Ben Dekker dies at 86: the forester, actor and philosopher who stood for Parliament from a fruit barrow

The old man of the Wild Coast dies at 86

Ben Dekker died on Monday 9 November at Isilimela Hospital near Port St Johns, on South Africa’s Wild Coast. He was 86, and he died of natural causes after a month of care there, the Daily Maverick reported on Tuesday in an obituary by Herman Lategan. Born Benito Adolfo Dekker on 21 October 1940 in Centane, he died 19 days after his 86th birthday.

Briefly confirmed the death on Tuesday, reporting that he died on Monday evening and that fellow actor Anton Dekker, a distant relative, remembered him as a gentle giant with ice-blue eyes who rejected material wealth. Anton Dekker said Ben died without a cent to his name, by deliberate choice, and that his dying wish was cremation, his ashes scattered on the shore beside the hut.

That hut, near Port St Johns above the sea, was the centre of his life for decades. He lived there surrounded by wild bush, foraged his meals from the ocean, mussels, abalone or oysters, decided each morning as he looked out at the water, and made his own bread.

A forester, a philosopher, an actor; and a candidate

Dekker grew up in Vincent, East London, the child of Dutch immigrants, and he grew to nearly two metres tall. After matriculating from Selborne College in East London at 17, he took a five-year contract with the Department of Forestry and studied at Saasveld Forestry College, near George. The department posted him to the Lottering Forest Station in the Tsitsikamma, where he qualified in surveying and in driftsand reclamation.

What did his Bantu Philosophy thesis actually argue?

When the contract ended he enrolled at Rhodes University in Grahamstown for a degree in philosophy and fine arts. His master’s thesis, Bantu Philosophy, argued that African thought deserved to be taken seriously and that European ways of thinking were not the summit of human development. It asked whether technology, industrialisation and wealth made a society more civilised, and set an African idea of Presence against the Western idea of Being. Examiners turned the thesis down, rejected it again on resubmission, and every South African university then blacklisted it. When he sought to register as a master’s student at the University of Cape Town, the council refused and gave no reasons, bringing protests to the campus.

He moved to Cape Town in 1966 to work as an actor and lighting technician for Capab, the Cape Performing Arts Board. Dekker was among the first actors at the Space Theatre, the experimental venue where apartheid could be mocked on stage. He appeared in Gilgamesh and in Donald Howarth’s Othello Slegs Blankes, Shakespeare’s play staged without Othello, because the law barred a black actor from sharing a stage with a white Desdemona. He appeared in 84 filmed productions, and to many he was most recognisable as the desert wanderer Gaitsigubib.

Why did a fruit barrow become a parliamentary campaign?

In 1970 he stood in the general election against Sir De Villiers Graaff, leader of the United Party, in Rondebosch. Dekker was a student with long hair and no money, so he bought a hawker’s licence and ran his campaign from a fruit vendor’s barrow at the Rondebosch fountain. His slogan was “Stem lekker, Stem Dekker”; vote well, vote Dekker. He challenged Graaff to a swimming race to Robben Island, aiming to put the comedy back into politics, and demanded universal suffrage, which lay outside the discourse of every major white party. He polled 1,694 votes.

On Dunkley Street in Gardens he opened his home to eight children who had nowhere to stay.

What the record still leaves open

We do not yet know the funeral and cremation arrangements. Anton Dekker has reported the wish, cremation, ashes on the shore, but no date has been set. We do not know whether the manuscript of Bantu Philosophy survives anywhere. Rejected twice and blacklisted by every South African university, with no surviving copy traced, the argument may now exist only in the accounts of those who read it.

We do not know, with final certainty, the year of his birth. The Daily Maverick gives 21 October 1940, a date that fits the arithmetic of his death 19 days after his 86th birthday, while the Stellenbosch theatre encyclopedia records 1941. The obituary’s exact date is the stronger record. We do not know what will become of the hut and the shore, nor whether the universities that refused him will mark his death.

Three refusals that added up to one life

Dekker matters because his life was a single argument made three times over. The thesis refused the academy’s claim that European thought was the measure of civilisation, from inside a South African university under apartheid. The barrow refused parliament’s claim that politics belonged to gentlemen with money, and it did so by demanding universal suffrage when no major white party would say the words. The hut refused the market’s claim that a life is measured by what it accumulates, and it did so for decades.

Each refusal on its own could look like eccentricity. Together they form a coherent position: that dignity does not come from institutions, and that a person can live by rules of their own making without harming anyone. The institutions he challenged are still the ones South Africa argues about, and his questions about what counts as civilisation are the questions the country is still answering.

The thesis was the campaign, and the barrow was the thesis

Through the Bureau’s five dimensions, his life is a single argument about power and its measures. Geopolitically, he stood inside apartheid South Africa and refused its central premise, that some people count and others do not, where it was most heavily guarded, the university and the parliament. Economically, he refused the measure itself: the thesis asked whether wealth and industrialisation make a society more civilised, and the hut answered the question with a life that needed very little.

Historically, the pattern is recognisable. The Space Theatre, where he was among the first actors, was one of the few places in Cape Town where apartheid could be mocked on stage; the barrow at the Rondebosch fountain was street theatre with a ballot paper attached. His dissent ran on almost nothing: a hawker’s licence, a fruit barrow, a hut, a garden. The 1,694 votes he polled were never going to win a seat. They showed the demand for universal suffrage could be made in public by a man with nothing, and heard.

What his death sets in motion

The first consequence is archival. If the manuscript of Bantu Philosophy survives, his death is the moment it gets looked for, and the moment the universities that blacklisted it are asked to explain themselves. A rejected thesis that becomes a posthumous publication would be a fitting second act.

The second consequence is local. The hut, the garden and the stretch of shore at Port St Johns now have no keeper, and the Wild Coast has a way of reclaiming what is left untended. The third consequence is cultural: Gaitsigubib and the 84 filmed productions will be rewatched, the Space Theatre’s history retold, and a generation that never saw him will meet a figure who managed to be, at once, a philosopher the universities feared and a clown the voters loved. South Africa has no shortage of public figures; it has very few like him.

Cremation, ashes, and the shore

What happens next is a family matter. Anton Dekker has said the wish was cremation, with the ashes scattered on the shore beside the hut, and that is the expectation unless the family says otherwise. Tributes from theatre and conservation circles are expected in the coming days, and the institutions whose histories he touched will be watched for their response.

The longer question is whether the thesis gets its hearing at last. A country still arguing about whose knowledge counts has a use for the argument Dekker made. The Bureau will follow the tributes, the cremation, and any move to preserve the thesis.