This skin had always been good enough for me. Men had admired my prowess in it. Women of many colors had found it beautiful. Never before had anyone, anywhere, attempted to change it. Yet now my color was far more important than anything I might be or do. Piss on their Honorary White! I’ll ride Black.
At Canada Junction some of the crowd dismounted to find their branch lines to various parts of Soweto. We continued on to Orlando, from which we had a long walk to where they lived. We walked along a dusty, rutted road, through rough weed-grown land cluttered with stones and here and there a pile of rubble, all that remained of former homes that had been bulldozed to the ground. In the near distance the houses were little square boxes softened by the shrubs and small trees which grew around them.
At a crossroads a group of men stood in excited conversation near a car which had run off the road and now was tilted lopsidedly on the grass verge. Along both sides of the roadway people were at their doors or windows looking toward the group of men. We stopped and one of my acquaintances spoke to them in their language. There followed an outburst of sound accompanied by much arm waving.
This car and another had been involved in an accident. An argument had ensued and the police had arrived. One driver had promptly taken to his heels. The police had shouted to him to stop, and without waiting for him to comply, had shot him, there at the corner, the bloodstained grass providing mute evidence. The wounded man had been removed in the police car to hospital, but was not expected to live. A crowd had formed and the police had ordered them to disperse. The people had merely retreated to stand outside their homes, in an ugly mood, but helpless and defeated.
Who cared whether another Black was shot and killed! Perhaps, at the hospital it would be discovered that he did not have a residence permit or Book of Life, and was therefore in Soweto illegally. After all, once a black man was in the hands of the police, identity material could easily disappear. No local resident would dare complain about the actions of the police. In any case, who could they complain to? The police themselves? The white courts? No. Fear of the white man dominated their lives. Fear of sudden violence, arrest, deportation to some remote rural area.
Along the dusty street, small groups of black men and women whispered together, their voices subdued even though the police were long gone. I couldn’t imagine this fearful numbness among Blacks in New York or Chicago or London or Birmingham, in Jamaica or anywhere else where large groups of Blacks lived. Perhaps, in spite of my acquaintances’ optimistic talk, they were already demoralized past any resistance.
I said as much, but was told that no one trusted his neighbor enough to band together. Resisting vicious police tactics in broad daylight was one thing, but where would there be any help if the police called at night, with their guns and their dogs, carefully selecting the houses of those who’d spoken up against them? Who’d lend a hand when his neighbor was dragged out and away, no longer militant, but abjectly groveling and begging for mercy?
This they lived with, these young men, desperately trying to blow some faint sparks from their despondent spirits, willing themselves to cling to faint dreams of a freedom which grew fainter and more distant each hour. They asked me about Blacks in Harlem and the deep South of the United States, hoping to hear from me accounts of white brutality to Blacks which might offer them some small consolation in their own desperate situation. But I told them that though the American police, given the opportunity, could be just as racist and brutal, Blacks in the United States were militantly aggressive in their own defense. Somehow, these young Africans had been fed the idea that their condition was in no way different from that of American Blacks. They quoted stories of Lester Maddox of Georgia and his ax-handles and of George Wallace of Alabama defying the Court’s orders, but did not know that history had already overtaken these men. They liked to tell themselves that they would one day rise up against their oppressors; they even imagined themselves engaged in covert activities against the Whites. But it was all bravado. Empty. Mere posturing.
They angered me, these young men. I thought of people I knew in Europe and the United States, black and white, who had talked with me in the fond hope that the black South African would eventually rid himself of the incubus of oppression, by the bloodiest means, if necessary. I thought of the young Blacks in my classes at New York University who’d believed that the militant projection of their blackness was a part, perhaps the most important part of their African identity. Were they identifying with this weakness, this demoralized hopelessness? These men had been bleating about the death of a brother, but in fact Tiro’s death had kindled no fire, had engendered no rage. A few minutes of huddling in grief, or beating the unresponsive earth, that was all. The realities had to be faced, clamored to be faced. Tiro was dead and had already faded into the pitiful legends of yesterday. Today was now, the job in Johannesburg, the Book of Life, the quarter room in Soweto, the paralyzing fear of Whites.
As we continued on our way to the houses we passed the elementary school. From the outside it was a large solid enough structure of reddish brick built to form a hollow square, single-storied and squat, the rough mortar between the bricks suggesting haste in construction. The ground around it was red clay nearly covered by a ragged growth of weeds, kept somewhat in check by human feet, because it provided the playground area for the school. The whole was enclosed by a wire fence torn in several places.
“I went to this school years ago,” one said.
“I’d like to take a look without interrupting anything,” I said. “I’d like to see them without anyone putting on a show for me.”
“Then just look inside. They’re accustomed to people looking in. The teacher won’t mind. Nobody will put on any show for you.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m always poking my nose in. We need to know what’s going on in the schools, so we check from time to time. Go ahead, if you like.” We stopped beside a classroom. He’d said “we” as if he were speaking for some absent group or organization.
