Sundaymail EditorRobert Mshengu Kavanagh
Long ago, on the first day of every year, in monasteries, convents and churches all over Europe the Feast of Fools was celebrated. A boy was appointed Pope or Bishop. The higher-ups had to serve the lowly monks. Masses, more like Harare kitchen teas, were held in which everything sacred in the Christian church was turned upside down and blasphemy and sacrilege replaced the Holy Mass. The same thing was done at the courts of kings, where the fool or court jester was appointed the Lord of Misrule. In ancient Rome during the Feast of the Saturnalia the slaves were set free and they were allowed all the luxuries and freedom of their masters.
For people who all year round have to follow rules and cope with life’s realities and demands for good sense, morality, responsibility and virtue, it sets something free inside us to turn everything upside down and have a fling before doing it all again for another year. The same thing happens when we see someone — like my friend, Adam Kok, I hope — who refuses to be bound by convention, who does not care what others think of him and whose experiences open up worlds to us we never knew existed or if we did, we pretend they don’t.
Last week it was Don Juan. This week it is another famous character. Casanova, like Don Juan, was a dangerous ladies’ man. I am not sure whether Adam, my old friend, knew much about Don Juan and Casanova. He wouldn’t have cared anyway. But in terms of philosophy and lifestyle the three had a lot in common.
I suppose in every man there is that itch — to be like Adam, a Casanova, a Don Juan, a ladies’ man, and without any principles at all jump in and out of bed with the beautiful wives of other men, women and girls of all ages and situations and even mothers and their daughters.
The belief that a normal man never says no to a woman who wants it, is widespread, especially in Southern Africa. I’ve heard men say: “Intombi ma efuna ukuthi uyijabulise, ijabulise phela!” which means: ‘If a girl wants you to make her happy, make her happy, man!’ And a man who has principles, is faithful to his wife, to the extent of even turning down a woman who offers herself to him on a plate, is seen as something less than a man, a ”moegoe” and a ”zungairwa”.
But, seriously, look at Adam with his lovely wife, Rudo. Which is the real man? The man who has a beautiful wife like Rudo and betrays her week after week, like Adam, or the man who counts his blessings and treasures the beautiful wife he has, respects her and keeps himself for her alone?
Put like that, most men would probably say the real man is the second one, the one who is faithful. In theory – yes. The problem is when it comes to practice. Adam would have laughed at the idea of a real man. He would simply have said he wasn’t interested in what other men might think or do but for himself he worshipped women and did his best to enjoy their beauty whenever he could. In this he really was quite similar to Don Juan and the notorious Casanova.
Giacomo Casanova was born in Venice, Italy, in 1725. Casanova had a long life of female conquests. In his Memoirs — 1 200 pages in the shorter version — Casanova documented affairs with over 120 women! It all began for Casanova with two sisters, Nanetta (14)and Maria (16). Obviously they didn’t know anything about statutory rape in those days. Casanova claimed it was this experience with Nanetta and Maria that made him dedicate his life to the happiness to be had with women.
Adam Kok’s philosophy was about happiness and to him the highest form of happiness was the pleasure of sleeping with a beautiful woman. Casanova said something similar: “The main thing in my life was sensual pleasure. For me there was nothing more important than that. I felt I was born for the opposite sex. I have always loved women and done all I could to be loved by them.”
Rudo called her husband, Adam, a little boy who has never grown up and she never took his escapades seriously. Casanova too lived a life of childlike mischief. He said that though he had a very good grounding in the Bible and an excellent moral education, all his life he was ‘the victim of his senses’. Like a naughty boy, he took pleasure in doing the wrong thing. He was always going astray and it was the knowledge that he was going astray which he enjoyed. “My silly mistakes are the silly mistakes of a young man”, he wrote in his memoirs. “I laugh at them, and if you are kind you will laugh at them with me.”
Adam Kok never wrote his memoirs. But he told them to me – and I record the adventures of Adam Kok in these Kok Tales just as Casanova recorded his in print and Don Juan’s adventures were described in plays, novels and even an opera.
I am a serious-minded man. I do not go out into the world a lot. Adam brought the world to me, with all its contrasts. He especially brought things which I, and probably a lot of other people, did not know could happen. Some will say that they are too abominable to think about. But for Adam they were just a part of life. He never judged people. As I have often explained, all he wanted for people was happiness. Whatever others did, if it made them happy and did no harm to anyone else, he didn’t see a problem. I don’t agree with this myself. I am simply telling you about Adam.
In the tales Adam has told so far, he has told of women who cheat their husbands — his first wife in fact, not Rudo (“what makes the world go round”). He told of a father who was sick and tired of his son not producing a grandson for him so he tricked him into making a baby with his own wife (“Kalulu and his muzukuru”)! There was the girl in the park who lured men with a broken shoe strap (“The Shoe Strap”) and Nesta, Adam’s favourite Nyatsi (married man’s girlfriend), who surprised him with her philosophical remarks on why it is better for a married woman to choose boyfriends who are old and ugly (“Beauty and the Beast”). Then there was Josephine who was tricked by her boss and ended up in his bed (“The Embrace”).
What about the mother who seduced her daughter’s fiancé so that he wouldn’t get impatient and go off and marry someone else (“Mothers and Daughters”)? Or the girlfriend of a rugby player who in his hour of glory gave her telephone number to another man (“That’s a woman”), the editor who married a high-class whore who gave him all the political and business scoops (“The Blush”).
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