Are We There Yet?

by David Smiedt

  Up for the challenge, I did as instructed and followed the script with positions ranging from media and manufacturing to IT and sales. In all but one of the cases I was told that the job was for a PDP but they would keep my résumé on file should a more appropriate role become available. The majority of the people I spoke to during these conversations – and who, judging by their accents, spanned a number of races – were far more sympathetic than I thought they would be. But as I’m certain Francois would tell you, sympathy don’t pay the mortgage.

  The conversation I had with Francios was repeated time and again with other white South Africans. On the one hand most of those I spoke to recognised the need for the majority of the population to be able to access the highest levels of management. On the other, they privately recoiled at the notion of effectively barring many of South Africa’s best and brightest from entering the workforce because they were too pale.

  Like Francois, many took the economic rationalism approach, arguing that companies forced to employ quotas would dilute the quality of their workforce. This in turn would impact on the firm’s performance, which would send potential backers scuttling towards Asia (I don’t know why Asia was continually singled out, but it was).

  Others were more circumspect, saying that at some point the country had to start paying the cost of apartheid and if it took a generation for the average South African worker to boost his or her skill level and experience, then so be it. The nation would eventually be all the stronger for it.

  Bloemfontein, which lies close to the heart of the country was everything I expected and less. The judicial capital of South Africa, it brought to mind Spike Milligan’s likening of Woy Woy on the New South Wales central coast to “the world’s only above-ground cemetery”. Like many state capitals, it had failed to capture the city vibrancy that it was prepared to sacrifice its country charm for.

  Even when I was growing up under the apartheid regime, the Orange Free State was viewed by many South Africans as a redneck backwater. It’s an argument supported by the fact that the Free State is still home to communit ies such as Orania, a town of staunch Afrikaners who believe that the only way to preserve their heritage and identity is to establish an autonomous ministate so far away from the Rainbow Nation that everything is still black and white. The town was purchased from the Department of Water Affairs and in order to fulfil their vision, these descendants of the Voortrekkers did something that none of their forebears could ever bring themselves to: they got rid of their black and coloured servants. Yet Mandela has visited Orania and was treated like an honoured guest.

  This is one example of how the Free State has always been and probably will continue to be a soft target for stereotypes when in fact its history is far more complex. It was here that the architects and administrators of apartheid, the National Party, was established in 1914. It was here, too, that apartheid’s primary foe, the African National Congress, set up shop two years earlier.

  The centre of the city is given over to a historic precinct that is stately yet compact. In essence a roomy square, it consists of a trio of imposing two-storey buildings all fronted by ionic columns. One of these is the Afrikaans Literature Institute, which I was heartened to see was still a bustling academic centre despite commemorating a language that many feel was apartheid’s mother tongue. This of course makes as much sense as vilifying German because it was the language of Nazism. In this instance civil service pettiness seems to have been put aside and government funds allocated to preserve Afrikaans. Yes, twelve years of compulsory Afrikaans study was foisted upon all South African students under the apartheid era, but it was the medium of conscience-jarring, soul-poking writers I would never have had the privilege to sample otherwise.

  Twilight was approaching and I joined the throngs making their way towards the rugby ground where the reason for my visit — a Super 12 clash between the ACT Brumbies and the local Cats — would be taking place. Despite the fact that it seemed to have had a charisma bypass, Bloemfontein felt like a town that was doing all right, content within itself and clocking up milestones like being the capital of the first state to elect a black woman premier, Dr Ivy Mastepe-Casaburri.

  My mate Francois would have said she was a shoo-in for the job, but for a region that had produced many of apartheid’s staunchest advocates this was no small irony. Unlike Johannesburg, Durban and even Pretoria, Bloemfontein felt safe. They were no armed guards watching over every ATM and no wailing sirens every few minutes. In fact, the only crimes I witnessed were those against fashion and let me assure you that you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a man wearing a short-sleeved mustard safari suit jacket with a long-sleeved burgundy shirt beneath it. There was only one accessory that could have done justice to this ensemble and the wearer nailed it: a comb-over.

