H. Nigel Thomas

Doug Miller 00:00

So welcome, Nigel Thomas. Glad to have you here. I'm Doug Miller in Montreal on the island. Amy Kaler in Edmonton, and yourself. You're you're in Greenfield Park.

Nigel Thomas 00:14

In yeah, just on the across the river from Montreal. Yes. Well,

Doug Miller 00:19

Good, good to have you. So a little bit of formality. I'll ask you to affirm that you have read the consent form and you agree to its conditions and what we're trying to accomplish.

Nigel Thomas 00:30

I have, and I agree.

Doug Miller 00:32

Perfect. And could you just give us your name and where where you're actually sitting talking to us now?

Nigel Thomas 00:39

Well, my name is actually Hubert Nigel Thomas. I've reduced Hubert to simply H because I don't like the name. And I what what was the second part of the question?

Doug Miller 00:56

Where, where are you sitting?

Nigel Thomas 00:58

I am well yes. Well, I'm in Greenfield Park, obviously, you know, talking to you from Greenfield Park, yes.

Doug Miller 01:05

From the south shore of Montreal. South Shore of

Nigel Thomas 01:07

South Shore of Montreal, yes. Well, well, it's not of Montreal; it's the south shore. It's interesting. Well, it's part of the Greater Montreal area, really. Absolutely, the

Doug Miller 01:18

Absolutely, the metropolis.

Nigel Thomas 01:19

Yeah, yeah.

Doug Miller 01:20

It's interesting, the H because my father had to choose a second name when he joined up for the war, and he made his middle name H. So he's followed your lead. So welcome. And what we'd really like to know is just a brief background. Could you just tell a little bit about where you're from and and how you actually learned and got involved in the anti-apartheid movement?

Nigel Thomas 01:46

Yeah, well, I'm from the tiny Caribbean island of Saint Vincent. The, when I left, it was just the nation. Well, it wasn't quite a nation. It was a colony of Great Britain when I left in 1968 to come to Montreal. It is now the nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Grenadines being a chain of small islands. I think they say 3039, or something like that of them. My memory isn't all that clear about how many. Most of them are inhabited, are uninhabited. I should say, yeah. I left just after age 21 in pursuit of university studies here in Canada, and that's pretty much it. I I can say you know anything else you want to know, you can ask me more directly.

Doug Miller 02:52

That's fine. You came in in in 1968, you say, and you you were going going to study at university. What was your experience? You you're coming out of a colony. Do you have any exposure to what was going on in Africa, in South Africa in particular during this period?

Nigel Thomas 03:10

Well, I certainly was curious. Remember, in a colony, the educational system is designed to to foster foster colonization, and so there was very little information available about Africa. We did listen to the BBC, and we got occasional snippets about what was going on there. I certainly, during my time in Saint Vincent, I certainly got the BBC broadcasts about the Mau Mau rebellion in East Africa. You didn't really know a great deal. Africa was a trope in my childhood, and it was the heart of darkness. And as I say in my novel, Spirits in the Dark, to call someone an African was really to invite physical was to invite a physical fight, literally. And when women were quarreling with each other, often. they would, but look at this Zulu woman, and the other would probably respond quite violently. So that was really the Saint Vincent in which I grew up, and people were. It was. Uncanny. I mean, I by the time I I was ready to leave, by the time I got to 20, I myself had sort of modulated all of this, and I I understood what was going on. But I only really came to fully, fully appreciate what all of this meant when I arrived in Montreal and became exposed, among other things, to the works of Frantz Fanon, and there is where I realized fully what had happened to us.

Doug Miller 05:35

Okay, so so this is now 69 or so.

Nigel Thomas 05:38

Yeah.

Doug Miller 05:39

Montreal's a little bit of a hotbed of Pan Africanist activity.

Nigel Thomas 05:43

Yes,

Doug Miller 05:44

and so you get no. No, I wasn't.

Nigel Thomas 05:46

No I wasn’t. I wasn't aware of it. I met someone in my French classes. I met a chap from Boston. Williamson was his name. He had adopted a Muslim name, Malik, something or the other. He never stayed in touch with me, though I would have loved to. And and he certainly was radicalized in quotation marks, and that helped me because I had someone with whom to discuss what I was reading, you know. I mean, I've read all about the Bandung Conference and so on and so forth. I spent a lot of time at the Atwater Library. Unfortunately, it's not a public library, and so I wasn't able to take out the books. But I went there and day after day and read and read and read and read, and I had a thirst for what I found there because it was not available in Saint Vincent.

