The Correspondent, September 1992

--l

CONTENTS COVER STORY

THE FOREICN CORRESPONDENTS'

CLUB

l0

South Africa's song of death Sally Roper reports on South Africa today, a country she describes as Alice's Wonderland where apartheid's real work has been the meticulous shaping and brainwashing of white minds.

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14-15

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NEWS AND VIEWS )

6

Giving new life to Hong Kong's public hospital service.

The Director of Hong Kong's Hospital Authority, Dr E. K. Yeoh, on changes now being made to the

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19

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Guy Adam's disturbing photos which illustrate just how cheap life has become in South Africa.

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toner reviews George Adams' latestbook G am e s

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22

TRAVEL Mike Smith in Viernam.

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THECORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER 1992

1

Will the Left give peace a chance in the Philippines?

Last month the Club hosted a lunch for Loreta Ann Rosales the president of leftist Partido ng Bayan.

Manny Benitez, former editor-in-chief of the Manila Times went along to hear what she had to say.

Here is his assessment of the Left as it now stands in the Philippines. peak of the leftist movement in Asia and what comes readily to

when she started talking about Philip- national reconciliation. pine politics and her own experiences Asked whether her party, which threw

mind is the last remaining active

as a former detainee and veteran street

its support behind the presidential bid of

communist-led insurgency in the re-

parliamentarian did she convince us of

gion, the 23-year-old costly guerilla war waged by the New People's Army (NPA) in the Philippines.

Against this backgrou nd, we expected to hear one of those fiery, rabble-rousing Marxist ideologues as the guest

the authenticity of her leftist credentials.

Senator Jovito Salonga in last May's elections, recognised the legitimacy of

speaker from the "Philippine Left" to address the Club on August 1 3. To our pleasant surprise, however, the speaker turned out to be a soft-spoken yet gl¡b, mild-mannered but self-assured, pixielooking schoolmarm. lndeed, Loreta Ann "Eta" Rosales, a professor of social sciences at the staterun University of the Philippines, looked anything but the president of Partido ng Bayan, the only visible political organisation of the Left in the Philippines. Only

Her message soon became clear: that despite the election of a general as president, the Philippine Left was alive and well and was not about to give up its case of "dismantling foreign domination" and bringing about radical reforms in the nation's political, social and economic life, in the face of the new administration's blandishments.

While her party was not "absolutely rejecting" the peace overlures initiated by newly-elected President Fidel Ramos, who she pointedly called "general" and condescendingly described as "centrist and Christian", Rosales expressed serious doubts about his sincerity and ability to bring about genuine

Ramos' presidency, Rosales bluntly said it did not, and repeated charges of elec-

toral fraud made by defeated presidential candidate Miriam Defensor-Santiago.

Butthe Partido ng Bayan presidentwould not elaborate on how much fraud may have been committed, and to what extent if at all.

Neither would - or, to be more precise, could Rosales explain away the

-

dismal peformance of the Partido ng Bayan in the 1987 election and, more significantly, in the 1992 election despite its alliance with the old and wellestablished Liberal Party of Salonga.

Salonga had become the new hero of the Philippine Left for his key role as

then-Senate president in the rejection of the

Philippine-American military bases

treaty last year (the Liberal Party was the first ruling party after the Philippines gained its independence f rom the United States in 1946, and the first president of the republic, pro-American Liberal Manuel

Roxas, died ironically of a heart attack while delivering a speech at the US Air Force base in Clark Field). ln the 1987 senatorial and congressional elections, the Paftido ng Bayan managed to win only two seats in the House of Representatives and none in the Senate (Salonga, who was then not known as anti-American, garnered the most votes). This year, the leftist party's voice was hardly audible in the din created by the five major and more traditionally inclined parties, three of which

those of Ramos and runners-up -Santiago and Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco

- were formed only a few months before the May ballot).

The Partido ng Bayan was organised as a legitimate political party during the euphoric months following the February, 1986, People's Power Revolution that toppled the strongman rule of the late president Ferdinand Marcos, sending him and his wife, lmelda, into exile and ignominy.

Among its "honoured" founders was the late Manila Irmespublisher Joaquin "Chino" Roces, a leading member of one of the Philippines' most influential families of Hispanic descent and the man behind the one million signatures that finally persuaded the widow of folk hero and formersenator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jnr, to stand against Marcos in the 1986 snap presidential elections.

Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino, who emerged from obscurity as a housewife, was perceived to have won the election, but was cheated of victory through the blatant rigging of the counting of votes. lt was Aquino's defiance of the Marcos' dictatorship and her controversial defeat at the polls that provided the spark to the People Power Revolution and the excuse to then de-

fence minister Juan Ponce Enrile and then deputy chief-of-staff of the armed

Fidel Ramos wooing the left

The government is set to talk with

forces General Fidel Ramos to lead the military rebellion against Marcos.

Loretø Ann Rosqles answering questions from Club members Soon after she was installed as the legitimate president, Aquino and her political allies like Roces started dis-

haciendas owned by Spanish friars.

Peasants were the first to organise themselves along modern leftist lines

tancing themselvesf rom the radical Left, which explains in part the failure of the

under American rule, which began after Spain ceded the archipelago to the United States under the Treaty of Paris in 1898,

Partido ng Bayan to make political inroads in the 1987 national and local elections.

The lack of support from the grassroots and from the more credible leaders of Filipino society has been the predicament of the Philippine Left since the first faint stirrings of political aware-

ness by the country's dispossessed during the later years of Spanish colonial rule and the early years of American tutelage.

Actually, it was not until the 1920s when an adventurous but dedicated communist and labour activist from the then British colony of Malaya set foot on Philippine soil thatthe revolutionary gospel of Marx and Lenin starled titillating the Filipino intellect. The roots of popular discontent stretch back, however, over 400 years, to the establishment of the first permanent Spanish settlement in Cebu by the Spanish conquistador, Miguel Lopes de Legazpi, in 1565.

Countless mutinies and insurrections marked the Spanish colonial rule which spanned 333 years, and the first explosion of agrarian unrest occurred in the central plains of Luzon in the sprawling

just two months to the day after the Philippines declared its independence from Spain on June 12.

It was not until 1928 that links with the internatioDal communist movement were

officíally forged, just a decade after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. ltstarted when Filipino representatives took part in a trade conference in Canton, now Guangzhou, in China. On their return to Manila, they founded the Labour Party, which, loosely speaking, was the precursor to the Communist Party of the Philippines and, in a larger sense , the Paftido ng Bayan.

Like most other sectors of Philippine

society, the leftist movement is riven

with

dissent. Today there are two the old Soviet-

communist parties

-

oriented Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP), which gave birth to the Hukbatahap

movement during World War ll and had

been the bane of five administrations since Philíppine independence in 1946, and the Maoisloriented Communist Party

of the Philippines (CPP), founded by young Filipino intellectuals in 1969, which set up the New People's Army.

communist lesder Jose Sison

2

T}IE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

3

The NPA, which operated nationwide unlike the Huks who were concentrated in central Luzon, grew rapidly after the proclamation of martial law in 1972 and

once boasted an armed strength of about 25,000 fighters according to intelligence reports. This has now fallen to about 14,000.

Besides the PKP and the CPP, which are both outlawed, the Philippine Left has made its presence felt through the

National Democratic Front, which negotiated with the Aquino government on behalf of the CPP-NPA during the 198687 peace talks. A number of the more

radical groups are vifiual communist fronts.

