Monday, 21 April 1986: Lunch with Afrikaner Rotarians in Piet Retief

Wednesday, 23 April 1986, Halfway House, South Africa

Before heading out yesterday with Tony MacGreggor on a whirlwind 500+ mile round trip to the eastern Transvaal, I looked up our destination in my Southern Africa Rotary Club Directory.  Not only was there a club Piet Retief (a small forestry-oriented community just west of the Swaziland border) but it just so happened that they had weekly lunch meetings on Mondays.  So while Tony and his associate, Hugh, were touring a lumber mill, I popped into the Imperial Hotel to meet the local Rotarians at their luncheon.  It was a small club – only about 15 attended – and they were most happy to have me, especially since their speaker for the day had cancelled.  They invited me to sit at the head table and asked me to give a 10-minute presentation about Summit County, Colorado where my Rotary Club is located. 

Here was my first opportunity to try out the Afrikaans I had been studying for several months:  “Goeiemiddag.  My nam is Vil. My van is Mahoney. Ek is n’Amerikaner.  Ek praat nie Afrikaans goed nie.  So please excuse me for continuing in English”. [Good afternoon.  My first name is Will.  My last name is Mahoney.  I am an American.  I do not speak Afrikaans well.]  That brought me a rousing applause of appreciation for trying.  I proceeded in English to tell the Rotarians about our ski industry, the Rocky Mountains, Interstate Highway 70’s 1.7 mile tunnel under the Continental Divide (they had never heard of our Continental Divide), the local Rotary Club’s annual contest as to when the ice on the Dillon Reservoir will break up in the spring, Western Slope water diversions to Colorado Front Range communities, etc.  I told them that the timber industry in Summit County was nothing compared to theirs as our trees were mostly skinny pines.  They wondered if cowboys had lived in Summit County in the old days.  I explained that there had been few cowboys – the county was a hard-rock mining area but there was presently little mining still going on. 

And yes, the club members were all white.  They managed to avoid racial jokes or slurs in my presence.  Jimmy Erasmus, one of the club officers (someone referred to him as Mr. Piet Retief) told of the visit of a British cameraman to Piet Retief not long ago.  They had extended the hospitality of the town to him.  Then he went back to England and put together a scathing account of the town.  So they were sensitive to potential criticism.  Jimmy said I could write anything I wanted to about them, but they wanted me to remember their hospitality. 

Judging from their names and accents, the club was mostly made up of Afrikaners – not surprising given the predominance of Afrikaners among the local white population.  I noticed that they switched back and forth between English and Afrikaans while talking to each other.  The president made his remarks in English – I’m not sure whether or not that was for my benefit.  One of the members, a young lawyer, was blind.  They invited me to come back to Piet Retief to spend some time but I got the distinct feeling that I would find the place REALLY DULL.

I learned that there about 5000 whites living in Piet Retief (named for a 19^th Century Voortrekker leader who was killed by the Zulus).  In addition to a handful of Asian Indians and Coloureds (mixed-race South Africans), there are about 85,000 blacks living in the large district surrounding the town.   

As I write this, I fantasize about the sort of response I would get were I to read this letter at a Summit County Rotary meeting.  I’m sure some members would be thinking, “5000 whites, 85,000 blacks and not one black member in the club.  If that isn’t racism, what is it?”  I agree – it’s totally ludicrous especially for an international service organization that takes pride in its non-discrimination policy.  However, it wouldn’t have done much good to confront the Piet Retief Rotarians about their lack of black members.  Either they would have gotten defensive or would have given me some elaborate justification as white South Africans so often adeptly do.  It’s racism all right, but my gut feeling is that it has less to do with actual skin color than with economic and political inequality.  Even the conservative whites I have met in South Africa so far don’t impress me as ideologues obsessed with racial purity in the old Nazi tradition.  Certainly, there are neo-Nazis here, but they tend to be a radical fringe group.  No, most racism here seems to me to boil down to dollars (err, excuse me, rands) and cents.  If white companies started paying black laborers a decent wage, their white employees would have to be paid less and, thus, give up some of their comforts.  Give blacks a good education and they will compete for white jobs.  Give them the vote, and they will legislate fairness.  This economy runs on the abundance of cheap, black labor.  And as a result, economic life here has been a gravy train for whites (well, at least until the recent economic downturn).

Yesterday, I was watching a white surveyor working along a road when we were stuck in a construction detour.  In addition to the black guy handling the stadia rod, another black carried the surveyor’s transom when they switched locations.  My first response to myself was, “Why can’t the big, lazy white sonofabitch carry his own fucking transom?”  Then I realized that the black porter might not have a job in that case or he might be earning less to dig ditches.  Observations like this keep pointing out to me that there are no easy answers here.  The system definitely exploitive and grossly unfair, but are there better alternatives?  And put five million American whites in South Africa running the country and I wonder if they would do any better once they understood the stakes here?  But don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that things don’t have to change.

On our return trip to Johannesburg yesterday, it poured for a while.  When the skies cleared, I rolled down my window in the back seat of the Cressida and let the cool autumn breeze mess up my hair while I took a little nap.  My main source of discomfort all day was Hugh’s smoking – probably umpteen ciggies during the trip.  The guy must have the lungs of a 60-year-old coal miner.  At first, I thought I would gag from the smoke, but I gradually adjusted.  Gotta be flexible when someone else is paying for the petrol. 

On the way to Piet Retief in the morning I didn’t see a single sheep in the fields adjacent to the highways.  However, on our return I saw dozens of “woolies”.  Traffic was very light on the freeway east of Jo’burg in the afternoon.  Life out in the veld must be about as exciting as rural life in the Kansas prairies.  I couldn’t handle it, that’s for sure.  Gotta keep moving and get stimulated by new landscapes, new people, and new ideas.  Maybe, this is a personal character defect.