With the growing anger toward the apartheid government, resistance rallies led by the ANC began to attract large numbers of protesters throughout the country’s townships, D. F. Malan’s white minority government retaliated by imposing even more stringent laws.
At times our modest home resembled a guesthouse, with the large number of relatives or stray kids living with us. Getting up in age, Johanna sold her home in Witbank and also moved in with us. In the mornings I would hurry to St. Michael’s Primary School with my friend Mohale Mpiti, and by 8:00 a.m. we were at our assembly places listening to our principal, Mr. Phahle, make the daily announcements before leading us in prayer. Assembly always ended with us singing the Lord’s Prayer. As with the American records I sang along with, I didn’t understand the words. I loved it when we came to the part that went hellow whered been darn nay, dye kin no come, bye wee bee darn, own ess ess east ease een hervey.
I had been at St. Michael’s Primary School for two months when my mother transferred from her job in Germiston to become head social worker at Alexandra’s Entokozweni Family Welfare Center, where many of the community women came to learn about cooking, sewing, life skills, health education, child therapy, and family planning. The center’s head administrator, Helen Navid, was a militant political activist, a fiery Communist who did not have one drop of prejudice flowing in her body. Helen and my mother became close friends. She was also friends with Father Trevor Huddleston, an antiapartheid activist she worshiped, and worked closely with her other white socialist colleagues, such as Joe Slovo, Ruth First, and the leadership of the ANC. The center also ran a night school for adult education, and Theo Mthembu, the legendary boxing manager and trainer, operated the Entokozweni Boxing Club. Theo, who worked with my mother as a social worker, became renowned worldwide for producing many international champions, including our national hero, Baby Jake Matlala. My mother said to me, “This is a rough township, Boy-Boy. Kids who play tennis or the piano get bullied. What you have to learn is how to defend yourself, because, believe me, you are not going to be able to avoid fights. The greatest soccer players come from Alex, and because you are so good at football, it’s going to win you many friends. Still, you’re going to need to be fast with your hands and nimble on your feet. I am not encouraging you to fight, Boy-Boy, but this is the way it is in Alex.”
Three times a week, after dinner, I’d walk up Twelfth Avenue to the Center for evening sparring, skipping, and other boxing rudiments. By eight o’clock, Theo would let us go so he could work with the budding professionals. Hanging around the fighters was a tonic. We were all given boxing nicknames. I was the “swimming crocodile” because I tried to emulate the great Jersey Joe Walcott by running backwards and sideways all over the ring, feinting, bobbing, and weaving while throwing punches. Everybody’s hero was Joe Louis. We had scrapbooks filled with photographs of the “Brown Bomber” and his wife, Marva, from his army photos to boxing posters. It was really a heartbreaker for the club members when Rocky Marciano put Louis away. But retelling the story of Louis’s victory over Max Schmeling (with our own embellishing tidbits) soothed our sorrows. It felt good to hear about how a black man put away a Nazi cracker—especially since we were under the foot of apartheid. We also were crazy about Sugar Ray Robinson, Sandy Saddler, Ezzard Charles, Jack Johnson, Battling Siki, Rocky Graziano, and many others we’d read about. Ring Magazine was our bible.
In my Standard Two class at St. Michael’s, one of my classmates, Dan Rafapa, played the role of the typical township bully, always messing with the girls, trying to get his hands up their thighs or fondling their breasts. Some of them humored him because he was always laughing, but my deskmate, Shirley, a newcomer like me, didn’t like Dan’s advances. Pretending to be infuriated, he climbed on top of our desk and made as if to kick her in the face. He put his left sneaker on my open history book, smudging it. That was it. I flipped and told him to cut it out. There was immediate silence in the classroom. He said, “What did you say?” I answered, “I said cut it out, man!” He got down from the desk in disbelief, put his face to mine, and said, “After school it’s you and me, sonny.” Little did I know that Dan was Alex’s junior mosquito-weight boxing champion. After school one of the boys brought two pairs of boxing gloves from the principal’s office and we went toe-to-toe. Dan beat the shit out of me, but he couldn’t drop me, so I got in a few good ones. It seemed like hours later when they stopped the fight, but I was still standing. My face was on fire from his leather, and I didn’t know it, but I was crying. Cheers went up for me. No one had ever stood up to Dan before. From that day on, I got respect from everybody in the school, and Dan became one of my best friends. The boxing lessons had come in handy. Polina was right again!
