Reading all the threads revivified memories:
Primary school compulsory singing on the bowling green, getting kicked by Mrs. Goss for not participating, elbowing her and getting ?flaps? from Dr Beron on my last day of primary school, then getting the same on my first day of high school from David Goss, confirming my view that the entire Goss family had it in for me. This included the Rabbi who constructed the incredibly closed-minded syllabus for Hebrew classes over the years.
Some other things remembered ? under 10 soccer, Ashley Davidoff slide tackling anyone close in his red adidas boots, meeting my lifelong buddy, Phillip Cramer at practice one day, Sally Anne Friedland telling me how much she disliked me in standard 4, when I barely knew who she was, my front row of Paul Paster and Willie Brouze, both farm boys who wrapped themselves around me in a protective cocoon in many rugby matches against many very surprised Afrikaans schools, Mr. Konvisser?s car tied to the fence-posts above the rugby field as he tried in vain to drive home, explosive touch powder in the desk interstices in Mr. Katz?s Rashi classes so the desks exploded in a puff of yellow iodide when dropped at his instruction etc etc.
Bored, bored, bored ? until form 3 when most of you were on Ulpan. My family at the time couldn?t afford the trip for me, and I was relatively alone at school in reconstituted classes, and under a scholarship to keep me in school. This triggered a commitment to perform that endured through the balance of school of all types for the next 10 years.
Truth to be told, I didn?t have to work particularly hard, but it shut down the boredom by allowing it to be channeled. The guys who triggered engagement were:
Bill Torbert, a foppish brilliant Englishman who jumpstarted my intellect around the issues that fascinated him ? universal field theory, quantum physics, relativity etc, and initiated a commitment to understand these and other abstract concepts that drives me to this day.
Dave Adler, a scruffy hippie radical who introduced me to politics through his [passion and commitment to the plight of the suppressed in South Africa. In fact, he helped me understand that most people were oppressed, inhumanly and way beyond our comprehension, in South Africa right under our noses, some noses more willing than others. This man altered my life irretrievably. Thanks Dave.
Rose Cohen ? a remarkable woman whose faith in me gave me courage and further opened up the worlds that Torbert and Adler triggered.
Those I disliked were all my Hebrew teachers ? small people preaching committed Zionism while they enjoyed the fat of the land in South Africa. Not many others actually.
As for Mr. Sandler, he adored me because I performed academically and kept his stats up, so we were all good, although he clearly was a rather odious man.
Politics
Dave introduced me to WYVS ? the group that was building schools in the Bantustans as a way to deepen my commitment to change in South Africa ? one brick at a time. I spent 2 summers doing this ? after matric and then after the Army. Each summer only added to my sense of just how awful apartheid was, and how remarkable the black folk of South Africa were ? long suffering, gentle and dignified in the face of a spectacular inhumanity. But the Air Force really got the whole radicalization process going. The training for population control, the eventual realization that Soweto was laid out in easy bombing runs, its boundaries shaped like a chemical beaker, thin at the top which was the single point of access and egress, that point being heavily mined with explosives ? just in case. The hatred with which black people were spoken of, the unearned sense of superiority that my Afrikaans speaking roommates reveled in notwithstanding visible evidence to the contrary, the secret documents I had access to during my job as the Aide de Camp to the OC, Strike Command at Waterkloof Air Base that confirmed the bombing runs, that laid out the city and port defenses of all major cities by first sealing off the black townships, the sanctions-busting by British armaments manufacturers etc and the general idea of the 1000 year South African Reich simply pushed me over the edge from vaguely politicized to radicalized. For a time, at least, I had found my calling.
Through the gateway of the Adler and Orkin families (Dave?s wife) it was a simple thing to glide rather seamlessly into student politics at Wits where I became deeply active, first within NUSAS where I quickly moved onto the National Executive, and the SRC where after a rookie season, I graduated onto the executive. During 1972, I led the National Free Education for All campaign in June of that year, led a number of marches into the city, worked with the Oppenheimer family to create the funds to bail out the marchers arrested each day so our numbers would hold up the next days festivities and in general made a pest of myself where the fascist regime was concerned. One great dividend form this is that it threw me and my wife, Dena Kirsch (a Waverly girl), together for what has now been 37 years.
The campaign was designed to alert white South Africa to the inequities of the regime, a strategy cooked up with a remarkable man and martyr, Steve Biko, the founder of the local Black Consciousness movement, who was at that time running SASO, the black students movement with whom we maintained a clandestine series of linkages, some legal, many not so legal. This program and the activities surrounding it led directly to the Soweto riots of 1976 as were much more successful radicalizing black school children that the whites, not particularly surprisingly. In Soweto we utilized the conscientiousization programs of Paulo Frere, a Brazilian priest who understood that the linkages between literacy and politicization were enormous. People who a kept illiterate will forever be trapped in ignorance ? the very purpose and design of the Bantu Education System ? part of the unspeakable econo-political theology that underpinned Apartheid.
