Saturday, 26 April 1986: Irene’s Shebeen & More on Black-White Miscommunication

Monday morning, 4/28/1986, Hillcrest Community, Halfway House, South Africa 

The local health department is closing down Irene’s shebben!  Irene is a black maid who has lived in a shack next to the Hillcrest property for some 30 years.  Saturday afternoon, while I was having lunch with Joan, Tony, and family, a Mrs. Schmitz came to the door all upset.  She was holding a notice from the health department which stated that Irene’s shack must be torn down or Mrs. Schmitz would face a fine. 

Technically, Irene’s shack is on the Schmitz property, although she works part-time as a maid for Hillcrest.  The bulk of Irene’s income is derived during the evening hours when her home becomes a shebeen, a black speakeasy, where alcoholic spirits are illegally sold to blacks. 

Party time at a South African shebeen.  Date and location unknown.  Source:  https://www.2oceansvibe.com/2015/03/19/make-it-a-quart-of-black-label-and-your-daughter-on-the-side-thanks/shebeen/#prev

While blacks can buy booze in the black sections of legal “bottle” stores, the only places where they can legally gather to drink are government-run pubs for blacks which have a very drab atmosphere.  Most black avoid these legal pubs and take their drinking business to illegal shebeens.  And since Halfway House is a white area, there are no legal black beer halls here.  Technically, the only blacks who can live here are those who are employed as domestics, gardeners, etc.  They must live on their employer’s property and cannot have their families with them.  These laws are blatantly disregarded by many white people.  Even the authorities tend to often look the other way unless there is a complaint.

The complaint against Irene is not about her shebeen or illegal residential situation (she doesn’t work for Mrs. Schmitz).  Seems she has no toilet or running water.  Despite her using water and toilet facilities on the Hillcrest property a few dozen meters away, the health department has condemned her shack.  As I write this, workmen are out there with crowbars.  The Hillcrest folks have decided to make other residential arrangements for Irene as Mrs. Schmitz is pissed off and refuses to take any responsibility for a potential fine.  It would be too expensive to install a toilet and running water in her shack.  Too bad – the birthplace of Irene’s child and a local social institution is meeting its demise.  Personally, I suspect that condemning her shack for health reasons is a convenient ploy to get rid of her shebeen.

Blacks must be used to this sort of thing.  They can’t even own property in South Africa or be in the country legally without a job, so they must not be used to much in the way of permanence and stability.  Apparently, the government plans to scrap the Group Areas Act and Influx Control Act which regulate black migration and residential life but we’ll wait and see if it happens.      

Later that afternoon, I attended a meeting put on by a Montessori teacher in Halfway House regarding pre-school education.  I’m not all that interested in pre-school education, but a friend (Sue) invited me because some women from Soweto were going to be there.  These half dozen nicely-dressed black ladies arrived in a combi (mini-bus) and the meeting began.  As announced by the white hostess, the purpose of the meeting was to see if Montessori methods and equipment could be used in black daycare centers.  I learned that black women who look after children in the townships have no toys, and often, not even crayons and paper for them.  Often the kids don’t even have enough food, so trying to get them tinker toys to play with on an empty stomach doesn’t make much sense.

What interested me most about the meeting was the interaction between the liberal, well-meaning white women and men at the meeting and the black women from Soweto.  The whites did almost all the talking and much of that was directed at each other.  There was little attempt to get the black women to talk about their needs.  I got the impression that the whites were telling the black women what blacks needed based on the whites’ experience.  The black women seemed somewhat shy, finding themselves in a white environment using English, their second (or even third) language.  Sue confirmed that poor black-white communication is common in situations like this.  Whites just don’t know how to be good listeners and learn what black needs really are.