Choosing Difference: South African Jewish Writers.

Choosing Difference: South African Jewish Writers. JEWISH IMMIGRATION immigration,entrance of a person (an alien) into a new country for the purpose of establishing permanent residence. Motives for immigration, like those for migration generally, are often economic, although religious or political factors may be very important. INTO SOUTH AFRICA South Africa,Afrikaans Suid-Afrika, officially Republic of South Africa, republic (2005 est. pop. 44,344,000), 471,442 sq mi (1,221,037 sq km), S Africa. ON ANY CONSIDERABLE scalebegan relatively late: there were a few Jewish families amongst the waveof English-speaking colonists who arrived in 1820, but they do not seemto have had the time, the impulse, or perhaps the confidence to recordtheir lives in journals or to write poetry or fiction. Englishliterature English literature,literature written in English since c.1450 by the inhabitants of the British Isles; it was during the 15th cent. that the English language acquired much of its modern form. began in South Africa during the First British Occupation ofthe Cape (1795-1803), when the travel memoirs, letters and diaries whichgenerally constitute the beginning of a colonial literature werewritten. But interesting though the works of visitors to the Cape likeLady Anne Barnard Lady Anne Barnard (12 December, 1750–6 May, 1825), nee Anne Lindsay, eldest daughter of James Lindsay, 5th Earl of Balcarres was born at Balcarres House, Fife, Scotland. She was author of the ballad Auld Robin Gray. , John Barrow John Barrow may refer to one of several people: John Barrow (historian) Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet, an English statesman John D. Barrow (b. 1952), British theoretical physicist and author John Barrow (U.S. , and their fellows are, it is arguablethat they form part of the literature of the metropolis rather than thecolony, at least in their ideologies and their envisaged readership.None of these colonist-visitors to Africa Africa(ăf`rĭkə), second largest continent (1997 est. pop. 743,000,000), c.11,677,240 sq mi (30,244,050 sq km) including adjacent islands. Broad to the north (c.4,600 mi/7,400 km wide), Africa straddles the equator and stretches c. were Jewish, though Jewishsettlement had already begun, even at this early stage: Lady Anne writesof a Jew who wanted to buy a house at Newlands i n the Cape (Barnard1999). The history of South African writing in English is therefore ashort one; though South African Jewish writers loom large in it at thepresent day, they are comparatively late arrivals on the scene. Imaginative writing in English is generally considered to havebegun in 1883with Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm. It is clearthat this work was an important influence on South African Jewishwriters: Dan Jacobson Dan Jacobson (born March 7, 1929 in Johannesburg, South Africa) is a novelist, short story writer, critic and essayist. He has lived in Great Britain for most of his adult life, and for many years held a professorship in the English Department at University College London. , in 1970, wrote an introduction to the work whichis still one of the best pieces of commentary on it, and which forms aninspiring introduction to postcolonialism in general. Large scale Jewishimmigration from eastern Europe Eastern EuropeThe countries of eastern Europe, especially those that were allied with the USSR in the Warsaw Pact, which was established in 1955 and dissolved in 1991. , however, and especially from Lithuania,homeland of the majority of South African Jews Since Biblical times, the Jewish people have had close ties with Africa, going back to Abraham's sojourns in Egypt, and later the Israelite captivity under the Pharaohs. Some Jewish communities in Africa are among the oldest in the world, dating back more than 2700 years. , was only gettingunderway in the 1880s. Marcia Leveson's critical work People of the Book: Images ofthe Jew in South African English South African English is a dialect of English spoken in South Africa and in neighbouring countries with a large number of Anglo-Africans living in them, such as Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. Fiction 1880-1992 offers, at muchgreater length and in far more considered form, a different andcomplementary view. She gives an account of Jewish immigration intoSouth Africa (or rather into the territories which were consolidated in1910 into South Africa). By 1858, she says, there were sixty Jewishfamilies in the Cape Colony Cape Colony:see Cape Province. , mostly from Britain and Germany. After thediscovery of diamonds and gold in the 1860s, immigration of all kinds ofpeople from Europe speeded up. The pogroms following the assassination AssassinationSee also Murder.assassinsFanatical Moslem sect that smoked hashish and murdered Crusaders (11th—12th centuries). [Islamic Hist.: Brewer Note-Book, 52]Brutusconspirator and assassin of Julius Caesar. [Br. of the Czar Alexander II in 1881, together with other less extreme butpunitive measures against Jews in Russian-ruled territories, caused alarge influx of Jews, from Lithuania especially. Leveson writes "In1880 there were about 4,000 Jews in the country: in 1891 Jews numbered10,000; and by 1899 there were about 24,000 Jews in a total whitepopulation estimated at 850 000" (1996: 16). The great days of immigration, of course, were by no means over atthe turn of the century, but let no one imagine that all immigrants wereoffered an equal welcome, then or later, by the authorities. The anxietyof the colonial British to maintain their position of power caused themto resent the growing presence of white but non-English people. And theGape Dutch (later known as Afrikaners) began in the 1890s the longprocess of urbanization which culminated in the legislation of the eraof Apartheid (1948-1990) when many urban occupations in the modernsector were defined as "whites only" (Davenport 1984: 298).Early in this long trek to the cities, which, significantly, speeded upin the 1930s, when European antisemitism was infecting South Africanwhite attitudes, they encountered as rivals the Jews. Leveson gives anaccount of the attitudes generated by this encounter: "manyfarmers, suffering from the distress of the Anglo-Boer war, from droughtand cattle disease, went bankrupt and were forced to sel l their land.Some land was indeed bought up by jews, who were considered exploitersof the less fortunate. Many of the uprooted Afrikaners tried to findemployment in the towns, where they came into direct competition withthe upwardly mobile jews, who were mostly already urbanized and busilycarving out a niche for themselves" (Leveson 1996: 17). Crude xenophobia XenophobiaBoxer RebellionChinese rising aimed at ousting foreign interlopers (1900). [Chinese Hist. was reinforced by the fact that the Jewishimmigrants of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries weremost of them Yiddish-speaking, many of them impoverished, and wearingthe distinctive clothes of eastern European religiously observant Jews.In 1902 the Immigration Restriction Act Immigration