TRANSCRIPT: WHO I AM, HOW I AM
Learning to be in the world without an arm, it took some moments. I found water began to play a big role in my life. In the hospital, I’m taken for my first bath and I’m so excited. I love the bath. Getting in, warm, floating. And I get in and I’m a bit nervous, and I put my foot down and I slide, and I feel I’m drowning. It was a terrible moment. And I was so weak, and I felt humiliated. I came out afterwards and a friend came to see me with a big smile on his face. How are you feeling? I said, ‘I’m feeling fucking horrible!’
I’m out of hospital. Stephanie Kemp, we’ve been divorced for some years now, she gets in touch with me. It was very poignant, very literally touching. We’d been so busy as revolutionaries; I’d never bought her flowers. We didn’t have money. I bought her a huge bunch of flowers. She was a physiotherapist. She’d never given me a massage. She gave me a massage. I go to the swimming pool and Stephanie is trying to help me float, and it’s cold. And I just feel diminished. I’m worse off.
The first question the medicos asked me about a prosthesis: would I like one, an artificial arm, and why? Yeah, of course I want a prosthesis. I can do things with it. It’s good for my balance. And it makes me look like everybody else. And the second question was, what colour would you like it to be? I burst out laughing. Well, I could have one white arm, one black arm. I could be the rainbow man. And then the guy who was the engineer, he had a strong I think Midland… English Midland accent. And he spoke about ‘your stoomp’. My ‘stoomp’ was a bit too long and they wanted to saw off a little bit to fit the prosthesis. And I first thought, it wasn’t my stoomp, it was my short arm. And secondly, there’s something wrong – I’ve gotta change my body to fit the prosthesis? It should be the other way around! Anyhow, I’m a very, very good, obedient boy. I go to Roehampton, the famous hospital for people with prostheses and so on. I’m very keen. I think it was Thursday mornings from 10 to 11. And I fit on the prosthesis, and I learn moving my muscles to get the claws going, and I play Chinese chequers, but I’m thinking, but I can do that without the prosthesis… [trails off]. Anyhow.
And one day I come there and there’s a woman ironing in my space, in my time. And I think one of the dramas of an event like this, you become very narcissistic. No, this is my time. And then it turns out she’s ironing with a prosthesis. Wow. Fantastic. That’s what I want to be like. And then she chats to me and then spoils it all. She says, ‘But you know the trouble, Mr Sachs, is when I’m at home and the prosthesis is not on and the front doorbell goes, I get into a panic.’ I said, ‘No, no, no. I don’t want to be living in fear like that.’
I had a bag, a long black bag. I would carry it with me. And I remember one day I was visiting a friend. I put the bag down. We were talking away. I wasn’t wearing the arm. The arm was in it. And somebody else had come in and put another black bag next to it, and I imagined them picking up the wrong bag, getting home, opening it and finding an arm there.
Another week I come, there’s a little kid. I think he was a thalidomide child. He had no arms, no legs. Cockney, bright as anything and I’m speaking to him, and his mom comes in. And I would call it a kind of English working-class beauty. She just looked so elegant and strong. And she had a rounded short arm. She's not wearing a prosthesis. And she looked so beautiful. That’s what I wanted to be like.
So now I’m in a state of confusion. I’m out of hospital. I’m travelling. I’m on the Underground. I’m doing things. I’m wearing my prosthesis. For two months, I’m going to do it. I’m going to show them. I’m going to do it for the people, for the ANC, for the struggle. I’m going to wear my prosthesis. And I wore it for two months. But I never felt comfortable with it. I didn’t know what it was doing. It wasn’t helping me at all. It was just making me look so-called normal. I’m better without it. I feel free without it. And I never wore it again after those two months. I did all the exercises. I got fit. I got better. I learnt to live in the world without a prosthesis more comfortably than with a prosthesis. I was doing everything. And I discovered afterwards, maybe 90% with what are called upper limb amputations don't wear their prosthesis. It doesn’t actually do anything except make you look like you’ve got two arms. And I didn't want to pretend I had two arms. I’m in the world as I am.
But I’m still ugly. The real problem is not the things you can’t do. It’s how you look – it’s the freak effect… That you’re just different in the world and people are uncomfortable with it. And it took me some while to come to terms with the way people were reacting and the importance of myself having confidence in doing things and not feeling ugly. And not feeling misshapen and being proud of who I am as I appear. And I negotiated that step by step.
And I’m in the Rose Garden in Central London, getting sun on me for the first time in months. It’s hot. I’m wearing a bright blue top that I had, and I want to take it off. And I say, I can’t, I’m ugly. People are coming to look at roses, they don’t want to see a guy with a short arm, with scars. And I’m getting hotter and hotter. And I’m saying yes, no, yes, no. And eventually I just take it off. And the people walked by and nobody cares. Nobody cares. And it was such a liberating moment for me – if I feel I’m ugly then I become ugly. If I feel I’m myself, I’m ok. Afterwards, I commented in my sort of romantic way that possibly the most important decision I’ve taken in my life, I took surrounded with roses.
