Uncle Khalu finally rushed George to the clinic on his motorcycle, where the doctors were able to remove the ax and stitch him up. Sitting in Johanna’s kitchen later that morning, George was still shaking from the shock of the axing and his hangover from the previous night’s booze-up. He was unable to steady his glass of brandy, and spilled its contents every time he tried to take a sip. Molly was unfazed as Johanna and the others continued to berate her. She kept sucking in her breath and sighing irritably. I was in awe of her.
As Barbara and I grew older, we’d help Johanna brew, sift, and ferment her intoxicating potions. We also kept watch out for the police, and threw stones on the tin rooftops to warn the shebeeners of raids. When the police approached the neighborhood, our signaling caused a din that rang through the township like a hailstorm. After all, Witbank was a drinking town, and most of Kwa-Guqa’s men lived to drink. Every street had a few shebeens, evidenced by the ashen faces of most people over eighteen who bore the dazed and confused look associated with too much bad booze.
Every Saturday morning, Johanna fed Barbara and me a laxative or inserted an enema that was usually administered with the help of Aunt Tinnie, Ouma Sussie, and Aunt Dolly holding our legs, arms, heads, and shoulders down while my grandmother stuck the pump up our asses, dispensing the liquid formula into our intestines. Despite these weekly internal cleansings, both Barbara and I strangely had sickly childhoods. We were especially bedeviled by bouts of bronchitis, influenza, and pneumonia. We were sometimes near death. I can remember several periods when Barbara would sit beside my sickbed, crying. One time my grandmother really did think I was dying. Her prayer women friends from the Lutheran church, in their mustard yellow and black uniforms, all sang hymns throughout the night between prayers administered by church ministers who were there to impress upon God the seriousness of my condition and to beg Him for my life to be spared until a much later date if possible. The Lutheran hymns were all sung in the Pedi language of my father.
Morena re ho Khunametsi, dipelo di go inametshi, Monghadi yo re Shokelang, Re kwe ba re go tsomang.
(God, we are on our knees, our hearts are bending over. O Master who sympathizes with us, heed us who seek thee.)
Ke lla ke le bothateng, ke le mo mahlomoleng, Jesu yo o mpakoletseng, A ko u Nkhomotse hle.
(I weep from the trials and tribulations, from sadness and heartbreak. Jesus, who died on the cross for me, I pray that you quiet my soul.)
Jesu o letsatsi, o monate jwang. Nthlomogele pelo, ke mo bohlokong. O mphe le bophelo joalo le lefung.
(Jesus you are the sun, you are so nourishing. Rain down your sympathy on me. I am in pain. Give me life now and even in death.)
Tlishang tebego le lobeng modimo a ya phelang. Yo le barongoa seetsheng e le ba mo retang.
(Bring on your thanks and pray to the living God, of whom even His messengers in the light sing praises.)
To this day, their melancholy but beautiful melodies and haunting harmonies still evoke for me my state of ignorance and innocence as I lay on my supposed deathbed.
The songs were deeply soothing and almost surreal, with a childish charm and sweet melancholy that rang in my ears long after they ended, echoing through my dreams and blending with the crowing of the roosters, the cackling of the chickens, and the singing of the birds in the early winter dawn. That’s when sleep was most delicious, when I prayed not to awaken to face the morning’s biting cold and the howling winds that blew the township dust into my eyes and sand into my ears and between my teeth.
Sometime later, when Barbara lay in that very same bed, near death, it was the exact same group of people who were again assembled by Johanna to conduct a similar prayer meeting during the nights, while I wept endlessly in the next room. But I was filled with unshakable confidence that the music would come through for my sister as it had for me, and miraculously my belief was confirmed. These were the moments when the power of music firmly impressed itself into our lives. When the prayer women sang, they seemed to put their deepest emotions into the appeals contained in the hymns. With tears running down their cheeks, their eyes crimson from weeping, they gave the impression of being in direct, personal communication with God. Even though we were very young children, the power of their commitment made a very deep impression. The strength of those songs still clings to us, the proof is in our continued presence in this world.
Strong as was her love for us, beatings were still a regular thing with Johanna. I always seemed to get into trouble with her, which always led to the strap, a twig from the old apricot tree, or the most excruciating, painful pinches in the armpits—all of which left my body black and blue.
