7 April 1986: Even the Rotarians were all white!

10 April 1986, 12:30 PM, Home of Mavis & Bill Urmson, Lombardy East, Johannesburg

Background:  When my friend, Jim Bachman, and I were strategizing about my proposed “fact-finding mission” to South Africa in the fall of 1985, Jim came up with a great idea.  He thought I should join his Rotary Club in Summit County, Colorado.  As Jim explained, there are lots of Rotary Clubs in South Africa and neighboring countries, and I would be welcome to attend their meetings.  Since Rotarians in general are generous and hospitable people (the clubs focus on public-service projects for the disadvantaged), I probably would get some invitations to stay with them.  And, most importantly, Rotary had a racial non-discrimination policy.  So attending Rotary meetings in South Africa would give me an opportunity to become acquainted with black business and professional men (At that time, clubs were just starting to admit women in the U.S. but were still mostly all-male in the rest of the world.)  So, I joined Summit County Rotary and attended their breakfast meetings for a couple months.  Before I left for South Africa, the club provided me with a bunch of small Summit County club banners which I would exchange when I attended Rotary meetings nearly 10,000 miles away.  During my trip, I attended numerous Rotary meetings in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Botswana.  Following is a report of the first meeting. 

 

On Monday evening, 7 April, I attended a dinner meeting of the Lombardy East chapter of Rotary.  It was a fine bunch of chaps, though I’m sorry to report that they were all white.  In a nation of 5 million whites and 28 million non-whites, you’d think that the clubs would be racially mixed.  While I did not specifically ask why the group was all white, I think I know the answer but will see what, if any, racial diversity I encounter at other clubs in the coming months.  I suspect there is no effort to actively exclude blacks from the Lombardy East club.  It probably has more to do with the Group Areas Act, the national law which dictates that people of various races must live in areas specifically designated for them.  Since Lombardy East is a whites-only community, it’s not surprising that all Rotary members there are white.  At the same time, the black township of Alexandra is no more than 5 km from here, so theoretically, blacks who live there could be members of this club.  Is this club actively barring them from membership?  I doubt it.  The problem is that blacks and whites in this society live separate lives and have few opportunities to become acquainted (except, of course, as servants and their employers).  In theory, you might work with a black fellow you could invite along to a meeting but Rotary is structured so that only one person per profession or business can belong to a specific club.  And your opportunity to meet blacks from other businesses or professions is very limited.  

I had a conversation on this subject last night with Bill Urmson, the 45ish accountant with whom I’m been staying.  Bill immigrated here from England 19 years ago and seems no more prejudiced that the average American businessman his age.  He finds it frustrating that there are so few common points of reference between him and the black junior accountants who work at his firm.  They don’t even watch the same sports.  Whites are into rugby while blacks follow football (soccer).  Much as I get bored with Denver Bronco-mania, it probably contributes in some small way to better feelings between blacks and whites in Denver.  White Bronco fans cheer for black players and blacks cheer for the white players.  So on Monday morning, the game gives them something non-controversial to talk about around the water cooler.  I feel this helps builds bridges between races.  You can figure that millions of these conversations have been going on all over the U.S. in the 39 years since Jackie Robinson cracked the color bar in professional sports.

Sports are only one example.  There are so many opportunities in the U.S. for promoting interracial bridge-building.  If you and your black neighbor are fighting with city hall to get the damn pot holes fixed on your street, you’ll probably discover he’s not such a bad guy, after all.  But here in South Africa, few such opportunities exist.  How can people work out political compromises when they don’t know each other and all they do know is mistrust and fear?

Back to the Rotary meeting:  All members were English-speakers of English, Scottish, Irish, Jewish, etc. backgrounds (even the English-speakers and Afrikaners live in separate neighborhoods and don’t mix much although there are no laws governing this).  They told some great stories especially after being well-lubed with Lion or Castle lager, two of the favorite South African brews.  For example:  Did you hear about the three old ladies sitting on a park bench who got flashed by a guy in a raincoat?  Two of them had a stroke…..the other one couldn’t reach far enough.  Then there was the 19^th Century story about the world’s longest hemorrhoids:  The London-Glasgow Express is steaming its way to Scotland when some damn fool pulls the emergency cord on the wall of one of the passenger cars, and the train comes to a screeching halt.  The conductor runs through the cars trying to find the bloody culprit, but no one has seen anyone else do it.  Finally, the conductor opens the door to the privy which is located right over the wheels at the end of one of the cars.  A rather forlorn-looking bloke is seated on the crapper, pants down to his ankles, and grasping the emergency cord in his right hand.  “Did you pull the bloody cord, mate?” the conductor inquires sternly.  “Yes Governor, but you see, I’ve got piles,” the fellow retorts meekly.  “Piles, you say,” replies the exasperated conductor.  “Listen you bloody fool, I’ve got piles, the engineer’s got piles, the Queen, she’s got piles, and half the people on this blasted train have piles, too.  But you don’t see none of them pulling the cord to stop the train!”  “Right, your excellency,” replies the unfortunate chap seated on the loo and still holding the cord with a look of agony in his eyes.  “But you see, I’ve got mine caught in the friggin’ axle!”     

