Honorary White (10 page)

“Not unless they're expecting you. It's the law, I'm afraid.” It suddenly struck me that in this country I could not, for an hour or two, lose myself in the temporary anonymity of a darkened cinema the way I'd done in every other country in which I'd lived or visited. It had been a favorite way of slipping away from pressing reality, a painless, absorbing way of insuring the quick passage of time. A thought occurred to me.

“What happened when the film
To Sir, with Love
was shown here?”

“Same thing.”

“No Blacks allowed to see the black actor?”

“Not here in Johannesburg. Blacks and Whites are prohibited by law from congregating in the same place. Anyway, they wouldn't have missed much, because the film was so badly censored it was difficult to follow the sequence of events. Anything between the black teacher and the white one, Gillian, was cut out. I know, because I saw it first at the bijou and then I saw the whole movie at a private showing in a friend's house. It's possible to rent an uncut film from one of the rental agencies. Anybody can rent them, Black or White, as long as they have the money.”

“So if I wanted to see a movie, I'd have to pay for my ticket then beg permission to get in, right?”

“Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that. We at this hotel would do whatever we could to avoid any embarrassment to you.”

I thanked her and, soon after, she left. I had no quarrel with her. I thought of walking off my irritation in the streets, but then remembered my near encounter with the policeman. The only alternative was a bath, a cold beer, and settling down with pencil and paper to review the days already passed in this beautiful city, this very uncomfortable society.

Some days later, early in the morning, a group of black welfare officers came to the hotel asking to see me. I invited them up to my room, wondering how the word of my presence had got around.

There were five of them, two women and three men, all of them employed to service one or other area of welfare for Blacks. They complained of the inadequacies of the service and reminded me that I had been involved in nearly similar situations as recorded in my book
Paid Servant,
which they had read. They could not begin to cope with even a tiny part of the problems people brought to them, and they wondered if I could offer them any advice. Listening, I learned that ten of them were expected to service Soweto and Alexandra, a total population of well over a million people. Their office was in white Johannesburg, and both the limited programs undertaken and the minimal funds available were subject to white control. The biggest problem was the many dislocated, neglected children who roamed the streets of the townships living on what they could beg or steal, homeless, without parents or relatives. According to the supervising authorities these children were not legally of the townships and therefore did not qualify for any official assistance. They could not go to school even if they wanted to because a new law required all legitimate parent-residents to have a pink school card for their child. Without it no child was accepted as a pupil.

White children, if neglected or abandoned, are cared for at Government expense. They would in no circumstances be allowed to wander about like homeless dogs eating garbage. I told them that I had seen an elderly white woman throwing chunks of bread to the pigeons and how, as soon as she'd wandered away, the children drove the pigeons off and collected the bread, eating it hungrily. Oddly I saw none of them begging.

The white welfare officers were the bosses and called the tune. Colored officers dealt with colored clients, Asian officers with Asian clients, black officers with Blacks. Levels of payment differed for each officer group. It became apparent that they were their own most needy clients, their own welfare their most pressing priority.

We talked for most of the morning, taking a short break for coffee which I ordered. There was something a little bizarre about us. In the park outside were living reminders of the urgency of their work, yet they sounded so much like welfare workers I've known in England, France, and the United States. The same pompous preoccupation with the jargon of their profession, the same insistence on separating themselves in every way from their “clients.” They emphasized that they were trained and qualified as sociologists, forgetting their earlier complaint that Blacks are denied access to anything more than the median levels of qualification.

From time to time, the door to my suite would be opened and one of the floor supervisors, white, would peer at us from the vestibule and quickly retreat with a “Sorry, just checking to see that everything's okay.” I assumed that it was just the normal hotel practice. It has happened to me in many parts of the world. My visitors, however, felt quite differently. They believed that we were being watched and that the interruptions would continue as long as they remained with me.

“They think we're plotting something up here,” one of the women said.