Alexandra Township was also the soccer capital of South Africa, and the majority of the black national team were home-grown heroes. We spent most of our Sunday afternoons at the Number Two Square football grounds, especially if teams like the Young Fighters and the Moroka Lions were playing. When the top teams weren’t playing in the township, we attended ANC rallies for the fiery oratory and to cruise the crowds for girls. When my friend Mohale spoke to the girls, they seemed to melt from his every word. But every time I tried my hand at it, I would go cottonmouthed and say something stupid like “Do you think it’s going to rain?” The girls would look at me with puzzled expressions. Mohale would just shake his head, but he remained a loyal friend. Women did not care too much for soccer, but were staunch supporters of the ANC. At times my mind wandered from the speeches to the parading beauty pageant. It really pissed me off that I couldn’t get my rap together.
In 1947, King George came to South Africa with his Royal Family, Queen Mary, Princess Elizabeth, and Princess Margaret. Our parents bought us new black and white uniforms and we were handed Union Jack flags to go and stand on the side of the Old Pretoria Road and wave the British flag and sing “God Save the King” as the Royal Family approached. We expected the king and his family to stop and at least say hello, because some of the schoolgirls had bouquets of flowers to give to them. Instead, they just passed by in their long convertible Rolls-Royce limousine, waving their white-gloved hands with dry smiles on their pink faces as their motorcade drove past to Pretoria. Our respect for England was deflated from then on. Our folks were pissed off because they’d bought us new uniforms they could not really afford. As children, we were hurt because we had worked so hard to learn the words to the British anthem.
In January 1948, all of my classmates were promoted to Standard Three, and we were excited about the new school year. Five months later, on May 26, the white electorate voted the Afrikaner National Party into government, and the shit immediately hit the fan. At the helm were the chief architects of apartheid, Prime Minister D. F. Malan, his coalition government, its lieutenants, and their think tank, the Broederbond. These men were directly responsible for setting South Africa centuries behind the rest of the developed world at a time when the country was almost on par with the standards of many Western countries. The Nats came to power with the clear intention of reducing Africans to a national cheap labor pool, and to all intents and purposes they legislated slavery. For us children, the first blow was the abolishment of the African Children’s Feeding Scheme. Depriving already disenfranchised people of this simple, humane subsidy immediately politicized us. Before this, children in South Africa were never directly affected by politics. But now even people who had never cared for politics were singing “Malan’s Laws Have Got Us Under the Yoke” and other protest songs. It was the first protest song I ever sang in unison with thousands of other voices.
All over the country, the ANC’s rallies and demonstrations grew larger, leading to industrial strikes and stay-at-home protests that had a crippling effect on the nation’s white economy. The government didn’t like this. Suspected sell-outs like Malatsi went into hiding. Rumor had it that he had been reassigned to Pretoria to work as a consultant with the new government to help train collaborators in wa
ys to further infiltrate the township and gain information on those opposed to apartheid.
The National Party’s ongoing destabilization campaign was having a devastating effect on Africans, coloreds, and Indians. The Afrikaner intelligentsia believed segregation was essential for national survival, and thus there could be no common South African society. In the shadow of this calculated social and political deprivation, an embryonic defiance campaign was taking shape in the form of an upsurge in national consciousness among Africans, coloreds, and Indians who were not intimidated by the new laws. As if that were not bad enough, during my final year at St. Michael’s in 1951, certain members of Alexandra’s youth gangs would often raid our school after hours and try to abduct some of the more attractive older girls. A few of the braver boys who tried to stand up to them ended up brutally slashed and stabbed. One notorious dagga-smoking and benzine-sniffing trio, Stoffies, Bree, and Nako, chose to make our school their personal turf. Reputed to have raped and murdered many young women, they terrorized St. Michael’s and had knife duels with some of our boys who chose to challenge them. One of our classmates, Miriam Nkomo, a top student in my class, was abducted from her home by these thugs and held captive for two weeks. Following her ordeal, she returned to class, but Stoffies waited for her every day after school without fail, and continued to force her to be his girl. In cases like this, the police never helped, and Miriam’s family was too terrified to come to her defense. These hooligans were finally arrested for brutally murdering and mutilating several young women. They were sentenced to hang. The rest of Alexandra Township breathed a sigh of relief.
