International conference on hybridity, liminality and  

                      boundaries   AND 2nd Conference on South African Children's 

                       Literature (in  parallel) June 30-July 2, 2005  Potchefstroom, South Africa

Thank you Professor van der Westhuizen for asking me to present this paper. I gladly share with you what I can and hopefully you will take what is yours to take. I present this paper in English to make it understandable to everyone. 

The theme of boundaries and the crossing of boundaries is indeed a very apt one for the times we live in. It is a time of transition for our country and it affects all of us in some way, consciously or indeed unconsciously, as I will point out at the end of my paper. 

According to the dictionary a boundary is something that indicates or fixes a limit or extent – thus it indicates how far you or someone else can go. 

In nature there are no boundaries. The earth is round. We can go around and around and around if we wanted to. There are obstacles, yes, rivers and mountains and ice wastelands. But if you persevere you can traverse these obstacles. 

Man has made boundaries. He has erected fences and towns and cities. People live in different countries and you need a passport in order to enter another country. You can travel, yes. But the moment you leave your house you are either on public property like streets and sidewalks or you enter another person’s house or office or whatever. There are nature reserves but animals and nature have to be protected against people. There are rules there too that have to be obeyed. 

Each of us is a separate being. And we have to interact in some way with other separate beings. We need personal boundaries to protect ourselves from others. From imagined or real hurt. Sometimes we are jailed by our own boundaries. And so I can go on and on. There are personal boundaries and those created by others and by societies for us. And we try to live as best as we can. Thus boundaries are not necessarily good or bad but it depends on how we use them. Boundaries are indeed at the heart of our existence because we are not alone on this earth. 

The verb to cross has an inherent meaning of movement across, or from one place to the other. When used in combination with boundaries it means to go over a barrier. 

The use of the present participle in “crossing the boundaries” suggests that the process isn’t finished yet. Thus we have movement, we have something in the way of that movement and we have the movement across that barrier. 

Life is movement. Whether we want to admit it or recognise it or not. Time goes on. As someone said: This moment will not come again. And it won’t. Similar moments, yes. But this specific one? No. I have 3 quarters of an hour to take you on a journey, from station tot station. After that there will be questions and then other persons will share their ideas with you. Thus we are all here now. At this moment in time on the 2 nd of July, 2005 at 8..... Here we are and there is a journey at hand .. 

Thus: hop onto the train with me. 

Where do we start? 

We start with a story that came to me in 1998. The name was in my head. Die hart van Zeebak. I have no idea why. It just was. And there was a young man on a bicycle pedalling furiously. Obsessed. And that was that. The beginning of a story. His name was Ferdinand. Why, I do not know. But only his brother called him Ferdi. And I wondered about Ferdinand. From WHAT was he trying to get away? WHERE was he going? I was trying to get him to tell me his story, but he would not speak. Perhaps he could not speak? He was as closed as a book that has not yet been opened. 

I watched him as he despaired. He was hoping for something to change his life. ANYTHING. But obviously nothing had happened. Of course not. What a silly hope he had. And he decided to go back home, because nothing was going to happen any way. Life is as it is. Nothing ever will make his brother Ben okay again. Ben will never again be the person he used to be. And he will have to go back and face it and get on with his life of becoming a brain surgeon in order to help people who are brain damaged. 

Perhaps Ferdinand’s despair in the beginning of the book was my own despair of getting hold of a story and it seemed so intriguing, but then ... nothing. Silly idea. I should abandon the book. 

Ferdinand decided to go on with his journey for another day, travelling aimlessly in the bushveld after he had written matric and all his friends were having fun at the sea and there he was: He and his nonsense of saying to them that he could not go with them because he had an appointment with aliens. Silly. Silly. 

Couldn’t I get a more sensible job? A real job like everyone else where one is paid a salary and one is not dependant on the royalties from books. Here I was watching an imaginary young man, being torn apart because he wanted something that was impossible. Was I trying to do the impossible by trying to freelance write. Children’s Books. Youth novels – in a country where we have no reading culture and publishers were struggling. Ferdinand didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do. I loved my job. But was I being silly? How would I survive? Choices. How does one handle choices? How does one know that one is doing the RIGHT thing – whatever that may be? Perhaps I must get a proper job. Like everyone else. 

