I was also unfamiliar with many cultural nuances and had much to learn. Fortunately I was encouraged and aided by an ex-school principal who worked in the office. She was especially supportive when I found myself having to let go two of our colleagues, one after the other, the one for drunkenness and the other for theft. Mrs M, as we fondly called her, had many money-saving tips which she dished out to the clients, one of which was to use bicarbonate of soda instead of expensive deodorants. I wondered whether on a hot day one mightn’t start to fizz!
My colleagues were all helpful in interpreting the township world to me. The first time I was told that a client would not be appearing for his interview because he was “late”, my irritation proved quite inappropriate as it transpired that he was in fact deceased. I was baffled and amused by expressions like “sit-in lover” for a live-in lover and “chasing the century” for someone who was growing old. One passionate letter we received waxed biblical in its exhortations: “Yes, let us go on, my faithful learnards. Rome was not built in a day. For this God is our God forever and ever. He will be our guide even unto death. Diamonds can be picked up,” it concluded, “but faithful people are rare.” Another letter concluded with the Quaker phrase, “Let us hold this problem up to the light.”
One young graduate social worker was a South African Barbara Cartland in the making. Her flamboyant write-ups on her clients sometimes made me blush to remember my own purple prose, of which my supervisor at the Radcliffe had so disapproved. “From the client’s history it would seem,” went one report, “that she is married to a quarrelsome, impoverished man and has been shut up in this small gloomy heap. Her nights pinned down by fear of what might happen and having to be indebted to her husband’s changing moods she is now only imprisoned by the need to escape this brutal life.” Another report, describing a visit to a paraplegic, read, “A bright exotic home with the bulge of the client’s body entrapped on the couch. Fragile face and jaw line is raised in a gallant obstinate determination. His fathomless eyes seem to mourn all the inexplicable cruelties and sorrows of time and the world.” This same girl once complained about our rather meagre salaries, telling me, “It is alright for you, you have a fat cushion to lie back on.”
I never ceased to be amazed by the variety and inventiveness of the strategies people devised to survive. They collected and sold old bottles, newspapers, coal, manure, pine cones, wood. Snacks and sweets were sold at school gates, catching children on their way in and out. Knitting, sewing, leatherwork, doing someone else’s housework, looking after babies, “mudding” wattle-frame houses – the list was endless. Sadly of course it also included petty burglary and prostitution.
Many households were headed by women, who were generally acknowledged as the backbone of the township community. Lack of employment in Grahamstown, together with the migrant labour system, meant that men left home to seek opportunities in the mines and elsewhere. Some women’s organisations taught simple skills to improve the standard of living and humanize the environment. During home visits I was struck by the cleanliness of so many houses. They were often cramped and inadequate, with leaking roofs or badly fitted doors, yet people scrubbed and cleaned even though water had to be fetched from a tap down the street. One of our clients had received financial compensation for the loss of a leg in an accident, enabling the family to put a new roof on their house. “When I look at the roof,” his mother said, “I see my son’s leg.”
It was a revelation for me to learn about the broad-based system of African kinship and the density of social networks. Extended webs of interdependence meant that sometimes relatives of three generations lived in the same household, helping out with food and money and providing support in emergencies. Voluntary groups such as churches, mutual aid associations, women’s groups and rotating credit clubs formed part of the supportive networks that helped relieve people’s financial and emotional burdens. When the state casually disrupted or intervened in the lives of black people it was usually with no regard for the crucial role played by supportive social networks such as these.
A pressing concern in the Eastern Cape was the resettlement of people. The nationalists had a grandiose plan, not unlike that of King Canute, the Viking King of England, who infamously attempted to stop the tide from coming in. “Go back, you black food!" the ruling party seemed to cry as they set about removing black people from South Africa and relocating them to a series of ostensibly independent states. Here they would enjoy so-called autonomy, while in fact real power would remain entrenched in white South Africa. As early as 1917, even the great internationalist Jan Smuts had said in a speech delivered in London, “In South Africa you will have in the long run large areas cultivated by blacks and governed by blacks … while in suitable parts you will have your white communities, which will govern themselves separately.” This meant, of course, resettling people from where they had migrated to the cities and towns and dumping them far from any sources of livelihood and support. It was a cruel and deluded project that caused untold misery, witnessed, among many other things, in the appalling malnutrition figures of the next few decades.
Two of the new homelands were located on our doorstep. When the Ciskei became “independent”, a new capital was built at Bisho (now Bhisho). A series of heavy buildings, a cross between Star Wars and the Weimar Republic, rose like bunkers in the veld. Among the finishing touches were parking spaces marked for VIPs, and others for VVIPs. But like the fictional Toy Town of my childhood, with its cardboard houses and strutting, opinionated characters, this façade had no substance. For many of us it was a symbolic moment when, in the midst of the so-called Independence Day parade, the towering flagpole with the new Ciskei fag fell down like a toy.