Doug Miller 06:48

Wow, that's, that's amazing. So, so what? What? What? Now, Frantz Fanon is is of course a seminal author in so many ways about this kind of stuff. How how how how did that open your horizons. Where did it lead you to in with all of that?

Nigel Thomas 07:04

Where did it lead me to? Well, one thing it did is that I decided I would never work for a capitalist enterprise. That was one thing it did, and I. I was-I mean-in from 69, late 69 till midnight to about May 1970, I worked for the Queen Elizabeth Hotel at nights, verifying the receipts. In those days, computers didn't exist, and so you wanted to make sure that the cashiers had the right totals, and that's what we did at nights, looking at the receipts and so on and so forth. But I soon I gave up that job as soon as I was able to, and I I had had an interest in psychiatric nursing, and I thought I would do that. And in fact, before I left St. Vincent, I had been accepted to be trained in in the British system of nursing first, general, and then later, hopefully, specializing in psychiatry. And there was an opportunity then for me to go and train at at Douglas Hospital, and I took I took it, went there, and within I guess I would say the first three months I realized nursing was not for me, but I continued. I finished the program, and because I knew it would give me full time work in the summer, and I could go to school, you know, full time the rest of the year.

Doug Miller 08:48

Oh, that's a that was a smart move from the very beginning.

Nigel Thomas 08:52

Yes. Well, I've all, I've always had to plan my life. I always say I've always said you know education was my visa out of indigence, and so I've had to plan.

Doug Miller 09:04

Great. So, so then, how in fact did you slowly come, or slow or fast? I don't mean to describe that. How did you get aware of what was going on then in Africa from all of this reading and so on?

Nigel Thomas 09:18

Well, I mean, I Southern Africa. I read pretty much in addition to my studies. I mean, I was doing that sort of like parallel reading to my studies because I I didn't really specialize initially in anything black. In fact, there was nothing, but there were no nothing here with any specialty here that was attached to Africa at the time. I did an honors degree in English at Concordia, and the only black text that was there. I didn't do it in English. I actually did it in history, an American history course in which the prof he used Invisible Man to anchor the Black experience, the African American experience within his his history course. I had read a couple of books by blacks in St. Vincent. One of them was Richard Wright's, what's called Uncle Tom's Children, and the other was James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. But other than that, I hadn't read anything, and so on. Of course, when I went on to do a master's degree, I decided to specialize in black in African American lit, and Richard Rice was a subject of my MA thesis. By then, I would have read pretty much, you know, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. I would have read. I had read all of Fanon's books, pretty much everything I could get my hands on about James Baldwin and the different various studies. And I am also bibliophile, so I use whatever extra money I had to buy whatever was coming out. Yeah, so I had that sort of background and so on and so forth. I knew what was going on in Africa. I knew about Lumumba and so on and so forth. I knew about Nkrumah pretty much, pretty much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, I'm in the process of putting those books in barrels to send to Saint Vincent right at this particular moment, yeah.

Doug Miller 12:08

Oh wow, a lifetime of collecting going.

Nigel Thomas 12:12

Yeah.

Doug Miller 12:13

Well, look, that's, that's interesting. So, so what we're working on in this project is the anti-apartheid movement in Canada. What was your, your awareness and involvement with with what was going on on the larger scene to to get Canada to react a little more positively? Well,

Nigel Thomas 12:32

One of the things we wanted certainly was for Canada to [missing]. By the time I got involved formally in 1984, actually, I think Canada had already excluded, had already excluded South African wines. I think that was about the only thing that had been done, and so in 1984, a good friend and colleague of mine at the time, I was a high school teacher, and we decided that we really had to make our presence felt, that that there were people opposed to apartheid, and that it must be visible. And we should rally the population into pushing the government to impose sanctions on South Africa. Along with that, we should talk to groups that could pressure the companies' institutions into divesting from South African companies. So yeah, in 1984, Shirley and I formed what was first functions largely as an ad hoc group called the Free South Africa Committee, and our first acts were to picket the South African consulate, which was then at Place Ville Marie, and fortunate. Well, we would number maybe between 5060 people we met there once a week, and we somebody I think I I have a feeling it was a person they it originated in the United States, but I'm not sure had made a list of products that were being imported from South Africa, and we kept asking people to boycott those products. Eventually, we moved from the South African consulate and began to target supermarkets. And that at that particular well, at. Placeville Marie, we were running into trouble with the police, but we ran into even more trouble when we began picketing the supermarkets. The police was never very sympathetic to us. However, Abe Limonchuk, at the time, was a city councilor, and he went to the police and said, "Look, you know these people have a right to be here, and you cannot be denying them permits. That's what they did. They denied us permits to hold these vigils, so they can come and threaten us with arrests. Anyway, on for when Limonchuk interceded. We began receiving the permits, though they didn't give them willingly. They humiliated me. I went get to get them, and they keep me just sitting there sometimes for an hour, an hour and a half. You know that sort of a thing. Yeah.

