ARYAN KAGANOF : USELESSLY...

'

Aryan Kaganof

Uselessly.

A very funny book about me, my dad,

the Devil and the God

Jacana Life, Johannesburg 2006
ISBN 1-77009-100-9

“His sharp, inquisitorial eye and insatiable curiosity are daunting, to say the least, Kaganof is the foremost counter-culture revolutionary in South Africa. Often his virulently oppositional stance reminds us that we have a culture at all – love him or hate him he is impossible to ignore. He is a one man cultural industry, producing paintings, books, clothes, films, music, photographs, and criticism.” Anton Krueger, Litnet.

Page 101:

DEAR GOD,
Thank you for your reply. I’m relieved that you haven’t run out of patience with me. Well, here it comes, the revelation you’ve been waiting for. I told you about all those fantasies I had that my dad was a torturer. The truth is, my intuitions were slightly off. We’re sitting watching one of those tedious SABC documentaries about the bad old days when suddenly my dad starts chuckling.

“What’s funny?”

“You’d hardly believe it, but I sold Vlakplaas to the government, back in ’73 or ’74.”

In the early seventies, my father The Devil sold Vlakplaas to the apartheid State. Vlakplaas was the notorious training camp where SADF elite troops were taught “dirty tactics” like torture and rape. He claims to know nothing of what happened there. “I only sold farms.”

“And if you had known what the farms would be used for?”
He stares at me for a while, silently. His forehead creases. He rubs his eyes.

“I would have asked for more money.”

Sincerely
J.J.