Honorary White

by E. R. Braithwaite

  “I had the choice of three hotels here which are allowed to take Blacks,” I told him.

  “Yes, I know,” he interrupted.

  “Let me explain. I was told this at the airport the moment I arrived. I was told that there were no other hotels I could go to, none owned by Blacks or Indians or Coloreds or anyone else other than Whites. I make no apology for staying there.”

  “Okay. Okay. I accept that you had no choice, but people like you and Foster and Ashe are setting back the black struggle ten years. By coming here. By letting South Africa use the fact of your coming to counter our accusations of discrimination.”

  It finally got through to me that he had invited me to see him, not really to tell me about Robben Island, though he answered my questions, but to protest my visit to his country. He’d mentioned that he’d tried to reach both Foster and Ashe without any success.

  “How do you imagine anyone outside your country would know anything about conditions here if no one made any attempt to learn at first hand?” I asked.

  “You could learn without coming here. Especially you. You were at the United Nations. Didn’t you meet any of our brothers who went there to petition? Some of our brothers from here and South West Africa made it over to the States. Didn’t any of them see you?”

  “Yes. I met some of them.”

  “Didn’t you believe what they told you?”

  “I was persuaded by what they told me.”

  “Don’t give me all that diplomatic shit, man. Either you believed them or you didn’t.”

  “I was generally persuaded by them, but I welcomed the opportunity to see the situation for myself. This is it.”

  “Do you dash off to every country to check everything for yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Then why this? Did you have any difficulty getting a visa from this government?”

  “No.”

  “Shit, man, doesn’t that tell you anything? Your books were banned in this country. Even today Blacks can’t see your film in the public bijou, and that, too, was banned to Whites for some time. In spite of all that these Afrikaners gave you a visa to come here. Think, man! Can’t you see they’re planning to use you?”

  “Look, they can plan what the hell they like, that has nothing to do with me. I was issued a visa. Fine. But nobody can control how I think about what I see and hear and feel.” And, on impulse added, “Not even you.”

  He laughed, reaching forward to touch me.

  “You think so? You really think so? By the time these sons-of-bitches are through with you, you’ll be singing their tune without realizing it. You’ll go back to the States and tell people all about how freely you were allowed to move about. No supervision, therefore, no police state. Which makes a liar out of all of us. Right? They’ll wine you and dine you and prove that educated Blacks can make it anywhere. Only the lazy Bantu has to be kicked in the ass and locked in a ghetto to make him stir himself. They’ll forget to tell you that he is disenfranchised, denied a reasonable education and the right to bargain for his labor and compete for the job he wants to do. Yes, friend, they’ll tell you you’re different and, you know something, you’ll end up believing it.”

  “Think what you like,” I said.

  “Eh?”

  “Think what the hell you like,” I repeated and stood up to leave. “Look, you invited me and I came to talk with you. I thought you’d tell me about what the life is like for you and others. I came because I wanted to learn the truth, to hear it for myself so I can write about it. I expected that you, black like me, would lay it on me, without all this bullshit. You think I was born yesterday? I’ve lived most of my adult life among Whites. London, Paris, New York, Rome. I’ve no illusions about them, but I don’t see them as bloody supermen either. They can’t control how I think and what I’ll write.” He had needled me to this point. He and the others. Who the hell did they think they were? Pouring their suspicions over me. Here they were locked tight in the rotten ghetto and wanting the outside world to know of their plight. Okay. I’d come in. Of my own free will. So tell me and I’ll write it. That’s what I was saying to them, but all I was getting was their suspicion and scorn.

  “Hey, cool it, man.” He reached forward and pushed me back into the chair. “Don’t get excited. We’re talking. Relax.”

  “You relax. You call that talking, making me seem like some half-assed idiot just because I’ve visited your country? White newsmen and writers fly here regularly, write their pieces and fly out again. Do you warn them that they’re being used?”

  “Fuck them.”