From outside the only sound we could hear was the low voice of one person, perhaps the teacher, rising and falling softly. The door was slightly ajar, and, urged by my companions, I opened it further and went in, followed by them.
The room was small and very overcrowded. The benches and few desks supported twice as many children as they were designed for, squashed and perched wherever they could squeeze their thin bodies. Those who missed out on the benches and desks were either standing at the back or squatting on the bare concrete floor along the sides of the room. In a room probably built to accommodate fifteen or twenty children in comfort, there were eighty or ninety. Most of them had plastic sacks in which they carried and zealously guarded their books, rulers, pencils, and other supplies.
Considering the external surroundings, the children were tidily dressed, the boys, for the most part in gray shorts and gray or white shirts, the girls in dark blue uniform dress with white bodices. They hardly noticed our entrance. Without exception their attention was raptly fixed on the teacher, absorbing his every word.
I leaned against a wall, watching what was, to me, a miracle. I’d forgotten that, in many parts of the world there still existed a ravenous hunger for learning and knowing. If had been so in my boyhood days in Guyana, even though we were never cramped like this, never oppressed in this way. But in the long intervening years of watching students and being a teacher, I’d become accustomed to other conditions, in which students needed to be inveigled, coerced, bribed, or flattered into making the smallest intellectual effort.
These youngsters were eager, their faces and eyes bright with either the enthusiasm of discovery or competition, perhaps already aware that a great deal depended on them, and knowing well that outside there were others who would gladly take their places.
The teacher nodded in our direction but continued with his lesson, apparently unperturbed by the interruption. The les
son was conducted in Afrikaans. He would ask questions and then have to select an answer from among the forest of waving hands which clamored for the chance to reply. None of the children seemed to notice the heat or the overcrowding. They were in an intensely competitive situation and were fully responsive to it. This lesson would be followed by one in English. Until the age of eight or, in some cases, ten years, the child reads, writes and does his counting in an African language, then is abruptly switched to studies conducted in Afrikaans or English or both. Blacks view this as a deliberate plan to inhibit their progress in a society which uses Afrikaans and English exclusively and interchangeably.
Obviously, there never would be any problem of discipline here, because there was no boredom. The children seemed to be soaking in every tidbit of information through eyes and ears, through their very skin. But what of tomorrow when even the minimal haven of this school would be denied them? All this youthful energy and thrust must inevitably collide with the white man’s blockades and become poisoned with frustration, anger, and hate. I could almost feel it, a near tangible force, the accelerating buildup of energy as each graduating group was forced out into its own confrontation with the cold, closed world. How long would they be denied? Eventually, clubs, police dogs and even guns would not be able to subdue them, and that was exactly what the Whites feared.
Outside, my companions decided to stay in Soweto and offered to accompany me to the railway station. They seemed to have forgotten all about the drink they’d promised me. I told them I’d had enough of that and would rather suffer a taxi, if they’d help me find one.
“Can’t take it more than one way?” one asked, grinning. “We make it both ways, five times a week. Anyway, you were lucky today. Nobody picked your pocket.”
Involuntarily I checked. He was right.
“Would you show me where I’d find a taxi?” I asked.
“Not easy at this hour,” one answered. “But don’t worry, I’ll run you into Jo’burg.” He led the way to his home, next to which a shiny, near-new car was parked.
“I never use it for work,” he said, touching it fondly. “Can’t afford to run it to the city every day. Then the cost of parking it. So I use it mainly on weekends.”
“As many a late virgin will certify,” another added, and all joined in the ribald laughter. Now that the matter of my transportation was settled we stood around outside his house, chatting in lighter vein with each other. Eventually, over my broad hints, the owner of the car started it up and we climbed in, the others riding only as far as their homes. On the way to the city, he was more relaxed with me, talking about his job as a warehouseman—a dead-end, but it kept him alive. In contrast to the power-cut gloom of London which I’d recently left, Johannesburg’s night was lit like a fairyland, its power stations all fueled by coal. A few blocks from my hotel we stopped at a traffic light and I noticed three smartly dressed young women, black, chatting together on the pavement, their lush bodies, bright, lipsticked mouths, and bold postures seeming out of place at that hour in Johannesburg.
“If Blacks are not allowed to live in this city, where would they find clients?” I asked my companion.
“If you wait long enough you’ll see,” he replied. “They’re waiting for Whitey. When it’s dark and he thinks nobody’s seeing him he leaves his wife and goes looking for black pussy.”
“But what about the police? Don’t they pick them up?”
“Only those who don’t pay.”
So much for apartheid.
“You want to hear a famous saying?” he asked me, smiling wickedly. “A real proverb? A Soweto proverb?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“The final destiny of the white man lies between the black woman’s legs. Work that out, my friend.”
