THE LISTENER GUIDE

DOCUMENTARY David Berry welcomes a C4 season of programmes on mental health but still thinks television's coverage of the issue leaves a lot to be desired. Not all in the mind’s eye

One of the distinguishing features of tal health on British television and to Channel 4 has been its use of the develop different images and connec­ ‘season’: the broadcasting of several tions. Mind's Eye is only partly suc­ programmes with a common theme cessful at this. over a few short weeks. The flexibil­ On the plus side, most of the prog­ ity of the channel’s commissioning rammes that were available for pre­ editor system means that the editors view at the time of writing have man­ can operate like canny book pub­ aged to escape from that cliche of lishers, spotting gaps in other sta­ most recent programmes on mental tions’ outputs, deciding that a topic health, the choice between mental deserves a closer, more intensive hospital and ‘community care’. look and then commissioning (and Out of Our Minds (Friday 10.30- perhaps buying in from abroad) 11.30pm), for example, is a sensitive reported. tices seeking power over the human programmes from different produc­ exploration of life in a modern men­ All these programmes work well, psyche. tion companies, one or two of whom tal hospital which avoids a ritual con­ up to a point. To work together as a The one programme in Mind’s Eye might be set up specifically for the demnation of asylum life or scare ‘season’, they need to be com­ which does try and engage with all purpose. stories about what happens to pa­ plemented by other films which pro­ this, The History of Psychiatry Last summer, Carol Haslam, then tients who leave hospital. vide an overview, a sense of how the (Wednesday 9-10pm) is marred by Commissioning Editor for The first programme in a series on mental health system in Britain is exploring the problems through Documentaries and Education, de­ psychotherapies, A Change of Mind structured, how it all fits together. alternative comedy, a bright lun­ cided that mental health merited (14 November for six weeks) has the And this is where Mind’s Eye falls chtime idea which should have been such an approach. The result is courage to spend over 20 minutes on down, like so many other television scotched after a good night’s sleep. Mind’s Eye, a season of 16 program­ one shot of a group therapy session treatments of mental health before. Perhaps I am being a little unfair mes, 14 of which are new, that starts in progress. Courage because— as in There is too much description and to Mind’s Eye here, for there are next Wednesday and runs through till most psychotherapy sessions— much not enough analysis, too many life some very good programmes in the Christmas. C4 has also produced an of what is going on seems mundane stories and not enough theory and season indeed. But part of the prom­ excellent (and free) 36-page booklet and, in conventional televisual terms, history. The season takes as its start­ ise of a ‘season’ is that it breaks with which provides background to the boring. Its final programme, at pre­ ing point, like so many programmes television traditions. And Mind’s Eye programmes and lists over 80 orga­ sent still being filmed, intends to ex­ before, the experience of mental does not, in the end, do this. With so nisations working in mental health in plore psychotherapy in the National health, mental illness and treatment many programmes on mental health Britain today. Health Service, a subject which has rather than the power of psychiatry shown already, there is a real need All in all, then, another case of C4 not been properly covered on the and how that power evolved. to do something very different. A connecting with the parts other chan­ screen. The series gives the viewer The three programmes on schi­ good point to begin might be a film nels have yet to reach? Not quite. an accurate idea of what therapy is zophrenia (10, 17 and 24 October) on how television has tackled the Unlike C4’s season of films about actually like, something that has been are a case in point. subject over the last three decades. Poland last year, for example, or its rarely shown on television. They make eloquent pleas for a recent series on gay and lesbian The Madness Museum (Thursday better understanding of the illness, issues, mental health has hardly been 9.30-10.45pm), a drama about a day but these pleas have been made be­ DRAMA ignored by British television. On BBC at a mental hospital in 1860, general­ fore on television. What has not been Paul Kerr on a political thriller set in alone, there have been over 50 ly avoids the ‘lessons of history’ looked at is how schizophrenia be­ South Africa in the wake of documentaries and half-a-dozen approach that most TV histories of came a subject for psychiatric disci­ Sharpeville. series about the topic over the last 30 medical (and physical) science take, pline, how psychiatry ‘constructed’ years and that is not counting the the glorious march of science this form of classical madness. numerous short reports on current approach, the ‘wasn’t-it-awful-then/ What has not been examined on affairs and magazine programmes how-less-naive-we-are-now' pose. It is British television— and is not in which seem to have a particular fas­ a stunning and original film. Mind’s Eye—is the extension of the Process cination with stories on madness, Two programmes I was not able to discourse and practice of psychiatry scandal and cure. see, Mistaken for Mad? (31 October), from classical madness in the 19th workers In the first few months of 1985, a look at race and mental health, and century to neuroses and general un­ Panorama, Horizon and 40 Minutes We’re Not Mad .,. We're Angry (17 happiness in present times. How did If the first half of the Eighties witnes­ all did programmes on that perennial November), an impassioned chal­ this happen? How did a part of sub­ sed what Salman Rushdie has de­ issue in mental health, the closing of lenge to modern psychiatric treat­ jective experience become colonised scribed as a Raj revival’ on our the mental hospitals. ITV, Yorkshire ment by former patients, both prom­ by psychiatry, thought of as ‘mental screens—with films and TV serials and, more lately, Central have made ise much. The kinds of views covered health’, subject to its rules? like Heat and Dust, A Passage to significant documentaries about cur­ in these two documentaries have These are difficult questions, not India, Gandhi, The Far Pavilions and rent psychiatric practice. Programmes usually been tagged on to news re­ simply for British television but for Jewel in the Crown— the second half about mental illness are almost as ports or more conventional surveys, British thought. They mean rethink­ of the decade has seen a shift of common as the illness itself. and it is good to see them having ing psychiatry not as a benign or focus from Asia to Africa. Already on The challenge facing C4 was to more space. There is much that has malign institution—which most men­ the way are Richard Attenborough’s come up with something new, to been happening in these areas in the tal health programmes have opted Asking for Trouble (about Steve question past representations of men­ last few years that television has not for—but as a set of competing prac­ Biko), Anthony Thomas’s Rhodes and

26 THE LISTENER 25 SEPTEMBER 1986 I'HE GUIDE

TVS’s biopic about Nelson Mandela; legacy of the British, alongside the million tourists and the Australian Harry Belafonte has apparently tennis and polo that provide such Tourist Commission estimates each already acquired the rights to Winnie perfect cover for clandestine visitor will spend more than 1,000 Mandela’s life story. For its part, the meetings—at least for the whites. ‘Ev­ Australian dollars. When added to BBC has recently brought us the ex­ erybody trusts tennis players,’ as one sponsorship and television revenue, cellent Asinamati and Drums Along of Margie’s women contacts puts it. it makes hosting the racing very big Balmoral Drive: hard on their heels Even if they are suspected, though, business. comes Death Is Part of the Process people like Pila and Ralph can some­ The America’s Cup is a match race (Sunday BBC1 9 5-10.20pm), a two- times leave the country, while for between two 12-metre class yachts. part political thriller set in the wake Thabo and his comrades Death is Between 31 January and 15 February of the Sharpeville Massacre as anti­ simply part of the process’. 1987 an Australian yacht will race a apartheid activists begin to recognise challenger for the Cup. The first to that peaceful protest may not be win four races will hold the bottom­ enough. SPORT less silver trophy. Round-robin and The presence of Art Malik as knockout races from October until Richard Clark on the media and Indian-law-student-turned-freedom- January 1987 will decide who de­ dollar hype surrounding the running fighter Indres is a reminder of the fends and challenges for the Cup. of yachting's America's Cup in Raj cycle (he played Hari Kumar in Four Australian syndicates are com­ Australia this winter. Jewel and Dr Aziz in Passage). But it peting for the right to represent their also reveals just how different this country against one of 13 challen­ new wave is from those end-of- High gers. The cost of the visiting cam­ Empire fictions. What we are seeing paigns is estimated at 120 million US is more than a thirst for a new brand dollars, the most extravagant being Art Malik of ‘out of Africa’ exotica. Indeed, it’s rollers those from America. significant that while the Raj revival their comrades and we viewers trust Losing the Cup has enlivened relied heavily on literary adaptations, most may turn state’s evidence; those Drenched in champagne, Australian American yachting. When they lost, this South African cycle is much who seem least likely to join the Prime Minister Bob Hawke told TV the supremacy of the New York Yacht more actuality-based. Since the im­ struggle sometimes surprise us. Shot viewers: Any boss who sacks anyone Club was overturned. This year six position of stria media controls by in Kenya, Process is a brave and for not turning up today is a bum’. US syndicates are competing to bring the regime last November the news well-crafted film and demands to be Hawke, who had given up drinking the title home. The strongest chal­ has been gagged, leaving the field seen, like the guerrilla group it fol­ some months before, was leader of a lenges come from New York and San wide open for fiction—Asinamali, for lows, however, it may have been country feeling the squeeze of reces­ Diego. New York’s past dominance instance, was shot in Johannesburg betrayed from within. sion. He no doubt recognised the put them ahead in the race for during the state of emergency. Simi­ One of Salman Rushdie’s criticisms kudos to be gained from what he corporate finance, including a one larly, Death Is Part of the Process, for of the Raj cycle was the way in which described as ‘one of the greatest mo­ million dollar donation from General all its novelistic origins, draws deeply ‘Indians get walk-ons, but remain, for ments in Australia’s sporting history’. Motors. But much of their support on author Hilda Bernstein’s experi­ the most part, bit players in their In Sydney, people awoke on the 27 comes from individual patrons from ences in the early 1960s when the own history ... It is no defence to September 1983 to a headline in the the oil state of Texas and the money- ANC was forced underground and say that a work adopts, in its struc­ Morning Herald declaring victory in men’s southern chauvanism may cost anti-apartheid activists took up armed ture, the very ethic which, in its the America’s Cup The Biggest Thing their syndicate the Cup. When the struggle— her husband was sent­ content and tone it pretends to dis­ Since Peace in 1945—Triumph Unites money talked it wanted a Texan at enced alongside Mandela in 1964 at like. It is, in fact, the case for the a Nation’. the helm of New York’s effort and the Rivonia trial. prosecution.’ Alan Plater’s adaptation The previous day off Newport, the Club selected John Kolius. That Process, in fact, is an implicit re­ and Bill Hays’s direction are careful Rhode Island, the yacht Australia II left the world’s most experienced joinder to Gandhi, focusing as it does to avoid accusations of exploiting had wrested the trophy from the USA matchracer, Dennis Conner, free to on the failure of passive resistance as ‘local colour’ (as one character puts for the first time in 132 years. Mil­ lead the San Diego bid. a strategy and the rise of armed it sourly: ‘It is a very pretty police lions of dollars had been spent to Conner was the man who lost the struggle in the war against apartheid. state ), but the perspective remains unscrew the 40-inch bolt which held America’s Cup in 1983. Folklore had In the very first scene, for instance, primarily a white one. Thus, of the the ‘Auld Mug’ trophy for the event it that the head of the skipper who Indres, having organised a human seven people at the Human Rights to its plinth in the New York Yacht surrendered the pot would replace it rights exhibition, is cynical about its Council meeting it is the three black Club. The boat with the revolutionary on display at the New York Yacht effectiveness; as the visitors begin to characters present who don’t have winged keel had shown the Amer­ Club. Spared decapitation, Conner arrive he turns to a colleague: ‘Now speaking parts. Nor is it always better icans were vulnerable. The Cup, probably feels happier steering the we wait for the government to fall.’ when they do—the writing is at its which had been a Stateside benefit, San Diego challenge and has a for­ At a subsequent meeting it is pro­ weakest when characters like Thabo was now seen as attainable. posed that the Human Rights Council discuss their hopes for the future: The interest in that deciding race is simply dissolved; ‘Because it’s be­ ‘Freedom in our lifetime—that is in 1983 highlighted the event as a come an obstacle to progress— it what I want to see.’ Similarly, we money-spinner. Worldwide media contributes to the illusion that South learn much more about the home coverage had shown the financial Africa is a democratic country.' In its and work lives of Dick and Margie possibilities that association with the place Umkhonto we Sizwe (‘spear of Slater or Pila Norval than we do Cup could bring. the nation’), an underground guerril­ about Thabo, Sipho, Kabelo or even The 1987 defence is in Perth, West­ la organisation, emerges ready to do Indres. ern Australia, where a film crew from rather more to the symbols of apar­ The obvious explanation for this, TVS will be based for the five-month theid than simply litter them with of course, is simply that for Indres duration of the event. TVS have leaflets. and Thabo (brilliantly portrayed by negotiated the exclusive British use Process follows Indres and three John Matshikiza) ‘politics’ is a career of Australian coverage. They are pro­ white friends—Dick and Ralph, both in itself, a cause to which everything ducing 18 half-hour programmes for university lecturers, and Pila who else is visibly sacrificed. For them it Channel 4 and an hour long works in a bookshop—as they get is not simply a matter of ‘living a bit documentary, Down For The Cup increasingly involved in this new dangerously' like Pila; for Thabo and (Sunday ITV 10.30-11.30pm). struggle, counterpointing their activi­ his comrades it is never safe. Much Adrian Metcalfe, Commissioning ties with the even riskier role played of the narrative, indeed, is focused Editor for Sport on C4 describes the by black activists like Kabelo, Sipho on the group’s gradual professional- coverage as ‘an exhilarating mixture and Thabo. Over two episodes we isation in everything from bomb- of the Olympic Games and see what happens to these— and making skills to organisational struc­ Dynasty—great sport with the ex­ other—members of the movement, ture. The survivors learn that the war traordinary goings-on of the rich and as one by one they are either caught, against apartheid cannot be fought famous’. forced out of the country or under­ like a game, nor can they continue to Western Australia is a state with a KOS PHOTOS ground, or tortured into betraying operate as amateurs. Amateurishness, population of fewer than two million. their colleagues. Those whom both it turns out, was perhaps the last The Cup is expected to attract half a

