God for the Nationalist Part v. He enjo ys the advantages of the sta t us quo comb ined with the pleasure sof what he thinks is a clear conscience.
And Ithink it would be only fair to add that it isn't on ly those who vote U.P.who quietl y enjo y the South Afr ica n stat us quo. People who are Progr essives, even perhaps active Progre ssives,are oft en in the midst of aclandestine love-affair with the stat us quo. (I do n' t claim immunity myself , Imay add). To take butone instance,some of the thingsthat I haveheard from membe rs of the loca l st udents' WagesCo mmissionsuggest that Progr essive people aren't always wholly progressive in pract ice . . .
among thewhites. (Though Isuppor t the Progr essiveParty invery many ways, I am not at the momen t speaking as aProg ressive, still less am Ivoicing an off icia l Part y view ).
Now it see ms to me that the ProgressivePart y's arguments, many of which are in the mse lvesvery powerful,will make little headway among whitesuntilthey are backed up by a naturalpressur e from blacks. Itis pressur e from blacks, real pressure, that whites understand.When that pressu re begins to be exerted. and when it beco mesclear that it cannotbe stamped out bybannings, prohibition s, legisla- tion,etc., then (I think )-and no t before then- ma ny white peopl e will begin to pay attention to the Progressive Par tv.
I think we whites must allshudder and bow our heads when we think of the implications of these recen t bannings,the implications of what is happeni ng inour societ y-implication swhich involve us all and which partly accuse us all.
• • •
"Tha t' sit ," Mr Vo rste r might say, "and that' s why Iam tryin g to stamp out the black pressure." Mr Vorste r might say it;but many whites, evensecretlysome Pro- gressives,wo uld agree with him."I ban peop le:'
Mr Vo rsterwoul d say, if he were in the habit of speak ing ope nlyabo ut such matt e rs, "Iban peop lein order to preserve the traditio nal Sout h African way of life."
There isone of these implicat ion s that I'd like to develop a little further. Isaid earlie r tha t an obst ruct io n of a natural proce ss could lead to an ine rtness- in this case, an inertness among whites,who are unlikely to modi fy their views unless the y are made to face up, before it is too late, to the thoug hts and feelings of black peopl e.
Let me apply this tho ught to the position of the Progres- sivePertv. For allits talent, for all its strong argume nts, it has not so far made much progress as a political force
SOUTH AFRICA
Butof coursescctetv.especiallya society likeours, cann ot be static. Black peo ple arefeelingbitte r resent- mentswhether the y are allow ed to expr esstheir feelings or not. These resen tm en ts arebeginnin g to bo il and bubble under thesurface . Most whites continue com placentlyto live the ir trad itional wayof life.
It isdifficu lt to esca pe the conclusionthat, asthings are going now, sooner or later somethi ng dread fu lmust happen. D
AND 'THE CUBIST SENSIBILITY'
by Peter Strauss
The Cubist movementwas such a complex affa ir that it probabl ychanged our sensibilit iesin a thou sand different ways. But why not sta rt talking about the Cubists bit by bit , at any rate? They havechanged our livesso radically that we should never sto p analysing them. I want to talk abo ut a particular effec t that became less and less eviden t asthe movem ent developed. Itis most inescapable in the earlycanvasses of 1907 and 1908. Let me give so me exa mples: Picasso's Les Dem o iselles d'Avigno n (1907 ); his
Fruit and Wineglass, and particularl yhisThree Women, both of 1908;Braqu e's Hou ses at L'E sta qu e of 1907.
These pictures bring us into an extraordinari ly close relationship wit h them, if we compare them wit h, say, B
work s of the High Renaissanc e. It is as though a broad carp et that had sepa rated usfrom theca nvasses were rolled away, and we cou ld ste p right up to the m no w- and are almost drawn into them.
In Renaissance paintings I am always aware of thisca rpet . It isa broad carp et, obeyingthe lawsof perspec tive, probablymarked off in littl esquaresalso obe y ing the laws of perspective, and it calmly sepa rates me fro m wha t is behind it:the event. Of course the painting itself is three-dime nsional-in fact, it isan extensio n of this carpe ted hall Iam standing in;like a mirror in a restauran t
it gives the illusio n of twice as much space. And wit hin this exte nsio n of thespace of the hall the event takes place. It takes place in three dime nsions but not arou nd me; I am no t invo lved in it; Iwat c h itacross the ca rpet.
The paint erhas put the event behi nd a theat re proscen- ium; it beco mes aspect acle. DaVinci's Last Suppe r isthe perfect example.
