6. Atlas, Fiction and Fate

The Accidental Spy – Great Expectations – Wasteland (1)

In the memory of Ruth First (1925-1982), Aquino de Bragança (1924-1986) and Fernando Ganhão (1937-2008)

A Conspiratorial Charade: The setting is a smelly, dark and aged hotel bar in Johannesburg, South Africa; the characters of the drama sit in a shabby table placed at a disguised corner of the room. Date: 7 January 1979.

Abel: (A shy, young fellow, pulling an ugly, bulky chair) “Mr Vorster I presume?”

(Very cold but firm handshake)

B: (An aged, cocky, Special Branch policeman, dressed in a dark, worn-out costume): “Ja himself, and welcome to Zuid-Afrika, the land of the free” (added with a sneer, tweaking eye and revolting dirty teeth) …” let us have a seat and a drink, shall we? Warfare can wait…”

A: “How could you know I recently arrived from Maputo? Why do you ask me for a meeting when I’m here on a valid visa to visit relatives?”

B: “Ag man, don’t be pussie (2). Here (proudly exhibiting) is my ID… now listen to me: I do the questioning and you do the answering, okay? And don’t be dof: I am not going to beat around the bush, so speak up and don’t give me kak! We like you’re visiting! We may even have made you to drop by without you knowing it! (Long pause building up expectation) … look at these ANC bastards – so that you know what we know – and tell me if you recognise our problem”

A: (looking for a moment to the open file with underscored pictures and text in red, laid down over a greasy tablecloth, feeling intimidated by rank and bluntness): “If you know so much, you should also know that I’m an archaeologist. I’m only interested in science, not politics! I have heard of expat researchers working at our Centre for African Studies, but I never met them.”

B: (Deliberately ignoring the statement, addressing a slow waiter): “Ag, mamparra, bring me a beer; and (now addressing Abel) perhaps a Catemba for our laaitie”?

A: (nodding) “Thank you”

B: (looking menacingly to A) Cool! Let’s cut the crap and avoid rooinek talk: you help us, we help you, lekker huh? WE know that you are here for your wife’s sake, she is sick and your black doctors cannot help her, right?”

A: (now grasping the corners of the table as if to hold on to good manners)” Yes, unfortunately a rare disease, and our doctors – whatever colour, which is not the point

– cannot treat her (adding in a meaningless appeal for sympathy) ... we are also expecting a child you know?”

B: “That’s why we are here boykie! To help you with your growing family, so that you can eat bread, beef and Caldo Verde … even if all food has left to Portugal, now that the bloody Frelimo communists took over, hey?”

A: (curious) “what do you mean by to help”?

B: “you help us, we help you, you see? You give us information of your maaifoedie comrades and we put boerewors on a Jo’burg bank account we open for you. Easy, well done, dankie!”

A: (surprised and restrained, but nearly dropping his drink) “Again, I… I am a scientist; I don't do or understand politics… (but having in mind a soon-to-born child and a hateful police officer facing him) ah… I really don't know which information you are talking about… I need to think about it”

B: “You think about it and fast if you and your Choty goty are allowed to come back! And think how much more fun with real pocket money for you to use on your nomenklatura chic shop and black market, hey? You like black with style, don’t you boykie? (Pulling ostensibly a card as if stroking a final bet: Here is my telephone number. From now on you must identify yourself as ‘Atlas’, no other name, okay? Always, even in Maputa when our people contact you. (Now looking ominous) And so that you know, we are especially interested you check on this fokken comrade of yours (pointing his filthy finger at Ruth‘s photograph in his file). For her we will organise a nice braai …”

I. Great Expectations (8 February 1979)

The SNASP (Mozambican Security Service) agent asks me astonished why I didn’t accept the offer, as if life would be an endless game of spies. We are seated in my office, which helps me to have the upper hand. I remind him again what I said during our current debrief: science is my business, not the hidden world of intelligence. Although a party member, I am unwilling to act as a double agent. I am however no fool, and suspect that South Africa’s Special Branch has already reported our conversation to one of their local double agents: a sweet revenge after realizing that I ignored their offer. This thought, however, I do not disclose. I am – once again – playing the naïve, stooge scholar.

The first thing I did after hastily leaving Johannesburg was to meet with University’s Rector Comrade Fernando G. to report on what had happened, expecting that he will properly alert those who must be watchful. He told me he would organize for someone from SNASP to meet with me. My worry – I told him –was that South Africa’s intelligence interests on ANC activities at the campus was a bad omen.

