Are We There Yet?

by David Smiedt

  The museum’s most chilling exhibit is a room painted black and from whose ceiling hang 121 pristine nooses. This macabre chandelier represents each of the South Africans executed between 1962 and 1986 for their political beliefs alone.

  For all its fastidious detailing of the pain and suffering wrought by apartheid, the museum chronicles its downfall without gloating. Equal reverence is given to both Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, the protagonists in a revolution that was bloodless despite the scale and savagery of the oppression which prompted it. The simple black and white sketch of the agreement for the nation’s first democratic elections is on display alongside aerial photographs of serpentine black queues at polling stations. Photos of a beaming Madiba sharing a joke with the Afrikaner he replaced as the country’s leader sit alongside ballot sheets stacked with parties once banned.

  Despite a stomach-churning sense of guilt that my family and I had participated in this system by not opposing it, the sense of joy and justice created by the museum’s commemoration of the transition to majority rule is infectious. Formulated to be a cathartic experience for all who visit, its motto is Walk Away Free. Which I might have been able to do were I not Jewish. Having suffered through scores of racial persecution campaigns, did it not make us doubly guilty that we not only remained silent but reaped the privileges of this one?

  Oupa interrupted my self-indulgent hypothesising by declaring that I was “now ready for Soweto”. In the apartheid era, you didn’t see it until you were in it. From a distance the city was a vast smudge of smoke created by hundreds of thousands of oil lamps, kerosene stoves and cooking fires. Soweto wasn’t electrified until 1988 and then only through the efforts of Mayor David Tebehadi who had to travel to the United States to privately secure the necessary loans.

  Soweto came into being as the result of two distinct factors. Firstly, in the lead-up to World War II, African labourer-tenants were evicted from rapidly mechanising white farms and driven from overcrowded, drought-stricken reserves in search of work and a better life in the city. Secondly, at the same time, coalmining and the manufacturing industries expanded rapidly to stand alongside gold as a major employer. So rampant was the growth that between 1938 and 1945 the number of employees in the coal industry increased by 50 per cent, while the ranks of those in manufacturing swelled by 60 per cent. By the end of 1946, Johannesburg’s black population had risen by 100 per cent in a decade.

  While industry was glad to harvest the labour that this influx provided, it paid little regard to the housing needs it prompted. The city authorities shared the apathy. The solution they came up with to deal with this crisis involved issuing innumerable licences permitting householders to take in subtenants.

  This was to prove as effective as a rice-paper condom. Areas such as Pimville – today a suburb of Soweto – became so overpopulated that sixty-three water taps were used by fifteen thousand people and one in five children did not live to see their fifth birthday.

  So deplorable were conditions in these slums that many Africans moved out and began setting up homes on any vacant piece of land they could find. The thought of burgeoning black communities living where they chose under their own rules appalled municipal authorities and prompted the belated implementation of low-cost housing programs. Uptake was initially slow as squatting was cheaper than living in one of the council-built dwellings and camps could be set up nearer to places of employment, which in turn cut down on transport costs.

  Eventually, however, the state succeeded in crushing the squatter communities by force and pushed them into vast estates where they could be more effectively subjugated. And so the loose conglomerate of shanty suburbs, native locations and council bungalows became a city.

  This process was hastened by mining magnate Ernest Oppenheimer who in 1954 arranged a R6 million loan to build 24,000 houses in five years. Some say his generosity was inspired by sympathy for the poverty which haunted the township like an emaciated ghost. Detractors believe he was simply prolonging the lifespan and yield of his workers.

  Still, at scores of depots and railway stations, ticket windows were besieged daily by throngs of hungry Africans with just enough cash for a one-way fare to Egoli, the City of Gold.

