Honorary White (15 page)

I said as much, but was told that no one trusted his neighbor enough to band together. Resisting vicious police tactics in broad daylight was one thing, but where would there be any help if the police called at night, with their guns and their dogs, carefully selecting the houses of those who'd spoken up against them? Who'd lend a hand when his neighbor was dragged out and away, no longer militant, but abjectly groveling and begging for mercy?

This they lived with, these young men, desperately trying to blow some faint sparks from their despondent spirits, willing themselves to cling to faint dreams of a freedom which grew fainter and more distant each hour. They asked me about Blacks in Harlem and the deep South of the United States, hoping to hear from me accounts of white brutality to Blacks which might offer them some small consolation in their own desperate situation. But I told them that though the American police, given the opportunity, could be just as racist and brutal, Blacks in the United States were militantly aggressive in their own defense. Somehow, these young Africans had been fed the idea that their condition was in no way different from that of American Blacks. They quoted stories of Lester Maddox of Georgia and his ax-handles and of George Wallace of Alabama defying the Court's orders, but did not know that history had already overtaken these men. They liked to tell themselves that they would one day rise up against their oppressors; they even imagined themselves engaged in covert activities against the Whites. But it was all bravado. Empty. Mere posturing.

They angered me, these young men. I thought of people I knew in Europe and the United States, black and white, who had talked with me in the fond hope that the black South African would eventually rid himself of the incubus of oppression, by the bloodiest means, if necessary. I thought of the young Blacks in my classes at New York University who'd believed that the militant projection of their blackness was a part, perhaps the most important part of their African identity. Were they identifying with this weakness, this demoralized hopelessness? These men had been bleating about the death of a brother, but in fact Tiro's death had kindled no fire, had engendered no rage. A few minutes of huddling in grief, or beating the unresponsive earth, that was all. The realities had to be faced, clamored to be faced. Tiro was dead and had already faded into the pitiful legends of yesterday. Today was now, the job in Johannesburg, the Book of Life, the quarter room in Soweto, the paralyzing fear of Whites.

As we continued on our way to the houses we passed the elementary school. From the outside it was a large solid enough structure of reddish brick built to form a hollow square, single-storied and squat, the rough mortar between the bricks suggesting haste in construction. The ground around it was red clay nearly covered by a ragged growth of weeds, kept somewhat in check by human feet, because it provided the playground area for the school. The whole was enclosed by a wire fence torn in several places.

“I went to this school years ago,” one said.

“I'd like to take a look without interrupting anything,” I said. “I'd like to see them without anyone putting on a show for me.”

“Then just look inside. They're accustomed to people looking in. The teacher won't mind. Nobody will put on any show for you.”

“How do you know?”

“I'm always poking my nose in. We need to know what's going on in the schools, so we check from time to time. Go ahead, if you like.” We stopped beside a classroom. He'd said “we” as if he were speaking for some absent group or organization.

From outside the only sound we could hear was the low voice of one person, perhaps the teacher, rising and falling softly. The door was slightly ajar, and, urged by my companions, I opened it further and went in, followed by them.

The room was small and very overcrowded. The benches and few desks supported twice as many children as they were designed for, squashed and perched wherever they could squeeze their thin bodies. Those who missed out on the benches and desks were either standing at the back or squatting on the bare concrete floor along the sides of the room. In a room probably built to accommodate fifteen or twenty children in comfort, there were eighty or ninety. Most of them had plastic sacks in which they carried and zealously guarded their books, rulers, pencils, and other supplies.

Considering the external surroundings, the children were tidily dressed, the boys, for the most part in gray shorts and gray or white shirts, the girls in dark blue uniform dress with white bodices. They hardly noticed our entrance. Without exception their attention was raptly fixed on the teacher, absorbing his every word.

I leaned against a wall, watching what was, to me, a miracle. I'd forgotten that, in many parts of the world there still existed a ravenous hunger for learning and knowing. If had been so in my boyhood days in Guyana, even though we were never cramped like this, never oppressed in this way. But in the long intervening years of watching students and being a teacher, I'd become accustomed to other conditions, in which students needed to be inveigled, coerced, bribed, or flattered into making the smallest intellectual effort.

These youngsters were eager, their faces and eyes bright with either the enthusiasm of discovery or competition, perhaps already aware that a great deal depended on them, and knowing well that outside there were others who would gladly take their places.

The teacher nodded in our direction but continued with his lesson, apparently unperturbed by the interruption. The lesson was conducted in Afrikaans. He would ask questions and then have to select an answer from among the forest of waving hands which clamored for the chance to reply. None of the children seemed to notice the heat or the overcrowding. They were in an intensely competitive situation and were fully responsive to it. This lesson would be followed by one in English. Until the age of eight or, in some cases, ten years, the child reads, writes and does his counting in an African language, then is abruptly switched to studies conducted in Afrikaans or English or both. Blacks view this as a deliberate plan to inhibit their progress in a society which uses Afrikaans and English exclusively and interchangeably.