SNASP agent (grinning):” Here is what I think we should do: you will confirm that you accept being their Atlas, and we count on you being a double agent. Atlas is in fact a very good name! You will be our road atlas to lead us beat the enemy. You will feed in disinformation which we will prepare for you. They’re clever people, but we are well trained by our Stasi brothers from the DDR. They have a good foot in the university and elsewhere, they’re smartest.”

I smile discreetly, holding on to my own thoughts: I would be surprised if the agent (who did not identify himself with a name) knew of the other ‘Atlas’, the rebellious Titan from the Greek mythology. Clearly perceiving his amateurishness and my own aversion to role-playing games, I have decided that – Atlas or Apollo – I will not carry either firmament or fairyland on my shoulders. For him, intelligence – as if gambling with worthless puppets – seem to be as elementary as in Monty Python’s Life of Brian: “You come from nothing, you’re going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!” … since clearly, he has nothing to lose.

As we talk, repulsive events come to mind: following a defamation from Stasi agents, my friend and colleague Luis B. has recently been sent to a Frelimo ‘reeducation camp’ in the Mozambican Gulag at Nyassa, conceivably for not being as ‘dogmatic’ as required. Luis is a competent lecture who helped setting up the newly established ‘Faculty of Marxism-Leninism’ where Eastern German ‘philosophers’ have been sent to indoctrinate. Luis’s fate has been unknown to us despite repeated requests for clarification.

Rumors indicate however that his arrest was clearly prompted by a DDR agent: open-mindedness runs against worshipping the communist creed, Mozambican intellectuals must learn it.

One rarely has the benefit of taking decisions leisurely, and this was one of such moments. As we finished our brief discussion, risk-taking ease ran through my spine: will my resolve and ‘rebellion’ be accepted, or will it be taken as a punishable extravagance? Will my inflexible stand also dispatch me to Nyassa for fighting back apostolic hierarchy and emulating Luis’s courage?

I do not expect that the agent would ever understand my standpoint. I must therefore return to our Rector – who has been so far a tolerant leader – hoping that he will recognize my constraint and inform the SNASP accordingly. These are my last thoughts before I show the door to a self-assured agent with my promise to be back to him one way or the other.

II. In the Eye of the Storm

(…) From my office window I look right into the agricultural gardens and beyond, the bright red soil fading into the cyan blue sweep of the Indian Ocean. The University Campus, gradually mushroomed from the late 60’s – once a leftover of the ancient coastal forest in the outskirts of the city and a splitter between concrete and shanty dwellings – stands now proudly scrubbed from the old, even if incarcerated by an endless swell of ‘machambas’ (plots). The School of Agronomy and the Institute for Scientific Research were the first buildings to be raised as intellectual and material beacons of modernization. Yet, shortly after independence in 1975, the Campus evolved as an enclave in food-famine territory. Within and without, the ‘us’ and ‘them’ splitting Mozambican and expatriate personnel. And only the latter earn in foreign currency and thereby have access to Loja Franca, the shopping spa.

As the country is heading into its unknown fate, replacing the old myths for new ones, I see the arrival of an increasing number of international expatriates without a homeland that they may claim, or unsure where they belong. They seem to look for the new Celestial Pole, a new revolutionary summit, as once-upon-a-time crusaders sought after the Holy Grail. They mostly use vernacular English as their language, complemented with a new Portuguese variety pregnant with recent revolutionary jargon. Perhaps they search for a language above other languages, a language serving them all?

The new is only briefly the good: as provisions became increasingly scarce, the urban poorest started cultivating every bit of the surrounding land which has now morphed into shredded plots. For those relatively well-off Mozambicans able to afford domestic help – like myself – we send servants to scavenge miserable supplies of rationed food, every so often available after standing in day-long queues. The most striking of products are the barely recognizable mackerel, encapsulated as long-gone fossils in small ice blocks, their minute body parts torn to pieces, as if fished with explosives. In exchange for this bizarre catch the trawlers sail back to Russia with the best of our tuna, grouper, snapper, prawn and lobster, among other valuable species.

The Institute has been my home since 1975 when I joined as junior staff to help establish an Archaeology Unit. In November 1978 the newly arrived Research Director Ruth F. and Administrative Director Aquino B. came to my office to discuss how to accommodate an increasing number of South African scholars and Mozambican students at the newly established Center for African Studies (CEA). We agree that we will relocate to the ground-floor allowing Ruth to move in into my office. Since the events recorded above, imminent threats seem to have been forgotten, although I trust that precautions have been taken following my report: we are clearly not sheltered in our ivory tower.