  As far as concepts go, Soweto seemed like a corker. Corral the black population in a location close to the city, but out of sight, where they could be monitored and utilised as workers for the mining and manufacturing concerns that transformed Johannesburg into the country’s commercial capital. While our white homes were situated in suburbs dripping with elegant Anglo nomenclature, such as Sandhurst and Hyde Park, this Brobdingnagian experiment was merely lumped with a contraction of its geographical location: South Western Townships became Soweto.

  Very soon Soweto spilled over its boundaries like a fearsome gut running roughshod over an elasticised waistband. The last time such matters were calculated, the city squatted over a sixty-five-square-kilometre collage of tin shacks, litter-strewn wasteland and bungalows designed by architects who would have done a far better job if there was the remotest possibility that they would ever have to live in these brick boxes. Three million call the place home.

  And it’s not all poverty and despair. In a city of this size in a country where race is no longer an impediment to prosperity, there are always going to be some haves and plenty of have-nots. By Oupa’s reckoning, at least half-a-dozen millionaires have resisted packing up and heading to suburbs that were once reserved for whites only. The luxury end of Soweto is Diepkloof Extension where a handful of mock Tuscan villas look across rolling lawns to Tudor piles next door. These are few and far between and the wealth in Soweto is made all the more conspicuous by its surroundings.

  Referred to as “informal housing settlements”, patches of urban wasteland have been swallowed by clutters of shacks that ripple off in every direction like a corrugated-iron ocean. Stones hold their roofs in place and plastic sheeting prevents the rain turning the floor to mud.

  Oupa had arranged for me to view one of these dwellings but I was rather uncomfortable with the prospect of taking an up-close gawk at a stranger’s poverty. “It’s okay,” he reassured me as we parked the car and made our way along a dirt road towards an elderly woman who waved us in her direction. “This is the way Maria makes her living. And besides, Wallpaper were here last week.”

  “The decor magazine?” I asked, having trouble blending the world of ergonomically designed toilet seats and thousand-dollar scatter cushions with the lean-to Maria inhabited.

  “The one and only,” beamed Oupa, taking obvious delight in my discombobulation. “She made enough money out of the shoot to cover almost six months living expenses.”

  On stepping into the single room that Maria shared with her two grandchildren, I could immediately understand why some art director had swooned in her Pradas. Depressed at the prospect of being surrounded by rusting iron, Maria had decided to add some colour to her home. She carefully peeled the labels from cans of pilchards – a township staple on account of its affordability and nutritious value – and began creating a mosaic. Three years later, every wall was covered in thousands of fish dancing against a background of fire-engine red and sunflower yellow. Had Maria done the same thing in a gallery, she would have undoubtedly been hailed as a tongue-in-chic installation artist. It was mesmerisingly vibrant and Maria was justifiably proud.

  Up until a few years ago Maria had been a domestic worker. That all changed when her former employers decamped to Toronto after a smash-and-grab attack in which a spark plug was hurled through their car window and a handbag plus all sense of security was extracted. Maria informed me that she now makes more money showing her home to tourists than she ever did “cooking for that bitch”.

  It was only when I was asked for an entrance fee that I was able to wrench my retinas from the wall. “It’s R20 or $2,” said Maria in a tone which suggested that some visitors actually tried to bargain her down. If it was a ploy it worked and I doubled her asking price.
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  Maria’s spotless home was dominated by a Sony television set which her previous bosses “couldn’t be bothered schlepping”. An American soapie was on and I got the distinct impression that, before another troupe of tourists arrived to stare agog at the wall, Maria was anxious to catch up on whether Dakota would recover from her coma before Montana married Phoenix only to discover that Alabama was in fact her sister. I asked Maria how long she planned on staying. “It’s been almost four years now,” she sighed, “but any day now Nelson is going to give me a house.”

  How do you solve a problem like Maria’s? Her faith is founded on the fact that every working day since the democratically elected government took power in 1994, 500 homes have been built for South Africa’s poor. However, as yet the supply has barely dented demand. Clusters of these freshly built dwellings have sprung up on the road between Soweto and Johannesburg. Many have shiny cars in the driveways, a patch of lawn, satellite dishes and views of the shantyland their occupants may once have called home.

