26 February 2008
interview
Johannesburg — Taking a short run on the day after June 16 1976 and a chance meeting with a Comrades athlete proved a turning point for Bruce Fordyce, writes Sue Blaine
BRUCE Fordyce arrives for our lunch in a hurry, walking past the restaurant's open French doors at a rate that has me jogging to catch him by the elbow. We shake hands and his face wrinkles in a smile.
"Does your budget run to a starter too? I ran 15km this morning," Fordyce says as he sits down, eyes the menu and then springs up again to remove his jacket, while singing the restaurant's praises and checking his cellphone.
Illovo's Assaggi is the world ultramarathon record-holder's favourite restaurant -- he knows most of the staff by name -- and he suggested it right away when I invited him to lunch.
As the fabulous smell of freshly warmed garlic envelops us, Fordyce runs his finger down the menu, his stream of words running as fast as he does.
"You can never get in here, but I don't do lunch much, the menu's different and the saddest thing of all is that you can't get their mussels at lunchtime ... oh, here it is," he says, asking the politely hovering waiter if he can have the Cozze Tarantina -- fresh mussels cooked in a tomato, chilli, garlic and white wine sauce -- as a starter.
He can. He smiles.
"Well, I'll definitely have that, and your veal chops, so long as you have got your zucchini chips," he says to the waiter.
Our conversation meanders from food to the Drakensberg mountains to Fordyce's lesser-known passion, South African rock art.
Fordyce has a master's degree in archaeology from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). He joined Wits' staff in the late 1970s as the first research officer of what would become the university's Rock Art Research Unit.
He led the group's first project to study rock art in Harrismith in the mid-1980s -- work that was seminal in establishing rock art research on an academic footing.
Later, in a conversation which hops between topics at an alarming rate, Fordyce bemoans the lack of seriousness from South Africans in protecting this legacy.
"If an archaeologist finds something good now they tell nobody. It will be ruined. We have the best and the most exquisite rock art in the world ... (and) it's just going to ruin. It's not being looked after considering it's such a precious asset," he says.
The years Fordyce spent at Wits as a student in the 1970s appear to have shaped many of his ideas and passions, as well as his passion for rock art.
"I was always interested in history. Then I went to Wits and did a general BA, but history and archaeology clashed. I did two years of history ... (and I) got my passion for it (rock art and archaeology) from Prof David Lewis-Williams, the world's expert on rock art," he says.
It was also at Wits that Fordyce took his first run, a five-minute lollop around the university's rugby fields, on June 17, 1976, during which he "puffed a lot".
The date is significant. The day before, Fordyce was among a group of students whose march in solidarity with protesting Soweto school children was broken up by railway police.
While Fordyce's own protest was merely halted, the murderous response in Soweto shocked the world.
The killings and a chance meeting with another Wits student, John Leger, who had achieved a silver medal running the Comrades, and a TV documentary on the ultramarathon, all came together and had Fordyce tying on his takkies.
Eleven months later, he finished his first Comrades marathon. Four years later Fordyce came second to Alan Robb, and, in 1981 he hit the headlines when he ran, and won, the race wearing a black armband to voice his protest against the apartheid government's use of the Comrades to celebrate the republic's 20th anniversary.
What followed is still the stuff of legend. Fordyce won the race nine times between 1981 and 1990, every year from 1981 to 1988 and again in 1990 after he sat out in 1989.
Fordyce was one of many who wore black armbands in that 1981 race, a gesture runners decided upon after initially considering withdrawing from the race. "No one would have cared if we withdrew, (but) the armbands made a statement".
"I was very naive making that decision. It was only a few days later, in the bath, that I realised that if you are going to run a race wearing a black armband when a lot of the field supports the government -- and runners threw tomatoes at me, you know, so they had to have brought a tomato -- then there's only one thing you can do," he says, looking at me intently.
Our main courses arrive -- Cotoletta á la Milanese, crumbed veal chops deep fried and served with roast potatoes, roast tomatoes and zucchini chips for Fordyce -- and Taglioni al Salmone, pasta with sliced leeks, tomato and vodka, topped with sliced smoked salmon for me.
"You've got to have one of these," says Fordyce, handing over a zucchini chip, "You will die."
It's delicious, light and with a gentle taste.
First bite of veal down, Fordyce changes the topic again, telling me how he was "gobsmacked by this thing called apartheid" when his parents returned to SA from Hong Kong and what was then Malaya (now Malaysia) when he was 12. He had had friends of all races in the Far East.
At Wits he became increasingly politically aware, served on the students' representative council and worked with antiapartheid activist David Webster providing detainees with sports equipment.
"And then he was assassinated. Jeez," he says, looking away.
"You know, (apartheid-era sports minister Piet) Koornhof, who's just died, would only let blacks run the Comrades as international participants. I have a photo of Vincent Rakabele, the first black medal winner (in 1975) with a label saying "Sotho" on his chest, implying he came from a different country," he says, explaining the lunacy of apartheid.
"But the things I did, politically, were gestures compared to what other people were doing. At Wits I was most famous for being my sister's brother. She (Oonagh Fordyce) was the most beautiful Rag queen," he says.
Fordyce might be known for his Comrades Marathon dominance, but he has run many ultra-marathons, including 87km through war-torn Bosnia, the historical London-to-Brighton race (another 87km) and the Nanisivik Midnight Sun Ultra Marathon on Canada's Baffin Island -- 100km through Arctic tundra.
"We had to run along a red stripe on the ice," he says of the Arctic race he won in 1987 and 1992. It is the story of the run from Sarajevo to Banja Luka that is most interesting, however.
The race was organised as a once-off by South African Jim Panton, who had spent years as a boy at KwaZulu-Natal's Kearsney College watching the Comrades runners pass the school.
Panton joined the Royal Army Air Corps and, while training to run the Comrades, was posted to Bosnia. Not wanting to miss out, the young soldier plotted a course that was the same length, and persuaded Fordyce and British "miler" Steve Cram to join the run, which he used to raise funds to build a Muslim-Christian school.
They ran guarded by Nato soldiers and an airborne control centre.
Fordyce has many achievements under his belt, but the pinnacle to date was receiving a State President's Gold Award for Sports from former president Nelson Mandela in 1997.
"(Mandela) was delightful. I have to tell you his words to me. He said, 'Ah, Bruce Fordyce, the man with more Comrades than my ANC'," he says, throwing his head back to laugh.
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