Restriction Act may refer to: Immigration Restriction Act 1901 in Australia Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 (also known as the National Origins Act or the Johnston-Reed Act) in the United States Immigration Restriction Act 1935 in New Zealand was passed, excluding anyone whocould not sign his name in European script--this was interpreted asexcluding speakers of Yiddish who used Hebrew characters. In 1906 theact was modified to define Yiddish as a European language, but thegeneral sense of the white community that Jews were in some way"different" and threatening did not abate abatev. to do away with a problem, such as a public or private nuisance or some structure built contrary to public policy. This can include dikes which illegally direct water onto a neighbors property, high volume noise from a rock band or a factory, an improvement . South African antisemitism from 1914 onwards increasinglyparalleled European antisemitism in its growth and attitudes. In the1930s and early 40s there was considerable pressure from right-wingorganizations and Cabinet colleagues on the then prime minister of SouthAfrica The Prime Minister of South Africa was the head of government in South Africa between 1910 and 1984.The South African monarch was the head of state, until 1961, when the non-executive State President of South Africa assumed that role, following South Africa's departure from , Jan Smuts Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts, OM, CH, PC, ED, KC, FRS (May 24, 1870 – September 11, 1950) was a prominent South African and British Commonwealth statesman, military leader, and philosopher. , to pass legislation which severely restricted orbanned altogether Jewish immigration. Smuts himself, according to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. hisfriend and biographer, the Jewish writer, Sarah Gertrude Millin, waswilling, even anxious, to support the interests of South African Jews inany way he could, but white opinion was against him, especiallyAfrikaner opinion--and he depended on the support of the Afrikaners.Millin writes of the wife of a member of Smuts's cabinet who saidto her, "You should tell Jews not to make themselves prominent andseek public positions. You know what times are. It isn't liked whenJews are prominent. It isn't liked...in the Cabinet"(1955:122). This warning was aimed at Millin's husband, the ableand deserving lawyer Ph ilip Millin, whose appointment to the judiciarywas delayed for years (as Smuts himself admitted) because of the factthat he was Jewish. "This is a long preamble of a tale." Like the Wife ofBath, however, I wish to argue for its relevance, since the history ofthe Jewish community in South Africa has been one which, even more thanthe histories of the communities of the Diaspora in Britain, the UnitedStates United States,officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , Canada, and Australia, has obliged its members to think ofthemselves as "different," and not primarily or mostimportantly Adv. 1. most importantly - above and beyond all other consideration; "above all, you must be independent"above all, most especially as religiously different. The "melting pot melting potAmerica as the home of many races and cultures. [Am. Pop. Culture: Misc.]See : America "concept, so vital in the United States, and influential in many otherlands, has never been popular in South Africa. The politically dominantwhite groups insisted on the "difference" of other groups,African, Indian, minority European groups like Greeks and Portuguese,and especially Jews. Black people were, of course, held in permanent"difference" by their appearance. Greeks and Portuguese, sincethey were at least Christians, might hope for eventualassimilation--Pereira and Ferreira are nowadays common Afrikaans names.But the jews, who were in any case ambivalent ab out their"difference," valuing it as much as they hated it, were muchmore difficult to assimilate. I do not want to undervalue the injustices suffered professionallyby Jews like Philip Millin, or socially by many others, when I say thatthe Jew's ability to define himself or herself as different inseveral ways from the rest of the white population of South Africa maywell be the reason for the great achievements of South African Jews inthe field of literature. With great regret, I shall confine myself herealmost entirely to writers of fiction, despite the claims on myattention of Jewish poets like Sidney Clouts, Bernard Levinson, RuthMiller, Karen Press, Helen Segal, Lewis Sowden, and many others. Onepoet, Olga Kirsch Olga Kirsch (1924–1997) was a South African and Israeli poet.Kirsch was born and brought up in Koppies in the Orange Free State. Her father had emigrated there from Lithuania and, though a Yiddish speaker, brought his daughter up to speak English. , has been included because the linguistic choice whichshe made was both interesting and unusual. Let us look at three of the most distinguished South African Jewishnovelists: Nadine Gordimer Noun 1. Nadine Gordimer - South African novelist and short-story writer whose work describes the effects of apartheid (born in 1923)Gordimer (1923- ), Nobel Prize Nobel Prize,award given for outstanding achievement in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, peace, or literature. The awards were established by the will of Alfred Nobel, who left a fund to provide annual prizes in the five areas listed above. winner and as StephenClingman has called her, the writer of South African "history fromthe inside" (1986:1-20), Dan Jacobson (1929-), absent from SouthAfrica since 1954, but still preoccupied with the country of his birth,and Sarah Gertrude Millin (1889-1968) whose long series of novels, shortstories, and biographies was published from 1919 to 1965. These three seem to me to represent some of the choices availableto South African Jews-there are other choices with which I shall dealbriefly later. To begin with Gordimer, since her fame seems to demandit: she has frequently used of herself the phrase "a whiteAfrican This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.This article has been tagged since September 2007. " (1990:275), defining this identity not only as a Jewishchoice, but as a choice to be made by every white who wishes to remainresident in this country. It was a choice that she made and exploredearly in her career as a writer. Having made the "whiteAfrican" choice, is Gordimer still a Jewish South African writer?By no means a Zionist, she has explained that she had no religious andlittle cultural education as a Jew (Bazin and Seymour 1990:117; 249).She nevertheless says, "I,m Jewish but have never had any kind ofJewish upbringing; I have never been to a synagogue except for awedding, et cetera ET CETERA. A Latin phrase, which has been adopted into English; it signifies. "and the others, and so of the rest," it is commonly abbreviated, &c. 2. Formerly the pleader was required to be very particular in making his defence. (q.v. . In fact, I read the Bible as literature when I wasgrowing up" (Bazin and Seymour 1990: 194). While I do not wish here to revive or extend