2 / 11 / 8
Michael Dingake called me a couple of days ago. I think that he was responding to my earlier email. I was so pleased to speak with him. He will be coming in from Botswana on Thursday to meet with us. As interesting as it would have been to go to Botswana (and it would have meant another member of the Pan African Band), it will be less expensive and time consuming for him to come here.
His book, ‘My Fight Against Apartheid’ is one of the most detailed accounts of prison life on Robben Island (along with the rest of his work with the struggle). It grabs you from the beginning and is quite a through account of his life.
Michael chose from Hamlet:
Act 1, scene 3 Lines 56-81:
Polonius: ‘The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for. There-my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in they memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy should with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d courage.
Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in
Bear’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as they purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous choice in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all-to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any many.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!’
