About this project

...A LIFE STORY

I know it’s difficult in this country, but we’ve got to think more clearly than the State allows...

—Rick Turner

Rick Turner lived a short life. Born on a farm outside Cape Town in 1941, to a middle class white family, he died in 1978, shot through his bedroom window in Durban, by a police assassin.

In his brief 36 years on earth, Rick Turner captivated people's attention through thoughtful discussion and by raising profound questions as he taught students and struggled against apartheid and capitalism. He was known by people as a remarkable teacher, parent, friend and activist and known by the apartheid state as a serious threat.

The life and work of Rick Turner is an anomaly; his choices are hard to translate across the three decades since his death. He was a white anti-apartheid activist, an atheist who wrote of the ‘Christian human model’ of ‘loving people over things’ and married a Muslim woman, a socialist who spoke out against the Soviet Union and its satellite states, a non-pacifist who criticized the use of armed struggle against apartheid and, most importantly, a man who stressed ‘the impracticality of realism’ and ‘the necessity of Utopian thinking.' Rick Turner’s vision for a desirable future for South Africa called for a profound reshaping of the boundaries of possibility for social change.

In February of 1973, Dr. Richard Turner, (known to his friends as Rick) Professor of Political Science at the University of Natal, Durban, was banned. He was forbidden to publish his writing, and everyone else was forbidden to quote anything that he said or wrote.

* * *

“If a man happened to be 36 years old, as I happen to be... and he refuses to stand up because he wants to live longer, he may go on and live until he is 80... A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. So, we are going to stand up right here... letting the world know that we are determined to be free.”

— Martin Luther King
(read at Rick Turner’s funeral, by his daughters, Jann and Kim)

On January 8, 1978, about a month before the banning was to expire, he answered a knock at his door around midnight. When no one answered to ‘who’s there?’ He went to the bedroom window to see. When he pulled the curtain aside a pistol blast sent him flying to the ground, and he died a few moments later in his thirteen-year-old daughter’s arms.

WHAT'S IN A LIFE?

Human beings can choose.
They can choose whether to live or to die; they can choose celibacy or promiscuity, voluntary poverty or the pursuit of wealth, ice-cream or jelly. Obviously they can’t always get what they choose, but that is a different question.

-- Rick Turner

What is in a life?
How can a life be understood, decades later?

How can our choices be translated out of our particular circumstances and be of use to others, in a different place, in a different time?

Stories. Hints. Scraps.
Little bits of evidence that lead in possible directions.

Our lives are made up of all the choices that we make, or do not make. Choices made visible, but not chosen. Choices made, but not understood, or regretted and carried like a weight.

The work of studying history is quite simply the study of human choices. We learn from other people’s life choices so that we can choose how to live.

* * *

My project is to tell the story of Rick Turner's life. Not only to tell the story, but to tell it with grace, to tell it beautifully, to honor his contribution to the world. The story needs to breathe, needs to call out to you in passionate prose and poetry: 'a man lived here, and this is what he made of his life!'

To do this, it is important to push the limits of what we traditionally understand to be a 'biography.' Rather than unfolding as a dry chronology from birth to death, the structure of the book will give the reader the feeling of being drawn in, bit by bit, allowing the curiosity to build in layers.

In addition to my own writing, I will also be weaving together Rick Turner's writings, family letters and photos, newspaper clippings, police documents and interviews.

This book will be a collage, a scrapbook, a recording of stories spoken by friends and family, a photo album full of portraits taken from various angles, a protest march attended by thousands of passionate protesters, a letter written lovingly by hand, sent from a dear friend...

HOW WILL I USE THE MONEY?

I initially undertook this work towards the completion of a Masters Degree in History at the University of the Western Cape, in Cape Town, South Africa. Passing with honors, the external examiner Christopher Saunders wrote that the thesis was 'now the best work on Rick Turner and…it deserves to be published in some form.'

The money raised will go towards building on the extensive researching and writing I have already done on Turner, and transforming it into a format that will reflect the way I think his life story should be told. This includes further research in London and South Africa, accessing archives, editing, reproducing and transcribing costs, and some basic living expenses.

I am raising my own advance, together with all of you, and affirming our belief in the desirability of this project being put to print as a well-written and engaging biography.

FURTHER READING

Rick Turner's book, "The Eye of the Needle: Towards Participatory Democracy in South Africa"
can be found at:
http://sahistory.org.za/pages/////library-resources/onlinebooks/eye-needle/eye-index.htm

To read more about Rick Turner's life:
http://www.sahistory.org.za/r-turner/rich-turner-biography.htm
or
http://www.turner.ukzn.ac.za

The biographical movie, "My Father, Rick Turner," (made by his daughter, Jann Turner, who was 13 when Rick was murdered, and put a lot of work into investigating the death when she grew up),
can be watched online:
http://www.barbara-follett.org.uk/richard_turner/part_1.html

Report this project to Kickstarter