But Ferdinand rode on, entering a desolate little town, that wasn’t even marked on the map. Just another little town like so many he had been in before. And he played chess in a little cafe with an old man that looked faintly familiar. But as he was bored out of his skull he whiled away the time. He would go home home tomorrow. 

And then ... the story went on. And on. 

And then I got stuck again. Badly. Ferdinand was on his way – by chance he had entered a planet in another dimension - or perhaps it was not by chance? Perhaps it was meant to be? How would one KNOW? All he knew was that he was madly in love with Leandra and he was rid of Ben. But then ... he had a nightmare. And it was a gross nightmare. He was sick when he woke up that he could have dreamt such a terrible thing. He loved Ben after all. And Ferdinand became angry with Leandra for keeping him in a make believe virtual city and he was demanding answers. And who was Nimron whom she talked about so much and then.. The story went on ... but only for a little while and then .. Nothing ... 

Ferdinand decided to come back to Earth – not to get involved in Zeebak’s goings on. After all, it was nothing to him. And yet he didn’t want to go home either. Because nothing had changed. So he was angry and stuck. 

And so was I. For months. For years almost. He didn’t want to DO anything. He was just FURIOUS, with life, with what had happened to Ben and he didn’t want to do ANYTHING. So of course there was no story. 

I decided to do other stuff. As a freelance writer I could not afford having a writer’s block. Writer’s blocks are for people who can afford them! I had to find a way out of my writer’s block. I took up scriptwriting and learnt to do that. I wrote shorter stories. Bur I could not go on with a longer story because there was Ferdinand, stuck, but he didn’t want to go away. He was torturing me. What WAS it with him? WHAT TO DO. 

I started writing again I actually finished the book and entered it for the Sanlam Competition in 2000. It didn’t win like my two previous winners, Anderkantland and In die tyd van die Esob, but it was a finalist. But the editor said she was not going to publish it because there was something wrong with the last half of the book. The part I FORCED on the story just so that it could be DONE. She said the beginning was beautiful and haunting, but the ending didn’t MATCH. Like when you build jigsaw puzzles and a piece looks ALMOST like a fit and you WANT it to fit, bit it DOESN’T. 

So I was stuck again. What to do. I became angry with her and sommer at everyone. Mad at things that frustrated me etc. you probably know the feeling? And I conceptualised an Internet story-making course. Now I was going to analyse and teach. Though I said all the while – I could point out WAYS and MEANS of getting TO a story, but stories have their own lives and you have to FEEL it out – like in a GUT feeling. 

But we have BOUNDARIES in ourselves. Boundaries we created in order to live. And one of them is holding in your anger. You may not SHOW negative feelings. You must not HAVE them. And of course we do.. We just hide them. Or take them out on other people. In subtle ways or in open aggression sometimes. But because we are not supposed to BE angry, we have never learnt to HANDLE so called negative emotions. We are polite and distant. How are you? Fine and you? I am fine thank you. And what if you are NOT fine? As Ferdinand was NOT fine, though he was clever and seemed to have everything he needed except for BEN being okay again. But he didn’t talk about it. His father didn’t talk about it. His mother didn’t talk about it. Apparently the psychologist didn’t help much either. And he could not speak to Ben because Ben now was in a world of his own and Ferdinand was on the point of exploding from all his feelings and no one to talk to. 

So there he was in the cafe in the desolate little town talking to an old man who seemed more and more strange by the moment. He didn’t want to go back home and he didn’t want to go back to Zeebak. And the old man talked about choices. That you had to follow your heart. And Ferdinand knew that he had to go back to Zeebak and finish what he had started. But he was scared that he would make a mess of things. Sometimes we think that we have control over people and things. But do we really? Of course not. But the old man said you didn’t know whether you were going to make a mess of it or not. You just do the best you can. 