There’s one instance that I’ve always remembered. Johanna discovered I had been stealing money from the pouch she wore that served as a cash register while she sold booze. When business was slow, Johanna would disappear into the bedroom adjoining the kitchen, or into the toilet outside in the yard, or behind the coal shed, and lift her dress and hide the cash in her money apron. (She did not know that Gigigi and I were spying on her.) At night she hung her apron from her iron bedpost. Gigigi persuaded me to steal a few pennies, then three pence, then sixpence, then shillings, and finally half-crowns. Because Johanna snored like a hibernating bear, I found it easy to sneak into her apron and lift coins. She would have never discovered my scheme had it not been for the grocer who mentioned to Johanna that I was spending a lot of money on fatcakes and fish and chips for my friends. My grandmother beat me for several days and a few nights as well. Some nights she would wrestle me from a sound sleep and throw me outside. I didn’t mind the beatings so much. It was sleeping outside that terrified me, as it would any four-year-old brought up on ghost and witchcraft stories. We were told that ghosts of people who had died were roaming the township at night and ready to carry people away to the graveyard where they would feed on their victims or torture them until they were left witless for life. I would bang on the front door of Johanna’s house, crying and begging her to please let me in. “I will never do it again, Ouma Johanna. I will be a good boy. Please let me in.”
I wasn’t the only family member to feel Johanna’s wrath. Uncle Khalu and Johanna frequently fought. Khalu was a mean street fighter, but his mother often got the better of him. One afternoon, Gogo Kappie-Kappie, Johanna’s mother, sent me to call my grandmother because she had something very important to discuss with her. I ran down Tolman Street to Johanna’s house, and when I walked through the gate, I heard her cussing Khalu in the coal shed behind Molly and George’s room, next to the chicken coop. When I rushed to the scene I saw Khalu’s face and clothes covered in blood. Johanna’s right thumb was dangling at the joint where he had bitten his mother. Johanna was hitting Khalu across the backyard, all the while cussing him as he tried to fight back. Although he had an athlete’s physique and stamina, Johanna sent her son staggering like a punch-drunk boxer just before a TKO. I ran back to Ouma Sussie’s to tell everyone at her house what had happened. Uncle Putu, Aunt Lily, Aunt Tinnie, and Ouma Sussie ran back down the street to stop the fight at Johanna’s house. Although Johanna and her son argued and fought often, there was a tenderness and deep affection between the two of them. When Khalu came home he always brought his mother beautiful gifts such as dresses, handbags, and shoes, crockery and other housewares. They attended church together and always walked hand-in-hand after worship service.
Three years later, two jealous Dutch co-workers murdered Khalu because he was a light-skinned black manager of a cinema where they all worked. At Khalu’s funeral, I saw Johanna sadder and more heartbroken than at any other time I lived with her. Losing her son in such a violent way took its toll on her. She never bothered to attend the court trial, because deep in her heart she knew the white boys who murdered her son would get away with a slap on the wrist. Indeed, the Dutchmen got off with a one-hundred-pound fine each and a warning from the judge not to go around killing natives anymore.
Johanna’s rough exterior aside, she showered me w
ith much love—more than I received from anybody except my mother. During my sick days, she spent sleepless nights and days at my bedside wiping my brow, feeding me medicine and her traditional elixirs, rubbing my chest with Vicks and wrapping me in hot towels. I remember her praises and rewards when she thought I was a good boy, her sadness whenever I would go and visit my parents in City Deep Gold Mines, her joy on my return, the prayers she recited for my health, good fortune, and protection. She carried me on her back wrapped in a blanket while she scrubbed, cooked, swept, and brewed her intoxicating potions. She carried me even while she was in the middle of a fight, while I hung on to her for dear life. She called me “Minkie Mouse” because I was so small, and when she was really happy, she called me “Mousie.” When I left Witbank in 1945 to live with my parents in Springs, Johanna and I cried at the Witbank station. “Don’t forget to come and visit your grandmother, Minkie Mousie. I don’t know how I will live without my little Mousie.” Barbara and I visited Johanna every holiday, even if it was just for a few days, until she later came to live with us in Alexandra Township.
