by Elsa Joubert
When I was heavy with the next baby, Hoedjie went to the bush to do his abakwetha. Mama was there when he left, but not when he returned. Mama had gone to work at Wolseley, for the fruit season. My ma was forced to work because of my stepfather being so stingy. What he did with his money we never knew. But he wouldn’t spend it. Mama had to buy her children’s school clothes herself and pay for their food, and we helped her. The stinginess was the worst thing about my stepfather.
When buti Hoedjie returned from the bush, we didn’t have a big party because that was the time of what they called the potato boycott. The people were told not to buy potatoes, because the story did the rounds that a white man in the Transvaal, in some place they called Bethul or Bethal, where they plant a lot of potatoes, had killed a black boy and buried him in the potato field. The A.N.C. men used to come to the houses to see if we were cooking potatoes. If they saw potatoes in the cooking pots, they threw out all the food into the yard. It was all right to cook meat and other vegetables, but no potatoes. This trouble was the reason why we did not give a party for buti Hoedjie.
There was too much unrest in the location.
The baby was again a girl and nurse Bam helped me once more. I had the child christened Agnes and her Xhosa name was Thandi.
It was at this time that they came around the location to say that all the women must come to the Nyanga Hall in the bachelor quarters to have snaps taken and to get pass books. The new law had come which said that the papers must go and women must carry pass books.
But the pass books didn’t give the trouble, says Poppie, because everybody got them. The biggest thing was the extension, the permission to stay here or to work here. If you didn’t have the right to stay here, even if you had the book, then the book was no good to you. And even if you had the right, then you still had to go to the office after a time to change your pass, because the time they had given you ran out. And if you went to a new job and the previous white people had signed you off, it was back to the office to discharge the pass as well.
27
Old Makhulu who lived next door to us – makhulu means grandma – shared her house with a witchdoctor woman. The witchdoctor woman was quite old, but she still worked a lot. Many days I saw Bellville registered motor cars parked in front of her house, which meant that it was white people who had come to buy medicine to get pregnant, or to be helped in a court case, or to win at horseracing, but mostly it was to be cured of the sickness of their nerves.
Old Makhulu had the same clan name as my father, Mbele, and that’s why we felt as if we were family. Her house was a broken-down affair, boards and sheets of corrugated iron and sacking stuck together any old how. When the wind tore bits off, buti Hoedjie tried to mend it for her with wire and pincers. Buti Hoedjie stayed with us for long stretches of time, and when he became angry at buti Plank he left us for mama, when the stepfather got his goat, he came back to us.
Mosie and buti Hoedjie added a second room to our house and then they stayed with us permanently.
Of tata-ka-Bonsile’s brothers only one came to Cape Town, his name was Spannerboy. He had gone to look for his brother at Lamberts Bay and worked there until he was sent away to Cape Town, where he got a job on the boats. He also moved in with us. Witbooi never came to Cape Town, he was sent to Tulbagh and from there back to Herschel where he died.
Mosie went to night school in Nyanga and there he met Johnnie, whom we called Johnnie Drop-Eye because of his bleary eye. He came from Springbok. My father, he said, trekked through that part of the world with his sheep and his goats, from Bitterfontein to Klawer, and nowhere could he find a place to stay. Johnnie came to the Cape and here was no place for him either. Then Mosie said: Come and stay with me in the room I’ve built on to my little sister’s house.
When buti Plank came home from the sea he moved in with us too. Now I was completely happy. Until buti Plank and buti Hoedjie fell out with each other about the drink. The eldest had too much to say about the second eldest, he wanted to play the big boss. Then he would say: Old Hoedjie, you are drinking too much.
Then buti Hoedjie would answer: But you’re the big boss and you drink more than I do, buti.