These are the groups now being wooed

by President Ramos who, within weeks of his inauguration, started waving the olive branch, offering rebels of all persuasions from the'communist NPA to the rightist renegade officers led by

-

cashiered colonel Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan in Manila and the Muslim separatists in the south

-

a general

amnesty to give them more of an opportunity to return to the fold of the new law and help rebuild the nation.

As an added incentive to the communist rebels, Ramos has won the unani-

mous support of both chambers of Congress behind his proposal to repeal Republic Act 1700, which penalises the crime of rebellion and outlaws communist organisations like the two parties.

The move, bold and unexpected considering Ramos'key role in breaking the back of the communist insurgency, the rightist mutiny and the Muslim rebellion, has obviously knocked the

wind out of the sails of the radical Left.

Despite the negative reaction from top Filipino communist Jose Maria Sison, a government delegation is to meet him

in Ulricht, Holland, to clear the way for negotiations on permanent peace.

Through spokesmen, the CPP leader has accused the Ramos administration of trying to split the leftist movement through the peace initiative.

Rosales herself, in her address to the

Club, was rather equivocal about it. All she could say was that the amnesty "card" had been trotted out by both the Marcos and Aquino governments, that the repeal of RA 1700 would benefit only a handful of former rebels who actually are now collaborating with the government, and that the government was still relying on discredited presidential decrees issued during the time of the Marcos dictatorship to enable the military to arrest and detain suspected subversives without charges, in the "total war" against the NPA. ln summary, besides her accusation that Ramos is incapable of effecting a national reconciliation, Rosales did not say anything exactly new to justify the rebellion being waged by the Left, the thousands of lives lost and still being lost notwithstanding. Too bad, considering that the Philippines does need radical reform to give its people, 70/. of whom live below the poverty line, at least a glimmer of hope for a better life.

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The New People's Army fights on

4

THECORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER 1992

Date

Giving new life to Hong Kong's public hospital service hen Dr E. K. Yeoh was appointed director of operations for the new Hospital Authority many of his colleagues thoughl he may have bitten off a little bit more than he could chew.

One of Hong Kong's leading liver specialists, Dr Yeoh spear-headed the territory's highly acclaimed AIDS awareness campaign in the late 80s.

He described his new task as daunting when he addressed a Club luncheon last month.

Hong Kong's public hospital system leaves a lot to be desired in a place which reeks of so much affluence.

The public hospital system has been sadly neglected by successive administrations. Hospitals are grossly overcrowded while their dedicated medical staff work long hours for little reward.

The HospitalAuthority hopestochange

By Karl Wilson was financed almost entirely from general revenue raised through taxes. "lt reached a point where the public health system was unable to meet the demands of the people.

"The result was overcrowded hospi-

tal wards with camp beds on the floor and long queues at public medical clinics. These were all symptomatic of a system that was unable to meet the demands of the public."

"Overall management roles and responsibility in the hospitals were underdeveloped. Management information systems were rudimentary and there was inconsistent development of quality assurance programmes in clinical practice," he said.

"The service was oriented towards health care professional needs and

aspirations. lnsufficient attention and regard was paid to consumer aspirations and expectations."

To address the infrastructure and

public hospitals has increased from 3,31 5

in 1952 to 21,490 in 1990 or 3.8 beds

management problems facing the hospital system, the Government established the HospitalAuthority in Decem-

per 1,000 people.

staff

.

"ln an environment of improved housing, better education and growing affluence in the community, public aspirations and expectations of the health service rose," Dr Yeoh said.

"You must remember that the system

6

tional/professíonal groupings and impeded "integrated delivery" of patient care provided by different health care professionals.

that perception and inject new life into the public hospital system.

The Government likes to tell everyone how much it has achieved with its public health system since the war.

For example the number of beds in

The infant mortality rate is also trotted out as another example of a "system that works".

The infant mortality rate has dropped lrom 77.1 per 1 ,000 to 5.9 per 1 ,000 in 1 990.

But what the Government has failed to do over the years is to address the problems which have blighted the public health system for decades, such as overcrowding and overworked medical

and the remaining public hospital services were provided by 15 independent non-prof it making organisations.

"Overall co-ordination of public hospital services was problematic, with consequential inefficient use of resources," he said.

The second factor was related to the management within the hospitals themselves.

The management structure, according to Dr Yeoh, was based on func-

Dr. Yeoh Dr Yeoh also noted two other factors

which contributed significantly to the failure of the system in Hong Kong.

The inf rastructure for delivery of public

health care was fragmented and not conducive to cost-effective delivery. He noted that the 36 public hospitals and institutions in Hong Kong were managed by 16 independent organisations.

According to Dr Yeoh 13,000 beds or 60o/" o'n public hospital facilities were managed by a government department

THECORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER 1992

ber 1990. One year later it assumed the management responsibility of all the 38 public hospitals and institutions, 54 specialist centres and 37,000 health care staff in Hong Kong.

The key objectives of the Hospital Authority are to integrate the 16 public

hospital systems and to implement organisational changes, develop management structures, management systems, health care facilities and health care professionals in, as the Government says, " an environment which would be conducive to integrated delivery of cost-effective, high quality patient care responsive to the aspirations and needs of the customers".

According to Dr Yeoh, the first year centred on developing the infrastructure of the organisation.

"Under the terms of the agreement, the authority was obliged to offer terms

of employment to all the 37,000 staff of all the 16 organisations involved in providing health care in Hong Kong,"

and in two others we have cut camp beds by 70'k and we hope to eliminate them altogether by early next year.

"We also intend to reduce the waiting time at specialist hospitals from 180 minutes to 90 minutes and at emergency clinics patients in need of urgent

T,,,n

treatment will have priority and for those

considered less urgent the average

he said.

"As it stands, 60% have accepted the Authority's terms and the remainder are still undecided. Staff have three years to make up their minds.

There will be no sackings. People have the right to opt for a new contract with the Authority or stick with exìsting

waiting time will be 30 minutes - down from 60 minutes.

"We also intend to introduce a patient

problems. Through better manage-

able to ascertain the views of the public about the health system."

Dr Yeoh said the Authority was also in the process of introducing a formal programme of quality control which will ensure that the best standards of medical care and practice are followed.

"Each hospital will be responsible for its own management and budget controls," he said.

"What we are doing is taking the management of health care out of the hands of the central authority and giving it back to the hospitals," he said.

"Attitudes have to change in all areas. lnstead of only seeing problems in black or white people are going to have to look at the grey areas as well.

"What we are doing is building a new health service. lt will take time but we will get there."

ment we have eliminated camp beds from one of the four major hospitals

@

contracts."

Dr Yeoh said the Authority had laid out an ambitious programme in its business plan which has been submit-

ted to the Government. "ln it we will be accountable for every cent of tax payers money we spend," he said.

"Most of the Authority's goals such as direct patient services, development of community health care, organisational improvements, support services and management systems can be achieved through better resource management.

"The camp beds and long queues have been symbolic of management

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amidst the luxrÐ' of one of the feu, renaining colonial bastions, dircover tJre original Cury Tifrr on Satudays fron 13 noon mtll 2:30 pm.

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THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

7

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SEPTEMBER 1992 THE CORRESPONDENT

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f fasñ6øcli THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

9

COVER STORY

South Africa's song of death The Boipatong massacre made headlines around the world recently in a country where violence has now become the norm. In this special report former Hong Kong journalist Sally Roper looks at life in a country desperately trying to reverse a system which bread racial intollerance.

outh Africa is truly Alice's Wonderland. Sometimes you wonder whether someone has slipped a bit of magic mushroom into your food or "Drink Me" into your tea.

