Litnet

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Whatever labels the world gave him, from a young age Herman had a sense of himself as an outsider – the randeier of the book’s subtitle.

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Title: Hoerkind: Die memoires van ’n randeier
Author: Herman Lategan
Publisher: Penguin Random House
ISBN: 9781776093380

One of the things Herman Lategan and I have in common is that we’re both a consequence of an unwanted pregnancy. In 1949, I was parted from my mother in a Salvation Army home, and she was told to carry on as if nothing had happened. In 1964, Ria Lategan took the decision to keep her baby. Because his father, Sam, wasn’t ready to accept responsibility, Herman was born out of wedlock. Our mothers were only 21 when they gave birth.

After putting me up for adoption, my mother transferred from Paarl and resumed her nursing training at Rondebosch Hospital with an unblemished reputation. Public morals had changed little by the time Herman Lategan was born; if faced with an unwanted pregnancy, young girls in so-called respectable white society either got married or gave up their babies for adoption. That’s why Ria’s decision to keep Herman seems extraordinarily courageous. How did she face down the stigma of being an unmarried mother? Perhaps the demi-monde of Kloof Street’s boarding houses regarded respectability as the hollow sham it is, but elsewhere she also seems not to have been harshly judged. It was her baby who was judged. The Dutch Reformed Church (NGK) refused to christen him because he was illegitimate and there were those who disparagingly referred to him as a whore-child (hoerkind).

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Lategan also shares moments of beauty, happiness and warmth in a narrative that is insightful, ironic, humorous and compassionate. And it’s a page-turner.

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Whatever labels the world gave him, from a young age Herman had a sense of himself as an outsider – the randeier of the book’s subtitle. His formative years were spent in an adult world with no siblings and few friends of his own age. His mother had a flair for the dramatic that imbued life with a certain theatricality even when there was little or no money for food. When Ria wasn’t around, Herman – like Blanche Dubois – depended on the kindness of strangers. The writer he was destined to become was already internalising and remembering these experiences. When he reached school-going age, his mother told him she’d run out of money and was placing him in an orphanage. Perhaps she thought – or convinced herself – that what she was doing was in the best interests of her child, but Herman felt bereft, discarded and abandoned.

After that, he was farmed out to a ready-made family of cousins who spared no effort to make him feel like the poor relation he was. The tight-sphinctered and disapproving Tina Lategan seemed to take a perverse pleasure in telling him he was destined to end up in the gutter. This prediction haunted Herman with the power of a prophetic curse. When he was sufficiently provoked to stand up for himself, his indignant relatives deposited him on his mother’s doorstep. This ushered in a happy, if short-lived, interlude when mother and child were reunited. Ria was young and attractive and had always been on the lookout for Mr Right. When she finally thought she’d found him, she couldn’t have been more wrong.

She was in her early thirties and presumably felt the time had come for her to think of her own happiness. So, she left Herman with his bemused father and went off with her knight in rusty armour to his Namaqualand farm. His father was one of the strangers upon whose kindness Herman had come to depend – but sadly, he was anything but dependable. Although he had his good points, he would periodically fall off the wagon and spend months in an alcoholic stupor, while his wife – who certainly hadn’t signed up for this – did her best to take care of Herman. Holidays on the farm in Namaqualand offered no respite. He discovered that his mother felt trapped in an abusive relationship with an alcoholic husband. She also took to heavy drinking and gave as good as she got. The young Herman survived life-threatening episodes during which his mother’s husband came after them with a gun. Fortunately, he was too drunk to shoot straight.

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Perhaps his parents didn’t deliberately set out to screw up his life, but they certainly didn’t prioritise his needs over theirs. Having been in an abusive relationship with both parents, he’d have had a low self-image and very little self-esteem. That made him a prime target for abuse at the hands of a surrogate parent – and that’s exactly what happened.

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Life with his father continued to unravel, as did his father’s marriage. One day, Sam had a heart-to-heart with him, during which he told Herman he probably wasn’t the father he’d have liked to have had – conversely, Herman was probably not the son Sam would have wanted either. That’s great. Thanks for that. It brought to mind his mother having told him she’d have preferred to have had a daughter. So, he segued from being an unwanted pregnancy to being an unwanted child. Perhaps his parents didn’t deliberately set out to screw up his life, but they certainly didn’t prioritise his needs over theirs. Having been in an abusive relationship with both parents, he’d have had a low self-image and very little self-esteem. That made him a prime target for abuse at the hands of a surrogate parent – and that’s exactly what happened. His best friend’s father was a highly respected arts editor on Rapport who was able to open doors to the literary and theatrical worlds that so fascinated the 13-year-old Herman. Coenie Slabber was also a paedophile who allegedly groomed and sexually abused him over a five-year period.

It suited his father for Herman to become a boarder at his school and, for a time, he prospered away from what had passed for home. He was a voracious reader, academically sound, creative, a keen debater and founder of the school newspaper, but – almost inevitably – he began to sabotage himself, and what could have been a glittering school career came to an ignominious end. His heart was set on the theatre, and he was one of the fortunate few who auditioned successfully for the UCT drama school. Unfortunately, his matric results were not good enough to get into university. So, instead of becoming a thespian trouper, he became a boknaaier troopie. That ended, to his undisguised relief, with what was tantamount to a dishonourable discharge. Were suicide attempts, substance abuse and stints in rehab the fulfilment of Tina Lategan’s prophetic curse? For a while, he did become a denizen of the gutter, sleeping rough on park benches and spending a year where I started out in life – in the Salvation Army.

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It’s a rare privilege to be able to go on that journey with him.

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If this sounds like an unrelenting tale of misery, a swaarkrystorie and a depressing read, I’ve given the reader a false impression. Lategan also shares moments of beauty, happiness and warmth in a narrative that is insightful, ironic, humorous and compassionate. And it’s a page-turner. It’s brutally honest and unsentimental. The retelling of his childhood and formative years is an attempt to understand himself and those who touched his life in different ways. In a switchback ride, he brings the story up to the present day. It’s a story that takes the reader to New York, London and the Antipodes. It celebrates his love of Cape Town, of Kloof Street, of Sea Point. It’s a story that encompasses gay life, the arts and journalism. It’s populated by fascinating characters and celebrities – some of whom find themselves irresistibly fabulous. Then there are the down-and-outs for whom Lategan feels immense compassion because he’s been there and knows what it feels like. On the other hand, he takes no prisoners, and those who treated him shabbily get short shrift. But he’s also unsparing towards himself for his volatile mood swings and, at times, outrageous behaviour – including towards people who always gave him their unwavering support. It’s one of life’s satisfying symmetries that the son of the doctor who brought him into the world became a mainstay in his life – first as a lover, then as a friend and the person to whom the book is dedicated. Ultimately, it’s the story of how Herman defied Tina Lategan’s prophecy, picked himself up out of the gutter, learned to forgive himself and, by learning to forgive others, was able to liberate himself from the hold they once had over him – including, and perhaps most importantly, those who never acknowledged the harm they’d done.

Although it is written in Afrikaans, this should not deter the reader with a reasonable grasp of the language. Lategan, who for 20 years refused to write in the language, has written this book in a way that makes Afrikaans sing. And although he could have written it equally well in English, it’s fitting that in telling a story that goes to the very essence of who he is – what shaped him and what he has become – he should do so in the language in which he first gave expression to his thoughts. Lategan describes his journey to emotional healing, and the reader is left with the inescapable impression that the act of writing this book was an integral part of that process. It’s a rare privilege to be able to go on that journey with him.

See also:

Hoerkind deur Herman Lategan: ’n onderhoud met die skrywer