Meet Tom Holzinger, a real life character in a Bessie Head book

Gasebalwe Seretse
Correspondent | Friday May 31, 2013 00:00

Bessie Head, perhaps along with Alexander McCall-Smith are the two writers who although born outside the country put Botswana on the world map. While many still have the chance to see McCall-Smith because he is still alive and for the past few years has been able to visit Botswana yearly, few ever got the chance to see and interact with Bessie Head. Holzinger writes of his first chance encounter with the famed author in Francistown in the late 1960s: 'Ace (South African political activist Mxolisi Mgxashe) comes looking for me during my last evening in town. 'Look,' he says, 'There's this woman writer you have to meet.' He points to his temple. 'Her name is Bessie Head, 'head' like your head, and she's with us in the PAC. She's in the Tati Hotel bar. Come.'

We walk into the main bar with its long row of stools. No luck with any woman writer. The usual collection of desperate men. I hate it when they ask white strangers for drinking money. I want to leave. 'No,' says Ace. 'The back room.' We push our way to a rear door that leads into a small drinking room with tables and chairs. Ace goes in first. He sweeps his arm. 'Come, she's here.'Indeed she is. Madame Bessie Head holds court in her salon, a tough-talking duchess surrounded by male retainers and admirers. They love the flow of her words. I don't see her face at first. She sits on a low stool facing away from us, cigarette in hand. She swings around to see who the newcomers are. She's round and brown. 'Ace!' she announces with pleasure, then looks me over from top to bottom. There is a long moment as she takes in my skin, age, clothing, glasses. Then a quick laugh before waving me into a chair. She resumes her tirade against the colonials. I gather that they are this evening's enemy. Her rough language I find sometimes funny, sometimes embarrassing. If she is a writer, she is an unusual one.'

The friendship between the two would blossom when they met again in Swaneng two years later. By then, Bessie Head was a known writer as her book, When Rain Clouds Gather about her stay in the Bangwato Development Association (BDA) farm near Radisele and Pilikwe had already been published. Tom became a constant companion of Bessie Head in the evenings where he had the chance to sample the writer's scones, cakes and biscuit.  According to Tom, the writer was a good cook who also happened to be an excellent jam-maker. At one point, Tom and an American visitor witnessed Bessie killing a chicken for dinner. He writes: 'Chicken was a preferred food. She didn't always buy it from the butcher. When I visited her in 1978 together with Ruth Cooper, she took a special delight in this big-hearted black woman from America who refused to make comparisons. She wanted us at her house every day. On our final visit she killed and cooked a chicken. She had a large white bird tied up outside her door.

She picked it up by its feet, laid it on a rock near her door, put a heavy foot on it and abruptly twisted off its head. Ruth gasped. Bessie remained steady. Her foot did not come off until the gushing blood and thrashing wings had stopped. Then she lifted the carcass for me to take a photo - a round brown woman delighting in her prowess, red stains on white feathers, and a pure cobalt sky above. Later I helped her pluck and gut the bird, and she turned it into a perfect dinner. She was never in better form'.

Tom asserts that, Bessie was good with her hands and took care of the Boiteko garden at Swaneng as well as her own backyard garden where she grew different vegetables and fruits.It was in the same garden that she grew her Cape gooseberries which she used to make jam and sold it in the village to both locals and expatriates to supplement her meagre earnings.According to Tom, Bessie divided her time between housekeeping, taking care of her son, Howard, and gardening and she mostly did her writings at night when she had no company.He also says that Bessie was an ardent letter-writer and that throughout her life, she wrote thousands of letters. The Canadian, who is part of the Bessie Head Heritage Trust, whose primary mission is to continue the woman author's legacy, says that he hopes that a book with a collection of her letters would be published in the not-so-distant-future.

Followers of Bessie Head would know that she was a very political person who was actually exiled from her country of birth, South Africa because of her involvement in the struggle against apartheid and according to Tom, one of the people that she greatly admired was Robert Sobukwe of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC).Some of the local politicians (both traditional and contemporary) that she liked include, Botswana's second vice-president and Mongwato royal, Lenyeletse Seretse and Peter Sebina at whose place she lodged for some time. It is said her book, Maru was inspired by her interaction with the latter. Perhaps one of the most unfortunate episodes in her life was when she had a mental breakdown that led to her publishing a note at the Serowe post office that denounced Botswana's first president,  Sir Seretse Khama. She was admitted at Lobatse Mental Hospital where she recovered before returning to her beloved Serowe.  Tom asserts that she had nothing personal against the late president.  It was at the height of the friendship between Tom and Bessie Head that she wrote her masterpiece, A Question of Power. By then, Tom was not aware that his friend was writing a book since he never got the chance to see her doing the actual writing as she did it by night but one evening, she asked Tom to go through her handwritten scripted and Tom confesses that she was enthused by the sheer madness in the book.

He did not want to discourage the writer but silently asked himself, 'Who is going to read this?' But  it turned out that many people wanted to read it. Interestingly, some of the scenes in the semi-autobiographical work capture real-life moments that the two spent together and Tom is referred to by his real name. How does it feel to be a real-life character in a book but an internationally celebrated author? 'I'm very pleased, I'm very proud,' says Tom who out of respect for the late author has decided to stop writing about the times that they shared together. 

Today, A Question of Power remains one of Bessie Head's most acclaimed works. Perhaps one of the most constant questions that Tom Holzinger has ever been asked about her friendship with Bessie Head is if ever they were romantically involved and he answers it thus:'Sometimes when it was just Bessie and me, and neither one of us in a hurry, that we would feel some little tug towards greater intimacy. We both sensed it was there, in that kind of mutual recognition, which proceeds by intuition. We would sit down with an extra cup, or an extra cake, and allow the conversation to be pulled toward the danger zone. But we never entered it.

Again by mutual intuition, we knew the other wouldn't really want greater intimacy, that a great destruction might well ensue. So we left it alone, with just a whiff of tea and tantalis still hanging in the air when I closed her gate'.Tom asserts that Bessie Head had always enjoyed her beer but also sadly notes that perhaps it was her dabbling in spirits that would led to her untimely demise due to liver failure.

The friendship between the two lasted a lifetime and at one point, Bessie's son, Howard (who recently passed away) spent a time with Tom and his family in Canada. Of Bessie's death soon after Howard returned home, Tom says:  'I heard very little from her during 1985 and early 1986.In April 1986 a long-distance phone call before dawn woke the Montral household. Patrick van Rensburg in Serowe had phoned Randolph Vigne in London, and Randolph had phoned Harold Head in Canada. Now it was my turn to hear Harold's old-school voice, low and strained, 'Do you know that Bessie is dead?'

Bessie Head died in April, 1986 and was buried in the village of Serowe. Today, Tom is based in the village and one of the things that he intends to do as part of the Bessie Head Heritage Trust is to set up a museum in honour of the celebrated author before he returns to his native Canada.

*Editor's note: Bessie Head fans and tourists can visit the Bangwato Development Association farm near Radisele where the author used to be based. Another place worth visiting would be Bessie Head's home in Serowe, which is currently being turned into a museum.