“Blacks talking together are always supposed to be plotting. To kill them or steal from them. That's why that one comes in without knocking.”

“What's surprising about that?” from another. “We're watched, and I'm sure our American friend is being watched. Wouldn't surprise me if these rooms are bugged.” Suddenly getting up to peer among the artificial plants, behind the sofas, under the tables. Everywhere.

“Why worry?” I asked, smiling. “We've not been plotting, so who cares if someone's listening to us? Surely it should come as no surprise to anyone to hear that black children are homeless and starving.”

“Survival, friend, survival. Mustn't make anything too easy for them. You probably think we've been reading too many spy novels. In this place you say something out of line and they have you hanging, like a fish. You're lucky you can afford to be amused at us.”

“I'm not amused at you.” Christ, would I never escape having to defend myself.

“Stay here six months, or three months, and you'll understand what we're talking about.”

On this subdued note, they left me.

The meeting with the Bantu Council had been arranged for eight o'clock that evening in the home of one of the members. I would have preferred to meet them in the Council building where I could see them against their working background but naturally I was obliged to follow their arrangements.

One of them called for me promptly at seven o'clock. On the way to Soweto, I told him of my earlier visit with the white guide and the old man's outburst which had led to this meeting. He seemed preoccupied, glancing in the rear-view mirror more often than I thought necessary, and I was surprised when he suddenly asked, “Is anyone following you?”

I didn't know how to respond to that. “Why?” I asked.

“Just trying to make sure,” he replied, and said no more about it. On arrival at his home, his wife greeted us with the news that two members of the Security Police, one black and one white, had been there asking about me and the meeting, claiming that they wanted to make sure I would be quite safe. She replied that I would be under their roof, as safe as they were, as protected as they were, if any protection was necessary. They replied that it was their duty to prevent an international incident and merely wanted assurance that all would be well.

“I gave them short shrift,” she said, smiling.

This was my first experience of the Security Police actually monitoring my movements. It was no longer a joke, an offshoot of my friend's paranoia, but undeniable proof of the Big Brother interest in my movements. My hosts seemed to take it all in stride. They told me that police spying was merely another fact of daily life; it pervaded every area of living to the point where no one fully trusted his neighbor or associates or friends. This was equally true of the Council: although they were all black, each one was afraid that another might report something said or done in the hope of receiving some minuscule concession from the Security Police.

“That way they keep us distrustful of each other, suspicious, so we're unwilling to come together in any real way to help each other. If I have a new idea, I don't know where to start. I can discuss it with my wife, but who else? Sometimes people come to me with ideas. I've got to listen very carefully. If their ideas have the slightest hint of opposition to Government policy, my first reaction is that they're trying to trap me. Oh, yes, that's part of the technique. They come to you with an idea and the next thing you know they claim it was your idea in the first place and you have the Security Police on your back. All the time the police hold over your head the threat of sending you off to one of the Homelands. They could come here tomorrow and claim I'd been instigating something and deport me out of here. They'd tell me to remove my house from the Government's land. How do I go about picking up a house like this? They've got us Blacks in a vise. As a result we don't trust each other. We talk, sure, we talk, but we watch what we say. So, now you know. We'll meet here tonight with you and we'll tell you some things you could hear from anyone else. That's safe. But wait till you ask us questions that require us to express our deep feelings, questions that get to the bone. Then see what happens. We begin to look at each other. My friend, the Whites have got us so that each one of us has become the other's policeman.”

“Then this exercise tonight is likely to be a waste of time,” I suggested.

“Not altogether. Wait and see for yourself.” But I was right.

By eight o'clock no one else had arrived. At eight thirty-five one showed up bringing his wife and a friend as if it were a party. Ten minutes later another arrived, with his wife and a local schoolmaster. No sign of the aggressive little councillor whose challenge to me had precipitated the whole thing. I asked my host about him and learned that he had been informed of the meeting and had promised to attend. By nine fifteen, he had still not come and someone left to fetch him but soon came back saying that he was not at home.