Doug Miller 16:03

Was was the Free South Africa Committee mostly made up of black members of the black community?

Nigel Thomas 16:09

No, it would have been. It was about a third black, two thirds white.

Doug Miller 16:15

Okay. And and and you you you came together out of what kinds of affiliations?

Nigel Thomas 16:23

Some some of us were teachers. There was a teacher, Hyacinth Young, who taught at St George's. She came to the protests, and sometimes actually for students, and I'm thinking of them. These pristine-looking white boys. I was teaching at face at the time, and sometimes my face students they saw me occasionally on television, and and they showed up sometimes. But there were people. There were a few people came from who were members of Union United Church came. Tom Holzinger, who who now lives in Botswana, but who is actually right visiting right now, he was a he was there almost permanently. He and his his partner Rebecca and their two children. One of them was actually not even quite a toddler. Misha. They brought him, you know, in a stroller, if if I remember well. Yeah, and some names I recall: Anne-Marie LaFon, Rosemary Walley, Joan Gordon. Leah Roback absolutely came to every one of them, and and nowadays when I'm complaining about my old age, I remember the and and feel and feel guilty actually, you know, yeah.

So yeah, and eventually, what happened is that different groups of different organizations, the names of which I can't remember now. Would sometimes call upon me. I went because I was the bilingual. Between Shirley and me, I was the bilingual one. So oftentimes I was the one who went. There was a guy called Yves. I think it was Yves Beaulieu, his name. He worked a very humble position at the CSN, but he ensured that we had all the photocopies of the products that were that we were targeting to be distributed. And at the same time, during that time, sanctions hadn't been imposed on South Africa at the time. We so we got people to sign the petition. We also had a button, and I was trying to find one, and I could not find it. I I know it there. I have a paper bag of them, and they're somewhere stuck somewhere In archives, we had a button which Shirley and I printed, designed, and and and so on. And somehow, I think you know how guilt works. You're not doing anything, but you can at least buy a button. People bought buttons. We saw lots of them. Sometimes people who participated. As I remember, at one point we went to Mirabel to protest Maggie Thatcher, who was changing flights there, and we had to, of course, charge for a bus. And many of the people who came with us. Well, they weren't able to pay, and we had enough money from the buttons to pay for them. And when Bishop Tutu came to Montreal, we actually had enough money that we could even give him some money to take to South Africa. Of course, the South African government took it from him when he got to South Africa. Eventually, we were able to to find another way of, and so on. The buttons sold and sold and they sold and they sold, and different people who supported us would take a certain number and sell them, and yeah, and so on. So that way, we sometimes we, we would join with groups from Toronto and go to Parliament Hill because what we wanted was sanctions. Eventually, as you know, sanctions were imposed. Yeah.

Doug Miller 21:14

So, so, so you did have relations with some of the student groups and unions. Oh yes.

Nigel Thomas 21:20

Well, my point of contact was largely Nigel Crawhall. The students, the university students, didn't really support us. They didn't come to the vigils. There was one event where they did. Students came from Vanier. They came. I'm sure Leah Bertley was involved. Was involved with that. They came from Dawson. Some came from McGill, and some from Concordia. But that was when Glenn Babb was giving a speech at the Mount Stephen Club. Oh and and interestingly enough, it was someone from the consulate who tipped me off, and he said, and I quote: "One day apartheid will end in South Africa, and you and I will be able to sit down and have a drink, and talk about this. I never found out who the person was because we never did have that drink. Yeah, yeah.

Doug Miller 22:32

But that was that was a big event. It did bring a lot of people together.

Nigel Thomas 22:35

Yes, it did.

Doug Miller 22:38

That that of course was in response to the South Africa's government's initiative to to I guess could say white

Nigel Thomas 22:47

yeah it was their response against the divestment movement and so on and you had this professor what's was his name Shingler I think Shingler

Amy Kaler 23:00

yeah

Nigel Thomas 23:00

Yeah and he was yeah he, he would go on radio and oppose the divestment movement and so on and so and somehow he was very pretty. He was teaching at McGill and there were black students in his class and some of them were even convinced that divestment was not, was a bad thing. You know, he was pretty good at it. You know.