The levels of schizophrenia in the society are frightening; but more than that they are extraordinary testimony on the spectacular success of apartheid's real work - the meticulous, extensive shaping and brainwashing of white minds.

Thus in the wake of the Boipatong massacre and row over the singing of

the Afrikaner anthem Die Stem al lhe recent rugby test between the All Blacks

and the Springboks, callers to a radio talk show could make comments like "We will not be told what to do by the ANC. We have compromised enough."

It's clear they don't like having to share the playground!

So if it's a "do as you would be done by" situation, are we really to believe, then, that these callers were not aware that they have been "telling people what to do" for 40 plus years of grand apartheid, topping up with specialvenom the ills of good old fashioned colonialism? lf whites "don't like being told what to sing and what not to sing," how much less, then, would they have liked being told, who to make love with and to have to rush out of the city by nightfall for fear of imprisonment, to name a few of the more obvious rules of apafiheid days.

Then of course there are the consequences of a system that kept people in poverty, such as malnutrition, illiteracy, diseases of deprivation like TB and the brutalizing mental scars of slum living?

It is the total amnesia of some whites as regards these glaring facts which is so

bizarre.

So, in Afrikaner discussions there is always, incredibly, much use of words like "decency" and "reasonableness",

From Sally Roper in Johannesburg

as in "We only want to lead decent lives", or "we are reasonable people.

We only want the right to live our lives the way we want." Quite so - but then is it not "reasonable" to allow others to live

more "decent" lives by electrifying townships, surely a "reasonable" request for conurbations like Soweto, current population estimate two million and rising?

The Afrikaner Nationalist politicians have honed the art of double-speak to exquisite heights, using comforting and reassuring phrases (like "separate development") to hide their tactics. All that's "developed" in the black towns is despair and squalor, and an increasingly mean mood of generalised rebellion amongst young people which sees a rising tide of confused-motive crime.

So whilst the attempted murder of journalist Phillip Van Niekerk, political editor of Johannesburg's progressive Weekly Malin Sebokeng township several weeks ago was ostensibly a straight rbbbery (poverty being a result of conditions created by apartheid's laws), there were

other discernable motives at work, notably a newly expressed deep contempt for whites, even journalists, who in the decade of the eighties were very often actively protected during township violence.

After Van Niekerk and his two com-

a black journalist, had immediately yielded car, keys, wallets panions, one

and jackets, one robber coolly put a gun under Van Niekerk's chin and pulled the trigger. Likewise, in house robberies piles of faeces are occasionally left as a calling card, and even in plush subur-

10 THECORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

ban areas whites have been needlessly shot after willingly giving up their cars to thieves, most shockingly of a young white mother in front of her children as she pulled away from the kerb on the school run. There is definitely a new mood of vindictiveness amongst young township youth towards whites.

White amnesia was clearly demonstrated by one woman, ironically from the East Rand town of Vereeniging, very near the current flashpoints of township violence, Boipatong, Sharpeville, and Sebonkeng, who aired some particularly extraordinary comments on the same radio talk show. She said plaintively with genuine belief: "We are a peaceloving Afrikaner society which has done everything for the blacks."

Whilst outsiders usually dismiss such comments as coming from a twisted, devious, or a colossally stupid mind, this is not so. Though what she says is

actually obscene, she in herself is not evil, nor is she more stupid than the average person anywhere else in the world. But in a place where the dirty washing of life was eternally sent out to the laundry, unless you looked hard, as journalists or human rights workers do you never saw the bloodstains. Being an ordinary joe, she makes no effofi to look behind the stage set of white South Africa. To continue the theatrical analogy, the stage hands are taking over the production, and the flats are now being rudely shoved aside to expose the carnage backstage.

The bubble had to burst some time, and there is a literal sense of wooziness and disorientation amongst whites as they withdraw from the sweet narcotic of protection and privilege fed them drip by drip. lt is proving to be a real cold

turkey experience, and people find it very hard to focus their minds on the

reality of the situation. As addicts do, white South Africans have colluded in their own fate, but as a result, are not equipped to cope with reality very clearly.

How reassuring it must have been after all to know that your environment will be regulated and ever-populated by people like you (but how dull)? South African society, particularly of the sixties and seventies, had a Stepford Wives

quality about it. All whites seemed to drive smart cars and looked pretty or handsome. Crimes were usually of the furtive Victorian variety, the society infused with a mania to preserve a veneer of "normality".

Jews is significant. Many, past and present, have built some of SA's best

known companies like mining giants Anglo-American and JCl, and were amongst the hugely rich young men known as the Randlords who came, saw and conquered 100 years ago. The

Jo'burg equivalent of a Jewish Ameri-

can Princess is called a kugel, and kugel jokes, nasally delivered with a heavy South African twang are prominent amongst the jibes of social commentors, standup comics and the more spiteful sectorsof WASP society. Kugels,

so the wisdom goes, are brash

and

ests of a common f uture. They really will accept you wholeheartedly as friends, invite you home and kill the fatted calf with no thought of return. They tell me only that they wish more whites could actually admit what has happened here, instead of this extraordinary amnesia

that "polite" society affects. Perhaps it is easier for me as a Zimbabwean with a parallel, though separate history, to make that admission.

The physical separations of apartheid still operate, and because the black areas are presently so unsafe, the system has a horrible afterlife and energy,

like a zombie

Yet neurotic diseases like

that will not die.

The black slumcities around the white areas flare

anorexia were endemic in the universities as

'-:--::====-

women, like Jane Fonda,

up rn

unex-

pected, uneven

bursts. Just as

strove for the perfect Aryan

you thought it was safe to go back into the

body, a strange

ideal in Africa.

The family murderplagued (and

township, some-

still

of that party in some to you'd

thing happens

plagues)

working classAf-

rikaner society,

been invited to, or suggest they reconvene at

and the incidence of rape in

Cape

your place in town. Still meet-

Town,

even then, was

reputed

to be

-

so you duck out

En route to Shrapville cemetqry øfter a day of

speeches at Boipatong stadium.

amongst the highest in the world. You rarely saw the

seamier side of life, unless you looked for it or lived in Cape Town, where the Coloured community, robbed of a vote

they once had, drank out its despair publicly in gutters and on pavements, or dropped its collective drawers for money.

Rape, incest, drug and alcohol addiction, gang wars and prostitution were a way of life for too many people in the coloured community.

The comments of another, very dif-

ferent woman also struck me. She is Jewish, one of the tens of thousands whose family found refuge here after the holocaust many of whom went on to become enormously successful. The wealth and influence of Johannesburg's

spoilt, but good hearted, with diamonds and expensive Ray Ban's on show as

they whizz down the freeways in their shiny new Mercs.

This older Jewish lady said to me in a quiet, guilty voice: "l talked with some friends in the northern suburbs the other day. We knew what was happening all along in the townships, and yet we chose to ignore it. How could we allow that, given ourown experience asJews?".

Her admission showed an admirable honesty, what South Africa needs more of to go some way towards healing, because in my experience, if one actually simply says "sorry" in conversation here, acknowledging the wrongs blacks are amazingly willing to forgive in the inter-

ing on

white

man's turf.

Alexandra township, for example, is one of the oldest and was one of the most stable black areas in the Johan-

nesburg area, replete with old brick homes and a feeling of permanence.

