“Okay, let’s be calm, people. We’ll give both sides a chance to present their case,” I said. But the atmosphere became volatile, and soon afterwards a comment from one of the footballers triggered a walk-out. Once outside, the disgruntled students vented their frustration by going on the rampage: buildings were torched, including the dormitories of some of the football team members.
Pandemonium reigned throughout the night, until the darkness was invaded by the white headlights of police vehicles that surrounded the campus. The atmosphere was tense. I was too afraid to return to my own dormitory, so I spent the night in a room where I hoped the university security officials would not find me. The decision to hide was instinctive; it turned out to be a wise one, as many arrests were carried out during the night.
With exams underway, most of the students were anxious to return to their studies and resume classes. But the following day another mass meeting was called, and this time the entire student body was in attendance.
“They can’t just come here and detain all these students! It is unacceptable!” a voice cried out to cheers of support.
“Are we going to submit to this treatment, or are we going to stand against it?”
It was clear that we needed a body of representatives to negotiate with the authorities to release the detained students, and so we duly elected a steering committee.
I was elected as a member of the committee. I was the youngest and only a second-year student myself, so it was with some reluctance that I accepted the position. But I’d realised that someone had to take charge. It was, ironically, my calm demeanour that pushed me into the limelight – people generally shy away from loudmouths, maybe because they tend to be unpredictable and lacking in credibility.
The newly elected student committee drew up an agenda, and we approached the rector of the university with our grievances. We consulted with him, listened to the solutions that he and the university council put forward, as well as their complaints, and then we took these to the students. Over the next few days we went back and forth, back and forth, between the two parties. Gradually, though, we began to realise that the university council had no intention of resolving any of the students’ grievances. The student committee made several presentations to the university council, but our requests fell on deaf ears. After a tense week, during which time classes were suspended and there were regular confrontations with the police, it became clear to us that the strategy behind the closure of the university was to break our morale and for the police to continue with their arrests without any student interference.
The campus conflict raged for a week, and then one blustery autumn morning I awoke at 6am.
“The campus has been surrounded by armed policemen in Casspirs; they’re just waiting for us to incite a protest so that they can get us with their rubber bullets and teargas,” Oupa said.
We managed to remain calm throughout this difficult time. The university authorities advised us that it would be safer for everyone if all students returned to their homes. They also said that we could expect correspondence notifying us about how we would move forward from this impasse.
I returned to my room and quickly packed my clothes and as many of my personal items that I could comfortably carry. I wanted to get off campus before dissatisfaction boiled over into anger and a demonstration. It was with immense frustration and disappointment that I had to leave the university, and I felt terribly uncertain, not knowing as I walked away whether or not I would ever return to the place from where I eventually hoped to qualify as a political scientist.
Back in Hammanskraal, I messed around for a couple of weeks, catching up with old friends and playing the odd card game. I also cooked meals for my aged maternal grandmother, who loved nothing more than having her family fussing around her. My cousin often joined me when I visited her, and together we would clean her house; it was a pleasure doing these chores as she smiled with gratitude and joy.
My grandmother was blind, and she lived in nearby Majaneng, a very under-developed rural area. She relied on her R7 quarterly pension – which barely covered daily living expenses. Her son, Uncle Boy, was a builder who lived in a tin shack on her property. He was a good builder, but he lacked discipline. Uncle Boy would secure a local building job and then, if a client was foolish enough to pay him before the job was complete, he would stop working on it and find another job somewhere else. My poor grandmother had to deal with disgruntled clients who came to find out why Boy hadn’t completed their building projects, even though they had paid him. She also had to support Boy on her miserable pension during the periods when he wasn’t earning. Because of all this, she was grateful to have our company and help, as Boy never made any attempt to help with the daily chores.
These visits to Majaneng helped pass the time during the excruciating wait for the university’s letter to arrive. When the official envelope did eventually arrive, I tore it open, eager to read its contents.
“What does it say?” my sisters asked, crowding around me.
The letter was a serious blow to the future I had mapped out for myself. The university council warned that unless students adopted an attitude of commitment to their studies and undertook to adhere to the university’s rules, we would not be welcome to return to campus. But I read between the lines; I knew what that letter really meant.
“It says that unless I am prepared to sacrifice my dignity, I can forget about continuing my studies,” I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.
As I folded the letter and put it back in its envelope, I knew that I would not be returning to the University of the North; I would never have to walk past that monstrous cement coat of arms at the main gate, with its motto, “Die mens se hand.”
Although I no longer wanted to be a student at a university that ruled its students with an iron fist and treated them disrespectfully, my decision was not taken lightly. I still wanted to earn a degree, but apart from this I had a financial obligation not only to my sister and her husband, but also to the bank and St Peter’s Seminary. That period of my life was difficult and confusing: I felt disappointed, demoralised, angry and depressed. For a brief period I feared that my usual optimism might degenerate into complete hopelessness. Maybe I had not realised the full truth of what my friends and Pobane had been saying all along – that life was extremely difficult for a black man.
