by Fred Khumalo
Pitso flared his nostrils and inhaled hungrily. The sea carried with it the subtle smell of dreams, hopes and ambitions that had driven the white man from his land of birth to the shores of Africa. The sea also smelled of crushed dreams and lost causes. It smelled of death; of frustrations. But it still carried with it the alluring scent of hope – hope that the journey he and his comrades were about to embark upon would be worth it.
They drove around for more than an hour, ending up at a place called the Rosebank Showgrounds, where they would be stationed until their final departure for Europe. There the recruits were to be checked by military doctors, inoculated and then tested for physical strength.
‘Fall in line!’ a white man with a powerful voice greeted them as soon as they had been disgorged by the trucks. ‘Fall in line!’
When they had lined up, the men were issued with new clothing. The uniforms were dark blue melton, the same kind of clothing worn by members of the police force. Each recruit was also supplied with a strong pair of boots, two pairs of socks, one greatcoat, two shirts, two undershirts, four blankets, a towel, one belt, one hat or cap, one pair of braces. These uniforms were a novelty for the men, many of whom had never worn shoes or pants until they were recruited. At home, in the rural areas, they wore traditional outfits made of animal hide, or simply old sacks with holes for arms and a head.
Even so there were among them seasoned warriors who had fought in many battles against the white man, who knew how to manoeuvre against an enemy. In addition to being expert fighters using spears and clubs, some of them knew how to use firearms and dynamite. The challenge, however, was to unlearn the traditional African way of fighting. A whole new world awaited them across the oceans.
CHAPTER 20
Upon arrival, the recruits had been organised into battalions of two thousand men each, consisting of four companies of equal size. In terms of sleeping arrangements, tents had been organised for the men. Each tent slept ten to fifteen people.
The training started. Every day, the men were drilled and instructed on how to react when under fire, even though they would not be bearing arms in Europe.
The relationship between white soldiers and black recruits was tense. Many of the white officers in charge were highly agitated with these black recruits, whom they considered complete dunderheads.
‘They can’t master the simple art of marching in line, for crying in a bucket,’ one white soldier was heard to complain.
The recruits were unable to grasp the most basic utterance in English. How, the officers wondered, was the white army going to work with these people in Europe?
The black recruits couldn’t understand why they were being made to march in line. In their tradition, when you went to war, you didn’t march around. You jumped about, ululating, singing at the top of your voice, wielding your spear and beating your cowhide shield with it. The dramatic singing and the screaming and the beating of the shield were meant to drive the fear of Satan into the heart of the enemy. Not this soulless, left-right, left-right, forward march, left-right, left-right, forward march. Even cows didn’t walk like that.
An awkward scene took place on the training grounds one day. To ensure that they were physically fit enough to meet the demands of the tasks that awaited them overseas, where they would haul huge loads of cargo from ships and trains, the men were required to carry bags containing sand weighing a hundred pounds across a distance of a hundred yards. Each man had to carry this weight and walk steadily across the required distance to complete the exercise.
When it was Chief Mjongeni’s turn to pick up the bag – the Pondo chief with the loyal subjects – his subjects would hear none of it.
‘Our chief is not allowed to carry stuff like that. He’s not a commoner. Please don’t humiliate him, don’t debase us,’ pleaded one his subjects. ‘I hereby offer my services to do his share of the work.’
The white officer asked the interpreter what the man was saying. The interpreter, a Lovedale-educated Xhosa speaker, did a straightforward translation.
Fuming, torrents of spit coming out of his mouth, the white officer said, ‘Tell this monkey that the point here is not to simply carry a bag from point A to point B. Tell him we are testing everybody’s strength – chief or no chief – to see if they qualify to go overseas. We can’t carry sickly, burdensome bastards across the seas. We’re going to war, not to a blooming picnic. Tell the blockhead what I’ve just told you!’
The Lovedale graduate who, like most educated black men, held the British-appointed tribal chiefs in utter contempt – uneducated, polygamous heathens! – carefully twisted his whiskers, as was the habit of important educated people, and told the man: ‘Uthi umlungu, hamb’onya. Akunankosi apha. Sonke singamadoda. Siyafana, sinamasende. Inkosi leyo yakho mayithathe langxowa iyibeke phaya phesheya kwebala xa ifuna ukuhamba nathi iye phesheya kwelwandle. Utsho umlungu.’ The white man says, go and shit yourself. There’s no chief here. We are all men, we all have balls here. We’re the same. Your chief must lift that sack and carry it across the field like everybody else if he wants to join us on our journey overseas. The white man says.
There were sniggers from those who’d overheard the exchange. The Pondos were angry that the white man had insulted their chief in such fashion. They vowed that they would arrange for their chief to take tea with the King of England so that this incident could be dealt with accordingly. Of course, it was a pipe dream. No such meeting would ever take place. In the end, the chief performed his chores just like the rest of the men.
The white senior officers had initially thought of keeping men from the various language groups apart. But after encounters such as this, it was decided to mix them up so that tribal chiefs couldn’t count on their subjects to cover for them. This would later prove to be beneficial to both the officials and the men themselves – they began to trust and respect each other, despite their previously held prejudices. As a result of this mutual trust, they worked harder and faster together. During their breaks, men would exchange stories about their various traditions, only to discover they were not too different from each other. Significantly, Zulu speakers began to teach Sothos their language, and vice versa.