Chapter
Eleven
TWO DAYS BEFORE I was scheduled to leave South Africa, some students from Witwatersrand University telephoned. They said they wished to visit and talk with me, and I agreed to have dinner with them at my hotel; they wanted to take me to a local restaurant, but one near-experience of that was enough for me.
I suddenly had a feeling of confusion. Talking with one of the students on the telephone had brought the old, familiar feeling of excitement which always comes to me at the prospect of meeting young people, challenging their intellects and having them challenge mine, learning from them and hoping to teach them. Life had, so far, favored me with a wide variety of experiences which lent themselves to excellent illustrations whenever I needed to enliven an academic topic. These students had invited me to meet and talk with them. They were White. For weeks now I had been bombarded by the ugliness of white bigotry toward Blacks. I’d seen a young man beaten and humiliated for no reason. He’d been running, that’s all. I’d heard lovely black women talk of the fear which was a major ingredient of their daily lives. I’d traveled, cooped up with other Blacks like cattle in a truck, while Whites rode in comfort on the same train. Now here I was, reacting with pleasure to an invitation to meet and consort with Whites. Did the fact that they were students make the difference?
I wondered what the young men I had so recently visited in Soweto would think of me, if they knew I was entertaining a group of Whites. Would they consider me insensitive to their plight? But why worry about what they would think? What did I think? In the face of all the injustice I saw all around me, how could I justify to myself the feeling of pleasure at meeting the students? Perhaps, I thought, they were denied the opportunity to meet and talk with Blacks. Perhaps meeting and talking with me might sow some tiny seed of tolerance and respect which might take root. Or would it? Hell, I was not the first Black any of them had met or could meet if they wished. Or wasn’t I? Maybe they’d never met another Black who’d had the opportunities to do what I had done. Perhaps, in their eyes, I was different. But, wait, wasn’t that exactly what the Indian ex-Robben Island prisoner had predicted would happen? That the Whites would get to me and seduce me into believing myself different from local Blacks?
I was feeling quite low when the students arrived, but tried to hide it in welcoming them and making them comfortable. Eight of them, five men and three women, young and, at first, somewhat ill at ease. One dark-haired woman who seemed to be the leader of the group apologized for encroaching on my time, particularly as they knew from the newspapers how busy I was.
“We just had to take the chance, sir,” she said. “We’ve read your books, we know you’ve lived in England, France, and the United States and we’d like to talk to you about things we’d never be able to discuss with anyone here. We just had to take the chance that you’d see us.”
In the face of her plea my misgivings subsided. Hell, these young people looked no different from other groups of young Whites I’d taught in London or Denmark, New York or Florida. Perhaps, in some small way I might be useful. Wasn’t this what I had always tried to do as a teacher?
We talked. At first about my books, my teaching, my travels and my diplomatic service, gradually moving on to themselves as members of their university and citizens of their country.
“All our philosophy courses teach us to examine the human condition continually and try to improve it,” said one young woman, whose two thick braids emphasized the youthfulness of her serious face. “We read about social structures, historical and modern, and it is inevitable that we compare them with our own. We talk about the anomalies among ourselves. That’s fine. But then we try to discuss them in class and that’s where the trouble starts. How can we talk about the human condition without referring to the Blacks in our society? As soon as you mention Blacks, professors get uptight.”
“Unless you refer to them only as statistics,” another said.
“In High School everyone was eager to get to the university,” a young man said. “We came, believing that we should develop as thoughtfully intelligent people, prepared to assume future responsibilities. And
we are encouraged, as long as our inquiries and interests are not directed toward real social change!”
“I had this thing with my philosophy professor,” one said. “We were discussing social change and after a while it struck me that our entire discussion was limited to intellectual speculation. No one had tried to draw any parallels between what we were philosophizing about and the social realities around us. No one had made any reference to Blacks; no one had commented on apartheid. Of course we talked about injustice, but not as if any of us was even tangentially involved in it. We even reviewed research that had been done, but it was as if we were discussing the behavior of caribou in Canada. So I finally spoke up and said, ‘Why don’t we, as students, examine our own attitudes to Blacks?’ In as many words I was told to forget it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s dangerous to display a social conscience,” a young man said. “If you have a social conscience you will inevitably get around to examining Government policies and practices. So you raise a question involving the slightest criticism of that policy and the trouble starts! Some of our professors are members of the Nationalist Party and ardent defenders of Government policy. Before you know it you’re under some kind of investigation.”
“From your professors?”
“Worse. Much worse. From the Security Police. It’s a grim situation and you find yourself spinning in circles. We study logic, so Plato’s Republic is part of our reading. We read it and we look around to test the validity of the things we read which seem sound against the reality around us. When faced with conflicting concepts, we naturally expect to be able to talk with our professors about them. We read Mann and Thoreau and Steinbeck. French, English, German, Italian, Russian—we try to understand the views and opinions of those considered the world’s foremost thinkers. Some of us have been reading Solzhenitsyn. Isn’t it to be expected that we will look at our own social structure, if only to reassure ourselves that it is a good one?”
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