“After his little performance at the Council Office in front of the white woman guide, someone's had a word with him, I suppose,” one of the men suggested.

I was surprised to learn that everyone knew of the incident, insignificant though it had seemed to me.

Three young men showed up, none of them councillors, one of them a newsman working for a city newspaper. Conversation settled on the safe topic of the schools. The schoolmaster was praised on all sides for the wonderful job he was doing, even though it emerged that the children's big successes were in their competitive singing, rather than in their academic work. Of the six to seven hours of the school day, at least two hours were spent rehearsing songs, mostly European songs.

Discreet questioning disclosed that the schools in Soweto are poorly equipped, the teachers poorly trained, the pupils ill-­prepared to compete in the harshly competitive society; and here were these black men congratulating each other. When I probed further on the schools, on teacher and pupil performance, they readily resorted to a lengthy litany of woes, all of which were blamed on the Government and so outside their control.

I was soon bored with it all. I had been led to believe that they were ready and able to talk freely with me about their community, but all that had taken place were moans, evasions, and backslapping. What the hell had they to be proud of? The few schools they had were overcrowded, understaffed, and ill-equipped. Large numbers of children were roaming the streets instead of being in school, and the devilish “pink card” system kept it so. More and more of these children were pressured into Tsotsi gangs, and these men, each secure in his own circumscribed job, did nothing to change the situation.

I stood up to leave, just as the hostess brought a tray of drinks on which the other guests avidly fell as if that were the real reason for the gathering. If real change would come to places like Soweto, it would not be through the efforts of men such as these, I realized.

On the way to my hotel, my host and I said little, each wrapped in his own assessment of the abortive meeting. Now and then he slowed down to allow another car to pass us, and I realized he was still afraid that I was being followed. Or perhaps he was concerned for himself. So easily one could be caught in the grip of paranoia.

Lying on my bed, reviewing the day's events, I was disturbed by the non-appearance of the little Soweto councillor. I had been told that he knew I would be there to see him. After his spirited effort in front of my white guide, he would want to be there, as face-saving is very important among people. I wondered if she had complained to her superiors about his outburst and a decision had been made to silence him, at least for the duration of my stay. With all that I heard about the police and their tactics, he had invited a pack of trouble for himself. But perhaps it was worth it, to him. Perhaps he had reviewed his life and had seized the opportunity to make a gesture, to himself. In the prevailing circumstances, that small gesture assumed heroic proportions. No other Black had said or done as much. Not publicly. Not in the presence of a member of white officialdom.

T
HE NEXT DAY WAS
the day of the promised lunch at the Afrikaner businessmen's club arranged by the banker I had met at Helen Suzman's. On the way there he explained the growth and development of the white community.

A man eminently knowledgeable about money, its power and influence, he spoke easily of his plans for the future. He spoke of the club to which we were going, its founding and the type of people who were its members. He warned that I might find them inflexible in their social attitudes, but hoped I'd be patient and remember that they were the products of a grim period in South Africa's history when men and women needed to fight for the land on which to settle and establish communities. For my benefit, he recounted the Afrikaner version of those wars of conquest, stressing the courage and fortitude of the voortrekkers and their womenfolk. He spoke of the bloody conflicts in which Afrikaners of earlier generations had frequently been involved and made it seem that they had invariably been on the defensive against a persistent, devious, and intractable enemy. Memory dies hard and I got the impression that Afrikaner hatred of Blacks is deliberately kept alive today, primarily for tactical political purposes. I reminded him that the wars of which he spoke were several generations old. Since then the whole world had been torn by wars far graver than those the voortrekkers fought and yet had shown a willingness to rise above the hates and fears which had given rise to those crises. What was there so special about South Africa that it needed to “feed fat its ancient grudge”?

