I was feeling battered, first by the Indian, then that bastard at the restaurant, now this. How much crap was I supposed to take? I wanted to see, at first hand, the conditions under which my fellow Blacks lived, but why should they think they had a right to cram it down my throat?
“I wouldn’t wish to live here,” I replied. Leaving it at that.
“How about a drink?” he asked, not waiting for my response, but reaching into a cupboard for two china mugs and a tin of powdered coffee. He poured water from a container into a tin kettle, then set to pumping away at the Primus stove, pricking at the jet from time to time and cursing under his breath as it defied his efforts.
“Not to worry,” I said, actually relieved that the little stove was defiant. After all he’d said I wasn’t too anxious to risk the water, even though it would of course be boiled. Wondering if he had to go through this same exercise early every morning to have hot water for shaving. What happened in the winter? Apart from the bare necessities there was nothing. No curtains, no posters, no pictures.
The failure of the coffee project seemed to cause us both some embarrassment, but he saved the situation by inviting me to take a walk around the neighborhood. Outside the night was star-studded and pleasantly warm, the night shadows smudging the outlines of bush, tree, and house, giving the whole place a romantic softness. No street lamp in this part of town, only the candleshine from open doorways and the starlight from above.
“It’s okay if we walk around here together at night,” he told me, “but any one of us alone would be asking for trouble. You call it mugging in the United States. Bands of young boys roam the streets at night, preying on men who’ve been drinking in the local beer gardens or in the shebeens. Beat them up and rob them. Sometimes kill them. Know how they do it? They push a piece of sharpened wire, something like a short knitting needle, into the neck at the base of the skull. Paralyzes those who survive. Many of the paraplegics in the local hospital are victims of the Tsotsis.”
“Why do you call them that? What does it mean?”
“Not too sure. Something to do with the Zoot Suit gangs of the United States, I’ve heard. Anyway, so the story goes. Most of them are boys without parents or even relatives. School dropouts. Or maybe they couldn’t get into school. Couldn’t afford the fees, or clothes, or books. So they don’t go. After all, schooling is compulsory only for Whites. Optional for Blacks.”
We walked around, listening to the night sounds, people talking to each other, snatches of conversation floating out from the houses, all in an African dialect. Music. Edmundo Ros swinging his inimitable way through a rumba rebroadcast from London. The sudden scream of a night bird in the near distance. We could have been light years away from the neat, trim suburbs designated “White.” In order to reach this place from my hotel the route had been through suburb after suburb of affluence and comfort. My companion and hundreds of thousands like him made the same trip to and fro each day, seeing the affluence, envying the comfort. Inevitably hating.
“I think I should be heading back to town.” I said.
“Had enough?”
I told him it wasn’t that. I was anxious about being stopped by the police. If that happened and they found out that I was a visitor they’d also discover that I had no permit to be in Soweto.
“Nobody’s going to stop us. Not unless there’s a police raid to find people illegally living here.”
“Do you know when a raid is likely to happen?”
“No.”
“Then I’d better get back.”
Hoping he’d see the point and agree. Realizing, belatedly, that I was completely dependent on him now for leaving that place. There were no telephone booths to be seen, no taxi stands, no bus stops. If there were any such places, only he knew where they were.
Now and then a car passed us, always hurrying. No pedestrians. Perhaps the Tsotsis keep nighttime walking to a minimum. Abruptly he turned and we retraced our steps to his house where we got into his car and headed out of Soweto.
“The trick is not to have a breakdown at night,” he said. “No help for the black motorist, not even from the police. If you have a breakdown and a policeman approaches you, the first thing he asks is not what’s wrong with the car, no, he wants to see your pass.”
We made it without incident to my hotel where he left me and hurried off home. I wished him a safe journey, asking myself if the trips, his and mine, were worth the risk and anxiety. I could so easily have jeopardized the rest of my stay. I promised myself I’d not do it again.
I sat and thought over the events of the day which had been painful and very irritating. Here I was a black stranger in this country and it was becoming more and more difficult to meet and consort with Blacks without being subject to suspicious inquiry. Inside me, I felt deep identification with them in their unhappy state. Everything I’d seen and heard since entering the country merely strengthened that feeling, because I knew that the only thing which saved me from the same fate was the fact that I was a national of another sovereign state. I wouldn’t want to live as they lived, but neither did they. I was prepared to be with them whenever they wished, to learn from them, about them. I didn’t wait for them to seek me out. I sought them. But evidently that was not enough. Okay, so they thought I’d be used by their Government. I believed them to be wrong. So why couldn’t they give me the benefit of the doubt? I was already in the country. If I looked and listened and heard and then went off and wrote laudatory pieces in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, then they could call me traitor.
