By Dianne Tipping-Woods

This is not a post about the South African judiciary. No, the bench I’m referring to is an actual bench in Amsterdam. The bench became the focus of my attention recently, by virtue of a group of exceptional South Africans who have been invited to ‘own’ a portion of it.

I heard about this bench in Pretoria at an event hosted by the Dutch Ambassador. The evening in question formed  part of a programme spanning several days and featuring two Dutch ministers and a delegation of businessmen and women representing more than 40 Dutch companies – all excited about and looking to do business with South Africa.

One after another Mike van Graan; Ferial Haffajee; Sibongile Khumalo; Pallo Jordan; Moeletsi Mbeki; Mamphela Ramphel and Pieter Dirk-Uys received their ‘Space to take Place’ Awards from ambassador Rob de Vos, who invited them to join993 people selected from various other countries all over the world to “come and sit on the bench”.

The actual 100 metre long bench is situated on the waterfront of IJburg in Amsterdam. In its literal sense, I imagine that this bench is used by a succession of people; lovers who find it romantic, bankers depressed about the economy, students who like to study by the water, tired mothers, tourists, drunkards, a homeless person, the Dutch Minister for International Development himself who lives just 200 metres away from it…. Perhaps they approach it with a sense of homecoming and walk away with a small feeling of loss. The right bench in the right spot will do that to you.

But this bench is so much more really. As well as being a piece of functional art, installed in a public space, by inviting this selection of artists to sit on this bench, it has been transformed into a richly metaphoric space. The metaphor operates at a literal level through the act of collective ‘ownership’ of a physical space in the Netherlands that is shared by individuals as far away as Côte d’Ivoire, Ukraine and of course, South Africa. As the official website says, “through this symbolic gift of real estate, recipients become hosts: they invite others to occupy this place in the Netherlands – a place whose genesis is in part due to them. By indicating and occupying a place and a position, the project creates a new mode of hospitality”. Pretty cool.

What I find even more cool is the imagined space that the bench represents, by virtue of the credentials of those who have accepted their ‘deed of donation’ issued by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What they have really accepted is an invitation to sit at the heart of our collective imagination. In assuming partial ‘ownership’ of a space that defies notions of ownership (because in reality anyone can sit on the bench), what they are really doing is accepting a responsibility to continue challenging us and creating new ways of listening, seeing, representing, understanding and communicating about the world. By giving South Africa seven spots on the bench, the Netherlands is acknowledging the ways in which these South Africans contribute to the creative space that the bench represents.

In its physical sense, the bench is there for rest, pause, reflection - but as an imagined space, it must be a place for action, conversation, dialogue, and flux. The ‘meanings’ of the bench must be as diverse as the people from all over the world who sit on it and can change as often as they come and go and depending on who sits next to whom. To sit on the bench is to give something, gain something and share something – perhaps even to recognize something that is much bigger than the sum of its individual parts.

Places on the bench awarded and formalities over, it was time to mingle in the rich imagined space that had been evoked so eloquently by the Ambassador– a space that exists as comfortably in a tent in his garden in Pretoria as it does on the banks of the IJburg.

I spend a full thirty minutes trying to think of what to say to Pieter Dirk Uys (only to be usurped mid-introduction by an intern quoting Macbeth) and exchanged a mouth full of chocolate fountain and strawberry garbled words with Ferrial Haffajee, heard Sibongile sing and watched Mike van Graan slip away from the crowd, before I too slipped away home.

Right at the beginning of all this, I said I was not writing about the South African judiciary. But perhaps I should rephrase. It is not about judges in the legal sense. Those South Africans who sit on this bench are judges and jurors of a different kind - the warm, living barometers of our democracy. And while the closest I’ll get to a river in the Netherlands this year is an Amstel in my hand, when I do visit Amsterdam again, I’d like to sit on the bench for an hour or two, just to catch my breath.