  My sense of personal wellbeing vanished shortly after entering the stadium. After migrating to Australia I became a rabid supporter of my new national team in whatever sport was being played, and if truth be told, there’s nothing I like better than when the Aussies take it to the Jaapies.

  Steep-tiered and designed to intimidate visitors with the appearance that it is closing in on you from all sides, this stadium was the venue where generations of Afrikaner Springboks – farm-toughened and powered by an unshakeable belief in their racial superiority – slayed Lions, Wallabies and All Blacks. This paddock was one of a select few on which a rugby nation came to believe it was the world’s best. It was a notion which only grew stronger during the sports boycott of the apartheid years when teams of rebel has-beens were crushed by young, skilled men in green and gold and culminated in the 1995 World Cup victory. For a few glorious hours after Nelson Mandela – wearing the rugby jersey of blue-eyed Afrikaans skipper Francios Pienaar – handed the William Webb Ellis trophy to the beaming captain, the nation was united in a collective delirium the likes of which it had never seen nor will again.

  Like junkies chasing that first rush, South African rugby fans have never quite replicated that dominance. Since these halcyon days, the elite coaching staff of South African rugby have rolled over like rent boys at Mardi Gras in an elusive chase for victory. They have even taken to importing Australian coaching talent such as Tim Lane who would be guiding the Cats around the paddock in the game I had steadfastly maintained I was going wear my Wallabies jumper to. I swiftly discovered that good-natured rivalry had long been replaced by hardened bitterness as team after South African team across a variety of sports choked on the threshold of victory over Antipodean rivals.

  By the time I had covered the ten metres between the booth and the turnstiles I had already been called Bruce four times and told that I was “going to get the crap beaten out of me in that shirt” by a concerned security guard.

  The match was scheduled for a 7pm kick-off, but being a Friday most of the spectators had knocked off early and were enjoying numerous frosties in the beer garden adjacent to the stadium. Seething with antagonism and the contents of half-a-dozen longnecks calling their small intestines home, the punters who were still sober enough to make out where my loyalties lay fixed me with narrow-eyed death stares. Others merely alerted their pals to my presence by giving me the bird with one hand and nudging their pals amid a sideways “look at this fuckwit” with the other. The solitary smile I received that evening came from Owen Finegan as the Brumbies’ bus rolled by.

  Having been sent reeling by a series of shoulder charges, I found my seat. Which happened to be next to an Afrikaans family who clearly viewed me with the type of virulent disdain usually reserved for war criminals and Bon Jovi impressionists.

  The taunts dissipated as the home team edged in front by half-time. Lulled into a false sense of security, I brazenly got to my feet at the referee’s whistle and was promptly pelted with a well-directed mandarin to the bridge of my nose. Upon which most everyone seated in the adjacent sections burst into heartfelt applause.

  Temporarily blinded by an explosion of citric acid, I groped my way to
the men’s room. Having doused my burning retinas, I foolishly decided to pee. No sooner had I taken my position at the trough when I felt a meaty hand in the small of my back deliver a powerful push. Yes, in a horrifying revisitation of schoolyard humiliation, I was launched feet first into the urinal.

  Shortly after the second half commenced, a Brumbies winger bolted across the line for a try that was not converted, thus giving the visitors a six-point lead. The tension in the stadium built as penalties were awarded and missed, the ref dropped some clangers in the face of obvious foul play and time ticked away towards a victory for the Australian team. All the while the glares and taunts I drew became more threatening.

  A glimmer of redemption was mercifully delivered in the last minute of injury time when the Cats fullback glided over in the corner for a five-pointer. With the siren wailing and the home team still a point behind, he slotted the conversion from a miraculous angle. Joyous pandemonium broke out and as the beaming Afrikaner family beside me packed up their esky, their seven-year-old son who hadn’t made a sound all night craned his golden-fringed head to look me dead in the eye and beamed, “Vok jou”.