After a few gems like these and other assorted silly nonsense from the various club officers, Otto, a 90-year-old Jewish guy told us about the 1910 visit of Halley’s Comet (very timely as the comet is back, 76 years later).  He explained that there were many dire predictions in 1910 that the end of the world was at hand.  The time of “The end” had been pinpointed by someone, so people he knew were getting their affairs together and waiting for the big day.  When that day arrived without incident, some seemed rather disappointed. 

Tom Stubbs, the District Governor of this area, Rotary District 930, was the evening’s speaker.  He told us about the history of Rotary in South Africa.  When he arrived here from England in the late 1940s, there were only a few clubs; now there are some 200.  The high point of the evening for me was exchanging a Summit County club banner with the president of the Lombardy East club.  I was presented with an orange and blue banner featuring a secretary bird walking on a South African map which eventually made its way back to the Summit County club.   

These are the banners I presented to South African Rotary Clubs.  The Summit County club took pride in its elevation, about 9050 feet above sea level at the Holiday Inn in Frisco, Colorado where meetings were held.

 

After the meeting, we adjourned to the bar for a few more cold ones with several members discussing plans for a “donkey derby,” a gambling fund-raiser.  I told them about Summit County Rotary’s annual Lake Dillon thaw contest in which entrants guess the day and time in the spring when the lake’s ice breaks up – recorded by a clock secured to the bottom of a floating drum placed during the winter on the ice out in the center of the lake.  The clock stops when the drum falls into the water.  One of the chaps suggested they have a similar contest:  “We’ll have people guess when the local reservoir is going to freeze up and we’ll never have to pay a winner.”

The conversation turns to Rhodesia 

When just about everyone else had left, four of us sat around talking about Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia).  One chubby guy told how he used to make booze runs up to Rhodesia during the war and in the late 1970s.  It seems that Rhodesia didn’t produce its own liquor and international boycotts prevented legal booze imports.  His company had a mine in Rhodesia so he would head up there in a station wagon full of spirits.  He never encountered problems with border guards, army convoys, or ambushes.  The mine area seemed very peaceful but when playing golf at the local course, they would often closely look ahead at the bushes for any signs of hidden guerilla fighters.

Another fellow, Barry, had been in the Rhodesian Army for 20 years.  He came to Johannesburg for his health after Robert Mugabe and ZAPU (the Zimbabwe African People's Union) took over and Rhodesia became black-majority-ruled Zimbabwe in 1980.  Barry had been in the army command center during the war and explained that many South Africans like the chubby guy had been very naïve about the apparent calm in Rhodesia during the war.  He’d seen the reports of ambushes that came into the command center most of which were never reported in the South African press.  He told the story of a white braai (barbecue) which was stormed by a couple truckloads of black guerillas who had managed to get by several army checkpoints by strapping their weapons to the undersides of their trucks.  They stopped outside the white compound, pulled out the guns from under the trucks and let fly with a barrage of bullets before any of the partygoers knew what was happening.  A number of women and children died.  As a result of numerous incidents like this, many whites at the time routinely carried side arms and slept with them next to their beds.               

Rhodesia was ruled by a white minority government from 1965 until 1980.  It often comes up in conversation here because whites are worried about potential parallels between Rhodesia and South Africa. Just yesterday, I spoke with a guy who runs a backpacking expedition service in Jo’burg.  “No Americans are going to come here to take our trips,” he said, “regardless of what you might write about them.  While our trips go to very safe areas, Americans perceive that it’s very dangerous here.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “but what about all the reforms?  Don’t you think they will defuse the situation making South Africa more attractive to foreign visitors?  Just this morning, all hotels and restaurants in the country were opened to non-whites.  It seems like every day I’m here, the government announces some new relaxation of apartheid rules.” 

He disagreed.  “The more blacks are given the more they will want.  I lived in Rhodesia during the war.  Once blacks there were given the vote, the situation got even worse.” 

After the Rotary dinner, the Rhodesian army veteran drove me back here.  He seemed like a nice guy, and I tried to temporarily ignore his former and present roles in black oppression – he now works as an armaments technician for a local weapons manufacturer.  While we were having a very interesting conversation parked outside the wall of my hosts’ home, private neighborhood security cops stopped by to see who we were.  They were polite since we were white.