Ruth's Real Life

Caught in the UmPhafa Thorns The UmPhafa tree,  zizyphus mucronata , has a double thorn. The thorn on the bottom of the branch hooks backwards, while the thorn on the top of the branch spikes forwards.  The tree has many names, including the hook thorn, and the Afrikaans, blinkblaar-wag-‘n-bietjie (shiny leaf wait-a- bit). All the names refer to the vicious nature of the thorns. Animals and humans alike find it difficult to escape the thorns once entangled in them. King Chaka, the Zulu Chief, told his people that the backward thorn holds memory while the upward thorn points to the future. We cannot have one without the other, so we must look forward to the future but never forget the past. I know, in my own life, I am often deeply caught by the backward hook of memory and by the tree’s elliptical seed. The tree seems to have a sense of its own magic. Synonyms for elliptical include: cryptic, dark, equivocal, murky, mystic and nebulous. Memory, and how we...

On Thursday, I was invited to discuss my poem Black and White with 90 Grade 7s. The poem is about my second mother, Johanna Rapule. At the end of the talk, the girls asked a number of questions about the poem but there is one that has haunted me ever since. ‘What would you say to Johanna if you could speak to her again?’ The easy answer would be to tell her that I loved her. The real answer would be the deep regret that, although she knew my hopes and my dreams, I never knew hers. Growing up in apartheid South Africa, it seemed normal to have Johanna living in the tiny khaya at the bottom of the garden. It was normal to have her cook and clean and iron. I was five; my world was shaped by adults. As I grew up, visionary teachers, like Maureen O’ Gara, awakened me to the injustice that kept Johanna in her place. As a student, I protested and waved placards. We ran from the police down the streets of Benoni. We wrote angry poems, smoked furiously and drank too much wine. ...

A new year begins and with it come all the hopeful resolutions that see the light of day briefly before dying their usual death. Don't make new resolutions  I spoke to a group of people yesterday and asked them if they had made resolutions for 2012, many of them had. Most were horrified when I told them to ditch their grand plans as they would cause more stress than they were worth. The 1 st of January is like some magical line in the sand – there is a vague hope that we can step across the line and suddenly be all the things that we haven’t been for the last X number of years. It gets done Things that need to get done, get done. If you amputate a finger while cunningly carving a radish to decorate a salad, you don’t sit on the couch waiting for the right inspirational moment to go to the closest casualty room. You put your finger in a Tupperware container and just go. Building a better picture Our brains contain a dominant picture of who we are. In order to ma...

Respond while you have breath to prevent a catastrophe Ruth Everson Africa has potential – South Africa can move to self-sufficiency in a single generation. This startling claim was made by Professor O’ Connell, Vice Chancellor of the University of the Western Cape, at a Captains of Industry event held by Symphonia for Africa at St Stithians College recently. Symphonia’s purpose was clear, to shock and then to galvanise business leaders into becoming part of the solution to the education crisis in South Africa. Professor O’ Connell, who grew up in District 6, is passionate about education: ‘Respond while you have breath to prevent a catastrophe.’ This was the challenge that he laid down to the businessmen and women at the meeting. This is the challenge that he lays at the heart of every South African. If we are to thrive as a nation, we dare not ignore his voice or the voices of others who are calling for action. How do we do the impossible? O’ Connell painted a vi...

I Want to Restart the Beat of my Heart What are we waiting for? We stand with our toes in the ocean of our own inspiration but are afraid of the pull of the currents of our hearts. The moments that move my heart seem to happen at the most ordinary times. What my poet’s heart has taught me is to be alive to the possibility of finding the ‘extra’ in the ordinary. On an early morning walk along the Durban beachfront, I came across Bongani and his sand woman. Bongani is a sand sculptor, and amidst the dolphins, a soccer ball and the fearsomely fanged cat that he was working on, stretched a Rubenesque sculpture of a woman. I doubt that Bongani has ever heard of Rubens but like the Master, (famous for his painting of voluptuous women), he had captured in his naïve work a sensuality and grace that ensnared my heart. I want to re-start the beat of my heart The figure was of a bountiful woman, clad only in a thong, lying face down in the sand. Initially, what caught my...

Mosquitoes, Moustaches and Saddam Hussein One memorable holiday, Julia and I headed off to a lodge in Hluhluwe. It was December. In the hot, hot heart of Zululand. But this is not about the curtains of mosquitoes that obscured our view of the sunset. It’s not about the death of the generator, that awful moment when the world went quiet, except for the persistent sucking of the swamp and a collective shiver of delight from the clouds of mosquitoes, sensing their moment had come.   There were choices, of course. We could stay in our room and join the puddle made by our fridge in extremis as we melted without the air conditioning, or, we could open the windows and be bitten to the bone by vulture sized mozzies. There was one other choice. A quad bike ride to a lake to view hippos seemed enticing. After all, I have ridden camels in Egypt, climbed the Great Wall of China and once, even knitted a jersey. (The fact that the jersey was so hideous that not even a camel would ...

Start your heart-dance.   Fatter Than Life is a poem about living ‘juicy’, about living a larger life. It was written at a time in my life where I felt lost and trapped in both my inner and outer worlds. We probably all have those days where – even in the middle of the brightest day – it feels like midnight in your soul. The hook for the poem came one beautiful Karoo morning, driving that straight, long road back to Johannesburg from the Cape. There was my tall African sky that I love so much, carrying a silver and grey cloud formation called a holy mackerel sky. I loved the unusual name and it began to dance in my head as the road unrolled. The name and the clouds had a lift and a joy that I was searching for. I have been a big person for most of my life. I was sent for ballet lessons – once. I came home knowing that if I was ever going to star in a ballet it would be as the Lake and not the Swan. But I don’t have to wear a tutu, or in my case, fourfour, to know how to d...