Honorary White

by E. R. Braithwaite

  Three young men showed up, none of them councillors, one of them a newsman working for a city newspaper. Conversation settled on the safe topic of the schools. The schoolmaster was praised on all sides for the wonderful job he was doing, even though it emerged that the children’s big successes were in their competitive singing, rather than in their academic work. Of the six to seven hours of the school day, at least two hours were spent rehearsing songs, mostly European songs.

  Discreet questioning disclosed that the schools in Soweto are poorly equipped, the teachers poorly trained, the pupils ill-­prepared to compete in the harshly competitive society; and here were these black men congratulating each other. When I probed further on the schools, on teacher and pupil performance, they readily resorted to a lengthy litany of woes, all of which were blamed on the Government and so outside their control.

  I was soon bored with it all. I had been led to believe that they were ready and able to talk freely with me about their community, but all that had taken place were moans, evasions, and backslapping. What the hell had they to be proud of? The few schools they had were overcrowded, understaffed, and ill-equipped. Large numbers of children were roaming the streets instead of being in school, and the devilish “pink card” system kept it so. More and more of these children were pressured into Tsotsi gangs, and these men, each secure in his own circumscribed job, did nothing to change the situation.

  I stood up to leave, just as the hostess brought a tray of drinks on which the other guests avidly fell as if that were the real reason for the gathering. If real change would come to places like Soweto, it would not be through the efforts of men such as these, I realized.

  On the way to my hotel, my host and I said little, each wrapped in his own assessment of the abortive meeting. Now and then he slowed down to allow another car to pass us, and I realized he was still afraid that I was being followed. Or perhaps he was concerned for himself. So easily one could be caught in the grip of paranoia.

  Lying on my bed, reviewing the day’s events, I was disturbed by the non-appearance of the little Soweto councillor. I had been told that he knew I would be there to see him. After his spirited effort in front of my white guide, he would want to be there, as face-saving is very important among people. I wondered if she had complained to her superiors about his outburst and a decision had been made to silence him, at least for the duration of my stay. With all that I heard about the police and their tactics, he had invited a pack of trouble for himself. But perhaps it was worth it, to him. Perhaps he had reviewed his life and had seized the opportunity to make a gesture, to himself. In the prevailing circumstances, that small gesture assumed heroic proportions. No other Black had said or done as much. Not publicly. Not in the presence of a member of white officialdom.

  Chapter

  Six

  THE NEXT DAY WAS the day of the promised lunch at the Afrikaner businessmen’s club arranged by the banker I had met at Helen Suzman’s. On the way there he explained the growth and development of the white community.

  A man eminently knowledgeable about money, its power and influence, he spoke easily of his plans for the future. He spoke of the club to which we were going, its founding and the type of people who were its members. He warned that I might find them inflexible in their social attitudes, but hoped I’d be patient and remember that they were the products of a grim period in South Africa’s history when men and women needed to fight for the land on which to settle and establish communities. For my benefit, he recounted the Afrikaner version of those wars of conquest, stressing the courage and fortitude of the voortrekkers and their womenfolk. He spoke of the bloody conflicts in which Afrikaners of earlier generations had frequently been involved and made it seem that they had invariably been on the defensive against a persistent, devious, and intractable enemy. Memory dies hard and I got the impression that Afrikaner hatred of Blacks is deliberately kept alive today, primarily for tactical political purposes. I reminded him that the wars of which he spoke were several generations old. Since then the whole world had been torn by wars far graver than those the voortrekkers fought and yet had shown a willingness to rise above the hates and fears which had given rise to those crises. What was there so special about South Africa that it needed to “feed fat its ancient grudge”?

  It is both distressing and fascinating to hear people defend their contempt and hatred of Blacks, especially to me, a man as black or blacker than their enemy. I asked him if he and his kind had no concern for the inevitable bloody results if they persisted in their despotic pressure of the Blacks.

  At this, his tune changed. He denied contempt, citing his own friendly relationship with the Blacks he employed on his farm.

  “I’m willing to admit that changes must come,” he said. “They will come. But we must not expect them overnight. We can’t have revolution here. Evolution yes, but not revolution.” The words flowing so easily from him, cushioned in comfort as he was by the blood, sweat, and toil of the Blacks whom he despised. He could talk of evolution, secure behind the vast stockpiles of armaments and the military manpower deployed strategically all over the country—I pulled myself up short. I was on my way to hear from him and others like him, so the thing to do was wait and listen to them.

  The Clubhouse was much as I expected, an attractive red-brick building set against a pleasant background of carefully nurtured trees and trimmed lawns and flower beds. Beginning at the doorway, uniformed servants everywhere, all black, ready to dart off at the master’s bidding, all eyeing me with surprise and speculation, the first black person ever to set foot in that building in other than a menial capacity.

  Settled in the well-appointed lounge with my host to await the other guests, I drank a glass of sherry with him, amused that we were in fact breaking the law which forbade Blacks and Whites to drink alcoholic beverages together. Unable to keep the thought to myself, I shared it with him.

