We knew Marius not only through joining COD, but also during his beatnik period. We met him in Cape Town in 1959. Paddy Roome, Tony Levy and other ex-Jeppe School pupils who were at university with us put Marius in touch with us, when we went down to Cape Town for six months in April 1959. We went to Cape Town because Tony had been newly recruited by the Star and sent to CT to attend the Argus journalist's training course for six months.
We got pretty friendly with Marius while we were in CT, and with him (possibly through him) we met Breyten Breytenbach and Jan Rabie and Ken Parker. At the time, we thought Marius was a bit mad (in the nicest possible way!!) with a great sense of humour but somewhat inclined make up or embroider facts for effect - e.g. to make the story funnier, he didn't mind a joke against himself. We only half believed in his stutter...
He was very goodlooking in those days, and could be extremely charming -as he continued to be, when he felt like it, all his life, though he tended to pursue the crusty old man image in later years. This is one of the things about Marius' character that puzzled me - was he playing at being the crusty old man, or WAS he a crusty old man? We don't remember what Marius was doing in CT - he'd finished university but we can't remember that he had a job.
JHB and the COD period. We joined at Sharpeville. He came back to JHB and appeared on the scene after that, and wanted to join COD. It took months (if not years) before he was fully accepted. We think there are three reasons for this: 1) That he was a bit wild; 2) he was not a typical JHB entrant into COD e.g. he was Afrikaans; and 3) he had a political mind of his own He was always keen to belong but at the same time he had two characteristics which sat uncomfortably with the movement hiearchy at the time: a sharp and enquiring, independent mind and an unconventional approach to life.
Diane: she was very young, very beautiful, and going through a very wild phase when she married Marius. In fact, she married Marius, I think, because she was pregnant. Jane was born around the time our twins were born, she was premature and tiny. We often got landed with her - Marius and Di had no baby sitters and continued to lead very social hectic lives. I started working fulltime for COD around then, in second half of 1961; by then, Marius and Di were both fairly normally accepted members of COD, I remember Di coming to COD offices before a demonstration, Benny Turok insisting that she go wash her rather grubby feet (she was wearing rubber sandals). Benny always insisted that we look respectable and middle class at demonstrations.
Why did Marius divorce her in jail? We were already out of the country by then, so we don't know. But she had had her flings and the relationship was far from quiet and steady well before he went to jail.
Some anecdotes:
Did you read our letter in the M&G? And when we were all back from exile, around about the same time, 1991, we had an evening with Marius and he exulted laughingly about his new job with DBSA: "Hey man, I've got a proper job!"
Marius was intellectually and culturally something of a firecracker. It was with him in Cape Town in 1959 that we met Jan Rabie and Marjorie, and listened with fortitude to musique concrete. It was in Cape Town where Marius and Breyten Breytenbach sometimes climbed through the kitchen window of our High Level Road flat to raid our fridge ("in toekas se tyd" as Breyten once recalled in a jail-to-jail letter he tried to smuggle to Marius).
It was through him that we did a bit of jolling and mountain climbing with Richard Rive and Kenny Parker. One Sunday Marius set off with Jack Cope for a day's climbing, got to the top and discovered nothing but tins of pet food in his rucksack. Marius had been in charge of the food, but in a hungover predawn, he'd blearily scraped the nearest tins off the pantry shelf. Not that he was all that keen on physical exercise - when he and Sherry visited us in our rural retreat a few months ago, he turned down the offer of a lovely ramble through bush and glade with loathing: "I didn't drive 300 kms to go for a walk"....
Marius was a poet. He was one of those Afrikaans poets invited to read his work at a Vic Falls gathering a decade ago.
Marius was a "Quiz Kid" - a star performer who took Jeppe High School's general knowledge team to glory on the famous radio show of the Fifties.
These are just a few things about him that come to mind. Marius liked to play the contrary cuss. But he was intellectually, and in his political clarity, a shining light.
Eve and Tony Hall
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