  “And fuck you, too, mate. What gives you the right to be so high and mighty? Your years on Robben Island? Okay, I sympathize.”

  “Stuff your sympathy. Hell, man, you’re beginning to sound like Whitey. Cool down. I’m only trying to help you. And don’t hand me that shit about Paris and London. Over there they might hate your guts, but the law limits what they can do to you. Here Whitey is the law. Blacks can’t command the law because it was not intended for them. They can’t demand justice, because it was not intended for them. Justice and the law are concepts which apply to men. To humans. In this society Blacks are not considered human so they are not sheltered by those concepts. Did you know that, in this society we have no vote? We’re not even on the official census. Shit man, we’re not here. Don’t talk to me about Whites in Europe or America. These here are different. They’re fascists of the worst kind.

  “Look,” he was leaning forward, tapping on my knee with a long finger. “All I’m begging you to do is think. I’m black. You’re black. I published a few newsletters which nobody outside this town ever heard of and they threw me into jail. You’ve written books which have been read by millions. Attacking the very policies they live by. Okay, they try to keep those books out, but they’re brought in anyway and read, so to save their own fucking face, they lift the ban. That makes this a liberal society. Right? And to cap it all, they let you in. Man, they used you before you stepped into that airplane.”

  The logic of it hit me hard, killing my anger and stirring up the fears I’d earlier had about making the visit. The visa was five months in coming. Perhaps all that time was necessary while the design was worked out. Christ, I was beginning to think like him.

  “Okay, you made your point. Now I must be running along. I’ve a few things to do.” I wanted to be out of this.

  “Like a dinner engagement, maybe? With some of your white friends?” Grinning.

  “Perhaps.” He had the knack of finding the nerve.

  “Don’t worry. They’ve enough black slaves to keep it hot for you. Okay, man. Like you say, you can see and hear and think for yourself, but I tell you they’ll use you. They do it all the time. Among us. Even out there on the Island. Can you imagine that? Even out there where you’d think we were all brothers, all there for the same reason, all united against the fascist bastards. Even there they managed to use some of us against others. And for what? Some fucking little privilege we’d already learned to live without. After all we’d been through, to sell one’s soul for shit like that! So you see man, telling me that you can see and hear and think for yourself doesn’t mean a damn thing. Anyway, while you’re thinking for yourself, think about us and remember that in the eyes of these fascists you’re no better than the rest of us.”

  “I’ll remember,” I said. I’d come to this house with a gutful of goodwill toward this man. Now all I could feel was a nagging suspicion that somehow I’d been trapped into betraying him and others like him. Just by being in their country.

  “In prison the payoff was some worthless little privilege,” he was still with it. “What are they giving you? The ‘Honorary White’ bit, so you can believe yourself different from the rest of us? Fancy hotel, your face in the white newspaper, moving around freely? Same thing, man. Privileges bought—”

  “Nob
ody’s bought me,” I said, lamely.

  “—And paid for, man. And when you think you’re moving about more freely than the rest of us, just look over your shoulder. If you’re quick enough you might learn something.”

  Everything he said struck home. Sure, I had been telling myself that nobody was restricting or supervising my movements. I’d been in and out of Soweto and Alexandra, hadn’t I? My only problem had been my inability to make contact with the so-called black representatives. Buthelezi. Matanzima. The Information Office had promised me meetings with them but had only come up with excuses. Always at the last moment. But I must not let the things this man was saying color everything that happened. If I couldn’t reach the big Blacks, there would be others.

  “Are you concerned for me or just sorry for yourself?” I asked, trying to throw him on the defensive, and free myself from the suffocation of his penetrating insight.

