Rick Andrew - a short biography and bibliography of this KwaZulu-Natal author.
Rick Andrew. Rick Andrew was born in
Johannesburg in 1947, moved to KZN in 1966 and has lived
there ever since.
Rick introduces himself thus: From
1977 to 1995 I
painted, using the medium of Acrylic on canvas, and I
concentrated on the
landscape. I held several one man exhibitions in Durban
and Johannesburg. My
interest in the landscape was to record its uniqueness,
and personally, to find
some sense of belonging or identity. In 1996 I stopped
painting and concentrated
on writing since I was involved in an M. Tech. thesis. To
offset the objectivity
required by the masters, and partly as a kind of therapy,
I wrote an account of
my experiences in the South African Defence Force (SADF)
in 1976. I was
surprised and pleased that it was published by Penguin in
2001, under the title
of Buried In The Sky, and has been reprinted twice. For
the last three years I
have been writing a movie script set in Durban with a
focus on the lives of
three students. Recently, however, I have begun to realise
just how big a
difference there is between literature and a movie script.
Selected WorkFrom Buried in the Sky (2001)
Leaving Pietermaritzburg in December of 1975 I was
pursuing a dream. I saw
myself as a minstrel in a green jacket. My hair was long,
touching my shoulders,
and I was standing under the night sky of the Wild Coast,
my guitar in my hand.
It was time to break free.
As art teacher at Maritzburg College, a
wide gap had been
forming between the restrictions of the job and the needs
of my soul. I was
tired of working to the background music of cadet bugles
and the cane flapping
the backsides of boys in grey flannels. I had had three
major disagreements with
the headmaster, who was a mathematician. After our short,
formal, and rather
strained encounters, each time I was left feeling that he
did not believe the
study of art to be a worthy academic pursuit. I believed
that art was life
itself. However, he was the headmaster, confident and
composed, though I noticed
a momentary tremor in his eyes when he saw the small ruby
earring in my left
earlobe. I was turning into an alien right there - in the
corridors of those
sacred rugby precincts.
I resigned, fitted out a Combi, and hit
the road with my wife
and small daughter.
We left in the rain about a week before
Christmas, and headed
south, performing at various hotels along the coast. I
have memories of thick,
muddy flood waters powering to the sea beneath the bridge
at Port St Johns,
moonlight on the waves at Coffee Bay, and halls packed
with Christmas dancers at
Kei Mouth and Morgan's Bay.
In the ablution blocks of campsites
along the way I would
invariably catch the news on someone's portable radio. It
was not good. The
South African army had penetrated deep into Angola. In
some of the newspapers
there were pictures of armoured convoys in an empty
landscape. Something serious
was going on, but press restrictions limited our knowledge
and made it difficult
to build up a picture of the situation. However, it seemed
like war - the real
thing - on the international chess board of power.
Like a dark rolling cloud, this news
pursued us on our
journey.
For the month of February we worked in
East London at the
Sportsman's Bar in the Queen's Hotel. Food and
accommodation were supplied. We
used to play the cocktail hour and the evening slot from
eight to twelve, with a
fifteen minute break in each hour. Gill and I both played
guitar and sang, some
cover versions and some of our own compositions.
On slow nights a few travelling
salesmen sat watching us,
sipping their drinks. At the end of a set we might receive
a note with a
request, or the offer of a drink. We'd look across the
room and our latest
patron would wave us over to his table. Usually he would
feast his eyes on the
singer - my wife - hardly pretending any interest in me.
[ ... ]
I was reading a paperback of the
letters of Vincent van Gogh, and there was a passage in
one of his letters to his brother Theo that I pored over
continually. I wrote it out in my sketch book. It put into
words the kind of vision that I found inspiring, but was
unable to articulate at the time. Van Gogh was quoting
from Philosophe sous les Toits by Souvestre.
... Your own country ... is
everything that surrounds you, everything that has brought
you up and nourished you, everything you have loved -
those fields that you see, those houses, those trees,
those young girls that laugh as they pass, that is your
country! The laws that protect you, the bread with which
your labour is repaid, the words you speak, the joy and
the sorrow that come to you from the people and the things
among which you live, that is your country! The little
room where you used to see your mother, the memories which
she has left you, the earth in which she reposes, that is
your country! You see it, you breathe it everywhere!
Figure to yourself the rights and the duties, the
affections and the needs, the memories and the gratitude,
gather all that under one name, and that name will be your
country.
I was always disturbed by the phrase 'The laws that
protect you'. Apartheid put a fence between me and the
others - those excluded by the Whites Only signs. It kept
me in a kind of exile. This was my country? Was this my
country?
[ ... ]
The small print on my call-up papers
stated quite matter-of-factly that failure to report for
duty would render the addressee liable for six years'
imprisonment.
My situation became an interesting case
study at the Hard Rock late night discussions. A young
hippie couple whose father (on the girl's side) was paying
for their passage to England said that I had no choice but
to leave South Africa. To stay would mean prison. To go to
the border with the SADF would be to side with the racist
regime and to go against all that was moral and right.
However, it wasn't easy for me to leave
the country. I had a wife and child to support and very
little ready cash. Besides, I didn't want to leave my
country. I wanted to live in it. Learn about it first
hand. I wanted to play music. Find the stories and tunes
to express the truth of our experiences. Despite the evil
in the land, people were living here, and neither hope nor
acts of human kindness ever ceased. I wanted to see change
and beauty. I wanted to see my country bloom.
I didn't know then that the seed of the
future was germinating in silent determination on Robben
Island - some three kilometres away. Staring beyond the
bars of his little cell. Staring through the mountain ...
A deadly and unflinching vision for justice ...
Nelson. Bibliography2001. Buried in the Sky. London: Penguin. - Durban -
- Index -
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