By this time, I had already availed myself of the accommodations provided by the State President, having been held at his pleasure at John Vorster Square and at Compol Buildings in Pretoria (Security Branch HQ) under several of the ridiculous laws that they used to silence people. My passport had long ago been confiscated and so I was a prisoner in my own strange land. Had my dad not been a top lawyer in Joburg, these visits might have been a lot worse than they were, as indeed they were for Biko, Timol and the many other folks with whom I worked. My father was warned by his contacts in the judiciary that I was getting into very deep water, and I should stop now. I am not sure they were aware that I was a cadre of Umkhonto We Sizwe at the time, but given that it was riddled with informers, they might have been. In any event, I had graduated with a degree in political science (surprisingly enough) and given that I could not leave the country and take up the scholarship that I had been granted at Harvard, I decided to go to Law School while doing articles. During that time, I disengaged from above ground politics, but remained heavily involved in the work in Soweto, and in various activities for Umkhonto around legal support for detainees, families etc. It was at this time that my relationship with Alec Irwin, Mac Maharaj and others deepened of which see more later.
In 1976 I was arrested for the last time in SA, spent some time under the tender ministrations of the Security Branch guys, was in custody when Biko was killed, and determined that this was a long war and my commitment was now dragging ? again the dreaded boredom setting in, the same banging my head against a brick wall as I had felt at KDS.
So once I graduated Law School and passed my Bar Exam, like all good communists, I decided to apply to Business School in the US. Simultaneously my ingenious father filed a complex lawsuit against the government for the recovery of my illegally retained passport application fees over the years that I had been steadfastly applying and being refused, and to avoid public court activity I was granted an exit visa, a one way passport valid only for the UK and US. I was accepted at Harvard, Stanford and the others I had applied to and chose Stanford because they had pictures of sun and green quad?s in their brochureware, while Harvard, Yale etc had pictures of snow.
America
Yikes ? my first time ever with a pure academic peer group ? unbelievable brilliant folks, distressingly confident, incredibly disconcerting for me ? no more cruising, memories of studying for matric by playing Klabberjas with Selwyn Feldman for days on end gone, literally with the wind. I worked my arse off for the first few semesters, just to stay even and live firmly in the central bulge of the bell curve. Then the SA government, not yet done with me, cut off our funding and Dena and I were left to our own devices. She started work after we wangled our way to a work visa for her, and I just worked to stay close to the meniscus. Then the system became clear to me, and I could cruise again ? lucky because I had to then get a job to pay for this very expensive joke. I had figured out also that I wanted to be a management consultant and got my first of 2 jobs in the US, that one with a start-up called Bain and Company that was just making its name in the business.
I stayed at Bain for 10 years, became a partner there in short order and began to find my specialties ? economic development, business turnarounds and national policy work. After a brief detour once I had left Bain into the world of leveraged buyouts, profitable but awful, I joined the Monitor Group where I remain to this day as a Senior Partner. The work I do is in 3 principal areas ? Mining, Healthcare and Economic Development. Right now as I write this I am in Kazakhstan working for a major Oligarch to help him reorganize and modernize his massive copper interests, thence to Morocco where I am driving work around the destiny of the major economic asset of the country ? its phosphate deposits. I am also leading the reformulation of strategy for a $30 billion health plan in the US. I work all over the world, curiously enough for the last few years, much of this work has been in Saudi, the Gulf, Kazakhstan, Morocco etc. As they say, some of my best clients are Muslims.
Back to the Future
In Boston, I remained connected to South Africa and the ANC via the Fund for a Free South Africa which acted as an East Coast hub for fundraising and disbursement supporting political prisoners and their families, among other things. This kept me connected, and provided some wonderful opportunities ? I was asked to keep an eye on Max Sisulu while he was at Harvard and Musi Dhlamini and his wife, Zeni Mandela while Musi was studying I Boston. I became close to Zeni and Musi, and this led to the next cycle in my life as once my passport was returned to me on the occasion on my fathers death in 1991, I was invited on that trip to visit with my old friend Alec and his Cosatu colleagues ? Tito Mboweni, Jay Naidoo and Community activist Trevor Manuel. I was asked to join them in a brains trust to develop an economic policy for the ANC, and I offered to start this off by creating a training program for them on theories of economic development, and to elevate their general economic sophistication. By this time the early meeting between business and the ANC were also being arranged and I worked with this team to develop the positioning of the ANC in those discussions, culminating in the Lusaka conference. I had been working in economic development in transitional economies for some years in the Andean basin in South America ? Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, and in Israel, Poland, Singapore, Dubai and other places with similar issues to those likely to confront a post apartheid South Africa. This 2 year process led to my being offered a senior position in government once it became clear that the ANC was the government in waiting, and my refusing that in favor of bringing Monitor Group to South Africa and devoting much of its energy to developing the industrial, transport and health strategies for the country. Some of this was around developing the election platform for the ANC, the rest was around fixing the mess that we inherited post election.
