By Jasper Cook
“Bill Johnson” was a name to me, but he was a Big Name. He was usually, and quite simply … right.
There are more kinds of rightness out there, though. For a time, classical music was right, and jazz was just wrong. But jazz is now right, too.
In his way, “RWJ” would welcome a rightful intellectual following act. That person would be fine, just as long as s/he would get it more “right” than he did, which is really quite hard to think of. I don’t see anyone out there who does. Not yet.
It’s a question of style, or MO (method of operation). The numbers say George Foreman was the greatest heavyweight boxing champ ever, right into middle age. Yet Muhammad Ali, we know, was The Greatest. We just had to ask him. But, uncomfortably enough, he did beat Big George.
Mr Johnson’s style, or MO — whatever one calls it — was arguably classical. He was forever an Oxford Don. For me, that is the highest of compliments. I am an intellectual commoner, but I have family knowledge of what Oxford demands of people.
Since I met Bill Johnson on Hanglip Farm, when Maeder and Lesley Osler still lived there, a farming story may do the trick:
An irascible truck driver once unloaded thirty-two tons of maize kernels onto a concrete screed outside my house, and drove off. I don’t know why he was so angry. My Tswana speaking staff said: ‘The only person to make a Boer cry is his wife.’
Maybe that was it. This was in Suurbekom, a small rural settlement on the West Rand. A massive highveld deluge was on the way, and I was at a loss. After sadly looking the heap of golden grain, my staff of mielie-meal packers silently left, en masse, all 32 of them, (numerically poetic right, a ton for each packer?) melting into the veld. I sat surveying this disaster, knowing at last what financial ruin looks like.
But half an hour later, they all reappeared, with 25 litre plastic buckets on their heads. They formed a queue. The two male helpers stood at the grain pile, scooping maize into buckets, and hoisting the buckets onto the carriers’ heads. In a graceful, continuous loop, the women carried buckets from the screed to the mill, thirty metres away, and poured the grain into the grain skip, safely dry and under cover. Within two hours, and before the storm did indeed arrive, they had swept the last kernels into the final bucket.
My grain was saved. Our jobs were saved. Our sales were saved. Nobody had said a thing, but everyone (except me) had known precisely what to do.
This is what I mean. This could not happen in England or France. There was no textbook in place, nor any “how to” manual, specifying what to do in that predicament. Yet my so-called peasant, rural labour force acted instantly and without a second thought. It was the commonest of sense, and the workers acquitted it with grace, patience and resolve, even rhythm.
If there were an Oxford, or learned way, Bill would have known it. But, practical and literate as I am, I was confounded.
So, what I am saying is, with the best intellect in the world, there always room for more, and Mr Johnson was the best, but would have chortled and giggled at the telling of this story. And he would be happy to admit that there was a new sense of things, like that of my rural staff, that would sort out the mess we are in.
A mess which the most brilliant of minds: Hofmeyr, Smuts, Van Zyl Slabbert, and the three Ms — Mandela, Manuel and Mbeki — have not found a way of clearing. If there ever was a being who could, in the schooled, Oxford way, it was Bill. But clearly the learned way is not everything.
We don’t make friends being right, but I don’t care. I liked him and admired him, and I will miss his literary voice. However doleful what he dished up could be, it was always somehow lighter than the lead balloons dropped by most so-called intelligentsia. He had a Stephen Fry-ish way of making readers teeter on the brink of tears or laughter. Fun and serious. Is ‘funious’ a word?
Hamba kahle, RWJ. I am so glad your problems are over. For years, you did better on one leg than I did on two, any your fiery mind made mine look like a dull paraffin lamp. You were fearless, remarkable and desperately hard to win arguments against! You have more than earned your peace.
FEATURED IMAGE: R.W. Johnson in his study, Constantia, Cape Town, 2015.
This article first appeared on Jasper Cook’s blog, Scazima. Used with permission.