THE LISTENER 25 SEPTEMBER 1986 27 THE GUIDE

midable 16 million dollar campaign. ment, merchandising and selling an Cup in 1983. John Bertrand, helms­ He feels the trophy was stolen and is association with the challenge. Iden­ man of Australia II three years ago, IN THE AIR out for revenge. His preparation is tifying with the image of the sport has decided not to sail but has been meticulous. With the backing of NASA has proved popular with high-profile retained as adviser and syndicate technology, a punishing training businesses, including Dire Straits director. It must have seemed like a good schedule and unshakeable self-belief, who are producing a record with the The designer who drew the lines wheeze at the time. A pamphlet that Conner is confident he'll regain the company. of the yacht that won in Newport, would make out the case for dismantling Cup. Such a method of funding is uni­ Ben Lexcen, is also with the team. He the welfare state by casting the The British challenge is more que among the syndicates and does predicts that their new boat will be ‘arguments’ in the form of a satire featuring a family called the ‘Wellfairs’. modest. The budget of almost £7 not rely entirely upon winning. If four minutes faster around the 24.5 Yes, you’ve got it: they live like lords by million has been raised by spon­ however the Cup comes to Britain mile course. If his prediction is even 'extracting from the State every penny sorship and floating a company, Brit­ the shareholders will profit from its half true he has conceived a remark­ which they properly can’. The Wealthy ish America’s Cup Challenge pic. subsequent defence. ably fast 12-metre. Wellfairs (Centre for Policy Studies (Only last week Guinness stepped in Such an eventuality is not impossi­ Seven countries are represented in £3.60) takes special delight in ridiculing with a ±1.1 million sponsorship deal ble. Harold Cudmore, the race team Perth this Australian summer. For the the Mobility and Attendance Allowances linked to their newly acquired pro­ manager and skipper of the British crews, winning the Cup is their ambi­ (they're the ones that make life worth duct, White Horse Whisky.) Investors challenger is a much respected inter­ tion; for the syndicate chiefs, spon­ living for the chronically sick). Here's an have been encouraged by the Busi­ national yachtsman. If the research sors and investors there is more at example: At breakfast next morning, ness Expansion Scheme which is, fit­ programme has developed a fast stake. The average budget per syndi­ poor Leo was undoubtedly very wheezy tingly enough, intended to promote boat, the investors could be drinking cate is more than ten million US dol­ indeed. Fortunately, he was being investment in high-risk businesses. gin with their stockbrokers. lars. The winners will have spent waited upon by a solicitous blonde. Shareholders gain 60 per cent tax Of the defenders, Alan Bond’s Au­ wisely; the losers will have to take Eyeing her, Kenneth leant over to relief by investing. BACC exploits the stralia’s Defence 1987 Limited has the stock, learn from defeat and consider Humphrey and whispered, “How do you commercial opportunities of British look of a favourite. It was the Perth their money a long-term investment like Uncle Leo's Attendance Allowance participation by product endorse­ businessman’s campaign that won the in a future challenge. . . . her name is Susan.” It seemed that, due to his disablement, Leo needed such frequent and close attention that in Transylvanian folk lore, than many the family was able to collect £20 a FILMS ON TV a straight horror film. It’s the nearest week from the State for Susan's Richard Combs on Roberts De Niro thing Polanski has yet made to pure services.' Sorry to be unfashionably and Duvall. comedy, though his surrealistic tom­ earnest, CPS, but this is meant to be foolery often has a slapstick streak. funny? There are moments in Dance of the Vampires which are perhaps a bit Geoffrey Howe's recent 'We're not in a Fixers too close to straight farce—scenes, Jericho situation’ comment on South for instance, in the traditional Tran­ African sanctions would seem to indicate True Confessions (1981, Sunday sylvanian inn, festooned with garlic, that Mogadon Man is hoping to script his BBC2 10.20pm-12.10am) has a dream where the hubbub of peasant chatter way out of his image problem with a few of a plot, with two dream roles for stops at the mention of the word well-turned one-liners. (And, let s face it, strong actors like Robert De Niro and ‘vampire’. But the theme is true the man really does owe himself a Robert Duvall. They play brothers, a enough to Polanski— innocence im­ break—who else could go away on holiday and be widely described in the priest and a cop respectively, in a perilled, subverted, then turned to press as 'working his way through a pile Chandler-ish tale of murder and cor­ evil—as are his characters. Jack Mac- of novels'?) With political commentators ruption in Southern California in the Gowran plays an intrepid vampire now beginning to tip him seriously as the 1940s. A woman’s body is found cut hunter, who travels to the heart of next Tory leader, we can undoubtedly in two; there are connections with a Transylvania to prove his theories ab­ expect more of the pithy new verbal porn movie-maker and with a power­ out the existence of the mythical style. For many, though, it will require a ful building contractor, who has his beast, bringing with him his innocent rather large ‘leap of imagination'—an own vice connections but also a busi­ young assistant Alfred (played by ingredient the Foreign Secretary thinks ness relationship with the Catholic Polanski himself). The latter is smit­ is necessary for a solution in South Church. The trick of the plot is that it ten by innkeeper’s daughter Sharon Africa—to envisage Mogadon Man as is the cop, Tom, who has the reli­ De Niro as Father Des Tate, even after the local vampire has anything remotely approaching trenchant gious instinct to clean up this cesspit, has inevitably been reduced and exercised his droit de seigneur and ... on any subject. to expiate his own past sins by put­ compressed in the film, so that the carried her off to his castle. Subse­ ting away the contractor, even if it is parable emerges more starkly— quent alarums and pursuits end with When the Independent finally reaches not for the crime he has committed, emphasised by opening and closing the ball of the title—a magnificently the newsstands on 7 October, it will be and even if it means ruining his scenes in the desert, 15 years after grisly set-piece, in which the vampire as a self-styled 'new' kind of newspaper. ecclesiastical brother in the process. the main action, when the brothers hunters infiltrate the horde of ghouls The fact that its staff have been drawn, The priest, Des, has the instinct to are reunited and reconciled as they as they dance a stately minuet, which almost without exception, from Fleet confess (‘Something’s got to change wither towards their final truth. This abruptly ends when only our heroes’ Street hardly seems to have dented the in my life. I’m tired of fixing things’), wouldn’t matter so much if the para­ reflections appear in a large mirror. carefully nurtured innovative image but as business manager for the ble weren’t made to seem so A number of not quite resolved created for the new title. One thing that archdiocese is too implicated in the schematic, the parallels and contrasts possibilities dance round Dance of genuinely is new, however, is the corruption to do more than wait for between the worldly priest and the the Vampires. Is it a funny horror paper s definition of freelance the blessing of release when his cop with a calling so didactically film, or a comedy with scary touches? contributors as 'hacks'. Yes, that’s brother’s crusade gets going. made. But Ulu Grosbard’s direction Is it a parody of Hammer-type vam­ right—anyone not on the staff is a As well as a dream, however, the is a matter of plain statements, and is pire lore, or has it created a quite ‘freelance hack' according to literary plot is also a bit of a trap. In its so self-effacingly neutral that it seems delightful lore of its own? It is, editor Sebastian Faulks. He told a recent gathering of the Publisher’s Publicity original form, a novel by John Greg­ to have withered into its own truth perhaps, a particularly Middle Euro­ Circle that he would 'be mainly drawing ory Dunne (who also wrote the before the film has had a chance to pean joke which has somehow found on the Independents own staff writers screenplay, with his then wife, get going. It also banks down the its way into the English-speaking for reviews rather than freelance hacks’. novelist-essayist Joan Didion), it is normally volatile De Niro, suggesting cinema (and at times there seem to less of a religious parable than a a placid scrutiny that is at times close be some odd language problems in The return of Dr Who to our screens is tough, racy yarn very much in the to somnolence. the film). It’s Polanski, perhaps, in said to be under scrutiny by Chandler mould. It piles on eccentri­ Dreams are abroad again in Dance transition between East and West, be­ campaigners worried that earlier series cities of character, bizarre twists of of the Vampires (1967, Saturday tween a native, anarchic surrealism were too violent for children. So they plot and motive, seamy details of BBC2 11.45pm-1.35am), though of a and the more public mythology of should have been pleased last week to both the criminal and clerical life, so more vivacious sort. This is Roman the horror film. If so, it shows him see the Inquisitor at the Doctor’s trial that the sense of corruption rises like Polanski’s vampire send-up—though remarkably in control of something halt a screened replay of one of his a rank sweat, and the cop’s urge to affectionate send-up is what it needs whose identity is not quite adventures because of its 'offensive put things right is like a palpably to be called, since the film is often resolved—which may also be the key violence'. The Doctor, said the physical act of cleansing. Much of this more atmospheric, more caught up to everything he has done since. prosecutor, was well known for it.

