Russel Botman. A Tribute. Editors A l b e r t G r u n d l i n g h. N i c o K o o p m a n

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1 Russel Botman A Tribute Editors A l b e r t G r u n d l i n g h R u d a L a n d m a n N i c o K o o p m a n

2 Russel Botman A Tribute Published by AFRICAN SUN MeDIA under the SUN MeDIA imprint. All rights reserved. Copyright 2017 AFRICAN SUN MeDIA and the Editors The editors and the publisher have made every effort to obtain permission for and acknowledge the use of copyrighted material. Please refer enquiries to the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, photographic or mechanical means, including photocopying and recording on record, tape or laser disk, on microfilm, via the Internet, by , or by any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission by the publisher. Views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher. First edition 2017 ISBN ISBN [e-book] DOI: / Set in Garamond 12/15.5 pt Cover design and typesetting by AFRICAN SUN MeDIA. Cover photograph supplied by Stellenbosch Centre for Photographic Services (SCPS). Photographs without specified photographers are from the Russel Botman Private Papers. SUN MeDIA is an imprint of AFRICAN SUN MeDIA. This publication may be ordered directly from Produced by AFRICAN SUN MeDIA. africansunmedia.snapplify.com (e-books)

3 Contents Preface... Nico Koopman i 1. His Youth and Student Years... 1 Cornelius Thomas 2. Who Lights The Candles? His Role as Minister and Church Leader Johan G Botha 3. His Life as Theologian Dirkie Smit 4. His Didactics Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel and Anlené Taljaard 5. As Vice-Rector (Teaching): 1 July December Ludolph Botha 6. As Manager Paul Cluver and Gerhard Lubbe 7. HOPE Project Martin Viljoen 8. From Excellence to Significance Botman in a Wider Context Marita Hilliges and Andrew Casson 9. Hope@Africa Project MS Tshehla 10. Interaction with African Counterparts Thabo T Fako

4 11. In Memoriam A Rector Remembered Albert Grundlingh 12. Epilogue Beryl Botman Gallery

5 Preface Nico Koopman 1 This celebratory volume pays homage to the late Hayman Russel Botman who died suddenly, early in his second term as rector and vice-chancellor of Stellenbosch University. Botman s story is told from his earliest childhood years until his last day as rector. Russel Botman was a minister and public theologian who exercised his theology in the three public spheres identified by the Roman Catholic theologian, David Tracy, namely church, broader society and academics. Botman served in all these areas. He served churches at the local level of individual, family and congregation, and in the wider context of denomination and ecumenism locally and globally. He influenced public opinion and served the different terrains of the broader society, among others politics, the economy, ecology, as well as the civil society with its many spheres of among others individual, marriage, family, circle of friends, neighbourhood, institutions for education, sport, culture, art, trade unions as well as volunteer organisations, social movements and non-governmental organisations. Botman served academics at the University of the Western Cape, but especially at Stellenbosch University, as well as in national, continental en global regard. The variety of contributions also reflects Botman s multiple involvements and diverse ways of service delivery. Interwoven contributions focus on Botman s church involvement (Johan Botha), academic teaching (Plaatjies- Van Huffel and Taljaard), academic research (Smit), local and international university management (Ludolph Botha, Viljoen, Cluver, Lubbe, Tshehla, 1 Prof Nico Koopman is Vice-Rector: Social Impact, Transformation and Personnel, Stellenbosch University. i

6 RUSSEL BOTMAN A TRIBUTE Hillegas, Casson en Fako). His wife, Beryl Botman, provides a more intimate view of Botman s many dimensions. The contribution by Thomas on Botman s childhood and youth years confirms how Botman was shaped from a young age to operate in a wider context. Grundlingh looks back to provide perspective on the holistic focus of this believer and minister, responsible citizen, public theologian, academic and university manager. A tribute is literally a eulogy, a good word about an individual. Mindful of hagiography, the focus is especially on describing Botman s legacy that can be built upon in future. The nature of tributes and celebratory volumes is that they can never be exhaustive. They tell a story from limited perspectives. However, they serve as invitation, stimulus and inspiration to others connected to Botman to also tell their stories about his story. If this volume succeeds as a catalyst, it has served its purpose. ii

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8 Russel as a young student. Theology, UWC, 1981: Induction as minister of religion. Russel Botman is at the back, second from the right.

9 1. His Youth and Student Years Cornelius Thomas 1 Introduction Dear Father, we are doing well and we hope to hear the same from you, by returning mail. These are the oldest extant words of an eleven-year-old boy who grew up to be man with a mission. This is his voice recorded for posterity. He wrote these words to his father far away to calm the anxieties he knew his old man felt about his family. He expressed hope that his dad would be well too. He cared for the family at home (the group) and about his dad (the individual). The boy expected a reply by return post, understanding and insisting, then already, that communication was a reciprocal process. Eleven years later, the boy had grown into a strapping young man, a student, who said, We simply take over. This was of course an ambitious statement, but one articulated in a context of discrimination and oppression, of apartheid South Africa. I used these quotations as navigational tools as I entered the early life story youth and student years of this boy-man, Russel Botman. I joined an individual now gone, but one who still speaks. I bend my knee to the assertion that Biography, today, remains, as it has always been, the record and interpretation of real lives the lives of others and of ourselves. 2 This biographical sketch is about the life of my subject, Russel Botman ( ). I had seen him in action, overheard him a few times, but I do not remember that we ever chatted. Still, as author of this chapter, I must put it plainly that while this is a biographical sketch about him (the other), it is also patently my narrative, my active entry into and interpretation of his early life. 1 Dr Cornelius Thomas is an historian and Head of Cory Library, Rhodes University. 2 Hamilton N, How to Do Biography: A Primer, Harvard University Press, 2008, 21. 1