the "What is aJew?" debate, I acknowledge that the best known South AfricanJewish writers have been secular, and that we can only identify Jews andappreciate their choices as Jewish choices by using the ancientcriterion that the child of a Jewish mother is a Jew. Gordimer'smother, as she has admitted, was only just a Jew, despising her fatherfor his roots in Lithuania (Bazin and Seymour 1990:247-248). What seemsto have been more problematic for Gordimer was that as a child she knewno Jews whose experience of injustice had made them compassionatetowards blacks: "... my father had, during his childhood, sufferedfrom a form of apartheid. But he never drew a parallel between the twosituations. Born a Lithuanian Jew, he had nevertheless lived underRussian domination which denied Jewish children the right to go to thesame schools as the others or to attend the university. My fatherarrived in South Africa at age 13 totally uneducated. His attitude wasnot mu ch different than that of the immigrants who arrive in SouthAfrica today--Italians, Germans, French. They are hardly there threeweeks before they adopt all the behavior and prejudices of the whitesupremacists" (Bazin and Seymour 1990: 118). Gordimer's difficulties with the Jewish immigrant who feelsnothing for the oppressed op��press?tr.v. op��pressed, op��press��ing, op��press��es1. To keep down by severe and unjust use of force or authority: a people who were oppressed by tyranny.2. are manifest in her "trade store"short stories, published in her early volume The Soft Voice of theSerpent. In stories like "A Present for a Good Girl,""The Umbilical Cord umbilical cord(ŭmbĭl`ĭkəl), cordlike structure about 22 in. (56 cm) long in the pregnant human female, extending from the abdominal wall of the fetus to the placenta. " and "The Defeated" she reflectson the callousness of the storekeeper towards his clients--and thedamage that his child does to himself when he rejects and despises him.Gordimer has tended to experiment within her short stories withsituations and characters which are more fully explored in her novels.The stories of The Soft Voice of the Serpent were followed by her firstnovel, The Lying Days, in which Joel, a young Jew, has solved hisproblems of attitude towards his parents, who keep a trade store. Headvises Helen, the heroine: "There is that in you that is them, andit's that unkillable fibre of you that will hurt you and pull youoff balance wherever you run to--unless you accept it. Accept them inyou, accept them as they are, even if you you rself choose to livedifferently, and you'll be all right. Funnily enough, that'sthe only way to be free of them" (1983: 153). In The Lying Days Gordimer takes as her heroine a youngEnglish-speaking girl who grows up absorbing the prejudices of herfellow whites in a small mining town on the Rand. Helen leaves as ayoung adult for Johannesburg but finds that she can commit herself tonone of the choices available to liberal whites there. The novel offersJoel, Gordimer's most detailed and sympathetic presentation of aJew, whom Helen is prevented by his "difference" from everconsidering as a lover. Next in the order of Gordimer's novels comes A World ofStrangers, in which her hero, Toby, tries to live in a multiracial mul��ti��ra��cial?adj.1. Made up of, involving, or acting on behalf of various races: a multiracial society.2. Having ancestors of several or various races. Johannesburg. The novel commemorates the world of Drum, the magazine forblack readers which in the 50s and 60s employed the first considerablegroup of black writers. Occasion for Loving and The Late BourgeoisWorld, the latter a favorite with me, portray the failure of the liberalideal of a just society founded on the personal choices of people ofgoodwill. In The Late Bourgeois World, Gordimer introduces her preoccupation with themarginalization mar��gin��al��ize?tr.v. mar��gin��al��ized, mar��gin��al��iz��ing, mar��gin��al��iz��esTo relegate or confine to a lower or outer limit or edge, as of social standing. of whites in the struggle towards democracy, which is tobe a central theme of one of her greatest works, Burger's Daughter Burger's Daughter is a novel by South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, originally published in Britain in 1979 by Jonathan Cape Ltd. It follows the life of Rosa, the title character, as she comes to terms with her father Lionel's legacy as an activist in the SACP over the .A Sport of Nature contains Gordimer's most sustained and criticalportrait of a Jewish family in Johannesburg, and in None to Accompany Meshe appears to pay a long-standing debt to the feminist movement, whichshe has in the past seen as a white middle class self-indulgence (TLS (1) (Transport Layer Security) A security protocol from the IETF that is based on the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3.0 protocol developed by Netscape. TLS uses digital certificates to authenticate the user as well as authenticate the network (in a wireless 15August 1980). What is important is that Gordimer's oeuvre, read asa chronological whole, forms a coherent account of Apartheid asexperienced by a middle-class white person. Dan Jacobson's achievement as a Jewish South African writerappears at first sight very different: since 1954 his permanent home hasbeen in London, and in his highly productive life of novel, short story,and review writing, only a part of his attention has been focused onSouth Africa. The South African part of his oeuvre has however been asignificant one in the whole corpus of South African writing in thiscentury, as I shall demonstrate, and his choice to leave South Africaand comment on it from a distance has been, if not a purely Jewish one,one which has been more open and attractive to Jews than to some othergroups in South Africa. Jacobson has written ruefully rue��ful?adj.1. Inspiring pity or compassion.2. Causing, feeling, or expressing sorrow or regret.rue about hisconsciousness as an adolescent of the "difference" between hisparents and the people of English descent in his home town, Kimberley: It was not just that [the Pallings] celebrated Christmas andEaster, while we celebrated Passover and Yom Kippur Yom Kippur[Heb.,=day of atonement], in Judaism, the most sacred holy day, falling on the 10th day of the Jewish month of Tishri (usually late September or early October). It is a day of fasting and prayer for forgiveness for sins committed during the year. . My parents spokewith a foreign accent; the Palling parents did not. Mr Palling was inemployment as the chartered secretary of the local branch of a buildingsociety; my father managed his own business. The Palling parents calledeach other "Mother" and "Father"; mine did not. MrPalling went every Sunday morning Sunday Morning may refer to: "Sunday Morning (radio program)", a Canadian radio program formerly aired on CBC Radio One CBS News Sunday Morning, a television news program on CBS in the United States Sunday Morning (TBS TV series) in a white shirt, white flanneltrousers, and a blazer, to play bowls at the local club; my father didnot. The Pallings' house was clean and