28 THE LISTENER 25 SEPTEMBER 1986 I \ A j^ ______ARTS

reproduction system with all its attendant a performance of Henry Fwe j ust know is going to wanted her to rob the old boy. I kept saying, ‘Take displacement activity is a sound move for TV, be interrupted with a big bang just as those ‘busy his money!’ which too often raises its eyes above waist level. hammers, closing rivets up, give dreadful note of I had thought of giving the Arab corpse a rave Blind Date is a show ideally suited to a medium preparation’. Some attempt is made to show the for his dramatical abilities, but in truth his whose ultimate destiny, surely, will be to white pigs at home, boring on about what day they deadness left something to be desired. It was too permit/oblige us to experience other people had their hair done, etc., but the hackneyed ironies variable — eyes alternatively open and closed, copulating almost continuously. For the time of doomed white tribe behaviour were so much rolling and staring — for the high level of realism being, a little disguised schadenfreude will have to better dramatised by David Dimbleby, a repeat of achieved by Lipman, though I suppose this is do. whose 1980 The White Tribe of Africa (BBC2) was excusable in a live actor. In the end they dump him The big deal of the week, complete with May allowed to steal the show as a curtain-raiser, on the in the waiting room of ‘The Lionel Davis Wing For ’68-style press-kit and hurried-looking other side. Private Patients’, leaving us with the rhetorical opportunism, was Death is Part of the Process What happens if you’re a one-parent, night­ question, ‘Who is Lionel Davis?’ Incidentally, I (BBC1), an Alan Plater conversion of an early time, uninsured female minicab driver and an old was irritated to hear the rotten James Sixties Hilda Bernstein novel about insurrection in Arab person dies in your back seat? Someone got a Taylor/Carly Simon version of ‘Mockingbird’ South Africa. credit for having posed this rhetorical question in being used as closing music instead of Charlie and It should be turned back into a novel again at the the credits for Shiftwork by Lesley Bruce, but was Inez Fox’s incomparable original. Brace up, first opportunity. A sort of how-to manual for left out of the cast list in Radio Times. Wrongly, in Brenda Reid (producer) and Mike Westbrook fourth-form pyromaniacs, it has plainly been my view, as he/she had done half the work. (original music credit). concocted for international distribution and Maureen Lipman shouldered the unappealing ‘And finally’ said Hermione Lee, interviewing revolution on the level of Time magazine, Coke acting duties — anorak, specs, endless harsh Julian Barnes on Talking to Writers (C4), ‘why do and disco music. Blacks aren’t commercial night-driving shots and no change to phone the you write?’ I thought she said ‘Why don’t you worldwide, so most of the plotters are white and baby-sitter — but succeeded in twisting the piece write?’ for a second, but she was serious. Barnes’ good-looking with homes and wives to go to. The into a half-decent play by finding somewhere in face registered shock, confusion, resolution and blacks are sets of eyes in the night. The whites have her experienced heart the one and only character defiance. What could he say? That he did it for names they call each other. (Some of them have who could have got into such a mess and spoken money? For fun? To irritate his old headmaster? another, secret name, for excitement purposes.) such lines, then letting circumstances go to work Nothing like that. He looked her in the eye and The names of the blacks you have to work out on her. These circumstances weren’t that said he wrote because he was afraid of dying. ‘I from the cast list. All the characters are strictly interesting, mind you: the bloody-minded won’t say I can hear the nails being hammered into cartoon cut-outs, for school use only, and the hospital, the paranoid police station, the all-night my coffin lid and I don’t exactly dwell on whether political savvy was received for Christmas in 1963. undertakers, these were predictable episodes in the the tree my coffin will be made of has been cut Only the villains have South African accents! milking of a strictly one-joke problem. I mean, down yet, b u t. . . I think you want to build some ‘What’s Shakespeare got to do with politics?’ isn’t it a bit fishy that she can’t call in the police little crenellated sand castles against the oncoming asks one constitutionally thick white mum before because she just happens to be uninsured? I tide . . .’ It gave me pause for thought. □

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New Statesman 3 October 1986 33 'X k w o o / 2 * \ \ A I ChillingTelevision | power of racism Every good play about ac­ tivists is also a play about activism, in which the charac­ ters wrestle with their con- 1 sciences in full view of the audience. Death Is Part of the Process (BBC1) was a piece in this category. Based on the i novel by Hilda Bernstein, which won the Sinclair prize in | 1982, it concerned a fictional . splinter-group of the African National Congress dedicated to attacking the symbols of apartheid in South Africa. I, Art Malik, Jack Klaff and John Matshikiza headed the cast, playing a passionate Indian student, a cautious white lecturer and an irrespon­ sible black bookshop assis­ tant, all of whom combined their talents to mount a cam­ paign of sabotage. The action was set in Johannesburg in 1961, but filmed in Kenya. The cos­ tumes, sets and properties imparted an excellent sense of > time and place which could have been more strongly re­ inforced in the dramatization by Alan Plater. This made a J straightforward chronological narrative of the book’s flash- 1 back style. An element of I suspense was introduced, but 1 impeded by some of the mono- I lit hie pronouncements which J studded the dialogue: “Every- f l body has a story — every-* body", or “There are no ■ innocent people". ■ While the white characters had arguments the black I characters had anger; how- X ever, much of the injustice of apartheid was taken as read ■ and not fully displayed. Only a E chilling cameo by John Woodvine suggested the power B of formalized racism against which the group was pro- ■ testing. !■ Moral arguments in a dif- IE ferent arena were kicked U around in Inside Story (ITV), ■ a new serial about a Fleet ■ Street take-over which fea- i l tured Roy Marsden as a coarse B millionaire proprietor, am- j l bitious for control of a failing ■ up-market newspaper. Fran- j l cesca Annis took the role of an n l intrepid foreign correspon- 1 dent. She is apparently des- J lined for the editor's chair in jfl future episodes but regrettably j l spent half of this one in bed, on j l regrettably flimsy pretext, H revealing an elegantly-turned^ ■ naked back. 1 Drama productions from Anglia Television often have a hopelessly inauthentic quality, which suits mannered British detective stories but did not enhance this production. De­ spite a credit for the Sunday Times columnist Henry Por­ ter, and the involvement of the distinguished director Moira Armstrong, the entire produc­ tion suffered severe credibil- ity-loss by comparison with well reported actuality. In particular, sequences allegedly ■ taking place in Beirut bore no s relation to the news coverage of recent events in the city. r Celia Brayfield J ’ A cry country for belovedthe cry A ’

Alison Chapman ie ad apind gis aated for 1964. is She in Hilda apartheid Britain to against fleeing before years campaigned activist and lived she where Africa, South remembers political Bernstein and spacious farmhouse THECOOL, IN in r bne. t o hr h 1982 Sinclair the her won It banned. are tion the and Africa of becomehas its part fabric. violence that ugly South of beauty breathtaking the between contrast the by struck constantly writer Herefordshire, in cottage 16th-century stone her of kitchen formed it into formed a into it sequencetrans­ has of events.’ Alan and did, he things the goes to back then and prisoner escape a in of the with starts around It time. jumps it because play ‘It 71. now Bemstein, says rific,’ (the second is now to be shown and next Sunday). two-part Plater’s Sinclair BBC1adaptation there’s Alan the the came Then out intact. ture fleshing struc­ and it, storyline the leaving rewrote but characters and drawer a dozen fished or it out of so Bemstein publishers, social merit, with or content’. political literary of high novel unpublished ‘an Prizefor to resort of opposi­ forms other who acts sabotage all of after dissidents of group multiracial story of the a experiences telling her own on in into, is found to be infested maggots. with She likens it to a bitten peach when which, juicy o t d, u oc i a while a in once but do, to joy the of members both are personally; they him knows Bernstein Matshikiza, John including can, of vegetation and so on’. samethe sort altitude, a has it high in done was is ‘which Africa:South like Nairobi, filming the of Most a into make to book difficult wasa don’t care how far I go or how little I the commitment: huge this makes Indres,’about says, Malik ‘ishe mostthat me excites ‘What saboteurs. student the in mixedIndian group of something there’squite comespowerful that over.’ yet great with restraint, it does he and villain, a to harder a always play hero than it’s sensethat the in part difficult (ANC). Congress National African who ‘hero’ plays the African Thabo. hc ae netiig n a great a and entertaining are which grew up I that politicians armchair the and Indresdifference between achieve; I am idea that “If anything has to be done, I a impressed me.He has ‘Hisacting oehn cms ln wih you which along comessomething sees exactly where he with isat college.going. He looks at his life and fe te oks nta rjcin y af a half by rejection initial book’s the After Her novel, Aa Pae’ srp i ter­ is script Plater’s ‘Alan Art Malik playsIndres, young Malik the Art Afri­ South are cast the of Most Yu e ofrd os f parts of lots offered get ‘You BBC1 ’s thriller set in political South is Africa a adapted novel from by Hilda Bemstein. Now 71, she still harbours a fury against injustice as Veronica as Groocock 71,discovers Now injustice against she fury harbours still a prepared Death Is Part of the Process, the of Part Is Death ” . This . is . the eitnewie Hla enti: tl fgtn aant apartheid against fighting still Bernstein: Hilda writer Resistance draws Death Is Part of the Process, 9.5 BBC1 another area completely. When you read the the read you into When you completely. take area to another going is actor, an as know, understand him, to get under his skin and and skin his under get to to trying in him, was actor understand an as challenge The every day.was together. crying I It all pieced it and history of the aware very was I the script, the of many ‘By I from readthe time him. events on around going parents his been by had he protected child a as where Town, Cape in career his began Klaff to Kohler). (Estelle Margie married who’s group the in comrade white ITV’s in Kumar Hari of part the towards same script, you say: “Yes, this I do!” must ’ He felt the see why he behaved as he did.’ vulnerable. but strong is He guy. brave tough, scenes almost I dedicated to two people or I One knew. powerful. incredibly was Spear of Bernstein group, which the with Nation The Jewel in the Croum. the in Jewel The The central group is a fictional of version the is afictional group The central a Dick, plays Klaff Jack African-born South ‘Dick is not particularly heroic, not the big, the not heroic, particularly not is ‘Dick Sunday Premiere: ties (the famous ‘Rivonia’ trial). Although Although trial). ‘Rivonia’ famous (the ties ulig p f h rssac mvmn, a movement, resistance the of up building ‘I valid. as still are concerns and theme film’s ecie i Brsens rvos book, previous Bernstein’s in described escape (Their ity. dramatic across the frontier is releasedtechnical­ a on temporarily was Rusty imprisonment, life to sentenced was Mandela Nelson alongside trial, activi­ anti-government stood with charged Mandela, had She he teens. late after her in Africa Rusty escaped her husband with back to Britain South in live ht vrtig ht is eoe a compost a becomes dies that everything that the Peterfrom in title, out Weiss’s the today. of comesIt is forerunner what happening of part necessary a as period that saw about than the black ones,’ says Hilda Hilda that’s says “Well, ones,’ say: black might ‘People the Bemstein. than about to contributes which a new growth. World that World Despite its 60s setting, she believes that the believesthat she 60s setting, its Despite to went and London in born was Bernstein ‘I found the white characters easier to write easierto characters white the found ‘I Was before the ANC was banned. was formed in response to the the to response in formed was 60s. It early the in connected was enthusiasm, humour and a feeling a and humour enthusiasm, attitudes.’ a and ethics of was set there different totally friends, their with the garden gate or next door to play outside went they moment the and home, the in beliefs and moral of attitudes set one was there dren them. everything around liberation the with was themselves It all. at because that white people associatewho wasn’t it yourself,” but white are you natural, shootings Sharpeville of 1960, a year their comradeship and vitality, vitality, openness, and warmth, the their beauty comradeship their people, ‘The passionately: Africa of pent-up energy. She misses South against going are They conflict. struggle are a in state of continuous against injustice,’ she says. ‘You ‘You says. she injustice,’ against fury of feelyour lessening to a not it’s ‘I ANC. important terribly think of speak behalf to the on world the travelling busy is she writing, or course, the sunshine.’ of . .and, . singing women’s of the Hilda Bernstein’s novel ‘Death Is Part of Part Is ‘Death novel Bernstein’s Hilda used is that violence any fair, is that not trial isany that polluted, river any abused, is that child any is -you societyaround what the in wrong about angry feel should the Process’ is published in paperback by paperback in published is Process’ the racialism.’ • gratuitously against people, and any Grafton Books at £2.50 at Books Grafton This short, wiry woman radiates woman wiry short, This ‘For instance, with my own chil­ own my with instance, ‘For When she etching When is not painting, Ours.) 2 7 S 7 2 r e b m e t p e 3 O -3 Marat/Sade - Marat/Sade r e b o t c