So we moved back to SA, just as others were flooding out. It is a rare blessing to get a chance to circle back on your own life, one I could not resist. I also felt that I had unfinished business in SA, and now that the long fight was nearing its end, it was time to return as my skill-set was in dire need inside the high councils of the ANC where I felt there was room for at least one well trained committed capitalist. My American boys, Kyle (10) and Jay (8) were put into KDS ? why should they not? In retrospect, I felt that the school had been great for me and would be good for them as they too would eventually figure out after the predictable and unavoidable chorus of moans and complaints. While they were dealing with school, I was working inside the government reconfiguring the overall transport system working for my old commander, Mac Maharaj, working with Alec on Trade and Industrial Policy, Trevor on Fiscal Strategy and Tito on treasury and a cast of many on restructuring the heath system from a fundamentally whites only system to one with much more primary care and a far more equitable distribution of services and access. Most of all, I worked very closely with Madiba for his full term on the integration of all policies into a coherent platform for development. This was a rare privilege and remains a high point of my life.
All the while, we were back to living in Houghton, and getting increasingly deeper into the Chabad community under the amazing grace of Dov Hazdan, and to a lesser degree Mendel Lipsker. While I don?t buy a lot of the dogma, I buy the passion, the joy and the commitment of the Lubavichers. They are doing God?s work all over the world. I see them at it in the many places to which I travel ? in Lviv in the Ukraine, In Moscow and Krasnoyarsk, in Mumbai and Almaty. They have doctrinaire tendencies but their goals are noble and they constitute a standard against which all Jews can define themselves without scorn and with acceptance. Yosie Goldman described this to us as the ?gold standard? ? I believe him. Anyway I like the endorphins that the Hassidim generate, and I appreciate the vodka. I can?t take it too seriously though.
So SA was full circle for us ? back to KDS, deeper into religion after the drifting around the religion that you get in the US in particular, back to politics. Then I began to fight with Mbeki in and out of cabinet. I never liked him ? found him truly doctrinaire and his commitment to Africanisation I felt to be a thinly disguised reverse racism. He surrounded himself with acolytes who were very black, very corrupt and not very smart. Disappointing. So when he was declared the successor, the time came for us to leave again, this time with a light and not a heavy heart. So back to Boston.
America redux
Back to Monitor, back to largely global work with heavy travel ? 20 days/month in Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, India, China, Morocco etc etc. It?s now been a decade back, and it all just seems to be speeding up. Amazing work ? never bored ? by now you know this is critically important.
Work, however, is work, the rest is life.
Dena had, when her mother died, asked Yosie Goldman how she could express her Shiva, and he said do something special for her. So she, indomitable woman that she is, set about building a Mikva in honor of our parents. The first in Metrowest Boston, she brought it into being by a sheer effort of will in honor of her Mom. We funded a lot of it ourselves, but as labor of love, one that will yield a continuing dividend of Mitzvot that will guaranty Dena?s place in heaven. My place is still up for discussion, particularly during these Yamim Noraim as I write this.
Family
Kyle ? imperious, savvy, sensitive and complicated, a sports marketing graduate of U Mass Amherst now working in a startup exploiting web-based mass meeting technology, back to living in Boston after his first job in Colorado working for USA Rugby, the National rugby =federation in the US where he ran sponsor management. Another lucky do-over as he lives with us again for a while after this move and we get to know him well as an adult. A true joy.
Jay ? cheeky, full of light and laughter, whip-smart and technologically inclined, graduated from Brandeis with a Film Studies and English degree and now working I Hollywood for a small upwardly mobile production company where he does everything that he needs to do the learn the movie and TV business. Early days, but going strong. A remarkable young man who has left his fathers tent to go the land of mammon to create a life. Has largely Jewish friends, all new, all his own work. I told him to watch out for Laban, and he is doing great.
Dena ? wonderful creature full of holy fire, deeply empathic, powerful intellect, remarkable instincts. Good for me and the boys, and good to us. We are all lucky and blessed, even if that means we have to eat kosher meat (at least at home).
Postscript
I enjoyed King David, more looking back than at the time, although we, all the princes and princesses of Africa, lived in a generally happy time as the beneficiaries of a system designed to make white kids happy, even Jewish ones. We were, all of us, the children of incredible privilege, the chance beneficiaries of a system designed to benefit others that we were fortunate enough to land on the right side of. Our ancestors just a decade before we were born were not so lucky in the face of an extraordinarily similar system. Lucky, lucky, lucky ? considerably better than smart. I always wondered why the school and the community were so silent in the face of this situation, but have learned over time to take responsibility for my own actions only, and not hold others to my own standard, but allow them to fumble through their own lives in search of illumination and closure. I think we all got incredible platforms upon which to build at the school, and the blog is witness to what the class produced.
I am sorry I will miss you guys at the reunion. I will be just leaving Almaty ? I am told by mein zun, Mr Hollyvood, that they call it the Running of the Jews here. Hope they don?t hurt themselves trying to get me!!
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