Pitso, even though he was a recruit himself, was working overtime to translate to his comrades the white man’s words. He had the good fortune of being able to speak Afrikaans, his father’s language, which was spoken widely by the white people in Bloemfontein. But he could also speak his mother’s language, Sesotho, and impeccable English, which he had of course learned at the centre for coloured children.
His linguistic interventions did not go unnoticed.
‘Boy, where do you come from?’ asked Captain Portsmouth, coming up to Pitso after a particularly demanding drill.
Standing at attention as he had been taught, Pitso briefly talked about his education. He never raised his eyes to look at the officer, but recalled that the man stood out from the rest because he walked with a limp, possibly an injury sustained in a long-forgotten war. His head and face were also clean-shaven, save for the tiny brown moustache which rested above his upper lip like an overfed caterpillar.
‘You speak English so well,’ the officer said at length, impressed by Pitso’s story. ‘But I also heard you speak Sesotho fluently the other day. What are you, a mixed breed?’
In the name of King Moshoeshoe, what was this paleface saying to him? Pitso’s face clouded, his palms sweated, his lips twitched. If this man hadn’t been an officer, he would have been tasting the young man’s fist right then.
‘Well, have you lost your tongue?’
‘Sir, I am Mosotho, sir.’
‘With looks like that, with hair like that? Do yourself a service, boy. Declare your coloured identity, and you will be accorded treatment befitting your status and moved to a coloured contingent.’
‘I understand you, sir. But I’m still a Mosotho, as my papers say.’
‘Ah, you’re a proud Mosotho, then? Who is the founding father
of the Basotho people? What’s the original capital palace of the Basotho people?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Would you like to find out?’
‘To what effect, sir? The Basotho kingdom is as good as dead, so what would be the point of probing the past? That would only make me sad, wouldn’t it, sir?’
Captain Portsmouth pushed on, ‘Based on the evidence before me, I therefore conclude that you don’t know yourself.’
‘My father’s white, my mother black, sir. But I am a human being. Classified as Mosotho, sir. Sorry, sir, my father was white. He is gone now.’
After a while, Captain Portsmouth said, ‘We shall have another conversation, young man. I like your fortitude. But more importantly, I want you to teach me Sesotho. I used to be stationed in Basutoland some years ago. I started learning the language, but I stopped using it when I left that region. You know how it is; if you don’t use the language often enough, you lose it. I need to brush up on my vernacular if I am to make myself useful to you fellows on our journey to Europe. But remember, you have just joined the army, not a debating society.’
The officer turned on his heel and walked away. Although he walked with a limp, there was pride and purpose in his stride. Pitso wondered if his father, the soldier he had once been during the Anglo–Boer War, had walked with such a sense of purpose.
CHAPTER 21
‘Pitso,’ started Tlali as they were eating dinner one evening in Cape Town, ‘tell me I haven’t died and woken up in the land yonder, the land of my ancestors.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The food. White people’s food on my plate. No boiled mealie-meal kernels and boiled cabbage here, no bitter wild spinach here. Look at this! The white woman who dished it up for me called it beef stew.’
‘Come on, man, shut up and eat.’
‘No, man! I won’t shut up. The fact that I am eating so well is a sign of good things to come. Whoever thought the child of a humble African herbalist would be eating white man’s food, off a white man’s plate?’
Some of the men sitting not too far from them were probably thinking the same. They all came from poor backgrounds.
‘At this rate, I think, maybe by the time I get to the land across the ocean, my own face would have changed to white.’
The other men roared with laughter.
What made the food even more delectable, Tlali said, was that it had been dished up for them by white ladies. He wished his father could have been there to witness the spectacle. With a smile as bright as the morning sunshine, the lady who dished up the food had generously placed a huge spoonful of meat onto his plate. He had been about to move to the next lady, who was dishing up vegetables, when the first lady asked him, gesticulating with her hands, if he wanted more. Of course he wanted more. Who could refuse a white lady’s offering? So the white lady put more, and more, until his plate was as tall as the mountain overlooking their training grounds, the famous Table Mountain.
When the meal was over, an important-looking lady arrived. She was introduced to them as the wife of the Governor of the Cape. The men looked at each other, wondering what a ‘governor’ was. Speaking through an interpreter, the wife of the governor wished them well on their journey. She solemnly promised that she would be keeping them in her prayers.
The recruits were then asked to stand next to the governor’s wife. A photograph was taken. Things happened too fast for Tlali to make sense of them immediately.
After dinner, as they were walking back to their sleeping quarters, Tlali was still in his element, telling stories and fantasising about life in Europe.
‘Now that I’ve eaten my first white man’s meal,’ Tlali said, ‘I think I am well on my way to getting myself a white bride.’
‘Why would you need a white bride?’ one man asked.
‘Man, we’re going to Europe! There are no black women over there. Besides, why would I want to go looking for a black woman in Europe when there are so many of them here at home? This war is freedom for us to explore, man.’
