Life builds character

RON FRIEDMAN

In many ways, growing up white in apartheid South Africa is exactly the same as growing up in the United States, Canada or any other western country. This is the initial starting point of the new book Ja No, Man by journalist, filmmaker and now author, Richard Poplak. The rest of the book is an attempt to prove exactly the opposite.

Poplak's autobiography chronicles the childhood of the author from his birth in 1973 to the time he left South Africa with his family in 1989, a period he describes as the death throes of apartheid.

Poplak looks back on his life through the lens of an outsider. After leaving South Africa at the age of 16, he intended on shedding his former identity, one that he realized was mired in the sordid history of the cruel South African power structure, and becoming a citizen of the world. "I think I developed for myself, probably because I was so appalled by my experience of a South African, a sort of nation of one," said Poplak in a telephone interview from Toronto. This perspective allowed him to look at his childhood and appreciate how bizarre it really was and it was the attempt to resolve his past that gave birth to the book.

Despite being about a dark period of history, Poplak's book is surprisingly funny. He manages to tell the tragic story of apartheid, but mainly through contrast to his own experiences, told in a self-effacing tone and playing up the absurdities of the situation. Poplak can afford to laugh; after all, he got away. His humor is that of a disaffected observer, not a direct participant. To be fair, most of his jokes are directed at the white minority rulers at the time, the people whose worldview enabled such a monstrous system to take effect and which created a culture of division that often crossed the line into the absurd.

Poplak's book is made up of a series of anecdotes interwoven with moments of contemplative insight. Since he spent most of his childhood in the protective surrounding of suburban Johannesburg, seldom exposed to the realities of the rest of South Africa, readers can relate to the stories he tells. Like children all over the world, his life was made up of routines such as school, family and home. What makes his stories interesting is that they are all colored by the fact that they take place within a unique reality, in which every aspect of one's life is regulated in a way that has political overtones, from the school with its racist and nationalistic curriculum and militaristic field trips to the segregated public services system with its superfluously doubled-up infrastructure.

Another element that adds to the story is the fact that Poplak is Jewish. His being a minority within a minority gives his voice an additional level of perspective and his stories a characteristically Jewish resonance. "I view S.A. as a series of tribes facing off against one another. I think it's an important way to understand the world. I think it has some sort of universal message and is universally applicable."

"Ja no, man [which literally means yes no, man] is a contradiction in terms and I guess that's exactly how I see the country. Within our tight, ghettoized communities, we lived very warm, very comfortable, very loving, very close lives. It was the best childhood known to mankind. However, in the greater context of South Africa, you had this very violent, very closed-minded, very hateful, very racist and very troublesome existence. That's the classic South African conundrum," said Poplak.

One can't help but get a feeling that this book was meant to achieve more than it actually ended up doing. It seems like Poplak intended in his book to arrive at some kind of essential understanding of the South African reality, but along the way realized that this wouldn't be possible. He stressed to the Independent the journalistic underpinnings of his writing and the importance that every fact he wrote be verified, but the work as a whole doesn't feel journalistic or academic, rather it comes across as a scrapbook of recollections. "I think I would have liked it to have been a definitive closing of a chapter of my life, but by no means was that the case. It didn't end up closing any loops or providing any closure," confessed Poplak.

If you want to hear more about growing up white in apartheid-era South Africa, Poplak will be in Vancouver for the Jewish Book Festival and will be participating in Confronting Controversy on Nov. 28, 7 p.m., in the Dayson Board Room at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.

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