"The gangs, they set up at either end of the street, you know. They are just boys, some no more than ten years old. Some of the boys come into your store and buy a pop. Then they throw the bottles around to create their diversion and begin to empty the shelves. And you just stay quiet if you don't want to be necklaced."
"Yes, but you weren't in the store when that happened," said Tom.
Gilly began to laugh. "No, I was not in there the first two times it happened."
"Well, he was in there the third time," said Tom to me, "and he chased them down the street with his pistol."
"Oh, ho-ho-ho-ho," Gilly laughed and rocked back in his chair as though the comrades were the best joke in the world. "When I was young, ho-ho-ho-ho, there were guns everywhere in the townships. And these little fellows, all they've got are stones."
"You know what we have to do," said Tom when Gilly'd left, "we have to get Gilly to come out to our house for dinner and bring his wife and some of his friends. It would be interesting for you to talk to them."
But the riots in Soweto kept anyone from getting in or out after dark and, even in the daytime, there were too many barricades and stonings to bring the women along. So Gilly and three of his black friends, young men in their twenties, came to an afternoon braai, a barbecue, at Tom and Sally's house. A Christmas-week strike had begun in Soweto that day and Gilly, Bob, Carswell and Nick arrived in a rusted Datsun, although Gilly owns a BMW.
We all sat on the patio for a stiff twenty minutes while the Millss maid peeked around the doorpost with an expression of intrigued disapproval. But then a few beers were had and the steaks and the boerewors sausages began to spatter on the grill, and one more of the hundred thousand endless discussions of South Africa's "situation" began.
The strange thing is that when I look in my notes now, if I cover the names, I can barely tell who said what or if the speaker was black or white. Carswell, Bob (and me, I guess) favored one man, one vote. Gilly, Nick, Tom and Sally felt Tom's idea about property qualification had merit. There was a general denunciation of the Group Areas Act, which dictates where what race can live, and of U. S. sanctions, too. "Politics is dirty," said Carswell and there was unanimous disparagement of President Botha and Winnie Mandela. Everyone agreed moderates would come to the fore if they just had a chance. Bob described, with considerable anger, how the riots and strikes in Soweto were controlled by anonymous pamphlets and unsigned ads in the Daily Sowetoen. He blamed outside agitators, just like the Reagan White House does. "They call you up in the night," said Carswell, "and ask what size tire would fit you."
"We need more black police and black army forces," said Nick. Nick, Bob and Carswell had small children and were furious about the black school boycott. They said the ANC leaders were pushing a public-school strike while the leaders own children were being educated in private schools. They feared, they said, "the intentional creation of a black underclass." Of course, there's one of those already but, anyway, everyone praised capitalism for a while and Bob made a poetic appeal for whites to stay in South Africa, although perhaps he was just being polite in response to the hospitality.
Then Nick said something that shocked me, and that I could see suprised Tom and Sally. "I'm angry that South Africa is singled out," he said. "Why should Senator Kennedy come here and tell us our troubles? We're not the only country in the world where bad things happen."
"I have just this one fear," said Carswell. "Attack from the outside-South Africa has no friends."
After the meal Gilly waxed historical and told a horrifying story about seeing three men crucified by the Spoilers gang in Alexandra in the 1940s. "One man was still alive, nailed up to this post. He was screaming but his mouth was dry and no sound came out. I will never forget it."
"What are you guys going to do?" I asked Nick, Bob and Carswell. "How are you going to get rid of apartheid?"
"Such meetings as this are valuable," said Carswell, as though something had been accomplished that afternoon.
"That was a real eye-opener," said Tom when Gilly and his friends had left.
"Incredibly interesting," said Sally. "We've got to do that again."
And it dawned on me-they'd never had black people as guests in their house before.
"We've seen Gilly and his wife at office parties," said Sally. "And there are black and Indian students at the kids' schools. We've seen the parents at school functions."
We were going to the Fletchers house that night for dinner. "Let's not say anything about this," said Tom. "I'm not sure how Bill and Margaret would feel about it. They're a little old-fashioned about some things."