I never could reconcile in my mind the cruelty she could demonstrate alongside the kindness, love, and generosity she would pour out. Throughout my whole life, until she died in 1994, at the age of 104, she loved me dearly, always inquired after me, and stood up for me when anybody would try to put me down. Johanna was deeply proud of my achievements, but always encouraged me to pray for humility. Her memory will always remain with me.
2
IN 1945 MY PARENTS SUMMONED Barbara and me to live with them. They had moved from City Deep to Springs, a mining town thirty miles east of Johannesburg. We were to live in Payneville, a model African township two miles east of the center of town, where my father opened the first milk depot and fruit and vegetable market for the municipality. The town had a colored section on the south side and a large Indian merchant community on the northern end; a rail fence surrounded the entire settlement. The houses were some of the first built for Africans to have flush toilets. The place had electricity, street lamps, a modern clinic, a nursery school, modern schools for the older children, a shopping center, parks, and a cinema. I was very excited about going to live there, not to mention finally being able to live with my parents. It never entered my mind that Payneville would be a passing dream, to be destroyed a few years later by apartheid. Every city and town in South Africa had an African township or two like Payneville, until the forced removals of the 1950s. After that, mega-townships like Soweto, with its population of five million, constructed specifically for Africans, became the rule. Colored and Indians were removed to their own townships.
A self-made man in every sense of the word, my father taught himself architecture, carpentry, landscape design, horticulture, and sculpting. His personal library contained books by Sri Aurubindo, Aldous Huxley, Lin Yutang, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, William Shakespeare, and Evelyn Waugh, as well as Byron, Keats, Dumas, and Booker T. Washington. He was also a self-taught and noted sculptor, and a friend of the famed painter Gerard Sekoto. My father and Sekoto refused to be called native woodcarvers and sketchers, the terms used for African artists. They demanded to be called sculptors and artists just like their white counterparts, who often copied their styles and made huge profits by doing so. My father, Sekoto, and other African artists of their caliber were prevented from gaining recognition for their work. Sekoto, who became known as the father of South African art, went to Paris in 1947, where his works were exhibited in many solo and group shows. My father’s pioneering works were later commissioned by many rich whites in South Africa and exhibited in top galleries around the country. Today a few fortunate African collectors own some of his works.
My mother was a great cook and teacher, and a skilled organizer (she later became president of the National Council of African Women). Although she was a descendant of a Scottish father and a Ndebele mother, and could have opted for the semi-privileged life of a colored, Pauline chose to be an African community leader. She was fluent in a number of indigenous languages.
Their marriage was a difficult union for their awkwardly juxtaposed backgrounds, given the pressures from their relatives and friends and the absurd racial restrictions of South Africa’s social and legislative environment. Some of my father’s relatives openly voiced their disapproval of his choice to marry a colored woman when so many women from his tribe, church, profession, and social environment were available. Similarly, some of my mother’s relatives never understood why she’d married a black Karanga from the north, when so many eligible light-skinned gentlemen had wanted to marry her. It was a sick state of affairs, which haunted Barbara, Elaine, Sybil, and me throughout our lives. It never mattered how much most of my father’s family grew to respect and love her; there were always those in my father’s family who despised my mother. My sisters and I were never considered black enough to be seen as African, nor were we light enough to be totally accepted by our colored relatives and their friends. Throughout my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, many times I’ve been asked the same question: “Hugh, tell me really, what are you people, Africans or colored or in between?” Angered by the question, I usually tempered my response: “We’re just human beings.” Our parents taught us to be proud of what we were; it has always been easy to explain our origins, those of my grandparents and parents. We learned to trace our family roots as far back as possible. It always amazes people when I tell them that my maternal grandfather was a mining engineer from Scotland.
In 1946, after attending preschool across the street from our house, I was accepted into St. Andrew’s Anglican Primary School, where, because of my high marks, I was immediately promoted to Sub A, the third-year class. One day on my way home from a school trip to gather clay, I was kicking a tennis ball back and forth with my friends as we ran alongside the tar road back to Payneville when a runaway car hit my best friend, Washa, while he was running to get the ball away from the middle of the road. He must have flown over fifty feet through the air before he landed on the grassy side. He never breathed again. Washa was only eight years old. The white man who hit him never stopped, and there was never an arrest. Mr. Buitendacht, the township superintendent, under whom my mother worked as a social worker, came to the school and gave a speech warning us not to play in the roads because we were in the way of white peoples’ cars. Even though Payneville was a model township, Springs was very racist and surrounded by other Afrikaner right-wing communities such as Brakpan, Nigel, Benoni, Welgedacht, and Delmas. In 1945 a mining strike was stopped when the army, summoned to shoot black miners, killed scores of them and forced the survivors back to work at gunpoint. This was three years before the apartheid administration took over the government.