And there I was on track again. I had tried to teach people about story writing, about being honest with yourself because we stand in the story’s way with all our hang-ups and fears. I had taught them what I needed to know. Writing isn’t easy. You have to get yourself and your ego out of the way. The stories are there. To be written. All around us. Thus I got myself out of the way of the story.. No need to be angry any more. Life is as it is. You handle it. I chose to write, and write I will. Life is what you make of it. And perhaps just perhaps you can get hold of a Tin angel. A dilapidated Tin angel. A wacky almost incoherent Robot angel, to show you that WITHIN your life, with all its boundaries and problems – those that you made and those others made for you – there are POSSIBILITIES to explore. 

The story was finished. It was published. It got great reviews. Everyone was happy. The editor and myself were over the moon and smug as a bug that it was done. My children were over the moon because I was a total pain while I was struggling with it. 

This is more or less the journey of the writing of the text of the youth novel as I remember it. 

I thought I was done with Zeebak and went on with other stuff. Then the editor phoned to ask if I wanted to write a teacher’s guide for Zeebak for use in schools. I had a choice. She preferred me to write it because I know the book so well, and I had had some experience with educational books with the Balkie series I wrote for Best Books last year. I had a choice. I could say yes or no. I said yes. 

And another journey started. A reflective and analytical one. As I explained and as you probably deducted from my recount of the writing of the book – writing is a strange process. You SEEM to be in control of the book (your fingers are doing the typing and the story seems to live in your head) but in the end – you seem to be NOT in control. Thus I had to analyse the text I had written. I had to analyse it as if someone else had written it. 

Okay. I agreed to write the text with an OBE expert to check everything at the end because I didn’t have any real recent teaching experience except for the 14 workshops I did. These one-day story-making workshops were based on the Internet Writing course I had conceptualised in 2000. But that was a different kind of teaching – or perhaps not so different. Because in order to “teach” writing I had to figure out what on earth I did in order to already have an impressive CV with more than 20 publications in 2000. I had to ANALYSE my own manner of writing. Someone asked me whether I wasn’t afraid that by analysing, I would kill the magic! No. I wasn’t, for how on earth could I kill the magic if I didn’t even know what it was? But yes, we have to travel to find the stories. They are there. But sometimes we have to travel within ourselves to get hold of them. 

Margaret Atwood in her book: Negotiating with the Dead – a writer on writing – has the following to say: 

Having failed on the subject of motives, I took a different approach: instead of asking other writers why they did it, I asked them what it felt like. Specifically, I asked novelists, and I asked them what it felt like when they went into a novel.

None of them wanted to know what I meant by into. One said it was like walking into a labyrinth, without knowing what monster might be inside; another said it was like groping through a mind; another said it was like being in a cave — she could see daylight through the opening, but she herself was in darkness.

Another said it was like being under water, in a lake or ocean. Another said it was like being in a completely dark room, feeling her way: she had to rearrange the furniture in the dark, and then when it was all arranged the light would come on. Another said it was like wading through a deep river, at dawn or twilight; another said it was like being in an empty room which was nevertheless filled with unspoken words, with a sort of whispering; another said it was like grappling with an unseen being or entity; another said it was like sitting in an empty theatre before any play or film had started, waiting for the characters to appear.

Dante begins the Divine Comedy - which is both a poem and a record of the composition of that poem - with an account of finding himself in a dark, tangled wood, at night, having lost his way, after which the sun begins to rise. 

Virginia Woolf said that writing a novel is like walking through a dark room, holding a lantern which lights up what is already in the room anyway.

Margaret Laurence and others have said that it is like Jacob wrestling with his angel in the night — an act in which wounding, naming, and blessing all take place at once. 

Obstruction, obscurity, emptiness, disorientation, twilight, blackout, often combined with a struggle or path or journey - an inability to see one's way forward, but a feeling that there was a way forward, and that the act of going forward would eventually bring about the conditions for vision — these were the common elements in many descriptions of the process of writing. 

I was reminded of something a medical student said to me about the
interior of the human body, forty years ago: 'It's dark in there.'