  Like any city of Soweto’s size, there are areas that are better off, those that are worse for wear and others where one might venture if euthanasia was unavailable in your home town.

  For the most part, the older bungalows I saw were not occupied by the same upwardly mobile middle class moving into the new developments. However, what they lacked in conspicuous indicators of financial liquidity, they more than made up for in house pride. Many streets seemed as though they were in the midst of an anal-retention pageant with house after pristine house set behind a modest yet lovingly tended sprinkling of flowering plants. Neighbours gossiped over fences and kids kicked footballs on the pavement. I was expecting a ghetto but instead encountered a neighbourhood which residents obviously and affectionately considered home.

  The northeastern skyline of Soweto is dominated by a pair of cooling towers which in recent years have been painted with psychedelic swirls and acid-trip lashes of tangerine and lime. Not that these ever provided juice for the city in which they stood. Instead they exclusively served the Johannesburg CBD and were a daily reminder to Sowetans of who possessed the power.

  Tours of the township have become big business, but only a small percentage of white South Africans have ever ventured into this particular conglomeration of thirty-nine suburbs. Soweto has a habit of slapping visitors around the head with their expectations and assumptions. First off, they are more likely to be greeted with smiles and waves than weapons and intimidating demands.

  “It’s safer in Soweto than in Johannesburg city,” said Oupa in the fraying tone of a man who made his living shattering stereotypes about his home town. Enthusiasm began to percolate within him once again as he pointed out a squat cream building with a flat tin roof and a cramped gravel car park.

  “That, my friend, is the Pelican Nightclub,” he grinned.

  We pulled over to the shoulder and he gazed at the faded signage with the almost imperceptible head shakes that come with reminiscing about wild nights long gone. “When I used to come here to listen to kwela [a raucous form of idiosyncratic South African jazz] in the 70s, I had beers with white boys from the suburbs like you. The bands that played there weren’t allowed to perform in Johannesburg, but they were the best in town. So the white kids who wanted to experience it often put shoe polish on their faces and pretended to be black to get in. This wasn’t because they would have been badly received by the regular clients, it was actually to avoid being targeted as political activists by police who raided the place from time to time.”

  This city thumbs its nose in delight at the simplistic notions that tourists bring with their dollars. From the smart campus of the Vista University, you can make out aloe-lined fairways of the eighteen-hole Soweto golf course. There are bowls clubs, tennis courts and SPCA offices with paddocks for injured horses and a patient line of locals nursing cats down to their last life.

  Ingenuity runs rampant and local entrepreneurs have set up shop around busy intersections with a staggering array of goods and services on offer. One tried to tempt me and Oupa with “the freshest barbecue chicken in town”. This involved selecting the unfortunate live fowl from an overcrowded cage beside an oil drum whose lip was licked by flames from within. Sensing our hesitation, the proprietor attempted to convince us with a poultry liver appetiser. Overcome by a sudden bout of vegetarianism, I politely declined.

  Beside Giblet Joe was a carburettor specialist, and across the road was the Soweto equivalent of a shopping mall. This consisted of a line of freight containers which served as premises housing everything from mobile phone dealerships to hair salons and boutiques. With doors and even display shopfronts cut into the metal walls, many of them were branded with handpainted logos and slogans. Affordable, transportable and impervious to the elements, a number also functioned as cafes and bars.

  Our next stop was a patch of red dirt known as Kliptown Square. Today it is the backdrop for a ragtag street butchery where rusted trestle tables are piled high with flyblown meat and purple entrails. In 1956, however, it drew 2884 delegates from around the country to witness the drawing of the ANC Freedom Charter, the document which forms the basis of South Africa’s new constitution. With police strictly enforcing pass laws and monitoring travel between provinces, reaching Kliptown was a feat in itself. In one notorious incident a group of Indian delegates who did not have the necessary permits to enter the Transvaal bluffed their way out of custody by pretending to be musicians on their way to a wedding. Taking the better than average odds that your average white cop wouldn’t know talentless sitar playing and howling Hindi showtunes from the masterful varieties, they belted out number after number until the cops ushered them along, grateful for the silence.