Sandwiched between a few minor skirmishes with my playmates and trying to stay out of white folks’ way, we usually rode wild donkeys on Saturdays in the blue gum forest on the southern fringe of Payneville, before going to catch a Gene Autry or another cowboy movie. There was always a weekly serial featuring Dr. Fu Manchu, Tarzan, Captain Marvel, or Superman. It was hard to hear from all the cheering, whooping, and laughter. Also, we only spoke Afrikaans, Zulu, and Sotho, and understood very little English. But we still memorized the dialogue and recited along as the film unwound.
It was popular culture that really expanded my English vocabulary. As in the films we saw, most of the words to the songs on the 78-rpm records I played on the gramophone were not easy to make sense of, but it didn’t stop me from singing along with the vocalists and scatting along with the instrumentals. My friends and I wore the gramophone out with songs like Louis Armstrong’s “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You,” “Blueberry Hill,” “Rockin’ Chair,” and “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South”; Louis Jordan’s “Caledonia, Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens,” and “Ain’t That Just Like a Woman”; Nat “King” Cole’s “Mona Lisa” and “Route 66”; Ella Fitzgerald’s “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,”; the Andre
ws Sisters’ “You Call Everybody Darling,” “Rum and Coca-Cola,” and “Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy”; Jim Reeves’s “Oh My Darling Clementine”; Cab Calloway’s “Hi-dee, Hi-dee Ho!”; and Red Foley’s “Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy.”
My parents soon realized that I had become inseparable from the gramophone and sang along perfectly with all the American records, as well as those of South African performers, like the Manhattan Brothers’ “Jikel’ Emaweni,” “Madibina,” and “Makanese”; the love ballads of the African Ink Spots, like “Ndi, Nje” and “Carolina Wam”; and modernized Xhosa folk songs.
They decided to seek a piano teacher for me, hoping that music lessons would enhance my talents and wean me off the gramophone. During the 1940s there were many piano teachers in the townships, men and women who’d been been taught by missionaries so that they could accompany school choirs and play the organ in church. Many more had been self-taught in the 1920s, when they accompanied vaudeville groups like Emily and Griffiths Motsieloa’s troupe and Wilfred Sentso’s Synco Fans, and learned to read music and write arrangements for small combos and big bands. Township music teachers imparted what little knowledge they had picked up from such groups and from the Salvation Army, police, and military bands, to whatever students they could find. “Madevu” (his nickname referred to his massive beard) was such a pianist, and he was already teaching a couple of girls from the senior grade at St. Andrew’s. I became his third and favorite student. After a few months of afternoon lessons, I began to excel.
In a few months’ time I was playing excerpts from Bach, Mozart, Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, and Lizst, along with piano arrangements of nursery rhymes. My teacher’s favorite nursery rhyme was “Lavender Blue Dilly-Dilly.” At the year-end recital, I performed “Lavender Blue” with the school choir to applause from the parents and teachers and endless guffaws from my friends, who all thought it was square white music. It was really embarrassing, but my parents insisted that I continue with the lessons and not pay any attention to my detractors. My mother would say, “Don’t mind them, Boy-Boy, they’re just jealous because they can’t play an instrument or sing.” Wanting to try something new, I yearned to play some boogie-woogie jazz on the piano. Once in a while I would sneak in a snatch of boogie-woogie while I practiced my sonata excerpts. One afternoon my teacher caught me and was so furious that he reported me to my parents—he told them this was music for drunkards and harlots, sinners and gangsters, and that it would get in the way of my classical talents. He warned my parents that if he caught me playing boogie-woogie again, he would stop teaching me. Surprisingly, my parents didn’t seem too concerned. They just asked me to try to do my best not to infuriate my teacher and to stay with the program.
Still Grazing Page 3