Читать книгу To Survive and Succeed - Mkhuseli Jack - Страница 9

My battles begin: against racism and for schooling

Passing Standard 4 at the Slangrivier farm school meant I had reached the highest grade offered and had to look for another school. There were not many options because there was no such school close by. Township schools were out of bounds due to pass law restrictions. If you came from a farm there was no way that you could obtain a permit to be in a township. But I was determined that I would not drop out of school.

Humansdorp Higher Primary was the only school with an opening for Standard 5. My mother, though happy that I had achieved my Standard 4, told me to accept that there was very little to be done. In isiXhosa she simply said: ‘Sela amanzi uxole mntanam.’ Literally translated, this means: ‘Just drink water and be satisfied, my child.’ Outwardly I accepted my mother’s analysis of the situation, but inwardly I was determined that I was not going to accept this end-of-the-road barrier.

The year-end holidays of 1972 were most difficult for me. I had no plans for the coming year but I told myself that I would carry on with my schooling, come what may. My white friends Eric and Marius were already staying in the Nico Malan High School koshuis (boarding school) in Humansdorp and were sympathetic towards my predicament but could do nothing about it. I grew up with them on their farm under the kindly eye of their dad, Mr Henry Pretorius – the one who had looked the other way. Among the Xhosa people on his farm, he was known as uJobela, the isiXhosa name for a long-tailed widow bird, but I don’t know why he was given this name.

That December holiday, he gave me a job on the farm and I worked harder than ever, saving every cent to buy books and a school uniform and have money for transport. I woke up at five in the morning to herd cows to the kraal for milking. I poured the fresh milk into pint bottles, capped them, and distributed the final product to white holiday homes before the visitors were up for their breakfast. For this part of the job I had to wear a white coat, which made me look important to my friends. After delivering milk we would go back to the dairy and manually crank the handle on the milk separator to separate the cream from the remaining milk. The cream would be decanted into metal cans to be collected twice a week by the milk lorry. The skimmed milk would be given to the calves and if there was any left over it would be shared among the labourers.

Once the calves had been fed, I would herd the cattle to grazing camps. Jobela trusted me when it came to executing my responsibilities. He was, however, wary of what came out of my mouth on some occasions. Although he was a kind, patient and a tolerant person, there were times when Jobela thought that I needed reining in. I was a little too forward for the liking of many whites because I spoke my mind and challenged every racist or unfair practice I came across.

Jobela was a farmer’s son himself. He and his wife Ella had four children: three boys and one daughter, and an adopted girl. They were both deeply religious and staunch members of the Dutch Reformed Church and they brought up their children to have strong Christian values. Jobela, however, was also respectful of what he called ‘die wet’, the law. He believed that laws had to be obeyed even if they were unfair, unjust or evil. When issues of racial separation were raised he would accept that they were wrong, but he did not believe that the authorities should be challenged. I guess his rationale was based on the Bible which, in his view, said ‘obey those in authority’.

The issue of racial discrimination would surface during the holiday season when Jobela suggested that we refrain from playing rugby together when Oyster Bay was teeming with white holidaymakers. He personally did not mind, but felt restricted by the law: ‘… dit is die wet en ek wil nie in die moeilikheid wees nie,’ he would say – ‘that’s the law and I don’t want to get into trouble’.

Although asthma still plagued me and I was the weakest among my black friends, I was the only one who was respected by bullies – especially white ones – and particularly the heavy racist kids who came with their families for holidays or long weekends. I made it my business to bring trouble upon myself or those with me by standing up to white arrogance. Both whites and blacks became fed up with my conduct, with my friends regarding some of my actions as unnecessary provocation.

Oyster Bay’s only public hall, which served as a restaurant, community hall and tea room, was the place where I had most of my skirmishes against what I thought was simple unfairness. For example, there was a door for ‘whites’ and another for ‘non-whites’. I vowed to my friends that I would not abide by this. Sometimes white boys would block the road, forcing us to take a longer route, or they would shout insults, such as ‘koring kop’ – a jibe at our hair.

I believed that bullies should have to work for their unjust behaviour and I was prepared to fight even if I did not have the slightest chance of winning. In farm life in those days winning or losing a fight was a big deal – even more so between black and white boys. But for me, losing counted for nothing; what mattered was that the fight was for a good cause. This principle remains with me to this day.

* * *

Christmas and New Year’s Day came and went with no breakthrough as far as my schooling was concerned. My problem was becoming topical because some supported my desire to be educated while others sneered at me, calling me an ambitious idiot. I was slowly getting support from my entire close family and from the broader local community. This was a real first at my home.

