I was born and brought up in Johannesburg, “Jo’burg” for short. We did not live in a great big pink house like the Madam in this book, but in a small flat. My strongest memory of my mother is of her tapping away at her typewriter. She wrote about the theatre and made radio programmes, and my dad was a music publisher who wrote musicals. We were all looked after by Mma Sebate, who was cook, cleaner and nanny. As a child I never questioned the fact that I called her by her first name, Mary, when all white adults had to be called Aunty, Uncle, Mr or Mrs. I never questioned that we called her by an English name when her first language was Tswana. I never questioned that her own children lived 150 miles away and that she only saw them when our family went on holiday. One awful day, when I was about eleven, she received a telegram and collapsed in front of me. The telegram told her that two of her three young daughters (aged about three and five at the time) had died. They had caught diphtheria – a disease that I, as a white child, could not have caught. I had been vaccinated. Her children had not.
It was only years later that I began to ask questions about the way we lived and everything that, as a child, I had simply accepted. This was after I had left my whites-only school and was at university. The government had passed a law to stop black students studying with white students, but fortunately there were still a few black students at the university. And when Nelson Mandela and his comrades were arrested, both black and white students protested together. My brother was busy with secret anti-apartheid activity and I also got involved. In 1964 we were both arrested. I was let out after eight weeks but my brother was put on trial and sentenced to two years in jail.
Of course, for black South Africans the whole country was like a vast jail. If Naledi and Tiro’s mother in Journey to Jo’burg had lost her job, she could have lost her “permission” to stay in Jo’burg. She could then have been arrested and thrown into jail simply because her “pass” was not in order.
I have often wondered how, as a child, I never really saw or understood how shocking apartheid and racism were. Our mother was Jewish and I had wept over The Diary of Anne Frank. If we had lived in Europe, I knew that I could have been like Anne Frank. Why had I not seen the terrible things happening around me? When I began to remove my blinkers I felt angry. None of the teachers at my church school had asked me to THINK. I was also angry that I had only been allowed to choose my friends amongst people of the same skin colour. It was as stupid as saying you could only have friends of the same eye colour.
Years later, in England, with children of my own, I wanted to find a way of telling them about South Africa. Their father’s grandparents had come from India to South Africa; now, apartheid laws forbade us to live together in our home country. I wanted my children, as well as others in England and elsewhere, to ask questions. By this time many black South African children were refusing to go to schools which they said only taught them to be servants, and the government was sending police and soldiers to arrest or shoot them. Yet in England, even in non-fiction books, young people were still not being told what was really happening in South Africa.
I have always loved stories, and had begun to think about a story I especially wanted to tell, about two children whose baby sister falls desperately ill while their mother is working far away in Jo’burg. I wanted to show their courage in making the journey to save baby Dineo. Because it is their first visit to the city, much of what they see is new to them. I hoped that my readers would join Naledi and Tiro in beginning to ask lots of questions about the way things were.
As the idea for my story grew, I was lucky to meet a South African called Ethel de Keyser. She worked for the British Defence and Aid fund for Southern Africa, which helped families of people like Nelson Mandela who were in jail because of their fight for equality. Ethel and a few volunteers were encouraging children in Britain to find out more about apartheid. When I needed a publisher for my story, it was Ethel who kept me going when the first few publishers said “No thank you”. Journey to Jo’burg was my first story and, if I had been on my own, I might have given up and packed it away in a drawer. But with the support of Ethel and the group, the search went on until a “Yes” letter came!
I sent two copies of the first edition of the book to nephews and nieces in South Africa. But my sister-in-law never got the parcel. Instead she received a letter headed UNDESIRABLE PUBLICATION: A Journey to Jo’burg – 2 COPIES (you can see a copy on the next page). The books had been seized and banned by the government! They were only taken off the banned list the year after Nelson Mandela was let out of jail.
Now the government is chosen by all South African people, black and white, and there are no more apartheid laws. But changing “the way things are” is much harder than just changing the laws. There is a huge gulf between rich and poor, between “haves” and “have-nots” and we must never forget to strive for the ideal of equality for all. We still have an enormous mountain to climb if every child is to have an equal chance. The journey continues …
BEVERLEY NAIDOO
Over one hundred years ago, Britain fought a violent war in South Africa. Gold and diamonds had been discovered there and Britain wanted the wealth. Britain’s enemies were Afrikaners whose ancestors were mainly Dutch and who were mostly interested in farming the land. It was a colonial war between white Europeans. Black Africans, who were the majority, had no say in it. But they were needed now as workers in the mines and new towns as well as on the farms. When Britain won the war, it set up a system of taxing everyone in the country. So, to get the money to pay these taxes, black people were forced to work for white people.
In 1910, the British government handed over power to the white colonists, both English and Afrikaners, who had been fighting each other just a few years earlier. One of the first Acts passed by the new parliament of the Union of South Africa was the Land Act. It stopped black people from owning land except in reserved areas. They could only remain on white-owned land – most of the land – if they stayed as labourers and servants. You can hear the anger and sadness of Africans in this song …
The Land Act Song
We are children of Africa
We cry for our land
Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho
Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho unite
We are mad over the Land Act
A terrible law that allows sojourners
To deny us our land
Crying that we the people
Should pay to get our land back
We cry for the children of our fathers
Who roam around the world without a home
Even in the land of their forefathers.
by R T Caluza,
music teacher at Ohlange School in Natal
Soon afterwards, African people came together to form the African National Congress to resist the terrible injustice. Indians and others also protested about unequal treatment, including a small number of white people who believed in justice. But in 1948, white South Africans voted for an Afrikaans-speaking government that tightened the racism and called it apartheid.