If I gave up my studies, I knew that I would have to find a job that would enable me to pay back all the money I owed to those who had put their faith in me and supported me. I was divided between wanting to study, so that I didn’t fall into the trap of the hand-to-mouth existence experienced by many of my friends and my brother, and paying off the student loan. But my greatest desire was to leave the country to join Umkhonto we Sizwe – the pressure was overwhelming, and the temptation to escape that oppressive environment was enormous. During those long, idle days I spoke to various groups of friends who were also considering going into exile.
“My uncle knows someone who can get us out; we can go and join the cadres in Tanzania,” one acquaintance offered, while another said, “I’m going away so that I can fight the boere; you can come with me if you like.”
I felt strongly committed to joining the struggle. At home, I paced the floor in frustration, hoping and waiting for an opportunity to leave. But I grew increasingly demoralised and impatient, and I finally realised that none of the promises I’d been made were going to materialise into actual arrangements to leave South Africa.
I decided that I would have to work. I would have to button my lip and do the unthinkable: take a job with the white man.
Chapter 9
The chilly days stretched into the bitter winter weeks of 1980. The sheer monotony and inactivity of the long days made each idle week indistinguishable from those before and those that followed. The unproductiveness of this period was soul destroying. The newspapers mirrored my feeli
ngs of depression as they reported on the country’s continuing turmoil. There were demonstrations and boycotts across the country, and headlines screamed out: “School Demos Reach Crisis Levels.” There were predictable reactions: “Enter the ‘New Nazis’” as the Blanke Volkstaat Party was founded by right-winger Eugene Terre’Blanche; and “Sasol Blasted by Terrorists” reported on Umkhonto we Sizwe attacks on Sasol and the national refinery.
Throughout this bleak political period, the government continued its reign of terror, as police arrested people and held them for long periods without trial, as they had been doing since the 1960s. The only ray of light was Bishop Desmond Tutu – Secretary General of the South African Council of Churches – who joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement in its campaign to release ANC leader Nelson Mandela. The campaign was supported by many anti-apartheid groups, both locally and internationally.
Despondency greeted me when I awoke each morning, but I was reluctant to reveal my sense of depression to anyone. My family had always been so supportive of me, how could I betray them now, making them feel that their faith in me had been misplaced? I did not want to upset them. So, whenever anyone asked me, “How are things going?” I’d smile and say, “Fine, everything’s fine. I’m working on getting a job; it won’t be long now.”
The harshness of that winter was relentless, but after I awoke every morning, washed and dressed, I put on the smile I needed to get me through the day, trying to convince myself that if I remained positive, an opportunity for employment would materialise. I was terrified that if I allowed the black cloud of depression to settle upon me, I would never be able to escape from underneath it; afraid that if I did not get properly dressed, I would not be presentable enough to pounce on whatever opportunity might present itself.
My family had always reached out to assist me, and during that gloomy period they continued to believe in me and offer support. My brother-in-law, Joe Moumakwe, who married my sister Florah in 1981, sent a message to inform me that there was a job going at a Spar distribution warehouse in Hercules, Pretoria. In spite of wanting to work, I experienced conflict. During this period, the South African Council of Churches was promoting study opportunities for black students to study abroad. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to leave the country to pursue a military training programme, or to get a bursary from the SACC to study. And I still had serious reservations about working for whites. After careful consideration, I decided to apply for the job at Spar and tried to suppress my racial prejudices against whites.
I took great care to appear presentable, and I was waiting outside the Spar before the doors opened, sitting in the empty car park, watching as white employees arrived. The Spar warehouse was a busy distribution centre that supplied groceries to Spar supermarkets in Pretoria and the surrounding areas.
During my interview, the human resources manager rattled off a list of duties I was expected to perform: “Check invoices against outgoing deliveries; check the outgoing deliveries against the delivery notes,” and so on.
I knew that I was more than capable of the menial duties that the manager would assign to me, but still, I tried not to show my relief and joy when he offered me the job as a despatch clerk. My salary was R180 per month.
I caught the daily train from Hammanskraal to Hercules, proud at last to be a contributing member of society and to be in a position to prove to my family that their faith in me was well placed. In reality, my duties consisted of shuffling papers; the work was uninspiring and unfulfilling, and I soon came face to face with the petty racism that I’d expected and dreaded having to deal with. The warehouse manager was an elderly man called Van Geffen who mistrusted anybody who was black; the black staff tolerated his insults by patronising him during their interactions with him, or belittling him behind his back. They realised that Van Geffen’s fragile ego was easily stroked by addressing him as Baas Van Geffen, in this way avoiding his wrath. There was no doubt that Van Geffen’s attitude was sanctioned by management, because whenever a report was made against him, it always resulted in the complainant getting a raw deal from Van Geffen at a later stage.