A prayed-for solution came just as the school holidays drew to a close in January 1973. Two of my brothers were working as labourers for a construction company that had a contract to do some work in Paradise Beach near Jeffreys Bay. My brothers normally stayed at construction campsites. A relative who was familiar with the Jeffreys Bay area had heard via the grapevine that a primary school for blacks was expanding to include a higher primary. My mother, brothers and sisters discussed this and it was agreed that if I was admitted to this school I would have to stay at the construction campsite. If the school did not work out, I would have to try to find a job and, in preparation, apply for my ‘dompas’ – the loathed pass book that I, and all black people over the age of sixteen, were forced to carry if we were in a designated ‘white’ area. I would have to drop out of school.

Dawie Theron was the owner of DST Construction, and was also known as ‘Zulu’ among white people. He was an extremely overweight bully who could barely construct a sentence without uttering one or two expletives. Zulu knew me from Oyster Bay where his company had its office, and for some reason he took a liking to me. He even allowed me to sit in the front seat of his bakkie, something that very few whites permitted in those days. Blacks were expected to jump on the back, no matter how high the load, where they’d be shaken and jarred. Zulu was extremely aggressive and would shout, slap, punch or kick workers when he perceived them not to be following his orders or instructions. He called my brother Bonakele ‘Dwarfie’ because he was short and stocky. My brother called him ‘Goeffie’ because of his huge body. The two of them had numerous verbal and even physical clashes. Bonakele had a short temper and he, too, had become vulgar. And yet, in this volatile, violence-prone workplace, I did acknowledge one positive aspect to this deeply flawed ‘boer’: for him, today’s fight was never tomorrow’s fight.

The Jeffreys Bay Bantu Community School was four kilometres from Paradise Beach and was under the principalship of a Mrs Dano. She ran the school from Sub A to Standard 4. In 1973 they were going to experiment with establishing a Standard 5 for the first time. How my admission was arranged I do not know but fortunately there was no problem with pass laws as my address was given as the construction campsite a few kilometres away.

After a month of schooling and living on the construction site, both my brothers started to run into serious pass law problems. Bonakele was forced to leave the Jeffreys Bay area and started to look for work on farms near St Francis Bay. However, help was at hand. My Uncle Oudenks was now working for a farmer on the outskirts of Jeffreys Bay. The servants’ quarters were less than 30 metres from the old shopping complex. I was about to live closer to school than in my entire, albeit brief, school life, and I had the company of two of my cousins who were at the same school. My favourite aunt, Nowise, was as kind and welcoming as she had been when my family and I were dumped on her doorstep after our eviction.

Soon after I moved in, a huge and significant shift in my health occurred: my asthma left me forever. It had started when we were evicted and moved in with Uncle Oudenks and now it lifted when I joined the family again.

Things looked positive. I was doing extremely well academically and was made prefect for the entire school. Mrs Dano, who was not aware of the travails we had faced as a family, believed in me. I represented the school at rugby, even though we did not have the numbers for a full under-thirteen side, and our teacher and coach had to borrow players from the neighbouring coloured school when we had an inter-school match.

I was also encouraged by the district inspector, Mr Curnick Mdyesha, to forge ahead with my schooling. He told Mrs Dano that I was a bright child and there was definitely a bright future for me. Yet, despite such affirmation, I was haunted by the spectre of knowing that my schooldays were numbered.

This was made clear to me when the only black policeman in the Jeffreys Bay area, one Cisko Tsholoba, started passing comments and claiming that I was at the school illegally. He took pride in harassing non-law-abiding Africans. I feared him, especially since he lived next to the school and had a habit of summoning me to his house. He would interrogate me rudely and tell me to stop thinking I was smart. He hated my brothers, especially Galelekile. Things got worse for me when both Galelekiles showed their dislike of him. They challenged him on numerous occasions and warned him to stop harassing me. Standing up to a bullying policeman in those apartheid days was a bold move.

Ironically, while attending school in Jeffreys Bay, Zulu re-entered my life. I got an afternoon gardening job at his house. His wife Helda was a tall, slender woman and I thought she was genuinely beautiful. She was the direct opposite of her foul-mouthed ogre of a husband. She was kind and would give me my two slices of bread with butter and apricot jam and coffee on the family’s own plates, which was most unusual. In those days labourers’ plates were stored in the same place as the bowls and dishes used to feed the dogs and cats and they were not to be washed with those of the white people. Helda never once shouted at me and was always interested in hearing about my schooling.

Jeffreys Bay was largely inhabited by coloured people whose main occupation was fishing. Some worked in the construction industry as semi-skilled labourers, while others sold products made out of seashells. The number of blacks living in the township area was fewer than 300.

As I have mentioned, I was a bit provocative as a young boy and at times prone to a bit of bullying myself. This did not end well for me, but end it did when one day I challenged a young coloured boy I used to walk past every time I went to my gardening job. He was always quiet, never saying a word even when I greeted him. One day I went up to him to harass and bully him but I was walking into big trouble. He suddenly had a knife in his right hand. Still, I taunted him. He did not retaliate. I moved behind him and began to kick him just as I had seen on the screen in the bioscope. I kicked him so hard that I lost my balance. A split second later, I felt warm blood streaming down my back and I collapsed to the ground. I regained consciousness in the Humansdorp provincial hospital. I had been stabbed in my right shoulder and the doctor told me it was a miracle that I survived.