  Chapter 11

  Highs and Lows

  The region surrounding Bloemfontein is known as the platteland, which imaginatively translates as “the flat land”. It is a prosperous agricultural belt and consists of hectare after hectare of cattle-strewn paddocks and wheat fields. Mildly agreeable to begin with, the scenery very quickly begins to feel like it’s on an audiovisual loop and tedium rides shotgun shortly afterwards.

  The odd troupe of monkeys and stoats standing up on their hind legs in the yellow grass by the roadside made fleeting appearances – as did raptor specks gliding against a backdrop of liquid sky – but mostly it seemed like just interminable stretches of same old, same old.

  My destination was a church in the restful viltage of Adelaide near the town of Somerset East. It began life as a military outpost during the Frontier Wars and then became a sheep-farming hamlet of unpretentious charm – a quality it has regained today – until British forces rode into town during the Anglo-Boer War. The troops commandeered the local Dutch Reformed Church, turned it into barracks and left things in such a state of disrepair that the locals had to embark on a funding drive to restore their place of worship. Offers of labour and time were abundant, but the townsfolk simply could not afford the expensive materials needed to complete their task.

  Three months after the donation drive was abandoned through lack of results, it seemed the congregants’ prayers were literally answered when two wagons rolled into town stacked with cut timber, a hand-carved pulpit of intricate allure and a matching chair. Believing that the master builder in the sky had seen fit to bestow this miracle upon them, locals quickly set about fulfilling their part of the bargain and restored the church immaculately.

  The packaging on their gift revealed the items had been imported from England and locals viewed them as a spiritual lesson that all races had goodness in their hearts. They believed that their former enemies’ consciences had got the better of them and the timber had been sent as an apology. The time had come to live and let live.

  A few years later, however, a letter arrived addressed to the town mayor. It was from his equivalent in South Australia and read: “Dear Sir, It is with some trepidation that we enquire as to whether a consignment of oak wood, which we ordered from England about two years ago for our new church, has not, perhaps, by mistake been delivered to your town in South Africa instead of ours.” The locals admitted to nothing and the church they restored remains one of the prettiest in the nation.

  After cutting through a succession of dry, dull and dusty towns, the road began to traverse a series of jagged charcoal peaks. Lined up in tight formation behind one another like overweight relatives at a bar mitzvah buffet, they signalled the start of the Kat River valley. A compact cluster of citrus orchards set between a succession of gentle ridges, this it was one of those rare places where agriculture has complemented Mother Nature rather than being a boil on her pristine bottom. Wooden roadside kiosks offered kilogram-bags of plump mandarins for R10 ($2). Fruit hung in the trees in such profusion that they looked like spatters of luminous amber flicked from a paintbrush onto a bottle-green backdrop.

  By the time I reached my destination of Grahamstown it was late in the afternoon and the air was beginning to chill. I had never been to the town before but it was there I would most likely have studied had my family remained in South Africa.

  After a brief conversation with a hotel receptionist about evening distractions in town, I was directed to a pub called the Rat and Parrot. By the time I arrived it was thrumming with the kind of crowd that only university towns can muster. Women in the unfortunate combination of G-strings and hipsters pretended not be interested in floppy-haired lads nursing beers and Foucault. Rugby boys were already losing their ability to pronounce consonants as jug after jug of Castle Lager was consumed, and Ashanti was blaring from the speakers.

  Using that ever-reliable technique of buying students’ company with alcohol, I began chatting to a group of English majors nearby. Boisterous, amiable and opinionated in the way that only undergraduates who have happily fallen on an unexpected source of booze can be, we spent a couple of mildly inebriated hours discussing everything from sport to politics to racial integration. When I asked why there were so few – or more precisely, zero – black students in the bar, one of the girls replied, “They have the bars they prefer to go to and we have ours. Obviously no one is banned from going anywhere but human nature is such that like tends to stick with like. Jews hang out together. WASPs gravitate towards one another. It’s just a matter of choice.”