Residents past and present would talk nostalgically of a childhood spent in "Alex". But around March last year the area erupted into f ighting so violent that the two worst areas were dubbed Beirut

and Baghdad, and skirmishing continues. The reasons behind the flareup have little to do with tribal violence and everything to do with fomented trouble and things like revenge and hurt, which

easily translates into killing and violence in an atmosphere where life is cheap. When people ask you "what is

THB CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

11

the cause of the violence," usually to get some notion of when it could be expected to die down, it's hard to answer. No single reason and no easy answers can be given, because the "cause" have as much to do with inner city squalor as party politics.

A similar phenomenon was the emergence of a new horror: the train massacre. Travelling in to work from the

townships earlier this year became an enormous risk as "unknown assassins"

took to infiltrating crowded commuter carriages and opening up with automatic weapons. Reports as to who the attackers were confused, with

ing down the immaculate M1 f reeway to

go boating or picnicking outside the city when you see in your rearview mirror a phalanx of armoured "hippos" steaming up behind you dodging the kugels in their BMWs. "Aha", you think with detachment. "Trouble in Alex."

Alexandra, as an older township, was already too big even for Pretoria's programme of forced removals in the eighties when the luxu ry developments began to attract prestigious corporate and media operations out of the old town centre.

Thus it lies uncomfortably close to

Sandton, Johannesburg's "Beverley

other recent incidents. Their tally was a sickening 49 massacres over the last 24 months, with an average deathtoll of 25 people per incident.

Monday's papers usually carry a summary of the "unrest" (another masterly elision of meaning) in the townships.

The Star of July 14 listed laconically: "Two off-duty policemen were hacked and stoned to death and two residents were necklaced in Vaal Triangle town-

ships at the weekend. ln

some saying that the killers

Sharpeville po-

lice found the charred bodies of two people who had been necklaced on

were strangers in the area, and that they spoke

Tulu to

ships. The independent Weekly Mail newspaper itself a target in the past for suspensions and even death threats against its staffers, listed some of the

one

Saturday night." The

another, circumstances which implythe

report contin-

use of Natalbased lnkatha

ues to list petrolbombings of

Freedom Party

policemen's

armed men as agents provo-

homes, two

in

shotgun killings dif f erent

Highveld areas

areas, assas-

cateurs where

in

ANC

sins unknown,

is strong. Papers carried surreal

and two dead

support pictures

and Boipøtong: the nqme means place of hope.

of

trains, their seats slick with blood, while

Hills" style plushest suburb. The other

smartly dressed commuters arriving in the wake of the carnage, stepped over

night, after

newspaper covered corpses on the platforms. Though these incidents seem to have slowed, a group of strangers getting into a carriage is still enough to make jittery commuters jump out of the windows of a moving train in terror, resulting not surprisingly, in a number of accidental deaths.

Like a Venn diagram, though, South

Africa's two world's do occasionally overlap. Whilst bohemians sit in sidewalk cafes and pretty women shoP in shiny shopping fortresses, teargas and death make people sob nearby. So on a gorgeous sunny Saturday you are speed-

a huge meal in one of Sandton's most glamorous restau rants, I pulled up at a traffic light beside an armoured ambulance. I sat there in high heels and glad rags, facing a hill behind which I knew a war was being waged, with all its attendant carnage. Mostwhites hear about problems in the townships

the way they hear about eastern Europe in the morning papers. But like Sarajevo, you don't have to go there.

Then there are the especially bad incidents like Boipatong, which catch people

on the raw, and make headlines the world over. Boipatong hit world headlines, but it was only one more in an ongoing series of group killings in town-

12 THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

six

wounded in an ambush in Natal. lnitial repoftssaid thatgunmen armed with AK 47s and 9mm pistols fired on a family of six. And that was just one weekend.

The funerals for the 39 Boipatong dead were affairs on the scale of those in the eighties and Biko. The estimates were 50,000 attenders. We were five of them, four whites and one black, and the day did not begin encouragingly! As we approached the ramshackle stadium we were targeted by a large group of PAC (Pan African Congress) youths who surrounded us menacingly and shouted their slogan "one settler one bullet." I'm sure they would not have been interested to learn that only one of us was South African, and he a returned

exile. Later when I told a trade unionist friend of mine he got angry because the PAC seem regularly to show up at rallies and funerals, get nasty and cause trouble which often gives the ANC a reputation for unruliness and racism, since the event are ostensibly ANC-organised.

The more extreme liberation organisations like the PAC and AZAPO attract small support compared with the ANC. During the Paul Simon furore in Januarythisyear, caused bythe youth branch of AZAPO, jokes were doing the rounds about how the organisation had had its AGM in a township front room - which are notoriously tiny. Simon had to take notice, but at the end of the day it is the ANC, and lnkatha in Natal, which hold the largest numbers in allegiance.

The panic rose like vomit in my throat at Boipatong, as we made our way through the ring of youths taunting us and intothe stadium, where lwas frisked by a jolly, smiling woman marshall with ANC epaulettes. The ANC's ground handling of crowds, even on an emotional day such as this, in my experience has always been immaculate, and crowd behaviour, too. Apart from the PAC incident, I did not feel threatened in any way - though South Africans who have attended rallies for some time tell me that they have noticed a cooling of attitudes, resulting in a toleration of whites rather than an active welcoming of them. Still, I felt included and was glad to be there. There were no armoured police vehicles outside the stadium, but an insistent helicopter circled constanty throughout the hours we were there, acameraman braced on the skids.

Other helicopters also circled occasionally, but somehow seemed innocent.

The one with the cameraman was probably the SABC crew covering from the air, unable to enter the stadium. The feeling of surveillance was unshakable.

The crowd itself was polyglot, but predominantly young, probably under the age of 20. I chatted to a powerful-looking but still gangly 19 year old, whose girlfriend pointedly ignored me. He had left school early and worked as a gardener in one of the Afrikaans dormitory

suburbs near this industrial area. He

was very afiiculate and open, saying he bore no grudge against whites, and his hope was to get a job which would

front pages himself, head encased

in

enable him to save and continue his education. We smoked my cigarettes

bandages after the incident in adjacent Sebokeng. He has had reconstructive surgery, and was immensely lucky that the bullet missed his brain and spinal

and he wrote his name down for me in beautiful handwriting.

column. His companion, the new man Ă?or lhe Washington Post..., had a bap-

Despite the occasion, there were many

tism of fire, only catching a bullet in the arm. Ultimately South Africa's reality, like most, is mixed and muddled, with shocking contrasts, and villains and heros. What makes it different are the levels of calculated exploitation along with the levels of mass delusion which prevail.

But in another prism of the Looking Glass world, South Africa shows today one of the most successful multiracial societies. People associate'with who they like because they want to, though there is a fair amount of multi-racial posing (multi-racial couples are "in" it's said). Whoopi Goldberg pinned it down during her visit her eailier this year for the filming of "Sarafina!" She said, "here racial issues are on the table", an allusion to the fact that they are acknowledged - maybe not by the lady in Vereeniging - but by the majority of the population. Even the most right wing whites are looking for solution - even if it's a loony one like hiving off into a small

lighter details. For instance, there

is

often a distinctly theatrical air about re-

ligion here, which you will recognise if

you have ever heard Desmond Tutu speak. He could give up his day job any time for a career as standup comic. His speech at Boipatong was brilliantly humorous, eliciting roars of laughter from the crowd. There were veritable droves of other clerics, sweeping dramatically through the crowd, some in extravagortly lacy white frills and furbelows over their gowns, others more sober. Even the hearses were glamorous, American-style vehicles, dark coloured, but with a glittery finish which made them look like gigantic, exotic shiny beetles. lt was just the sheer number of them

though ...