Apartheid forced everyone in the country to be classified into a separate ‘racial group’: ‘White’, ‘Coloured’ (of mixed-descent), ‘Indian’ or ‘African’. The group that you were put into depended mainly on how you looked and who your parents were. A white person was forbidden to marry anyone not white. Everything about your life was decided by how you were classified – where you could live, what work your parents could do, whether you went to school and what school you could go to, which door you could use to enter a building, whether you could play in a park or on a beach or use a toilet … Everything. Although everybody’s parents paid taxes, the government spent much more money on white schools, white hospitals and facilities for white people than for anyone else.
Many people protested against apartheid. Nelson Mandela, one of the leaders of the African National Congress, and seven of his comrades were found guilty of trying to overthrow the government in 1964. They expected to be sentenc
ed to death.
Before the white judge announced their sentences, they each made a stirring speech from the dock. Nelson Mandela’s words were banned inside South Africa but they journeyed around the world. He ended his speech by saying:
The prisoners were sentenced to jail for the rest of their lives. Nelson Mandela and six other black comrades were sent to Robben Island. Ahmed Kathrada, who was one of them, was officially classified ‘Indian’. Dennis Goldberg, a white comrade, was sent to prison in Pretoria. For a few years, all resistance was crushed.
But then came new rebellion. In 1976 young black students in Soweto protested when the government ordered them to learn half their lessons in Afrikaans. They wanted to learn in English, a world language. Hundreds of students were killed and many thousands were arrested. But the resistance continued. In Beverley Naidoo’s Chain of Fire, Naledi and Tiro from Journey to Jo’burg are caught up in it.
On 2nd February 1990, when the apartheid government finally released Nelson Mandela, he repeated the words of his now famous speech. And in April 1994, for the first time ever, all South African adults were asked to vote for a new parliament. The African National Congress became the government and Nelson Mandela became the new President on 10th May 1994.
The idea for this book arose at meetings of the Education Group of the British Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa in 1985. The Fund was established by the late Canon Collins of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1958. It aimed:
– to help people who had been unjustly treated
– to support their families and dependants
– to make sure the world was aware of what was happening in southern Africa
– to help develop a non-racial and free society
With the election of South Africa’s first democratic government, the work of the fund came to an end in 1994. However, its commitment to education carries on through the Canon Collins Educational Trust for southern Africa.
The trust now helps to fund a variety of different projects throughout southern Africa. One such project is the Phelophepa (meaning good, clean health) Health Train. This sixteen carriage train travels around South Africa providing health care to areas that have no local facilities. It includes dental, eye and general health clinics as well as an onboard teaching area where local people can come and be trained in basic healthcare, learning how to help their community.
50% of the author’s royalties earned for Journey to Jo’Burg are received by the Trust, therefore by purchasing this book you have helped to allow them to continue with their work with the people of South Africa who need it most.
If you want to know more about the Canon Collins Educational Trust for Southern Africa then have a look at their website, http://www.canoncollins.org.uk/
And for further info about the health train go to, http://trainofhope.org
Click on the covers to read more
About the Author
Beverley Naidoo was born in South Africa and grew up under apartheid. After arrest and detention without trial, she came to England. She married another exile and was only able to return freely twenty-six years later, after Nelson Mandela’s release from jail. Their two children were brought up in England where she still lives. She goes back to South Africa to stay in touch, especially with young people. A teacher for many years, she has a doctorate in education and a number of honorary degrees.
Journey to Jo’burg was her first children’s book. It was an eye-opener for readers worldwide, winning awards, but it was banned in South Africa until 1991. In Chain of Fire, No Turning Back and Out of Bounds her young characters face extraordinary challenges. Black and white, they are caught in a society that she describes as ‘more dangerous than any fantasy’. Her many awards include the famous Carnegie Medal and Smarties Silver Medal for The Other Side of Truth about two refugee children smuggled to London who also feature in Web of Lies. In Burn My Heart, she explores a hidden colonial story of uneasy friendship and betrayal in 1950s Kenya. Her stage play The Playground directed by Olusola Oyeleye at the Polka Theatre, London 2004, was a Time Out ‘Pick of the Year’.
For younger children, her picture books include Baba’s Gift written with her daughter Maya. In The Great Tug of War she entertains all ages with animal trickster tales that her characters in Journey to Jo’burg would have shared around a night fire.
www.beverleynaidoo.com
Also by the same author
Chain of Fire
No Turning Back
Out of Bounds
The Other Side of Truth
Web of Lies
Burn my Heart
And for younger readers
Letang’s New Friend
Trouble for Letang and Julie
Letang and Julie Save the Day
Where is Zami?
Baba’s Gift
The Great Tug of War
About the Publisher
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United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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London, SE1 9GF
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United States
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