6 8 9 1 The

Modem drama out 01 Alnca TELEVISION

In Death is Part of the Process [the BBC has fashioned a Ldrama about South Africa ivitli political backbone which Is certain to stimulate Irontroversy. I Alan Plater's screenplay based on Hilda' Bernstein’s 'novel is passionate about the impossibility of peaceful re- ; forms under a police state 1 posing as a democracy — let alone majority black rule. The excellent Art Malik Third degree: Indris (An Malik) meets the Special Branch stars as an Indian student who try to scramble up the greasy cultural and class-conscious [abandons the law in the 1960s pole of political opportunism vein of the successful Mapp i to join the first fumbling to the pinnacle of power, and Lucia adaptations. | attempts at armed resistance number 10 Downing Street. Set in a determinedly to apartheid. \ Jeremy Child is the respectable health spa board­ i Death is Part of the Process haughty, aristocratic Tory (BBC 1, tomorrow, 9.05- ing house, Paying Guests of­ Charles Seymour weighing in fers hy pochondria, breathless 10.20pm), which follows The the votes in Sussex; James White Tribe of Africa (BBC 2, high-pitched dialogue and the Faulkner has more steel as his superb Robert Hardy as the 8.10-9.05pm), projects the self-made Conservative rival barking, bicycling and insen­ ( seething discontent sym­ Simon Kerslake; Tom Wil­ sitive Colonel Chase. bolized by the black power kinson plays the intellectual salute of the clenched fist, butcher's son, Raymond The little spa dramas are i Political debate in Jeffrey Gould, championing the worlds apart from tonight's Archer’s First Among Equals underprivileged; and David unsettling supernatural setting (ITV, Tues, 9-10pm) is more Robb his fiery Scottish Labour of The Last Seance (ITV, 10- polite, although no less vindic­ colleague, Andrew Fraser. 11pm). Exquisitely photo­ tive, taking place in the ele­ Politics never rears its ugly graphed, Agatha Christie's gant chamber and bars of discordant head in short story features Norma Westminster's talking shop. E. F. Benson’s fictional world West as a medium haunted by Dramatized by Derek Mar­ of genteel ladies and retired her earthly powers and the lowe in 10 parts. First Among Army officers in the well- mysterious Madame Exe Equals follows the burning heeled Home Counties. Paying (Jeanne Moreau). ambitions of four fledgling Guests (BBC 2, Wed and MPs elected in 1964 as they Thurs, 9.30-10.30pm) is in the Bob Williams SOMETHING rather less subtle comrade” and “every path than a pot of paint flung in the blocked”. face of the public was screened et worse r There is no law or fresh aii by the BBC last night in Death The BBC and South Africa: can is Part of the Process. many other countries, comra where the inhabitants are noi This was a Boy’s Own thriller Godfrey Barker, Arts Editor, gazes gloomily at the new Sunday night anti-apartheid drama on BBC-1 free to vent their grievanc about the adventures of two; but never mind; it is not for t black bombers and their Indian novels. The bees cannot back ish writers somehow failed to moral bankruptcy, lazyminded- wing Buchan or Sapper, a minable. hour-and-ii-quarter. they’ve just been banned" (we for which one feels intense i: pal. it was set in South Africa. off the honeypot. Of the 120-odd notice mass, murder under ness and cliche. Upon which thriller in which the comprehen­ One groaned when clinched fists were in 1960). tation with the BBC. Or so it purported. The BBC submissions! for-'the Booker Stalin. note we may return to "Death is sive murdering guilt of the Pre­ and barbed wire- sprang, u r in What could . Mr Plater bril­ piously assured us that the Prize this year,, more than half a It is the literary consequences Part of the Process”. . - toria regime was assumed /rom the tittes^ and? .wheniyv within liantly pen in;'* reply to that? All of us can forgive wasr drama was bom out of “the per­ dozen were traqts'about South of the flight to South Africa Let us be kind, for what it? frame one and in which the vile" •seed n dsS? t h e%-3o: h a nn e s b.U r g •”Tha*Africanf is* peaceful by an hour of dripping cliche sonal knowledge of the struggle Africa. On-Ty.-Uhe BBC and which should concern us. The matters, to Mrs Benntein. She and crafty Boer flogged the Kaf­ truncheorftbearefs and' white nature," we >yere informed. In Mrs Bernstein’s company, against' apartheid” of novelist Channel 4 offer a,ceaseless lash-' land of torture, barbed wire and may not be to blame (someone firs to an inch' of their lives. It vigiUmles&sprang into'/action, : between the lengthy bomb-mak­ lowing a plot which an air. Hilda Bernstein, who ‘‘fled the ing of the , public conscience.' sneering accents offers itself to should be) for the inanities made Bulldog, Drummond, for­ but woree.’yfas to conie. .The- ing instructions which followed, siac of IQ 55 could have \- country” in the Sixties after her There may .- be .genocide "in' the writer in the form of tinned acted out in her name last ever unearthing Huns and Com­ dialoguej'ncft so much^woodeo: one- gathered in clenched-teeth three miles ahead of. Wha husband was arrested to stand Uganda and the subtlest human passion and prepackaged anger, night. I have not read her munists from under restaurant as granitic, would have embar­ dialogue from hero Indres (Art unforgivable is this. So trial alongside Nelson Mandela. torture in the Soviet Union and- as an easy lift off the shelves of “prize-winning” novel; for all I tables in the Ritz Hotel, seem rassed C P. Snow. “You don’t Malik) that the Boers had Africa raises desperate qi Despite these outstanding Eastem Europe, -but for the the supermarket of emotion for know, it may validly be a cry for as delphic as the exist, boy,” growled a copper drowned his uncle in his own tions of political, historical credentials for detached com­ Tractatus arts, the Iron Curtain no longer novelists who cannot contrive her beloved country, an inward Logico-Philosophicus by resembling Barry MacKenzie to blood. Alternately the police moral complexity. The E ment, Mrs Bernstein’s novel as hangs across the German bor­ toiling of Past;:rnakian comparison. a black lad. We moved to a seemed to be banning science owes us something cleverer an iota of emotional feeling on explanation than this bar-n translated to the screen seemed der bur between Johannesburg their own. As a literary choice, complexity. group of expat LSE lecturers. journals, telling lies, and sharp­ to lack the final ring of “Death is. Part of the Pro­ infantilism and claptrap pr< and Soweto. “South Africa”, with its user- I doubt it, though. The cess” (of getting black majority “It is an illusion that South ening torture instruments, for truthfulness. “there is no law in South ganda. Someone in the hie There is no need to feel friendly outrage, all too often screenplay from her novel by rule, you may gather) ran, if one Africa is a democratic country,” Africa”, “there is no fresh air in chy at Bush House, respons South Africa has become the unduly solemn about this. promises only one thing when Alan Plater, of “Barchester may put it charitably, through one observed profoundly. “The this country”, “the whole of for this childish idiocy, sh< fashionable backdrop of evil in Novels are not sources of truth packaged into the covers of a Towers" fame (he sh( "K know all 36 volumes of the Oxford African National Congress is a South Africa is on a time fuse, have their bottom smacked. thp Fighties for dramas and anv morf> now than when Rrit- honk- intellectual flabbiness better), offered us a kj f left- Dictionarv of Cliche in an inter­ non-violent organisation but IVJ l ,

extent, about the dilemma of white and col­ necessarly be a grandiose undertaking. Angela TELEVISION oured’ liberals and how they were driven to Pope (directing) demonstrated this in a very cautious extremes. South Africa is about the modest but superbly achieved short play, S h ift inhabitants of unnamed towns like Soweto (it W o rk , by Lesley Bruce. only means South West Township); their un­ Julie is a single parent who moonlights, reachable, for whites, degradation and hum i­ with an uninsured car, as a minicab-driver. Not true enough liation and their response to it. Neither is Late one night she picks up from Heathrow journalism at the moment about roughshod an Arab fare who promptly expires in the Peter Lennon takeovers, but what has been done to journ­ back seat. Julie (a fine portrayal of plucky alism by the takeovers. Inside Story is not, as desperation by Maureen Lipman) discovers DEATH IS PART OF THE PROCESS (BBC1) it makes a point of claiming, ‘the road from that the most reliable institutions have their INSIDE STORY (Anglia) Wapping-, but the old road to Wapping. The finicky ways. No, hospitals will not accept fully SFHW WORK (BBC2) point is not that one should demand rigorous dead people. Half-dead if you like: dead on CONFERENCE QUESTION TIME (BBC1) topicality, but that the effect of such confident arrival by ambulance perhaps, but not DOA and competent work is to give the illusion by minicab. And, surprise, even late-night that this is most if not ail of the truth required funeral parlours are sniffs’ about receiving Death Is Part of the Process deals with a for present understanding. The}' are not false, corpses not formally dressed in a casket, m oment in the 1960s when a group of white but they are not true enough. particularly if they have no death certificate. intellectuals are convinced by their coloured’ In Death Is Part o f the Process there is that The cops are out; she is not insured. colleague (An Malik) that the democratic pro­ too neat cross-section of society— ranging Julie and her friends are night people, and cess of seeking reform has been ‘picked from ‘liberals’ willing to ‘write to the papers’ what Angela Pope’s direction and Remi Ade- clean’ and that the time has com e for violent to potential killers— which marks the fabri­ farasin’s camerawork made clear was that action. The allocation of tasks neady measures cated rather than the inspired story . In s id e night is a different country. It was a strange their varying sense of outrage and injustice. Sto ry has an authentic newsroom, and shows world of dissolving sights and insubstantial The white professor (Jack Klaff) is w illing to signs of having done its homework on indi­ places, and none of the three principal char­ give instruction on how to make a bomb but vidual reactions to this kind of Fleet Street acters had their seat-belts adequately attached not on how to plant it; the ‘coloured’ activist crisis, but, like the South African adventure, it to society. In all the stumbling and tottering is ready to blow up goods trains but not to has yet another fundamental flaw. and whispered half-heard pleading and plot­ kill people; the black man (John Matshikiza), a Set it against Citizen Kane and you will ting, they became plainer in our minds as little feckless, partial to wom en and booze, suddenly realise that as an animal it does not recognisable human beings in a mildly in­ just wants to get down to the business of appear to belong to the same species. It is not salubrious world. And while this was not killing whites. that Citizen Kane did not have its share of necessarily great art, it was ambition working But they are like people w alking on invisi­ boisterous bluster and carnival extravagance. in the right direction. ble nets in a country which makes little But it had passion, and it had an element There are times of course when a slick pretence of keeping up, internally, an appear­ altogether absent from all of these clever approach is the most satisfactory response to ance of democracy or justice. The impotence serials: it had a powerful artistic content. It is the material. I had some doubts recendv of people attempting to protest in a state not so much that these serials almost never about P a n o r a m a employing the ‘magazine’ capable qf claustrophic surveillance is one have this magic element; they have no ambi­ approach of action and anecdote to complex aspect of South African life very well con­ tion to seek for it on the simplest level. The subjects. But it was perfecdy suited to its veyed. viewer is left with a sense of malnutrition. report last week of th£ political and police But this competent serial, like the equally With this deficiency inevitably goes another: machinations which led to the Paris terrorist efficient Inside Story about the takeover of a the inability to suggest more about characters bombings. Since it was a story of killers and quality paper by a predatory press baron and their lives than the actual words and cops and secret emissaries and doublecrosses, (and like the IRA kidnap thriller The P ric e , efficient pictures state. Great film work has Gavin Hewitt’s admirably lucid investigation broadcast some time ago), raises questions this ability. And the right approach need not was well served by sequences of mystery about television's handling of unresolved cur­ trains and forbidding prisons. rent issues. The problem is, in part, their very Question Time, in the role of a kind of intelligence and competence. You cannot dis­ caravan house of Parliament with Robin Day miss these dramas, as you could many old w ielding the carrot and stick for the donkeys, worthy Hollywood movies such as W ritte n o n trundled into Eastbourne and set representa­ fo e W in d or The Front Page as being trans- tives of the four parties to work on each parendy theatrical or fantastic. There is a lot other: David Steel, George Younger, Gerald of unremarked and unacknowledged talent in Kaufman and Ian Wrigglesworth. Ian Wriggles- television in editing, script writing, research, worth (SDP) tried to comer George Younger design and— on a simple level— flawless per­ (Con). ‘I think the country deserves to know,’ formances, which we have come to take for he thundered, ‘whether our Government has granted. When these talents are put at the discussed co-operation of this sort (nuclear service of such serials you are presented with defence) with the French government and a very persuasive piece of work. whether he is speaking authoritatively for his The danger of such high competence ap­ own governm ent. . . ’. Rousing stuff—was lan plied to unresolved current problems j s that about to provoke a National Outcry? But they lack the Hollywood naivety which gave George w ho had even then been slipping on warning that they could in no sense be taken his roller-skates under the table, responded, as a definitive version of anything. These ‘Are we talking of two different things?...’ modern, highly sophisticated products leave and skated away. you with the illusion of being seriously in­ This is the programme where the viewer formed about real issues. has the satisfactory sensation of seeing politi­ Death Is Pan o f the Process and Inside Story cians, almost within reach, wriggle and share one fundamental defect. They both give squirm and at times give each other the the w rong story. South Africa is no longer, rubber-hose treatment. One of the best poli­ and probably never was to anv significant Art Malik being ‘seriously informed' tical shows on the road.