The hospital discharged me after stitching my wound. It was a very cold day and I was not warmly dressed. I walked gingerly to the old Humansdorp-Jeffreys Bay road and slowly started walking the long way home. I was spotted by a petrol attendant who took off his jacket and put it around me. When I told him what had happened, he immediately said I could not continue walking in that condition. This good Samaritan carried me, a wounded sixteen-year-old farm boy, on his shoulders to spend the night at his house with his family. He was a priest of one the Zionist churches. Had he not come to my rescue, I doubt I would have lived to see the light of day and his kindness had a positive impact on my life. The boy who stabbed me was convicted and given a suspended sentence.

I had been happily ensconced at my new school for three months when disaster struck again. Uncle Oudenks was fired after a fight with his boss. He and his family were kicked off the farm but, as ever, they found a way to carry on. My cousins and I went to live with Galelekile and his wife Nosapho in Driewerf, about four kilometres from Humansdorp. My schooling continued. I had to walk eight kilometres a day again, but I was in class and six months later I passed Standard 5.

In December that year Galelekile was also fired. He then became so fed up with the oppressive culture of white farming life that he decided to leave it altogether.

At that time the apartheid government was hitting the throttle with its racist plan to empty the republic of excess blacks and was trying to lure or force blacks into the so-called independent bantustan state of Ciskei. Galelekile got himself on the list of people who were being encouraged by the government to ‘relocate’ to Mdantsane township, close to East London. I was left in the lurch. Again.

In January 1974 my walk to school became a lot longer than it had been the previous year. I was back living with my Uncle Oudenks who had found a job working for someone as a contractor. We lived on the northern side of Humansdorp, close to Arcadia township, which was designated for people classified as coloured. The whole of that year I walked between Humansdorp and Jeffreys Bay – a long and tedious twelve kilometres there and twelve kilometres back. I walked alone; my cousins had dropped out of school that year.

What whites came to call my ‘cheekiness’ was fostered by Australian and Californian surfers who gave me lifts from Jeffreys Bay to Humansdorp. These blond, long-haired hippies who drove Kombis with their surfboards on top were on their way to Bruce’s Beauties and Seal Point, internationally renowned surfing spots. Black people loved these surfers, who were seen as different from ‘our’ white people. They were patient and spoke to me as though we were equals, which was uplifting. They told me about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the United States. They smoked a lot of dagga and did not seem to do much work. At the time, my political understanding was limited to what I heard from these surfers.

I passed Standard 6 with flying colours and had successfully made arrangements for my schooling the following year. I had applied to and was accepted at Nathaniel Phamla High in Peddie. The good news was that I was going to stay at the boarding school. I was very excited and my family was ecstatic about my achievement. That year I worked as a gardener at Paradise Beach and during those December holidays I collected enough money to pay for my school and boarding fees, books and transport. I did not have the depressing experience of previous years.

As I was preparing to go Peddie to start school the next year, I heard a rumour that my grandfather was opposed to me going to high school. Apparently he felt that Peddie was infested with witches and thought that a troublesome child like me would not last long there and would die within a short space of time. In isiXhosa my grandpa said ‘uyakuf’ eluhlaza’, meaning I would die without having been sick. This new crisis paralysed me mentally.

My desire to go to high school was influenced by two boys I had met by chance in Humansdorp. One was a shy and a polite fellow named Hintsa Swartbooi and he was already at Loyiso High in Port Elizabeth. He was one of the first boys I befriended from the Humansdorp township. He was focused, interesting and always impeccably dressed. He later became a police commissioner and was put in charge of the police training division in Graaff-Reinet. The other guy I met was Dumile Mateza, who was already enrolled in one of the posh Port Elizabeth high schools. Dumile was the complete opposite of Hintsa: he was talkative and liked to show off, and he too was immaculately dressed.

One of my most memorable encounters with Dumile was at a rugby match between the township’s All Blacks team and the Swallows from Kruisfontein, the so-called coloured township. Dumile paced up and down the side of the field, commentating for whoever cared to listen. His articulate analysis was outstanding.

While trying to find a solution to my schooling dilemma, I remembered that one of my grandfather’s children stayed in Port Elizabeth. This was the only family we knew in any city anywhere in South Africa. I persuaded my mother that we should follow his lead. While a lot of people in our community supported me, many tried to counsel me against having high expectations because I would have to dodge the pass law bullet in order to stay there. This did not deter me and we eventually got hold of my uncle’s address. But I wasn’t going to take this journey alone: I begged my mother to accompany me. She was very sceptical about my plan, but did not want to dampen my spirits.