Later we joined the huge traffic jam crawling to the cemetary. People literally poured themselves into the fleets of battered buses until the cabins were quite full to the ceiling with humanity.

Others reclined regally on the luggage racks, or even stood dancing on the roofs, keeping perfect balance as the buses lurched overthe pitted veld. Many women looked magnificent in home made ANC headresses, swathed elegantly in black green and gold.

We never made it to the graveside

ceremony, due

to appointments in

Johannesburg, so after waiting for 1 1l 2 hours in the traffic we turned round and drove outof Sharpeville, backthrough

the Looking Glass, back onto the highway straight as an arrow into Johannesburg. Later, when I opened my Weekly Mail I saw what had happened after funerals - the killings documented by Guy Adams'photographs here. He was later held at gunpoint for taking the picture of someone with a gun.

Another foreign correspondent was smashed over the head at Boipatong with an iron bar. Some weeks later Van

Boer Republic like Orania. OnTVscreens

we recehtly saw hatted and bonneted Afrikaners re-enacting scenes from the past in this bizarre little enclave. But they are the lunatic fringe and the majority of the rest are getting on with the spade work of charge.

And back in Johannesburg people take time off from the revolution, hanging out on a Friday evening to do some series'jolling" (panying) and "dopping" (drinking) at the Yard of Ale, the city's trendiest pub. Here revolutionaries and stockbrokers from the stock exchange dop it up with Afrikaans journos from the nearby progressive Vrye Weekblad, dolled up township girls and kugels decked out in lurex whilst the inimitable sound of live township jazz wafts by.

Sally Roper is a free lance journalist in South Africa and an absent member of the FCC.

Niekerk of lhe Weekly Mailmade lhe

THECORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

4

1992

13

PHOTO ESSAY

')

)

Sou beaten anc One more corpse in a country thøt has seen too møny' It also d how ordinqry people have become immune to the søvøgery'

By Guy Adams of the Weekly MaiL 14 THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

15

l1___J-1

-/-7

Lr-r-r\S

trLJtr

THERE'S ALWAYS

RECIPROCAL CLUBS

A STORYAT

THE

Rugby Club.

Rugby Union House, Crane Place, Off 314 Pitt St., Sydney, NSW 2000.

AMERICA

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KOREA

UK. 21 16,

Pittsburgh Press Club, 300 Sixth Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15222, USA. Tel: (412) 471-4644 Reno Press & Virginia Club, 221 So. Virginia St., Reno, NV 90501, USA.

o mojor force in world trode you'll find we've olwoys got o good $ory to tell: no podding, no puff ond bocked by occurote, up-toìhe-moment figures ond stotistics Nexl time you receive one of our press releoses, give it o good once-over, You'll soon see whot we meon 0r contoct us if you need detoils on qny ospect of Hong Kong trode Hong Kong Heod Ofice Williom Cheung

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THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992 I7

PEN NEWS

LY

POND

Women writers still have a long way to go n November 9, 1991,

after

several years of frustrating

By Ann Marie Angebrandt

struggle, delegates to the 54th

World Congress of lnternational PEN meeting in Vienna voted to establish a .Women's Committee with the mandate "to address problems particularto women

writers and encourage the participation of women at all levels of PEN. Many members felt the move long overdue. Efforts to set up such a committee date back to 1986 when 200

BY ARTHUR HACKER

women attending an lnternational PEN Congress in New York drew up a petition over lunch to demand more female minority pafiicipation in the congress' panels and readings.

Middle-aged, white, European men dominated the congress, they argued, and the lack of black and brown faces on the panels was as striking as the absence of female voices.

At the next congress held in Toronto

in 1989, some results were visible, in large paft due to a promise made by This lovely silk screen print of Bali was beautifully printed by the famous Coriander Studio in London.

Copies are on view at the Main Dining Room of the Foreign Correspondent's Club,2 Lower Albert Road and Fabric Fair,4Ă&#x; Ho Lee Commercial Building, 38-42 D' Aguilar Street,

Central

Silk Screen Print in Six colours Edition 500 Printed by Coriander Studio Published by Arthur Hacker 1984 Size: 43 x 22.5 inches Price HK$l,250 unframed Send this form and your cheque to Arthur Hacker Ltd., Suite F, 8th Floor, Crystal Court, Discovery Bay, Lantau, Hong Kong.

Beautifully printed in a limited edition of 500 numbered copies signed by the artist, it is available HK$1,250 post free from: Arthur Hacker Ltd., Suite F, 8th Floor, Crystal Court, Discovery Bay, Hong Kong.

Tel:987 9043 Fax: 987 9012 Pager: 1139933 call 1945 Cheques payable to Arthur Hacker Ltd.

ORDER FORM Name

Please send

This time, half the speakers were women, manyfrom the developing world.

Yet fears spread through the congress that creating a women's committee would cause marginalisation and lead to committees for every minority group.

Date

Signature

No. of copies HK$1,250 each

quently, and take responsibility for re-

gional work," says committee chair, Yet some of the 107 PEN lnternational Centres spread throughout 76 countries still "see no reason why it should exist," she says.

The Women's Committee, which is

issue to a vote.

the fourth committee established under the loose federation of PEN Centres, has several purposes.

Its primary aim is to focus on female writers from developing countries; next, to fight against obstacles that prevent women from writing and keep their writing from being recognised; and finally, to enable female writers to know, translate, and popularise one another's work.

The committee is now finalising plans

male writers was conceived to help other women in the areas of human rights and

censorship and win more respect for women's writing.

Later, UNESCO's World Decade for Cultural Development programme lent its considerable name and suppotl.

Then remarkably, at the 1991 Congress in Vienna, supporters of the

-

regional networks of local women's committees, including one in Asia.

Hong Kong has no women's committee yet. To carry out the mandate of the lnternational Women's Committee here, a strong regional network must be built so that female writers in the region can become acquainted with each other's

work and bring influence to bear

on

specific human rights violations affecting female writers.

Since the lnternational Women's Committee has no budget, local fundraising is also very impofiant. lndividual, corporate or government donations are welcome for seed money and travel funds to bring delegates from the developing world to the PEN Congresses..

It's also of obvious importance to involve women from China in work done here, and any assistance in supplying names of women from China who might

be interested in pafticipating in a PEN women's committee is welcome.

Finally, the international women's group

Meredith Tax from New York.

Supporters hoping to create the committee were unable to bring the lnstead, an informal network of fe-

Delivery address

Telephone

Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood, to try to correct the imbalance.

committee found that times were changing in lnternational PEN. Though delegates were still overwhelmingly white and male, many were younger, and from new centres, the by-products of democratic revolutions in Eastern and Central Europe and Africa.

Within a few days, energetic lobbyists had convinced 28 PEN centres to agree to co-sponsor a resolution establishing a women's committee. After heated debate, delegates finally cast a vote of acceptance.

Since then, more than 25 countries now have in place either local women's committees or active members participating in the New York-based lnternational Women's Committee.

The committee is guided by roughly 100 contact people in local centres worldwide, and around 20 very active members who "see the work of organising the Women's Committee as their own; think about it, write about it fre-

for a publishing workshop to be held at the Frankfurt Book Fair next year so far the most high profile event the committee has planned. lnternational PEN is also organising

at PEN is interested in identifying

hu-

man rights problems in the region that

pafiicularly affect female writers. For example divorced women in Nepal have next to no chance of having their works published since they are socially banished and will never be acknowledged by the all-male selection groups who decide what will be published in the kingdom.

