Review
  Steinberg, Jonathan (2002) Midlands. Johannes-
  burg and Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers
  Cherryl Walker
  Comments by Shaun Johnson on the front cover of this award-winning
  book describe Midlands as going 'to the heart" of questions which are so
  sensitive that most people shy away from them' and as 'a fine piece of
  investigative journalism.' Both assessments seem inflated to me.
     Midlands is an account of Steinberg's journey along the 'racial frontier'
  that runs between the prosperous but besieged white-owned commercial
  farms of the southern midlands of KwaZulu Natal and the desperately poor
  lands of the 'dying black peasantry' (p.ix) on the boundary of these farms,
  in former homeland and mission reserves and in farm tenant villages. The
 author's entry point is the murder of the 28-year old son of one of the white
 fanners, in late 1999, allegedly by one or more of the black tenants living
 on the farmer's land. The point of Steinberg's investigation, however, is
 not to solve the question of who committed the murder (which is never fully
 resolved, although the author is convinced he provides us with the answer
 at the end), but to expose the inherently adversarial relationships between
 white and black that inform this case. The murder is presented as not only
 the logical outcome of local dynamics but also as emblematic of broader
 black-white relationships throughout the South African countryside.
     It is an intriguing, if exasperating, read but I suspect that the book's
 enthusiastic public reception resides largely (perversely) in the way in
which the author reinforces rather than shifts existing sensitivities and
confirms widely held stereotypes and fears about the 'racial frontier' in
rural South Africa. These stereotypes include the inescapability of conflict
over land between black and white, entrenched by over 300 relentless years
of history, the doomed future of commercial farming in the aftermath of
South Africa's transition to democracy in 1994, and the primordial nature
of the racial identities that animate these dramas. Thus, Steinberg tells us,
the 'whole history' of conflict between black and white rural communities
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                                                                        Review
runs in the prime suspect's blood (177), while white farmers are
'constitutionally incapable'(174) ofunderstanding their black subordinates.
Even he slips, on one occasion, into a 'primordial whiteness' (249), before
reclaiming his position as disinterested observer.
    As regards the investigative journalism, that label fits uneasily on a
study in which so many key elements are fictionalised. The names of all the
main protagonists and most minor informants are changed, as arc all place
names south of the Umkomaas River. More unsettling, the complex history
of this land, that is presented as key to our understanding of current social
dynamics, is doctored - historic clan names and chiefs' names are amended
and events glossed so as to conceal current identities. I was also never quite
sure on which side of Steinberg's own authorial frontier, between the
observed and the imagined, to locate many of the encounters he describes,
all of which, whether observed directly or not, come with careful attention
to apparently realistic detail. Steinberg, we discover, is capable of giving
us verbatim accounts of conversations at which he was not present, some
of which he only imagines must have happened as he describes (82,83).
    Furthermore, the views of the black tenants are obtained only indirectly,
through black assistants, and quite who among the tenants is interviewed
is not clear. Steinberg presents as incontrovertible, without the need for
further testing, his assessment that no black tenant would ever agree to be
 interviewed by a white journalist. Hence his decision to rely on paid (black)
 informants, whom he grills mercilessly to extract every last shred of
 information from their conversations — 'I would press and press until they
 were so full of caffeine and nicotine, and the room so full of words and
memories and forced inductions, that they would stumble out and hope
never to see me again' (109).
    Most unsettling of all, the one voice of political and moral authority to
 emerge in the book - that of the elderly and wise (black) ex-trade unionist,
 who explains to the reader, through Steinberg, what is 'really' happening
 along the racial frontier and, along the way, why the countryside is doomed
 - turns out to be not an actual person but a composite of two, both of whom
 refused to have any visibility, even a disguised one, in the book. How
 reliable, then, is the conversation between this 'voice' and Steinberg at the
 simple dinner in this character's rural home, as well as their follow-up
 conversation in the 'white men's' pub in Pietermaritzburg, where the
 bartender looks on suspiciously?
    Steinberg does discuss the serious ethical and methodological dilemmas
 that his informants' varying requests for anonymity and his own sense of
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   Cherryl Walker
   responsibility to his subjects posed. These are not easy issues to resolve in
   any research endeavour, but his solution is a compromised one. It is not
   simply that the identities and places behind the fictitious names are easily
   ascertained, if one knows the area and accesses the newspaper and other
  reports on the murder and subsequent investigations. It is that Steinberg
  asks us to take his account of what 'actually' happened on trust and, where
  he has embellished or entirely made up scenes, to accept that the spirit of
  his account is true - truer than that of others. The irony that his methods
  have something in common with those of the white farmers whom he
  scorns, who rely on paid informers to tell them what the informers think
  their paymasters wish to hear, does finally dawn on him towards the end of
  the book (218). His solution is to insist that 'I do know that I got to hear
  everybody's understanding of the events' (109).
      I am not convinced thathe earns the reader's trust. He can be careless of
  important detail in his treatment of both history and current government
 policy - thus Theophilus Shepstone is mistakenly described as Governor of
  colonial Natal (62), while the account of post-1994 land reform (183) is so
 cursory as to be misleading. There is a certain hubris in some of his claims
 - until he comes along, we are informed, no white people ever set foot in
 the tenant village except as landlord, policeman or soldier, while the only
 whites who ever went to the nearby mission went 'laden with school books
 and food' (106-7). Throughout the investigation, Steinberg is an energetic
 but controlling instructor-cum-tour guide, carefully stage-managing the
 timing and content of the information that he releases and taking pains to
 ensure that the reader understands the import of what he imparts exactly as
he, Steinberg, intends it. Concerning two police officers, Steinberg writes:
 'Later, when I tell you [the reader] more about Sullivan, you will see that
his relationship to Wessels was an interesting one' (177). Describing the
contrast he sees between the 'pastoral serenity' of the 'Gudla' valley and
the 'wild power of the hills', Steinberg instructs the reader:
         Once you mark this contrast you realize why the scene is so unsettling.
        The cultivated fields appear fragile and precariously temporary. It is as
        if... the wild bush that climbs the slopes of the hills could come down
        and take the basin back whenever it chooses. (105)
     In the end, the primary character in Midlands is that of Steinberg
himself. The book is more illuminating about his motives, his fears and his
construction of the racialised world through which he travels than those of
his protagonists and bit players on either side of his frontier.
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