Doug Miller 23:25

So, so how how did you and Amy get to know each other?

Nigel Thomas 23:31

Well, I I did. I don't know that I remember Amy. Do you remember me from there?

Amy Kaler 23:37

I do. I was part of the McGill South Africa committee, so our point of where we overlap is Nigel Crawhall, who remains a good friend of mine, and I think also a good friend of yours. So yeah, that was the overlap, and I remember meeting you at things where either the kind of the core of the McGill committee was showing up to, you know, to lend our support, or I have a picture somewhere of when, and it's yeah, retrieving the word, from South Africa had just been released from prison. A white member of the ANC, Dennis Goldberg.

Nigel Thomas 24:30

Yes, that's right. Okay, okay. Yeah, and there's

Amy Kaler 24:33

A picture of yeah Chengiah Ragavan, Lauren

Nigel Thomas 24:40

That that was in a restaurant, right?

Amy Kaler 24:42

The Café Commune,

Nigel Thomas 24:44

Yes, it was on Milton Street. Exactly that.

Amy Kaler 24:48

So there's yes, there's photographic evidence, I guess. So I remember that the Concordia students, Concordia was sort of doing its thing, McGill was doing its thing, and we didn't overlap as much as we probably should have. Right? Yeah. So I think I think that's the connection.

Nigel Thomas 25:12

Okay.

Amy Kaler 25:13

I wanted to ask about, you mentioned that the Free South Africa Committee at its events, you were selling buttons, and I'm sure I have that button myself somewhere. And you sold lots, and and it was very popular, which makes me think that the reaction you got from the public must have been generally pretty positive if people were interested in buying buttons.

Nigel Thomas 25:47

Well, wait, yeah, that's that's true. But we also had a few unpleasant racists.

Amy Kaler 25:51

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Nigel Thomas 25:53

I remember white guys zooming across what was then Dorchester, now René Leveque, in front of Placeville Marie, and saying, saying stuff like "Viva South Africa”, you know,

Amy Kaler 26:10

Okay,

Nigel Thomas 26:11

A bas les negres, and that sort of thing. And I remember on another occasion, we were in front of, I think it was Proviggo on in on Cote des Neiges. I think it was a Provigo supermarket, and someone came by and Invited Rosemary Wallie for a chat, and and told her some pretty crude stuff, in which all the myths about black sexuality were were invoked.

Amy Kaler 27:00

Okay,

Nigel Thomas 27:00

and she was visibly upset. You know, none of that surprised me. I was quite prepared for that. I mean, I grew up, you know, I have I grew up in the home of a white grandfather who was married to a black woman, and who couldn't help but repeat stuff that was racist. He was part of the colonial ethos, you know. And I mean, I I understood that sort of a thing, and I myself had already taken on racism in some pretty significant ways in in the in the high school system.

Amy Kaler 27:54

Right.

Doug Miller 27:55

I'm sure. I'm sure for sure. This is this is great. We're we're Union United Church you mentioned was was was quite a still quite a central feature of the black community here. Well,

Nigel Thomas 28:11

Yes, but I remember when I asked the choir director whether they would be interested in participating in an event that we were having. Now I don't really remember what the event was. He said, "No, I am not involving my choir in anything that is political. And then, of course, when Nelson Mandela came, he participated. And I shook my head. Of course, yes.

Doug Miller 28:52

Speaking of Nelson Mandela, how how did you feel? What did you think when Nelson Mandela was freed in 1990?

Nigel Thomas 29:00

Well, I was in Quebec City, and I remember the Sunday when the news was announced, and I kept saying, "Now I hope this isn't a hoax”, but it wasn't because I was, of course, it was televised, and and I I I was rooted to the television and watched it and so on and so forth, and I said, "I no, I just hope they don't assassinate him, and so on and so forth. And then, of course, that led to, of course, all the way to to the elections. Okay, I I'm tempted to jump ahead, but I'll let you ask the questions.

Doug Miller 29:41

Were you apprehensive? Were you excited? Were you?

Nigel Thomas 29:46

Oh well, well, I mean, it's funny. I have a metaphor in in in one of my books. It says that once once the snow has cut loose, you can't stop an avalanche, and. And that was exactly how I

Amy Kaler 30:04

felt.

Doug Miller 30:04

Tremendous, great metaphor.

Amy Kaler 30:07

Yeah.

Doug Miller 30:09

So, so, so, so moving moving that forward, the next four years were rather were rather rough and tumble in South Africa. Well,

Nigel Thomas 30:16

yes, indeed.

Doug Miller 30:17

Have any any interest in what was going on, or activity around that?

