On 10 May 2023, the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship hosted the launch of Professor Charles van Onselen's most recent publications, three volumes collectively titled "Three Wise Monkeys". Senior research fellow in the Centre, Professor Peter Vale, was the respondent at this launch and on 12 September 2023 published a written review of the collection for Litnet. 

In an age in which the 280 characters of electronic text have the power to declare war, comes a tract of 722 pages on the relationship between two seemingly insignificant countries in a remote corner of an embattled (should that be embittered?) world. The presentation is a triptych, that is, a set of three associated artistic, literary or musical works intended to be appreciated together. So, while each book is a creation in (and of) itself, they are best understood when read sequentially and judged as a single composition.

What is the work of Three wise monkeys, the conceptual framing (and the grand title) that draws the work together? These are the three monkeys (sometimes called the “three mystic apes”) from Japanese philosophy, which embody the principle, “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” The monkeys are:

Mizaru sees no evil by covering the eyes,
Kikazaru hears no evil by covering the ears, and
Iwazaru speaks no evil by covering the mouth.

They symbolise a lack of moral responsibility of people who refuse to acknowledge impropriety by looking the other way or feigning ignorance in the face of wrongdoing. In this instance, the monkeys exemplify denial, rootedness and silence, which are at the core of colonial conquest, occupation and dispossession.

The first book, titled The making of an African economic tragedy, sets down the roots of the fatal liaison between the two sovereign polities in the making. Southern Africa was – as it remains – “a zone of transactional economic activity where interconnectedness and interdependence over the longue durée … [gave rise] to asymmetric cultural, demographic, social and political exchanges” (I, 8). The intrusive idea was a disciplining social force of sovereignty which came with colonialism (Portuguese and British) and (Boer) Republicanism.

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A recurring theme throughout the trilogy, not just the first book, is how different beliefs underpin each impulse towards sovereign inclusion.

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A recurring theme throughout the trilogy, not just the first book, is how different beliefs underpin each impulse towards sovereign inclusion. So, there is the juxtaposition between a Catholic-centred, colonial state-in-the making, via Mozambique, and the deeply held Calvinism of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. Despite these differences, space opened for social and economic exchange before the declaration of “international borders” – a process of sovereign enclosure that routinised the migration of Mozambican workers to the mines on the Witwatersrand: traffic which “was, in practice, little more than ‘slavery by any other name’” (I, 101). Readers familiar with Van Onselen’s work will recognise this motif from his award-winning 2019 book, Night trains. But, in my view, this account is both broader and deeper than the earlier one. It is peppered with vignettes on currency trading on the Indian Ocean littoral, on South Africa’s compulsion to incorporate Mozambique, on the role of the Indian Ocean spice trade, and, importantly for what follows, on the growing allure of Lourenço Marques (LM; once called Delagoa Bay, now called Maputo) for whites in South Africa and, to a lesser extent, what was then Rhodesia.

The upshot was that Mozambicans were colonised both by distant Portugal and by its near-neighbour, South Africa – behind the latter, especially at the time of the Union, stood the British with their “raw imperial power” (I, 186). Small wonder, then, as Van Onselen wily observes, that “Mozambique entered the modern world with British hands around its throat and South African fingers in its pockets” (I, 153). This throttled a place (and a people) that destiny had called to fulfil the role of state, initially colonial and then, from 1976 onwards, independent.

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[A]s Van Onselen wily observes, that “Mozambique entered the modern world with British hands around its throat and South African fingers in its pockets” (I, 153).

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The key to the second book lies in the image of the “turnstiles” of its title, Through the turnstiles of the mind – turnstiles, in this case, being a single-entry barrier between labour and leisure. In the mind of white South Africans, LM emerged as an alluring, sun-filled, liberated seaside space. This image arose from two reinforcing developments: a) the pursuit of leisure-time activity and its spread across southern Africa, and b) the arrival and power of broadcasting.

The development tourism industry in LM prefigured Bophuthatswana’s Sun City as a magnet for the exotic and erotic. It would soon come to be South Africa’s equivalent of England’s Monaco – a place that the writer Somerset Maugham, who knew the French Riviera well, described as “a sunny place for shady people” (I, 51).

