Dutchman can’t duck the doggerel

IT HAS been a rough week for Jan van Riebeeck and, far across the Indian Ocean, in a lonely quarter of Jakarta, the founder of the settlement that became Cape Town rests uneasy in his grave.

It was perhaps inevitable that President Jacob Zuma’s recklessly incriminating gaze would eventually fall on the Cape’s first governor, dead now for 338 years.

The pantheon of historical figures of European descent unblemished by apartheid and therefore not responsible for the government’s current woes is rapidly diminishing. Here at the Mahogany Ridge we suspect that the Romans and Greeks will be next.

The Dutch East India Company administrator was first rounded on at a fundraising dinner last weekend when Zuma – boldly speaking off the cuff – told his well-heeled audience that the ANC had a superior claim to power than other political parties because it was born out of the need to defeat white colonial rule.

“You must remember,” the president reportedly declared, “that a man called Jan van Riebeeck arrived here on April 6, 1652 and that was the start of the trouble in this country. What followed were a lot of struggles and war.”

Not to mention, as one of the Ridge regulars observed, the introduction of trousers.

The following morning, at the ANC’s 103rd anniversary rally, Van Riebeeck came in for more grief – this time from a bearded man wearing the skin of a dead antelope and a hat made from porcupine quills.

He was lumped together with the religious leaders who led a short interfaith service, so he may even have been a sangoma of sorts, although reporters referred to him as a praise singer. Nevertheless he created a bit of a stir when he claimed that some housekeeping was needed before the rally could get under way: “I have to clear the spirit of Jan van Riebeeck from this place first.”

That the rally started late, with Zuma finally addressing the crowd some two hours behind schedule, was testament perhaps to the doggedness with which the old Dutchman, or at least his metaphysical form, stubbornly clung to this world before his despatch to some far-flung other place.

The exorcism was, however, not without apparent collateral damage. Judging by his delusional address, Western Cape ANC leader Marius Fransman may have been hit in some ectoplasmic crossfire with the result that as much as half his senses had disappeared along with Van Riebeeck’s ghost. Either that or he was badly concussed.

“As the ANC in the Western Cape,” he babbled, “we want to say that today the ANC has arrived and, as we look around us, the stadium is full. The last time this stadium was full was the World Cup. Against all the odds, you people came.”

I looked around. The stadium was certainly not full – not at that stage. The crowd was keeping out of the sun and nearly all the seats not in shade were empty. Later, though, the stadium did fill up – particularly for the musical programme that followed Zuma’s speech. Was Fransman able to see into the future?

He was evidently still groggy on Tuesday when he, too, decided to weigh in against Van Riebeeck in a response to the reported plans by Freedom Front Plus to lay hate speech charges against Zuma for his comments about the colonial governor.

This, Fransman claimed, was an obvious ploy to “drum up emotions against the ANC” by groups such as the Broederbond and FF+ who were only interested in protecting white privilege and “are still in utter denial of the factual reality” of the problems that Van Riebeeck and the Europeans brought to the Cape.

“Besides killer diseases they also brought lethal weapons with which people were killed, subjugated and genocide was wielded against numerous locals,” he said.

“The most evident were the many wars and clashes by which thousands were mowed down like animals. They did not bring land here, but regularly fought for it.

“Many of these people, who now fight the ANC driven by old hate motives, are beneficiaries if not descendants of those that could have caused that genocide and now, post-liberation in 1994, refuse to take any primary responsibility for what they and their forefathers were part of. Many of them take reconciliation for granted and do not want to deal with social justice. It is they that are quick on the draw to hide behind the protection of laws put in place by the ANC.”

The colonial vestige that is plain English has, alas, also been taken for granted. But no matter.

We get the drift. Sort of.