10 RUSSEL BOTMAN A TRIBUTE Renowned American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his essay History that [a]ll history becomes subjective; in other words, there is properly no history; only biography. The sage asserts that history must be explained from individual history, or must remain words. 3 In Emerson s cosmos, the human mind reigns supreme, and that is true. But it is also true that many human minds come together and form the civil mind, including the questing mind of a people in search of something better. I accepted Emerson s advice, but for my point about the civil mind I also turned it around. Botman s voice, sparse but real, is also suggested by those who knew him and by the social forces of his youthful years. For the paucity of voice, I could stray, but because of civil history (social history), I mustered the courage to make him real. Novelist of Ragtime-fame, EL Doctorow, puts it that History is the present. That s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is the end product, myth. 4 Doctorow allows for myth, but warns that to be irreverent to myth, to play with it, let in some light and air, to try to combust it back into history, is to risk being seen as someone who distorts truth. This narrative derives much of its life from secondary voices and old memories and as such parts of it may well be myth. There may be imaginative speculation here and there as this tale unfolds, but I tried to steer clear of myth in an effort to put Russel s actual, authentic life before posterity. Childhood and Primary School In the spring of 1953, Bloemfontein chugged along as a bleak urban sprawl threatening to become a city. Clinging precariously to it, one would find the historically coloured neighbourhood of Heidedal (Heatherdale) basking peacefully in the sun. Imagine adults purposefully walking along dusty streets; consider a bicycle or three. Washing flapped on lines and children played where they could. The area s dwellings suggested inhabitants ranging 3 Emerson RW, History in The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First Series, Vol. II, Macmillan and Co, 1906, EL Doctorow: The Art of Fiction, No. 94, EL Doctorow interviewed by George Plimpton, The Paris Review, Winter 1986, e-l-doctorow 2

11 1. His Youth and Student Years from dirt poor to the lower middle class. The houses and lean-tos seemed defeated. But a church here and there symbolised hope. Political clouds also loomed overhead. On the African side of the town, two years before, the African National Congress had decided on the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. Then, in 1952, the Defiance Campaign threatened. A year later, the dust had settled. Now, in Heatherdale, Karel Petrus Botman and his wife Mavis (née Louw) were especting their first child. The baby arrived on time on Sunday, 18 October A boy. Shortly after, the proud parents baptised him Hayman Russel in the local Dutch Reformed Mission Church (DRMC) the church for coloureds. The boy grew up within the realm of the coloured experience in the 1950s and 60s. This young family was relatively poor, but parents Karel and Mavis strived to become part of the lower middle class. Karel acted as an evangelist. He and his family embraced the tenets of Christianity throughout. Indeed, devotion to the Christian way of life constituted the very basis of coloured culture. The family subsisted on a plain diet thin porridge for breakfast, sandwiches in the middle of the day, and potato, rice and meat for dinner. Sundays they enjoyed dessert also, mostly custard and jelly. They dressed plainly; they could neither afford nor did they desire anything ostentatious. Russel knew to take care of his shoes and daily polished his one pair, for the dusty gravel street down to Dr Blok comprehensive school and around did not help matters. After school, he played with his siblings, three sisters and a brother Ethne, Phebe, Grace and Deon. Yes, we were enough to play on our own, 5 one remembered. Sometimes they strayed into the street and played with other children also. The only time Russel pursued a more individual sport, was when he dabbled in boxing and body-building. But this did not last long. He mostly organised, supervised, guided. The evangelist dad knew he wanted to qualify himself as a proper minister. He thus went back to Dr Blok, the school, with the intention of matriculating and then going on to university. At one point he and Russel 5 Phebe Botman-Kerspuy interview, Roodepoort, 18 July

12 RUSSEL BOTMAN A TRIBUTE walked to school together. Coloureds truly believed that, alongside religion, education was their salvation, their ticket to upward mobility. When I went to school, my father also went back to school to do his Grade 9 and 10, so we were there at the same time because in those days there weren t high schools and primary schools. We only had one school in the township, Russel recalled. He fondly remembered these walks and that his father would pause at the school gate and knock out his pipe against the heel of his boot before they entered the premises. Russel understood the importance of education from his father s example; he saw that one had to set oneself goals, even long-term ones. 6 He looked up to his father, explaining, My father s decision to go back and study was fundamental in my childhood, as I realised how determined he was to be educated. After he finished high school, he went to the University College of the Western Cape to further his education so he could become a minister in the church, only returning home once a year. 7 His father, Karel Botman, therefore left his family in Heatherdale in the capable hands of his wife, Mavis, when Russel was still a young boy, and made for the Cape to pursue his studies and qualify as a pastor in the DRMC. First he studied at a theological college in Wellington and thereafter transferred to the University College of the Western Cape (also known as Bush ). Students called the institution Bush at the time as it sat amid the sand-swept fynbos south of Bellville South. Mavis kept the home fires burning by working as a typist for the DRMC Press. With publications from the press often making their way to the Botman s home, their household always had words to play with words in pamphlets, newspapers, books, comics. While his mother worked, Russel took care of the kids. According to his brother, Deon, the younger siblings just did what they were supposed to do and this made Russel s job easy. Russel also had the responsibility to buy the odd grocery items, especially bread. He kept an accurate record of the cash 6 Deon Botman interview, Roodepoort, 18 July See Lessons for Posterity: Steeped in Tradition but Changing with the Times, capemedia.co.za/bbq/54/files/data/search.xml 4