It has taken refreshed memories of the life of historian and polemical writer RW Bill Johnson’s imaginative visits to this old Waenhuis area in the nuwe Hantam area of the grassy karoo, for me to rekindle some liberal echoes for us homo narrans, we story telling humans. Here, Maeder Osler looks at some related aspects in the landscapes, noting that Bill Johnson was a generous often selective and at times controversial contributor on toverview, whose albums of words we usually decked with our special selection of photographs.

PRAISE SONGS FOR THE LIVINGS?

Are such praise songs on deaths in a land of pervasive ironies, a sudden unexpected surprise intensive outpouring of tributes, customarily wrapped with some guilts; or are they more like the poetry of passing music, songs glancings inwards from us, we left behinds?

Bill’s memorial service is planned for Thursday August 6, at 2pm at Christ Church ,Constantia, Western Cape, I gather from his courageous inspiring widow, Irina Filatova – the widely respected Russian born historian and academic, with highly readable credible research ties to all sorts of upper echelons. Probably this memorial is more likley an assemblage of old-timer liberals, including myself – us lefts behind, with their introspections and despairs, forever hopeful).

ALLURES IN MAGICS OF FAIRYLANDS?

When in the very early 2000’s I told Bill about the toverview model for rural digital communication, his curt rhetorical response was ‘Is there any rural media left at all in the RSA. I at toverview have found plenty of rural media presences, in between the gaps: including quality in some fairylands. (Today, I would say to him that toverview has found a surprisingly vivid and varied presence of much rural media, inside the many gaps, and the many pointed omissions, and including a mysterious world of citizen journalism of a certain usually obscure type. (His imagined reaction and response I guess could be unprintable?).

SHADES OF LIBERALS

In many ways, also ironically, Bill Johnson simultaneously, often contradictory to my mind, advocated and called to question many shades of liberalism he claimed to represent– including his recent toverview June 2 article claiming ’Tug of War … has shifted to the Liberals’.(A power play perhaps to warn, methinks, any old fashioned liberal, let alone firm believers in ubuntu?).

What all this contradictory irony amounts to, in my considered opinion, is more echoes in landscapes of the variety of lives of many folk who might proudly describe themselves as Liberals, - even those who are sometimes contemptuously labelled as Liberals, even (heaven forbid) those clumsily castigated by the scheduled idealogues and their to-be-paid actors as, ‘neo-liberals’. The various differing list of those individuals and contexts in Johnson’s liberal world, and , for example, in my liberal world, seem very different: this may be a factor more of context and different names?

Of the persons we shared in mutual admirations that included Tommy Bedford, the springbok and rugby leader, at a time a student with Bill on the Natal University, Howard College, Durban campus. Then there was Thami Mhlambiso – remember him Thabo Mbeki and the Pahad brothers? - a vice-president of the then National Union of SA Students, (NUSAS) at a time at the Wentworth campus. There was special respect, and some contact with, Albert Luthuli nearby Stanger. Another prominent compatriot was the late Gavin Stewart, outspoken media advocate and practitioner, a colleague from Bill’s Northlands high school in Durban ,and my flatmate in Pietermaritzburg, then later in Cape Town, including up to and after his mysterious arrest into solitary confinement.

On Tommy Bedford, Bill often expressed to me his admiration, even though he has written some highly critical accounts of that game - unlike his praises for UK ancestral soccer games,(presumably of gentlemen. I remain unclear as to Bill’s attitude to modern gender games). I am more certain of the courageous care Bill when he exercised heard of Gavin’s critical admission to hospital at Milnerton, where he took the care and trouble on himself to visit the dying media personality, on Bill’s one painfull leg, deep into the night. Bill Johnson was a firm example of unshakeable care for folk he admired. (There were quite a few he made no bones about not being a fan of – ask the DA’s John Steenhuzen, ask the SACP’s ………., ask the modern day ANC, EFF…?).

FARMYARD VISITS & CHATS

I am also remembering Johnson’s winter visits he - courageously and competitively - made to the grassy karoo where the waenhuis stands amongst wide memorabilia, much of which would resonate with him. He was courageous because of the ways he needed to endure and handle his series of amputations in response to his chance infection to a small injury cut in our seawaters which poisoned him with a slender chance of survival and pursued him further for his scores of years. I vividly recall his detailed unsentimental preview of each step and position of a balance he needed to adopt ahead of moving beyond his bedside. (Irina recounts how he, like Gavin Stewart, was impatient to the end to keep writing).

He was competitive, because like most of us, he simply was; and especially for his karoo visits when he took so much uncomfortable trouble to drive all the way from Cape Town with a friend onto Colesberg district roads to engage with our mutual compatriot CJ (Jonty) Driver. Some might see this, not necessarily accurately, as an engagement of ego’s, others might say of interacting haughty arrogances?; though it was far beyond that.

WHAT ABOUT THE POETS?

My understanding of Bill’s central wish to meet Jonty was that he (Bill) wished to understand why Jonty had paused, even hesitated, in his writings about his birthland the RSA? After Jonty’s death, in a presentation of his memoir, Dayspring, with an introduction from John Coetzee, Bill again directed the question to myself. At the time I could only claim that international experience, with its complications,had widened Jonty’s focus, not to exclude his homeland, but to enable more time to focus on his poetry. (It occurs to me now that I have no idea of what RWJ felt about poetry – my bias suspects, not too much?). I am reminded of the reported explanation of the Polish poet, Herbert … , that ‘It is vanity to think that one can influence the course of history by writing poetry. It is not the barometer that changes the weather.’

Nevetheless the farm visits and chats, hung in the air – as poems might do – and I remember vividly much opinionated bristlings, and Irina saying sternly at one stage ‘Bill, that is enough…’ (He listened and obeyed!) . I remember also that his friend Peter Mansfield, who had taken a care to read about the Hantam Community Education Trust project on the farm alongside, urged a sceptical Bill to take the trouble to visit and’ see for yourself’. (Peter was also one whom Bill tended to obey).

The result of that visit was an astounded Bill who with Irina interviewed and cross questioned Les Osler, then co-ordinator of the long standing project. They took much care to cast their living experience to an international travel publication – which, (a bit like some local media groups?), loved to keep RW’s work to themselves and behind pay walls. (But then, are such as pay walls not also are a feature of liberal free marketing – ask any liberal?).