"Yes," said Sally.
But at one that morning when we were all good and drunk and passing around the Afrikaner Witzend brandy, Tom couldn't resist. "You'll never guess what we did this afternoon," he said to Bill and Margaret. "You know my client Gilly, who owns all the stores? Well, we had him and some of his young friends out to a braai. They had some extraordinary things to say. It was a real eyeopener."
"Incredible," said Bill. "What a great idea. We ought to do that, Margaret. With some of my subcontractors. That's a great idea."
"We really should," said Margaret.
I had the most peculiar feeling in my woozy haze. I was present at the birth of a fundamental, epochal realization of human fellowship. But I was sure the birth was coming too late to save the baby.
I'd walked Gilly out to the Datsun when he was leaving Tom's house. And he took me by the arm and said, "Apartheid is the evil thing. Apartheid must just stop. If those laws are removed, no more policemen will be needed." He glanced toward Tom and Sally. "They all know it's wrong."
I said, "They don't seem to know how to get rid of it."
"They know," said Gilly. "They just don't want to give up the advantage they have on the black man."
"Is it too late?" I said.
"What man does man can fix."
Maybe. On my last day in South Africa I drove through Soweto-probably not a good idea for a person as putty-colored as myself in a shiny red rent-a-car. Also, it was illegal. No white person is allowed to go there without government permission. Even white police and soldiers don't enter Soweto unless the "situation" gets so out of hand they think they have no choice. But I'd been in South Africa for a month and had not met one white person who'd been there. It's just outside Jo-burg, a huge adjunct taking up the whole southwestern quadrant of the city's outskirts. But I hadn't talked to any white person who'd ever even seen Soweto.
And then I couldn't find the place. A city of two million people and when I looked at my rental car map it wasn't there. I drove around the N-1 beltway and there were no signs, no exits marked Soweto. I got off in the southwest and headed in what I thought must be the right direction. I took a couple of gravel roads, navigating by the sun. Finally I saw a Soweto sign, the size that might say "PICNIC AREA 1 MILE." And on the other side of a hill was Soweto, as big as the San Fernando Valley, a vast expanse of little homes.
It was not such a terrible-looking place, by Third World standards. It was littered and scruffy and crowded, but most of the houses looked like what you'd see on an American Indian reservation. Each modest dwelling was set on a small plot of land. There was electricity and no raw sewage stink.
Soweto was almost rich as riches are measured in Africa. And there was plenty of economic power here for political power to grow out of it if that were the way things worked in South Africa. But it wouldn't have mattered if each of those houses had been Graceland. People would be just as oppressed. South Africa is one of the few places I've ever been where things are not a matter of dollars and cents.
I locked my car doors, adjusted my necktie and drove through the place in a sweat. Soweto is like discovering arithmetic. It is an epiphany about what "83 percent of the population" means. Until then I hadn't seen the blacks in South Africa, not really, not even in the overpopulated homelands. Now they pressed in on every side in the slow jam of bicycles, trucks and foot traf
fic. I hoped I had something in my wallet, some leftover receipt from a United Negro College Fund donation or some damn thing to save my pink ass when the comrades got to me. Everyone was staring in my windows. Everyone in the crowd was looking at my pale, stupid face.
And then I saw that they were smiling. And here and there was a happy wave. There was laughter from the little kids. I drove through Soweto for nearly an hour without so much as a bad look tossed in my direction, let alone rocks or firebombs.
Maybe I'd caught them by surprise and they didn't know what to make of me. Maybe they thought I was so crazy to be there that it was funny. I didn't know.
Months after I got back I was giving a lecture on journalism at some little college in the middle of Pennsylvania and I told the students about driving through Soweto. One of them came up to the lectern afterward. She was from Soweto, an exchange student. "Don't you know why the people were smiling and waving at you?" she said. "They thought you were great."
"But why?"
"It's illegal for you to be there. How did you ever get in?"
