Celebrity scrum strips away flesh in favour of fantasy
Following the death of Joost van der Westhuizen this week, effusive tributes to the great scrumhalf came from all corners of the globe. Mostly — and appropriately so – they tried to balance recognition of his on-field achievements with admiration of a brave battle against the motor neuron disease (MND) that eventually ended his life.
His struggle with his health was a private one (even though Van der Westhuizen’s interviews and appearances along with the work of his J9 Foundation kept it peripherally in the public view).
Humans are not very good at confronting the idea or image of a body wasting away. We tend to speak euphemistically in hushed tones about fatal illness; implicit in this awkwardness is a judgment about physical weakness.
So it was much easier to remember the Van der Westhuizen who tackled Jonah Lomu, who delivered that pass to Joel Stransky, who was one of the best players in the game. And it was joyful: no one who has followed Springbok rugby since readmission could forget a decade’s worth of sniping runs that, as often as not, yielded a try. (There is an argument to be made that Van der Westhuizen’s individual flair masked the national team’s inability to develop a coherent attacking style – but that’s a matter for another day.)
Then, of course, there was the “flawed hero” narrative. This, too, was marked by euphemism: brief allusions to that stage in his life after he retired from rugby and before his MND was diagnosed. Very few people mentioned the sex, lies and videotape. And drugs.
Given that Van der Westhuizen — with the clarity afforded to those constantly reminded of their mortality — had admitted to his arrogance and folly, there was no need to tiptoe around the subject.
Such, however, is the hypocrisy of what might be called “Huisgenoot morality”. This is an attitude, a world view, extending beyond the readers of that magazine (or You, Drum or Heat).
It entails a view of celebrity as a projection or fantasy of ordinary citizens that cannot accommodate the complexity of being human. A public figure is either a saint or a sinner; a demigod, an angel fallen from grace, or a penitent who achieved salvation through suffering and shame.
The religious overtones here are deliberate. Huisgenoot morality requires a particular fracturing of the mind, a combination of prudishness and prurience that betrays pious repression — even among those who don’t profess a faith.
One of the unintended consequences of secularism is that famous people are canonised, forced into a beatific mould into which they patently don’t fit. Then they are punished for not fitting.
If this happens to sports people, who are often falsely associated with virtue, then it also happens to artists, who are readily associated with vice.
Coincidentally, February 6, the day of Van der Westhuizen’s death, was also the anniversary of the death of Andre P Brink in 2015. Brink was also worldrenowned and a national hero, albeit in the more marginal terrain of literature. He also demonstrated great courage – more than was required to tackle Lomu – by challenging the apartheid state through his writing. And Brink was a bad boy as well.
There was a political message in his performance of this role; one of the Sestigers rejecting the Calvinistic constraints of Afrikaner nationalism, he saw breaking sexual taboos as part of his writerly creed.
Still, the cliché of the lecherous, dissatisfied author seemed to be confirmed in five short marriages and numerous affairs in the shadow of his doomed relationship with poet Ingrid Jonker.
This cliché was at odds, however, with the gentle soul and generous mentor many knew Brink to be. Late in life, he found love and lasting commitment with his sixth wife, fellow writer Karina Magdalena Szczurek.
While his literary output thinned, he traded controversy for contentment. Brink’s life does not fit a reducible pattern; it does not lend itself to easy moralising (although God knows, Huisgenoot tried). Nor does that of Van der Westhuizen, even if obituaries may tempt us into that practice.
Brink was an enthusiastic rugby supporter — a Stormers fan who would be willing to fraternise with a former Blue Bulls player. And Van der Westhuizen — well, he didn’t write any books, but he had one written about him.
I can imagine the two of them now, sitting up there in the South African pantheon, laughing about how they wouldn’t go along with white Afrikaans stereotypes.