On top of this, his job made him a suspect. Architecture and property development were still a white man’s domain in his country. A black man was not supposed to be good at them unless he was cheating at something. It irritated them that they could not really find what Phila cheated on but it was assumed to be hidden somewhere. Or that he was an affirmative action product.
When he’d first come to Cape Town he had worked for the city municipality before joining a renowned architectural firm whose rich clients were drawn from Camps Bay, Clifton or Constantia. His boss, a good Scottish bloke in his early fifties, required “black cultural background” to enhance what he called the “clownish Tuscany briefs” his rich clients demanded. Working for rich private clients was exactly what Phila had vowed never to do; his interest had never been in real estate. Rather his calling was in environmentally friendly and innovative social housing and other public spaces.
He was fascinated by technology and interested in communication through architecture. He thought he had learnt some experimental ideas and clever tweaks suited for his country’s environment. Early on in his studies, he had found himself drawn to architects like Frank Gehry (his thesis had been about Gehry’s work), who seemed to have found a way of introducing motion into architecture. The first time he saw the Guggenheim Museum of Art in Bilbao it blew his mind. It was then he realised buildings could convey emotion and movement. Since then his architectural design studies came from the natural world, things like beehives and termite nests, which Phila thought provided effective and perfect designs for stadiums, malls and public social housing. He belonged to the modern architectural movement that wanted to move away from conventional city council buildings into something that required vision and creativity, making ideas exist through solid materials. His frustrations and disappointment with his city job was his inability to break through the stubborn bureaucracy of mayoral committees, who seemed to regard him only as a pawn to check the black tokenism box. When he realised that even where possibilities did exist to create great public spaces, like parks, the politicians were always in the pockets of private billionaires, whose new money-making fad was to underwrite and sponsor public spaces for profit, he gave up.
When Phila started at the architectural firm the junior staff were not comfortable being assigned to him. They automatically assumed he was an affirmative action appointment, which meant they would have to do all the work. He quickly picked up nuances in their actions, voices, the way they tried not to be pinned down with him when giving briefs, their incessant nodding to make sure he understood. Even clients, including decent ones, almost without fail, became crestfallen when they were assigned him as their chief architect. Sometimes the prejudice became open and the firm would have to assign another person if they wanted to keep the client. And this was not only limited to white people – black people as well had no confidence in his skills. They assumed he was a charlatan, or a front. Signs of the lack of confidence in him from whites ranged from speaking too loud during briefs, asking the same questions over and over again, making sure he understood the brief, or coming to his office on a daily basis to check on progress. Blacks would wink a secret understanding that communicated that they understood he was just a window doll of white business and so was going with the flow. All preferred even the junior staff, so long as they were white.
“I’m sure he gets enough BEE briefs,” one client said. “I want someone who is going to give me optimal value for my money.” BEE, the government programme of black economic empowerment, was constantly used to whip black professionals in that sense, suggesting all contracts they got were through corruption or political connections to the ruling party. Initially his boss, who was now his partner, felt so embarrassed he wanted to reject the project briefs where such incidents occurred.
“Were I to concern myself with or be upset with the personal beliefs of every moron we work for we would never get any job,” was how Phila played down the effects of those awkward moments to his partner. Phila had decided a long time ago to be philosophical about such things. He interpreted the need to be acknowledged for the work he did as just another trick of vanity. The rub was that he ended up doing the work anyway since the briefs to the junior partners always ended up on his desk one way or the other. He had more experience, a better work ethic. This, of course, didn’t stop him sometimes resenting his colleagues for being white. He became angry watching them leave in their Maseratis, as early as 4:30pm, to yet another new expensive nightclub, while he remained behind to burn the midnight oil, doing the work they’d get all the credit for from the clients. He resented their smug attitude, disguised as flattery, when they dropped briefings on his desk. “Boss! Could you take a look at this for me?” Yet when he asked them to remain behind, to burn the midnight oil alongside him, they ended up being in his way, with their constant talking about their nightlife achievements. It distracted Phila, who required silence to think. Alone at the office, especially in the early evenings, was when he was in his element.
