Honorary White (8 page)

So, it had happened. After all the fancy official footwork it had happened. Here I was, miles away from the city and without other means of reaching it. I felt suddenly angry at the thought that the taxi would drive away, leaving me there, helpless in an unfamiliar place. On impulse, I climbed in.

“I can't take you,” the driver insisted.

“Then we'll damned well both stay here.” My anger spilling out. “I telephoned you from this address and you were sent here to collect a passenger and take him to the Landdrost Hotel, weren't you? Well, I'm that passenger and I'll be damned if I'll get out of this taxi.” Without another word he turned the vehicle around and headed toward the city.

“If a policeman stops us, I could lose my license,” he complained.

“If a policeman stops us, tell him to talk to me!” I responded.

“The bloody dispatcher didn't tell me you were non-white,” he went on. “If he'd told me, I'd have known.”

“How would he know from the sound of my voice?” I asked.

“Well, non-white VIPs stay at the President or the Landdrost. It's not that I don't want to take Non-Whites in this taxi. It's not me. It's the law. If a policeman stops me with a Non-White in my taxi I could lose my license, and my job. But I suppose it's okay, if you're a VIP.”

Just listen to him! This same bastard would have left me stranded back there just because of my black skin.

“Do they ever tell you if a fare is black or white?” I asked.

“Well, no, because we don't normally pick up Non-Whites.”

“One of your taxis took me to Parktown from the hotel. In broad daylight, so he knew I was black. He didn't tell me he couldn't carry Blacks. So, if he could carry me there, why all this fuss about taking me back to my hotel? Does the policy of your company change with the drivers or from daylight to night?”

“It's the same policy, but—”

“But you don't want to carry Blacks.” I interrupted whatever excuse he was about to give.

“Look, I don't have anything against you—”

“Like hell you don't.” In spite of myself the violence was spilling over. “They sent you to pick me up, but one look at this black face and you were ready to fly off and leave me back there in the dark.”

“I was only doing my job,” I heard him say.

“Hell, no. This is your bloody job. Carrying passengers who call you is your job.”

I leaned back, swallowing the rest I wanted to say. What the hell was the use? A bastard like this would do the same thing again five minutes from now. He made some comment, but I didn't hear it. I lost interest in him and anything else he had to say. Just get me to that bloody hotel, I thought. Just get me there.

A few weeks later I learned from the doorman at the Landdrost that some men from the Security Police had been making inquiries about me. They'd questioned the doorman and referred to a comment I'd made to the press about a white taxi driver who'd refused to take me in his cab and had only complied when I'd climbed in over his objections. Apparently they wanted to question the driver and needed some identification from me. They said they would be returning to see me. To hell with them. As far as I was concerned the matter was closed.

The following week, I went to visit a young Indian, living a few blocks from my hotel in a small area temporarily designated “Indian,” who recently had been released from the political prison on Robben Island, the same prison in which Chief Nelson Mandela has been held for years. About seven miles offshore from Cape Town, it houses several hundred political dissidents, all black and serving sentences which range from one to twenty or more years. I was eager to hear about conditions there at first hand.

The young Indian had been active as a publisher and distributor of newsletters attacking the Government's racist policies. He was caught, tried under the Suppression of Communism Act, and jailed for ten years without right of appeal. Now, even though he had been released, this young man was under a restriction order prohibiting him from having visitors. On entering his house it was agreed that, in the event of a visit from the police or security agents, I was to say that I was visiting his brother who lives in the same house.

He was full-bearded, thin, and hollow-cheeked as if recently recovered from a long illness, but his handshake was firm and he greeted me enthusiastically, mainly because I was from the same country as Dr. Cheddi Jagan whom he admired tremendously for his resolute position against the British during Guyana's struggle for independence. He had heard that I was in Johannesburg and wished to talk with me, to “set me straight,” as he put it. He made reference to the recent visits of Arthur Ashe and Bob Foster, both of whom, he claimed, played into the hands of the racist South African Government which sought to use such visits to divert international pressure from their policies of segregated sport. He seemed to believe that any Black from outside who visited South Africa was, by implication, accepting the prevailing policies as valid. He wanted to know how I had managed to acquire a visa in the first place and how was it that the author of a book like
Reluctant Neighbors
could persuade the South African Government to let him in. He fired off these and other questions without waiting for answers. He insisted that the Government was deliberately inviting well-known overseas Blacks, particularly Americans, to South Africa and showing them certain isolated aspects of the lives of Blacks in the Republic, so as to brainwash them into supporting the Government's racist philosophy. Bob Foster, he said, was a case in point.

“That black American went so far as to state that he liked this country so much he was seriously considering building a house here,” he sneered. “The idiot doesn't realize that if he lived here, he, too, would soon be compelled and condemned to live in a black township like Soweto or Alexandra, instead of a fancy suite at the Landdrost Hotel where you, too, are staying.” Looking at me as if I shared Foster's guilt.

“I had the choice of three hotels here which are allowed to take Blacks,” I told him.

“Yes, I know,” he interrupted.

“Let me explain. I was told this at the airport the moment I arrived. I was told that there were no other hotels I could go to, none owned by Blacks or Indians or Coloreds or anyone else other than Whites. I make no apology for staying there.”

“Okay. Okay. I accept that you had no choice, but people like you and Foster and Ashe are setting back the black struggle ten years. By coming here. By letting South Africa use the fact of your coming to counter our accusations of discrimination.”

It finally got through to me that he had invited me to see him, not really to tell me about Robben Island, though he answered my questions, but to protest my visit to his country. He'd mentioned that he'd tried to reach both Foster and Ashe without any success.

“How do you imagine anyone outside your country would know anything about conditions here if no one made any attempt to learn at first hand?” I asked.