  When the police eventually swooped late on 26 June 1955, officers painstakingly recorded the details of every delegate. One hundred and fifty-six of the leading activists were arrested and charged with treason. Held in two large cages at Johannesburg’s Fort Prison, they came to represent the democratic doppelgangers of the 159 members of the all-white South African parliament. This mass incarceration proved to be a boon for the resistance leaders as it gave them their first opportunity to openly discuss the Struggle en masse. It was a situation the government had been trying to prevent for years and founding ANC leader Albert Luthuli later reminisced, “The frequent meetings that distance, other occupations, lack of funds and political interference had made difficult, the government now made possible”.

  The trial drew international attention and funds were channelled from around the globe for the plaintiffs’ legal fees, food and clothing. The charges were eventually dismissed and the detainees were released to jubilant scenes. The Freedom Charter had claimed its first victory.

  In 1960 another group of protesters assembled to voice their objections to the pass laws. Their assembly point was the Sharpeville police station near Soweto. The protest was organised by the Pan-African Congress, a splinter group of the ANC headed by the charismatic Robert Sobukwe who advocated a purely Africanist philosophy and rejected the idea of working with whites.

  A crowd of between 3000 and 5000 assembled for a peaceful protest, buoyed by the news that similar gatherings were taking place at nearby settlements. After a scuffle in which one of the police station’s perimeter fences was pushed over and a section of the crowd surged forward to have a sticky, the police panicked.

  “Then the shooting started,” recalled journalist Humphrey Tyler. “We heard the chatter of a machine gun, then another, then another. Hundreds of kids were running too. One little boy had on an old blanket coat which he held up behind his head thinking perhaps that it might save him from the bullets. Some of the children, hardly as tall as the grass, were leaping like rabbits. Some were shot.”

  Tyler described a policeman who had taken up a position on top of a Saracen vehicle and was firing his machine gun into the retreating crowd in a 180-degree arc “from his hip as though he was panning a movie camera”.

  When the ricochets of
bullet on bone eventually dimmed and the corpses on the road stopped twitching, sixty-nine protesters were dead. Almost 200 were rushed to nearby Baragwanath Hospital.

  On duty that night was a medical intern named Desmond Miller. He had left the tiny country town of Vredefort a few years earlier to study in Johannesburg and nothing could have prepared him for the carnage he was about to encounter.

  “We got word that dozens of casualties were en route,” he told me, “and had to clear the wards of people whose conditions weren’t life-threatening. We assessed and dismissed as quickly as we could, then spent what felt like days picking bullets out of people.”

  Miller, who subsequently migrated to Sydney shortly after Soweto erupted in the infamous riots of 1976 and had the good sense to marry my mother some years after my father died, recalled: “Every single one had been shot in the back. These people were running for their lives, but still the police kept on firing.”

  * *

  Oupa was palpably proud to live in Soweto and as we skirted an area he termed the Wild West – a trio of suburbs bitterly and bloodily disputed by at least five gangs – half-a-dozen shots rang out from the cemetery on a hill nearby.

  “Gangstas,” spat Oupa. “To show their respect for the friend who died, they shoot the coffin as it is being lowered into the ground. I don’t understand these young guys – they just want to be like Americans with their rap music, guns and crack. Because many of them have grown up in Soweto, they have no connection to their tribal culture and its sense of right and wrong. Their parents were the ones who suffered under apartheid but these young guys have a sense of entitlement. They know nothing about their heritage. They’re not interested in the fact that people struggled so they could have the opportunities and freedoms on offer. They just want it easy.”