity for them as for the American Southerners … She believed that Afrikaners were morally superior to their government … She saw in everyday Afrikaners a humanity largely lacking in their National Party” (p 292). “Sooner or later it would be realized that he [Verwoerd] had ’no real affinity with the stoutly sensible Afrikaners … though many South African laws were unjust, she did not want to encourage distrust for the law as such” (p 294).
“Rebecca thought African tribal life abysmal … She found African students obsessed with one issue: ‘one man one vote.’ She did not think it advisable to revolutionize the country as quickly as they wished, or that it was realistic to think that all of South Africa’s problems were due to whites and to apartheid, ‘I do not see what is gained by shutting our eyes to various disagreeable facts about African life’ … as she considered black-on-black violence and the absurd power of the witch-doctors. She thought lasting change in Africa could only come about in gradual, evolutionary fashion. In Durban, she was impressed with the Indian population and worried that it would be overwhelmed in a state designed exclusively on the principle of one man, one vote” (p 292-293).
Johannes Comestor