One of my first visits to a resettlement area was in the early 1980s when I went with two other Black Sash members to Kammaskraal, beyond Peddie to the east of Grahamstown. People had been moved there from the coastal areas of Kenton and Alexandria. A general invitation had been issued to the white churches of Grahamstown to participate in a communion service with the people of the area. We travelled in a small cavalcade of cars, up and down rutted dirt roads on a beautiful spring day. The countryside was greening and the hills rolled towards the distant coast. It seemed a lovely pastoral scene, but of course it was completely undeveloped – except for the rash of government-issue lavatories that greeted us like upended tin coffins as we neared the settlement. Clearly, a further influx of people was anticipated. Such houses as had been erected were made out of packing cases and tomato boxes. Astonishingly, some had flourishing gardens helped by water from a nearby dam.
The multilingual ecumenical service took place beside the road on a hilltop. There was a preponderance of women and children. Some wore their special church uniforms of starched white hats, scarlet jackets and black skirts, some were in frilly dresses and smart hats, some in tattered clothing. When the peace was given, the entire gathering leapt up and danced. Then the communion wine came, in chalices and broken cups, and we all lined up at the side of the dusty road. As we left there were knots of people wandering off over the hills, shouting, singing, dancing, in an air of medieval festivity. It reminded me of a day early in our marriage when Malvern and I participated in a Ban the Bomb march to the nuclear power station at Aldermarston in Berkshire, England. A huge cross section of people, from Christians to anarchists, hippies to housewives, sang and danced their way down country lanes, banners held aloft. Among the high hedges it was impossible to see where the crowd began and ended. Such expressions of the human spirit, with their combination of grit and joy, have always had the power to stir me and on that day at Kammaskraal I was again amazed by the resilience the people displayed. Transplanted far from the lives they had known, in makeshift dwellings exposed to the extremes of Eastern Cape weather, yet they participated joyously in a church service with visiting strangers.
Resettled, repatriated, removed; dumped, displaced, forgotten – these words were all used to describe the many mill
ions of South Africans who were forcibly removed in pursuit of the policy of separate development. In the Eastern Cape their need added significantly to the strain on the already heavily burdened and under-resourced region, and our advice offices and welfare organisations felt the impact too.
One of our long-term goals at GADRA was to change the mindset of those receiving aid, from passive dependency to a more proactive engagement. My predecessor had started asking recipients of food parcels, euphemistically called “rations”, to offer some small token in return. They could work in the allotment behind the offices where spinach was grown for distribution with the food parcels, or cut up stockings to fill cushions for energy-saving wonder boxes -a home-made device used to keep saucepans warm.
In a further effort to impart self-help skills we introduced a development component to our work and gave it the isiXhosa name Masakhane – let us support each other. A volunteer introduced us to the deep-trench method of gardening and encouraged people to make water tanks and erect wire netting. This style of gardening suited the Grahamstown area, where water was a scarce resource. With plenty of mulch and compost, the method required less land, labour and water, and had the further advantage of recycling biodegradable rubbish. From small beginnings our gardens expanded and in time people started seeking help with their own gardens. When Betty Davenport, another staunch Black Sash member and a very able craftswoman, joined our staff we diversified our development work to include sewing groups and other practical activities.
Our school-feeding scheme was managed by an indefatigable and courageous stalwart. Margaret Barker was the wife of the Anglican Dean and also a Sash member. She delivered food to a number of township schools daily in her kombi, continuing even through the late-1980s, when school buildings were being burnt down in protest against the education system. Most of the time she had to contend with heavy army and police presences in the townships.
The feeding scheme was often given donations of food, an excess from a student function perhaps or a surplus of carrots from the market. Once Margaret and I drove out to a nearby farm to collect a donation of pineapples. We took baskets and boxes and a pair of old gloves for the prickly work of loading the fruit, but when we arrived we discovered that we were also expected to pick the pines ourselves. Margaret didn’t falter, and armed with one glove each we set to. Fortunately a group of farm workers arrived in time to lend their skilful hands and soon our kombi was loaded with a bountiful harvest.
Reconciling the public’s idea of gifts with our policy of becoming less of a hand-out agency was quite a balancing act, but over the years we managed to get our message across. Nothing, thankfully, ever rivalled an event I took part in shortly after arriving at GADRA. A service organisation wishing to donate food parcels asked us to identify our “most needy” cases, who would personally receive the gifts at a handing-over ceremony. It was difficult enough just deciding who the most needy were, but then we discovered that the venue for this proposed display of charity was to be an industrial site, which entailed a considerable walk. Some of our clients were frail and elderly and a few were disabled. The reason for selecting this out-of-the-way venue, it transpired, was that GADRA had a reputation for being political and the donors did not want to attract too much attention. That word again – I could hardly contain my frustration. “Political!” I spluttered. “What does that mean?” My more seasoned colleagues remained poker-faced and we proceeded with the bizarre scene. Names were called and people received their parcels with humble bob curtsies, after which they sang a hymn of thanks and had their photograph taken with the donors. That event bothered me for a long time – it seemed to be part of the very paternalism we were trying to eradicate.