THE LISTENER 2 OCTOBER 19* Art Malik, Jack Klaft and John Matshikiza headed the cast, playing a passionate .Indian student, a cautious Cmlling white lecturer and an irrespon­ sible black bookshop assis­ tant, all of whom combined power of their talents to mount a cam­ paign of sabotage. While the white characters I The action was set in had arguments the black I racism Johannesburg in 1961, but characters had anger; how- | filmed in Kenya. The cos­ ever, much of the injustice of Every good play about ac­ tumes, sets and properties apartheid was taken as read i tivists is also a play about imparted an excellent sense of and not fully display ed. Only a I activism, in which the charac­ time and place which could chilling cameo by John j ters wrestle with their con­ have been more strongly re­ Wood vine suggested the power sciences in full view of the inforced in the dramatization of formalized racism against | audience. Death Is Part of the by Alan Plater. This made a which the group was pro­ Process (BBCl) was a piece in straightforward chronological testing. this category. Based on the narrative of the book’s flash­ novel by Hilda Bernstein, back style. An element of which won the Sinclair prize in suspense was introduced, but 1982. it concerned a fictional impeded by some of the mono­ splinter-group of the African lithic pronouncements which National Congress dedicated studded the dialogue: “Every­ to attacking the symbols of body has a story —• every­ aDartheid in South Africa. body", or ‘There are no innocent people". lea over ision and Equity issue

laced to THE current Equity referendum on o r Ju liu s whether members should be allowed to :■> lend a appear in South Afica has taken on more th w hich meaning than ever for Louis Mahoney, g charac- one of the prime movers of the vote. | .sense o f Mahoney, who has juit celebrated his ftery an d 10th anniversary as Equity's first and only black member of council, is newly back from filming in Death is Part of the Process, in Kenya for BBC television. It ole should be screened in the autumn. mage for The novel, by former Hampstead resi­ es to play dent Hilda Bernstein, won the first-ever fo ol. N o Sinclair prize for fiction in 1983. and i oversha- deals with the beginnings of the ANC's , not been armed struggle in South Africa in the early 1960s. Mahoney plays the part of uet of the Sipho. one of the more militant of the tnaliy be- early saboteurs. i told me "H e was quite a fun character to do — assington on the one hand things are deadly se­ are such rious. but he also likes'his booze and his of getting women.” Mahoney told me at his home j-one else in Willow Road. Hampstead. Hie results of the Equity referendum tinues to are expected next week. lOrship o f "This is not a question of individual tirsty and freedoms, but one of whether or not we battle for recognise a regime." he said. ”1 am n C a n u te generally amazed that in 1986 in our democratic multi-racial society, we as a audiences union can accept that our members can o p inio n s, work in a place that practises institution­ season at al racism." DEATH is Part of the Pro­ used to make bombs? 'T V v fi- cess (B B C -1) was set in 1961, As with the story, so with a circumstance which unfor­ the sentiments expressed. The tunately reinforced the im­ characters talked throughout 2-c\-c \-‘S > b pression that this two-part as though they were taking drama about South Africa, part in an educational film adapted by Alan Plater from (which, come to think of it, the novel by Hilda Bernstein they were). (who was herself Involved in You would have thought the events it chronicles) has that a dissident group already nothing new to tell us. under surveillance by the security forces would have A man asked a woman to discussed th eir motives and buy him some chemicals. personal histories with each A nother day he asked h e r to other at some earlier point. 9.05-10.25 BBC I bay more, suggesting, with a But here they were doinr it Sunday Premiere: Death Ib Pert Ot The meaningful emphasis, that again. Process she should go to a different This drama is very good- Second pan in Alan Plater's fine adaptation of chemist this time. Hilda Bernstein's novel. The action begins to hearted (despite the surpris­ move apace as one by one. the 'terrorists' are Then we saw him and his ing presence of a comical, picked off by the secuntvpoiice. There's even a mates watching an explosion. happy-go-lucky black man) moment of heartbreak as Thabo (brilliantly play­ Was it really necessary after but very dull. Liberal cac«e« ed by John Matshikiza) is horrifically tortured in all this that the woman should are not helped by such sim­ his cell, strapped to the wall by his hands, but go and see her friend the plistic stuff. soil managing a weak clenched fist. It hardly scientist so that he could needs saying that the whites have it somewhat explain to h e r th at those easier in detention. Remember, this is not fiction particular chemicals ca nbe - every event happened — and it formed the basis for today's struggle. The LONDON STANDARD. THURL j A Y. SE P T E M B E R 25. 1986— 2 3

A TV thriller this weekend details how So Uth African activists turn terrorist

when peaceful methods fail. MICHAEL EWING protests.

HOW ABOUT a spot of light terrorism to help pass the time ? How to make a small but effective bomb, for instance. How to improve it. Where to What a reckless place it for effect. What in­ gredients to buy from your friendly neighbourhood chemist. How to mix them. All rigiit. now paint the whole business of blowing the world apart in sympathetic colours. Make the toomb-makers heroes. Lace their way to handle activities with the pale cast of righteousness. Give them moral justification. Underwrite violence as an act of moral retribution. Then put it on television at prime time on Sunday evening. Absurd in the era of Belfast. Beirut and Rome ? Devastatingly the bombers unfunny in -the year of the Achille Lauro incident and fifty, a hundred, exception, the moral leper deserving rather unfortunately the other day other atrocities ? Insane at the of nobody’s sympathy, least of all as "the greater truth.” UNDERDOG time of the Paris bombings ? multi - racial forward - looking The greater truth here is that hero: Art You may well think so. The BBC Britain’s- Blowing bits off South terrorism is fine if the cause is itiatiK, w.io would choose to disagree. In fact, Africa is not the same as blowing . media-fashionable. From that point starred In they've spent a considerable amount bits off Belfast, Beirut, Rome, Paris. of departure, practically anything Jewel in the of money, time and intellectual The African is not as black as he's can, be made to look acceptable. Crown, plays resource to put such a package on painted. Window-dressing is the key. the leader of your screen. The first hour-and-a- the black ihalf will be shown on BBC-1 on So runs the argument and so Thus, the role of leader of the activists. Sunday. runs the message inherent in Death black terrorists is in the hands of is Part of the Process. And a Art Malik, an actor forever robed Death is Part of the Process—a beautifully weighted message it Is. in the mantle of underdog hero how to use them—are played with kaner Interrogation. I endorse the chilling title and, let's face it, the Not surprisingly. thanks to his role of Hari Kumar quiet assurance and saintly dedi­ view. cop-out clause in every terrorist's in Jewel in the Crown. cation by stock television hero- But .television has a higher obli­ charter—is an immaculate piece of Seventy-one-year-old Hilda. Bern­ Thus, the Afrikaner policemen material (impressively so by South gation to honour In the age of the television writing by Alan Plater stein is a member of the African are portrayed to a man by actors African actor Jack Klaaf). bomber and the doorstep assassin, if from the novel by South African- National Congress and a sufferer in skilled In projecting themselves as only because of its massive- and all- born Hilda Bernstein. its cause. Her husband Lionel stood bloodless, mindless psychopaths. There are no in-betweens. No pervading influence on the young. trial alongside Nelson Mandela In doubters. No sympathetic whites the Rivonia case of 1963 and escaped who shrink from outright violence, It has an obligation to hold the to this country in his socks. And Saintly nor sympathetic blacks who doubt balance between extremism and Sabotage to be fair, her novel is no exaggera­ its value. moral commitment. It has the duty tion of bully-boy Afrikaanerdom; it to espouse values slightly more All well and good, the activists finite than “the greater truth." should be read by anyone pretend­ Thus, even a halfway-human might say : the novelist and the It’s set in the early Sixties and ing an interest in the South African South African—one of the very few programme-maker both have an And in the final analysis, it tells the story of the first tentative struggle for power. permitted to reach the screen from obligation to hammer home with should have the wit to accept that steps in sabotage taken by a fic­ But—and It's a very big but Mrs Bernstein’s pages—is reduced to passion the argument for human the primary colours and flickering tional group of black activists indeed—the subtle shadings of an ugly hermit-crab of a Boer in rights wherever anomalies exist. impressions of the “ thriller" often against the Soutto African govern­ novels do not translate easily to a matchless performance by John. root deeper than the facts of docu­ ment; the birth pangs. In other television, and they haven’t in this Woodvine. True. And as someone who 'has mentary. words, of today’s struggle for inde­ case. The small screen deals in The “ good " South Africans on served his time, however briefly, in pendence by the outlawed African primary colours, primary emotions; the other hand—whites who supply a South African police cell (all a No one, particularly the BBC, National Congress. in what BBC Television's managing the activists with chemicals for mistake, they finally told me) and has a licence to kill in the name Of course, South Africa is an director, Mr Bill Cotton; described their bombs and the instruction in submitted to the softer side of Afri­ of entertainment. EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS

DEATH IS PART OF THE PROCESS

This is the best political novel that I've read for a long time, and richly merits the Sinclair prize... partly for its vivid authenticity... and partly for its narrative skill. - BASIL DAVIDSON

'Death is Part of the Process' is a novel that had to be written; it is in a way surprising that it has not been done before... It is a compulsively holding novel with descriptive writing of a high order. - JAMES CAMERON

What she has done is something i've been wishing someone would do: to write something that stands on its own as a thriller... she has caught the truth of the beginnings of this movement. - DONALD WOODS

Her Characters, in all colours, are as vivid as the repressive attitudes of her setting. Such a story is never out of date. - FINANCIAL TIMES

She has written a classy thriller with the authority of someone who really knows what they are talking about. Her evocations of South African life are marvellously convincing. - BOOKS AND BOOKMAN

The interrogation scenes are absolutely riveting - CHRISTOPHER HOPE in KALEIDOSCOPE

Contemporary novels of this stature are rare. You must read this. - EDDIE WOODS, MORNING STAR

FOR THEIR TRIUMPHS AND THEIR TEARS

The title is emotive, and there are some tragically moving stories to be told; but the tone of the book is tough and straight. It is an unembroidered account of what the policies of white South Africa have done and are doing to women. - GUARDIAN 29.8.75

A beautifully written emotional but unsentimental account of a very unbeautiful situation - IRISH TIMES 2.9.7 5 (MAEVE BINCHY)

A devastating catalogue, almost a handbook, of the oppression all women suffer in South Africa. - OBSERVER 24.8.75

A vital document on the situation facing millions of women in South Africa today. - CHURCH OF ENGLAND NEWSPAPER, 5.9.7 5

An outstanding contribution to the International Women's Year, and a moving tribute to their cause (of women under apartheid) - SADRUDDIN AGA KHAN, UN HIGH COMMISSION FOR REFUGEES 2.9.75

