Michela Wrong

How to get around South Africa’s many boundaries

In Dispatcher: Lost and Found in Johannesburg, Mark Gevisser remembers the secret roads and escape routes a young gay like him — and other dispossessed people — took in the land of apartheid

A sign common in Johannesburg, South Africa, 1956 Photo: Getty

There are writers whose prose style is so fluid, so easy, the reader feels as though he has been taken by the hand and is being gently led down a path by a guide who can be trusted to point out interesting landmarks, allow the odd meander, but always keep firmly on course.

Mark Gevisser, who published a praised biography of former South African president Thabo Mbeki a few years ago, is one such, and the metaphor seems apt in view of this book’s title, which comes from a game the author played in childhood.

Perched on the back seat of his father’s Mercedes, he would pore over a map of Johannesburg, sending imaginary emissaries out into the city and trying to ferry them home. Too often, the boy found, the journeys had to be aborted: the dots could not be made to join up, adjoining districts of this goldrush city did not seem to connect. It was all very puzzling.

There was a good reason for this, Gevisser came to realise. Maps are not only dreams, fantasies of cities that  planners hope will one day spring into being; they are also records of political intent. In apartheid South Africa, the racial divide took stark geographical form, the colour of your skin determining where you worked, slept and played, which stretched as far as the cemetery. Law-abiding citizens were simply not meant to take the journeys the young Gevisser kept dreaming up.

So a memoir about journeys, which begins with those his Jewish forebears made from both Ireland and Lithuania, narrowly escaping the pogroms, swiftly becomes one about boundaries. Gevisser is fascinated by the frontiers — physical, legal and psychological — separating townships from affluent suburbs, black men from white women and men from one another.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in