Possibly, then, writing has to do with darkness, and a desire or perhaps a compulsion to enter it, and, with luck, to illuminate it, and to bring something back out to the light. This book is about that kind of darkness, and that kind of desire.

(Margaret Atwood: Negotiating with the Dead, Virago Press 2003, Part of the Empson Lectures, Introduction pp xxi,xxii)

But back to the teacher's guide. I studied the Curriculum for Grade 10 Afrikaans Home Language for days. Of course the teacher’s guide had to be totally based on the Curriculum and cover all the aspects prescribed in order for it to be a practical guide to a teacher who had to teach a literary text in a classroom. But more than that, I wanted to share what I knew and what I had learnt about and experienced with stories and characters because maybe it could be valuable to some teachers or learners. I believe that we all know stuff and we all know different stuff depending on what we do and where we have been and that we should share our knowledge to enrich all of us. 

Thus I planned and plotted to find the best way of doing just that. I imagined hassled teachers, underpaid and frantically trying to cope with a new curriculum. Teachers in transition. I imagined learners – young people in transition. Teachers and learners in transition in a country in transition. And I did the best I could. 

I would like to read to you the Introduction I wrote as translated from the Afrikaans: 

This guide offers the following: 

1. A focussed approach to the teaching of Die hart van Zeebak as a literary text, based on the Learning Outcomes and Assessment Standards set out in the national Curriculum with inter alia the following: 

     a comprehensive treatment of the text in all its aspects by means of short questions and possible answers per chapter as well as longer questions and possible test and exam questions and answers with addional information on storylines, characters etc. 
    suggestions for assignments for personal folders, practical work questions, work sheets, classroom discussions, school debates etc with indications of which Learning Outcomes are covered by the questions or assignments, to be used at the discretion of the teacher for differential purposes
    extended additional sources in the form of writer’s input, graphical explanations, research and other authentic texts that can be given to the learners 

2. A holistic approach to the text, focussing on the following in order 

    to generally assist the Grade 10 learners who are in their first year of the FET- BAND with the comprehension of concepts and insights relevant to the study of literary texts. 
    to bring to the learners the insight that the issues the characters in books have to deal with are universal and the same as they themselves and indeed people of all ages are struggling with
    to give the learners the background information on the text in order to see it within a specific sociological/historical and political context
    to conform to the ideals, vision, critical, developmental and other outcomes as set out in the Curriculum. 

3. A writer’s perspective with the text as focus point in order 

    to supply the learners with material behind the text which may be enriching or interesting to them 
    to encourage creative writing in young people as publishers are always on the look out for new young writer’s voices
    to develop and encourage a creative and problem solving attitude as suggested by the Curriculum
    to supply background information on science fiction in order to put the many films and TV shows the learners daily see around them in perspective 
    to encourage the reading and writing of science fiction as it is a genre that is especially suitable to assist in lateral and creative thinking as new worlds are imagined in these stories but these stories are not alien to us, as we can but write about our human experiences though they may take place on another world. 

Thus, what I wanted to bring across too were the following: 

I wanted to point out to the learners and the teachers that literature is about LIFE. It isn’t something APART form you. It is a mirror to LIFE – to all our lives. The story of Die hart van Zeebak can be summarised very briefly as the story of Ferdinand and Leandra, of the people of Zeebak and of a Tin Angel. Thus it is a love story, an adventure story and as most of the action takes place on Zeebak, a planet in another dimension, it can also be categorised as a science fiction novel and of course a youth novel because the main characters are 18 years old. But it may also be our story! Here and now in South Africa, because books and people cannot be categorised, cannot be boxed. We are infinitely more than for instance teachers, learners, writers, lecturers, farmers, parents, children, teenagers, paraplegics or however we can be described as various groups of people. We are all individuals with a specific history, with specific talents, with boundaries, yes. Earthbound, but also infinite. Our spirit cannot be boxed or jailed, unless we allow it to be jailed by other people’s boundaries. The psychologist Viktor Frankl’s theory says just that. And he has lived his theory because he was a prisoner in Auschwitz and Dachau. Mr Mandela is our own perfect example. His body was jailed. Not his spirit. 

