The world beyond the campus, where the real politicians operated rather than the student replicas, was a mystery to me. Realpolitik. The new term with its foreign accent clarified nothing. People I knew from campus, writers on the student paper, the members of theatre companies and vegetable co-ops, were finding their way into the Movement, as they called it, but I had no idea how to seek out such a path, and no inclination either, to be honest. The Movement. It sounded like a machine, not quite a juggernaut but a piece of earthmoving equipment for running down anyone who stood in the way, crushing the obstacles pragmatically into the churned-up demolition site of history. Construction site, they would have insisted.
Towards the end of my university days, a farmer near the Botswana border drove his bakkie over a landmine and his daughter was killed. The newspapers carried photographs of the child’s body and the parents’ anguish. The gory details. Soon afterwards, an activist recently released from prison came to speak on campus. He spoke passionately, provocatively, about the bitter realities of the struggle, quoting Lenin on revolutionary violence without mentioning his name. ‘There will be casualties,’ he said more than once. When a girl in the audience questioned the killing of soft targets, the murder of babies, he rounded on her as if she were a spoilt child: ‘This isn’t a party game — it’s a revolution! There are no innocent bystanders.’ She sat down as if she’d been slapped.
Thoughts like these must have run through my mind while my father was lecturing me about dirty politics and the things the security police did to detainees at John Vorster Square. He was looking for reassurance, you see, but I felt it necessary to fuel his unease, acting up, dropping in phrases from books — ‘the ruling class’ — repeating points made by radical students on the hustings during SRC elections. The need to Africanize ourselves and our culture, the morality of taking up arms against an oppressive regime, colonialism of a special kind. I may have mentioned Frelimo. No doubt I quoted Prof Sherman — Hegemony Cricket, we used to call him.
The button eyes in the leather couch winked as if they were in on the game.
After a while my father changed the subject. He began to talk about my national service. ‘If you’re not planning to go back to university,’ he said, ‘you should go into the army in July. Get it over with sooner.’ He knew my feelings on this subject. He was just reminding me of the unpleasant consequences of my decisions and it was a pretty good strategy. I began to watch my words.
The talk wound down. When I was on the point of leaving, he said, ‘Are you busy Thursday?’
‘Well, I’m working with Jaco as usual.’
‘Take a day’s leave. Tell him you have to go to a funeral. There’s something I want you to do for me.’
It was not a question. My first thought was that he wanted me to help with the stocktaking in the warehouse, which I’d done before, but he had something else in mind. He pushed a large book across the desk.
‘Have you heard of Saul Auerbach?’
The photograph on the cover looked familiar.
‘He’s a photographer, a very good one. Also happens to be a friend of your Uncle Douglas.’
Now I placed the photo. There was a copy of it in my uncle’s lounge. It had caught my eye mainly because I was not used to seeing a photograph framed and hung on the wall like a painting.
‘Doug’s arranged for you to spend Thursday with Saul. He’s doing some work around the city and he’s kindly agreed to let you ride along.’
‘What for?’
‘I think it will be good for you. You might even learn something.’
‘I don’t want to be a photographer.’
‘That doesn’t matter. It’s not about finding a profession, you’ll make your own way in the end, I’m sure. It’s about this anger you’re walking around with, this bottled-up rage against the world. It worries me: it’s going to land you in trouble. And that’s why you might learn something from Saul. He’s a man with strong convictions, but he’s learned to direct them.’
‘I don’t even know the guy.’
My father tapped on the book. ‘Just look at the pictures.’
If you want to find out about Saul Auerbach, go ahead and google him. He has three pages on Wikipedia and gets a mention on dozens of photography sites. Saulauerbach.com, which is maintained by his agent, has the basic facts of his career. If you’re after the details, there are blogs devoted to particular periods of his work and squabbles about its merits. Specialized search engines will guide you to his photographs in museums and you can find others scattered in online journals and galleries. Writing a paper? There are articles, freely accessible or available for purchase, on his style, his influences, his politics, on his use of black and white, on the question of whether he is a photographer or an artist or both. Planning to buy? Getart.com offers investment advice. If, after all this, you still need a book on the subject, the online retailers will show you what’s in print and bookHound will direct you to the bargains. You could become an expert on Auerbach without getting up from your desk.
In those days, before everyone’s life was an open secret, research involved a trip to a library or a newspaper archive, and the pickings were often slim. While I was curious about Auerbach, I did not have time to find out who he was. They might have had something about him in the Wartenweiler on campus, but I did not want to go there. I had declared the university out of bounds.
All I had was the pictures. I sat on my bed, with the book propped against my knees, and flipped through it. It was a great book, according to my father (quoting my uncle, the artistic side of the family). I had no way of telling, although I was ready to disagree. Between the covers were two hundred of Auerbach’s photographs: he had made the selection himself. The images were dense and sunken, they seemed to have settled beneath the glossy surfaces like gravestones. These black and white boxes weighed on me. Worlds had been compacted into them and sealed in oil. If I tilted the book the wrong way and exposed some pinhole to the air, they might burst into their proper dimensions. I imagined one of these rooms inhaling, filling itself with life, breaking back into scale with a crack of stage lightning. The images were familiar and strange. I kept looking at a hand or a foot, a shoe, the edge of a sheet turned back, the street name painted on a kerb. Have I been here? Is this someone I’m going to meet? I turned the pages with the unsettling feeling that I had looked through the book before and forgotten.
The title page was inscribed: ‘To Doug and Ellen, with my very best wishes and thanks for your kindness and support, Saul, 12th September 1980.’ The book had been closed before the ink dried and fragments of the letters had come off on the opposite page, lightly curved strokes like eyelashes. What kind of support had my uncle given Saul Auerbach? Auntie Ellen was a music teacher and dancer of note, prone to demonstrating her skills extravagantly at family weddings when she’d had one too many. Perhaps she’d taught Auerbach to rumba in an unguarded moment.
In the flap of the dust jacket I found a handful of exhibition reviews clipped from newspapers and magazines, none more than a few paragraphs long. One reviewer spoke about the rigour of Auerbach’s composition and his fine understanding of light. Another praised his dispassionate eye but questioned the grimness of the images it gave rise to. A third, more enthusiastic offering from Scenario said that the humanity of Auerbach’s vision transcended politics and enabled a deep engagement with his subjects.