orderly; ours was not. Myparents discussed politics endlessly--local politics, Zionist politics,the war in Europe; the Palling parents never did. Our house was full ofbooks and newspapers, and we were constantly going to the town library;the Pallings' house was altogether bare of reading matter. I and mybrothers did well at school; the Palling boys did not. We argued withour parents; the Pallings did not. (Jacobson 1964: 76-77) What Jacobson is describing is an intellectual and, even more, acritical tradition embodied in the relationships within a family; thistradition is to be an important part of his choice to be a writer. Hisparents maintain an intellectual involvement with European politics, aswell as with Zionism: the young Jacobson spent two years on a kibbutz kibbutz:see collective farm. kibbutzIsraeli communal settlement in which all wealth is held in common and profits are reinvested in the settlement. The first kibbutz was founded in Palestine in 1909; most have since been agricultural. before settling in Britain. And if the Pallings are to be seen as athoroughly conformist con��form��ist?n.A person who uncritically or habitually conforms to the customs, rules, or styles of a group.adj.Marked by conformity or convention: English speaking South African couple, at least inthe externals of their lives, the Jacobsons, it is clear, are not. Theirchildren may stay in South Africa or they may go elsewhere, but theirrelationship to any national ethos will be a critical one. Two early novellas This literature-related list is incomplete; you can help by [ expanding it].This is a selected list of novellas that have gained fame and/or critical and public acclaim. , published in London in 1956, give a compellingsense of this critical spirit, which in Jacobson's writings isalways combined with compassion. They are The Trap and A Dance in theSun, and both have as their subject the terrible relationship betweenwhite master and black servant. I have called this relationshipelsewhere a post-slavery phenomenon (Lenta 1996: 89-104) because it isbased on the definition of the servant as abjectly inferior because ofhis race group, and the master as superior for the same reason. Themaster apparently has immense power over the servant, and the latter isobliged apparently to acquiesce; but in fact both are aware of themaster's equal dependence on their relationship, and the slave willuse deception of many kinds to maintain his power over his master. I have commented earlier that Jacobson has written what amounts toan introduction to postcolonialism: in A Dance in the Sun he anticipatespostcolonial writing by giving to his narrator NARRATOR. A pleader who draws narrs serviens narrator, a sergeant at law. Fleta, 1. 2, c. 37. Obsolete. a wonderfully imaginedhatred of his situation as colonist and longing for the"homeland" he has never seen: "It was a kind ofhomesickness, I felt then, but it was a sickness for a home I had neverhad, for a single cultivated scene, for a country less empty andviolent, for people whose manners and skins were fitted peaceably peace��a��ble?adj.1. Inclined or disposed to peace; promoting calm: They met in a peaceable spirit.2. Peaceful; undisturbed. together...--a multi-tongued nation of nomads we seemed to be, across acountry too big and silent for us, too dry for cultivation, about whichwe went on roads like chains. We were caught within it, within thiswide, sad land we mined but did not cultivate" (1985: 140-141). Jacobson's frequent subject in his early days was the lives ofwhites, especially Jews, in Kimberley, which he often calls Lyndhurst:Beggar My Neighbour: Short Stories and Inklings are volumes whichcontain stories of this kind. The short story "Beggar MyNeighbour" is one of the most haunting accounts of what it means tolive in comfort yet in proximity to the destitute. As in the case of Gordimer, I cannot give space to a list of thetitles of Jacobson's works, but will draw attention to those whichI think remain of interest to readers who wish to understand life inSouth Africa. The Confessions of Josef Baisz deals with life in acorrupt and totalitarian state Noun 1. totalitarian state - a government that subordinates the individual to the state and strictly controls all aspects of life by coercive measurestotalitation regime , and Jacobson's interest in SouthAfrican politics of the period is obviously a strong influence. Time andTime Again (1985) is a volume of autobiographical pieces, of which abouthalf are set in Kimberley and which catch the flavor of small town SouthAfrica. Two recent works, The Electronic Elephant and Heshel's Kingdomare interesting because though they possess South African elements, theyare evidently post-Apartheid. South Africans This is a list of notable South Africans with Wikipedia articles. Academics, Medical and ScientistsWouter Basson, Scientist Mariam Seedat, sociologist and gender advocate (1970 - ) Estian Calitz, academic (1949 - ) as well as the people ofthe northern hemisphere have asked themselves what might characterizetheir literature after the great theme of opposition to Apartheid hasmoved into the past: The Electronic Elephant asserts that the greatertheme of colonialism is by no means dead. It deals with Jacobson'sjourney along the road through the north of the Cape Province Cape Province,former province, S South Africa. Under the South African constitution of 1994 it was divided into Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Northern Cape, and part of a fourth province, North West. , Botswana,and Zimbabwe which he tells us was variously known as "themissionary road," "the hunters' trail," "thetraders' road" and "the road to the north" (1995:1). At the height of the imperialist dream it was seen as the beginningof a great Cape-to-Cairo-route, and Jacobson's journey along it hasthe purpose of finding out what became of all these versions of thecolonial impulse. The work is highly personal; there is no sense of afinal verdict on the remnants of col onialism. Heshel's Kingdom is also personal and involved withcolonialism, but very differently. It takes as its point of origin theauthor's grandfather, Rabbi Heshel Melamed, whom Jacobson has neverseen, since he died in middle age in Lithuania before Jacobson'sbirth. This death freed Heshel's wife and children to emigrate toSouth Africa and to escape the approaching Holocaust. Heshel himself,who had visited the United States and knew what happened to Jewishfamilies who settled there, was strongly opposed to any idea ofemigration emigration:see immigration; migration. . Had he not died, Jacobson knows that he himself, born inJohannesburg, and the other descendants of Heshel alive today would nothave existed. The death of their grandfather gave them not onlyexistence, but choices--choices like those Heshel had seen exercised inAmerica and which he deplored. Jacobson records the variety oflifestyles they have embraced: religious Jew, secular Jew, white SouthAfrican, Englishman, and the rest. He tells what little he knows ofHeshel's life and deat h, and of his family's arrival and lifein South Africa. Even more striking, however, is