5 April 1986: South Africa at Last
Sunday afternoon, April 6, 1986
Home of the Urmson family, Lombardy East, Johannesburg
It was evening when our 747 descended into the large metropolis of Johannesburg (generally referred to as “Jo-burg”, for short). My seat mate, Mike, and I were continuing a very intense but friendly discussion of South African politics. Mike admitted that much needed to be done with education of blacks (per capita expenditures for blacks are perhaps only ¼ that for whites).
“Let me tell you about education of blacks in my country,” I broke in. “Ever since the days of slavery, it has been inferior. Only now that we are doing away with segregation is it improving. And who has suffered as a result? Not just the blacks themselves, but all of us. There may have been, for example, a very gifted black child living in Selma, Alabama in the 1930s who could have grown up to be a great brain surgeon had he or she been given the opportunity for a good education. We have all been cheated because minds went to waste.”
Mike pointed out that it would be impossible to bring all black South African children into white schools. The country simply couldn’t afford the expansion that would be required. Besides, since black education is inferior, they would have to lower the standards of white schools if they suddenly let any black children attend that wanted to.
“Okay, maybe you can’t totally integrate all schools immediately,” I admitted. “But you could admit the talented black children who could meet the white school standards.”
“I agree with you completely,” Mike conceded.
I was somewhat taken aback by Mike’s reasonableness on this and other related issues. In summary, he said that almost no one his age (early 20s) believed in apartheid any more. Even his parents were changing. It was the grandparents who were the stubborn ones. Change was coming but everyone worried that it would be too little, too late. And what happens if the brain drain continues? If talented whites leave, if business investors leave, what will happen to the economy that is left to the blacks who are left behind? Look at what has happened to the rest of Africa when the white Europeans abruptly pulled out. Most of Africa can’t even feed itself. I must admit that it’s hard to argue with such logic.
I stepped off the plane’s ramp into the warm, slightly damp night air at Jan Smuts International Airport. Smuts was a Boer War general who committed the unforgivable crime (in the eyes of his fellow Afrikaners) of making peace with the British. Later, he was an influential figure at the Versailles Conference at the close of World War I. The historian I read claimed that Smuts was more comfortable hobnobbing with Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill than he was with farmers in the Veld (pronounced “felt”, the high plains of South Africa). He served as South Africa’s prime minister for several times in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s and was defeated for the last time in 1948. That was the infamous year of the National Party victory after which informal racism began to become institutionalized. In the 1950s, it was refined into a pseudo-science guided by a psychology professor, Hendrik Verwoerd, the so-called “Architect of Apartheid”. Verwoerd was prime minister from 1958 until his assassination in 1966 by a Greek South African whom historians say was mentally unstable. I my opinion, Verwoerd was the crazy one, guiding South Africa into a ruthless and unworkable white utopian system.
Enough history for now and back to the airport. I wasn’t thinking much about history when I stepped onto South African soil, or should I say concrete. Instead, I was feeling totally freaked out about being here. I boarded a bus which took us to the terminal building and looked at myself in a mirror across from where I was standing in the bus. The dirty-blonde, bearded, blue-eyed, now (sigh) “middle-aged” man in the mirror was wearing a khaki hat, Burberry trench coat, light blue suit, and maroon silk rep tie. He seemed to be saying to me, “What have you done, you mad fool. You’re 8000 miles from home, you know no one, you are in a place where the rules are very different from what you’re used to, and you’re at “their” mercy. You’ve done a lot of crazy shit in your life, but this is totally insane. If you don’t wind up dead or imprisoned, you’ll, at the very least, be totally humiliated.”
As the bus stopped in front of the terminal, I took my eyes off the man in the mirror. As I walked into the building greeted by an Avis car rental sign welcoming me to South Africa, I realized that this was the first time in my 40-year life that I had ever been out of the United States alone. The customs official put a sticker in my passport and told me I would have to have it renewed in Pretoria (the capital) in three months. I had decided to ignore the man in the mirror and proceed on as if this was all perfectly normal. Such feelings of anxiety were to be expected, and I wouldn’t take them too seriously. I gathered up my backpack and huge duffle bag (yes, I was beginning to wonder how I was every going to deal with this monster for a year!) I was met by a customs man wearing a white uniform with short pants. He asked if I was returning from abroad or was here as a visitor. “I’m visiting, sir,” I replied in my politest Amerikaner manner. “You can go on through,” he directed without so much as taking a quick peek at any of the contents of my enormous cache of harmless personal effects.
Then, on the other
side of the international arrivals barrier, I spotted a 40ish, smiling,
slightly plump, fair-haired woman in a blue and white striped dress carrying a
sign which read “Mavis”. I was hoping to
god that we would get along for at least one day as I was feeling in need of a
few hours of hospitality before I had to deal with any unpleasant realities. Mavis was accompanied by her two toe-headed, good-looking
sons, Neil (15) and Tony (14). It was
not initially apparent that they were close in age as Neil was at least three
inches taller than Tony. One of the boys
was instructed to go over to a bench in the waiting area and fetch Cecilia, the
family’s new maid.
According to Mavis, this was Cecilia’s first visit to an airport. She had nearly fallen down on the escalator earlier as she had never been on one before. “She’s very shy and doesn’t speak much English,” Mavis explained. Cecilia was a very slight black woman who appeared to be at least 35 (and maybe 50 for all I could tell) who was wearing a skirt and blouse with a kerchief on her head. Later, I was to learn that Cecilia had come here recently from Transkei, the first of South Africa’s black “homelands” to gain independence, a status recognized by no government except the one in Pretoria. Transkei covers several thousand square miles in three separate parcels extending from the coast of the Indian Ocean between the cities of Durban and East London to the independent nation of Lesotho, high in the Drakensburg Mountains. Lesotho was formerly a British colony (independent since 1966) which has never been a part of South Africa although completely surrounded by it. Apparently Cecilia knows very little of Western ways so far including house cleaning and cooking. When we had a large family dinner earlier today, Mavis discovered that Cecilia had no idea how to set the table. Mavis seems frustrated with Cecilia, but her mother, a wise and charming old English South African soul, advised Mavis to be patient and explain everything very carefully. Better yet, demonstrate things to her.
As we drove out of the airport onto the freeway, I had to keep reassuring myself that everything was perfectly all right even though Mavis was behind the steering wheel on the “wrong” side of the car heading down the left lanes of the divided highway. But when we got off the freeway and on to a two-lane road, I kept getting these momentary sensations that we were about to crash every time we met an oncoming car which would pass to the right of us (No, I have never been to the British Isles!) When we entered the driveway in a nice, upper-middle class neighborhood (by American standards), Mavis stopped the car for one of the boys to get out to open the gate which gave us entrance through a high concrete wall. The attractive ranch-style house seemed to stretch on and on. At the very back were my quarters, with a cot, fully-stocked bar, sauna, and bath – all reached through a private entrance. One side of my room was mostly glass and faced southerly toward the city. A tile swimming pool was located only 20 feet away. Hey, not bad!
Comments
Post a Comment