When he got home Phila sat at his desk to try and pick up where he had left off with the Maqoma manuscript. He realised he still required silence and solitude to think. For some reason, perhaps because of the rough seas they’d been experiencing around the Cape recently, he’d been thinking about shipwrecks. How white-skinned Xhosas, even chieftesses, survived shipwrecks on African coasts. When their ships came to take them home they refused, choosing to remain Xhosa, some even founding clans that were given chieftess status by Tshiwo, the grandson of Nkosiyamntu, the Mnguni chief whose people the KhoiKhoi named amaXhosa because they regarded them as angry men. Phila wondered about the internal lives of Xhosa people in the nineteenth century, especially those who were at the confrontational forefront with the British: Maqoma, with whom the confrontation was violent; Tiyo Soga, with whom it was religious; and the likes of S.E.K. Mqhayi, with whom it was intellectual.
Fleas Swallowing Elephants
MOVING IN TWISTS AND TURNS AROUND the carnival atmosphere of excited tourists, mostly American and Chinese, Phila went to stand in the stern after boarding the ferry at the Waterfront. The early morning breeze stung his face. The whiff of brine maced his nose. Hands on his waist, he turned to look at the landscape of Cape Town. Old lady Hoerikwaggo puffed on her pipe, meaning Umlindi craved company that morning, hence the white cloth laid over majestic Table Mountain.
The ferry – named Makana – was dwarfed by a cruise liner docked next to it, named after the then Queen of Britain. The ironies of history, thought Phila, leaning on the rail and looking down into the water. He wondered how many of his companions on this boat knew a single fact about the person it was named after. Probably not a single one, local or foreign. He adjusted the weight of history he carried on his back.
As the ferry plied across the line, unbidden thoughts of slave journeys to distant lands came to Phila. How some chose the ocean floor over the prospect of slavery in foreign lands, throwing themselves off the ships in droves sometimes. Some believed, in desperation, that the River People would see them through their African villages after being swallowed by the sea. Talk about harsh times breeding desperate wishes and cruel fates that were the midwives of the modern era, Phila thought to himself.
Nxele, the Makana the ferry is named after, himself drowned in these very waters, when the whale boat he escaped on from Robben Island capsized. Those who could swim survived, but Nxele drowned, leaving behind a despairing nation whose last hope of freedom and self-sustenance drowned with him.
What thoughts come to drowning men as the water floods their lungs, pondered Phila. What language do drowning people speak? The fate of Virginia Woolf also trespassed on his mind.
Matched by the seasick dizziness, a mental vacancy dogged Phila into sleep. He felt drawn out of a meditative mind stance into a trance as sleep’s dark energy nuzzled him.
In the eye of his sleep the hum of the engines evolved into the moans and groans of a ship’s timber. The seawater turned into d
ark molasses as the ship bounced about in the swell. A broken image of a trembling moon shone through the waters. A whale-oil lamp illuminated the ship’s cabin. He heard strange noises, rats scurrying between the walls and the hull as the bloodcurdling roars of violent wind assaulted the ship. Shouts bolted through in confusion, incoherent cries about the Cape of Storms and the spirit of Gama about to bury everything into the floor of the ocean.
After twenty minutes or so the ship stabilised and, Phila, still in his sleep, again heard the steady rhythm of the swishing of oars. Now he could smell a bitter-sweet smoke scent, a smell he had grown to associate with Maqoma. The ship sailed along dikes and edges of lagoons. Blue-grey mountains folded along the littoral of surf-strewn boulders as they moved towards a familiar landscape. Momentarily he recognised it as Hout Bay in a grainy morning light of invading mist. Where Chapman’s Peak Drive now snaked were only woods. The land became thickly forested as it climbed into a mountain. Next they passed rims of spectacular gorges at the bottom of which lay the seething sea. Flood paths along the mountains ran to the precipices. As they sailed past an undeveloped Llandudno towards Camps Bay, he recognised the boulders and Sandy Bay beach where German tourists came to be in the nude. Still in his sleep, Phila stood up to try and get a closer look, but discovered his movements were restrained. When he tried to take a step he heard a strange noise, like the clanking of chains. He looked down at his feet, and then at the six or so men also chained beside him. A stone came into his heart.