I continued to avoid conflict, though. When I was growing up I was seldom involved in arguments or fist fights; I avoided conflict at all costs, and Louis still jokes with me, “I’ve never seen you in an altercation of any sort; Herman, you are the master of conflict-avoidance.” Whenever I observed my friends argue among themselves or with figures of authority, I realised that emotional or physical retaliation only exacerbated the situation, whereas withdrawal, or a well-timed joke or smile, defused the situation and saved everyone from a confrontation that would probably be forgotten in a few hours, anyway. I knew I had to adopt the same non-confrontational attitude while working at Spar if I was going to continue working there, and so when a spiteful person said or did something unkind, I either laughed it off or ignored it, reminding myself that I did not want to join the ranks of the unemployed again.
It did not take me long to realise that even if I worked overtime and did more than my share of work, Spar would employ me as their despatch clerk indefinitely – there was no opportunity for advancement for black employees. However, I did realise the value of being employed, and I continued to work with enthusiasm and diligence. Through it all, I kept up my usual interaction with people, confident that a better opportunity would come my way if I was patient and receptive. My attitude was rewarded seven months later when I managed to get a job as a clerk at Motani Industries.
Motani was a modest furniture manufacturing company in Koedoespoort, outside Pretoria. Owned by Omar and Sattar Motani, the company manufactured fine furniture, and had just launched a lounge suite range in quality fabrics and leather when I started working there. I was employed in a similar dead-end job to the one I had at Spar, but the situation was more tolerable because I experienced none of the racist harassment that I had experienced at Spar.
During our tea and lunch breaks, away from the sawdust and incessant noise of the factory, I met and interacted with the rest of the staff. While we ate and drank, I listened to what other people were talking about, and I soon came to appreciate the value of listening; in this way, I picked up a lot of useful information.
While I was employed at Spar, I became fairly good friends with a colleague, Ismail Ibrahim, an amiable man who enjoyed banter about everything from PW Botha’s inflexible approach to governance to the fighting style of Charlie Weir, the world boxing champion from Durban.
One day, Ismail and I were sharing our personal dreams and he said, “Herman, you’ve got too much potential to work here for the rest of your life, you should go into business for yourself.” We discussed various ideas that we both had, and during one of our conversations he mentioned a cousin who seemed to have his finger in a lot of pies. “My cousin regularly rents community halls and holds concerts in them; he earns quite a lot of money from these promotions,” Ismail said.
It was 1982 and I was already in my second job, with no real prospects of making a meaningful career for myself. I thought long and hard about my discussions with Ismail, mulling over the information I had picked up, and hoping that I would hit upon the right career or come up with an inspiring idea that would allow me to live an independent life.
“What’s the matter?” Connie asked whenever she saw me get a faraway look in my eyes.
“I just feel like I’m on a treadmill, doing the same boring stuff over and over again, and that I’m never going to get off; if I don’t find something that excites me soon, I think I’ll go crazy,” I said.
Connie faced me and folded her arms around my neck, her lovely eyes looking into mine.
“The right opportunity will present itself, my dear. But you must be patient. Just continue to be alert and positive, and something will turn up,” she said.
I wasn’t always reassured by Connie’s words, but I was always soothed by her calmness and patience.
At least my
work frustration was somewhat balanced by the lifestyle that Connie and I enjoyed. After completing high school, Connie had taken a job with Southern Sun as a bookkeeper, and we both looked forward to weekends when we socialised with our friends and family. It was infuriating that we had no access to whites-only cinemas; that we could only visit the Pretoria Zoo on appointed “black” days; and, that we had to confine our dancing and socialising to friends’ houses or shebeens instead of the glamorous and hip whites-only clubs in town. Still, we managed to make the best of our leisure time – it was our pressure release from the stress of working in a white man’s world. Weekends were, usually, forty-eight hours of hard partying.
During the weekdays, I worked hard, but at night I tossed and turned sleeplessly, frustrated that I did not have a big idea for a business that would enable me to realise my dream of being in charge of my own destiny. It angered me that there was no chance at Motani of earning more if I worked harder. But I couldn’t dwell too much on the future because I had immediate responsibilities. I had almost finished paying back my student loan and I wanted to marry Connie, which meant that I would have to pay lobola for her.
I never rushed into things without careful planning, so, once I had paid off the student loan, I decided to ask Connie’s parents if I could marry her. Representatives from my family met in the traditional way with representatives from Connie’s family, and we completed the formalities involved in the payment of lobola: Connie’s father agreed on an amount of R800 – which I paid in June, 1982. After this, Connie and I started planning our formal white wedding.
Black Like You Page 9