Ann Marie Angebrandt is a PEN Member and freelance journalist

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

19

BOOK REVIEW

that not only had he slept with 700

An arbitrary compendium of games ames People Play, published in 1964 by Dr Eric Berne, brought a whole new way of thinking - and a vocabulary to match to social and even personal psychology.

Berne's thesis - not exactly radical, was that most of our bebut still novel

GAfvrES HONG KONG PEOPLE P

haviour, rather than being

LAY

rooted in Pavlov's concepts of conditioned response, Skinner's extrapolations of Pavlov, Freud's concepts of repression and the unconscious, Jung's collective consciousness and the mysterium tremendum, Adler's childhood experience, Laing's knots, Fritz Perls search for the Gestalt or any one of a dozen other psychoanalyses, had a much simpler explanation.

Berne suggested it was largely a matter of game playing: with ourselves and with others. The appeal of his proposal was enormous, and it attracted a great deal of attention.

Berne called his system Transactional Analysis, TA, and the whole edifice was founded on a single theory. The personality, he said, could be divided into three pafts: parent, adult and child.

Last year, Englishman George Adams

brought Eric Berne

to Hong

Kong's

remains undetermined because no single Çømes

t{ong \ong eeopfeeføy

ßy

Çeorge

Alanu

ÍA9t{Keu6[icøtions 202pp t{Kj95 fuztientel 69 Ísl Stoner episodic, collection of observations.

Adam's qualifications to expound Dr Berne's theories are murky, however, and his expedise unclear. While he is

wide impact, however, and it seems to have disappeared entirely from local

affiliation with Hong Kong University and "trained in Transactional Analysis in Zurich, Switzerland", whatever that

20

labour

lowing the Shalaotung golf course

thor is that he is 33, a graduate of Oxford, appears to have some sorl of

claims; and for all that, an interesting, if

to

furiously to avoid responsibility for anything. Someone else litters. Someone else starts hillside fires. After one death and a second near fatality, still no one knows who mixed up Hong Kong Oxygen's gas bottles. Responsibility for al-

colony in Transactional Analysis in Education. The book did not have a

spelling, split infinitives and dubious

playing is done outside consciousness, and is intended to avoid intimacy.

Blameless and Connections are categorised as everyday games. ln the former, says Adams, "traditional admiration for inaction combined with low social consciousness" causes

people and institutions, particularly

an of icianado of TA, and expounds with both relish and ease, the only biographical information supplied about the au-

Three months ago, Adams published his second book, this one called Games Hong Kong People Play, and subtitled A Social Psychology of the Hong Kong Chinese.

It is entertaining in spots; pedantic in others; not very well written; an editor's nightmare of poor punctuation and

lover".

payoff. Generically speaking, all game

government departments,

educational establishment, publishing his observations of three years in the

shelves.

women, all of them hired, but that "actually, they thought I was quite a good

may mean. No elaboration is offered.

Adams proposes 53 quintessentially

Hong Kong games in 15 categories.

Each comprises a narrative description of how the game is played, followed by a summary list of the thesis of the game, its aim, the roles adopted by the players, the dynamics of who does what to whom at which point, and the sudden switch towards the end that yields the

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER 1992

approval enabled the scheme to advance and no one broke the law.

The latter game is played around the web of interpersonal relations that enable people to get things done, serve their own ends and demonstrate their superior status. Judiciously "establishing, disclosing, hiding and using connections" is how the game is played.

Someone has a friend in the bank, in the police, in the Jockey Club, in the ICAC, and so has access to otherwise confidential information. Hidden connections explain the high levels of corruption embedded in Hong Kong society.

Under Love Games, Adams gives us Nightclub and Virginity.

Nightclub is among the most entertaining. At a cost of hundreds of dollars per quarter hour, expensive liquors and serious credit card bills at the end of the month, which a spouse may or may not

see, revellers allow themselves to believe that the high-priced "hostesses" they have employed are truly interested in, and attracted to, them.

The most public example of Nightclub was Chin Chi-ming, whose exploits with

a gaggle of second-rate part-time

ac-

tresses landed him in court. He claimed

Virginity is a corollary to Nightclub, played from the female perspective. As long as a woman does not allow sexual activity, no matter how abandoned, to culminate in penetration, she preserves

her claim to be a "virgin," with all its implications for purity, cleanliness and Chinese social rectitude. One of the plaintiffs at the Chin trial insisted that, indeed, she remained a virgin, despite the fact that she kept a rendezvous with a strange man at a seedy hotel charging hourly rates, and repeatedly performed a series of acts that included oral sex, all in exchange for a promise of handsome payment.

While the book's subtitle refers specifically to the Hong Kong Chinese, the city's European population does not escape unexamined.

Old China Hand is a favourite of longtime expats who dismiss as an artless innocent anyone with less than two decades in Hong Kong. Adams identifies China Hand players by: use of such phrases as "we in Hong Kong", "our schools, banks, way of life, etc" and "the riots in '67"; derision of the con-

cepts of humanity, principles and responsibility; and a physical state that is "frequently alcoholic, fat and/or de-

rapidly along the street, avoiding collisions with Unworthy Victims at the last moment; Non-lnterference in China's lnternal Affairs, in which Beijing plays Victimised Nation, rejecting the insidious human-rights protestations of Persecuting Colonial Powers, deflecting attention from issues such as repression, surveillance, incarceration and torture.

Some of Adams' games are so common that they hardly need description.

Portable Phone and the social illusion labelled Happy Families are two of the most obvious.

Finally, many of Adams' games are merely twists and turnabouts on others.

For example, Blameless is related to We Will Act, a variation involving gov-

ernment departments.

Connections is related to I Can Get lt For You Wholesale, which is related to Peng Di La!. Nightclub is related to Suzi Wong. Tiffin is related in a larger sense older, to Refugee - usually played by which immigrant mainland Chinese itself is related to Feng Shui and Aboriginal.

Adams says the point of Games Hong Kong People Play is "to show that difference in culture is not something mysterious", and that Hong Kong games are not all that different f rom Western games.

The motives usually involving social

status

-that

engenderthem are, though,

and Adams acknowledges that thls often lends the games a fundamentally different character from those played

by Westerners. These differences are significant enough that analysis of Hong

Kong games often cannot be fully accompanied with TA.

This, finally, is the salient shortcoming of the work. While the limited validity of TA in the Hong Kong context is not

Adams' fault, the failure to develop an

analytical model that accommodates local variations is.

The result, then is that Adams' study is something of an arbitrary compendium of games and selective perceptions. Because the observations are far from comprehensive, the book appears to finish before it's been completed.

One wonders what Adams hasn't observed.

ln the wrong hands, Games

Hong

Kong People Play could readily be used

in supporl of anti-Chinese racism.

ln

other hands, the book might be used as the starting point for a more cogent analysis of Hong Kong social style, tensions and peccadilloes. All in all, the slim 200-page volume is good fun, and at $95 worth a read, but it is less a study in social psychology than an exercise in voyeurisrn.

-

@

mented".

Tiffin, which readers must assume can be because Adams doesn't say played only by Britons, is a China Hand variation. Players underscore Hong Kong's colonial heritage through actions that are frequently imperious and attitudes that are usually overweening.

Adams largely, though not exclusively, blames elderly civil servants and former

colonial officers. lnexplicably, he refused to pin-point the Hong Kong Club as the premier gathering place for Tiff ins, although he all but uses the name.

