Christmas thoughts about Toverview

By Phakamisa Mayaba

Some two years into Toverview: a raggedy start-up conceived in the semi-rural Karoo, funded by a pensioner, packaged by a toppie barely a few years his junior, then thrust onto the internet – a hangout for trolls, deep fakes, and teenagers of questionable tendencies, dubious culture and little religion.

And then someone asks us, the lowly, barely qualified contributors, if it’s all been worth it. Like they expect us to sing for our collective supper, smile, and say ‘ja, nee, oooh ja’.

In isiXhosa they have a word: uphambene. You’re mad. The literal translation would be more to say you’re entangled, you’re caught up in something you need to loosen yourself from. When this two-bit writer – sitting in the shade of a mulberry tree – was first asked to consider the gig, he rightly thought it was a fool’s errand.

Maeder Osler at a Forgotten Highway summit with Mbulelo Kafi.

For one thing, the setting was no elegantly lit boardroom with plush carpets and a watercooler —  instead, a glorified speakeasy with rickety tables, plaasjapie music, and a rowdy crowd. Moreover, one wasn’t sure that the behatted farmer driving a Mahindra jeep and who came with the proposition had any business in new ventures other than to perhaps inspect his new quarters at a retirement village somewhere in the Kaap. Away from the farm. From the teaching. From the student activism or the rugby. Certainly away from online publications at a time when so many others were going under fast.

But there was the pressing, immediate matter of survival, so I said ‘okay.’ In no time, all sorts of characters began to creep out of the woodwork. A heavily bearded IT man. A diminutive tour guide. There is also the Cameroonian who’s written something of a serious corpus, an ex-trombonist, and an old-hand editor.

There were others too who came for the ride but somehow disappeared in the madness. Some quietly slunk away, others showed up and were never heard from again. It’s understandable — the entire idea was a hard sell on any rational-thinking man. Yet the farmer’s dream was unrelenting. From his savings people were paid, sometimes just because they had not yet given up and walked away.

There were lunches and meetings, small advances for travelling, and writers even rubbed shoulders with frumpily dressed academics at lahnee conferences – all expenses paid. Now didn’t those make one feel like they were still in the game! There were excursions and ideas exchanged.

Of course, put more than one person in the same room, and characters and personalities might be at loggerheads. Sometimes about business, sometimes about work ethic, but at least these never got too personal. Thankfully, they were never anything that a ‘sorry bro’ couldn’t fix later. And nobody ever got moered.

The farmer’s dream may remain, but with not much other funding, how long will he keep it up? His vision was to keep independent media alive in places where even traditional media had long seen the wisdom of closing up shop and moving to bigger, greener pastures in more cosmopolitan areas. And, to even our surprise, that’s exactly how the dream has shaped up. Every now and then a compliment … ‘I like what you guys are doing’ … ‘‘please come do a story on our NPO.’

And we actually, do. Always. Because no event, no idea, no story was too small for Toverview. That was the vision and the dream, and what were we except people who were slowly beginning to believe in it too?

I know what you’re thinking … ‘now you’re really starting to suck up.’ If you consider a truth in journalism as some kind of massaging of a person’s posterior, then, yes, I am. Having published stories about the neglect and virtual absence of government in peripheral rural areas, it’s a breath of fresh air when a man, uncompelled by anything but a desire to see progress and development in an area in which the people have embraced and loved him, sets out to create an almost impossible vehicle for doing so. How could I possibly be the one to knock that?

As a freelancer, I’ve had to put away researched and finished pieces only because some public hack in Kimberley could not legitimise the article with a comment. Often an innocuous comment that could not possibly cause any harm to their department. Alternative opportunities missed, so you can understand how this could make a man put the entire state under one blanket of distrust, and even call them ‘lazy beaurocrats, the lot of them’.

As for our benefactor, is he simply a generous person, or is Toverview still a way to offset white privilege? Feel free to split hairs, but this Christmas I’m mostly haunted by the realization that the future of Toverview is uncertain. That indeed, nothing good can stay.

So one can only take stock of the road less travelled that Maeder Osler set us on a few years ago. The moments, some good and others less so, and the people we met, lost or forgot along the way. Because of it, this writer has been able to buy his own drinks. To foot his own bills and pay his way through life.

In his aging years, he’s even had time to create the BarefootLionHunter, a nondescript nobody who prowls social media trying to figure out what the fuss is all about. He’s put smiles on the faces of his lowly friends, made the kids happy, and the sister quietly proud. So whatever comes next for Toverview, the answer to the question, is Yes, it’s been well worth it. Ans yes, Osler, uphambene… And we are mad, all of us who followed him in his impossible dream.

Featured image: From left to right: The author, Maeder Osler, Mbulelo Kafi, and Janco Piek at a Toverview founding meeting. 

This is an edited version of an article on Phakamisa Mayaba’s website, eParkeni. Used with permission.