Makapan's Cave

Can Bosman's short story be used in a History Course? That's not a question I usually ask since tenure, but the start of the story has to be seen as ironic (it is) in order not to be verboten: Oom Schalk Laurens, Bosman's (b. 1905) alter-ego old man character (born ca. 1850?) is about to reminisce about something that happened to his brother and him. He says something like, "All Kafirs are the same," and then that while the Hottentoten steals only the biltong, the kafir steals the biltong and the line it is hung on. But some kafirs, Oom Schalk says, are okay and it is wrong to shoot them, and so . . .

This is the highly deceptive, very well planned out beginning of an amazing story premised, ultimately, on grasping power and violence in a very intimate way. It is also set squarely within genuine political events (naming Paul Kruger and Piet Potgeiter) again in a subversive and believable way. It is kind of like a "Brokeback Mountain" told doubly ironically, where the reader and the teller are kept from full disclosure, and the emotional center is left intact, and explodes only in retrospect, when looking back over what's been read. It is a perfectly structured story, and it is as heartbreaking as Doris Lessing's in telling of the damage racism does to human relationships. The brutality of the story is like a slow burn. I love it.

But to use it I have to have all the class first hear me talk about it. Because many of them will not know what to make of it especially its beginning. They will not find it accessible to them. It would be like reading, with no warning, a story by a German 1930s author:

"Oh, I know the Jew," Old Hans began, knocking his pipe on his pantleg. "All the Jews are the same. They are all misers, cheapskates who will swindle you blind and must be shot." . . .

People compare Bosman to Twain, so perhaps that's where I'll have to find the angle in: Huck Finn and Jim on the Riverboat. Boy that scene has done a lot of work over the years!