This book gives a valuable insight into the position of African women in South Africa and should make a significant contribution to the understanding of social and political problems generally in that country COMMENTARY Johannesburg's Janus-faces neighbours think - make her an easy target. David Nokes Yet as Pila herself sits by the pool looking, in her pretty pink bathing costume, like a young Death is Part of the Process Doris Day, there is a suggestion that her poli­ BBC1 tical activism may be a similar kind of pastime. In the first episode of this two-part film the In South Africa the issues are black and white: liberation struggle is presented as a kind of we all know who the heroes and the villains joyous adventure. Idres (Art Malik), Thabo are. Such unaccustomed moral certainties may (John Matshikia) and Sipho (Louis Mahoney) pose problems, though, for the dramatist who prepare their bombs like children playing with aims at more than propaganda or melodrama. fireworks, wrapping them in Christmas paper At first. Death is Pan of the Process, set in as a sign of hope, not cynicism. In the second • South Africa in 1961. seems in danger of mere­ episode this light-heartedness is beaten out ly reinforcing some worthy but conventional against the walls of prison cells, yet a tougher stereotypes: the white liberals, fresh-faced and kind of optimism remains. Sipho. the most handsome with open shirts and open hearts;, cavalier of the comrades, may betray the the blacks, peace-loving. decent and humane, cause, but Margie, the Afrikaner wife of a full of boyish vitality or avuncular wisdom: the detainee, takes up the struggle in his place. Afrikaner police, ugly and brutal, with harsh, Estelle Kohler's portrayal of Margie is the best guttural accents, and dressed in ill-fitting suits among a number of strong performances in this and hats straight out of 1930s gangster films. film. With her watery eyes and taut, nervous Gradually however, it becomes clear that the frame she renders the growth of political film intends to explore some of these familiar awareness as a - physical and emotional images. Visually it evokes the Janus-faces of awakening. Johannesburg: by day normal and bustling; the Death is Part of the Process has the confi­ pavements crowded with women in bright print dence, pace and style of a feature film. Shot frocks out shopping or getting their hair done; partly on location in Africa, it includes panor­ by night, a place of danger and fear, with sleek amic scenes of the countryside around Johan­ black police cars cruising the deserted streets. nesburg not as mere decorationi^i t as a politic­ “Don't put words in my mouth” , complains al context. “The most beautiful country in the Mr Norval (John Woodvine), the main repre­ world”, says one character, “why do we allow it sentative of Afrikanerdom, when his daughter, to be run by monsters?” Plater’s screenplay Pila. protests that he doesn't just want cheap punctuates Bernstein’s political narrative with labour, he wants slave labour. His complaint is a number of dramatic juxtapositions. In the an interesting one, added by Alan Plater to the novel, Pila's mother has two tickets for a new original narrative in Hilda Bernstein’s book, in­ play. In the film, it is Henry V that they see. dicating the greater moral self-consciousness Pila likes the poetry but deplores of the film over the novel. In a sense the film is Shakespeare’s politics. “Politics? In a frame-up, which not only puts words into Shakespeare?" says her mother, incredulous­ . people’s mouths, but also adjusts the lighting ly. This allows Plater to switch from an to enhance a political effect. When the white amateur Chorus in doublet and hose declaim­ liberals plot, they do so surrounded by the ing in a reedy voice “fire answers fire . . to symbols of their'ease: in the sunshine, at the the full-throated roar of an African chorus as sports club, watching rugger, or polo or tennis. the fires of explosion spread from pylon to “Everybody trusts a tennis-player", remarks pylon. Further juxtapositions, such as the one seasoned campaigner. .When the blacks sequence of rapid cross-cutting between tor­ plot, they are huddled around a candle or hur­ ture and love-making may seem unnecessarily ricane lamp, and the intense chiaroscuro gives contrived. But throughout, there is an energy their conspiracy the iconic drama of an Old and passion about this political thriller which Master. The words put into the mouth of Pila's turn contrivance into optimism and coinci­ mother - all about hair-styles and what the dence into a celebration of humanity. OKS AMD POETRY! is in 'how people psychologically change, however, be pushed too far. Tennant adolescent heroine. She is conscious of panicked by their children's puberty? at the least pressure. Describing that uses a diversity of voices — including this connection but insists that what she But such a reading is only partially satis­ moment of transmutation, metamorpho­ social workers' and psychiatric reports, is doing is 'fictionalising good research', factory. There is also the literary problem sis.' The pressures around leadership, re­ newspaper clippings and village gossip — not plagiarising other people's experience. of bringing together the 'vertical and the sponsibility, and competition inevitably interspersed with her narration, which is 'It would be silly if no one could use horizontal types of novel'. Although lead to a bloody and nasty climax. mor-e interiorised and poetic. Freud, or these other techniques, just be­ Tennant regards this amalgamation as an Comparisons with William Golding's Last year Tennant was involved in a cause of what that DM Thomas did with impossibility, there is nonetheless an un­ ‘Lord of the Flies' are inevitable, and controversy about a book which used a them,' she says. resolved tension between the two in this Tennant admits that one of the things that similar technique — DM Thomas' The' Emma Tennant has two daughters who book. Those of us who were enchanted forged the book was Golding's remark White Hotel'. In a letter to the Times are much the same ages as her novel's by 'Wild Nights' Imy favourite) and 'Alice that he'd never write a book about a Literary Supplement she criticised protagonists. Pre-adolescence remains a Fell', may find 'Queen of Stones' a dis­ group of girls getting lost on an island. ‘I Thomas' technique of putting words from compelling mystery in contemporary lite­ appointment; but though flawed, it is an was already working on the book when I other historical people's lives into the rature and Tennant's obvious compas­ interesting novel and, in literary terms, an read this,' she told me, ‘but I thought mouths of his own fictional characters. sion, caring and desire to understand the exciting one. "well that's what I am doing," and it en­ Tennant also uses Freud's case books, phenomenon can be interpreted as mater­ 'Queen of Stones' is published by Jona­ couraged me.' The comparison must not, especially to recreate the symptoms of her nal autobiography. Who, after all, is not than Cape at £6.95. 1 5 = REVIEWS AND EVENTS: Bragg's chapter on the possibilities measures of social control. shame: but Timmerman the Zionist must cable offers for arts programming and ‘Socialism And Survival' is a collection seek to prove that they did not stem from Puttnam's prognosis of the cinema's role of Bahro's talks and writings since his ex­ an inbuilt, historically determined dyna­ in the home-based film-viewing revolution pulsion in 1979. It carries a short, admiring mic within the state of Israel. The War, are good for the casual reader to dip in, introduction from Edward Thompson and then, is 'Sharon's war', the product of a but most will find themselves hooked on illustrates that Bahro, even after the rig­ leadership, and the killings, awful as they the debates and want to read further. Es­ ours of East Germany, remains a utopian are, have been wrongly compared to the sential for anyone working in the TV in­ and an optimist. Bahro warns of impend­ ideologically based excesses of Nazism. dustries or media education, but invalu­ ing holocaust but says it can be averted Much of the time Timmerman's material able as a guide to those who have hitherto through the mobilisation of reds, greens is predictable; occasionally, however, an missed the point in the press and longed and people of spiritual faith. He is particu­ original perception breaks through. For for a comprehensive summary; this book larly inspired when it comes to explaining example, he blames the PLO and their looks set to become a milestone in media to socialists why they should turn green, European allies for boosting the Palestin­ analysis. (Martyn Auty) although less impressive on the particu­ ian cause along a path which led it to dis­ lars of what lies over the green horizon. aster, giving it an illusory, hubristic (Andrew Taylor) strength. GENERAL One can only hope that Timmerman is Kurt Vonnegut Jr: 'Palm Sunday' right — that the Israeli trend towards (Corgi, £1.95). ISRAEL middle eastern fanaticism, intolerance ■"he sleeve bends over backwards to sell Jacobo Timmerman: The Longest and moral emptiness, is reversible. He GRAPEVINE iNis as a new Vonnegut novel. In fact, like War' (Cahtto and Windus, £7.95, Pica­ points out that this has been the first war Clive Sinclair, of personal computer fame, thij earlier 'Wampeters, Foma and Gran- dor, £2.50). when Jews and Israelis have had severe has presented the first of his annual prizes ns', it is a pot-boiler made up of lect- A highly personal account of Israel's inva­ doubts about its justification, but fails to for unpublished novels with 'high literary book introductions, reviews, even a sion of the Lebanon, 'The Longest War' is confront the question of how far this war merit combined with contemporary social fide church sermon. Vonnegut de- a desperate and anguished book. Timmer­ was a product of the other four. Israel and political relevance' to Hilda Bern­ fenc s himself from his critics — including, man, author of the extraordinary 'Prisoner now can only be seen, in world political stein for ‘Death is Part of the Process', a surf isingly enough, much of his ancestry Without a Name, Cell Without a Number', terms, as an aggressive, imperialist, racist novel about sabotage in South Africa. - provides Nick Lowe with a sequel to has now settled in Israel, but the confines state. The most frightening question is, Bernstein lived in South Africa for many Goes' (the phrase 'And on and on' of his new homeland are almost as narrow could it have ever been anything else? years where she worked actively for block in airing at least every 20 pages) and as those of the Argentine secret prison (David Rose) rights and was eventually forced to es­ has the good grace to let a dead where he was once held; his son, indeed, cape with her husband. Her prize is C5.000 air his remarkably fluent views of was jailed for refusing to serve at the plus publication in 1983 by Sinclair ity. Candid and frequently, funny, front. Browne. Second prize, £2,000, goes to Gil Vonnegut stands by his own childishness Still a Zionist, pre-eminently a liberal, FICTION Edmonds for The Common'; and Iwo ana even constructs a school report-style Timmerman believes that a non-militaris- John Wain: 'Young Shoulders' (Mac­ £500 third prizes go to Aviott John for lakdown of his work to date (like most tic, free Isreal is still attainable. This ideal millan, £6.50). ‘Chasing Cursors' and Philip Latham for he discovers a considerable trough underlies and unifies what can can some­ Winner of a Whitbread award, this novella 'Sarah Singing'. in quality, happily filled by the return to times seem like a confused, contradictory covers a timespan of just 24 hours during form of the recent 'Jailbird'). By 'ino and desperate book. To Timmerman the which a group of parents attend a memo­ We would like belatedly to thank 'Flats! means essential Vonnegut, but often liberal and humanist, the atrocities of rial service in Lisbon for their children, backs' in Dean Street for permission to sharp, funny and beautifully ironic Sidon, Tyre and Beirut are an inerasable killed in a plane crash whilst on a school reprint the colour poster of 'Murder My enough to be worth sampling as a stand­ Sweet' which appeared in last week's by until his next ‘proper’ book, ‘Deadeye book section. Dick’, arrives early next year. (Giovanni Dadomo) TELEVISION Brian Wenham(ed): 'The Third Age POLITICS of Broadcasting1 (Faber, £2.95). Rudolf Bahro: ‘Socialism And Surviv­ Notwithstanding the arrival of Channel 4 al' (Heretic, £3.50). and the simultaneous appearance of sev­ Bahro was East Germany's leading dissid­ eral books on the subject (of which Lam­ ent intellectual until he was jailed and then bert's 'Channel 4: Television with a Differ­ expelled for penning The Alternative In ence' is easily the best), the most import­ Eastern Europe', a devastating critique of ant book on television published this year 'actual existing socialism'. is 'The Third Age of Broadcasting’. A col­ Now settled in Bremen, Bahro has re­ lection of perceptive, forward-looking es­ jected red socialism altogether to become says on subjects as diverse as news, ai ts, a prominent and compartively radical access programming and TV films, the voice in the environmental Die Grunen book is unified by its aim to confront the (Green) party. He believes, for instance, new TV technology — video, cable, satel­ that the movement needs both its violent lite — and assess the arguments currently anarchist fringe as well as the more con­ being made within broadcasting so as to servative rightist elements. He quotes make them accessible for a much wider Jesus and is still somewhat enamoured constituency. with Marx, particularly the young Marx, Editor Brian Wenham, soon to relin­ whose methods rather than theory he be­ quish his post as Controller of BBC2 to lieves to be worth developing. head the BBC's advance planning for its Like many Greens, Bahro sees a new This thoroughbred racing machine built by the workshops of many times Tour De two satellite channels, has commissioned political landscape emerging in Protestant France winner Eddy Merckx from aircraft tubing, titanium and other expensive sound­ a diverse group of contributors — Peter industrial Europe during the next decade ing alloys is worth more than you would expect to pay for a good second-hand car. Ibbotson, Melvyn Bragg, David Puttnam, or so. It will see the withering of red socia­ ‘The High-TeCh Bicycle' by Edward Stevenson (Harper and Row. £12.951 is not a book Russell Harty, Channel 4 Controller Paul list and social democratic parties and the for your average pedal-pusher or country PC. Sandwiched between chapters on bicycling Bonner, cable expert Robert MacNeil etc growth of greens as the only serious history and the future of human-powered vehicles lies the meat of serious cycling. — to address the questions raised by the opposition to 'black' conservatives and Illustrated by David Arky with sumptuous photographs, it deals in detail with the eva­ luation of the latest in equipment and frame-building technology. New materials are imminent arrival of the new technologies fascists, ie those dark forces addicted to discussed, as are modifications to traditional designs. As far as I can see it is a blatant which collectively herald the Third Age of the old 'exterminist' industries such as glorification in full colour of the cyclist as consumer and, if you salivate as I did over Broadcasting' (following the radio and steel, cars, nuclear power and weapons, machine-turned bits of kinetic eroticism and love bikes, then this Is a must. There is network TV ages). as well as to correspondingly extreme absolutely nothing around like it. (Chris Richardson!