  “I’m not sorry for me, man. I’ll live. I lost ten years of my life out there on the island. Doing shit, man. Breaking rocks for the sake of breaking rocks. You’re sitting on a pile of rocks today with a hammer in your hand and sometime next week or the week after it’s a pile of pebbles and you can’t remember how it happened. You’ve used two weeks of your life watching rocks turn to dust. And the next week you’re sitting on another pile of rocks. Or is it the same one? You know what they did with the pebbles, man? They just left them there to remind us that we were just shit. You know what our ambition was? To stay alive. Staying alive, that’s all. Living for news from outside. Do you know what was the most important thing to us in there? Not money, man. Not pussy. A newspaper. Any old newspaper. We read every word. Everything. And we talked. Can you understand? Those fucking Afrikaner guards watched us to prevent us from talking. Threatened us. Punished us. But we talked. Even with our mouths shut like, what you call them, ventriloquists, man. Whoever found a piece of newspaper read it, then passed it on and told everyone what he’d read. After a while we were reading more closely, more perceptively than when we were free. We shared our points of view. We talked. Especially about the political situation.” Here he laughed again, scratching his head, remembering.

  “Once a priest came into the prison carrying a briefcase with a newspaper, the Times, stuck under the flap. Like lightning, it disappeared. He never made a fuss about it. That Sunday we had a whole newspaper to read. After that, whenever that priest came to see us, he brought a newspaper and it always disappeared from his briefcase. Survival, man, that’s the word. Nelson Mandela is up there. Living it out from hour to hour. That’s where you learn about hope, man. Without it you’re dead.”

  He came and placed a hand on my arm, a conciliatory gesture.

  “Will you come and see me again, friend? I promise to be nice.”

  “Don’t strain yourself on my account.”

  “That’s not a strain. Living like this is a strain. Shit, I can’t even see you to the door. Never know who might be checking on me from outside. If I’m seen talking to you, they could come and take me away. Fucking lovely way to live, isn’t it? I’m jealous, man. You, a stranger, can move about as you wish. Right? Me, a native son, I’m denied the right to step outside. Goodnight, man.”

  I left him, his words continuing their disturbing refrain in my ear. I’d gone to his house to talk with him about his time in prison. He’d talked about my visit to his country, sowing in my mind a very sizable seed of doubt about my own motives, and my possible malleability by the South African authorities. Walking away from the Indian’s irritating sneers, I wondered if he was right.

  He’d questioned my coming to South Africa but he’d either forgotten or ignored the fact that my coming made it possible for me to see him and hear his cynical censure. In his position, I’d be just as embittered, seeing strangers move about with ease while I was restricted to my own house. But what the hell did he want of me?

  † Marijuana.

  Chapter

  Five

  ON MY WAY BACK to the hotel, I passed a restaurant, brightly lit and attractive, and suddenly realizing I was hungry, I decided to go in. I pushed the door but got no further than a step inside, where I was confronted by a waiter, dead-faced and stony-eyed, who placed himself in front of me. He said something to me which I supposed was in Afrikaans.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “You do not come in.” This was stupid. I was already in and thinking out my next move. Now I fully realized why the hotel people had repeatedly suggested that I let them know whenever I wanted to dine out and they would make the arrangements for me, claiming that they knew where all the best eating places were located. This waiter looked as if he would have welcomed a fracas, eyes pale, pugnacious jaw thrust forward. I was turning to leave when another man approached and asked him something in Afrikaans. The waiter replied, and the newcomer then addressed me.

  “I don’t speak your language,” I said.

  “You’re not African?”

  “No, I’m a visitor.” At which he spoke again to the pale-eyed waiter, this time impatiently, but I walked out, wishing them both to whatever hell was reserved for Afrikaners.

  In my room, the things the Indian had said teased and tormented me, throwing into sharp relief what had happened at the restaurant. The waiter’s contempt for Blacks was ready and waiting for expression. A waiter! His awkward English indicated that he may well have been a foreigner, an immigrant. How quickly people took on the local social coloration. Like chameleons. Come to think of it I hadn’t seen a restaurant in Soweto or Alexandra. Maybe I passed them and didn’t notice. What were they like? Could I eat a meal in one of them? Christ!