Nigel Thomas 30:22

Right. Well, no, I, I, one of the persons very much involved. There were quite a few South Africans who were part of the Free South Committee, and among them was Cecil Abrams, who, who, he was a prophet at bishops, and soon after that he went to Brock, and we kept in touch and talked about it, and and so we kept sort of looking at where things were headed, and it seemed, you know, my my, I had deep worries. You you don't oppress people for literally centuries because apartheid, de facto apartheid existed in South Africa long before the jury apartheid existed, and you don't oppress the people for that long, and then suddenly everything becomes wonderful. I mean, the economic situation that we see today, the economic apartheid that exists in South Africa, I expected that. I know how capitalism works. I, you know, people don't give up wealth easily, and so on and so forth. I know the system of exploitation. Apartheid was simply an overlay with laws on an oppressive system. You keep the system, but you remove the laws, which are economically, at any rate, ineffectual, and you bribe or pay whatever, and so on and so forth. You know, I think Howard Zinn talks about it very, very well. You know, you get the lawyers, the bourgeoisie. You pay enough of the bourgeoisie to control the masses and so on and so forth. I knew that was going to happen.

Doug Miller 32:29

So, so back in those days, you you mentioned some of the names, Cecil Abrams and and Shangir for sure.

Nigel Thomas 32:37

Chengiah didn't come often to the free SAC things. Wally Lawrence, who had been my colleague at Las at La Salle High School, he was always there. And what was Philip's last name? He he told me that he was that he was classified as colored in South Africa, and I remember saying, looking at him, he was quite about my complexion, and I to myself, what sort of a system is this? And then, of course, by then I knew that there were several subcategories of color in South Africa. So I, in fact, I remember jokingly thinking in my head, I wonder which of the categories he occupied. Yeah, but Philip came all afraid, always hesitant to to put himself forward. I mean, I am. I suspect he never even signed the petition for sanctions. But you know, but this was a kind of. And I mean, I'm not blaming him, you know. I just, you know, that was, you know, if you came from South Africa and you knew what.

The other thing too is that there were spies in the group. We later found out who some of them were. There were two of them.

Doug Miller 33:59

That's very interesting. So we've been infiltrated.

Nigel Thomas 34:02

Yeah, they were put there by the by the RCMP. Yeah.

Doug Miller 34:07

Wow, that's crazy. Can you explore that a little bit more? Just tell us a little bit more about that.

Nigel Thomas 34:15

Well, there was one who who was trained. You can see as, as an, what we call an agent provocateur who tried on many occasions to get us involved in altercations with the police, and there was another one who was kind of a petty criminal, and so they had him over the coals, kind of a thing, and so he was working for them. It's he who, and very quickly, those two they were always very close. They recognized each other, and so on and so. It's the guy who was a petty criminal, who eventually he, he eventually ended up in a psychiatric institution.

Doug Miller 35:07

Oh wow!

Nigel Thomas 35:08

He told, he told me about it.

Amy Kaler 35:14

At the time, did you have suspicions?

Nigel Thomas 35:18

We we suspected the woman,

Amy Kaler 35:20

right?

Nigel Thomas 35:21

In fact, Joan Gordon-I didn't mention her name earlier on. Yeah, I did mention her. Joan Gordon at one meeting where she was acting up. I remember Cecil Abrams said something very caustic to her, and then Joan Gordon said, "You're just an agent provocateur”.

Amy Kaler 35:42

Okay, right.

Nigel Thomas 35:44

Yeah,

Amy Kaler 35:45

And so she had obviously picked up that there was something on not quite right with this person.

Nigel Thomas 35:53

Yes, yeah.

Amy Kaler 35:54

yeah.

Nigel Thomas 35:56

Oh, and she and she was miserable. You know, she um, would tell, she would tell members of the group that we said stuff about them that wasn't true.

Amy Kaler 36:10

Oh, okay, so that you'd be looking at each other suspiciously. Is this person talking behind my back?

Nigel Thomas 36:17

And she was confronted that day. The meetings were held in my when in my condo. I have a condo. I I was in transition, you know, I just finished my doctorate and I was looking for jobs, and I had a condo. I lived in a condo in Verdun, and the meetings, the anti-apartheid meetings, were held in my condo, and Cecil Abrams had confronted her precisely about this mischief that she was involved in, and once he finished, Joan Gordon mentioned. I guess in in French it would be provocatrice.

Amy Kaler 36:58

Yeah, agent provocatrice Right. right.