"I don't know. I -was lost. I came in through some back roads."
"The government isn't letting anyone in there and when people saw you, that you had managed to get in some way. . . . They figured you must be somebody good, an organizer, or from some international group, that you would even be there."
"Even though I was white?"
"Because you were white."
There is some hope for South Africa, for the souls of the people there anyway. I mean, personally, if I'd lived my forty years in Soweto and I saw some unprotected honky cruising down my street on a Saturday afternoon, I would have opened that car like an oyster and deep-fat fried me on the spot.
Through Darkest America:
Epcot Center
MAY 1983
At Epcot Center the Disney corporation has focused its attention on two things greatly in need of Disneyfication: the tedious future and the annoying whole wide world.
Once the future promised weekend tours of Jupiter, 200-mph Pontiacs shaped like tropical fish and happy robots making every kid's bed. The world beyond our shores was a wonderland of oddball plants and animals, peopled by folks in interesting colors who lived in Taj Mahals and trees. Today the future is a quagmire of micro-chips. They'll connect your television to somebody's typewriter, and, if you can't score a million at Donkey Kong, you'll be out of work. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has become a jumble of high-rises, from which pour mobs of college students headed for our embassies with kindling and Bics.
Mickey, Donald, Goofy to the rescue! Give us hope! Give us joy! Give us funny mouse ears, anyway, to wear while we man the ramparts of civilization.
Alas, it's not to be. Walt is dead. And, after a couple of hours at Epcot, you'll wish you were, too.
Epcot Center is one element in the vast central Florida complex where Disney is attempting to remedy America's chronic leisure surplus. The whole is twice as large as Manhattan Island. Epcot itself is almost the size of Central Park.
Five big American corporations sponsor pavilions in the "Future World" half of Epcot Center. I was expecting wonders. I'm a fan of big American corporations. At least, I used to be. I thought they embodied that true basis of the American character: utopian greed. Their vision of the future always combined mercantile rapacity with such courageous lack of common sense-"Hey, Dad, can I have the keys to the auto-gyro?" I guess I'm out of date.
Instead of miracles, each pavilion has a mechanical ride that whisks you through darkened scenes full of robots which have even less personality than human actors. Every ride seems to begin with cavemen and end in a video game where a recorded voice asks you to face the challenges of tomorrow. I thought that's what we're paying these corporations to do. In between the automat Neanderthals and the tepid splatter of strobe effects is the briefest, most bowdlerized, most fact-free possible exposition of something that has something to do with something the corporation vends. It's noneducation in the guise of un-entertainment, and there's not even a good sales pitch to excuse it.
The Bell System's "Spaceship Earth" is, I suppose, the best of the lot. You're trundled around inside the immense whiffle ball that's Epcot's trademark and exposed to tableux morts showing glimpses of communications technology from mud to the modern day. The last scene is a nightmarish vault filled with blasting, flashing television screens. I thought this brought the point home nicely that it doesn't matter how elaborate a communications system is when there's nothing to communicate.
General Motors has something called "The World of Motion" that should properly be titled "Ride the Wild Ironies." In the first place, they propel you through their robot show in a form of mass rail transit. And the tram cars are all too much like current GM automobiles-small, slow and made out of plastic. Also, the ride keeps coming to a halt, caught in some mid-exhibit traffic jam. Furthermore, General Motors tries to make its history of transporta tion comic at a moment when the U.S. auto industry is just not a laughing matter.
It's interesting to see what the members of a corporate board can agree upon as funny. At GM, funny is round, puffy faces and great big behinds-though other out-sized body parts will do. We're shown a cave family with very swollen feet. (They had to walk, you see.) And there's a group of caravan travelers being overcharged by a fellow with a huge hooked nose. I hope no one thinks this is anti-Semitic, not after all the trouble GM went to making 15 percent of their robots black whether black people belong in the scenes or not. (No, there aren't any out-sized male parts visible.)