Thus I wanted to bring across that there is hope. Always. Perhaps everything doesn’t turn out the way YOU think it should have. But then you assume that you have control over life and other people. And you don’t. Writing teaches one exactly that. All of us have our own stories. 

Characters in books have their own stories too. Successful characters that people can identify with are real people. Sometimes more real than real people because they allow you to see inside them and get to know them really well. And just like people, characters have to be treated with respect. You don’t TELL them what to do – they KNOW what they have to do. It is THEIR story after all. Otherwise you should have written an autobiography! You LISTEN to them. You don’t IMPOSE stuff on them – because otherwise they just FREEZE up. NOTHING happens or the story is not as it should be because it isn’t THEIR stories any more. And readers can pick that up. A good book gives you a feeling of satisfaction as if everything had happened as it was supposed to have happened. 

And it is difficult, as a writer and as a human being because one always knows better. We KNOW what other people do WRONG. A pity that they seldom listen to us. A pity too that our own lives aren't perfect. Why aren’t our own lives perfect if we know so well what OTHERS should do? 

Characters are real. Even if they are non-human. Even if they look like hairy little ... Balkies? 

I would like to quote you something from the TV presentation I worked out for SABC 2 for a little character called Balkie whom some of you may know. He has been telling his stories in rooirose magazine for almost 13 years now, and he has now decided to become a TV star and it looks as if maybe he will manage just that. He is quite determined. I can tell you that. He does JUST as he likes. He has received thousands of fan mail through the years. Here is the quote: 

COMMENT: (January 2006) Balkie apparently didn't want to become a TV star after all. He was always extremely opiniated! In fact, he seemed to get really tired of telling me stories and showing Elizabeth how to draw his pictures,  so he went off in search of the Country of the Balkies. We don't know if such a place exist, because, unfortunately we lost contact with him. But we are quite sure, that where ever he may be, he is spreading the Balkie-joy, just as he had done here on earth. 

"One example of what Balkie “does” to children is the following: some time ago he received a letter from a little girl that said: (translated from Afrikaans) 

Dear Balkie

I know you are not real. Are you real? 

Love 
Anel. 

And he replied: 

Dear Anel 

Of course I am real. Are you? 

Love
Balkieeeeeeeeee

Balkie truly seems to live on the edge of our reality. And if “realness” can be measured by the amount of letters you receive, he is more “real” than most of us! Anel did write to him, after all, to comment and ask her question!"

Thus, characters are REAL. They just live in another world. Something I unconsciously used in my youth novel Anderkantland  in 1993 where the main character somehow finds herself in the land were the fairy tales HAPPEN – where characters like the three little pigs and Rapunzel and of course the prince and the wolf and the witch and many more actually LIVE their stories. And of course she INTERFERES because she KNOWS BETTER. She has read the stories after all! But the magic of stories isn’t so easily interfered with as she finds out for herself. 

And if they are real, they can teach us something. Not with some blatant little moral lesson that no self-respecting child falls for. Children are young. They are NOT stupid! Children learn from WATCHING parents and grownups, not from what they SAY except if what they SAY and what they DO is the SAME thing. And children and we can learn from listening to and reading stories. We can learn from what the characters experience in stories. We only have one life. We can only experience so many things and meet so many people. But in books we can meet a wide assortment of people. And learn from what they do and don’t do! From what they say and don’t say. And from what happens to them.:Ben Okri says the following about the reader’s involvement in his book: A Way of being free: 

The writer, functioning in a magical medium, an abstract medium, does one half of the work, but the reader does the other. The reader's mind becomes the screen, the place, the era. To a large extent, readers create the world from words, they invent the reality they read. Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn't care to sit next to in a train, planets that don't exist, places you've never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader's creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.

(Ben Okri: A Way of Being Free, Phoenix, 1989, p. 41) 

We can learn from characters just as in real life one is sometimes inspired by what other people do, for example paraplegics who seem to make so MUCH of what they DO have instead of grumbling and moaning that life isn’t perfect. 