What’s going on, he asked himself quietly.
Grey stone houses frowned down on the sea like isolated sentries, growing whiter and bigger as they moved along, smoke rolling out of their roof pipes. They arrived in a chaotic place, a naval dock or something. It all looked like a dream from a Belloise harbour painting of New York docks, bar the snow. A cold crystal air blew cold dampness. Those men not carrying things up and down from the ships stood around fire braziers, bundled up like sheep, and occasionally hanging their hands to catch the heat. The place was noisy and dirty under the bandage of grey mist.
They were ordered to disembark on this busy wharf and directed to walk to the promenade, passing sweaty stevedores, some with matted beards, loading and unloading cargo from the holds of vessels. Somebody kept saying something about Darling Street as the formless mist hived them into the muddy streets. The serenade from the twisting branches of tree sentries on the street brought apprehension to Phila’s soul. They came upon a site of shops and chapels jutting to the sky in a riot of different patterns. Greenmarket Square. This he had managed to work out on his own, finally realising, too, that he was in the Cape Town of an earlier century. Around them a crowd grew, jostling, curious, trying to get closer. Looks of disgust darted on them.
There was a fountain in the centre of the square. Phila cupped his cuffed hands for a drink to slake his thirst and bathe his sweaty face. As he bent he felt a sharp sting on his back. The lash from a sjambok made of hippopotamus will tear brutally into a man’s skin.
“Who taught you to pollute your master’s fountains? That fountain is not for kaffir needs!” a man in a brown frock, a tonsure band on his wetly sunburnt head, hollered at him. As prisoners they were paraded through the town centre where trade and barter was in riot. The language was inelegant rabble to Phila but he somehow understood all its meaning. This is a scene from The Divine Comedy, he thought, as he dragged on. Merchants, petitioners, jugglers and fire-eaters, clerics and whores; musicians playing on stringed instruments, thirsting for applause and hungry for tips; brigands and smugglers, peddlers and knaves, pimps and panders. All ogled the prisoners with alarmed interest. In the crowded streets were netted butcher booths selling all sorts of meats: mutton, beef, chicken and goat carcasses still dressed in their fur at the tail ends for ease of identification. Bloated scaly fish hung from strings in front of fishermen’s smelly stalls. Fruit and vegetables, most of which he could not identify, decked the tables.
A caged monkey, with puffs of white hair on its cheeks, surveyed its lost position, chittering and wiggling its tail before calming down in stunned resignation in seeing Phila, who felt deep affinity with the animal. For a moment the monkey halted to give Phila more of an attentive look, before continuing with its squeaking. Phila realised the monkey had found him out but had decided to play along.
On the corner of the square a white man raved about injustices of slavery, looking as much of a lunatic as those pointing and laughing at him. As the prisoners passed by they saw the man being escorted away by government officials, who accused him of rabble rousing. People gambled away their earnings in dark corners, some fighting like rams next to troops of caged slaves, to the chagrin of scratching curs and gaunt scavenging cats. Wagoners, with whips as long as the masts of ships, fastened cattle with lariat, their wagons swerving dangerously to avoid boozed clerks on the streets. Clergymen, with long tail-coats and tall stove-pipe hats, preached in booming voices, words bursting out of their mouths like balls of fire, bringing tears to the eyes of some listeners. Singing females, pregnant, probably with the seeds of those same reverend preachers, happy-clapped their hands with heads tilted to the skies. Freed slaves and immigrant costermongers lined the pavements selling bottles of tonics, bitters, liniments and soaps.