TIMEOUT 27 DEATH IS PART OF THE PROCESS. by Hilda Bernstein. FOOD, POVERTY AND POWER SINCLAIR BROWNE £7.95. ANNE BUCHANAN (SPOKEMAND £3.50) This is the best political novj As food is the most basic of hunan it I've read for a 1( needs it is irrportant to know and Fichly— mecite-"tfie Sinclair where and how it grows, who con­ Prize it was awarded last year. Partly for its vivid authenticity trols the processing and dis­ THE MAKING OF THE SECOND tribution. of fact, feeling and opinion: for COLD WAR Arme Buchnan answers many here in 294 never-boring pages you by FRED HALLIDAY of these questions with facts and have the drama of apartheid South (Verso £4.95) figures together with relentless Africa in its humanity and logic. She shows how the large essential meaning, even when This is an absorbing and topical multinational firms decide what dealing with a whole variety of bock aiming to analyse the causes and where food is grown and at different kinds of attitude. of the intensification of the Cold what price it is sold. Partly for its subtlety of War. Most of the developing countries characterisation, whether of The main factors of the Cold War, in the Americas and in Asia grow white, coloured, Indian or black according to the author, specialised food not for the persons in that drama: for here are firstly the American deter­ benefit of the grower, but to be you have men and women and even mination to regain a supposedly exported to the more prosperous children in completely believable lost nuclear supremacy over the countries. situations described without Soviet Union, ip to the point of G"eat wealth goes to multi­ prurience or propaganda, even when in less conpetent hands those a serious flirtation with the idea nationals in the processing of ef a limited nuclear war. coffee, tea, oils, cocoa, ground situations could so easily become (Halliday refutes with facts and nuts etc.,together with the food tuppence-coloured or merely figures the attempts of military canning industries. The countries sentimental. Partly, too, for its statisticians to prove Soviet which produce most of the raw narrative skill: for here you have superiority). Secondly, the hosti­ materials have the lowest stand­ an 'open' plot' that nonetheless conceals its twists and turns, and lity of the West to the revolutions ards of living- keeps you reading to the end, even in the Third World. Thirdly, the Power over these countries is increased swing to the right in maintained by a system of corrupt when the nature of the outcome has America itself die to internal government and armies. The elete been explained to you on page one. political and economic diffi­ import luxury gDods such as ex­ I am not gping to give away any culties. pensive cars, electronic equipment details about those twists and I found the chapter on 'A New and other consumer goods, thus ip- turns of plot, because it could Period of the Third World Revolu­ setting the economic balance of rob Hilda Bernstein's readers of tions' , of special interest. In the countries. some part of the excitement that dealing with the anti imperialist The bock exposes many of the her book continuously evokes. and social revolutions in Asia, myths of the cause of poverty, Suffice it to explain that her Africa, Latin tonerica, etc., the such as over population. For story is about the or ingins and founding of Urkcnto wa Sizwe, the author shows up the persistent and example, North Americans consume 40 ruthless atterrpts of the U.S. to times the resource that the aver­ action wing of the African stop these revolutions. age Asian does. Sometimes the National Congress of South Africa, Speaking of the Soviet help to climate is blamed, yet people back in the early 1960's; of its these movements, the author empha­ starve in Northern Brazil despite small successes and its rapid sizes that the effectiveness of its favourable agricultual failure; of the disasters that this help depends on the evolution climate. overtook many or even most of the of the political situation in the There is a very telling poem, participants; and of how, through countries concerned. quoted ty the Turkish Poet Mazim blood and misery and torture, While critical of various aspects Hikmet:- confusion and courage and gradual of Soviet policy, Halliday never­ What a bewildering world development,, the action was begun theless does not accept the view While die fish are drinking coffee again in the late 1970's and 1980. that the responsibility for the in Brazil Nothing here is written to recipe, Cold War should be equally shared Babies gp without milk here... nothing faked and nothing with­ by the two super powers. They feed people with words held: but what is given is offered The conclusion one draws from The pig with choice potatoes. with a sureness of touch that did this analysis is that the main re­ There are many charts and cart­ not, for me, ever lose its sponsibility lies with America. oons which, with their bitter strength. humour, expose the exploiting Tamara Philipps. countries. Basil Davidson 6CRITS SUR L'AFRIQUE sance de la litterature sud-africaine J.M. COETZEE, Au caeur de ce pays, Papy­ contestataire. rus, Maurice Nadeau, Paris 1981, 186 p. Sophie Mayoux a traduit de Panglais Hilda BERNSTEIN, Death is Part of the Pouvrage publie en 1977 a Londres sous le Process, Sinclair Browne, I.x>ndres, 1983, titre correspondant a Pappellation fran?aise. L’auteur, J.M. Coetzee, ne en 1940, est profes­ seur a Puniversite du Cap. Le roman raconte Ce tres beau La mort fait partie de la vie. lTiistoire d’une ferme isolee au coeur du Veldt; roman a justement merite le premier Sinclair Magda et ron pere vivent loin de toute civilisa­ Prize for Fiction decerne a «une oeuvre inedite tion. Le jv>v sMwii jr>.* jeune afrii?ip“ i-^use traitant avec une haute qualite litteraire d’un du contremaitre Hendrik et sa fille tu" son sujet social et politique contemporain ». Hilda pere et Penterre secretement. Elle est alors au Bernstein a du quitter en 1964, sous la menace pouvoir d’Hendrik qui la viole avant de d’arrestation, l’Afrique du Sud ou elle vivait s’enfuir. Restee seule, Magda erre dans un depuis 1933. C’est done avec une reelle etrange pays entre le reel et ses hallucinations. connaissance du pays et des milieux «libe- Elle meurt, bras en croix, face au ciel, dans raux» de Pepoque qu’elle decrit Paventure son jardin desertique, herisse de pierres. d’un petit groupe multiracial realisant «en amateurs > quelques sabotages et soumis a une Athol FUGARD, Tsotsi, Penguin Books, repression ubiquitaire et brutale. Sa descrip­ 1983, New York, 150 p. tion poignante et emouvante des conditions de Athol Fugard, ne en 1932 a Middelburg, est detention et de torture de ses heros noirs, Pun des meilleurs dramaturges sud-africains. metis, indiens et blancs en apprend beaucoup II nous livre ici un extraordinaire ouvrage, Pun plus sur les rapports de la police sud-africaine des meilleurs thrillers sud-africains. avec les opposants que n’importe quelle etude savante de sociologie ou d’histoire. Nadine GORDIMER, A World of Strangers, Penguin Books, New York, 1981, 265 p. II faut remercier les editions Penguin de Andre BRINK, Sur un banc du Luxembourg, nous offrir en livre de poche Pun des meilleurs Stock, Paris, 1982, 272 p romans de Nadine Gordimer «un monde Jean Guiloineau a traduit de l’anglais sur d’Etrangers ». un banc du Luxembourg. Andre Brink, a 47 ans, est professeur k Puniversite de Nadine GORDIMER, Fille de Burger, Albin Grahamstown, il est le traduaeur en afrikaans Michel, Paris, 1982, 357 p. de Shakespeare et de Camus. Auteur de cinq Guy Durand a traduit de Panglais ce roman romans tous publies en France, il est traduit de Nadine Gordimer qui est beaucoup plus dans le monde entier. «Je suis ne sur un banc connue par ses nouvelles. Ce roman, con?u du Luxembourg a Paris au debut du printemps dans le meme esprit, a un autre caractere. 1960», nous confie-t-il dais sa derniere Rosemarie Burger ressemble physiquement a oeuvre: c’est en effet alors q i’il etait sur un son pere, mais, plus encore, e!le veut, comme banc du Luxembourg qu’il apprit le massacre lui, rendre aux Noirs d’Afrique du Sud la de Sharpeville et qu’il a reconsidere les place que les Afrikaners blancs leur refusent. problemes de l’Afrique du Sud II a rassemble Romanciere sud africaine, Nadine Gordimer des articles deja publies anterieurement. Le partant des realites eprouvantes qu’elle premier chapitre, sur un banc du Luxembourg, connait, nous fait communiquer interieure- est le seul qui soit vraiment original et qui ment et exprimer avec force le conflit latent ou situe I’orientation de ce nouveau livre en la morale individuelle se confronte a Puniver- evoquant les problemes de Pecrivain de langue seile et aux evenements significatifs de afrikaans. le Mahatma Gandhi aujourd’hui, Phistoire contemporaine. I’anglais et Pecrivain de langut afrikaans. la literature comme agression, Papres Soweto, Elsa JOUBERT, Der langue Weg der Poppie Pecrivain en etat de siege. Pecnture contre le Nongena, ein Leben in Sudefrika, Verlag silence, la censure et la lit erature. Ces Volk und Welt, Berlin, 1981, 323 p. diverses contributions interesseont tous ceux Les lecteurs germanophones doivent remer­ qui sont preoccupes par I’Afriqje du Sud. cier Karl H. Kosmehl d’avoir traduit la longue Two outstanding books from Sinclair Browne DEATH IS PART OF THE PROCESS

Hilda Bernstein Winner of the first Sinclair Prize for Fiction

This gripping novel, a thriller set in the early 1960s. tells how a group of South Africans of all races become involved in sabotage. United in their determi­ nation to overthrow apartheid but thwarted in their struggle for peaceful change, they begin to blow up power lines, railway track, government offices — symbols of the state. Their campaign of violence brings little sucess and seems futile. Betrayal and arrest are followed by interrogation, solitary confinement and torture, described in horrifying and authentic detail. Some crack, some sell out, some die. But some escape, and a new generation of freedom fighters is smuggled across the border to begin training for a further struggle.

What the critics said ‘This is the best political novel that I’ve read for a long time, and richly merits the Sinclair Prize’ - Basil Davidson. ‘She has caught the truth of the beginnings of this movement’ - Donald Woods. ‘Death is Part o f the Process is a novel that had to be written; it is in a way surprising that it has not been done before. . . It is a compulsively holding novel with descriptive writing of a high order’ — James Cameron. ‘Contemporary novels of this stature are rare. You must read this’ - Morning Star. ‘Her characters in all colours are as vivid as the. . . repressive attitudes of her setting’ - Financial Times.

£7.95 cloth ISBN 0 86300 028 2

Available through your local bookseller. In case of difficulty it can be supplied post free by the publisher.

Sinclair Browne Ltd 10 Archway Close London N19 3TD Telephone 01-263 3438 Two outstanding books from Sinclair Browne A VISION OF ORDER

A Study of Black South African Literature in English (1914-1980) Ursula A. Barnett

In South African today, a vigorous literature in English is flouting the intellec­ tual and political repression which apartheid has brought. Poets, novelists, journalists and dramatists are pouring out work of the highest technical accom­ plishment, driven on by passionate feeling. The authorities respond by arrest, bannings and exile.

In this survey of black writers in English, Dr Barnett traces the history of their role in South African literature. She examines and assesses the careers o f many writers, including Sol Plaatje, Dennis Brutus, Alex La Guma, Bessie Head, Oswald Mtshali, Peter Abrahams, Can Themba, Athol Fugard and Richard Rive. The author brings her account up to date with lengthy treatments of the many writers who have emerged since Soweto.

Ursula Barnett has a Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town. She is the author of Ezekiel Mphalele (1976).

336 pages including bibliographies and index £15 cloth ISBN 0 86300 007 X

Publication November 1983

Available through your local bookseller. In case of difficulty it can be supplied post free by the publisher.