Obviously, there never would be any problem of discipline here, because there was no boredom. The children seemed to be soaking in every tidbit of information through eyes and ears, through their very skin. But what of tomorrow when even the minimal haven of this school would be denied them? All this youthful energy and thrust must inevitably collide with the white man's blockades and become poisoned with frustration, anger, and hate. I could almost feel it, a near tangible force, the accelerating buildup of energy as each graduating group was forced out into its own confrontation with the cold, closed world. How long would they be denied? Eventually, clubs, police dogs and even guns would not be able to subdue them, and that was exactly what the Whites feared.

Outside, my companions decided to stay in Soweto and offered to accompany me to the railway station. They seemed to have forgotten all about the drink they'd promised me. I told them I'd had enough of that and would rather suffer a taxi, if they'd help me find one.

“Can't take it more than one way?” one asked, grinning. “We make it both ways, five times a week. Anyway, you were lucky today. Nobody picked your pocket.”

Involuntarily I checked. He was right.

“Would you show me where I'd find a taxi?” I asked.

“Not easy at this hour,” one answered. “But don't worry, I'll run you into Jo'burg.” He led the way to his home, next to which a shiny, near-new car was parked.

“I never use it for work,” he said, touching it fondly. “Can't afford to run it to the city every day. Then the cost of parking it. So I use it mainly on weekends.”

“As many a late virgin will certify,” another added, and all joined in the ribald laughter. Now that the matter of my transportation was settled we stood around outside his house, chatting in lighter vein with each other. Eventually, over my broad hints, the owner of the car started it up and we climbed in, the others riding only as far as their homes. On the way to the city, he was more relaxed with me, talking about his job as a warehouseman—a dead-end, but it kept him alive. In contrast to the power-cut gloom of London which I'd recently left, Johannesburg's night was lit like a fairyland, its power stations all fueled by coal. A few blocks from my hotel we stopped at a traffic light and I noticed three smartly dressed young women, black, chatting together on the pavement, their lush bodies, bright, lipsticked mouths, and bold postures seeming out of place at that hour in Johannesburg.

“If Blacks are not allowed to live in this city, where would they find clients?” I asked my companion.

“If you wait long enough you'll see,” he replied. “They're waiting for Whitey. When it's dark and he thinks nobody's seeing him he leaves his wife and goes looking for black pussy.”

“But what about the police? Don't they pick them up?”

“Only those who don't pay.”

So much for apartheid.

“You want to hear a famous saying?” he asked me, smiling wickedly. “A real proverb? A Soweto proverb?”

“Go ahead,” I said.

“The final destiny of the white man lies between the black woman's legs. Work that out, my friend.”

T
WO DAYS BEFORE I
was scheduled to leave South Africa, some students from Witwatersrand University telephoned. They said they wished to visit and talk with me, and I agreed to have dinner with them at my hotel; they wanted to take me to a local restaurant, but one near-experience of that was enough for me.

I suddenly had a feeling of confusion. Talking with one of the students on the telephone had brought the old, familiar feeling of excitement which always comes to me at the prospect of meeting young people, challenging their intellects and having them challenge mine, learning from them and hoping to teach them. Life had, so far, favored me with a wide variety of experiences which lent themselves to excellent illustrations whenever I needed to enliven an academic topic. These students had invited me to meet and talk with them. They were White. For weeks now I had been bombarded by the ugliness of white bigotry toward Blacks. I'd seen a young man beaten and humiliated for no reason. He'd been running, that's all. I'd heard lovely black women talk of the fear which was a major ingredient of their daily lives. I'd traveled, cooped up with other Blacks like cattle in a truck, while Whites rode in comfort on the same train. Now here I was, reacting with pleasure to an invitation to meet and consort with Whites. Did the fact that they were students make the difference?

I wondered what the young men I had so recently visited in Soweto would think of me, if they knew I was entertaining a group of Whites. Would they consider me insensitive to their plight? But why worry about what they would think? What did I think? In the face of all the injustice I saw all around me, how could I justify to myself the feeling of pleasure at meeting the students? Perhaps, I thought, they were denied the opportunity to meet and talk with Blacks. Perhaps meeting and talking with me might sow some tiny seed of tolerance and respect which might take root. Or would it? Hell, I was not the first Black any of them had met or could meet if they wished. Or wasn't I? Maybe they'd never met another Black who'd had the opportunities to do what I had done. Perhaps, in their eyes, I was different. But, wait, wasn't that exactly what the Indian ex-Robben Island prisoner had predicted would happen? That the Whites would get to me and seduce me into believing myself different from local Blacks?