And then I’m invited to convalesce in Portugal. A great friend there, Teresa, now dean of a law school. I’m taken in a wheelchair through the airport. I’m still fairly weak. And she just threw to the winds completely my strict regimen of London. It was a fabulous month! We talked. And we’d go down to the beach, and I’d get into the water and we got into the bath naked together. She played the slow movement of the Beethoven Hammerklavier Piano Sonata over and over and over and over and over again. It was so joyous. And the hot bath just a source of joy. And I discovered I could love. The doctors don’t give you advice on how to make love when you’ve lost an arm. They don’t think about those things. And I was enjoying my body as a body. And enjoying the energy of the discussion and, and the kind of Latin expressivity, so different from the very beautifully organised love of the London hospital.
A few weeks later I’m in Vienna with my friend Margiet. And Bruno Kreisky – who was a social democrat, became chancellor – created a spa for the working class. And visiting people like me can go there Sunday night: nude, mixed couples bathing. So, there we are. I remember Malangatana, the Mozambican artist – big, round, obviously very dark-skinned body, naked. Margiet – naked. Albie – naked. The Viennese had seen many mutilated people because of war. And so, they don’t stare. They don’t look at your different parts or anything. It was very, very liberating. We go down to the bath. It’s hot water. And I jump into the water. It’s bubbling and it’s warm. And I feel such joy, and I find I can swim, and I’m not scared of water anymore, so joy is coming back into my life in a very, very, physical sense.
It took me a long time actually to liberate this arm. For a whole year it would just be at my side. I used to joke, you know, that the bombers were antisemitic because every Jew needs two arms to talk. And then just one day this arm came up. It came into the conversation! And suddenly my right arm is in action again. It was a very beautiful moment for me.
People offer to help you… Because they want to help you. And at first, ‘No, no, no, no. I want to be independent.’ But it took me a long time to say, ‘Thank you for offering.’ I remember once getting onto the train in England and I had a little suitcase, and I wanted to get it up onto the shelf. And everybody’s looking. English know how to look without looking. And I know I can do it, and I’m not sure how. And I lift it up, I put it on the seat, then I put it on the table, I put it on my shoulder, I put it on my head, and I put it in. I felt so triumphant I could do it! And it was almost like there was applause. But they were all dying to help me, and I was dying to be independent. And at that stage I wouldn’t say, ‘thank you for offering’. Now I’ve learnt to say, ‘thank you for offering’.
People ask me, you know, do… did I ever feel sorry for myself. And people speak about the sacrifices you made. I never, never saw it that way. I never felt sorry. I never thought of it as a sacrifice. I joined the struggle as a volunteer. I knew the risks. I read books about people who’d been partisans in World War Two, who’d been guerillas fighting in, in Cuba and in China. These were my heroes. And with the risks comes the possibility of being injured. And it’s fantastic, I’d survived. I’d got through. I felt joyous. So, I never felt sorry. And if I was offered my arm back, I’d say, ‘Thank you, but no thank you.’ I don’t even want to imagine being restored. I’m in the world like this. This is who I am, how I am.
And I never regarded myself as disabled. Until I’m back in Johannesburg. I’m asked to speak to Disabled People of South Africa. And I’m thinking, well, I’m not disabled but let me meet them. They were almost like pleased that I’d been blown up, like ‘Yay! We’ve got a disabled person on the NEC of the ANC’. And they’re saying, what should we do now? What will our rights be in the new South Africa? And they were all progressive people. They were fighting for democracy, but they wanted more than just democracy. They wanted rights for the disabled. Then I say, well, what you must do… what we must do… and you should… we should… I use the word ‘we’ for the first time. And I discover now I’m joining them as a movement. Nothing about us without us. It was literally very moving for me. And in that sense, I became a proud disabled person, and I discovered what I call the “democracy of the disabled”. That people are disabled for all sorts of reasons, congenital, maybe they’ve done something terrible, they were driving drunk, or they were born, or… It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. We are equal. We are all disabled. We all have that thing in common. We look different. We function in the world differently.
Looking back now, I can see that losing my arm, it didn’t create new perspectives for my thinking as a judge, but it intensified themes that were there. In particular - difference and the right to be different. This is so central to South Africa. We’re all so different. And we have a right to be the same and not to be treated differently. But we also have the right to be different, and how to connect sameness and difference. Same in terms of basic rights and entitlements, different in terms of who you are, your personality, your interests, your sexual orientation, your gender…themes like that were intensified for me now because I looked different. And how do you experience difference and live with difference, and how do you enable everybody in the world to be themselves, to be equal and to be different? So, I’m very proud to see myself as part of the democracy of the disabled and see the importance of being in the world as you are.