It is both distressing and fascinating to hear people defend their contempt and hatred of Blacks, especially to me, a man as black or blacker than their enemy. I asked him if he and his kind had no concern for the inevitable bloody results if they persisted in their despotic pressure of the Blacks.

At this, his tune changed. He denied contempt, citing his own friendly relationship with the Blacks he employed on his farm.

“I'm willing to admit that changes must come,” he said. “They will come. But we must not expect them overnight. We can't have revolution here. Evolution yes, but not revolution.” The words flowing so easily from him, cushioned in comfort as he was by the blood, sweat, and toil of the Blacks whom he despised. He could talk of evolution, secure behind the vast stockpiles of armaments and the military manpower deployed strategically all over the country—I pulled myself up short. I was on my way to hear from him and others like him, so the thing to do was wait and listen to them.

The Clubhouse was much as I expected, an attractive red-brick building set against a pleasant background of carefully nurtured trees and trimmed lawns and flower beds. Beginning at the doorway, uniformed servants everywhere, all black, ready to dart off at the master's bidding, all eyeing me with surprise and speculation, the first black person ever to set foot in that building in other than a menial capacity.

Settled in the well-appointed lounge with my host to await the other guests, I drank a glass of sherry with him, amused that we were in fact breaking the law which forbade Blacks and Whites to drink alcoholic beverages together. Unable to keep the thought to myself, I shared it with him.

“Let's put it this way,” he told me. “You're an overseas visitor, a world famous author, VIP. During your stay in South Africa you have the honorary status of a white man.”

That spoiled it for me, my mood of friendly ease evaporating completely, giving way to a rage which I fought to control. I put my glass down and looked at him, hating the arrogance which led him to assume that he, they, could change the color of my skin to suit their whim. No, not change it. Just overlook it, ignore it to the point where it did not exist for them and they could superimpose their choice upon it. But no, just looking at them convinced me that my blackness was there before them, large and unavoidable; it was plain from the way they behaved when we were introduced—the hurried pleased-to-meet-you, the words rushed out to belie their meaning; the quick retreat from my deliberately firm handshake.

I had half expected to meet a group of highly intelligent, urbane men, as conversant with world affairs as they were knowledgeable about their particular interests, articulate and arrogantly relaxed in the assurance of their power and prestige. Instead, I found myself in a group of rather ordinary people, most of them painfully hesitant on matters outside their parochial concerns and generally uncomfortable in the unfamiliar company of a black man who did not treat them as his betters.

Two of them, an elderly economist and a physicist, seemed more relaxed than the rest, and keen to discuss South Africa's international image, even though they took a lofty view of the criticism directed at her. They argued that the continuing international economic crises were working to South Africa's advantage, and would eventually have the effect of forcing some accommodation to her domestic policies. In support of this, they pointed to their country's considerable gold reserves, the rapid rise in the price of gold, and the new political leverage which, they claimed, South Africa could now exercise.

“In this world, money talks,” the economist said, “and the loudest, most persuasive voice is that of gold. Even some African countries which publicly criticize us because of our domestic policies are willing to make private economic agreements with us. Out of such agreements political accommodations are born.”

So we drank and talked, watched covertly by the black serving team which quietly and efficiently attended us. I wondered how they viewed my presence among the white men. Did they too assume that I was being used by the Whites? I could read nothing behind their unsmiling faces and courteous manner.

Then lunch was ready and we were seated, and I realized that this was a first for all or nearly all of them. They were sharing the same board on equal terms with a black man, and no matter how they might rationalize it to themselves that simple fact was incontrovertible. There was the usual friendly chitchat as each tried to settle down. I wondered how each would report this meeting to wife, children, and business associates. And what would they tell the Blacks who serve them at home and with whom they claimed to have good personal relationships?

I remembered chatting in a park a few days before with a maid who was supervising a small white child and a dog. I tried to question her about social conditions in South Africa, but, inevitably, she brought up Bob Foster.

“How he beat that white man! It was so good.”

