Farewell ‘just Joe’, your presence will always be felt in the newsroom

JOSEPH Aranes would not want us to feel sorry for him. Not in life, and certainly not now. In his inimitable words: “Ek het nie tyd vir sulke kinder-kak nie, hoor.” (“Listen, I don’t have time for such childish trivialities.”)

He’d prefer that we get “real about the bullsh*t”.

He disliked public displays of grief, saying at the funeral of former Business Report legend Ronnie Morris: “That’s why I don’t like funerals, all the crying.”

He would be bitterly disappointed to learn that many a tear has been openly shed for him – from Cape Town to Shanghai – these past few days.

And many more were spilled on Twitter and Facebook, social media platforms with which his “old-school” tendencies never quite gelled.

As death is a fact of life, so too is the myth of a universally liked person.

Joseph, a former Cape Argus assistant editor, had his fair share of detractors, but to countless others he was “just Joe” and they loved him for it.

Last week, that heart that gave so much to so many could not give anymore and stopped beating. Though the newsroom that he helped fill with many talented young journalists had been devoid of his larger-than-life presence for half a dozen of years or so, his name was never far from the lips or thoughts of those who knew him well. We’d catch up with him every so often in Long Street or Claremont.

About a month ago he enquired about what it was like working in a Chinese newsroom, but hastened to add that “that smog-forsaken Beijing” was not for him. He loved the vissersdorpie too much. He was also enjoying “time with my grandson and finishing my chores in my PJs”.

Nurturing young ’uns came naturally to him, and many of us who are now senior journalists sat at his knee as mere pups, often learning as much about ourselves in those exchanges as we did about our craft.

Those were defining moments that continue to influence careers and lives in the best possible way.

As some have pointed out in tributes on social media, Joseph was not perfect, nor was he a saint.

And to pretend that his relationship with some in the media over the past six years was not a fractious one following a political scandal in which his involvement was never proven would be a lie.

But to try to untangle that mess here would be to detract from, trivialise or reduce his contribution to the lives of many to a single sound bite.

The Chinese have this to say about death: “All of life is a dream walking, all of death is a going home.”

So, Chief, now that we have the pretty Hallmark-card-like saying out of the way, let’s get real about the bullsh*t.

After all the kinder-kak has been dispensed with, know this: you will continue to be with us in the newsroom. Because you never really left.

Yunus Kemp is the deputy editor of the Cape Argus. He is on a 10-month scholarship with the China Africa Press Centre.