Sinclair Browne Ltd 10 Archway Close London N19 3TD Telephone 01-263 3438 Publishing Sens 3

GeneralBestsellers 1 Lord's Taverners — 50 Greatest Trevor Bailey (Heinemann £12.95) 2 Vanessa Bell Prances Spalding (Weirtenfelrt fl? .9 5 ' 3 The Finest Hour: W inston Spencer Churchill 1939-1941 >S Martin Gilbert (Heinemann £15.95) 4 Jane Fonda's Workout Book (Allen Lane £10.95) iinl but 5 Ordnance Survey Motoring Atlas of Great Britain (Temple Press £3.25) >duetive 6 Illustrated Lark Rise to Candleford its in the Flora Thompson (Century £ l2.95) ales b\ 7 King George V Dps and Kenneth Rose (W eidenfeld £12.50) in stock, 8 Indian Cookery i in the Madhur Jaffrey (BBC £4.25) 9 The Naughty Nineties Martin's (Collins £5.95) 10 Chambers 20th Century Dictionary (New Edition) vert sub- Ed. E.M. Kirkpatrick (Chambers £9.95) Services. anted to Paperbacks ?t control itions in- Shirley Conran (Penguin £2.50) :their Te­ 2 The Prodigal Daughter Jeffrey Archer (Coronet £2.50) nths ago 3 The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail :s of Au- Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln and Richard Leigh iLen For- (Corgi £2.50) rkey and 4 The Angels Weep r’ith Nick W ilbur Smith (Pan £1.95) 5 The Long Voyage Back Luke Rhinehart (Granada £1.95) •us to re 6 Schindler's Ark to NHL. Thomas Keneally (Coronet £2.50) go ahead 7 The Miller's Dance (Poldark) ft by this Winston Graham (Fontana £1.95) concern 8 Spellbinder III o f IV - Harold Robbins (NEL £2.50) .vhich had 9 Windfall Desmond Bagley (Fontana £1.75) 10 A Boy's Own Story rnt.ihl rc- Edmund W hite (Picador £2.50) ere eon- ilanned a Fiction ick with n 1 Hollywood Wives hardback Jackie Collins (Collins £9.50) Michael 2 The W orld is Made of Glass tther with Morris West (Hodder £8.95) je end not 3 The Little Drumm er Girl John le Carre (Hodder £8.95) 4 Ancient Evenings V went to Norman Mailer (Macmillan £9.95) were pro- 5 The Philospher's Pupil uthors Inc Irish Murdoch (Chatto & Windus E7.95) 6 Death is Part of the Process ig serv ices Hilda Bernstein (Sinclair Brown £7.95) a to have 7 Exocet published Jack Higgins (Collins £7.95) intinued. 8 Brilliant Creatures Clive James (Cape £7.95)

JIVE, TH A T’S TH E WORD!

|»IVE SESSION LEADERS lexperts willing and able to share their It u i i i h t r t f iB i Publishing News 3

GeneralBestsellers 1 Lord's Taverners — 50 Greatest Trevor Bailey (Heinemann C l2.95) 2 Vanessa Bell Frances Spalding (Weidenfeid £12.95' 3 The Finest Hour: W inston Spencer Churchill 1939-1941 Martin Gilbert (Heinemann £15.95) 4 Jane Fonda's W orkout Book (Allen Lane £10.95! 5 Ordnance Survey Motoring Atlas of Great Britain (Temple Press £3.25) 6 Illustrated Lark Rise to Candleford Flora Thom pson (Century £12.95) 7 King George V Kenneth Rose (Weidenfeid £12.50) 8 Indian Cookery M adhur Jaffrey (BBC £4.25) 9 The Naughty Nineties (Collins £5.95) 10 Chambers 20th Century Dictionary (New Edition) Ed. E.M. Kirkpatrick (Chambers £9.95) Paperbacks 1 Lace Shirley Conran (Penguin £2.50) 2 The Prodigal Daughter Jeffrey Archer (Coronet £2.50) 3 The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln and Richard Leigh (Corgi £2.50) 4 The Angels Weep W ilbur Smith (Pan £1.95) 5 The Long Voyage Back Luke Rhinehart (Granada £1.95) 6 Schindler's Ark Thomas Keneally (Coronet £2.50) 7 The M iller's Dance (Poldark) W inston Graham (Fontana £1.95) 8 Spellbinder Harold Robbins (NEL £2.50) 9 W indfall Desmond Bagley (Fontana £1.75) 10 A Boy's Own Story Edmund W hite (Picador £2.50) Fiction 1 Hollywood Wives Jackie Collins (Collins £9.50) 2 The W orld is Made of Glass M orris West (Hodder £8.95) 3 The Little Drummer Girl John le Carre (Hodder £8.95) 4 Ancient Evenings Norman M ailer (M acm illan £9.95) 5 The Philospher's Pupil Irish Murdoch (Chatto & W indus £7.95) j^ ie a th is Part of the Process i^N H lda Bernstein (Sinclair Brown £7.95) 7 Exocet Jack Higgins (Collins £7.95) 8 Brilliant Creatures Clive James (Cape £7.95) - . itantf'aih'ifWrm * __ "fc %

One of the pitfalls of national liberation struggles is pointed out as follows (p 79): “Class struggle was subsumed under the national struggle” in Zaire, Hilda Bernstein’s book comes at a time when the graph of armed struggle particularly as the political parties were all led by the petty bourgeoisie. is in the ascendant, when the geo-political map of Southern Africa has greatly Pursuit of self-interest led to, the Katanga secession. At present, Nzongola- altered the balance of forces in favour of the oppressed. The novel is a moving Natalaja rates the prospects of revolution as low, the ruling class having a account of events that changed the political landscape of South Africa in the tight, repressive reign on the country. 1960s, when a new dimension — armed struggle — was introduced. One of the key features of Ghana was that the bourgeoisie was imported The first reaction of this reviewer — not yet bom at that time — was a from the United Kingdom, being virtually non-existent locally at first. The mixture of expectation and curiosity as to what political form the novel would economy was based on cash crop agriculture, so that the working class was take, for there is a dialectical link between life and death and the search to small. Again, the petty bourgeoisie took the leading role in organising for understand the process of history as a whole. There is always a need, as the independence, but its role, epitomised by Nkrumah, was progressive. struggle is hurled forward, to page backwards, record the events and Nkrumah recognised neo-colonialism for what it was, though one may underline their significance for the future battles in this struggle where there criticise his concept of “African socialism” (discussed on p 147). is ‘defeat within victory'’.! The role of the army in Ghana is a unique feature discussed in detail. The The opening chapter relives the tensions, doubts and squabbles that working class components of the Ghanaian s.rmy supported the coup of FI. always precede decisive situations in history. In particular, the advanced Lt. J. Rawlings on Dec 31 1981. The many positive moves towards establish­ forces had to satisfy themselves that the situation was mature for a ing socialism are documented (p 153 fi) including an anti-imperialist stance, transformation of policy. The symbols of apartheid and not human life were setting up people’s defence committees, workers’ committees, the the declared targets of the sabotage campaign which was launched on investigation of corruption, etc. Unfortunately, nothing has been done on the December 16, 1961, but was violence justified or necessary? “There is a land question. Nevertheless the author (Aidoo) feels that an encouraging change coming in the nature of the struggle. It’s not simply that things are basis for socialism has been laid. becoming more difficult, it’s a radical change of direction.” The debates were heated, “...there’s this awful contradiction: fear of doing nothing; fear of There are chapters on Zambia and Angola, the key features of which are familiar to our readers. The book ends with a chapter by Wallerstein and also involving innocent people... There are no innocent people.” “Your refusal to one by Waterman, the latter on a concept of “semi-proletarianised take part in a decision is also a decision”. Such were the debates that raged peasantry” which neither he nor I find very useful. These two chapters don’t back and forth among the pioneers of Umkhonto we Sizwe. The bizarre reality of apartheid barbarity is well documented: “...the little contribtue a great deal to the book, which could have done just as well without them. black children with rags and stick-limbs and hair turning strangely rust coloured, dying in the remote countryside”. The Group Areas Act S.P. threatened Indian families. These and many other wounds in the consciousness of the oppressed suggested that something drastic had to be INSPIRED BY THE TURN TO ARMED done to remedy the ills of oppression and exploitation. “How do you shake off an iron fist with passive resistance?” STRUGGLE Seasons were changing. “Unexpectedly, the rain started.” This dramatic statement is written in the pages that describe that turbulent period of trial Death is Part of the Process, by Hilda Bernstein (Sinclair Browne Ltd. Price £7.95). and error. Impatience pervades the souls of the revolutionaries whose wish is “freedom in our lifetime”. The cloud of danger hovered persistently over Exactly 22 years after the birth of Umkhonto we Sizwe a writer inspired by its them. The will to live added quality to their work. People of all races, from all struggle and achievements has added a unique novel to the arsenal of walks of life, swelled their ranks. What was discussed behind closed doors liberation literature in South Africa. under the curtain of darkness yielded results in a multitude of acts of sabotage throughout South Africa. 92 93 1

The choice between personal fortune and the will of the masses is made situations descrioed in the book. It strikes me that the pioneers cl sabotage glaringly clear. \1K was just crawling, a new-born baby of the revolution, yet were people who had risen above the narrow confines of racism, h is oni\ it showed innovation, creativity ana single-mindedness. The knowledge of revolutionary conviction that could have led to that dramatic shift ol strateu\ chemistry was not given in laboratories but tested on the field of battle. in 1960. Collective work was jemphasised; discipline was the watchword. It is an The author shows how racism has disorganised the personalities ol tIn­ exciting story, excitingly told. This reviewer would have liked to hear more security police and led them to their notorious methods of interrogation. "I about the way the decisions were taken by the high command, about the understand the native mind. I understand the way a communist thinks. contribution of Mandela and other leaders. One is left in the dark as to the That’s how I defeat them. I understand them.” The psychology of this policeman is permeated by delusions of grandeur, ignorance and arrogance. role of the leadership or even that of revolutionary theory in general. Nothing His captive survives owing to his sense of obligation to his people, his nobler is said about the role and work of the Communist Party, although it was and higher convictions. “Someone pulled down his trousers, and electrodes banned in 1950, 10 years before the ANC went underground. were fastened to each testicle. The current passed through and through him It does seem odd that the author chose to relate meticulously the recurring in shivering waves of agony, one on top of the other, an excruciating torment anecdotes of drinking and womanising that were supposed to coexist with split into a million separate needles.” Thabo refuses to divulge am the work of revolution — especially in the danger-ridden life of those information. His moral courage escapes his tormentors, racism still blinds revolutionaries described in the book. There is nothing wrong with romance them. “They don’t feel like human beings, these black bastards. Their skins in a revolution; after all, revolutionaries are inspired by love for life. Yet theirs is a love guided by revolutionary morality, and exceptions to this rule are no are thicker, their skulls are thicker. They don’t feel enough.” On the other hand the author’s analysis of the courage of Pila,a progressive excuse for dramatics. For instance the romance between Indris and Margi — white intellectual arrested for her part in sabotage, is disturbing. “She had whom the author describes using racial criteria (Indian and White) — is earned the badge of honour of Africa — jail for political reasons.” This particularly damaging to the image of a serious revolutionary. The motivation runs contrary to the attitudes of a captured revolutionary. Such emancipation of women — irrespective of their racial origin — guides sentiments are usually expressed by liberals, be they black or white. This revolutionaries with responsible attitudes, and such attitudes ought to be liberal tinge, naturally, does not fit into the author’s own political predominant in characters like Indris, Sipho and Thabo. The novel seems to suggest that racial consciousness could be alleviated if background. Sabotage was countered by brute force and terror, police infiltration and not destroyed by a casual act of sexual intercourse during the process of 90-day detention of revolutionaries without trial. This increasing repression revolution. If this was not the intention of the author, this impression gave rise to increased resistance. The author does not miss this dialectical unfortunately could not escape me while reading the book. “They met by process. The seeds of armed struggle planted in the 1960s were temporarily chance and would part by necessity”. “Every relationship was poisoned by trampled upon, denied the sunshine and water needed for growth. Yet the racism; whether you recognised it or not, it was there, because it was for a roots remained deep in the soul and soil of the downtrodden majority. Now night, perhaps one more night, and that was all. ” The characters seem to play the fruits are ripening. Hilda Bernstein’s gripping novel points the way to the their roles and live up to their responsibilities within the limitations of their future and informs us that the double-edged sword of mass action and armed racial or intellectual specifications. struggle will inevitably lead to the victory of the South African revolution. Skin pigmentation can either aggravate or lessen the danger faced by M.F. underground operatives; open or close the possibilities of their advance. Our revolution has learned to exploit this loophole. To continually insist, as the author does, on the ‘us’ and ‘them’ syndrome becomes counter­ productive to the efforts towards non-racialism. “It’s not power failure — it’s sabotage — they did it, and I helped them!” The concept o f‘they’ and ‘I’ defeats the purpose of the comradeship which is otherwise present in all 95 94

Collection Number: A3299 Collection Name: Hilda and Rusty BERNSTEIN Papers, 1931-2006

PUBLISHER:

Publisher: Historical Papers Research Archive Collection Funder: Bernstein family Location: Johannesburg ©2015

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