Her whole body glowed with the sharing in that small victory, this woman whose life was destined to be spent in lowly service, nurturing the children who would one day grow up to treat her with casual contempt, whether it was personal or public. She would be used, underpaid, kept in her place …

Now here were these men, most of whom had in their time been bathed and comforted by black women, casually defending their inhuman policies with the spurious claim of “good relationships.” Spurious? They were completely sincere and convinced of their righteousness.

After lunch, I was formally introduced to the group and invited to address them. On the spur of the moment I decided to talk on the economics of waste, deliberately choosing that neutral approach to tease them out of their shells, to let them feel comfortable with the Honorary White and open up so that I might learn about them. I said that I had been impressed by Johannesburg and its flourishing suburbs, but sickened by the wide evidence of the exclusion of Blacks from the essential life of the community. Blacks were everywhere, cleaning, serving, providing an inescapably solid base to the community's economic life, but resentfully, unwillingly, because they were denied the right to exercise their imaginative potential. I asked them to explain how a community could ever reach its full growth if the greater part of its people were restricted to minimal contribution. As I saw it the result was waste on an unbelievable scale, shrouded behind the absurdities of discrimination.

They listened in silence but when I sat down they defended themselves vociferously. They insisted that the Blacks of South Africa are better off economically than Blacks in any other part of Africa. They told me that though there was job reservation which favored Whites, the law required every man to be paid the rate for the job, and that those employers guilty of evading that law were invariably foreign firms, particularly American.

They insisted that I had not been in the country long enough to see and understand the complexities of the labor structure in general, nor the conditions affecting the black role in particular. Very few Blacks, they claimed, were capable of other than menial employment. South African Blacks had changed little from their original primitive state and were, for the most part, still happier living in the rural Homelands in their traditional way. On the other hand, the grim conditions in which the black workers lived were not really intolerable to them, being an improvement on what they knew in their familiar rural living. It was Communists and outside agitators who stirred them up and tried to make them dissatisfied with their lot. Rural Blacks were discouraged from taking their families with them to the urban centers only because that would have meant too great a dislocation, in addition to the aggravated problems of housing, feeding, and educating their children. On and on. The old familiar clichés, but trotted out with the utmost sincerity. As I listened it was difficult for me to keep my mounting irritation under control. I am as black as the men and women they were talking about.

But I was a stranger. I would be here today and gone tomorrow. I needed nothing from them, so they could afford to be generous with their time and their rhetoric. Perhaps they expected me to be flattered by being among them, treated as an equal by them. Nudged by the irritation which would not subside I said, “I understand you've broken the ‘Afrikaner Only' rule in this club and admitted Englishmen. That tells me you're getting around to forgiving and forgetting what Kitchener and his redcoats did during the Boer War.” There was silence for a few moments, not even the tinkle of ice in a glass. Then someone said:

“We've come a long way since those days. Language aside, we're all South Africans here.”

“That's what I was thinking,” I said. “Maybe the same spirit will foster a similarly reasonable attitude to the Zulu Wars and the descendants of those who fought in them.”

Silence.

“Here am I,” I went on, “sitting with you. I have no way of knowing where my ancestors came from. History suggests that nowhere in Africa was secure from the slaver's nets.”

They were watching me, most faces wearing that pained half-smile which was as much as courtesy demanded.

“What's your point, Mr. Braithwaite?” one asked.

“I'm anticipating the day when Blacks might be admitted to membership of your club. After all, one ex-enemy is as good as another. You could always designate them Honorary White.” My little quip fell flat. Even the half-smiles had vanished.

“The designation Honorary White is merely a convenience reserved for overseas visitors,” one said. “We do not wish to embarrass them by any regulations designed specifically to deal with domestic circumstances.”

“Yes. I know,” I replied, turning the needle. “Yesterday, some men I met in a park near my hotel mistook me for a Zulu, so I must look like one. I'm merely considering the possibility that I might be descended from one.”