Having been asked to merge with the CEA visible tensions became apparent between the views of the ‘old age’ and the ‘new era'. As archaeologists we embrace the need to understand deep time and the roots of a country so much deprived of the knowledge of its past. With the increasing regional conflicts with Rhodesia and South Africa, CEA’s core mandate is on contemporary political processes. Universality is not understood as we do, and aphorisms such as ‘the Cradle of Mankind’, even making the case that we’re ALL Africans, seem foreign to them: hell, the world cradle, or, to that matter, the origins of the present-day Bantu communities! what are they compared to the beloved, liberated country, the sacred grail?

What is faith but the rejection of reason? We are clearly seen as “rebels with a touch of the quixotic”, and at times – I must admit – I see them as the “revolutionary bureaucrats of Utopia” (3). Every so often Aquino (educated in France) reminds us of his motto: ‘Croissance, rather than connaissance’. Ruth is more specific in her views: colonialism has increased neither Conviction nor Cognition… As for their physiognomic and emotional differences: glowing and passionate eyes alike, Ruth has exile engraved on her face, the scars of roaming too long away from her roots: a sharp-witted mind, and exemplary command of tongue, thought and theory. Aquino (originally from Goa but a well-grounded Frelimo intelligentsia) has the millennial gloss that only Asian wisdom can bear, blended with the charm of French enlightenment. More finesse than faith, I come to think of it… Yet both are truly Africans of world heritage. (…)

III. Wasteland (17 August 1982)

In her last afternoon in life friends witnessed how Ruth was joyful: a day of celebration for departing friends, following ‘her’ successful conference on Southern African political transition. She finally felt the very best coming together, the silver lining after the storm: a lifetime spent as an outcast, but now well grounded in an adoptive country where her studies made the difference. Her ideals - a bright southern African future as a tangible goal - were being molded by hard life, labor and faith. Deep-rooted in her family values (4), she had pursued and saw at last the fruition of her dreams.

One must first fully grasp reality to truly see it; but ultimately, we are easily led into seeing the inner and outer worlds as one and the same. Every society end up forming their collective vision of reality – from speech to symbols. Still, we individually see what we must see. There were clear warnings that conflict was ever increasing: not long ago (January 1981) a group of South African special forces raided and killed 12 ANC members in a Maputo suburb. Shortly afterwards, as I met Ruth and her husband Joe S. during a movie intermission at Gil Vicente’s movie theater, we briefly commented on imminent risks, including those that my own ‘interview’ in Johannesburg had suggested. Still, we refuse seeing potential hazards: who would be capable to harm an innocent scholar (Ruth) or a highly guarded politician (Joe S.) … until finding out that real-world matters, and lives are as strong as their weakest fantasies.

As I write these lines I conjure up Ruth driving to her office, the meandering road dividing the sparkling midday light bathing the ocean and the bare red soil in seasonal fallow; her elegance in stepping out of the car protected by the generous shade of the Albizia tree; the inviting whiteness of the long corridors leading to her room; her charming smile, greeting back colleagues on her way; before unlocking the door to unleash her dreaming, dazzling eyes, to briefly gaze across the expanse of African Veldt outside her window, musing on what has been the very best years of her life; before resting her sight on the pile of publications on the table, images of the printed word guiding her pride and passion; their fortitude, the light and love governing her existence; until opening the recently arrived fake book parcel that never, ever, should have been opened.

(1) Records from Abel’s diary for 7 January and 8 February 1979, with supplementary events narrated in parts II and III, dated August 1982. 

(2) Translations from Afrikaans: Dof: stupid; Kak: shit; Mamparra: idiot; Catemba: red wine and cola, a popular Mozambican drink; Laaitie: young friend; Rooinek: red neck; Lekker: nice; Boykie: stylish boy; Caldo Verde: traditional Portuguese soup; Maaifoedie: motherfucker; Boerewors: spicy Afrikaans sausage; Jo’burg: Johannesburg; Dankie: thanks; Choty Goty: pretty girl; Maputa: Maputo; Fokken: fucking; Braai: barbeque.

(3) Arthur Koestler, Arrow in the Blue, 2005: 321.

(4) Ruth’s parents were South Africa Communist Party founding members, and her husband one of its top executive leaders during the 70’s and 80’s.