One day Hoedjie came home from work: He’d bought a new hat and put it on his head, and had his wages in his coat pocket. Quite close to our house, while walking along a footpath in the bushes, he was attacked by skollies. And he told us: My little sister, I found myself up in the air, they had picked me up boots and all, and stole my hat and my money and my jacket. They wanted to pull down my trousers, but some of them said: Leave him, we know him, it’s bra Hoedjie. Then they let me go. Fortunately he wasn’t knifed. Bra is short for brother. And if they don’t feel like saying buti, the young ones in the location say bura.
Another time buti Hoedjie arrived home wearing only his underpants; they had stolen everything else, and Mosie had to give his brother some of his clothes because he had little of his own.
You’ll never possess anything because of the drink, buti, said Mosie.
I have finished with the drink, said Hoedjie. From this day on I’ve done with it. But he cheated us. When we thought he was at his job, he would sit drinking at the Jabulani hall. All day long. I make him food to take to work, then he sits drinking beer at the Jabulani till he’s dead drunk, and he comes home at nightfall, food and all. Some times he gave the food to the skollies.
One day .Plank saw him at the bus queue, looking this way then that way, slowly advancing when the queue moved, but so restless, peering this way, that way. And then he left his place and made for the Jabulani. Plank followed him. I am not fighting you, he told Hoedjie. But you’re getting up right now. With all this nonsense of yours I’ll be late for work. It was a Friday. But still buti Hoedjie cheated buti Plank. After Plank’s bus had left buti Hoedjie again abandoned the queue and returned to the Jabulani.
That night they sat waiting in Poppie’s house. She sent Mosie to tell mama that Hoedjie hadn’t returned from work. People get worried on Friday nights in the location when someone doesn’t come home. Perhaps he has been knifed, perhaps the skollies have attacked him, maybe the police. Every weekend brings its trouble. One weekend three corpses were picked up in their neighbourhood.
Mama has to know, Mosie, Poppie said.
Mama and Mosie went to the police station but couldn’t find him. Mosie took his money to phone all the hospitals but he wasn’t there either. At last they found him in Philippi’s police station. He’d lost his pass, his wages, everything he had. The man is robbed, Mosie said, cleaned out.
On Monday mama told Pieta: Stay out of school and take this money and go and pay Hoedjie’s fine.
And when he came home that afternoon, mama asked: Where’s your dompass? But he couldn’t say. Pieta, asked mama, did you ask the policemen where’s his dompass?
They said they don’t know, mama, said Pieta.
But that night one of the men who had been arrested with buti Hoedjie, a man who hadn’t been drunk but had been arrested because he carried a knife, came to tell Hoedjie the story. When they brought you in on Friday night, you were very drunk. The police asked you: What’s your name. Then you answered: What the hell is that to you? Then the policeman said: Take out your pass book that I can see your name. They beat up buti Hoedjie because he answered: Take your own dompass and shove it up your arse.
Black policemen were throwing their weight around with people those days. They took his pass book by force and tore it up, and the wages in the book they put in their pockets.
This is what the knifer came to tell us, mama told Poppie, but whether it is the truth, that I don’t know.
He went home with the fellow with the knife, and they got drunk together and it’s at his place that Hoedjie met this Muis woman of whom he got so fond.
My brothers gave us a lot of trouble with their drinking, says Poppie, but they were full of fun when they were drunk. Tata-ka-Bonsile liked their joking. He was a quiet man, but he was fond of his br
others-in-law and their light-hearted, fooling, joking ways.
It makes me feel better, Stone told Poppie. It helps me forget my stomach.
28
The work at the wood factory was not hard, but Stone’s health still worried him.
I go to work in the mornings, he told Poppie, and from twelve o’clock onwards the pain starts. It’s not a vomiting or a stomach-working, only the pain, like a hand pressing into my belly, something gnawing at my insides.
But then you must see a doctor, Poppie said.
The factory doctor gave him pills, signed him off work for a day, then two days, and then said: I’m tired of your complaints, your stomach has nothing wrong with it.