his account of ajourney he makes with his son to Lithuania to try to discover whathappened to the Jewish people of Varnai (Vorna to the Jews who livedthere) and other thriving communities: apart from a handful of sadsurvivors, they are gone almost as though they had never been. Sarah Gertrude Millin's work now seems so remote from us thatdespite the fact that she lived till 1968, she seems to belong to adifferent century from Gordimer and Jacobson. Yet her best work remainscompelling, though disconcerting dis��con��cert?tr.v. dis��con��cert��ed, dis��con��cert��ing, dis��con��certs1. To upset the self-possession of; ruffle. See Synonyms at embarrass.2. . The novelist and critic J M Coetzee,in his essay "Blood, Taint taintan unpleasant odor and flavor in a human foodstuff of animal origin. Caused by the ingestion of the substance, commonly a plant such as Hexham scent, or while in storage, e.g. milk stored with pineapples, or as a result of animal metabolism, e.g. boar taint. , Flaw and Degeneration: The Novels ofSarah Gertrude Millin" calls Millin "certainly the mostsubstantial novelist writing in English in South Africa between OliveSchreiner Olive Schreiner (24 March 1855 - December 11 1920), was a South African author, pacifist and political activist. BiographyEarly life The ninth of twelve children, Olive Schreiner was born in 1855 to a missionary couple, Gottlob Schreiner and Rebecca Lyndall at and Nadine Gordimer, neglected nowadays because her treatmentof race has come to seem dated and even morally offensive"(1988:138). Only one work by Millin has been republished in the recent past: itis God's Stepchildren, which appeared in 1986 with an introductionby Tony Voss. The book had appeared originally in 1924, when the socialDarwinism social DarwinismTheory that persons, groups, and “races” are subject to the same laws of natural selection as Charles Darwin had proposed for plants and animals in nature. of her views was already out of date, though it had not turnedinto the horrible curiosity which it has appeared to be since the end ofWorld War II End of World War II can refer to: End of World War II in Europe End of World War II in Asia . Voss summarizes its thesis (and it is most markedly aroman a these) as "weak and misguided white men have mated withidle and sensual brown women" (1986:8). He goes on to note that"[o]ther races are referred to in terms of stereotype andcaricature: "the grotesque development which was the Hottentotideal of beauty" ... "a bow-legged Indian." The bottom ofthe hierarchy of races is with the "aboriginal," near to theAfrican earth" (1986:8-9). Offspring of unions between members ofdifferent racial groups are seen by Millin as doomed to degeneracy Degeneracy (quantum mechanics)A term referring to the fact that two or more stationary states of the same quantum-mechanical system may have the same energy even though their wave functions are not the same. , andshe traces this degeneracy relentlessly through four generations of thedescendants of the missio nary nar��y?adj.Not one: "Frequently, measures of major import . . . glide through these chambers with nary a whisper of debate"George B. Merry. Andrew Flood, who marries a Hottentotgirl. Millin is not merely a rather late adherent adherent/ad��her��ent/ (-ent) sticking or holding fast, or having such qualities. of Social Darwinism;she remained stubbornly unconvinced by evidence that racism was an evil.In the aftermath of World War II, when, as Coetzee remarks, therevelations which occurred in the course of the Nuremberg trials Nuremberg Trialssurviving Nazi leaders put on trial (1946). [Eur. Hist.: Van Doren, 512]See : Justice seemedto have made such discourse impossible (1989: 136), she published twonovels which affirmed her belief that unions between people of differentraces must produce degenerate offspring, King of the Bastards and TheBurning Man. Both seem to me unattractive costume dramas, permeated by abelief in that the activities of missionaries are necessarily damaging.In the 60s she became convinced that Verwoerd's Apartheid policiesoffered the ideology that South Africa needed. Indeed, her earlierautobiographical work, The Measure of My Days, in which her friendshipwith Smuts is an important topic, reveals her belief that whitecivilization is precious, fragile, and must at all costs--the costs, itis understood, will be paid by black people--be preserved. Shenevertheless considered herself a staunch anti-Nazi and both she and herhusband were Zionists, at least in a theoretical sense. Leveson tries to understand these contradictions by quoting LaviniaBraun's claim that Millin felt "a deep-felt compassion for thevictims of conflict caused by racial differences" and suggests thather "stepchild-like status as a Jewess in South Africa""leads her to a sympathetic identification with the pain and shameexperienced by other members of minority groups" (1996: 78). My ownview is not so generous: there is no doubt that Millin feels sympathyfor persons of mixed race, or for those whom she believes to be ofinferior races, but she does not identify with them. She sees whatCoetzee calls "the community's edict of expulsion This article describes the Edict of Expulsion, given by Edward I of England in 1290 that exiled the Jews from England for 350 years. For information on the 1492 Edict of Expulsion from Spain, see the Alhambra decree. " (1998:51) passed on people of mixed race as terrible but necessary, a verdictwhich is far from that which she passed on the antisemitism of the 30sin South Africa. She quotes with approval Smuts's warning to"white South Africa to 'have a care lest some day little brownchildren play among the ruins of the Union Governmentbuildings"' (1955: 134). More important, no doubt, than the opinions to which she tended inher autobiographical work is that all Millin's fictional texts showan ambivalence towards black people. Her volume of short stories, TwoBucks without Hair, since it focuses on the lives of black people andconsists of two groups of stories, maybe used to exemplify this. Part Iis entitled "Murders" and contains four longish stories; PartII, "Alita," consists of shorter sketches and centers on thenarrator's maid and her family. All the stories in Part I are concerned with the lives of blackpeople in rural settings, outside of the white economy. They show suchpeople experiencing love, jealousy, hatred--emotions common to everyone,but here resulting in mortal conflict Some of the black men and womenserve their own interests as they see them, some have a sense ofmorality and of honor which leads them to sacrifice themselves for thecommon good. Yet the tone of the (non-figural) narrator frequentlyindicates that these people are "primitive": admirable attimes, at times base, but fated to move in their behavior pattemsbetween the noble and the brutish brut��ish?adj.1. Of or characteristic of a brute.2. Crude in feeling or manner.3. Sensual; carnal.4. savage. The "Alita" stories are based on the woman who really wasMillin's maid, and for whom Millin felt both affection andadmiration. Here her pity for black people and her belief