  “Let’s put it this way,” he told me. “You’re an overseas visitor, a world famous author, VIP. During your stay in South Africa you have the honorary status of a white man.”

  That spoiled it for me, my mood of friendly ease evaporating completely, giving way to a rage which I fought to control. I put my glass down and looked at him, hating the arrogance which led him to assume that he, they, could change the color of my skin to suit their whim. No, not change it. Just overlook it, ignore it to the point where it did not exist for them and they could superimpose their choice upon it. But no, just looking at them convinced me that my blackness was there before them, large and unavoidable; it was plain from the way they behaved when we were introduced—the hurried pleased-to-meet-you, the words rushed out to belie their meaning; the quick retreat from my deliberately firm handshake.

  I had half expected to meet a group of highly intelligent, urbane men, as conversant with world affairs as they were knowledgeable about their particular interests, articulate and arrogantly relaxed in the assurance of their power and prestige. Instead, I found myself in a group of rather ordinary people, most of them painfully hesitant on matters outside their parochial concerns and generally uncomfortable in the unfamiliar company of a black man who did not treat them as his betters.

  Two of them, an elderly economist and a physicist, seemed more relaxed than the rest, and keen to discuss South Africa’s international image, even though they took a lofty view of the criticism directed at her. They argued that the continuing international economic crises were working to South Africa’s advantage, and would eventually have the effect of forcing some accommodation to her domestic policies. In support of this, they pointed to their country’s considerable gold reserves, the rapid rise in the price of gold, and the new political leverage which, they claimed, South Africa could now exercise.

  “In this world, money talks,” the economist said, “and the loudest, most persuasive voice is that of gold. Even some African countries which publicly criticize us because of our dom
estic policies are willing to make private economic agreements with us. Out of such agreements political accommodations are born.”

  So we drank and talked, watched covertly by the black serving team which quietly and efficiently attended us. I wondered how they viewed my presence among the white men. Did they too assume that I was being used by the Whites? I could read nothing behind their unsmiling faces and courteous manner.

  Then lunch was ready and we were seated, and I realized that this was a first for all or nearly all of them. They were sharing the same board on equal terms with a black man, and no matter how they might rationalize it to themselves that simple fact was incontrovertible. There was the usual friendly chitchat as each tried to settle down. I wondered how each would report this meeting to wife, children, and business associates. And what would they tell the Blacks who serve them at home and with whom they claimed to have good personal relationships?

  I remembered chatting in a park a few days before with a maid who was supervising a small white child and a dog. I tried to question her about social conditions in South Africa, but, inevitably, she brought up Bob Foster.

  “How he beat that white man! It was so good.”

  Her whole body glowed with the sharing in that small victory, this woman whose life was destined to be spent in lowly service, nurturing the children who would one day grow up to treat her with casual contempt, whether it was personal or public. She would be used, underpaid, kept in her place …

  Now here were these men, most of whom had in their time been bathed and comforted by black women, casually defending their inhuman policies with the spurious claim of “good relationships.” Spurious? They were completely sincere and convinced of their righteousness.

  After lunch, I was formally introduced to the group and invited to address them. On the spur of the moment I decided to talk on the economics of waste, deliberately choosing that neutral approach to tease them out of their shells, to let them feel comfortable with the Honorary White and open up so that I might learn about them. I said that I had been impressed by Johannesburg and its flourishing suburbs, but sickened by the wide evidence of the exclusion of Blacks from the essential life of the community. Blacks were everywhere, cleaning, serving, providing an inescapably solid base to the community’s economic life, but resentfully, unwillingly, because they were denied the right to exercise their imaginative potential. I asked them to explain how a community could ever reach its full growth if the greater part of its people were restricted to minimal contribution. As I saw it the result was waste on an unbelievable scale, shrouded behind the absurdities of discrimination.

  They listened in silence but when I sat down they defended themselves vociferously. They insisted that the Blacks of South Africa are better off economically than Blacks in any other part of Africa. They told me that though there was job reservation which favored Whites, the law required every man to be paid the rate for the job, and that those employers guilty of evading that law were invariably foreign firms, particularly American.

  They insisted that I had not been in the country long enough to see and understand the complexities of the labor structure in general, nor the conditions affecting the black role in particular. Very few Blacks, they claimed, were capable of other than menial employment. South African Blacks had changed little from their original primitive state and were, for the most part, still happier living in the rural Homelands in their traditional way. On the other hand, the grim conditions in which the black workers lived were not really intolerable to them, being an improvement on what they knew in their familiar rural living. It was Communists and outside agitators who stirred them up and tried to make them dissatisfied with their lot. Rural Blacks were discouraged from taking their families with them to the urban centers only because that would have meant too great a dislocation, in addition to the aggravated problems of housing, feeding, and educating their children. On and on. The old familiar clichés, but trotted out with the utmost sincerity. As I listened it was difficult for me to keep my mounting irritation under control. I am as black as the men and women they were talking about.

