Honorary White (14 page)

“We are ashamed, my friend, to sit here like women and weep for those whom they ban and imprison and kill. We, the sons of sons of Zulu warriors sit and cry because we are powerless in our fear. We should rise up against them. Perhaps you, too, sit there thinking that we should forget our fear and rise against those who make us afraid.”

“You were at Dorkay House,” one said, pointing at me. “The night some white men came to listen to the bands from Soweto.”

I admitted that I had been.

“Somebody said you write books,” he said. I agreed.

“Will you write about us?”

“I cannot be certain. After all I do not know your names. I will write about the conditions under which you live and perhaps, if you ever read the book, you might be able to identify yourselves.” Saying it to have some real part in the conversation, not really knowing if I would write about them.

“That's good, friend. No names. Please, no names. But if you write about conditions here we shall never be able to read your book. Not here. Don't you know that books critical of the Government are banned?”

“I know. My books
were
banned for a time.”

“You heard about that Afrikaner writer, Brink? He's written a book about a White sleeping with a black woman. Hell, they're after him. The politicians, the church, everybody. Shit, everybody knows it happens. That's why they've made laws against it. But the laws don't stop people from doing what they want, it only makes them cautious. Where the hell do they think all the half-breeds, the Coloreds, come from?

“Shit, brother. Can you imagine what would happen if a Black wrote a book like that? Nobody would even publish it. Look at us. We write simply stories and songs about ourselves and nobody wants to touch them. Naturally we write about our pain and our problems, not about sleeping with some white woman. You ever heard of Benedict Vilakaizi?”

“No. Who is he?”

“He was one of the few Blacks to teach at Witwatersrand University, years ago, before this Government changed all that. He was also a poet. He wrote many poems. Go to a bookstore and ask for
Zulu Horizons.
That's the name of his book of poems. Listen to this:

‘Yes, when a siren screeched one day,

A poor black dassie
‡
heard its call

And, answering its summons in confusion

Was trapped.

And then

Transformed into a mole,

Was forced to burrow deep and search for gold.'”

“That's very good,” I said.

“Shit, brother. It's more than good. It's beautiful. And it's real.”

“I'd like to meet the poet,” I said.

“You will, one day.” Laughter. “For now, he's dead. Died about thirty years ago. But he was a real Zulu. He spoke to the heart and soul of his people, to their pain and their pride. He was a father to us, not like Buthelezi.”

“What about other black writers?” I asked, wishing to keep him off Buthelezi.

“Oh, there are many. Many. But nobody wants to publish them. When a few of them get published, there's nothing much in it for them. But they, too, speak for us. Like Stanley Wotzuwadi. Listen to this:

‘I get my cue

From the glint in the cop's eye.

I have seen it before.

So I have to find it.

I pull away from Mons and hug myself in desperation.

Up, down, back, front, sides, like a

Crazed tribal dancer

I have to find it.

Without it I'm lost.

With it I'm lost, a cipher in Albert Street.

I hate it. I treasure it.

My pass. My everything.'

“You understand. He's talking to me. About me. About us. No white man can understand those words.”

“You know about the Book of Life? Our pass book?” one asked.

“Yes. I've seen one,” I replied. “Where can I buy some books by these black writers?”

They told me of a bookshop on Commissioner Street, a few blocks away, which was known to carry books by Blacks, native and foreign.

After some further conversation they invited me to have a drink with them later and I agreed to meet them outside the railroad station a short distance from my hotel. I left them, to search for the bookshop and purchase copies of books they'd mentioned, poetry and prose by Blacks, the few who had managed to get some of their work published. As they'd directed me I took the route through Eloff Street toward Commissioner Street.

H
ALF A BLOCK AWAY
from Commissioner Street I saw a black man running, just running along Eloff Street toward me, on the roadway near the sidewalk to avoid the traffic. There seemed to be no one pursuing him and I was not alerted to any trouble until two white men stepped in his way and grabbed him, one of them holding him tightly by the collar of his shirt. They were shouting at him in Afrikaans, so I could understand nothing except the repeated, “No, no,
Baas
”
from him. They cuffed and kicked him, shaking him meanwhile.

A crowd quickly gathered, some of them asking what the man had done. Some of these spoke English but all I could make out was that the man had been running. The men who held him had not been chasing him, nor did they know why he'd been running. Someone called the police, who quickly arrived and took over from the two civilians, handling the man just as roughly. One policeman, a big, red-faced, crew-cut fellow slapped the man on the side of the head with a huge meaty hand, snarling at him in Afrikaans. Someone near me called out to the policeman in English to stop hitting the man. The policeman told the bystander to shut up or he'd take him down to John Vorster Square for interfering in the due process of justice.

“Christ, is that justice?” I heard myself ask. The big policeman glared at me. I felt pitifully helpless, a stranger, unable to do anything but look on, as they dragged the man to where they'd parked their car.