The preference to follow in the cultural footsteps of Mother England resulted in a closed- rather than open-mindedness when it came to the issue of broadcasting. The BBC provided the early model followed in South Africa. It was staid, status-conscious and state-centric, and intended to reinforce the Weltanschauung of an island people. But broadcasting was anything but a closed exercise for the simple reason that “radio transmitters were no respecters of national borders” (II, 9). A younger generation understood this – particularly GJ McHarry, an Afrikaner of Irish stock, who obtained a broadcasting concession from the Mozambique Administration. The rest, as is so often said, is history: “From the mid-1930s to the mid-1970s, Lourenço Marques Radio (LMR) was … [a standout] commercial success” (II, 8) and became essential listening for generations of young South Africans interested in glimpsing the modern world. The symbol for this was the LMR Hit Parade, broadcast into South Africa late on Sunday afternoons – indeed, the most desperate hours in a country frozen in time and space by the Sunday Observance Act, which had its roots in 1894.

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From the mid-1930s to the mid-1970s, Lourenço Marques Radio (LMR) was … [a standout] commercial success” (II, 8) and became essential listening for generations of young South Africans interested in glimpsing the modern world.

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The clue to Book III – and, indeed, the whole enterprise – is in the third book’s title, The quest for wealth without work. Here, Van Onselen’s eye falls to the social (and economic) power of the Lourenço Marques Lottery (LML), which flourished in the cracks between the two countries. At the centre of the tale is a partnership between unlikely bedfellows: Sydney-born Rupert Naylor, who was an entrepreneur supreme; and a (sometimes) defrocked Catholic priest, José Vincente do Sacramento, who was born in a small town on the Atlantic coast between Lisbon and Porto. The former had “an unmatched ability to link gambling and entertaining enterprises to the underlying social changes that … [had] taken place on the Witwatersrand” (III, 252). The latter “was actively involved in currency dealing, commercial farming, the property and rental market, and a racecourse, and was a minor philanthropist … and did other things known only to the Pope” (III, 253).

Their joint endeavour was to facilitate and capitalise upon the LML, which, migrant labour aside, was the essence and substance of the actual relationship between the Catholic-centred colonial state and the Calvinist republic, which outlawed lotteries for 75 years. During these decades, “there was never a moment when the oppressive views of a Calvinist minority, working in tandem with the government of the day to suppress gambling, whether it be dog racing, football pools, pinball machines or lotteries, were not challenged, circumvented or ignored by a white working class that effectively defeated Calvin’s police. This … is the story of a religious war lost” (III, 18).

The war on the LML was led by Dr Albert Hertzog, apartheid’s minister of posts and telegraphs between 1958 and 1968, who drew not only on dutiful Calvinists from the pulpits in both the Dutch Reformed and Methodist traditions, but also on the General Post Office. The South African Police – then under the leadership of John Balthazar Vorster, who doubled as the minister of justice – reinforced the task. Yapping at their feet was the constant presence of the Broederbond, which was led by Dr Piet Meyer, who doubled as the chairman of the SABC.

The many intrigues in these pages are told not only by a great writer, but by the country’s foremost historian; Van Onselen’s work opens new ways to think about a range of issues like the responsibilities of scholarship, the idea of southern Africa, and the roots of South Africa’s foreign policy, among other things.

His work is replete with dry, mocking observations on life, living and licentiousness – with this gem from Vorster taking (in my view) the proverbial biscuit when he described apartheid South Africa “as the happiest police state in the world” (III, 235).

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Each of the three books shows that the archive is never exhausted, even if the official record – as is South Africa’s – is in a shambles.

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Each of the three books shows that the archive is never exhausted, even if the official record – as is South Africa’s – is in a shambles. And, taken as a whole, the triptych poses this axiom: “Regional history (in southern Africa) will assume its rightful place when, instead of asking only how South Africa shaped the destiny of its immediate neighbours, we ask how the adjacent territories help shape its economy and the wider society” (III, 250-1).

Professor Peter Vale is a senior research fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.