  But I was a stranger. I would be here today and gone tomorrow. I needed nothing from them, so they could afford to be generous with their time and their rhetoric. Perhaps they expected me to be flattered by being among them, treated as an equal by them. Nudged by the irritation which would not subside I said, “I understand you’ve broken the ‘Afrikaner Only’ rule in this club and admitted Englishmen. That tells me you’re getting around to forgiving and forgetting what Kitchener and his redcoats did during the Boer War.” There was silence for a few moments, not even the tinkle of ice in a glass. Then someone said:

  “We’ve come a long way since those days. Language aside, we’re all South Africans here.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “Maybe the same spirit will foster a similarly reasonable attitude to the Zulu Wars and the descendants of those who fought in them.”

  Silence.

  “Here am I,” I went on, “sitting with you. I have no way of knowing where my ancestors came from. History suggests that nowhere in Africa was secure from the slaver’s nets.”

  They were watching me, most faces wearing that pained half-smile which was as much as courtesy demanded.

  “What’s your point, Mr. Braithwaite?” one asked.

  “I’m anticipating the day when Blacks might be admitted to membership of your club. After all, one ex-enemy is as good as another. You could always designate them Honorary White.” My little quip fell flat. Even the half-smiles had vanished.

  “The designation Honorary White is merely a convenience reserved for overseas visitors,” one said. “We do not wish to embarrass them by any regulations designed specifically to deal with domestic circumstances.”

  “Yes. I know,” I replied, turning the needle. “Yesterday, some men I met in a park near my hotel mistook me for a Zulu, so I must look like one. I’m merely considering the possibility that I might be descended from one.”

  Chapter

  Seven

  MY NEXT PLAN WAS to visit the Transkei, one of the Government-designated “Homeland” areas. It was an hour’s plane ride from Johannesburg to Durban, the nearest airport to the Transkei. A car with a driver awaited me at the airport and we immediately took off on the three-hundred-fifty-mile road journey to Umtata, the capital town of the Transkei. I had expected that here, in a predominantly black enclave which was supposedly preparing itself for independence, I would find Blacks in control in all departments and at all levels of political, social, and economic life. My eyes were soon opened. At the Information Office, my first stop, the staff were all Afrikaners, officials of the central Government. The Information Officer welcomed me and promised to arrange for me to tour the Transkei. He would be in touch with me later that morning. I decided to use the time to look around Umtata.

  The Transkei capital looked thriving and prosperous. Every kind of business enterprise was represented, including automobile and farm machinery showrooms, supermarkets, banks, filling stations, and several hotels. All of them White-owned. No signs that Blacks had any kind of economic foothold in this, their own community. I passed the neat new police station, the white policeman leaning lazily against the door, looking toward the new multi­storied Government buildings. Truly a thriving town, showing off its potential for growth and development. Blacks everywhere, but not in command, not in authority. About half a mile from the hotel I saw a charming single-storied building, evidently a school, attractive in its simplicity of design, the large windows promising excellent natural lighting for the rooms. A well-kept grassy playground occupied the adjoining lot. On inquiring about it from a passerby I learned that it was the white school—a school for the children of white administrators and businessmen. Here in the heart of a black enclave, the White-only restrictions still applied. The charming bungalows, offices, shops, everything carried the invi
sible but unmistakable label, “White.”

  After lunch I set out, with the Information Officer, for a tour of some parts of the Transkei. It could not be accidental that this so-called black Homeland was, for the most part, rocky, infertile land which can barely support the local herdsmen’s scrawny cattle and goats. Adjacent to the township were many neat, small bungalows, silent evidence of the social changes which have overtaken the region, as the men are lured away from the small farm holdings to the unskilled jobs in the township. The horse is less in evidence than the car. Beyond the township the bungalows gradually gave way to the traditional circular Zulu huts of thatch and clay, each with its small patch of maize; women working among the long rows of green stalks, men tending their cows on sparsely covered hillsides. Even here, in their supposed “Homeland,” Blacks were literally restricted to the outer limits of the township, out of sight of progress, needed only to grease its wheels.

  The more I saw of the Transkei the more I sympathized with those urban blacks who were so determined to avoid being relocated to the Homelands. The Government’s stated policy foresaw eventual independence for regions such as the Transkei. On what kind of economic base could such independence be founded? The businesses in Umtata were all White-owned, their profits surely siphoned out of the black community. I asked the Information Officer about this. He told me that the overall plan envisaged a gradual takeover of all businesses by Blacks. White businessmen were encouraged to employ Blacks and train them into the techniques of management. When a trainee showed himself capable of taking over, the Government could purchase the business from the owner at current market prices and resell it to the trainee-manager on extended terms. I remarked that I saw no sign of any Blacks being trained. The scheme was new, but was slowly getting under way, he claimed. I said that the places I’d visited all showed clear evidence of prosperity, and it seemed unlikely their owners would easily relinquish them. Umtata is the largest and busiest of the Transkei towns. I could not see the businessmen walking away from such a gold mine. He had no answer.