that they mustbe "primitive" in all their actions and reactions is clear,but perhaps because the stories derive from the actions of a real woman,she cannot refrain from showing Alita to be noble, even at times heroic,though she is childish enough to long for a black shawl Black Shawl was the second wife of Crazy Horse, whom she married in 1871. She had a daughter by the same year, whose name was They Are Afraid of Her. They Are Afraid of Her died at age three, likely of cholera. Black Shawl also suffered the same disease, and was treated by Dr. with fringes towear on Sundays. In one of the stories, "Why Adonis Laughed,"Alita merely tells the story to the frame narrator. It concerns twoGriquas, David and Dinah, who long to marry, though David has to savefor years to pay bride price bride price:see marriage. . Shortly after the marriage Dinah givesbirth to a baby which is obviously of mixed race, and admits that thechild's father is her white employer. This kind of story has oftenbeen told in South African texts: Alan Paton Noun 1. Alan Paton - South African writer (1903-1988)Alan Stewart Paton, Paton in Too Late the Phalarope phalarope(făl`ərōp'), common name for members of the family Phalaropodidae, shore birds, called "little swimming sandpipers." Phalaropes, small, dainty birds with webbed toes, are the most aquatic of the shore bird group. ,Mtutulezi Matshoba in Call Me Not a Man, Lauretta Ngcobo in And TheyDidn't Di e are only three of the authors who have discussed thewhite employer who rapes or seduces his black employee. Millin, however,unlike these three, offers no interpretation of what has happened--Davidis simply laughed at. Work out if you can what is happening here. It is tempting to regard Millin with hindsight as the embodiment ofan embarrassing mistake made by some Jewish South Africans. She longedfor acceptance and for advancement into the ruling elite, as herautobiographical writings make clear. In order to achieve this, did shesink her own better judgment and embrace the ideology of whitesupremacy white supremacistn.One who believes that white people are racially superior to others and should therefore dominate society.white supremacy n. ? My own theory is that she made what was at the time animpossible combination of choices--to be a white South African, to be amember of the ruling group, to be a Jew and a Zionist. These three figures may stand as examples of the choices of theliterary Jew but the reality, of course, is that many other writers havemade their own choices, variants and different combinations of thosemade by those whom I shall venture to call the three greats. No reviewercould, in the space available to me here, possibly claim to beexhaustive in her listings, and I must insist that I am not attempting afull roll-call of Jewish writers nor even of Jewish writers of fiction,to whom I shall largely confine myself. Readers will not find here thename and work of their talented cousin who in 1908 published, privately,a slender volume, though my list must be individual and perhaps quirky.Olga Kirsch is an example of a writer whose choice may be compared inone respect with that of Sarah Gertrude Millin, since she combined anovert "South Africanness" with Zionism. Her choice--and it wasa choice--of Afrikaans as the language of her poetry, and the fact thatshe continued to write in that language long after she herself hademigrated to Israel in 1949, may be understood as an assertion that thelanguage did not belong to the political party which had appropriatedit, but was simply a major South African language. She may be describedas a major-minor Afrikaans poet, publishing collections in 1994 (Diesoeklig), 1948 (Mure n. 1. A wall.v. t. 1. To inclose in walls; to wall; to immure; to shut up.[imp. & p. p. os> Muredr>.]The five kings are mured in a cave.- John. x. (Heading). van die Hart), followed by a literary silence ofover 20 years. In the 1970s she resumed publication: Negentien gedigteapeared in 1972, Geil gebied in 1976, Oorwinteraans in die vremde in1978, and Afskeide in 1982. Kirsch kirsch?n.A colorless brandy made from the fermented juice of cherries.[French, short for German Kirschwasser; see kirschwasser. often makes use of images drawn from the Torah, and dealswith the history of the Jewish people and the Zionist hopes of her earlylife, but one of the most attractive of her poems contrasts her owncomfort and relative affluence with the abject poverty of a black SouthAfrican child. In her later poetry the life of contemporary Israel is attimes a subject; other poems recall her life in South Africa andcontrast the two periods and two countries of residence. She isspecially distinguished as a writer of sonnets, but her greatest gift toAfrikaans may well lie in the fact that she imported new attitudes andsubject matter into the literature. Two names of Jews whose work for others as well as themselves hasbeen vital on the South African literary scene come to mind: LionelAbrahams Lionel Abrahams (1928– 31 May, 2004) was a South African novelist, poet, editor, critic, essayist and publisher. He was born and lived his entire life in Johannesburg. and Barney Simon. Both have been distinguished writersthemselves, but are equally eminent for the encouragement and practicalhelp which they have offered to fledgling writers. Abrahams began hisliterary life as the editor of the stories of Herman Charles Bosman Herman Charles Bosman (February 3, 1905 - October 14, 1951) was a South African writer and journalist who became famous for capturing the rhythms of backveld Afrikaans speech even though he wrote in English. , oneof South Africa's most distinguished writers, many of whose taleshad appeared only in magazines by the time of his death in 1951. Sincethen, Abrahams has edited six volumes of Bosman's work. RenosterBooks, a publishing house founded by Abrahams, was the first to publish,in the early seventies, the poetry of the now well-known black poetsOswald Mtshali and Mongane Wally Serote Mongane Wally Serote (1944-) is a South African poet and writer. He was born in Sophiatown, Johannesburg and went to school in Alexandra, Lesotho and Soweto. He first became involved in Black Consciousness when he was finishing high school in Soweto. . Abrahams is himself a poet, andhas also written a book of short stories, The Celibacy of FelixGreenspan. Barney Simon began his writing life as a journalist and has writtena lively book of short stories, Joburg, Sis! His most important sphereof work is however the theater, and besides adapting his and otherwriters' stories for the stage, he has been an early producer ofAthol Fugard's work. Simon had an important role as patron andeditor in the production of Dugmore Boetie's Familiarity is theKingdom of the Lost: The Story of a Black Man in South Africa, one ofthe earliest and most interesting of black autobiographical works inSouth Africa, and he has collaborated in the writing and production ofmany plays, notably Woza Albert. Two writers of the fifties whose work was strongly motivated bytheir need to protest against racial injustice were Phyllis Altman,whose The Law of the Vultures