Poet and wrtier Breyten Breytenbach in Paris, France, 1982. (Photo by Patrick SICCOLI/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
In 1973, playwright Anthony Akerman left South Africa to further his studies in the UK. He’d resolved not to return home while apartheid was still the law — something he thought would be easy. But the euphoria soon wore off and was replaced by chronic homesickness. In this lightly edited excerpt from his memoir Lucky Bastard, Akerman relates how the exiled Breyten Breytenbach welcomed him as a fellow exile
The course at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff, Wales, simply provided an opportunity for us to do our own projects.
I’d come to the UK to escape South Africa and had had hopes of working in British theatre. Why was I directing a play by Brink? The year before, while at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, I’d directed several one-act plays by Harold Pinter but found myself at a slight disadvantage as I was unfamiliar with many British cultural references.
With a South African play, I was on firmer ground. I realised that becoming English was not going to be easy and I wasn’t working very hard at it.
Browsing in a bookshop one day I picked up the Penguin edition of Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm. I’d avoided reading it in the past but now, with the rain lashing against the windows of my student digs, I opened the novel and was hooked from the first sentence.
“The full African moon poured down its light from the blue sky into the wide, lonely plain.”
When I finished, I wrote to Mum and Dad saying how much I’d love to be in the Karoo for 24 hours again. The euphoria I experienced after arriving in London was clearly ephemeral and from that day on, I was incurably homesick.
When I went to Paris for the first time over Christmas 1974, Brink wrote to Breyten Breytenbach, introducing me as his friend and saying I’d be contacting him.
I met Breyten at Café Le Soufflot, and after café au lait and discursive conversation, he said he had to go and drop off or collect something from Orly Airport and, if I had nothing better to do, why didn’t I come along for the ride?
While he negotiated the Parisian streets in his red Citroën deux chevaux, Breyten told me about Peter Blum’s poem Oorlewendes (Survivors) and how exiles always stare into water looking for their lost country of Atlantis. He was the first exile I’d met.
When I asked him if he’d ever go home, he replied enigmatically, “We all go home in the end.”
I’m not sure what he did at Orly. Perhaps he was delivering or receiving clandestine communication for Okhela, an underground project that would fatefully take him back to South Africa and into prison within eight months.
Before I left for Cardiff, Breyten gave me a copy of Lotus, a book of Zen love poems he’d written for his wife Yolande under the nom de plume Jan Blom and inscribed it: “In memory of Atlantis.”
Although I wasn’t planning on returning home, I hadn’t yet burnt my bridges. But it seemed Breyten had already marked me out as a fellow exile.
I’d wanted to direct Fugard’s latest play — Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act — at the Sherman Theatre for a festival called Africa on Stage, but it fell through when an actor became unavailable.
I mentioned this to Breyten and he put me in touch with the Mayibuye Group in London. Mayibuye was the cultural wing of the ANC, and they’d recently put together a show of struggle poetry and liberation songs. I arranged for them to come down and managed to secure a small performance fee for them.
I’d never had any political aspirations, but I wanted to stand up and be counted. I’d realised it was just a matter of time before I came to the attention of South African spies. The year before, when Brink had been in London to meet his publisher about Looking on Darkness, the upcoming English translation of his banned novel Kennis van die Aand, we’d been to the theatre and had a meal together.
After he arrived back in South Africa, he wrote: “Landed with something of a jolt when I was awaited by the SB [the police’s security branch] and informed, very pleasantly, that they’d followed my every move over there.”
I passed the message on to Mum and Dad and said that meant I’d also been followed. They wouldn’t have liked reading that. They were law-abiding and were prepared to abide by any law if it was the law.
Mum probably thought Brink must have done something wrong to attract the interest of the Security Police, whose raison d’être she neither questioned nor wished to understand. I kept trying to reassure them — and myself — that my talent would eventually secure me fame and, if not fortune, at least some gainful employment. After the Mayibuye Group had given their performance in Cardiff, I wrote: “Their show was very well attended … and I managed to get £50 as a donation to the African National Congress.”
Why did I mention the incriminating donation to the ANC? Did I think no one would open letters addressed to Mum and Dad? Or did I want the spies to read what I’d written? And why did Dad keep that letter? After Breyten was arrested and put on trial, Dad was clearly worried because he only kept letters with personal news. I’d clearly started burning bridges.