Exxon's "Universe of Energy" tends to the peculiar rather than the humorous. There are no markings on the entrance doors. You mill around outside the Exxon monolith until they agree to let you in. Then you're made to stand in a large, dim hall while an incomprehensible film montage about wind and sun and rain and strip mines is shown on a wall. Another such montage is endured inside a theater. When it ends, the blocks of theater seats start moving around in a most disconcerting way. After two or three minutes of mechanical confusion, the seats locomote through a short tunnel filled with clock-work dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are depicted without accuracy and much too close to your face.
One of the few real novelties at Epcot is the use of smell to aggravate illusions. Of course, no one knows what dinosaurs smelled like, but Exxon has decided they smelled bad.
At the other end of Dino Ditch the seats rearrange themselves and there's a final, very addled message about facing challengehood tomorrow-wise. I dozed off during this, but the import seems to be that dinosaurs don't have anything to do with energy policy and neither do you.
If you have the right attitude, these exhibits are swell. They're Tilt-O-Whirls for intellectuals. They excite all kinds of thrilling mental terror about the banality of American thought, electrify you with horror at the myopia of corporate perspective, and create marvelous suspense as you consider what's in store for our society now that we've lost not only our visionary capacities but even our simple avarice. I mean, why can't you buy a Mickey Mouse phone in the Bell pavilion?
Maintaining the right attitude is a chore, however, and one I abandoned after the intensely stupid Kodak "Journey Into the Imagination." Epcot Center is a family attraction, so I didn't expect to see the things that occupy my own imagination. Still, Kodak could have done better than this jumble of redundant Jules Verne machine parts blowing colored bubbles through chemistry-set tubing and dangling crude unicorn cutouts from the walls. The nation that produced Mormon theology, Edgar Allan Poe and the Reagan Administration's economic policy deserves more.
There is supposed to be an interesting 3-D movie somewhere at Kodak, but I was desperate to get out of the place. It was twenty degrees hotter inside than it was in the midday sun. Like the rest of the buildings in Future World, the Kodak pavilion's sleek functionalism is for strictly decorative purposes. Even a company with as little imagination as Kodak should know better than to have a greenhouse roof in Florida.
The re
maining pavilion is sponsored by Kraft. It's called "The Land," and I can't tell you what goes on in there. I stepped inside and didn't see anything made from an organic substance. This included their food. I didn't go on the ride for fear they'd make me eat some of it.
All these exhibits seem more involved with literal than figurative tomorrows. They're as up-to-date as next Monday. Visiting Future World is like opening a Chinese fortune cookie to read, "Soon you'll be finished with dinner."
The other half of Epcot Center is called "World Showcase," and it consists of nine national pavilions arranged around a phony lake. An objective look at the world as presented here results in these conclusions: Earth is made of cement painted to look like different parts of Los Angeles, and its salient feature is overpriced gift shops.
"Mexico's" gift shop is housed in a vividly bogus Mayan temple. The sales floor is supposed to represent a Mexican marketplace. Seeing a Mexican marketplace portrayed as clean, quiet, safe and expensive is, somehow, as alarming as seeing a pyramid of human skulls in downtown Kansas City.
A clean, quiet, safe and expensive "Germany" is, on the other hand, soporiferously convincing. For a moment I thought I was in Germany. I left as quickly as I could.
"Italy" has so little to do with things Italian that I wonder if maybe this isn't some kind of revolving exhibit that, on other days of the week, is labeled "Belgium," "Seattle" and "Sydney, Australia."
The only interesting pavilion is mainland China's. They used some real wood and real ceramics in their reproduction of an ancient Peking temple. And they have a pretty movie about China's big, weird landscape. Political points are deftly made-"How wonderful it must have been when everyone could first enter the Forbidden City." But I'm not sure I want to live in a world where Exxon needs to take lessons from the Chicom hordes who murdered our boys at the Yalu. Also, their movie is shown in 360 degrees, which assumes we white devils have an extra set of eyes on the back of our ears.
Holidays in Hell: Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks What's Funny About This? Page 20
