New Westminster man's book about his South Africa days creating a stir

Erich Rautenbach's autobiography of 'rebellion and retribution' when he was playing drums in Cape Town, smuggling drugs and avoiding military conscription, The Unexploded Boer, has been called 'South Africa's wildest memoir of the year.'

MARIO BARTEL/NEWSLEADER

Pushing a pram up a hill in Sapperton was one aspect of Erich Rautenbach’s life. So was escaping a psychiatric hospital prison to avoid being conscripted into the South African army.

For the last 17 years, Rautenbach has lived the quiet life in Sapperton raising four boys with his wife, Mary Ann McKenzie.

It’s a long way from his roots in Cape Town.

Rautenbach has written a book, The Unexploded Boer, about his wild life in South Africa during the tumultuous times of the 1970s. He’s fresh from a three-month visit and promotional tour of his native land where the book is becoming a cult classic after being published by Random House’s Zebra Press.

Woodstock generation

Rautenbach grew up poor playing with friends of all colours. His father deserted the family when he was 12 and he fell prey to pedophiles.

The 1960s was the Woodstock generation of social change, and that pop culture reached the idealistic youth of South Africa.

“I made a decision at school that I was not going to go to the army. That’s where I drew the line. I wasn’t quite sure how it was going to happen, but I wasn’t going into the army,” recalls Rautenbach, 57, as he relaxes in his living room just days after returning from his homeland. “It was the values of the ’60s of revolution and freedom, which are bubblegum slogans, but that’s the way we thought.”

As a child, South Africa’s system of racial segregation and government control of the media was so ingrained, apartheid’s effects were hidden to his naive eyes, and those of many adults.

“It was very obvious something bad was going on. It was hidden. It was all quiet and creepy,” says Rautenbach.

He immersed himself in rock ‘n’ roll culture, becoming a drummer. He says he was considered so beautiful—his hair was a bright blond, prompting his friends to nickname him Luminous—that prostitutes pretended to faint when they saw him while older men constantly propositioned him.

The lifestyle was all to avoid the inevitable. Eventually the army came calling because service was mandatory. In sticking to the decision he’d made as a child, he drew inspiration from Muhammad Ali, who was jailed for refusing to accept being drafted by the United States to fight in the Vietnam War.

“That impressed me. We didn’t have those kind of examples in South Africa. I could stand up and say, ‘I have a right to say something’ and the police would just smack you in the head,” says Rautenbach. “I kept staying a step ahead of the MPs. They would send call-up papers and expect me to show up. I would head to the hills and hope they didn’t catch up.”

To survive he worked the black market with Zulu villages, smuggling marijuana to make money.

“I wouldn’t recommend the lifestyle to my sons. Some things are guaranteed to fail because there are so many pitfalls along the way,” says Rautenbach.

The police finally arrested him in 1976. To get out of prison he acted crazy so he could be sent to a psychiatric hospital. That scared him even more than jail, so he escaped. “I pleaded insanity and then made a break from the nut house.”

Rautenbach spent years hopping from country to country, living in places like London, Paris and Afghanistan. “There was no adventure. I was a refugee even though I didn’t know it. I found every possible way to survive. I was very adept at stealing food while pretending to be a tourist.”

Watched from afar

Eventually he came to Canada and was awarded refugee status. At first he settled in Toronto. An earlier relationship produced two sons, now 30 and 28. Not being used to cold winters, he eventually ended up on the West Coast.

He watched from afar as his old country went up in flames. He’d see photos and videos of people brandishing machetes and machine guns and wonder what was happening to his family.

Despite all the turmoil, he decided to stick around for his sons because his father hadn’t. McKenzie became the breadwinner and Rautenbach a stay-at-home dad, which at first involved pushing a pram and dropping the kids off at Hume Park elementary.

Rautenbach, who worked at some weekly newspapers in Ontario during the 1980s, first wrote the book while he was on the run in 1976, but lost the manuscript “getting out of Paris in a hurry.” Every time he tried to start again the words just wouldn’t flow.

“I had a writing block that would make Leonard Cohen jealous,” says Rautenbach. “I couldn’t do it before because I always ended up in a dark, black place. It took me a while to realize I was homesick. One day I sat down and it just didn’t stop.”

His perspective—that of a young, rebellious white male—had been left out of discussions of those times. They were overshadowed, rightfully so, by the blacks who changed the country, says Rautenbach. But it was also an emotional time for the young whites.

Since publishing the book, Rautenbach has heard from South African men his age all over the world. Many were drafted and served while others left the country.

“They all seem to be carrying something inside of them. It wasn’t their fault what was going on, everyone was trying to ignore it. The whole thing was hushed up. A lot tried to do the right thing even though they had no guidance and they were left in the lurch. Even the black kids, they’ve been forgotten, and they started the revolution.”

In search of Canadian publisher

In the fall of 2010, Rautenbach was diagnosed with a severe form of leukemia that required more than five months of chemotherapy. This past October, cancer free, Rautenbach returned to his old haunts and old friends.

“There’s nothing like going back and finding out the people I knew 36 years ago hold me in high regard,” he says. “It’s a strange connection. It’s home. I’ve been in all these other places and I thought I was above that. But home is home. You think it’s totally gone from your life until you step into it again.”

Ideally, he’d like to find a way to live in both countries.

“I’m always going to have family here. I don’t want to desert the family.”

The South African book market is small, so Rautenbach would like to find a Canadian publisher, although it is available through book websites like Amazon and Chapters. He also believes his story would make a good movie, although the pram pushing likely wouldn’t make the script.

“It has all the ingredients for a film—bad girls, rock and roll, prison.”