The bystanders began chattering among themselves, some expressing outrage at the two who had stopped the running man, others angrily defending their action. A crazy mixture of English and Afrikaans. Whites shouting at each other. A few Blacks standing well away from it, watching but saying nothing. I was too near the center of it for comfort, dazed by the suddenness, the sheer brutality of it. I felt myself shaking and knew that I was frightened. Suddenly, unexpectedly frightened. Christ, a minute ago the black man had been running here, the slap, slap of his feet still a faint echo in my ear with the memory of his loose shirttails fluttering behind him; now, he had vanished, in the company of brutal men, probably to be beaten while screaming for mercy, no one asking questions, no one interested in explanations. If it had been nighttime, he might have been killed on the spot. For what? For being in a hurry?

At long last I realized what so many people had been trying to tell me. It finally sank in. If you're Black in South Africa, there's nothing between you and sudden violence, nothing to protect you from the hate of centuries. On the street, in your home, anywhere. Not the laws, not the courts, not the police. “Walk,” they said to me, “don't run. Don't ever run.” I felt exposed, brought up hard against the fact that here I could not take for granted even the simple protection of personal space that strangers in all other places respect between each other.

Slowly I walked away from there to the bookshop. The bookshop attendant, a young, dark-haired woman, not only had the books in stock, but had read them and spoke knowledgeably and enthusiastically about them. We went downstairs to the lower floor of the shop. While I waited for the books, there would be footsteps from time to time on the stairs which were near the cashier's desk. Each time the young woman would quickly, furtively glance behind her.

It happened again and I asked, “Why are you so nervous?”

“Nervous?”

“Yes. Every time there are footsteps on those stairs you look frightened.”

She blushed. “I guess you're right. It's become a sort of occupational disease. But I can't help it. Each time it happens I promise myself that the next time I'll just ignore it, but I can't.”

“But why? They're only customers, like myself, coming to look and buy.”

“Not always. Regularly the Security Police drop in. It's got so we can nearly recognize their feet. They come in and flip through the books on display, deciding in their own strange way what must be withdrawn, what may be sold, what jackets must be covered. It's a kind of harassment, and there's nothing we can do about it. They're always looking for Communist literature and any title that's the least bit dubious, to them, gets the book banned.”

“What do you mean when you speak of covering jackets?”

“I mean just that. I'll give you an example.”

With that she went to a rack and returned with a paperback copy of
The Great Gatsby,
which was published in England. The cover carried palely colored drawings of three people, two women and a man, dressed in the style of the twenties, the women's clothing little more than a frothy film over the thin pencil lines of their bodies. There was nothing even vaguely suggestive about the drawings; one could differentiate between the sexes, that was all.

“They've ordered us to place covers over these jackets,” she said. “The book has recently been prescribed for Secondary Schools, and these men claim that the cover is too suggestive for exposure to the students.”

I was tempted to disbelieve her but for the seriousness in her clear gray eyes.

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” she replied, “They claim they are doing it in his name and in the interests of morality. Several times each week, without any advance notice, they come in, paw their way through our books and take some away, ostensibly to read and inspect them for questionable ideas and philosophies.”

“Mine were banned,” I said.

“Yours?” Her eyebrows raised in surprise. “Are you a writer, too? What's your name? You're not South African, are you? Your accent. Sounds English to me.”

“Yes, I write. The name's Braithwaite and I'm not South African.”

“Braithwaite! Of course.
To Sir, with Love.
I read in the
Mail
that you were in Jo'burg. Yes. Of course. For a while we were prevented from selling your books, even though
To Sir
was prescribed for the Training College. Can you make any sense out of that? You know they banned
Black Beauty,
the famous children's book, some years ago? That's the kind of mentality we have to deal with.”

“Now I understand your nervousness. I'm sure I'd behave in the same way under similar pressures.”

“Oh, in my case it's more than that. I was in jail for several years. For opposition to the Government. They jailed me under the Suppression of Communism Act, though they knew I'm no Communist. But that's a sort of catch-all. After I came out of prison I was restricted to my home for a long time. Couldn't travel or entertain friends or anything. It's like if you stopped living but went on breathing. I thought I'd get over my fear of them, but it happens in spite of myself. I suppose it's because I can't bear the thought of being imprisoned again.”

Somehow her words made a far deeper impression on me than did those of the Indian who had been held in Robben Island. He was still full of pep and vinegar and, given the chance, would again be inciting resistance. But this young woman had been hurt deeply as only the insider can be hurt when visited by the wrath of his own kind.

I paid for my books and left her. At every turn the underlying ugliness in the society was breaking through the upper crust of comfort and prosperity. To keep the majority in a state of fear some of the minority must themselves become victims, spreading the virus of fear within as well as without. With my small burden of books, I walked the short distance to the railway station. The five young men were waiting for me.

“Got your books?” one asked.

“Yes.” I decided to say nothing of the incident in Commissioner Street. “Where are we going for our drink?”

“Come to where we live. In Soweto.”

My immediate impulse was to refuse. I'd seen enough of that place.

“I've been there. I was there today, visiting with the YWCA.”

“Women!” one said, scornfully.

“We're inviting you to come and have a drink with us, brother,” another said, pointedly. I realize I should have anticipated this and invited them to my hotel. They watched me, waiting.