Some of my schoolmates became lifelong friends, fellow exiles, and activist colleagues. I had met our principal’s two sons, Rose-Innes and George Phahle, long before I came to Alexandra Township. Their mother, Hilda, and Polina were childhood friends, and our families had visited each other since our infancy, and it was then that our friendship began. Zanele Dlamini’s family was also very close to my parents because her brother worked as a health inspector under my father at the Alexandra Health Committee. And her social-worker sisters had similarly worked with my mother during their apprentice years. At St. Michael’s, Zanele and George, along with Jiji and Aggrey Mbere, were a class behind me, and Zanele’s sister, Kushu, was my classmate. When I came to St. Michael’s, Rose-Innes was doing his final year in preparation for high school at St. Peter’s Secondary School in Rosettenville, twenty miles from Alexandra. Today, Rose-Innes is a professor at Vista University in Soweto. Jiji is one of Africa’s leading gynecologists. His late brother, Aggrey, was South Africa’s ambassador to Rwanda. Sadly, George and his wife, Lindi, along with other exiled South African activists and a few Botswana neighbors, were assassinated in 1985 during the apartheid government’s “death squad” incursion into Botswana. In all, fourteen people were killed. Zanele Mbeki is currently South Africa’s First Lady.
4
AFTER I GRADUATED FROM ST. MICHAEL’S, my parents insisted on my going to St. Peter’s, a boarding school run by missionaries. My uncle Putu was studying at their seminary and my friend Rose-Innes was already attending, but I wasn’t so keen on it.
I only had a few months during my summer vacation to process my impending transformation. I was going to miss Polina’s daily bouts of affection, laughter, and good cooking. My mother loved to squeeze me against her bosom and kiss me on the forehead. “Boy-Boy,” she would say, “you’re gonna grow up to be a very strong man, and look after your mother when she gets old. You’re gonna be just fine. You’re such a good boy.” My father showed his affection in a different way, and even though he was a man of few words, I could tell my absence was going to be tough on him as well.
As my departure date grew nearer, the whole family got in on the act of helping me pack for school. My father bought me an iron trunk at the Indian supply store, large enough for my clothes, sheets, pillowcases, and blankets. After squinting and cussing while adjusting her wire-framed eyeglasses, my grandmother tried to settle her nerves and thread the sewing cotton through the needle. She soon gave up and let me do it for her. A few hours’ later, homemade labels with my name written in indelible ink had been stitched on all my belongings. Barbara, Elaine, and I enjoyed Johanna’s antics. Her fidgeting with the needle and thread was a hilarious comedy routine for us. It made us laugh uncontrollably. Johanna would try to be straight-faced, but after a while, she joined in the family revelry. To keep the good times rolling, I would let go an occasional fart. Straining to keep from laughing, Johanna reacted: “You little shit! Where’s the castor oil?” Elaine went into hysterics, begging me to stop farting.
Over the December holidays, Rose-Innes came by to brief me about St. Peter’s. He told me what to watch out for, who the troublemakers were, how to deal with the bullies, which teachers to be careful with, and especially about the boys’ hostel warden, Father Rakale, whose nickname, he told me, was “Bankbroke”; Rose-Innes said this was because every time the boarders requested some upgrading of the hostel’s conditions, Father Rakale would dismiss the idea and bark effeminately, “The school is bank-broke.” The warden sounded like a crude bastard. Rose-Innes then described all the funny characters, nuns, monks, and beautiful girls at the St. Agnes hostel. All this made St. Peter’s sound like an exciting place to be. From Rose-Innes’s account, St. Peter’s produced some of South Africa’s greatest African scholars and leaders, such as writers Es’kia Mphahlele and Peter Abrahams, and African National Congress leaders Oliver Tambo and Duma Nokwe.
One Saturday morning in February, the time came for me to leave our family’s cocoon. It was a solemn morning. No speeches. No tears. My father slipped me one pound for pocket money. We all embraced, and I was off for school. I was pretty composed leaving the house. When Rose-Innes and I walked to the bus terminal, many of our neighbors, including my boyhood friends, came out to see me off. Ped, Cocky, Steve, Bomber, and Mothlabane waved from our gate. I was going to miss these narrow, dusty roads, the street tennis-ball soccer, the weekend street festivals, the fights, the flashy cars, the fast women and their sharply dressed boyfriends. No more peering at Bessie’s prized thighs; no more lazy Saturday afternoons at the movies.