Tata-ka-Bonsile was a nervous man, says Poppie, he was nervous about his job and about me and the children, and about himself. Later on he became short of breath. In the afternoons when he came home he complained of feeling cold. Then I’d give him warm soup or warm food, as you would give someone who is ill, but he never felt like eating much. He was never a big eater, but he spoilt his health when he was staying with his clan people and I was working sleep-in.
Then I told him: The factory doctor is tired of you. We must go to a private doctor.
On a Saturday morning we went to a white doctor, a Dr Smit, in Lawrence Road in Athlone, and he took his time to examine him thoroughly, we were very satisfied with him, ja. He said: You have got T.B., but it is only a small spot, starting in the left lung.
The location people said: We told you, the people working at the wood factory all get T.B. But Poppie answered them: You are talking nonsense, my husband didn’t even work in the factory, he was toolboy for the electrician.
Dr Smit gave him a letter and took him off work completely. At the factory they gave him papers to sign to apply· for the disability grant. At first it was three pounds ten shillings a month, then later another pound was added. All the T.B. people were given the grant. It was the same as the old people’s pension.
Three times a week Stone went for treatment to the clinic, in a corrugated iron house near Elsies, where the nurse gave him injections. She came to Poppie’s house and said: You must all come to the clinic to be examined.
Poppie and her children took the bus to Philippi to be X-rayed. At first they were all right but when Nomvula, then a little girl of two years, got ill, the doctor said it’s T.B. too and she had to have the injections as well. When her father went to the clinic he took her along. She was very quiet and good with her father.
Poppie was working as a char with Mrs Stevens.
But in the afternoons when I got home, says Poppie, I saw that the place on the skin where the injection had been given, had formed a little knob and something watery was running out. I showed it to the nurse and she stopped the injections and only gave pills. And cough mixture and cod-liver oil, and for months on end the milkman came every day and brought us two pint bottles of milk free. We were given brown bread for free, every day I had to fetch a loaf at Mr Katz’s shop. He became angry when the bread heaped up and became stale because I didn’t have any big child to fetch it, and it was a long walk to his shop, especially on the days when I charred. Then they took away the bread. Every Wednesday I went to the clinic, and was given a card with which to buy seven and sixpence’s worth of groceries at the K.T.C. shop.
But Stone didn’t get well.
You’re doing wrong, tata-ka-Bonsile, said Poppie. The doctor told you to rest. Now you work around the house all day long.
He walked to the dunes with Bonsile. He cut Port Jackson branches and made palings to enclose the yard. He plaited the green twigs and made a pretty fence. It was not hard work, and Bonsile, who was five years old, helped him, but before long the sweat was streaming down his face, and his strength had left him.
If you don’t rest here at home, said Poppie, you’ll have to listen to the doctor and go to hospital.
This angered him. You want me to go away so that I can die and you can marry some other man. Nobody comes from the hospital alive.
But when his condition weakened, he knew there was no other way. One day he walked away to the clinic and when he returned, told Poppie: So, I have booked a bed in the hospital. You’ll like it very much to stay alone.
That’s good, said Poppie. I’m getting tired of being scolded at the clinic about your not going to hospital.
They also scolded her about the loaves of bread which she did not fetch at the shop.
We are trying to help you, said the white nurse. And is this the thanks we get?
If you don’t want us all to die, said the black woman next to Poppie to the nurse, then you are forced to help us. Because you pay us so little.
Those years the money was miserable.
29
Sunday afternoon buti Hoedjie arrived at Poppie’s place.
They were sitting on the sunny side of the house, enjoying the low autumn heat. But Stone had his jacket collar turned up and a coat thrown over his shoulders; the children were playing in the next-door yard and Poppie had her youngest at the breast. She was glad to see Hoedjie because he hadn’t been sleeping with them. Mamdungwana had told them that people had seen him hanging about this Muis woman all the time.
How is it you all sit like this? buti Hoedjie asked. Don’t you know about all the trouble in the location?
