Bram was a courageous man who followed the most difficult course any person could choose to follow. He challenged his own people because he felt that what they were doing was morally wrong. As an Afrikaner whose conscience forced him to reject his own heritage and be ostracised by his own people, he showed a level of courage and sacrifice in a class by itself. I fought only against injustice, not against my own people. – From the first Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture, delivered by president Nelson Mandela at the Market Theatre, Joburg, on June 9, 1995.
MORE than anything, playwright Harry Kalmer is a Joburg boytjie. That’s what intrigues him about the Bram Fischer story. “It’s such a Joburg story,” he says – and that’s why he’s smiling that finally his Bram Fischer Waltz will have a Joburg run in the Barney Simon Theatre at The Market.
That has him smiling even more broadly because years ago, he spoke to Simon about Bram Fischer – and now he knows that Simon was probably one of the men who drove the often disguised Fischer around stealthily.
That’s what makes the story so fascinating and what attracted Kalmer from the start. Here was this Afrikaner who had helped save Mandela from the gallows, yet we know so little about him. “He was almost a James Bond character with all those disguises,” he chuckles, and yet, who knows the man?
While working in London in the late 1980s, Kalmer got his hands on a document, The Sun Will Rise, with a collection of statements made during political trials since 1960. He was fascinated by the argument Fischer made at the Rivonia Trial. “He was a complicated man and someone who had strong beliefs.”
A Granta article by Mary Benson also piqued his curiosity. He started thinking about a solo show with a man in a cell. On his return to the country he called Barney Simon because he knew Pact would not consider a play with Bram Fischer at its centre – and for the time he let it go.
But he was once again driven to get going in 2008 when the centenary of Fischer’s birth date passed by with a deafening silence.
He didn’t understand why so little fuss was made of a man who had given so much to fight for the freedom of everyone in his country. There aren’t many of those around in the Afrikaner community, which makes him even more unusual.
“Not much is made of him being an Afrikaner and I thought he had completely anglicised, but discovered that wasn’t the case,” notes Kalmer.
The other thing that he discovered when he spoke to comrades like Denis Goldberg, Denis Hirson and Hugh Lewin as well as daughter Ilse was that he couldn’t speak of the man without dealing with his communism. “They all underlined that,” said Kalmer.
But he’s also been tickled by the fact that he played against the All Blacks as a scrumhalf in 1929, was very musical yet couldn’t dance (hence the title) and never recovered after the loss of the love of his life, his wife, Molly. “He used to count when he danced – one, two, three – loudly,” notes Kalmer, relishing in his personal insight. “He wasn’t a reader, he loved philosophy and politics, he played piano and drank dop en dam (brandy and water).”
Once when he spotted David Butler at a book shop wearing Bram Fischer type glasses, he knew he had hit the jackpot. Butler is acknowledged as one of our finest solo performers and always brings an intensity to a role that would suit the Fischer persona perfectly. “He’s the kind of guy who still does art for nothing,” says the playwright.
“I knew I had to start writing,” he said once they managed to get funding from Bloemfontein’s Vry Fees. But it was a collaboration and one that he welcomed. “I had done so much research that my play (and probably mind) became swamped,” he said. And in the end, Butler helped handily with the editing.
It first toured the Afrikaans festivals and then they decided it had to be done in English too and it was accepted by the National Arts Festival. Doing the translation was fun, says Kalmer, and he’s really pleased that the play has come full circle. “A resident of Bramfischerville, when asked, thought the land of the township had first belonged to a Fischer, hence his claim to fame,” says Kalmer. That’s what he hopes to change.
“I first thought of him as an Afrikaner’s revolutionary and not much more,” he says. But the play revisits everything he assumed about this very dynamic man. “His choices took incredible guts,” says Kalmer. “He was complicated, had a certain madness and was relentless.”
• The Bram Fischer Waltz starring David Butler, written and directed by Harry Kalmer and winner of a Silver Ovation Award and the Adelaide Tambo Award for celebrating human rights through the arts opens on September 17 and runs until October 5. Kalmer will also launch his latest book, ’n Duisend Stories oor Johannesburg, at Aardklop (October 7 to 11).