As my involvement with South African political exiles increased — although there was no discernible causal relationship — my employment prospects decreased in inverse proportion.
A few provincial repertory theatres had created positions for directors just out of theatre school. I applied to them all, but my applications were unsuccessful. Those theatres would have been inundated with applications and, understandably, foreigners without work permits wouldn’t have made it through the first round.
The Aliens Department of the South Wales Constabulary had given me leave to remain in the UK until September, after which I’d become an illegal alien. I needed to come up with something fast if I didn’t want to be sent home to do army camps and answer questions about raising funds for the ANC.
I discovered I could get a work permit for the UK if I got a job teaching English to foreigners at the Berlitz School. It was a way to get a foot in the door, legalise my status and, with boundless youthful energy, I no doubt felt it would also give me time to pursue theatrical projects.
That was the future that was staring me in the face when I went to supper with South African exiles in Golders Green one night. One of the guests was Conny Braam, chairperson of the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement, whom I’d briefly met the year before when I’d passed through Amsterdam on a hitchhiking trip around Germany.
She was vivacious, energetic, enthusiastic and attractive. I asked her if any Fugard plays had ever been staged in Dutch and she was sure they hadn’t. I then told her about Statements and how the play exposed South Africa’s race laws.
After seeing this play, I said, audiences would understand that apartheid was a crime against humanity. Braam was brimming with enthusiasm, said she thought it was a fantastic idea and would see what she could do to make it happen as soon as she got back to Amsterdam.
That was just the break I needed. I’d get to direct a play I wanted to do in a city I’d loved and, when I returned, I’d qualify for another six-month UK visa. But when I woke up the next morning the Berlitz School seemed a more likely outcome.
A few days later the phone rang.
“Hello, Anthony speaking …”
“With Conny Braam.”
“Oh, wow, hi, Conny.”
“There’s a ticket for you at the KLM desk.”
“What KLM desk?”
“At Heathrow. If it’s okay with you, you can come to Amsterdam next week Wednesday.”
“Are we going to do the play?”
“Well, all the theatres are on holiday in August, but we can talk when they come back. In the meantime, perhaps you could do some research for us?”
“Sure. What research?”
“It’s about the Cultural Accord between South Africa and the Netherlands. We want to send a report to parliament to have it cancelled. Maybe you could write on censorship in South Africa?”
“Of course.”
“You can stay with Breyten’s Dutch translator for a while. He’s a nice man called Adriaan van Dis.”
“Perfect.”
“So we will give you a place to stay and pocket money for three months and that should give you time to make some connections with theatre people. Is that okay?”
In 1975 Amsterdam seemed infinitely more sophisticated than London. Everyone I met spoke several European languages, the bars stayed open until 1 o’clock in the morning and the food was cosmopolitan and edible.
When I touched down on 6 August, the temperature was over 30°C, it was still light at 10 o’clock at night, and long-legged girls were riding bikes in miniskirts. Apocryphal stories circulated about how you could walk up to a policeman with a joint in your hand and, if you asked politely, he’d give you a light.
Braam picked me up from the airport, introduced me to the staff I was going to be working with at the anti-apartheid office and we ended the day with a braai on the roof of a house in the red-light district. This is where Adriaan van Dis would collect me and take me back to his apartment.
I’d called Breyten soon after Conny’s phone call and he told me Van Dis was the right person to put me in touch with theatre people. What I didn’t know was that when I arrived in Amsterdam, Breyten was wandering around Hillbrow with a false French passport and the assumed identity of Christian Galaska.
Late one August afternoon, I was in the anti-apartheid office using their golf-ball typewriter to write a personal letter. The only other person there was a staffer called Kier Schuringa.
When the phone rang, Kier picked up, uttered a few monosyllabic grunts and hung up. Then he turned to me and said, “Breyten has been arrested in South Africa.”
I’d had no idea about Breytenbach’s clandestine activities and didn’t see him again for another seven and a half years.
Lucky Bastard is published by Praxis Publishing and is available in bookstores, as well as from Takealot and Amazon.