appeared in 1952 and was republished in1987, and Harry Bloom Harry Bloom (1913–1981) was a South African journalist, novelist, and political activist. Educated at the University of the Witwatersrand, he worked as an advocate in Johannesburg until exiling himself to England in 1963. , whose Episode in the Transvaal was published in1956. Both these writers still deserve attention, commemorating as theydo important events in the process of resistance against Apartheid. Jillian Becker's novels, thoroughly minor work though theyare, have some interest for another reason. Leveson has identified themas characterized by "Jewish self-rejection" (1996: 190-193),manifest in this case in an angry and contemptuous sense of the middleclass Jewish community of Johannesburg. Becker does not always identifyher characters as Jewish: in her first novel, The Keep (1967), it isclear that the family is an upwardly mobile Jewish one, but in TheVirgins (1976), the parents, especially the mother, are simply callousand materialistic--their religious group is unimportant. The phenomenonwhich strikes the reader in Becker's work however, is that whichlocates evil (social, economic, familial) in the older generation, andespecially in older women, and it is one which is common in SouthAfrican writing, including Gordimer's texts. A more interestingcritical analysis of Jewish family life and how it shapes children isoffered by Lyndall Gordon Lyndall Gordon is a South African academic, known for her literary biographies. She was born in Cape Town and was an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, then a doctoral student at Columbia University. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford. , whose Shared Lives looks at a group of Jewishgirls, the second generation of their families in South Africa, as theygrow up and struggle with their families' hopes for them and theirown ambitions. Rose Zwi's South African fiction is more overtly historical inits intentions: the present writer remembers a friend's commentthat Another Year in Africa (1980), the first of a cycle of three works,was about her grandparents grandparentsnpl → abuelos mplgrandparentsgrand npl → grands-parents mplgrandparentsgrand npl . The cover of the novel makes it clear that areal community, that of the impoverished Lithuanian immigrants inJohannesburg in the 1930s, is the novelist's subject. The conflictsand hopes, successes and failures of the individuals are handled withcompassion. The trendy success of Antony Sher's first novel, Middlepost(1988) (two later works have been less successful) deserves notice. Sherconcealed the fact that he was South African for many years, having leftthe country when he was nineteen for a distinguished career in acting inBritain. His novel, which was published in the year when he went publicas South African, deals with a "holy fool," a Jewish immigrantof 1902 who, like many of his kind, becomes a smous (peddler peddleror hawker,itinerant vendor of small goods. In rural America peddlers carried their packs or drove a horse and cart from door to door. ) andencounters on his travels members of all the race groups resident in thesubcontinent. Jewishness (in the form of caricatures of Jews) is equallya subject with racism, and readers with strong stomachs may well findthis an interesting work. A final group which has to be noticed is that of Jews whose choiceshave been extreme and heroic, who have suffered imprisonment ImprisonmentSee also Isolation.Alcatraz Islandformer federal maximum security penitentiary, near San Francisco; “escapeproof.” [Am. Hist.: Flexner, 218]Altmark, theGerman prison ship in World War II. [Br. Hist. and exile,or who have commemorated those who have done so. In his autobiographyLong Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela Noun 1. Nelson Mandela - South African statesman who was released from prison to become the nation's first democratically elected president in 1994 (born in 1918)Mandela, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela comments "...in my experienceI have found Jews to be more broadminded than most whites on issues ofrace and politics, perhaps because they themselves have historicallybeen victims of prejudice" (1994:66). Though, as I hope I havedemonstrated in this review. South Africa's Jews have been asdiverse as any other group in their opinions, a substantial number ofthem have left records of lives devoted to the struggle for freedom.Once again, I can only give a tiny sample, but I suggest that RuthFirst's 117 Days (1982), Albie Sachs's The Jail Diary of AlbieSachs Albie Sachs (1935-) is a justice on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He was appointed to the court by Nelson Mandela in 1994.Justice Sachs recently gained international attention in 2005 as the author of the Court's holding in the case of (1990), and Gillian Slovo's Ties of Blood (1990) might begood introductions to this genre. Ties of Blood, dealing with thelifestyle forced upon the children of revolutionaries, makes aninteresting compan ion piece to Gordimer's Burger's Daughter. In the last 20 years, the Years, Thethe seven decades of Eleanor Pargiter’s life. [Br. Lit.: Benét, 1109]See : Time Jewish community of South Africa has beenshrinking in numbers in numbered parts; as, a book published in numbers.See also: Number . Many of the writers to whom I have referred haveleft this country and will never again be permanent residents here.After the 1948 election which brought the Nationalist Party Nationalist Partyor Kuomintang or GuomindangPolitical party that governed all or part of mainland China from 1928 to 1949 and subsequently ruled Taiwan. to power andinaugurated 40 yeas of apartheid, the outflow began, Dan Jacobson beingone of the earliest Jewsih writers to leave. The violence and economicdecline of the 1980s and the political uncertainty of the 1990s causedfurther white emigration. Jews, many of whom maintained family ties withpeople in America, Britain, and Australia, tended to be better able thanmost other whites to change countries. At the present time affirmativeaction affirmative action,in the United States, programs to overcome the effects of past societal discrimination by allocating jobs and resources to members of specific groups, such as minorities and women. employment policies, which are applied in government service anduniversities as well as elsewhere, work to disadvantage young whites,especially men. It is becoming clearer that in the long term, all whiteSouth Africans ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPAndries Hendrik Potgieter Andries Pretorius QRS who wish to remain will have to make the "whiteAfrican" choice which Gordimer has advocated; that is to say,Jewish South Africans may be obliged to abandon the"difference" between themselves and the larger South Africancommunity which in the past they have valued. The ties with Europe,America, and Israel which many have inherited must be weakened, and theymust accept that if they remain in South Africa, their economic andcultural fate will be bound up with that of their compatriots. The needto make such choices