‘Freedom,’ one man assented.
Tlali continued, ‘I’m just picturing my white bride. Perhaps with hips just so, wide enough to carry our children. Imagine the children. Grand, with a rich honey complexion, soft curly hair.’ He saw Pitso’s hands clench into fists and immediately fell silent.
One man argued, ‘I know we’ve been told we can’t touch white women over there. But what if the women want us?’
‘Exactly,’ said another man.
‘I just hope,’ Pitso said, ‘that Tlali is not going to embarrass us over there in Europe.’
‘What do you mean, I’m going to embarrass you?’
‘Tell these men how you’ve never slept with a woman,’ Pitso said to his friend, hoping to shut him up.
The men laughed and slapped each other on the back as they parted ways, each man to his own bed.
‘Now, gentlemen, as you close your eyes to sleep, think of the white brides waiting for us overseas,’ Pitso said, laughing.
As Pitso walked towards his bed, he was thinking what a wonderful, carefree friend he had in Tlali. The first time the two had met was at a tea room in Bloemfontein, where Tlali had been standing in line, waiting his turn to buy at a blacks-only window. The line had been long, the black lady serving them taking her time. Soon, Pitso had joined them, greeting those in line in their mother tongue, Sesotho. Then he had said, ‘My mother’s people, why are we standing at this window, in this heat, when we could go inside the shop and be served properly? We could sit down inside and enjoy our drinks on those chairs over there.’
There had been a hush, before somebody said, ‘The inside of the tea room is reserved for white people.’
‘Nonsense! A cup of tea is a cup of tea, whether you serve it from this window or from over there. I’m going to go inside and get myself a cup of coffee.’
Heads had turned and people were looking at him. One man said, ‘Perhaps given your light skin they will serve you …’
Pitso went inside, sat down and ordered a cup of coffee from a black woman who was wiping the top of a counter with a dirty rag.
Startled by the appearance of a non-white face inside the tea room, the woman stuttered and turned to a white man sitting behind the counter, reading a comic book. She said, ‘Baas, can I serve him from here?’
The white man looked up from his comic, adjusted his spectacles. His face turned red, and he growled: ‘Hey, fokof, you. He’s not white. He speaks the kaffir language. I know him, he’s always causing trouble. Thinks he’s white.’
‘I’m not leaving this place until you serve me,’ Pitso said quietly.
Now the blacks at the window started pelting him with insults: ‘Hey, you half-breed cunt. Why are you always causing trouble for us? Don’t you know the baas here will stop serving us altogether?’
‘Leave our white man alone, you uppity yellow piece of shit, trying to show off!’
‘The child of a black whore who slept with a cowardly white madman thinks he knows it all.’
One man held up his hand, asking his fellow customers to calm down. ‘Maybe the young man has a point here. The shop is empty, and we are standing out here in the sun. Let’s go in. I mean, we are regular customers here, the white customers are hardly ever here.’
The woman cleaning the tables smiled and winked at the man who’d said that. But the rest of the crowd started walking away from the shop. One of the men said, ‘The baas will call the police, and we’ll be in trouble because of your stupid vanity. Why don’t you make peace with the fact that you aren’t white, stupid piece of cow dung?’
Pitso shouted, ‘Stupid dogs, all of you. You are an insult to the black race, to the whole human race.’
He stormed out, to the relief of Tlali, still standing in line, who’d been scared that the police would arrive and start beating up everyone.
A few weeks later, Tlali had encountered the troublesome boy again. Tlali had been sen
t by his father to the coloured children’s school to find someone who could read him a letter he had received. None of the people in Tlali’s village or the neighbouring villages could read it, as it was written in English. It looked important, and Tlali’s father, always suspicious of white people, had been reluctant to find a white person from the town to read the letter for him, in case its contents could be taken advantage of by wily individuals. The herbalist had thought the Christian people who worked at the coloured children’s centre were a better proposition.
When Tlali arrived at the centre, he was shocked to be greeted by the insolent mixed-race boy who had caused a scene at the tea room a few weeks before. What shocked him was that the coloured boy seemed to be in charge there. He was teaching younger boys and girls words in a language Tlali assumed to be English. The coloured boy recognised Tlali immediately and greeted him with a warm smile, speaking in Sesotho. ‘I hope you haven’t been sent by the white man to come and arrest me. I seem to recall that you and your friends did not take kindly to my performance the other day. By the way, my name is Pitso.’
Tlali introduced himself, then explained in detail his father’s request.
‘May I see the letter?’
He handed it over. Tlali noted that this young man called Pitso did not move his lips as he read the letter. He must be highly educated, Tlali thought. Only white people read letters or newspapers without moving their lips.
Pitso then explained that the letter was from a white man in Johannesburg, a Mr Whitlock, a former employer of Tlali’s uncle Piet. Piet had died the previous month. Unable to locate his relatives until recently, Mr Whitlock had decided to bury Piet himself in Johannesburg. In the letter, Mr Whitlock was asking the family to advise him how he could send Piet’s last wages and private belongings to his wife or members of the extended family. The family could decide what they wanted to do with these, as Piet had been a loyal and trustworthy servant.