Colour pr¡nts on the feature wall of the Club are made courtesy

PETER CHO'S COLOR WORKSHOP

Adams offers such other games as Hover, in which Self-lmportant Diner faces off against Surly Waiter; Special Customer, in which Ruthless Tsim Sha Tsui shop assistant persuades Willing Client that he is a valued friend; Sorryl, in which lmportant Aggressor moves

FLAT G, 2ndlF., Luard Road 1, Southorn Mansion, Wanchai, H.K. Tel :527 4813,527 4781 Fax : 865 4370

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

27

TRAVEL

Hello Vietnam he old buildings of Saigon

Rock Cafe and the Apocalypse Now

from neck to ankles and wrìsts. On the other hand the outer dress is split up to the chest. Scores of pretty college girls on bicycles rushing out of classes for their lunchtime break, with ao-dais bil-

bar.

lowing, resembling

The open-air coffee-shop of the Continental Hotel which used to be the

butlerflies fluttering in the sunshine, is a

By Mike Smith

are still there, and in many cases the same old businesses too.

On Dong Khoi street (renamed from the notorious Rue Catinat by the communist authorities) the marvellous caferestaurant Givraly still bakes the crispiest baguettes in the East.

Furtherdown towards the riverthere's Cafe Brodard, famous for its homemade pates.

Maxim's theatre-restaurant is by the corner, close to the old Majestic Hotel.

Maxim's is straight out of 1920s Paris its cabaret stage with two splendid wide staircases leading up to the balcony, like an old Ziegfield Follies movie set.

Some of the great old restaurants are now gone - the Caves and Guillermo Tell were two I was asked to check out.

The ubiquitous girlie-bars have all disappeared, but they have been replaced with several small noisy bars with such names as Honky Tonk, Hard

social hub of Saigon, with tables spreading out over the pavement, has been bricked in by some moron as part of the hotel's refurbishment.

Getting around Saigon is best done by cyclo, a kind of arm chair on wheels.

The going rate is about HK$ZO per day (and that's 24 hours). A good cyclo lad

can also perform as interpreter, tour adviser, price negotiator, security guard and repellant of touts and beggars. Not a bad deal.

The elegant ao-dai dress, banned by the communist authorities until recently, must be the most attractively feminine national costume in all Asia. On the one hand the dress fully covers the body

a cloud of white

vision to remember.

Once the US elections are over and done with, and the trade embargo is lifted, Vietnam's economy will take off, particularly the tourist sector. lt has just the about everytl'ring for the visitor 2,000 kilois actually a whole country the seas and metre ribbon of beach The unpolluted. cities are waters are given its would as one expect beautiful, Likewise food is heritage. the French I'orange, wild boar, duck a superb crabs softshell chateaubriand, -and nothing on the menu is over HK$20.

Go soon

-

College girls in their ao-dai uniþrms revving up to rush to classes.

Like a waterlogged upright piano, the Floøting Hotel is moored on the bank of the Saigon river.

it may not last for ever.

Mike Smith is an associate member and local businessman.

A friendly former Vietcong vet now runs the shooting range at Cu Chi, where you can test your skill on AK47 ønd M16 hørdware.

Some US military hardwqre in the Wqr Crimes

Museum, formerly the USIS building,

ll+.

*

ll

At Cu Chi a very businesslike audiovisuøl presentation preceeds the guided descent into the old Vietcong tunnels.

Among the world's oddest bars must be the Rex Hotel's rooftop, on which øre aquariums, stuffed ønimals, aviaries, stqtues, bonsai trees, topiaries along with a rock garden, fishpond, gazebos, pool, massage parlour ønd a giant revolving crown.

22

TIJE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER 1992

A girl wearing her ao-dai in front of the bell towers of Notre Dame cathedral.

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

23

NEV/ MEMBERS

The FCC welcomes the following New Members CORRESPONDENT

ASSOCIATE

Nayan Chanda, Deputy Edilor, Far Eastern Economic Review Steven Jones, Managing Edilor, Asian Wall Street Journal

William Galvin, Management Consultant, Price Waterhouse Anthony Green, Managing Director, Anthony Green & Co Siu Hong Lee, Partner/Solicitor, Lee Chan & Co Rehman Mir, Owner, Mir Oriental Carpets Savada Mo, Business Manager, Ceskoslovensky Trading Centre Company

JOURNALIST

Andrew Pollock, Clinical Pathologist, University of Tomas Bartlett, Photographer/Producer, Airphoto lnt Ltd Roberto De Vido, Freelance Journalist

Hong Kong

Dr Kin Sun Yuen, Head of Educational Technology and Publishing Unit, Open Learning lnstitute of Hong Kong

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THECORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

25

LETTERS

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

Privileged membership the associate At last we lowly, second-class citizens members have been told the truth!

President Steve Vines said it all in his letter in the July issue o'f The Correspondent. " ... under no circumstances will the new Board tolerate discussion of its policies or argument with decisions taken by the democratically elected champions of the struggling masses as personified in the membership of the Club. ... Should any member have any complaint or suggestion, please do not hesitate to keep it to yourself."

Thank you President Vines for putting in writing the true views of the Board concerning the rights of the majority who are denied the privilege of voting for you.

-

-

'

Fred Fredricks Associate Member

Thank you To the President and Board members please accept my

take strong exception to Fred Fredricks paranoic assumption that only associate members are excluded from discussion of the Board's policies. May I take this opportunity to clarify the position that absolute agreement with the Board's wide and judicious policies is expected of all members. This is made absolutely clear in clause 991/2 of the Basic Law, sub

section 663112.

values'. vying to prove their strength of commitment to this illusive notion. Personally I'm neutral on the subject, mainly because I have no idea what a family value

Tony Lawrence

you are aga¡nst families? lf so let me state quite unequivocally that some of my best friends belong to families.

Therefore I can hardly be described as 'family prejudiced'.

Maybe family values mean ignoring

The editor welcomes letters from members and absent members. Write to: The Editor, The Correspondent, Foreign Correspondents' Glub, North Block, No 2 Lower Albert Road, Hong Kong.

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Does questioning family values mean

children/great-grandchildren and third cousin twice removed are the best thing since sliced bread despite the fact that as far as the rest of the world is concerned, they are, frankly obnoxious.

I merely raise this subject because I am pleased to report that family values have not -- to the best of my knowledge -- permeated into the hallowed premises of the Foreign Correspondents' Club.

Basically we discourage families from gathering on the premises. This is not a case of family apartheid but a rational evaluation of inter-personal relationships leading to the conclusion that there is a time and place for everything. The FCC being the time and place for most things conneeted with not being with the fam-

sion to family harmony by running a

The Ashoka _l

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paging system which practically guarSerrìce

'f¡k.'Arr¡vs \dclr.rousl¡rlr¡¡lnJulgtrree \\/etìt'lirr'rthelndrrlgenccLotr, h('t\rr,Lìr ;'0ll p ìì - l():0ll p ììì \\/c ¡re stìll thert,.rt ii ie \\/r,ntlh.rrì St, eeotr.ì1, I I K , Tcl ¡l-l Chli,5l5 5;lq ¡nrl¡lso¡tLrurbr.rndn('\\pì¡.1'.ìt(ì,/lìC(ùÌl¡UqhlConììù€r.ialLluiìdinc, li{i \\i.rncir.Ì lìrr¡tl, I L K, Tel tcl 8q81, iìr)l 50-;l

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antees that callers wishing to locate their spouses on the Club's premises have practically no chance of finding them. We have poured considerable expense and training into distorting the

voices of our pagers to ensure that almost no name is recognisable to the congregation installed at the bar.