may well bring about a contraction in the ranks ofSouth African Jewish writers, as well as a greater uniformity in theirpolitical opinions: only those who accept that their strongest loyaltyis to Africa will remain. ButJewish writing from the days of diversityand acrimonious political controversy will, I hope, remain as evidenceof Jewish reaction and counter-reaction to the bitter debates of SouthAfrica in this century. MARGARET LENTA is an honorary research associate in the School ofGraduate Studies, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Natal The University of Natal was a university in Natal, and later KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. It was founded in 1910 as the Natal University College in Pietermaritzburg, and expanded to include a campus in Durban in 1931. ,Durban. Her research interests are eighteenth-century fiction, diariesand letters, and twentieth-century South African fiction. FROM ALL THEIR HABITATIONS takes its title from Ezekiel 37:23 andfeatures reports of Jewish religions, intellectual, and communal life invarious parts of the world. REFERENCES Abrahams, Lionel. The Celibacy of Felix Greenspan. Craighall: AdDonker, 1977. Altman, Phyllis. The Law of the Vultures. Craighall: Ad Donker,1987 (1952). Barnard, Lady Anne. The Cape Diaries of Lady Anne Barnard,1799-1800, edited by Margaret Lenta and Basil le Cordeur. Cape Town Cape Townor Capetown,city (1991 pop. 854,616), legislative capital of South Africa and capital of Western Cape, a port on the Atlantic Ocean. It was the capital of Cape Province before that province's subdivision in 1994. : VanRiebeeck Society, 1999. Bazin, Nancy, and Marilyn Dallman Seymour. Conversations withNadine Gordimer. Jackson/London: University Press of Mississippi The University Press of Mississippi, founded in 1970, is a publisher that is sponsored by the eight state universities in Mississippi: Alcorn State University Delta State University Jackson State University Mississippi State University , 1990. Becker, Jillian. The Keep. London: Chatto and Windus, 1967. TheVirgins. Claremont: David Philip, 1986 (1976). Boetie, Dugmore. Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost: The Storyof a Black Man in South Africa. London: Cresset cres��set?n.A metal cup, often suspended on a pole, containing burning oil or pitch and used as a torch.[Middle English, from Old French, alteration of croisuel, probably from Vulgar Latin , 1969. Bloom. Harry. Episode in the Transvaal. London: Collins, 1956. Clingman, Stephen R. The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History fromthe Inside. Johannesburg: Ravan, 1986. Coetzee, J.M. "Blood, Taint, Flaw, Degeneration: The Novels ofSarah Gertrude Millin." In White Writing: On the Culture of Lettersin South Africa, 136-162. Wynberg: Radix The base value in a numbering system. For example, in the decimal numbering system, the radix is 10. (mathematics) radix - The ratio, R, between the weights of adjacent digits in positional representation of numbers. , Century Hutchinson, 1988. Davenport, T R H. South Africa: A Modern History. London:Macmillan, 1984. Gordimer, Nadine Gordimer, Nadine(nādēn` gôr`dəmər), 1923–, South African writer, b. Springs. She published her first short story at age 15 and later many of her stories appeared in The New Yorker magazine. . The Soft Voice of the Serpent. London: Gollancz,1953 (1952). "The Prison-house of Colonialism": Review of Ruth Firstand Ann Scott's Olive Schreiner. The Times Literary Supplement,London, 15 August 1980. The Lying Days. London: Virago, 1983 (1953). A World of Strangers. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983 (1958). Occasion for Loving. London: Jonathan Cape, 1978 (1963). The Late Bourgeois World. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986 (1966). Burger's Daughter. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980 (1979). A Sport of Nature. Claremont: David Philip, 1987. None to Accompany Me. Claremont: David Philip, 1994. First, Ruth. 117 Days. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982. Gordon, Lyndall. Shared Lives. Claremont: David Philip, 1992. Jacobson, Dan. The Trap. Cape Town: David Philip, 1985 (1955). A Dance in the Sun. Cape Town: David Philip, 1985 (1956). Beggar My Neighbour. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1964 (1958). "Introduction." In The Story of an African Farm, by OliveSchreiner, 7-23. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980 (1971). Time and Time Again. London: Andre Deutsch, 1985. The Electronic Elephant. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995 (1994). Heshel's Kingdom. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1998. Lenta, Margaret. "Rereading Rooke and Paton: Mittee and TooLate the Phalarope." English in Africa 23.1 (1996): 89-104. Leveson, Marcia. People of the Book. Images of the Jew in SouthAfrican Fiction. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1996. Mandela, Nelson Mandela, Nelson(born July 18, 1918, Umtata, Cape of Good Hope, S.Af.) South African black nationalist leader and statesman. The son of a Xhosa chief, Mandela studied law at the University of Witwatersrand and in 1944 joined the African National Congress (ANC). . Long Walk to Freedom, Randburg: Macdonald Purnell,1994. Matshoba, Mtutuzeli. Call Me Not a Man. Joannesburg: Ravan, 1979. Millin. Sarah Gertrude. God's Stepchildren. Craighall: AdDonker, 1986 (1924). King of the Bastards. London: Heinemann, 1950 (1949). The Burning Man. Melbourne, London and Toronto: Heinemann, 1952. The Measure of My Days. London: Faber and Faber Faber and Faber, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. , 1955. Two Bucks without Hair. South Africa: Central News Agency, 1957. Mtwa, Percy, Mbongeni Ngema Mbongeni Ngema (b. 1955 - ) a South African writer, lyricist, composer and director was born in Verulam, KwaZulu-Natal (near Durban). He started his career as a theatre backing guitarist.He is married to actress Leleti Khumalo. , and Barney Simon. Woza Albert. London:Methuen, 1983. Ngcobo, Lauretta. And They Didn't Die. London: Virago, 1990. Paton, Alan. Too Late the Phalarope. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986(1955). Sachs, Albie. The jail Diary of Albie Sachs. Cape Town: DavidPhilip, 1990. Simon, Barney. Joburg, Sis! Johannesburg: Bateleur The Bateleur (Terathopius ecaudatus) is a medium-sized eagle in the bird family Accipitridae which also includes many other diurnal raptors such as buzzards, kites and harriers. Press, 1974. Sher, Antony. Middlepost. London: Chatto and Windus, 1988. Slovo, Gillian. Ties of Blood. New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of : William Morrow andCompany William Morrow and Company is an American publishing company founded by William Morrow in 1926. The company was acquired by Hearst Corporation in 1981, and sold along to the News Corporation in 1999. The company is now an imprint of HarperCollins. , 1990. Zwi, Rose. Another Year in Africa. Johannesburg: Bateleur Press,1980. The Inverted Pyramid. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1981. Exiles. Craighall: Ad Donker, 1984.