He sat down on a small wooden box. People are going to strike because of all this trouble with the passes and the permits when we visit Langa. And for a pound a day wages.
I heard about the meeting, said Stone, but I have no strength to go.
I don’t feel for this meeting, Poppie said. She’s not complaining. She has a pass and her ma has one, and each of her brothers. Mosie never runs into trouble; it is only buti Plank and buti Hoedjie who get into trouble when they are drunk because they lose their passes or haven’t the papers on them or don’t have them stamped in time. Twice last month she paid buti Plank’s fine to get him out of gaol.
He was very contrite afterwards. He wept and returned the money she had paid. I was drunk, my sisi, he told her. She then put the matter out of her mind.
Poppie took the child from the breast. Well, forget about this meeting, my buti. She cooked food and he shared their meal.
Little brother-in-law, buti Hoedjie said, I hear you’re going to hospital. It’s the will of God, Stone answered. I am booked in, and they will let me know when there is a bed available, ja. He was fond of talking Afrikaans to his brothers-in-law, he was now so proficient, he did not want to talk any other language with them.
Now it is God’s will, Poppie said, but he doesn’t talk about all my uphill time with him before he went to book himself in.
Stay with us tonight, buti, Poppie invited Hoedjie after they had eaten. With the location so disturbed it is better for you to stay off the streets.
Mama’s house was not far from where the meeting was being held.
I’ll go to mama’s place and see how they feel about it.
It wasn’t the question of whether you felt in sympathy with the strike or not, Poppie explains. A strike is like that. If you are inside a strike or outside, your face shows nothing. If you’re not on strike you are in danger, because people think you’re a spy.
The people marched to the police station the first day and brought their passes-some burnt them, others threw them on a pile. I stayed at home with the children and my sick husband.
They said the pass laws were too hard and the money too little. Those days the police would knock you up, even twelve o’clock at night and come into the house and demand: Iphi dompass? which means, Where is your pass? If they found somebody without a pass they locked him up. Or if you lived in Nyanga and you visited your people across the road in Langa and you had no permit for this visit, they’d stop you in the street and then it was into the cells at Philippi, just like that. That is why people went on strike, because the police were too hot with the people in the location.
Now if they think you are not with the
m in the strike, they burn your house.
Monday afternoon the man Major who was the driver where Mosie worked, knocked at Poppie’s door.
Has Wili gone to work? he asked. They called him Wili at work because of his name Wilson.
Yes, Poppie answered, he is not very serious about the strike.
Then you must make a plan so he can come home safely this afternoon, Major said, else he’s going to walk right into big trouble at the bus stop. The strikers are beating up people coming back from work by bus.
Poppie took money from the dresser and gave it to Major: Take the money for the bus fare, she said. Go find Mosie at his work. Tell him he must not get a bus.
Major took the money and went by train to Cape Town, from there he went to Mosie’s work place, but when he got there the foreman said: I let them go earlier this afternoon, because they’re restless. I saw Wili walk to the station.
But Major did not see him on the station and a man whom he knew, told him: I saw Wili get a train. Maybe you’ll find him at Langa station.
The trains were not as full as usual at going home time, people were quieter and watching each other as if they were afraid. At Langa station there were policemen wherever you looked. Major saw Mosie and, pressing through the crowd, he took him by the arm: We must get away from here, buti. We’re not of the Cape people, let’s keep ourselves outside of their trouble.
As they left the station they saw the permit house burning, the house where you went for a permit if you wanted to go from Langa to Nyanga. First the black smoke and then the red flames and the noise of the wood crackling and the shouting. The people around them gave way for fright. Near them the police wanted to go this way, then that, just like dogs not knowing which to bite.
Major said: We can’t go this Langa way to Nyanga. Nor the other way round. They heard the sounds of shots fired by the police; in the people around there was a movement, as if it had grown out of the earth.