The Manneris ts that followed on the Renaissance painte rs used th ree-d ime nsional space very differe ntl y, and they are pro bab ly to be ta ken seriously as the ancesto rsof Cubism, as well as of the horror com ic. They used fore- shor teni ng and odd view-points and gest ure in such away as to lead the eye alo ng a pattern of reced ingl;mbs ra th e r deep into the pict u re. Space became act ive- a matter of grandi loq uent gesture. In a new way, the space within the pain ti ng was linked to the space outsi de, in which the spectator wasst a ndi ng. The event in the pic tur e was an extension of theevents taking place in himse lf. Fo r one thin g, the space of the picture was usua lly an extension of the fact tha t the picture itself wastow er ing ove rthe spectator. The picture itself 'conti nued' this tow ering effect. The gest u res of the figur es in the picture werean extension of the spect ato r's own spir it ua l gestu res. un- fortu nate ly the emotion was inva riably 'bad' emo tio n- grandi loq uen ce- and if the new use of space ,wit h its grea te r tecttle ness and itsgreat er abi lity to invo lvethe specta to r in it as anextension of it, made anew intima cy possible, everythingelse abo u t the art repe lled any intimacy.
You need to jump all the way to Degas to find the sa me kind of space used to portray, say, a woma n trying on hat s. Degas used the une xpected view poi n t of the Manner . ists (actually theirstended to be in fact rather mor e pre- dict ab le than hisl. He also used Ito create anactive space]
a way of stronglysuggest ing planesat va rio us interesting angles to each ot her and to the plane of the pictu re's sur face. We are not lookingat hisimagesover acarpet, either. No r are we lo o king thro ugh a window at a field of light, as with most of the Impressioni sts.
Degas is actually ast oni shing. If his picturesdidn ' t have the air of be ing mere sket ches, if his subject-matter were less charming and distract ing-Degaswoul d be a muc h mor e alarming artist than he ap pea rs. Fo rtu nat el y, also, fo r his easy acce pt ance, hisboldest experi me nts have the air of declaring themselves to be odd ities. The Rena issance artists let us see the show as though we were sitti ng in the aud itoriu m; Degaslet us see it from the wingsor from the flies.Which is a uniqu eand magical experience, but one never need feelabout it that this is theway the show ought to be seen. Degasbrou ght us into a new and, at first , ancdd-seeminq intimacy with the world arou nd us.
But wit h him thiscould still seem like aho lid ay from 'p ro pe r' seei ng, It to ok a man as tough·mind ed as Picasso to show us that the world outside us really is as close to us as his pict u res mak e it seem.
For in theCubist pictures I am talking about one is involved in the space of the pictu re as one never had bee n before. It is useless to use the old language and talk of the tacti lequalitiesof three-di mens io nal form. It is that the shapes on the canva s have business to execute with our hands, and our ha nd s have businesstoexecu t e with them.
The world that isinsidethe picture is aworld that is 'to hand' and 'at hand.' Webeco me aware for the first time just to what exte n t we perceivetheworld as anextension of our bod y , and space in terms of it. These Cubist paint ings make ou r bod y 'co n t in ue' in t o the objects of theevery d ay world. And theworld , inste ad of remai ning a spectacle, becomes an environment-presses onus with its infor ma t io n and its dema nd s.
The sensibility deve lo ped by this elemen t of Cubis m is paralleled in the twentieth century views on perception- in thework of the gestalt psyc holo gists and the phe norn en - oloqists. It has obtained the greatest mass significance through the most de mo crat ic of art forms, the cinema.
True, we allknow films that use the scre en to suggest spectacle. Bu t we have also all come across camer awor k that has the effect of using thescreen to place us in an environm e n t.
Wefind a similar sensib ility at wor k in the few mat u re poems of the Engl ishwar poet ,Isaac Rosen berg. It was the sensibility that enabled him to depict so much of the ho rror of life in thetrench es in the First Wor ld War- and also so much of its human ity and harsh beaut y. Rosenberg was a po et whose de velop ment we canfoll ow from very early on, and the transfor mat ion of his style is asto nishing.
In his earlyworks we find ourselvesvague ly flo ating , disembodied through an ado lescent'swo rld of longings and int imations. Wit h a lat e work, ho wever, we find ou rse lves caught wit hin a prec ise field of tensio ns- t he poe m isa place,an environme nt, where conf lict ing energies are held in the unst able synt hesis of a humanmom ent. The wor ld has co nt racted to a place whe re meaning is learned from thingsas close to you as the pop p y you havestuck beh ind your ear, or the rat that jum ps over your hand.
If, the n, the sen sibility of the ea rly Cub ist paintings and the po et ry of Rosenbe rg isone which- as Ibelieve - cha rac te risesour twe n t ie th cen tu ry relat ions hip with the world, what isthere to lea rnfrom it that might help us-cane part icula rly the Whit es amo ngus, who are abo u t as help- less as so ld iers caught up in a war- to live meaningfully in contempora ry South Africa ?
What choices are ope n to us in the rea lm of acti on ? We can choose to do what we can wit hin the White politic al esta blis hm e nt- certainly acho ice that maybe a noble one- but one in which one's pow er is virtually nil, and abo ve all one that may be tempe rame nt ally repu lsiveto som e of us. We can do our bit in getti ng the Black labo u r mo ve- men t unde r way. But no t all of us have the qualitie s of charac ter tha t are req uisite in such wor k. Moreov er it must inevita bly bewo rk that strives to make itself- and all White inte rven tio n-su perfluo us. It iswork that the White must feelin some degree tobe dest ructi ve of his own freedom of act ion .Onewould like to be ableto help form the future consc iousness of one's cou ntr y, But Black consciousness, on whic h it will depend ,hasrejected us.