I was feeling quite low when the students arrived, but tried to hide it in welcoming them and making them comfortable. Eight of them, five men and three women, young and, at first, somewhat ill at ease. One dark-haired woman who seemed to be the leader of the group apologized for encroaching on my time, particularly as they knew from the newspapers how busy I was.

“We just had to take the chance, sir,” she said. “We've read your books, we know you've lived in England, France, and the United States and we'd like to talk to you about things we'd never be able to discuss with anyone here. We just had to take the chance that you'd see us.”

In the face of her plea my misgivings subsided. Hell, these young people looked no different from other groups of young Whites I'd taught in London or Denmark, New York or Florida. Perhaps, in some small way I might be useful. Wasn't this what I had always tried to do as a teacher?

We talked. At first about my books, my teaching, my travels and my diplomatic service, gradually moving on to themselves as members of their university and citizens of their country.

“All our philosophy courses teach us to examine the human condition continually and try to improve it,” said one young woman, whose two thick braids emphasized the youthfulness of her serious face. “We read about social structures, historical and modern, and it is inevitable that we compare them with our own. We talk about the anomalies among ourselves. That's fine. But then we try to discuss them in class and that's where the trouble starts. How can we talk about the human condition without referring to the Blacks in our society? As soon as you mention Blacks, professors get uptight.”

“Unless you refer to them only as statistics,” another said.

“In High School everyone was eager to get to the university,” a young man said. “We came, believing that we should develop as thoughtfully intelligent people, prepared to assume future responsibilities. And we
are
encouraged, as long as our inquiries and interests are not directed toward real social change!”

“I had this thing with my philosophy professor,” one said. “We were discussing social change and after a while it struck me that our entire discussion was limited to intellectual speculation. No one had tried to draw any parallels between what we were philosophizing about and the social realities around us. No one had made any reference to Blacks; no one had commented on apartheid. Of course we talked about injustice, but not as if any of us was even tangentially involved in it. We even reviewed research that had been done, but it was as if we were discussing the behavior of caribou in Canada. So I finally spoke up and said, ‘Why don't we, as students, examine our own attitudes to Blacks?' In as many words I was told to forget it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It's dangerous to display a social conscience,” a young man said. “If you have a social conscience you will inevitably get around to examining Government policies and practices. So you raise a question involving the slightest criticism of that policy and the trouble starts! Some of our professors are members of the Nationalist Party and ardent defenders of Government policy. Before you know it you're under some kind of investigation.”

“From your professors?”

“Worse. Much worse. From the Security Police. It's a grim situation and you find yourself spinning in circles. We study logic, so Plato's
Republic
is part of our reading. We read it and we look around to test the validity of the things we read which seem sound against the reality around us. When faced with conflicting concepts, we naturally expect to be able to talk with our professors about them. We read Mann and Thoreau and Steinbeck. French, English, German, Italian, Russian—we try to understand the views and opinions of those considered the world's foremost thinkers. Some of us have been reading Solzhenitsyn. Isn't it to be expected that we will look at our own social structure, if only to reassure ourselves that it is a good one?”

“In this society,” another said, “if you entertain liberal views, you are soon forced by circumstances into testing the strength and honesty of your liberalism.”

“Strength?” a young woman asked. “How can you use that word? The fact is that we assume postures. For a short while. When the pressures begin we cave in. We don't necessarily change our views but we do the treacherous thing, the humiliating thing. We cave in to the pressures applied by the university and the Security Police. We learn that there is no such thing as intellectual independence. We don't see it in our professors. We don't see it in our parents. We don't see it. Period.”

“You spoke of having liberal views,” I said to them. “What views?”

“That's what we wanted to talk to you about,” one young man replied. Red-haired, with a full, neatly trimmed beard, he'd sat quietly since they'd arrived. “We read an interview of you in the paper the other day, and some of us have been talking about what you said. You spoke about ‘social conscience.' Okay, in this society the moment the words ‘social conscience' are used, we're talking about our racial situation. About Blacks. As soon as we look around to assess our social or economic situation we see Blacks. Everywhere. And we see what we do to them.”

“Well, what's your attitude to them? I mean you, individually, how do you react to them?”

“I'm not sure. I try to be—”

“We're supposed to be afraid of them,” the brunette interrupted him. “Everyone warns that they'll kill us in our beds one day. We're advised to be watchful of them, to keep ourselves armed always.”

“Are you afraid of them?” I pointed the question directly at her.

“Not ordinarily. Not in the streets, if I see them walking. Not in the shops or offices,” she stammered, then recovered. “Well, not those in our home. I mean, not when you can see them. But it's different when you think of them away from you. Where they live. What do they think? What do they talk about? My father worked many years in the Ciskei. He says they never forgive, they can go years biding their time.”

