forward and said in a threatening tone: ‘Be careful, you two, very careful!’ He turned and left to board his plane before we could ask any questions.
We returned to Oxford at the end of 1988, after I had graduated with an Honours degree in philosophy. I had enrolled for a Masters in philosophy at the University of Stellenbosch, and was planning to do the research for my thesis while at Oxford with Wilhelm. My thesis was on the work of various feminist theologians who questioned how the masculine language used for God was impacting on society and patriarchal structures. I quickly discovered that Oxford was not the best place to do work on feminist theology.
Wilhelm found Oxford a lonely and challenging place. Not being under the same pressure academically, I loved it. The first apartment we were assigned was dark and dreary, but when we subsequently moved to a much brighter ground-floor apartment close to University Park, I was much happier. We had very little money, since we were both living on the Rhodes scholarship. Eventually I took a job delivering newspapers to bring in a bit more cash. I bought anything we needed second-hand from Oxfam or at the university club, where foreign students would sell their belongings when they left Oxford. I would cycle into the city centre daily to have lunch or dinner with Wilhelm at Corpus Christi College. I loved the big old dining hall, with its long tables and benches. Sometimes we were invited to high table, which meant sitting at the top table and getting much better food. Afterwards we would have coffee in the senior common room; it was all very civilised.
On my first day in the common room, I met a lovely Scottish man. ‘Hello! I’m Eddie McKenzie,’ he said in a strong Scottish accent.
I introduced myself, then asked what he was doing at Oxford.
‘Oh, I kill frogs,’ he responded.
‘Why?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Because I like it!’ Eddie said without the slightest tone of irony. ‘Actually, I prefer South African bullfrogs. They croak less when you kill them.’
Slightly perturbed, I told Wilhelm about the conversation. He just laughed and told me that Eddie was doing a doctorate on genetics in frogs.
We made many good friends from around the world, such as Todd Breyfogle from the United States and Graeme McLean from Australia, who would later become godfathers to our children. Together we would play croquet and spend long hours in the pub (even though I never drank alcohol). During the summer, we spent leisurely afternoons punting on the river; in the evenings, we would frequently go to evensong in Christ Church College.
During our first year at Oxford, Wilhelm and I made two big trips. First, we decided to backpack and camp through Israel. I had always wanted to see the holy sites. It was an extraordinary three weeks during which Wilhelm and I were very close. I will never forget waking up on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, watching the sunrise through our open tent flaps. In between visits to the holy sites, we made time to float in the Red Sea and snorkel in Eilat. Although it was a magical time, we were disturbed by the political tensions in the country. Even coming from South Africa and its succession of states of emergency, we found the military presence in Israel and the animosity between Palestinians and Jews unsettling. It was clear that peaceful co-existence between the two communities was very far away.
In retrospect, Wilhelm and I seem to have been drawn to conflict areas. Having seen Israel, we decided to visit Ireland. In the weeks before we left, I was amazed to discover how few British people – and in particular how few Oxford students – had ever been to Ireland (North or South). Despite – or perhaps because of – the centuries-old conflict there, no one seemed particularly interested in the country. A good friend of ours, Edward Peters, who worked for a Christian organisation called Moral Re-Armament (MRA), with which Wilhelm was very involved, joined us.
We drove to Stranraer in Scotland, from where we took the ferry to Belfast. We stayed with two other lovely MRA people, Peter and Fiona Hannon, in Coleraine. Lady Fiona is the daughter of the Duke of Montrose, a title her brother inherited. She and Peter had spent many years in South Africa, and I was good friends with their daughter Catherine. Peter and Fiona were well connected in Northern Ireland and arranged various political meetings for us.
One of the most memorable of these events (for all the wrong reasons) was a lunch with the Reverend Ian Paisley in his home. After passing through security, we were asked to wait in a sitting room. Shortly afterwards, Ian Paisley arrived, greeting us warmly. He asked Wilhelm and Edward what they did, and he then turned to me. He clearly assumed that I was a housewife, but I corrected him, saying that I was also studying.
‘Oh? And what do you study?’ he wanted to know.
‘Theology,’ I responded.
‘Oh good!’ he smiled. ‘What type of theology?’
Now I was getting a bit nervous. ‘Well,’ I started hesitantly, ‘feminist theology.’
Ian Paisley locked a stern gaze on me. He snorted slightly. ‘In my church, that will not be allowed. In fact, women still wear hats!’ he said, while spitting slightly as he emphasised the ‘ts’ of hats. He clearly had no interest in continuing the conversation with me, and his wife invited us to the dining room. It was not a good start.
After saying a lengthy grace, Ian Paisley engaged Wilhelm and Edward in political discussions. I was listening with interest and was struck by the similarities between his arguments and those of conservative whites in South Africa. After our earlier interaction, I kept quiet. However, when Ian Paisley laughingly told us that he always knew when there were Catholics on a plane, as he could smell them, I was shocked. As I have never been good at keeping a poker face, it showed. He wanted to know why I looked so shocked.
‘Well, with respect, Reverend Paisley, I think it’s deeply offensive – and exactly what racist whites would say about blacks in South Africa,’ I responded.
A silence fell around the table. Again he looked at me with a stern gaze. There was a tense pause before he said: ‘No, no. We Protestants associate ourselves with the cause of black South Africans.’
‘How is that?’ I wanted to know.
‘We are a majority, who could soon be oppressed by a minority,’ he responded, much to my surprise.
A far happier meeting, on the opposite side of the political spectrum, was with a wonderful Catholic community worker called Paddy Doherty from the Bogside in Derry. He did extraordinary, inspiring work developing cross-community links between young people.
So many aspects of Northern Ireland were similar to what we were going through in South Africa. The restrictions on the media and on political activities, prejudice and suspicion between people, security concerns – even the metal detectors at shopping malls were familiar. Yet people in Northern Ireland looked basically the same, and spoke the same language; the conflict clearly was not really about religion any more. Why can this conflict not be resolved? I wondered, once we had left Northern Ireland and were driving through the green hills of Connemara.
Thankfully, the rest of the trip was more relaxed. I was seduced by the peaceful charm and beauty of the west of Ireland. We stayed at B&Bs and loved the charm and humour of our Irish hosts. We crossed the country and drove east to Dublin, where we visited the tourist sites and strolled around Trinity College, before taking a ferry back to the UK.
During our first year back in Oxford we also made a trip back to South Africa. We wanted to see our families, but also had something special to do. We had kept in contact with Tshepiso Mashinini (the younger brother of Tsietsi Mashinini), whom I had met during my first trip to Oxford in 1986. Over a cup of coffee