We are truly at a loose end. True,we can be su re that thiswill no t always be the case. The time will come whe n even the White liberal or radical willhave his hand s mo re than full, when there will be only to o much for him to do and dec ide. It is the interi m that is so agonising to us.
And we fee l it as a subtle destruction of our cha ract er, so 9
that we are afraid that when the time comes we will no longer be able to rise to what is demande d of us.
To me itseems that all we can do in the int er im is live as fully and as consciously as possible, and the 'Cubist sensibility' can help us to do this. We need to feel eve ry aspectof our environme ntas something do se and pressing on us, involving us. This entailsa breaking away from all id ealism, all Utopianism, all theoretic ana lysis. The liberal sensibili ty ha s been subtly undermined by the utilitarian re aso nable ness of nineteenth century th ou gh t . But OUf actu a llivesin Sout h Afr ica have necessarily been different . We feel daily aro und us the naked im pact ofhu miliat ion and de sp air, the horrible fecundity of misunderstandings muftiplvinq in our relat ionships witheac h ot h er- and occasionally we feel the flash, the unmitigated directne ss, of communicat ion ,and asense of the fu nd ame n t al uni t y of being in the same country for good or ill. Thisun ity is nottheunit y of a utilitarian community that understands itself and its common needs as part of an abst rac t syst e m, or part of a community of ideals. It isthe un ity of peo ple respo ndin g with intense imaginativeness to their own pressu res and needs, and so also to tho seof others, with
which they are inevit ably in vol ved .We understand each other because our jagged prob lem sare locked together and complementary, like the pieces of a jigsaw or the planes in a Cubist picture .
So we should read not Mill bu t Fano n, th at terr ibly distorted mind. Disto rted he may be by his sens e of
injust ice, by his bitterness, by his Black chauvinism- but the very distortion of his mind, so one thinks at times, is wh at he has to give to us, what he has to say to us. It should be the snrne wit h th ewriting we produce-we ne ed a Fanon .Wecan no longer reach after idealsolution sor serene anal yses :what we can produce is only the dist or t ed moment of our be ing reg istered with urgent consciousness and humanit y.We can make it clear to ourselvesand to eac h othe r that we live in an environment in wh ic h the strengths and weak nesses of man reveal themselves with direct, though often ambiguous and difficult, inte nsity.
Ifwe live and are conscious in this way weshall often find our consciousness in t o ler ableto ou rselves; but at least weshall kn ow ourse lves to be aliveand human.0
BWANA GO HOM E
(Bob Hitchcock ; pub. Howar d Timmins: 165 p.p. R4,75l
by Alan Pat o n
Thisbook is easy to read, it is full of factual info rma t io n, it is good lively journalism. But don't read it for rela x - at io n, or to becheered up. because it won't relax you and it won't cheer you up.
I am at a disadvantage because I have not been to independent Zambia at all. Ilast visited the actual cou nt ry in 195B, when it was called Northern Rhodes ia, and was part of the ill-fa ted Fed eration of Centra lAfrica . one of the last attempts in history by the wh it e man to im pose his willon black men.
I must th eref o re rather re late the factsas Mr Hitchcock sees them, because Iam in no posit ion to conf irm or con t est them, Iam going to assume that the factsare true, tho u gh it ispossible that the who le sad story has been coloured by Mr Hitchcock's extreme disillusionment with Zam biaand Presiden t Kaunda.
Ind eed Mr Hit chco c k can be said to have three themes.
The first is Zam bia and the Presid en t. Thesecond is the ine xo rab le growth of the guerilla movement and its 10
im me nse threat to the ru lers of Port ugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa.The third is the warn ing, grave and au thor- ita ti ve, that if the white man in Afr ica do esn' t come to his senses,the end of his tenancy is near.
let us consid er the first them e . Mr Hitchcock is not a racist and he does not write like a racist.On the contrary he believes in human eq uality. But every black Zambian who read sthis bo o kwill regard him asa raci st. His con dem nat ion of modern Zambia is extreme. But so also is hiscondemnation of colo nia l North Rh od esia, where a white miner could earn R20Q per month and pay his servant R4,OO whe re men like Kau nd a cou ld be thrown out of white-owned shops, and where the noble white- wash of"pa rt ner shi p" co vered up the dirty structu res of race discrimination.
The n came Mr Hit ch coc k's turn, not exact ly to be thrown ou t, but to go withgood in t en tions int o a Zambian bar, and be totally igno red by the barman. Mr Hitchcock reg ards the Zambian army as "o n e of the most undis- cipli ned armies in Africa" and gives exam ples of whit e