Doug Miller 37:05

I'm interested a little bit too in in terms of the community of people. What what kind of did did you find people were supportive of the ANC, the African National Congress, or or did they have affinities with other movements as well that had been out there. For instance, well,

Nigel Thomas 37:24

Well, well, there was a lot of admiration for BiKo. Yes, a deeper amount of admiration for Bico. I certainly had strong feelings, favorable feelings for the ANC for sure. Certainly, it's vision of South Africa. I'd read, I'd read Saul Plaatje's memoir written, I think he was part of that founding movement at the beginning and so on so forth. I also did familiarize myself with South African literature. I mean, literature, novels, etc. etc. I knew the works of Andre Brink and Gordimer and those people and so on and so forth. And at one occasion, I actually did a presentation on it, so I um, I how do I put it? So I I understood what the ANC stood for, and was quite supportive of them. Of course, one of the reasons I am today a novelist is that I kind of think I understand to some extent who human beings are, and so I know betrayal is a huge, huge component of who we are. So I, I expected some things to work out and some things to go off the rails, you know, and that you know there will be corrupt individuals and so on. It's just that's just who human beings are. You can't do a damn thing about

Amy Kaler 39:15

it. I remember in the McGill student group at the time we were very strongly mentored, I guess, by the ANC office in Toronto. So, you know, I was a young kind of naive student reading everything that they would send us and what we got, and also from some of our professors as well was a very, a very class based analysis of what was going on in South Africa. That if capitalism could be stopped or diverted, then racism was, was a secondary contradiction, and it would sort of resolve itself and. But then talking to people who were active in other parts of the movement that were much more influenced by Black consciousness or by the Pan Africanist Congress, they had very different understandings of what was happening there. And I remember having to kind of adjust my, you know, “everything's about class, everything's about relations of production”, way of seeing the world to take on board understandings of the world that weren't just so focused on who the workers are. And I'm wondering if you, you know, in your long time in the movement, if you saw those tensions between the the sort of class based analysis that the ANC was so big on and other ways of understanding apartheid,

Nigel Thomas 40:53

Well we, actually didn't we did not get into any of that. Right. Ou,r our concern. was the South African government should be weakened and pushed towards ending apartheid. That was, you know, in those years, and I would say we we were in action from about 83 to about 88.

Amy Kaler 41:26

Okay.

Nigel Thomas 41:27

Yeah, we I by we sort of dropped off from about 86. I don't remember when exactly did Mulroney impose sanctions. I have a feeling it was somewhere around 86. If I'm not 85, 86, 87.

Amy Kaler 41:47

I think it was 87. Yeah, I think it was. As early as 85, no it wasn't.

Nigel Thomas 41:53

It definitely wasn't 85. It was not 85.

Nigel Thomas 41:57

It was probably 87.

Amy Kaler 41:59

That makes sense.

Amy Kaler 42:00

Yeah.

Nigel Thomas 42:00

And so on, and I remember Aziz's group sort of coming in, and so on and so forth. In by in 88 in particular, I was very, very much focused on getting a university position and worrying, thinking about publications and so on and so forth. Because I mean, I didn't have your kind of traditional university studies. I mean, I, I had to work and take time off years in between, you know, to to get my doctorate. So yeah, yeah. But we, we really were focused on divestment, sanctions, and divestment. Those were our goals. Right. We wanted to push people, the selling of the buttons and so on and so forth, signing the petition and you know we wanted yeah and so yeah that was that was our goal. Now I personally certainly was spending a lot of time thinking through those things and you know some, yeah

Amy Kaler 43:21

The sort of the level of what you do, “what is this movement doing”? It wasn't having debates, you

Nigel Thomas 43:32

I remember, I remember, I remember Cecil Abram saying, remember Cecil Abram saying to me at one point, “Well, we hope that when apartheid is ended, we will be able to invite you to South Africa”, and so on and so forth. And I said to him, you know, Cecil, that wouldn't be important. And I don't know if he understood why I said that.

Amy Kaler 43:56

Could, could you tell tell us why you said that?

Nigel Thomas 43:59

Well, I for me going to South Africa was not important. It's um, it's the end of apartheid. In any event, I I knew that black South Africans would have so much to handle. If I went there, it would just be as, as a visitor. I wouldn't go there to try and advise them or anything like that.

Amy Kaler 44:21

Right, right, right, yeah.