White journalists I’d met in London and New York had given me the impression that they’d been able to talk with Blacks in South Africa without much difficulty. If that were true why were these Blacks making things so difficult for me? So different from my visits to other parts of Africa, where I’d been made to feel welcome. Immediately. My black skin was my ticket to enter. Here, it was the reverse; my very blackness was the barrier. Well, perhaps I should be patient. After all, the conditions I’d already seen were worse than I’d dreamed possible and those very conditions might be the reasons for my black friends’ suspicions and reservations.
The hotel’s public relations officer telephoned and said she hoped that all was well with me.
“If there’s any way in which I can be of help to you, please don’t hesitate to ask,” she said.
“Right now, all I ask of life is a hot bath, a cold drink and a funny movie,” I replied, lightheartedly.
“The bath and drink are no problem,” she told me, “but the movie is another matter. If you’re really keen to go to the bijou, though, and decide what you want to see, I could telephone the management and I’m sure it could be arranged.”
“Why telephone? I don’t understand.”
“I think I’d better come up to your suite and explain,” she said. A few minutes later, she arrived, blonde and well-groomed, with that quiet confidence which seems to be the stock-in-trade of the public relations fraternity.
Seated, she said, “I think I must explain the bijou situation here in South Africa. Most cinemas are operated for Whites only. We call them bijous here. There are a few for Coloreds and Blacks in their own areas. Indians have their own. In any case, those in Johannesburg are for Whites only. As an important visitor to our country you are allowed, shall we say, special status. I feel sure that if you decide on the film you want to see, I can telephone the management and there will be no difficulty.”
“You mean I couldn’t just go to the box office and buy a ticket?”
“Not unless they’re expecting you. It’s the law, I’m afraid.” It suddenly struck me that in this country I could not, for an hour or two, lose myself in the temporary anonymity of a darkened cinema the way I’d done in every other country in which I’d lived or visited. It had been a favorite way of slipping away from pressing reality, a painless, absorbing way of insuring
the quick passage of time. A thought occurred to me.
“What happened when the film To Sir, with Love was shown here?”
“Same thing.”
“No Blacks allowed to see the black actor?”
“Not here in Johannesburg. Blacks and Whites are prohibited by law from congregating in the same place. Anyway, they wouldn’t have missed much, because the film was so badly censored it was difficult to follow the sequence of events. Anything between the black teacher and the white one, Gillian, was cut out. I know, because I saw it first at the bijou and then I saw the whole movie at a private showing in a friend’s house. It’s possible to rent an uncut film from one of the rental agencies. Anybody can rent them, Black or White, as long as they have the money.”
“So if I wanted to see a movie, I’d have to pay for my ticket then beg permission to get in, right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that. We at this hotel would do whatever we could to avoid any embarrassment to you.”
I thanked her and, soon after, she left. I had no quarrel with her. I thought of walking off my irritation in the streets, but then remembered my near encounter with the policeman. The only alternative was a bath, a cold beer, and settling down with pencil and paper to review the days already passed in this beautiful city, this very uncomfortable society.
Some days later, early in the morning, a group of black welfare officers came to the hotel asking to see me. I invited them up to my room, wondering how the word of my presence had got around.
There were five of them, two women and three men, all of them employed to service one or other area of welfare for Blacks. They complained of the inadequacies of the service and reminded me that I had been involved in nearly similar situations as recorded in my book Paid Servant, which they had read. They could not begin to cope with even a tiny part of the problems people brought to them, and they wondered if I could offer them any advice. Listening, I learned that ten of them were expected to service Soweto and Alexandra, a total population of well over a million people. Their office was in white Johannesburg, and both the limited programs undertaken and the minimal funds available were subject to white control. The biggest problem was the many dislocated, neglected children who roamed the streets of the townships living on what they could beg or steal, homeless, without parents or relatives. According to the supervising authorities these children were not legally of the townships and therefore did not qualify for any official assistance. They could not go to school even if they wanted to because a new law required all legitimate parent-residents to have a pink school card for their child. Without it no child was accepted as a pupil.
White children, if neglected or abandoned, are cared for at Government expense. They would in no circumstances be allowed to wander about like homeless dogs eating garbage. I told them that I had seen an elderly white woman throwing chunks of bread to the pigeons and how, as soon as she’d wandered away, the children drove the pigeons off and collected the bread, eating it hungrily. Oddly I saw none of them begging.
The white welfare officers were the bosses and called the tune. Colored officers dealt with colored clients, Asian officers with Asian clients, black officers with Blacks. Levels of payment differed for each officer group. It became apparent that they were their own most needy clients, their own welfare their most pressing priority.
We talked for most of the morning, taking a short break for coffee which I ordered. There was something a little bizarre about us. In the park outside were living reminders of the urgency of their work, yet they sounded so much like welfare workers I’ve known in England, France, and the United States. The same pompous preoccupation with the jargon of their profession, the same insistence on separating themselves in every way from their “clients.” They emphasized that they were trained and qualified as sociologists, forgetting their earlier complaint that Blacks are denied access to anything more than the median levels of qualification.
