It's beautiful. You know I love what you are working on. I'm glad to have permission to share it, so I did. Keep writing, revising, tenderizing. That close attention is love in action.
"They were dominated by men on buses, on the street, in their part-time jobs, by their dads and uncles. Men, grown men, targeted these youngsters. They could smell an easy victory and could not resist. They knew: these were only boys. That was the point."
Yes! Yes, it is so hard to imagine a world without the Patriarchy. Thank you for sharing your experiences and wisdom.
Yes. We agree on that. We need men. I happen to love men. I'm married to one and raised one. Men are suffering hard in this culture, too. My argument is always: we need a matrifocal culture, centered on the needs of women, whether they have biological children or not. The government should be egalitarian. The Supreme Court should be made up of women of grandmother age, who are big enough to hold the whole culture, and say no to madness. We tried it with all men in charge. It didn't work.
New to your site and looking forward to catching up. My initial impression, and please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, is that we likely both agree that the patriarch is deadly for both men and women.
Great programme. Roy.
Thanks Roy. I’m glad you saw that.
And here is the final (?) version of 'Sometimes I can see, quite clearly.'
(You might have seen most of it earlier; this version includes 'Abraham')
Feel free to share ...
[Heading]
P.S. Rock Bottom.
"Wathint' abafazi, wathint' imbokodo"
"When you strike a woman, you strike a (grinding) rock".
A metaphor from women’s daily lives
chanted at the 1956 march
to the lawns of the Union Buildings
in ‘Pretoria’, within direct sight of our ‘flat’ / apartment
and the balcony where I spent most of my childhood, fascinated,
watching electric storms sweep up and down the Magaliesberg mountain range ./..
and where over 20,000 women
protested against the extension
of Apartheid pass-laws to black women.
(with Ma’am Ruth Mompathi in the leadership)
that dark / joyous / day.
Charl was battle-hardened - by her ‘mother.’
When Charl said: “I was an abused child,”
she meant every word of it.
But her mother never had the decency
to acknowledge her own complicity in
that which cannot be named,
(even to herself).
Her mother’s only reaction was ...
“I have absolutely no sympathy,
stop making up such vicious stories,
and causing trouble.”
(written to Charl 6,000 miles away,
from that glass-castle they call Monaco ./..)
And true to folk-lore
it was a close family ‘friend’ who first did ‘it’
- again and again ./..
It was only thanks to meeting Joan Austin
a remarkable woman, also in Pretoria,
that Charl eventually accepted
that for all intents and purposes,
she never had a ‘mother’ on her side.
She just had to get on with her life
without one.
which she did.
[Heading 2]
Cultural anti-appropriation / Refusing Afrikaans, 1959.
One fine day, Charl was sent to high school ...
But first, she got presented with her brand new uniform,
out of the ‘blue’, for the new, ‘Afrikaans-medium’ school, Groote Schuur.
Her German / Afrikaans grandfather had just died;
He would never have allowed this.
He insisted on English-medium schools for all his grandchildren,
including both of Charl’s brothers, who went elsewhere, later ./..
Charl was Alet’s sacrificial scapegoat,
in so many ways - a throw back to Abraham.
This was a bespoke school, for the children of leading ‘Broederbonders’
and some dissenters (like ‘naval [wives’] types’),
It was certainly not the English-medium school Charl expected
and unlike the children in the Afrikaans schools in Pretoria West,
still, many years later, none of these ‘aspirant middle-class children’
(at ‘Groote Schuur’ went to school barefoot (summer and winter)
It never occurred to them to take off their shoes
(it didn’t suit them to write up for it).
So instead, from day one, Charl simply refused
to submit any work, or write any ‘other’ exams, in Afrikaans,
despite the fact that she took both languages at the ‘higher’ grade.
She was the ‘top’ student in the province, so who was going to deny her?
The school even offered to make her Head Prefect, but she ‘declined’ ...
And besides, one of the most senior teachers
was caught in flagrante ... with one of the young (male) students,
and all he got was a promotion (elsewhere)
as an “Inspector of Schools”...
So on the surface, it worked.
Charl spent most of her time
while her parents were overseas
as the only girl in a boy’s boarding school;
Peter spent his time with well-off friends.
and for Andre, loneliness, perhaps.
Andre, continued to capitalise, mercilessly,
on his mother’s guilt (for decades).
Neither he nor his mother emerged ‘smelling of roses.’
Tough ‘choices’, all round.
But beneath the roses
are different stories.
I only recently found out how far it extended,
and I’m sure that’s what Charl wanted.
She only told me the bare bones of one of the stories ./..
her friends told me more ...
Those were ‘different’ times ... (?)
Taboos can always be broken,
if the context is right / embarrassingly wrong / enough.
As they say in the many (misogynist) idioms of Africa:
“When the big bulls fight, the grass gets trampled underneath.”
Her mother, too, tried – (unsuccessfully)
to beat Charl into submission,
till she was ‘only a pawn in their game.’
she wasn’t. ever.
It’s only today that I realise, fully, why
Charl had to come (back) to the U.K,
eventually, to die ...
and Charles had to be buried at sea ./..
They both needed to lay down their bones, ‘at home’.
16th April ‘2026.’
End of Part 1
(more to follow)
It's beautiful. You know I love what you are working on. I'm glad to have permission to share it, so I did. Keep writing, revising, tenderizing. That close attention is love in action.
:))
I will read this and sit with it later.
"They were dominated by men on buses, on the street, in their part-time jobs, by their dads and uncles. Men, grown men, targeted these youngsters. They could smell an easy victory and could not resist. They knew: these were only boys. That was the point."
Yes! Yes, it is so hard to imagine a world without the Patriarchy. Thank you for sharing your experiences and wisdom.
Thanks for commenting. All of us suffer under this system.
Yes. We agree on that. We need men. I happen to love men. I'm married to one and raised one. Men are suffering hard in this culture, too. My argument is always: we need a matrifocal culture, centered on the needs of women, whether they have biological children or not. The government should be egalitarian. The Supreme Court should be made up of women of grandmother age, who are big enough to hold the whole culture, and say no to madness. We tried it with all men in charge. It didn't work.
New to your site and looking forward to catching up. My initial impression, and please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, is that we likely both agree that the patriarch is deadly for both men and women.