Honorary White (9 page)

“Nobody's bought me,” I said, lamely.

“—And paid for, man. And when you think you're moving about more freely than the rest of us, just look over your shoulder. If you're quick enough you might learn something.”

Everything he said struck home. Sure, I had been telling myself that nobody was restricting or supervising my movements. I'd been in and out of Soweto and Alexandra, hadn't I? My only problem had been my inability to make contact with the so-called black representatives. Buthelezi. Matanzima. The Information Office had promised me meetings with them but had only come up with excuses. Always at the last moment. But I must not let the things this man was saying color everything that happened. If I couldn't reach the big Blacks, there would be others.

“Are you concerned for me or just sorry for yourself?” I asked, trying to throw him on the defensive, and free myself from the suffocation of his penetrating insight.

“I'm not sorry for me, man. I'll live. I lost ten years of my life out there on the island. Doing shit, man. Breaking rocks for the sake of breaking rocks. You're sitting on a pile of rocks today with a hammer in your hand and sometime next week or the week after it's a pile of pebbles and you can't remember how it happened. You've used two weeks of your life watching rocks turn to dust. And the next week you're sitting on another pile of rocks. Or is it the same one? You know what they did with the pebbles, man? They just left them there to remind us that we were just shit. You know what our ambition was? To stay alive. Staying alive, that's all. Living for news from outside. Do you know what was the most important thing to us in there? Not money, man. Not pussy. A newspaper. Any old newspaper. We read every word. Everything. And we talked. Can you understand? Those fucking Afrikaner guards watched us to prevent us from talking. Threatened us. Punished us. But we talked. Even with our mouths shut like, what you call them, ventriloquists, man. Whoever found a piece of newspaper read it, then passed it on and told everyone what he'd read. After a while we were reading more closely, more perceptively than when we were free. We shared our points of view. We talked. Especially about the political situation.” Here he laughed again, scratching his head, remembering.

“Once a priest came into the prison carrying a briefcase with a newspaper, the
Times,
stuck under the flap. Like lightning, it disappeared. He never made a fuss about it. That Sunday we had a whole newspaper to read. After that, whenever that priest came to see us, he brought a newspaper and it always disappeared from his briefcase. Survival, man, that's the word. Nelson Mandela is up there. Living it out from hour to hour. That's where you learn about hope, man. Without it you're dead.”

He came and placed a hand on my arm, a conciliatory gesture.

“Will you come and see me again, friend? I promise to be nice.”

“Don't strain yourself on my account.”

“That's not a strain. Living like this is a strain. Shit, I can't even see you to the door. Never know who might be checking on me from outside. If I'm seen talking to you, they could come and take me away. Fucking lovely way to live, isn't it? I'm jealous, man. You, a stranger, can move about as you wish. Right? Me, a native son, I'm denied the right to step outside. Goodnight, man.”

I left him, his words continuing their disturbing refrain in my ear. I'd gone to his house to talk with him about his time in prison. He'd talked about my visit to his country, sowing in my mind a very sizable seed of doubt about my own motives, and my possible malleability by the South African authorities. Walking away from the Indian's irritating sneers, I wondered if he was right.

He'd questioned my coming to South Africa but he'd either forgotten or ignored the fact that my coming made it possible for me to see him and hear his cynical censure. In his position, I'd be just as embittered, seeing strangers move about with ease while I was restricted to my own house. But what the hell did he want of me?

O
N MY WAY BACK
to the hotel, I passed a restaurant, brightly lit and attractive, and suddenly realizing I was hungry, I decided to go in. I pushed the door but got no further than a step inside, where I was confronted by a waiter, dead-faced and stony-eyed, who placed himself in front of me. He said something to me which I supposed was in Afrikaans.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“You do not come in.” This was stupid. I was already in and thinking out my next move. Now I fully realized why the hotel people had repeatedly suggested that I let them know whenever I wanted to dine out and they would make the arrangements for me, claiming that they knew where all the best eating places were located. This waiter looked as if he would have welcomed a fracas, eyes pale, pugnacious jaw thrust forward. I was turning to leave when another man approached and asked him something in Afrikaans. The waiter replied, and the newcomer then addressed me.

“I don't speak your language,” I said.

“You're not African?”

“No, I'm a visitor.” At which he spoke again to the pale-eyed waiter, this time impatiently, but I walked out, wishing them both to whatever hell was reserved for Afrikaners.

In my room, the things the Indian had said teased and tormented me, throwing into sharp relief what had happened at the restaurant. The waiter's contempt for Blacks was ready and waiting for expression. A waiter! His awkward English indicated that he may well have been a foreigner, an immigrant. How quickly people took on the local social coloration. Like chameleons. Come to think of it I hadn't seen a restaurant in Soweto or Alexandra. Maybe I passed them and didn't notice. What were they like? Could I eat a meal in one of them? Christ!

My reflections were interrupted by a telephone call from a young black newsman I'd met a few days earlier.