  My reflections were interrupted by a telephone call from a young black newsman I’d met a few days earlier.

  “How are you doing?”

  “Fine,” I lied.

  “How would you like to come out here and see how some of us live?”

  “Where’s ‘out here’?”

  “Soweto.”

  “I’ve been there.”

  “Soweto’s a big place. I don’t think you’d have come to this part. I heard you’d visited with the big boys here. Come and see how the little people live.”

  Safely indoors, I wasn’t keen to go out again. Besides, I’d had enough of social exposure for one night. A quick tray from room service seemed a more attractive alternative.

  “How could I get there now,” I temporized. “It’s nearly eight o’clock.”

  “By taxi. Black taxi. No white taxi will bring you out here. Get a black taxi from the taxi stand near the black bus stop. I’ll meet you at this end. It will do you good to travel the way the rest of us do.” I was still far from enthusiastic.

  “How will I get back here?” I asked, thinking of the special permit required of Blacks in the city at night.

  “I’ll see to it, don’t worry about that.”

  “Okay,” I surrendered and went out to the black bus stop across the park. I was directed to a taxi, empty while the driver stood around joking with friends. Loud laughter punctuated each sally. He waved me to sit inside. Soon I was joined by another passenger who sat beside me without saying a word. Then another and another, followed by two more, these sitting in the front. Not a word from anyone. Another person pushed in the back and we were all forced to sit diagonally pressed together. Another passenger slipped into the front. A woman. At first I thought she’d be driving because she sat at the wheel, but now the driver got in, pushing against the woman until he could take hold of the wheel even though his body was only halfway under it. Somehow he started the vehicle and we were off.

  It was the most uncomfortable taxi ride I’d ever taken. Eight adults cramped uncomfortably into space designed for five, the driver miraculously shifting gears and steering from his sideways position. We passed several taxis similarly overloaded, always with Blacks.

  In Soweto, my ac
quaintance was waiting as promised, standing beside his car. He said he could have fetched me, but thought the experience of riding as he did twice each day would help me to understand better what was normal for a Black. He kept his car for after-work use.

  We drove to his home, one of the square concrete boxlike structures in the northeast part of Soweto. Instead of the corrugated metal roof I’d seen on some of the other houses, this one and its neighbors wore bulky concrete tops, making them seem humpbacked in the nighttime gloom, very much, in fact, like huge sleeping elephants. Inside it was hot, even with the few windows open. Several candles were strategically placed about the room for light. Indoors he turned to me and said, “Welcome to the real Soweto.”

  The house was sparsely furnished. The main room in which I stood contained a wooden table with three wooden chairs around it, a rough chest of drawers reaching nearly to the low ceiling, and a narrow wooden cot. In a corner another table, roughly made but sturdy, supported some cooking utensils and a Primus stove. No electricity. No signs of running water.

  “Six of us live here, in four little rooms,” he said, his eyes brightly on me as if to note my slightest reaction. He led me into another room which was furnished in nearly the same way, except that there was no cooking equipment. A central wooden table, two low cots opposite each other and two wooden cupboards. Near one of the cots was a small upended box, centrally divided, which contained several books. Crowning the box was a half-worn candle stuck in a Coke bottle.

  “My brother is a medical student, one of the very few. That’s where he studies. He leaves here at five o’clock each morning to make his way into town and compete with white boys who read by electric light, sleep in comfortable beds and eat a good breakfast.” Saying it all so matter-of-factly. I looked at him and surprised the pain on his face.

  “Different from your hotel, don’t you think?” he asked.

  “Yes, different.”

  “Different from those houses they showed you on your officially conducted tour, I’m sure. Then, you saw houses like this, but with electric lighting and a kitchen sink and a water toilet out back. I’m sure they didn’t show you these. How would you like to live here for a month? No, a week, or even a day?”