A lot of GADRA’s work involved pensioners and one of our campaigns targeted the poorly organised pay-out system in which people waited in long queues for up to 10 hours at a time to receive their grants. Waiting in bad weather or in the fetid atmosphere of a community hall was an exhausting ordeal for the elderly and disabled, and in some instances people fell ill or even died in the queue. It was not uncommon for those in need to start standing before sunrise, not only to be certain of an early place but also to ensure being served before the money ran out. The latter happened from time to time and then pensioners had no choice but to queue again the next day. It seemed to us a simple matter to streamline the method by staggering the pay-out days: old age on one day, disability on another, and so on. We also proposed better systems of queuing. A tiresome bureaucratic tussle ensued. GADRA and the Black Sash collaborated on this campaign, attending endless meetings with officials. The changes came slowly, but at last our ideas were adopted.
Pension fraud was commonplace, often perpetrated by unscrupulous family members or neighbours posing as procurators, with the result that many who were incapable of walking insisted on collecting their money in person. On one occasion I saw a young disabled man crawling to collect his grant. Once a year all pension holders had to present themselves to verify that they were still alive. On such days we witnessed Hogarthian scenes of the halt, maimed, aged and blind shuffling along, supported by sons or daughters, transported in wheelbarrows or carried on someone’s back.
I was once asked to help the Family and Marriage Association of South Africa (FAMSA) with the case of an old man from Malawi who had spent the better part of his life as a waiter in a Grahamstown hotel. He had fallen ill and was unable to continue his duties. It was difficult to establish exactly how old he was but his face was lined, his hair grizzled and he walked with a shuffle. The hotel gave him no pension, feeling that they had fulfilled their obligation by caring for him while he was sick. With no chance of a state pension, he wanted to return to Malawi. I was reminded of the words of a Mozambican migrant worker to an advice office volunteer in the Transvaal: “You pick us like grapes, suck us dry and then throw us down.”
We were able to contact the old man’s family and arrange a passport, then sent him on his way with an air ticket provided by the Black Sash. In Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg he was met by Sash volunteers who provided overnight accommodation then steered him towards his connecting fights to Malawi.
While all these arrangements were being made there was the matter of the old man’s luggage. He carried all his worldly belongings in two beaten up hospital sterilising boxes that we knew would never survive a trip to Malawi. But he was adamant that they must go with him and even when FAMSA produced a suitcase, he would not reconsider. So off he set from Grahamstown with the boxes held together by string, but in Port Elizabeth they were prised off him with promises that they would be sent on. In due course there was a letter of gratitude from his daughter. “My father was lost and destroyed,” she wrote, “but now because you forewarned he is safe and sound. When he left Nyasaland it was a dense forest with a village here and there, now it’s a new city.” We could just imagine the old man’s bewilderment. The letter ended with a request for the boxes. “I would like to make my Dad happy in his old age if it is the last thing I do before he moves to the next world.” Alas the boxes never reached Malawi, but at least his worldly goods in sturdier packages, did.
Once a man who had spent a lifetime in a psychiatric hospital appeared on the GADRA doorstep. He had no family or friends and we had to organise a life for him, which involved getting an identity book, clothes and somewhere to live. When his story appeared in the newspaper we received offers of clothing and food from white Grahamstonians, but some were not prepared to bring these donations to our office. The township was an unknown world to them, an alien place where conditions were too frightening to contemplate. For many white South Africans the real fright they were avoiding was the unspeakable poverty that would meet their eyes. Local poet Lungile Lose, standing among the densely packed shacks of the township and looking over towards the whitewashed town, captures the chasm between the two worlds in his poem Tantyi and Town (distant view).
A racked house
Faces me boldly,
Pon
ds of water here and there
Make one screw one’s nose.
Brown, rusty – most houses,
Paint here and there.
White smoke tries unsuccessfully
To conceal the houses from heaven.
Dark heavy clouds hover above Tantyi;
Foamy white clouds dance above town.
All the houses are white.
Did it snow over there?
I wish it would snow here too.
At GADRA and in the Black Sash advice office we sometimes despaired that the weight of poverty would ever be lifted from people’s backs. This was especially so when our work tended to be merely palliative. In the Black Sash, at least, our activities were always aimed at bringing about social change and our efforts were buoyed by positive activism. At the end of a day’s work at GADRA, if there were no meetings to attend, I would sometimes take Garp, our black Labrador, into the hills behind our house. There amongst the Australian gum trees and the white arum lilies beside the dam I would take deep breaths and clear my mind, burdened by the hardships I was witnessing at work but at least feeling less paralysed by confusion and guilt.
At home I had the help and support of Hilda Faltein, who started work with us as a young woman in the late 1960s. She worked full time for many years and then continued to come in as a part-time char. Our children loved her and related to her as a second mother, especially when their own was rushing off to endless meetings. I always tried to keep mindful of Hilda’s circumstances and conditions of employment, especially as the plight of domestic workers was a recurring theme in the advice office.
Swimming with Cobras Page 7