After a bus ride to downtown Johannesburg, we walked to Park Train Station to see some friends of Rose-Innes. The platforms were bustling with students, couples holding hands, kissing, or just looking into each other’s eyes before boarding the trains that would carry them back to their schools all around the country. There was so much chatter on the “Non-Europeans Only” side of the platform I could barely make out what people were saying. Every time a train pulled out of the station, students were screaming good-byes, laughing or crying, leaning out of the windows trying to get one last embrace with those running alongside the cars. I looked over to the whites on their side of the platform. The women, with their wide-eyed children in tow, sneered at us with disgust written across their creamy pink faces. Their tension eased when a white policeman strolled by to ensure that no kaffirs crossed the line to the whites-only side of the platform. They despised the black college students who were returning to Fort Hare University in the Eastern Cape, Rhodes University in Grahamstown, the University of Cape Town, and Wentworth Medical College in Durban. One of the white cops shouted, “Get back, you blerry black kaffirs. I don’t care how much book you know, to me you’re just a bunch of blerry kaffirs. You better know your place, you blerry black monkeys.” The following year, 1953, the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act imposed the systematic segregation of train stations, buses, movie theaters, hotels, and virtually all other public facilities.
Rose-Innes and I hurried across town to the Faraday Train Station, from which the Rosettenville buses left. Walking briskly up Eloff Street, we passed all of the landmark clothing and department stores, as well as the Bantu Men’s Social Center, the main hangout for Johannesburg’s top African musicians, sportsmen, actors, poets, writers, and socialites. The center also had a dormitory for students attending the J
an Hofmeyer School of Social Work at the Jubilee Center next door, where the Johannesburg Municipal Native Brass Band also rehearsed alongside leading African theater groups. It was the headquarters for Khabi Mngoma’s pioneering workshops for opera and classical music. Next door was the Wemmer Men’s hostel for migrant laborers, which was across the street from the Harlem Cinema and Faraday Station.
As we made our way through downtown Johannesburg’s labyrinth, the sidewalk cafés were open, and white big shots with their fat cigars stepped out of their fancy cars to sit with their women at these bistros. Some were strutting in and out of the plush Carlton Hotel, which housed some of the most expensive specialty shops and haberdasheries in all of Johannesburg. These folks were spending, in one afternoon, more money than a lot of black folks made in months, if not a whole year. I felt sorry for the African doormen and porters at the hotel, with their pretentious smiles and “yessirs,” hoping their bowing and cheesing would at least earn them an extra tip from these pale-faced bastards.
With the afternoon summer sun still high in the sky, Rose-Innes and I boarded the bus for St. Peter’s. Rose-Innes told me a lot of the students arrived just before curfew at six, just in time for dinner. “It’s good that we’re early, so you can meet some of the people I told you about, familiarize yourself with the surroundings, and get settled in your dormitory.” We got off the bus at a shopping area of Rosettenville called “the Hill,” and walked down Third Avenue toward St. Peter’s, a cloistered campus, comprised mostly of African students set in the middle of an all-white, working-class, racist neighborhood. The scene at my new school reminded me of the bedlam we had just left at Park Station. There was excitement all over the school grounds. Rose-Innes introduced me to his classmate Jerry Ntsipe, who adopted me on the spot and promised to watch over me. Jerry took over and walked me through the maze of students, arches, buildings, and hallways. He made me promise that if anyone bothered me, I was to come and get him. He introduced me to Xolela Masabalala. “Xokes,” as Jerry called him, was a tall, dark-skinned, humorous guy with gigantic lips and endless banter that was only surpassed by his friend Peter “Jeet” Mathlare, a skinny, fast-talking, nervous-acting dude, who complimented Xokes’s every word and phrase. Their slapstick slang, which was a mixture of French, biblical English, township Afrikaans slang, and Shakespearean and Chaucerian phrases, reminded me of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and Amos ’n’ Andy. For the next hour I met other newcomers. The truck carrying our trunks hadn’t arrived yet, so I decided to explore my new surroundings.
Still Grazing Page 6