The prison Phila and others were taken to was situated in the town’s centre. It looked more like soldiers’ barracks and smelled of human filth. A pestilent mix of unwashed men, smoke from the braziers, a permanent stench from the horse dung and chicken droppings clung to the prison walls where they were kept locked for four nights. A blustering wind whistled all night long, bringing with it rattling rain. Shingling and sighs of the distant sea sent notes of despair to the heart as Phila tried in vain to sleep. Everyone inside clung to their own skin, driving away fear by remembering and telling to each other legends of their lands. The food, not enough to feed a grasshopper, was a mere chitterling soup with floating chickpeas and black bread before noon. Eventually they were taken to a court building, where judges and magistrates in black suits and white neck-cloths argued their fates. During breaks and after hours, legal vultures – attorneys, lawyers, interpreters and judges – continued their arguments augmented by tots of peach brandy outside the court buildings. Spectators openly placed bets on court verdicts. Even inside the courtroom, unruly spectators interrupted the proceedings with whistling and turning over of tables and chairs when the judgment went against their bets. Some even threw old tobacco quids and stubs to signify their betting losses or wins.
After hearing evidence, and that of the prosecutors, the swellhead brassneck judge, whose ugliness was arresting – yellowing eyes, double-chinned, a busy Adam’s apple, uneven teeth and a pale dyspeptic face – gave his verdict.
Rolling his eyes and stuttering in an affected tone, he pronounced: “The evidence against you, Macoma, is overwhelming.” He wiped his grey handlebar moustache. “Her Majesty’s government has tried by all civil means possible to provide you and your people with protection under her benign hand. She offered you protectorates, where you could learn more civilised ways of doing things, and how to save your soul from perdition. You were free to go there like other kaffirs whenever you chose to, but you refused, choosing to make yourself a nuisance to Her Majesty’s subjects, your superiors and masters. You chose to be a cacodemon to Her Majesty’s government.” He chewed his tobacco with an occasional drop of his head under the table to spit.
“You’re indefatigable in your paganism and a bad influence on other kaffirs. You lead them astray by your bad influences and the overwhelming trust they place on you. It’s become clear to Her Majesty’s government that all remonstrance of civilisation has been defeated in your beastly breast by your barbaric base instincts. Therefore she has no alternative but to remove you, together with the chiefs accompanying you, whom I’m certain are under your belligerent influence, from society. Her Majesty’s government can no longer stomach your unregenerate influence, thus she’s taking you away, for
the good of the rest of your people. It would appear as if whenever you’re in your village you let out the demon of your fever into the fray to disturb the peace. If you’re bent on living like a barbarian you shall do so in isolation, away from other innocent kaffirs. It is therefore incumbent upon me to follow the verdict of our lower courts in Frontierland by sentencing you to life imprisonment on Robben Island, coming out only when fleas swallow elephants. There you shall have enough time to contemplate your mischievous behaviour against Her Majesty’s government, and be a warning to those who wish to follow your bad example.
“From what I’ve just heard, you’ve killed enough men to stock three graveyards because of your opposition to civilisation. Most disgusting to me is that your frenzy didn’t stop with your animal kind, but you had the temerity to raid and kill white people also. For this your crime is not only deplorable to Her Majesty’s court alone, but an abomination in the eyes of the Almighty who, in His unfathomable wisdom, has seen right to give superior intelligence and wisdom to white people while leaving the black race with only animal intelligence and instinct. We shall therefore put as much space as possible between you and the civilisation you’re so averse to. With any luck you might even cultivate an acquaintance with the Lord’s grace, and be purged of your savage manners. If you have nothing to say for yourself, you’re all dismissed.”
The judge bent down to take a swig from the flask he kept inside his jacket pocket, coming up and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Phila felt someone take a stronger hold on him, making him stand. He was about to protest, thinking it was just Maqoma, when he realised they were legion: brown, yellow, white faces – all of them looking at him in anticipation. He was confused as to what to say or do. He felt his knees buckle. Then Maqoma was there, extending a hand to him, and Phila stood up, firm and tall. The courtroom was filled with the dead, men and women, all silently cheering Phila on with eagerness in their eyes. Phila knew none of these people and yet he knew every one of them.
Broken River Tent Page 38