This sacred custom is now on the

26

THECORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER 1992

verge of extinction as we contemplate an electronicpaging system which poses

the threat of joining the remote caller with the callee in perfect harmony. I'm sorry about this but we have to show willing in the scramble for progress.

Talking of progress, the new inter-

galactic press centre and horseshoe bar should be open by the time this magazine hits the envelopes. We are planning a grand opening with a surprise guest (no-one being more surprisedthan membersof the Board should

the Club to address me simply as 'sir' rather than 'your excellency'. I believe that this sets people at their ease and promotes a conducive atmosphere for developing a working relationship with the man/woman on the bar stool.

Coming back to the subject of enjoy-

we manage to secure the services of

ment, well yes, it certainly is quite a treat

the person we have in mind).

to be held personally responsible for member X's under cooked piece of steak,

chicken or

the fact that your spouse/children/grand-

However we have made one concesClose Encounters of the Exotic lndian Kind

wish for?

Promenade Level, Tower 1, China Hong Kong City, Canton Road, Tsimshatsui, Kowloon.

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more could you

OpenTdaysaweek.

o

bserving the US Presidential

campaign I note that the flavour of the month is 'family Both of the candidates are

warmest thanks for a wonderful evening on my 80th birthday.

I was surprised when David Thurston rang to say what the Club was planning. lt was one of the happiest and most enjoyable occasions of my life.

Thanks also for the most welcome presents which I and lrmgard (she also had a wonderful time) will drink to the health of all the members.

Steve Vines replies ...

I

A question of family values

Meanwhile, I regret to announce that Mr Fredrick's position as a member of the Club has been referred to the Politburo's lnternal Disciplinary Subcommittee (Eastern Region) for consideration of possible charges, see section headed'Subversion', in the Club rules.

É

I *rrrly raise this subject because I am pleased to report that family values have not -- to the best of my knowledge --

permeated into the hallowed premises of the Foreign 1 Correspondents'Club '

I

have great hopes for this press centre thing. Although it may encourage members to desist from the important activity of filling the Club's coffers via takings at the bars, it should mean that anyone vulgar enough to wish to engage in work can do so in relative comfort and with the proper facilities.

There is however a swanky new bar located just outside the door so that there will be no excuse for taking the work ethic to ridiculous proportions.

A number of people have asked me whether I enjoy (yes, that's the word they use) being President of the Club.

It's a strange question and one that is hard to answer. I should however like to stress that I have not allowed the fantastic amount of power attached to this high office to go to my head. As proof, I

am allowing quite ordinary members of

pork. lt is also a

great

privilege to have to deal with some of the more severely brain damaged members of the diplomatic corps (no names, no pack drill) when soliciting the

services of speakers.

However it's all a great education and who amongst us can say that we are not in need of that particular substance.

It seems to me that running a Club ( I hasten to say that that job is thankfully left to Heinz Grabner) is very much like running a newspaper. lt's a constant miracle that the wretched thing comes out every day and emerges from the total chaos as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Even more surprising

is the fact that the finished product is often quite readable, informative and entertaining, Okay, I exaggerate, but you hopefully catch my drift. Likewise

the FCC, the more I see of the problems, the more incredulous I am that it works so well, indeed works at all.

I have been criticised by some mem-

bers for not having insulted a sufficiently representative sample of theclub's

esteemed membership.

I

solemnly

pledge to rectify this omission as soon as it is convenient to do so.

Steve Vines

THECORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER

1992

27

The SLRc

fromadiffere

PEDDLER'S JOURNAL

The Asian face of America n a recent trip to Chicago

I

took a taxi from the airport to

the city and while sitting in the back of the taxi I tried to decipher the babble coming over the radio. Frustrated, I lent across and asked the driver what language was being sPoken and he said Urdu.

He went on to tell me that some 30% of the taxi drivers in Chicago are Pakistanis.

Driving in from the airport we passed a stretch of eight or nine blocks lined

with business establishments each proudly bearing one or more large signs in Hangul. I was able to identify pharmacies, dry goods stores, tailor shops, restaurants, an auto body repair yard and the headquarters of a Korean lan9uage newspaper.

Since the natives obviously can't read

the signs, one can only assume theY are there to attract other Koreans who may be passing by.

Later I learned that the Koreans have a near monopoly on the dry cleaning trade in the city.

There is a section along another Chi-

cago adery where an lndiatown has taken root. One street sign has been changed from Devon Avenue to Gandhi Marg.

I went into one of the suPermarkets which was a replica of what one would f ind in Bombaywith sacks of rice stacked on the floor, wooden tea bins and shelves

jammed with foodstuffs on the floor in low quality cardboard boxes. lndian families from the more affluent suburbs were milling about doing their weekly shopping, speaking a variety of languages from the Subcontinent.

On the main street I noticed, tucked between lhe Koh-i-noor jewellery shop and Lakshimi's Saris a shop bearing a faded sign saying Kravitzs Kosher Meat

Market. lt was closed for the sabbath but clearly still in business, stubbornly holding out against the enveloping tide

of newcomers.

The Chinatown in Chicago is surprisa much earlier wave of immigrants. Also left over from the old days is Toguri's Oriental Mercantile Company, still open for business on Belmont Avenue selling Japanese foodstuffs and merchandise.

I suspect few of the younger clientele today know that Ms Toguri whose father established the business long before the war, was better known in her youth as Tokyo Rose.

they pass almost unnoticed except when it comes to food.

Not only can just about any kind of Asian cuisine be found within easy driving distance of just about anywhere on the east coast, but oriental food shops have sprung up in shopping centres in some of the most unlikely provincial

in lower Manhattan, on the other hand, is booming. Spilling

customers scouring those shops for

over into the old ltalian neighbourhood and the lower East Side it is starting to

natives.

To put this in perspective, back in the late 1960s when I lived in Wilmington, Delaware, the general public's knowledge of Asian food was bound by the parameters of chop suey and chow

ingly small, reflecting

Chinatown

look more like Mongkok than New York.

A Koreatown has not only appeared in New York but each year there seems

to be more signs in Hangul and it has becôme next to impossible to find a corner fruit or vegetable market anywhere in Manhattan or Brooklyn which is not owned by a Korean family.

The newspaper kiosks are for the

are quite startling. communities are To the average American, however,

towns.

Even more significantly, most of the exotic ingredients and recipes are the

most part owned and managed by lndians, and Sikh families preferring a dif-

was to place a mail order with a sPecialty shop in New York.

That is, until a Chinese graduate stu-

ferent line of work have bought up a string of gas stations along Route 9 in

dent at the University of Delaware, recognising an opportunity, started a

northern New Jersey.

small business making tofu in his bathtub.

On Saturday mornings Chinese and Japanese housewives would arrive at his dorm from miles around to stock up on freshly made tofu.

Also, just across the river in New Jersey, Yaohan and lkeya have built a huge Japanese supermarket and department store complex, complete with Japanese fast food shops and a small amusement park for the children identical to those on the rooftops of most large department stores in Tokyo.

To the occasional visitor from this parl of the world, who left that part of the country before it all started to happen, these relatively new and flourishing Asian

Your point of Yiew.

lf you wanted to prepare Japanese food, the only way to obtain the ingredients, without driving great distances,

Leighton Willgerodt, an Associate Member of the FCC, is a sales executive with an American multinational chemical company.

Jim Biddulph is on leave.

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