#188: A Love Letter

My dear friends

This is our last letter for this year. I will return on 21 January.

We started the year reflecting on The Power of the Powerless and here we are. As the world weighs on our souls, I remind you of Havel’s request, “shed the burden of traditional political categories and habits and open oneself up fully to the world of human existence” and his encouragement, “every piece of good work is an indirect criticism of bad politics”.

I had intended this letter to share my favourite books of 2023, but then Jermaine made me write a different letter. You’ll find them here. I had thought that this letter would go on to explore how to build a reading list for 2024 and to remind you of the letters that made you think this year, but then Jermaine made me write a different letter. The links will take you to our usual content. Today, though, as we close this year, I need to share something different with you.

You see, on Wednesday evening, hundreds of people gathered in Cape Town’s St George’s Cathedral to say goodbye to Jermaine. It was the fourth such event in ten days, each one drawing hundreds whose lives had been shaped by Jermaine. I have puzzled over whether I have the right to call Jermaine, friend. Our lives intersected no more than a few dozen, mostly brief, times. Yet, I know he would not hesitate, he would call me friend and so I take the honour. And, on Wednesday night, as person after person spoke about who they were because Jermaine was, I knew that he left me with no choice but to try to write this letter.

I do so cautiously. Jermaine was a man of words. His uncle told us that he would badger him to buy the newspaper, then to listen as Jermaine read to him, and then to listen again as Jermaine told him the story of what he had just read. He was a man of words, a storyteller, a celebrated and awarded journalist. More than that, he was a generous man, who inspired others to have courage and so I will try to say what I feel needs saying.

We lived our lives in one degree of separation. For years our paths had crossed without us knowing. Johannesburg, known to South Africans as Jozi sometimes eGoli, the city of gold, had, like it does for millions of other Africans, drawn us to it. Our early adult lives unfolded as South Africa’s democracy was born. It was a time of hope, of connection and celebration, of parties, of freedom and creation. It was a blessed time and so, when we met, a decade or so after that, Jermaine relished connecting the dots.

I’m not a big person. Not a small one either. Six foot in the old parlance. Our occasional meetings all started the same. He would walk towards me, although walk doesn’t capture Jermaine’s move through the world, it was as if God had asked his parents “How would you like your son to move?” and they replied, “A touch of Tigger and a splash of Snoop”.

He would drape his arm across my shoulders, resting his height for a moment, then pull me close, easy as pollen to a bee, easy like Sunday morning, lower his head and his voice filled with smile say, “Tell me bra, do you remember?…Did you ever?… Where you at?… What was his / her name again?” Mischievousness playing at the corners of his mouth, possibilities realised and missed twinkling in his eyes. The storyteller in profession and person, weaving threads of joy and hope.   

A few years ago, he’d reached out to ask me something and, as was his way, he asked me how I was, what I was up to. I had just left my job; I was starting to explore what would become my coaching practice. It was an interim period, at that point, I wasn’t doing much. I was lying in a hammock when he called. I responded, “I’m embracing bergiedom” (for those of you outside of South Africa, bergie is a colloquialism, a vagrant or homeless person). He roared with laughter and retorted “You settlers take alles my broer…even bergiedom”.

I said I wasn’t sure what was next but hoped I would figure it out. He said “You will bro. You’re a smart man with LOTS to offer the game”. He gave courage. Person after person testified to the courage he gave, the doors he opened, and the possibilities he created. Here I am. Thank you Jermaine.

His Cape Town memorial was led by the Dean of St George’s Cathedral, Michael Weeder. As Weeder spoke, he reminded me that our country’s clergy, its religious people are people of principled power. This is the country where rabbi and imam, priest and reverend have stood alongside each other, where Huddlestone, Naudé, and Tutu united in their love for life, were resolute in confronting power, disregarding – some may say disrespecting – any division, building instead a coalition for life.

As I looked at the hundreds gathered to celebrate Jermaine, I thought he’d lived the best South African life. A life that brought together people together in possibility. His life was an embodiment of this country’s dreams. His achievements his victory, his family’s victory, his community’s victory, the country’s victory. Jermaine was what our democracy is meant to be.

Weeder reminded us that we stood in the place of sweet waters, Camissa, the name by which this land’s first people knew what the world now calls Cape Town. He reflected that the cathedral – ‘this colonial edifice’ – of which he is Dean, blocked and buried the life-giving life waters. He brought the complexity and the contradiction into the light, not to resolve it, but for us to see, to see that this life is complex, that we live on layers of history, that we must know, that we must explore.

This too is the best of our country. It is the place of scholar-activists, it is the place where a President once declared “I am an African”.

Alongside this, we are a place of violence and crushing poverty, a place where ineptitude has slowed the dream that Jermaine lived. As I looked around that cathedral, as I re-remembered the memories that Jermaine called forth, as I listened to his oldest friends recount landmarks that were Jermaine’s and were South Africa’s, as I remembered how this country crossed impossible divides, I fell in love again. And, as the love rose, so did the anger. South Africa’s stumbling is not ours alone. For a moment in time, we showed the world the possibility of another path. Our failures betray not only ourselves but the world. And still, there are glimmers. We are the country where an Afrikaner from Despatch and a Xhosa man from Zwide can unite, not once but twice, to conquer the world and transform a sport. We are a country where a boy from the Cape Flats grew to be a man who welcomed the world to our country in 2010, where the boy who read the paper to his uncle became the man who edited them, the country where a boy from the Cape is celebrated by Johannesburg’s Amakhosi, the country where a man can have his funeral in a Methodist church and be memorialised in an Anglican cathedral. That is Jermaine’s South Africa. That is our South Africa. It is what we owe ourselves and the world. Thank you, Jermaine, for making me fall in love again.

As Michael Weeder ended, he commanded us to take love into the world. He said, “It is too dangerous not to”.  

I will see you in January. Thank you for being here. Remember “shed the burden of traditional political categories and habits”, open yourself fully to the world of human existence, and know that each piece of good work you do is a criticism of bad politics. Our lives have power.

Much love

Karl

PS: If you, like me, came of age in the 1990s you’ll enjoy Nadia Davids’ An Imperfect Blessing. If, like me, you’ve grown cynical, read it, it’ll remind you of who we’re meant to be. It’s who Jermaine was.