“Do you think that's because they're Black? People everywhere resent injustice. If you mistreat people they are likely to turn on you. Whites do. Why should Blacks be any different?”

“It's not that they're different.” From the bearded young man. “The real fact is that we don't really know them. They're all around us and we don't know them.” I was glad he'd cut in. He seemed to have given the matter a great deal of thought.

“What's stopping you from knowing them?” I wanted to stir something up, get under their skins. “They're in your homes all day long. You can always begin there.”

“My father said that when he was at Wits it was multiracial,” a blonde girl intervened, but before she could divert him the bearded young man said, “Last summer I worked on a job with two Blacks. Okay, it was only a summer job, not much for me to do. They did all the work. One thing I had to do was sign their work permits. I suppose you've heard that a Black has to have his work permit signed by a White. Each month. Sometimes the most junior White is assigned that job. Even a girl typist might be the one to sign the permits of men old enough to be her father. I think the idea is to keep them in line, you know, humiliate them, remind them of their dependence.” He licked his lips, looking around at his peers.

“Anyway,” he went on, “there wasn't much to do so I'd get talking with those two. We never talked about politics and they never talked about themselves, I mean about where they lived, or their families, anything like that. We talked about sports or books or about the American and Russian moon trips. Things like that. It was nice talking with them, they seemed to know a hell of a lot, you didn't get the feeling they were inferior or anything like that. Anyway, they got laid off, for some reason or another. I can't remember. Well, if a Black is unemployed he cannot get a monthly signature and is likely to be picked up and jailed or deported. If he goes looking for a job people always suspect the worst as the reason he was sacked. See the dilemma? Anyway, these two came to see me, met me outside one day and asked me to help them out with the signature until they could find another job. They were having a tough time, but they didn't ask for money, only the signature. Well, I knew nobody would check it, so I signed their permits. It was a funny feeling. Twenty-two years old and I held the destiny of two men at the tip of my pen. If I'd refused to sign they would have been lost. You know how it feels to have people beg you for their lives? I did it, but I never felt good or proud. Each month they'd meet me in a park and I'd sign for them. Nearly eight months. Now they've got jobs in a warehouse. I was glad when it ended, my signing, I mean. I think they even hated me a bit. They never came to tell me they'd got the new jobs; I heard it by accident. When they came for the signatures I'd sign and they'd go. No more talking together, so we never really knew each other. I don't even know what they really thought about me. Could be they hated me for having become so dependent on me. Thing is, I never felt good about helping them.”

“If it's so difficult for you, it's a hundred times worse for a woman,” the blonde said. “We cannot be seen talking to a black woman in a public place, let alone a black man.”

“We're getting away from the point,” a young man intervened, then to me.

“We're here because of the things you said in your interview. We think you probably believe that we are either unwilling or unable to protest Government policies.”

“Critical examination and challenge mean nothing in the abstract. The social, political, and economic realities all around you are crying out to be challenged,” I insisted.

“You may not know it,” he replied, a bit testily, “but Wits does have a reputation for criticism and protest, in spite of administration pressure and police harassment. Have you heard anything of NUSAS, the National Union of South African Students? Let me tell you. It was founded by an Afrikaner student in the old days, to encourage and support the interests of white students. It had its beginning at an Afrikaans university, and in spite of the prevailing policies of discrimination and bigotry, opened its membership to black students. That hasn't changed. If you charge that the society at large is becoming more and more polarized you may be correct, but if you looked a little closer you would soon discover that NUSAS members, black and white, are in the vanguard of action for social and political change. Many former members of NUSAS were imprisoned, sometimes in solitary confinement, for pressing for social reform. My father was one of them. I was in prep school in 1964 when the Security Police began mopping up anyone who was an activist, faculty or student. Wits. Cape Town. Rhodes and Natal. They raided all the places with NUSAS affiliation. The economics lecturer at Rhodes, Norman Bromberger, was picked up and held in solitary for a hundred and sixty-eight days. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Nowadays students are not openly activist, but they're active nonetheless. No point in getting beaten up or jailed if you can avoid it. Long before black students had formed unions, the Whites were bearing the heat of protest. Did you know that until this Government came to power there were black students at the English language universities? Did you know there were even integrated campus dances? The Government banned them in 1965. Ever heard of Sir Richard Luyt?”

“Yes. He was Governor of British Guyana just before it became independent.”

“Right. He's now Principal of Cape Town U. After his appointment they resumed integrated dances there. He even offered a lectureship to a black anthropologist trained at Oxford, Archie Mafeje, but the Government forced the U. to withdraw the offer. Nearly a thousand students and faculty sat-in to protest. Dr. Mafeje was not appointed, even though the sit-in lasted nearly two weeks. Would you say that the students have been sitting on their hands?”