From time to time, the door to my suite would be opened and one of the floor supervisors, white, would peer at us from the vestibule and quickly retreat with a “Sorry, just checking to see that everything’s okay.” I assumed that it was just the normal hotel practice. It has happened to me in many parts of the world. My visitors, however, felt quite differently. They believed that we were being watched and that the interruptions would continue as long as they remained with me.
“They think we’re plotting something up here,” one of the women said.
“Blacks talking together are always supposed to be plotting. To kill them or steal from them. That’s why that one comes in without knocking.”
“What’s surprising about that?” from another. “We’re watched, and I’m sure our American friend is being watched. Wouldn’t surprise me if these rooms are bugged.” Suddenly getting up to peer among the artificial plants, behind the sofas, under the tables. Everywhere.
“Why worry?” I asked, smiling. “We’ve not been plotting, so who cares if someone’s listening to us? Surely it should come as no surprise to anyone to hear that black children are homeless and starving.”
“Survival, friend, survival. Mustn’t make anything too easy for them. You probably think we’ve been reading too many spy novels. In this place you say something out of line and they have you hanging, like a fish. You’re lucky you can afford to be amused at us.”
“I’m not amused at you.” Christ, would I never escape having to defend myself.
“Stay here six months, or three months, and you’ll understand what we’re talking about.”
On this subdued note, they left me.
The meeting with the Bantu Council had been arranged for eight o’clock that evening in the home of one of the members. I would have preferred to meet them in the Council building where I could see them against their working background but naturally I was obliged to follow their arrangements.
One of them called for me promptly at seven o’clock. On the way to Soweto, I told him of my earlier visit with the white guide and the old man’s outburst which had led to this meeting. He seemed preoccupied, glancing in the rear-view mirror more often than I thought necessary, and I was surprised when he suddenly asked, “Is anyone following you?”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. “Why?” I asked.
“Just trying to make sure,” he replied, and said no more about it. On arrival at his home, his wife greeted us with the news that two members of the Security Police, one black and one white, had been there asking about me and the meeting, claiming that they wanted to make sure I would be quite safe. She replied that I would be under their roof, as safe as they were, as protected as they were, if any protection was necessary. They replied that it was their duty to prevent an international incident and merely wanted assurance that all would be well.
“I gave them short shrift,” she said, smiling.
This was my first experience of the Security Police actually monitoring my movements. It was no longer a joke, an offshoot of my friend’s paranoia, but undeniable proof of the Big Brother interest in my movements. My hosts seemed to take it all in stride. They told me that police spying was merely another fact of daily life; it pervaded every area of living to the point where no one fully trusted his neighbor or associates or friends. This was equally true of the Council: although they were all black, each one was afraid that another might report something said or done in the hope of receiving some minuscule concession from the Security Police.
“That way they keep us distrustful of each other, suspicious, so we’re unwilling to come together in any real way to help each other. If I have a new idea, I don’t know where to start. I can discuss it with my wife, but who else? Sometimes people come to me with ideas. I’ve got to listen very carefully. If their ideas have the slightest hint of opposition to Government policy, my first reaction is that they’re trying to trap me. Oh, yes, that’s part of the technique. They come to
you with an idea and the next thing you know they claim it was your idea in the first place and you have the Security Police on your back. All the time the police hold over your head the threat of sending you off to one of the Homelands. They could come here tomorrow and claim I’d been instigating something and deport me out of here. They’d tell me to remove my house from the Government’s land. How do I go about picking up a house like this? They’ve got us Blacks in a vise. As a result we don’t trust each other. We talk, sure, we talk, but we watch what we say. So, now you know. We’ll meet here tonight with you and we’ll tell you some things you could hear from anyone else. That’s safe. But wait till you ask us questions that require us to express our deep feelings, questions that get to the bone. Then see what happens. We begin to look at each other. My friend, the Whites have got us so that each one of us has become the other’s policeman.”
“Then this exercise tonight is likely to be a waste of time,” I suggested.
“Not altogether. Wait and see for yourself.” But I was right.
By eight o’clock no one else had arrived. At eight thirty-five one showed up bringing his wife and a friend as if it were a party. Ten minutes later another arrived, with his wife and a local schoolmaster. No sign of the aggressive little councillor whose challenge to me had precipitated the whole thing. I asked my host about him and learned that he had been informed of the meeting and had promised to attend. By nine fifteen, he had still not come and someone left to fetch him but soon came back saying that he was not at home.
“After his little performance at the Council Office in front of the white woman guide, someone’s had a word with him, I suppose,” one of the men suggested.
I was surprised to learn that everyone knew of the incident, insignificant though it had seemed to me.
Honorary White Page 9
