Die Reuk van Appels changed a generation. Mia Swart pays tribute to the work of Mark Behr, who died on November 27 from a heart attack at the age of 52.
I read Mark Behr’s Die Reuk van Appels as a second year student in Stellenbosch. I found a copy in a friend’s flat and finished it in an afternoon.
Change was in the air – one could smell it. Even in the postcard-pretty provincial town, which always had delusions of grandeur, the excitement of change was tangible. Even in Hendrik Verwoerd’s intellectual home, surrounded by absurd beauty and unimaginable comfort, it was difficult to escape change entirely.
Walking to class along the oak-lined streets, I would see Koos Kombuis sitting on a sidewalk reading poetry. Johannes Kerkorrel was playing on the radio. Die Reuk van Appels was read by a group of us who saw ourselves as alternative Afrikaners and who wanted that change.
We philosophised in coffee shops when the townships were burning. We did nothing truly useful. But we questioned. We started debating groups and wrote in the student newspapers. All in all, it was a decadent revolution.
Even in the heady days before the 1994 elections, Stellenbosch remained as isolated as a grape seed. The political turmoil of the time and the larger currents of geopolitical change seemed of much less importance than the weekend’s rugby match. Afrikaans remained unchallenged as the language of instruction. Student residences were still not racially integrated. Men were not allowed in women’s residences.
For me, the power of Behr’s book was not that it triggered a personal political awakening – that had happened to me long before – but in what it represented. Die Reuk van Appels represented a loss of innocence, a coming out, a crashing of icons. It was a book in the spirit of the Sestigers, but for the new generation on the precipice of change – for those excited by that precipice.
For full tribute by Mia Swart see Mail & Guardian