“How are you doing?”

“Fine,” I lied.

“How would you like to come out here and see how some of us live?”

“Where's ‘out here'?”

“Soweto.”

“I've been there.”

“Soweto's a big place. I don't think you'd have come to this part. I heard you'd visited with the big boys here. Come and see how the little people live.”

Safely indoors, I wasn't keen to go out again. Besides, I'd had enough of social exposure for one night. A quick tray from room service seemed a more attractive alternative.

“How could I get there now,” I temporized. “It's nearly eight o'clock.”

“By taxi. Black taxi. No white taxi will bring you out here. Get a black taxi from the taxi stand near the black bus stop. I'll meet you at this end. It will do you good to travel the way the rest of us do.” I was still far from enthusiastic.

“How will I get back here?” I asked, thinking of the special permit required of Blacks in the city at night.

“I'll see to it, don't worry about that.”

“Okay,” I surrendered and went out to the black bus stop across the park. I was directed to a taxi, empty while the driver stood around joking with friends. Loud laughter punctuated each sally. He waved me to sit inside. Soon I was joined by another passenger who sat beside me without saying a word. Then another and another, followed by two more, these sitting in the front. Not a word from anyone. Another person pushed in the back and we were all forced to sit diagonally pressed together. Another passenger slipped into the front. A woman. At first I thought she'd be driving because she sat at the wheel, but now the driver got in, pushing against the woman until he could take hold of the wheel even though his body was only halfway under it. Somehow he started the vehicle and we were off.

It was the most uncomfortable taxi ride I'd ever taken. Eight adults cramped uncomfortably into space designed for five, the driver miraculously shifting gears and steering from his sideways position. We passed several taxis similarly overloaded, always with Blacks.

In Soweto, my acquaintance was waiting as promised, standing beside his car. He said he could have fetched me, but thought the experience of riding as he did twice each day would help me to understand better what was normal for a Black. He kept his car for after-work use.

We drove to his home, one of the square concrete boxlike structures in the northeast part of Soweto. Instead of the corrugated metal roof I'd seen on some of the other houses, this one and its neighbors wore bulky concrete tops, making them seem humpbacked in the nighttime gloom, very much, in fact, like huge sleeping elephants. Inside it was hot, even with the few windows open. Several candles were strategically placed about the room for light. Indoors he turned to me and said, “Welcome to the real Soweto.”

The house was sparsely furnished. The main room in which I stood contained a wooden table with three wooden chairs around it, a rough chest of drawers reaching nearly to the low ceiling, and a narrow wooden cot. In a corner another table, roughly made but sturdy, supported some cooking utensils and a Primus stove. No electricity. No signs of running water.

“Six of us live here, in four little rooms,” he said, his eyes brightly on me as if to note my slightest reaction. He led me into another room which was furnished in nearly the same way, except that there was no cooking equipment. A central wooden table, two low cots opposite each other and two wooden cupboards. Near one of the cots was a small upended box, centrally divided, which contained several books. Crowning the box was a half-worn candle stuck in a Coke bottle.

“My brother is a medical student, one of the very few. That's where he studies. He leaves here at five o'clock each morning to make his way into town and compete with white boys who read by electric light, sleep in comfortable beds and eat a good breakfast.” Saying it all so matter-of-factly. I looked at him and surprised the pain on his face.

“Different from your hotel, don't you think?” he asked.

“Yes, different.”

“Different from those houses they showed you on your officially conducted tour, I'm sure. Then, you saw houses like this, but with electric lighting and a kitchen sink and a water toilet out back. I'm sure they didn't show you these. How would you like to live here for a month? No, a week, or even a day?”

I was feeling battered, first by the Indian, then that bastard at the restaurant, now this. How much crap was I supposed to take? I wanted to see, at first hand, the conditions under which my fellow Blacks lived, but why should they think they had a right to cram it down my throat?

“I wouldn't wish to live here,” I replied. Leaving it at that.

“How about a drink?” he asked, not waiting for my response, but reaching into a cupboard for two china mugs and a tin of powdered coffee. He poured water from a container into a tin kettle, then set to pumping away at the Primus stove, pricking at the jet from time to time and cursing under his breath as it defied his efforts.

“Not to worry,” I said, actually relieved that the little stove was defiant. After all he'd said I wasn't too anxious to risk the water, even though it would of course be boiled. Wondering if he had to go through this same exercise early every morning to have hot water for shaving. What happened in the winter? Apart from the bare necessities there was nothing. No curtains, no posters, no pictures.

The failure of the coffee project seemed to cause us both some embarrassment, but he saved the situation by inviting me to take a walk around the neighborhood. Outside the night was star-­studded and pleasantly warm, the night shadows smudging the outlines of bush, tree, and house, giving the whole place a romantic softness. No street lamp in this part of town, only the candleshine from open doorways and the starlight from above.

