This article was published in the Cambridge Evening News on 24 March 1973.
THE white champions of South Africa seem, for the moment, to have won the war. Apartheid survives the occasional insurrection, colour-blind politicians keep up their propaganda and the police keep up their good work by beating up blacks who get out of line.
Far away in darkest Cambridge, though, there sits in the study of his quiet semi a man more likely to upset the status quo than a wagonload of political monkeys. His name is Tom Sharpe whose Riotous Assembly is now selling very well in paperback and who has just followed it up with another outrageously funny book Indecent Exposure (Secker and Warburg, £2.25), which has already been accepted by a Book Club.
In it he carries on with the theme—and several of the characters—that made his first novel a best-seller. The sinister Kommandant van Heerden with his secret longing to be British, the pathetic Luitenant Verkramp with his sex phobias and the champion negro-slayer Konstabel Els with his thirst for sadism still unquenched all get the rough edge of Tom Sharpe’s pen for the second and possibly the last time.
He was non-commital about leaving the Vorster veldt for greener pastures when I visited him at Highfield Avenue this week: “I have a soft spot for the Kommandant,” he confessed after telling me that his next book, already with the publishers, is about Cambridge.
He was non-commital about this, too, revealing only that it is to be called “Porterhouse Blue,” that in spite of the title it was nothing whatever to do with Peterhouse and that it would be quite unlike any other book about Cambridge . . . “Call it a satirical look at a certain type of don,” he suggested.
One thing is clear, it will be a very different proposition from his first two books. “Writing about Cambridge you are dealing with a very subtle situation,” he explained, with no apology for using broad humour to deal with the crude situation as he sees it in South Africa. If anything the situation is cruder and the lines less finely drawn than when, say, his friend Alan Paton wrote “Cry the Beloved Country,” a pioneer in the literary campaign against apartheid.
Mr. Sharpe’s books could best be described as a scream, although their stock-in-trade is laughter. I almost made the mistake of seeing some of the situations solely as farce… following in the footsteps of that famous bum-shooting scene in his first book, this one has 200 “volunteer” policemen undergoing shock therapy to cure them of the desire for black women (no prizes for guessing where the electrodes are attached). But this to the South African, is not simply farce, but something only a step away from harsh reality.
And Mr. Sharpe does not only blame the Afrikaaner for his narrow outlook. Like the Kommandant, he is a victim of the situation it is the Englishman who is the real accomplice to apartheid: “He has abdicated his responsibility.”
The Kommandant illustrates the point nicely. Emulating the English throughout, he bulldozes his way into the company of a bogus upper crust family. Invited to spend part of his holiday with them at their country mansion, he clutches his fishing rods and copy of Dornford Yates, dusts his plus-fours and tweed jacket and happily makes his way to a typical hunting, shooting and fishing jaunt. He even practises being British by smiling at an African by the side of the road, but gets little response.
When, chapters later, the hunting shooting and filleting does start, however, we get a true taste of Boer blood when it is up. He even calls Queen Victoria a stupid old bitch. Anyone brought up to see the English in the same light as the Jews see the Germans can, perhaps, be forgiven for being fickle.
Meanwhile, back at Gestapo headquarters, Luitenant Verkramp is having a whale of a time. In his leader’s absence he has put operation Red Rout into effect. The police headquarters resounds to the screaming of policemen being shocked out of their lust for kaffir women and the countryside echoes to pre-arranged explosions for which he is convinced he will be able to find Communist agents responsible.
Exploding ostriches and the introduction of a sergeant’s holiday slides into the shock therapy treatment (an aversion to Kruger National Park must be treason), together with 210 rampaging queer constables will, apart from anything else, help to make this a box office success as well as a literary one.