And this brings me to the second point. I wanted to bring across in the teacher’s guide: That life isn’t perfect. It never will be. Interesting that the word “perfect” comes from the Latin verb perficio, which means to finish. Life isn’t perfect because it isn’t FINISHED. We are still alive. Here. It isn’t too late. It is never too late to do what you always wanted to do. It isn’t too late until we are dead. 

As I looked at the text of Zeebak, which I seem to have written, I saw how we tend to BLAME everyone else. Especially when we don’t want to deal with stuff. We all do it. Example. The boss makes you angry as hell but you cannot say anything otherwise you may lose your job – so what do you do? You kick the cat or the dog or your wife (or husband?) or children when you come home. You expect to be treated as royalty at home because you had such a bad time at work. Except that EVERYONE actually has “problems” of his or her own. No excuse. There are always possibilities. There seems to be an outcry for young writers voices these days. Where ARE the young writers? Are writers a dying breed? Indeed, where are the writers? All you really need to write is a book and a pen. It has been done. A whole wonderful novel was written in notebooks by hand. 

Talking about blaming brings me to the third point I wanted to bring across. There is much moaning and groaning about the new Curriculum especially from parents. And of course it isn’t easy making a transition. It asks a LOT from everyone. And parents of course want the best for their children. The best schools and teachers, but also the best LIFE. If we feed the children with doubt and negativity about everything, will that help them to make a better life? These are difficult times for all of us, especially for teachers. That is also why I tried giving as much practical information, ideas, questions and answers etc in the guide. Teachers need all the help and encouragement we can give them in these difficult times. I figured out a possible lay out of the guide so that it would be easy for teachers to duplicate and give learners my notes on e.g. how a story works and how it is actually easy to answer ALL the questions IF you UNDERSTAND the characters and how stories work etc. 

And that brings me to the next point. What is new and fantastic in the new curriculum is that we are giving learners the opportunity to form motivated answers of their own. They have to learn to think for themselves. We are breeding THINKERS in our schools, not sheep! It isn’t possible any more just to memorise some stuff and do well and then to forget everything after a day. 

But of course the assessment of these answers is up to the teachers and that is DIFFICULT. It is a time of growth for all of us and everything will take time and perseverance from all of us. 

And what can we as parents and grandparents do to help? Motivated opinions are formed by EXPERIENCE. You can’t just say this is what I think and not give a valid REASON. 

We must all learn to have perspective. We are not alone on this earth. Yes, we all have opinions. But so do other people! And where must learners get perspective and experience? From their parents and grandparents and other people and they CAN get it from READING – because, as I said, books mirror life! 

Especially NOW with the challenges of the new times and a new curriculum, reading is more important than EVER, Often children are jailed in households where bigotry is rampant and that is all the ever hear and see – so they will grow up to BE just like that. Crossing the boundaries by READING – brings in NEW dimensions. Of course this is a long-term project. It will take time. Like everything else. We can but contribute what we can.

Change happens in PEOPLE. Individual PEOPLE who cross boundaries. The other day I received one of those e-mail petitions to the president that he had to stop violence. I am QUITE sure he and everyone else are trying their best. What I wanted to do was reply and say how EASY it was to sign a petition or go demonstrating in the streets and I suppose there are a place for those actions too – but how DIFFICULT it is to deal with your OWN life and to make sure that there isn’t any violence THERE because being rude to someone who works for you creates tension and sometimes violence. Many of us know the horror of emotional abuse that you cannot quite pin point because there are no obvious bleeding wounds. 

Ignoring other people creates tension and sometimes violence. And not doing what you WANT to do sometimes creates tension in yourself and others around you. Sometimes we create our own boundaries not believing that we CAN make a difference, by doing what we love to do. 

Shouldn’t we try to make ourselves happy and give others the space to be happy too? We are not alone on this earth. Though we cannot deny that we all get angry and jealous etc sometimes, shouldn’t we deal with our anger in positive ways. Happiness is contagious. Positive attitudes are contagious. Just like Aids. We all need a little magic in our lives. Look out for the magic. It is there! And open the magical door to books for our children.. 