Nigel Thomas 44:23

And I, what's happening in South Africa today with you know the xenophobia and so on and so on? I expected all of that. I, I expected it. I, I knew it would happen. Already there were so much tension between the horses and the Zulus and other people, etc. I, I, I kind of knew there would be problems. I mean, you have to think of how, of the traitor that Buthelezi was during that particular period. It gave pretty much a good idea. The way the way South Africans, white South Africans, played the the Indians and the coloreds, and you know against the black population, etc. etc. etc. And there was Cecil Abrams's wife who was here actually going around telling people that they don't want black South Africans to get the vote because if they did, they would cut the throats of of of colored and white people.

Amy Kaler 45:29

Right, right.

Nigel Thomas 45:32

It was astonishing. I I I was at the lecture where she said that. I was astonished.

Amy Kaler 45:38

Wow. Yeah, that that's quite shocking, that.

Nigel Thomas 45:46

Yeah, yeah.

Amy Kaler 45:47

I know people say it behind closed doors, but to in public say this is what's going to happen if black people, you know, attain political power is yeah, wow.

Nigel Thomas 45:59

Well, well, I mean, I mean, the reason, of course, that is guilt taking on that sort of thing. We did such terrible things to them. We profited, you know, and so on and so. It's natural that they were right,

Amy Kaler 46:13

right? You know. So it's it's one of those “every accusation is a confession”. Oh, there it was. There was

Nigel Thomas 46:19

Oh, there it was. There was her husband, very much active in to in the the struggle to dismantle apartheid, and there was his wife estranged at the time, you know, promoting the pro apartheid view.

Doug Miller 46:40

Well, it's it's and that hearkens back to your own roots, where we we would despise Africans as a an insult, you know.

Nigel Thomas 46:48

Yes, of course.

Doug Miller 46:49

And well, my goodness gracious, what a fascinating story! I'm, I'm not sure. I have a lot more questions. Have you? Do you think you've covered the subject you you mentioned at some point when Nelson Mandela got freed. We'll cover the rest later, or have we covered it?

Nigel Thomas 47:08

Sorry, okay. Sorry, I didn't quite get the gist.

Doug Miller 47:13

Well, I'm just I'm just sort of wondering because at one point you hinted that you had more to say about one subject, and I can't remember from.

Nigel Thomas 47:21

I've I've forgotten what it was.

Doug Miller 47:25

We probably covered it anyway. Yeah.

Amy Kaler 47:26

Well, I've got a question. So, you've gone on to be a novelist, and I'm wondering if there's any ways in which your experience during these short but quite intense years back then has kind of worked itself through, or manifested itself, or inflected the paths that you took in life creatively, professionally, any other way.

Nigel Thomas 48:00

I'm not. I'm not. You know, it's interesting. I, as you say that, I'm actually trying to think if there is anyone who, who has influenced anyone I've met during that time who's influenced any of the characters I've created

Amy Kaler 48:23

Oh, that would be interesting.

Nigel Thomas 48:25

Yeah, or, or thematic stuff that got there. I, I mean, I know, sort of in a very sort of light way there's some element of a Marxist ideology that is in my work, but I'm also sure that in other ways I probably undercut that because I mean, I don't have an a utopian view in any shape or form of human nature. I I I know of someone in the movement. I'm not going to name the person who whom I met after I came back from Quebec City, and who was very, very active in the movement, and I found that person to be so bitter about life and so dismissive about humanity. I was frightened, you know, and that person had become, spoke about, spoke of life in such a materialistic way that it saddened me. I mean that that's probably the best that I say about it. It's saddened to me. Yeah, you know, in instead of instead of growth, there had been considerable regression.

Amy Kaler 50:10

And was this like the result of absorbing the racism, absorbing the -?

Nigel Thomas 50:18

This was this was this this was a white person.

Amy Kaler 50:19

Oh, oh, okay, okay.

Nigel Thomas 50:21

This was a white person. I mean, I also met there was this fellow I remember. I know him at university at the time during the anti-apartheid, during my work in the anti-apartheid movement. I was also working on my PhD, and somehow I have a feeling though that this guy I'd known him in my undergraduate years at Concordia, and he said to me, he met me one day, and I was wearing the button, and what's all of that that about? And he said, "Man, in this world, you have two sets of people: the ones who have and the ones who don't have. And I want to be one of the have, and I'm going to do what I'm going to do in order to be one of the haves”. And I just felt it felt. I felt like a dagger when for me.

Amy Kaler 51:26

Oh yeah, that idealism that's still there. That yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nigel Thomas 51:34

And I sort of said, "Wow, you know, how are we going to battle apartheid? And this is black man, you know.

Amy Kaler 51:43

Right.

Nigel Thomas 51:45

Yeah, it's sometimes I wonder if I'm cynical, and I know I know I'm not. I know I'm not. I can see from the way my novels end that I have not.