“Okay,” I said, hating myself for my weakness. What the hell was I trying to prove?

Over my objections one of them said he'd get the tickets and we walked on to the station platform. The train was there, its engine hissing impatiently, perhaps at the Blacks who were shoving and pushing each other to get on. My friends pulled me into the surging mass.

“Why do we have to get into this one?” I protested. “I can see other carriages further along.”

“Those are for Whites,” was the reply, by which time I was caught in the surge and propelled along into the carriage which was already packed beyond capacity. All black people, those who were lucky enough to be seated, uncomfortable under the leaning weight of the rest of us. The place stank from the limited ventilation and the crush of human bodies. I wished I'd been strong enough to refuse this invitation.

Soon I was perspiring, the cool rivulets trickling their way down my armpits and my back. My arms were pinned to my sides, the package of books a rough discomfort against my ribcage. The knowledge that the man braced against me was feeling the same discomfort helped.

“You could have been riding comfortably with the Whites,” one of my friends whispered hoarsely in my ear. “For as long as you're visiting here you're regarded as White, did you know? Honorary White.” He made the two words sound like a curse.

“Now you tell me,” I whispered back, letting him gloat over his small imagined victory.

Through the crush, the white conductor forced his way, grabbing tickets from outstretched hands, quickly examining them, shouting at those whose tickets were not in order, abusing them, beefy, red-faced, belligerent. We swayed against his rough, onward passage. I felt helpless, with one foot barely touching the ground, dependent entirely on the pressures which kept me erect. As he elbowed his way past me, I saw the anger in his pale gray eyes, anger and contempt for the black mass through which he must claw his way.

“He's got to get the tickets before we reach Soweto,” was whispered to me. “Once we got there they'd walk all over him.”

With a squeal of brakes, the train shuddered to a stop. Gratefully I waited for some easing of the pressure. By twisting my head around I caught the eyes of one of my friends.

“This is a white stop,” he explained. “No Blacks getting off here. We've got more than an hour of this.”

Through a window I saw the legend, Braamfontein in bold lettering on the fence along the station, and beyond the red gleam of a bungalow's roof nestling under trees. Evidently a white suburb. Soon we were on our way, making more stops for the departing Whites—Langlaate, Croesus, Canada—depositing those who had been riding in cushioned ease.

I could have been riding comfortably too, as an Honorary White. Thinking of it I felt the full impact of its debasement. For all these years I'd been living proudly in my black skin, doing very satisfying things in it. In this same skin I'd spent a happy boyhood in Guyana, learning about ambition and pride and the pleasure of competitive effort from parents and teachers and others, most of them in black skins like mine—some white, but treating our black skins with respect. In this skin I'd sat with other undergraduates in an English university, pitting my intellect against theirs, confident in my abilities. In this skin I'd flown a fighter aircraft during the war, had known love, anger, despair, and success. In this same skin I'd written my books, taught Whites, and represented my country as a diplomat.

This skin had always been good enough for me. Men had admired my prowess in it. Women of many colors had found it beautiful. Never before had anyone, anywhere, attempted to change it. Yet now my color was far more important than anything I might be or do. Piss on their Honorary White! I'll ride Black.

At Canada Junction some of the crowd dismounted to find their branch lines to various parts of Soweto. We continued on to Orlando, from which we had a long walk to where they lived. We walked along a dusty, rutted road, through rough weed-grown land cluttered with stones and here and there a pile of rubble, all that remained of former homes that had been bulldozed to the ground. In the near distance the houses were little square boxes softened by the shrubs and small trees which grew around them.

At a crossroads a group of men stood in excited conversation near a car which had run off the road and now was tilted lopsidedly on the grass verge. Along both sides of the roadway people were at their doors or windows looking toward the group of men. We stopped and one of my acquaintances spoke to them in their language. There followed an outburst of sound accompanied by much arm waving.

This car and another had been involved in an accident. An argument had ensued and the police had arrived. One driver had promptly taken to his heels. The police had shouted to him to stop, and without waiting for him to comply, had shot him, there at the corner, the bloodstained grass providing mute evidence. The wounded man had been removed in the police car to hospital, but was not expected to live. A crowd had formed and the police had ordered them to disperse. The people had merely retreated to stand outside their homes, in an ugly mood, but helpless and defeated.

Who cared whether another Black was shot and killed! Perhaps, at the hospital it would be discovered that he did not have a residence permit or Book of Life, and was therefore in Soweto illegally. After all, once a black man was in the hands of the police, identity material could easily disappear. No local resident would dare complain about the actions of the police. In any case, who could they complain to? The police themselves? The white courts? No. Fear of the white man dominated their lives. Fear of sudden violence, arrest, deportation to some remote rural area.

Along the dusty street, small groups of black men and women whispered together, their voices subdued even though the police were long gone. I couldn't imagine this fearful numbness among Blacks in New York or Chicago or London or Birmingham, in Jamaica or anywhere else where large groups of Blacks lived. Perhaps, in spite of my acquaintances' optimistic talk, they were already demoralized past any resistance.