“It's okay if we walk around here together at night,” he told me, “but any one of us alone would be asking for trouble. You call it mugging in the United States. Bands of young boys roam the streets at night, preying on men who've been drinking in the local beer gardens or in the shebeens. Beat them up and rob them. Sometimes kill them. Know how they do it? They push a piece of sharpened wire, something like a short knitting needle, into the neck at the base of the skull. Paralyzes those who survive. Many of the paraplegics in the local hospital are victims of the Tsotsis.”

“Why do you call them that? What does it mean?”

“Not too sure. Something to do with the Zoot Suit gangs of the United States, I've heard. Anyway, so the story goes. Most of them are boys without parents or even relatives. School dropouts. Or maybe they couldn't get into school. Couldn't afford the fees, or clothes, or books. So they don't go. After all, schooling is compulsory only for Whites. Optional for Blacks.”

We walked around, listening to the night sounds, people talking to each other, snatches of conversation floating out from the houses, all in an African dialect. Music. Edmundo Ros swinging his inimitable way through a rumba rebroadcast from London. The sudden scream of a night bird in the near distance. We could have been light years away from the neat, trim suburbs designated “White.” In order to reach this place from my hotel the route had been through suburb after suburb of affluence and comfort. My companion and hundreds of thousands like him made the same trip to and fro each day, seeing the affluence, envying the comfort. Inevitably hating.

“I think I should be heading back to town.” I said.

“Had enough?”

I told him it wasn't that. I was anxious about being stopped by the police. If that happened and they found out that I was a visitor they'd also discover that I had no permit to be in Soweto.

“Nobody's going to stop us. Not unless there's a police raid to find people illegally living here.”

“Do you know when a raid is likely to happen?”

“No.”

“Then I'd better get back.”

Hoping he'd see the point and agree. Realizing, belatedly, that I was completely dependent on him now for leaving that place. There were no telephone booths to be seen, no taxi stands, no bus stops. If there were any such places, only he knew where they were.

Now and then a car passed us, always hurrying. No pedestrians. Perhaps the Tsotsis keep nighttime walking to a minimum. Abruptly he turned and we retraced our steps to his house where we got into his car and headed out of Soweto.

“The trick is not to have a breakdown at night,” he said. “No help for the black motorist, not even from the police. If you have a breakdown and a policeman approaches you, the first thing he asks is not what's wrong with the car, no, he wants to see your pass.”

We made it without incident to my hotel where he left me and hurried off home. I wished him a safe journey, asking myself if the trips, his and mine, were worth the risk and anxiety. I could so easily have jeopardized the rest of my stay. I promised myself I'd not do it again.

I sat and thought over the events of the day which had been painful and very irritating. Here I was a black stranger in this country and it was becoming more and more difficult to meet and consort with Blacks without being subject to suspicious inquiry. Inside me, I felt deep identification with them in their unhappy state. Everything I'd seen and heard since entering the country merely strengthened that feeling, because I knew that the only thing which saved me from the same fate was the fact that I was a national of another sovereign state. I wouldn't want to live as they lived, but neither did they. I was prepared to be with them whenever they wished, to learn from them, about them. I didn't wait for them to seek me out. I sought them. But evidently that was not enough. Okay, so they thought I'd be used by their Government. I believed them to be wrong. So why couldn't they give me the benefit of the doubt? I was already in the country. If I looked and listened and heard and then went off and wrote laudatory pieces in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, then they could call me traitor.

White journalists I'd met in London and New York had given me the impression that they'd been able to talk with Blacks in South Africa without much difficulty. If that were true why were these Blacks making things so difficult for me? So different from my visits to other parts of Africa, where I'd been made to feel welcome. Immediately. My black skin was my ticket to enter. Here, it was the reverse; my very blackness was the barrier. Well, perhaps I should be patient. After all, the conditions I'd already seen were worse than I'd dreamed possible and those very conditions might be the reasons for my black friends' suspicions and reservations.

The hotel's public relations officer telephoned and said she hoped that all was well with me.

“If there's any way in which I can be of help to you, please don't hesitate to ask,” she said.

“Right now, all I ask of life is a hot bath, a cold drink and a funny movie,” I replied, lightheartedly.

“The bath and drink are no problem,” she told me, “but the movie is another matter. If you're really keen to go to the bijou, though, and decide what you want to see, I could telephone the management and I'm sure it could be arranged.”

“Why telephone? I don't understand.”

“I think I'd better come up to your suite and explain,” she said. A few minutes later, she arrived, blonde and well-groomed, with that quiet confidence which seems to be the stock-in-trade of the public relations fraternity.

Seated, she said, “I think I must explain the bijou situation here in South Africa. Most cinemas are operated for Whites only. We call them bijous here. There are a few for Coloreds and Blacks in their own areas. Indians have their own. In any case, those in Johannesburg are for Whites only. As an important visitor to our country you are allowed, shall we say, special status. I feel sure that if you decide on the film you want to see, I can telephone the management and there will be no difficulty.”

“You mean I couldn't just go to the box office and buy a ticket?”