  Some hushed discussions then followed during which I wondered whether I had overstepped the mark with the race question. In a telling blow to my coolness count, they were actually debating whether or not I was a narc. Having decided that I probably did not make a living from law enforcement, an architecture student named Tim asked if I had sampled any zol on my trip. It was one of those words that I recalled from when I lived in South Africa but whose meaning I momentarily struggled for.

  My glimmer of confusion presented Tim with what seemed like a linguistic opportunity he had been awaiting for some time. “You know,” he beamed, “grass, dope, ganja, green, the sacred herb, skunk.”

  His mates dissolved into giggles as Lexicon Boy went through his pace and I replied in the negative. “Well,” he said, producing a joint from his pocket, “it’s time to fix that.”

  Minutes later we were in a cobblestoned laneway out the back of the bar, passing the Duchy from the left-hand side. Several other groups clustered around glowing cherries were also imbibing. What else would you expect from a university town located in a region where Cannabis sativa grows like a wild weed?

  Long before white occupation, the Xhosa tribe had cultivated a thriving dope business and exchanged the crop with Zulus for beads and iron. Today it is a primary component of South Africa’s rural economy.

  Despite exhaustive eradication programs aimed at reducing supply beyond the budgets of consumers, the price has remained stable for decades and in some cases has even dipped. In fact, it is frequently cheaper to get stoned on dope in South Africa than it is to get drunk on beer or buzzed on espresso.

  It is mostly produced by poor black farmers who supplement their subsistence existence with an easy-to-grow cash crop that flourishes several times a year alongside South African staples such as corn and cabbage. By the time the foliage has gone from farmer to wholesaler to retailer to street dealer it has been divided into what are known as “bankies” – the plastic bags banks use for storing R100 worth of coins – selling for around R50 ($10) each. Those in the trade are there to get by and it is not a hugely profitable business. In fact, the estimated gross profit of one dagga house selling hundreds of bankies a day in a well-to-do area of Durban is little more than R15,000 ($3000) a month.

  The real money is overs
eas. South Africa has knocked Jamaica off top spot as the single largest supplier of cannabis to the United Kingdom and is importing vast quantities of club drugs from Blighty in return. So widespread is South Africa’s THC reputation that enterprising travel companies are now running tour groups through the Eastern Cape and Natal so that overseas travellers can sample Durban Poison and Maritzburg Gold at ground zero.

  That evening we were enjoying the former, referred to by those in the herbal know as DP. The smoke had the sweet tang of caramel and the pungency of football socks forgotten behind the couch. Within seconds of a petite puff, my head began to implode in slow motion and I felt myself withdrawing at light speed to a galaxy far far away. My companions, however, coherently maintained a conversation about whether human beings inherently knew right from wrong or if we needed a moral system imposed upon us to prevent anarchy. At times, one of their voices would penetrate the fog between my ears to ask my opinion. To which I could offer no more than a glazed smile and a shoulder shrug followed by the kind of convulsing squealy giggle that eventuates when feather meets armpit.

  I waited for waves of wellbeing to wash over me but instead currents of nausea ripped through my abdomen. Then paranoia joined the party. I formulated a cogent hypothesis that I was about to become victim of a well-rehearsed gang that fleeced visitors of their belongings and pride, leaving their quarry naked on the main street as they swapped postmodern bon mots.

  I mumbled something about an early start in the morning, thanked the group for their hospitality and wandered off in the opposite direction from my hotel. The broad oak-lined street featured half-a-dozen pubs clearly designed to attract different faculties: there was a sports bar for the engineers, an avant-garde (read: sign upside down, lots of neon and Kraftwerk remixes) for the fine arts mob and a candlelit coffee bar where a doleful guitarist was bleating about some misery or other for a clutch of twenty-year-olds in antiglobalisation T-shirts.