Whistling in the Dark
When Dr. Phokeng Setai—one of six curators of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa—finished our tour at the old Dusthouse—an architectural remnant from the museum’s former life as a huge grain silo—and told us to go in there one by one to experience a sensory installation of Albie Sachs’ whistling, I didn’t think anything of it.
But when I entered this dark, confined space of desolate concrete, echoing with audio of a whistled melody, I thought “Hell, that’s creepy!” and then “Hey, I know this melody.” and a little later “Where are the goosebumps coming from?”
Sure enough, I did know this melody, it is actually from one of my favorite classical compositions: Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9: From the New World. Particularly, the theme from the Largo that was later adapted into a spiritual-like song called Goin’ Home. I didn’t know that but the story behind it is nicely unpacked by Emily Stephenson in her article William Arms Fisher’s “Goin’ Home”: Somehow a “Negro spiritual.”
What really matters is why and where Albie Sachs whistled this melody: Sachs was a prominent anti-apartheid lawyer, activist, and member of the African National Congress (ANC, the party of Nelson Mandela) when he got arrested in 1963 under the newly passed 90-Day Law that allowed the state to detain individuals without charge or trial for up to 90 days, with the option to renew the detention indefinitely! During what would become 168 days of solitary confinement, Sachs had to endure prolonged isolation, psychological pressure, interrogation, and torture by sleep deprivation.
Whistling became a lifeline for him, helping him to maintain dignity and sanity and not lose all sense of self in the face of unspeakable state violence. He not only found solace in the Goin’ Home melody but even managed to connect to a fellow prisoner he couldn’t talk to, but at least whistle with in wordless togetherness—a detail of this story that I find both incredibly grim and weirdly comforting.
This trip to Cape Town is challenging me; I knew it would! Not only because the contrast between super-model-like, white, young, rich tourists at the beach and the people of townships like Langa or Khayelitsha is so fucked up, for crying out loud! I am not complaining, I know that nobody forced me to spend my vacation here, that I am a complicit in this dichotomy, and that it’s questionable whether my presence here is for the benefit of the inhabitants of Cape Town. It is still hard to swallow what I see, at times.
The challenge that Albie Sachs and his whistling presented to me is of a different nature, though. It helps me to internalize the very real, traumatic, and often deadly chapters of so many people in this world, a world that is numbed by the effects of pandemics, war, capitalism, and human hubris, ignorance, stupidity. I know I cannot take in each indivual injustice experienced by every single person on the planet, but I will damn well remember the law’s capacity to serve both justice and oppression and keep on sharpening my senses for policies happening around me.