Doug Miller 52:01

Yeah. Well, I quite agree with that analysis right now. From what I've seen of you, I, I'm, I'm. I think we've covered a fair bit of ground here. Do you have any sort of last message or overview thing that you'd like to bring up that we might have missed, or you want to? Yeah. Well, it's just.

Nigel Thomas 52:19

I mean, what I probably have to say is just how I look at South Africa, and you know, one of the things that one of the debilitating aspects of, of systems like apartheid is that the the development, broadly speaking, of socialization, culture, unity, all the things that make for a society get put on hold,

Amy Kaler 53:02

right? Everything is the struggle,

Nigel Thomas 53:04

exactly. And so, once you remove the, the controlling force, there is just so much to be done, right? Right, and so on and so forth. Whether or not, and you can't talk about some sort of compensatory catch-up. That's that doesn't exist in human affairs, you know, in societal affairs. And so, I look at up upon South Africa with a certain amount of compassion. And I, when Ramaphosa got elected. I remember the wonderful work he did in the trade union movement. I kept hoping, but then there is what the leader does, and then there is there are the members of his cabinet, his government, and then the people, and different sectional competing interests, and even the whole business of reality, what's possible.

Amy Kaler 54:14

Right, right,

Nigel Thomas 54:16

Yeah. And when people are faced with impoverished situations. It's difficult to tell them wait.

Amy Kaler 54:30

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Or yeah. And

Nigel Thomas 54:34

Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, people are infected with bourgeois ideals. Everyone wants a nice house and a nice car, and so on and so forth. And of course, you look and you see the ones, the leaders, the rich and powerful folks having all of those things, and you say, why them? Why not me? I mean, and yeah, and, and of course, what I think I'm saying in all of this is that there is an inherent tragedy that's existential. It's an existential tragedy, right?

Amy Kaler 55:19

Yeah, that's right.

Nigel Thomas 55:20

So I look upon South Africa with a great deal of compassion, even even this xenophobia. I'm sure maybe I might see differently if I were there and were a victim of it. But you know, in the broad picture, and all things considered, it's a good thing. I know there's a lot of debate about the truth and reconciliation, but in so far as it prevented a bloodbath in South Africa,

I think it was a good thing,

Amy Kaler 55:52

Right? Right, and I don't,

Nigel Thomas 55:54

I don't think without Desmond Tutu, this would have been possible. And you know it's interestingly in the South African situation. It is not strictly speaking Mandela who is my hero. It is actually Desmond Tutu.

Amy Kaler 56:13

Okay.

Nigel Thomas 56:14

Yeah.

Amy Kaler 56:14

Yeah. Even though he he never he

Nigel Thomas 56:21

Even though he he never he didn't he didn't face the guns, so to speak. Right.

Amy Kaler 56:23

Right.

Nigel Thomas 56:25

Somehow, somehow he got protected by the church or whatever, and so

Amy Kaler 56:30

Right, right.

Nigel Thomas 56:31

And the government probably always felt, you know, we better not go after him. I mean, the religious institutions.

Amy Kaler 56:40

Right.

Nigel Thomas 56:40

So much investment, material, monetary investment in South Africa that they probably calculated that if they went after him, there would be trouble.

Amy Kaler 56:53

Right, right, yeah. He he was he was in the churches. He was part of the institution, and but he used that position within, protected by structures.

Nigel Thomas 57:07

They didn't. They didn't go after Boesak as well, and of course, you know, Bosak wanted to disgrace himself. That's true. Yeah,

Amy Kaler 57:16

Yeah, yeah. No, interesting. Yeah, yeah.

Doug Miller 57:21

Well, thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks so much. I, wow. Amy, I think we've covered the ground pretty good.

Amy Kaler 57:30

I yeah. I think we're good, and I'm mindful of you know respecting people's time and so forth. I have wheels spinning in my head from what Nigel has said. Just like I'm gonna think about that some more. So wow. So that that was that yeah. That was really really interesting.

Nigel Thomas 57:51

Question for you, Doug. What was your role in in the anti-apartheid movement?

Doug Miller 57:56

Well, which

Nigel Thomas 57:57

Which association, group were you involved with?

Doug Miller 58:00

Over the years, several starting in in '72, I was in Ottawa, and we set up Southern Africa Information Group because we were connected to international. Let me let me, let ,let me first end the interview.

Nigel Thomas 58:15

Okay, all right, and we can continue

Doug Miller 58:17

Okay, so I'll say thank you very, very much. Right, really appreciate it, and and we'll continue talking in a second here.