We are all human. We are all fragile and powerful. We all get angry. We all love. We all hurt. And that is the message found in books. 

I studied the text and found symbols and themes and a coherent story and I have no idea who put it there. Who wrote this book? How did it happen? Well I tried to tell you how it happened. 

The OBE expert told me how he laughed when he worked through the book and I had explained and generated questions and answers on everything imaginable according to the prescriptions of the curriculum – but when I had to explain the presence of a thin dog with a long tail that had seemed to pop up at crucial times in Ferdinand’s view – I was stumped. And I said so in the guide. I have no idea what that dog is a symbol of, I said. You think about it! After all it isn’t possible to EXPLAIN everything! It is only a story after all. Possibly children will smile at that. Sometimes people are so OPINIATED and they say for sure- THIS is what the writer or poet meant by that and then the writer or poet is AMAZED because he never saw it like that. Actually he never thought about it at all. He just did what he had to do. He wrote.

And of course I had no idea where all the symbols and imagery had come from – but they were there – in the text. At stages I felt like I had divided in two and was analysing a text I knew so well, as if it was a strange text that I only then saw for the first time. And to be quite honest at times I was really impressed ... with me? Wow – who wrote this? Me? And it really felt almost absurd. Especially when I discovered that the book might be seen, I suppose as a quote political novel unquote as well. Because of course Zeebak is a fictional place. It doesn’t really exist. There are no worlds in different dimensions – as far as we know! And yet we have stories about such places. We call it science fiction. But though the action may take place on strange worlds, science fiction is always about US – because, being human, writers can only write about human stuff. 

In the novel Zeebak has a lot of problems. There are two groups of people on Zeebak, as Ferdinand discovered. The one group was frozen and lived in a make-belief virtual world and the other group was jailed in place where they could not get out. This was because the two groups could not agree on anything and in the process they had almost destroyed the planet. In fact Zeebak had infinite energy in the form of a mineral called kristalleon but they could not make use of the energy because they were divided. And that is where the Tin angel came in with a concept called circle energy where energy between people go in circles around and around without any boundaries. That is of course the ideal. And also the ideal as envisaged in the Curriculum. A place for everyone. Education for everyone. A life for everyone. But it is only a story. A story that emerged in a writer’s head. A writer that lives here and now in South Africa. A South African. We breathe the energy of our days and we dream our dreams. And perhaps they will come true. 

And of course – in the end – the guide is just a GUIDE, not the alpha and omega of all knowledge. Just a GUIDE. Just my OPINION. 

Just like everything I told you this morning is only my OPINION. I was only your guide here today on a journey, trying to show you places. Places I have been and perhaps you know these places too? 

And now we are in sight of the end of the journey and you will get off the train and ask questions which I will try to answer and then we go our separate ways again. Is something different now? Forty minutes or so later than when we started? Has something changed? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It depends on how much you have absorbed. How much you have identified with what I had to say and made your own. Whatever. It is fine. It is your life. We each have our own. And that is what I put in the guide as well for the learners. Here is some stuff. It may be valuable to you or not. You decide. Of course learners have a resistance against LEARNING – because they are forced to go to school. Grade 10 is voluntary by law, but still they probably feel that parents force them to go to school. That is why I gave them a question on internal and external motivation. Do you learn to please others or yourself? Do you NOT learn to punish others and yourself? Do you think writers need a lot of internal motivation to sit down and write and rewrite, sometimes for years. Die hart van Zeebak consists of almost 50 000 words. Each of them had to be typed. And reworked. Why do writers do it? Is this quote by Laurence Durell maybe the answer?

It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel . . . if you 
were really sensible, you'd do something else.

Yes. Indeed. If you were sensible. Then I am a dreamer. And as the African saying goes: A dreamer holds onto his dreams when he is in trouble. 