“You could learn without coming here. Especially you. You were at the United Nations. Didn't you meet any of our brothers who went there to petition? Some of our brothers from here and South West Africa made it over to the States. Didn't any of them see you?”

“Yes. I met some of them.”

“Didn't you believe what they told you?”

“I was persuaded by what they told me.”

“Don't give me all that diplomatic shit, man. Either you believed them or you didn't.”

“I was generally persuaded by them, but I welcomed the opportunity to see the situation for myself. This is it.”

“Do you dash off to every country to check everything for yourself?”

“No.”

“Then why this? Did you have any difficulty getting a visa from this government?”

“No.”

“Shit, man, doesn't that tell you anything? Your books were banned in this country. Even today Blacks can't see your film in the public bijou, and that, too, was banned to Whites for some time. In spite of all that these Afrikaners gave you a visa to come here. Think, man! Can't you see they're planning to use you?”

“Look, they can plan what the hell they like, that has nothing to do with me. I was issued a visa. Fine. But nobody can control how I think about what I see and hear and feel.” And, on impulse added, “Not even you.”

He laughed, reaching forward to touch me.

“You think so? You really think so? By the time these sons-of-bitches are through with you, you'll be singing their tune without realizing it. You'll go back to the States and tell people all about how freely you were allowed to move about. No supervision, therefore, no police state. Which makes a liar out of all of us. Right? They'll wine you and dine you and prove that educated Blacks can make it anywhere. Only the lazy Bantu has to be kicked in the ass and locked in a ghetto to make him stir himself. They'll forget to tell you that he is disenfranchised, denied a reasonable education and the right to bargain for his labor and compete for the job he wants to do. Yes, friend, they'll tell you you're different and, you know something, you'll end up believing it.”

“Think what you like,” I said.

“Eh?”

“Think what the hell you like,” I repeated and stood up to leave. “Look, you invited me and I came to talk with you. I thought you'd tell me about what the life is like for you and others. I came because I wanted to learn the truth, to hear it for myself so I can write about it. I expected that you, black like me, would lay it on me, without all this bullshit. You think I was born yesterday? I've lived most of my adult life among Whites. London, Paris, New York, Rome. I've no illusions about them, but I don't see them as bloody supermen either. They can't control how I think and what I'll write.” He had needled me to this point. He and the others. Who the hell did they think they were? Pouring their suspicions over me. Here they were locked tight in the rotten ghetto and wanting the outside world to know of their plight. Okay. I'd come in. Of my own free will. So tell me and I'll write it. That's what I was saying to them, but all I was getting was their suspicion and scorn.

“Hey, cool it, man.” He reached forward and pushed me back into the chair. “Don't get excited. We're talking. Relax.”

“You relax. You call that talking, making me seem like some half-assed idiot just because I've visited your country?
White newsmen and writers fly here regularly, write their pieces and fly out again. Do you warn them that they're being used?”

“Fuck them.”

“And fuck you, too, mate. What gives you the right to be so high and mighty? Your years on Robben Island? Okay, I sympathize.”

“Stuff your sympathy. Hell, man, you're beginning to sound like Whitey. Cool down. I'm only trying to help you. And don't hand me that shit about Paris and London. Over there they might hate your guts, but the law limits what they can do to you. Here Whitey
is
the law. Blacks can't command the law because it was not intended for them. They can't demand justice, because it was not intended for them. Justice and the law are concepts which apply to men. To humans. In this society Blacks are not considered human so they are not sheltered by those concepts. Did you know that, in this society we have no vote? We're not even on the official census. Shit man, we're not here. Don't talk to me about Whites in Europe or America. These here are different. They're fascists of the worst kind.

“Look,” he was leaning forward, tapping on my knee with a long finger. “All I'm begging you to do is think. I'm black. You're black. I published a few newsletters which nobody outside this town ever heard of and they threw me into jail. You've written books which have been read by millions. Attacking the very policies they live by. Okay, they try to keep those books out, but they're brought in anyway and read, so to save their own fucking face, they lift the ban. That makes this a liberal society. Right? And to cap it all, they let you in. Man, they used you before you stepped into that airplane.”

The logic of it hit me hard, killing my anger and stirring up the fears I'd earlier had about making the visit. The visa was five months in coming. Perhaps all that time was necessary while the design was worked out. Christ, I was beginning to think like him.

“Okay, you made your point. Now I must be running along. I've a few things to do.” I wanted to be out of this.

“Like a dinner engagement, maybe? With some of your white friends?” Grinning.

“Perhaps.” He had the knack of finding the nerve.

“Don't worry. They've enough black slaves to keep it hot for you. Okay, man. Like you say, you can see and hear and think for yourself, but I tell you they'll use you. They do it all the time. Among us. Even out there on the Island. Can you imagine that? Even out there where you'd think we were all brothers, all there for the same reason, all united against the fascist bastards. Even there they managed to use some of us against others. And for what? Some fucking little privilege we'd already learned to live without. After all we'd been through, to sell one's soul for shit like that! So you see man, telling me that you can see and hear and think for yourself doesn't mean a damn thing. Anyway, while you're thinking for yourself, think about us and remember that in the eyes of these fascists you're no better than the rest of us.”

“I'll remember,” I said. I'd come to this house with a gutful of goodwill toward this man. Now all I could feel was a nagging suspicion that somehow I'd been trapped into betraying him and others like him. Just by being in their country.

“In prison the payoff was some worthless little privilege,” he was still with it. “What are they giving you? The ‘Honorary White' bit, so you can believe yourself different from the rest of us? Fancy hotel, your face in the white newspaper, moving around freely? Same thing, man. Privileges bought—”