When you read, you perhaps lie on your bed and you read right through a book. At the end you close the book and you are STILL lying on your bed and NO one has miraculously washed the dishes or did your homework or prepared an assignment. You still have to do it if it is your job. Is everything still the same? Perhaps. Perhaps not. 

Ferdinand went on a journey. To a planet in another dimension. And he came back. And was everything still the same? In a way, yes. And also, not. For his perspective had changed. For he distinctly heard the Tin Angel’s voice saying his usual odd syllable like saying that there are infinite possibilities. He heard that. Loud and clear. Though he was on a bakkie and the only things there were bags of mealies. What do we hear? What do we allow ourselves to hear? 

We journey through life. Sometimes in joy, sometimes in despair. Sometimes in frustration, sometimes in perseverance. We call it life. We don’t know what life is and we each have our own. We don’t know what it is, but we are still here. Alive. To do what we have to do. To cross boundaries or to create boundaries in order to live life to the fullest. And our lives are our own. 

Ultimately I think we should dialogue more. But it takes two to dialogue. It takes talking AND listening. In turns. EVERYONE has a perspective. Children too. They don’t somehow acquire a perspective on life when they are grown up. Listen to your children. Talk to your children. 

As you heard I am very opiniated ... sometimes I try to SAVE the world. Then I think perhaps it would be better just to save me! Perhaps in that way the world would be a little bit of a better place. Of course I keep on trying to teach my children the RIGHT way. And then I learn, again and again, to practice what I preach – or as one of my children told me with a smile – perhaps I preach what I practice! As if THAT is the only solution. No! No! We each have our own answers. And we live together. With boundaries, crossing boundaries as we travel. Not all of us at the same pace or in the same way. Each of us differently, depending on who we are, where we are, who we want to be and where we want to go. 

Our country doesn’t have a culture of reading. But Africa does have a wonderful culture of story telling. Lets tell our stories in book form so that many can read it. Lets make our own books! Our own stories. Our own personal stories. That is what I suggested in my book Eendag was daar ‘n storie – One day there was a story – a practical story-making guide. Everybody cannot be a published writer – but we all have wonderful stories to tell. Write them down and share them where ever you can. Lets create a culture of acceptance: This is my story. What is yours? Without having to DESTROY the other one because he or she thinks differently. Diversity is our name here in South Africa. So lets do it. Lets be diverse and bring together our nation’s personal stories. On grass roots level. Every day people. With extraordinary lives. Like all of us. Don’t try to be clever. Don’t try to be smart. Don’t think you are too stupid. Just tell it like it is. And perhaps some of those books WILL be published because if you hit the core of our common humanity in a story, it becomes universal and many people can identify with it. There are all kinds of stories. Stories that make us laugh. Stories that make us cry. Stories that make us wonder. Stories that scare us. Stories that feed us. Stories that amuse us. And they are all important. We need all kinds of stories. 

Die hart van Zeebak is a story about a parallel universe which Ferdinand enters for a time, before he returns home once more. In a way we are all small little planets orbiting our own existence and we make contact with other people in their little orbits of existence and we are touched and we learn and we give and we take. Sometimes for a life time. Sometimes for a few years. Sometimes for only an hour. But everything that happens to us – all kinds of contact does affect us in some way, consciously or unconsciously. How much it touches us, depends on our boundaries and how we are able to cross those boundaries and allow other people’s existence and ideas to touch ours. For some time now I have told you about my world. I wish I could learn more about yours. I wish I could dialogue more. But time is all we have to do the stuff we want to do. And I have this wonderful excuse that I used as the title of one of my books: 'n Haas moet doen wat ‘n haas moet doen.  A Rabbit has to do what a rabbit has to do! It is about a girl who woke up one morning to discover to her horror that she has turned into a rabbit overnight. But what now? Now she IS a rabbit and she has to discover WHY and WHAT she has to do? ‘n Haas moet doen wat ‘n haas moet doen. All of us. Whoever we are. 

But I have monologued for some time now. So lets dialogue. And then we will go our separate ways to do what we have to do. 

Thank you and I wish you well, on whatever journeys you undertake.

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