Saturday, 19 July 1986 – An Introduction to Grahamstown by a Jovial Professor

My train pulls into Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape at 7:00AM on Saturday.  I’m met at the station by Peter Surtees, a jovial, balding, white English-speaking accounting professor at Rhodes University.  The local Rotary Club has arranged for me to stay with him tonight.  Peter turns out to be a really enjoyable guy.  After breakfast, he takes me for a tour of the town and up Mountain Drive where I get some panoramic photos of Grahamstown (population about 25,000 whites and who knows how many non-whites in the surrounding townships).  To the south is a patchwork of forested hills and farms stretching all the way to the Indian Ocean on the distant horizon.  This town was settled in the early 19^th Century by English immigrants.  Peter drives me past old homes built in the distinctive “Settler” style.  We take a tour of the Rhodes campus – nice architecture which mostly fits together.  

After finishing the tour, we go to a bottle (liquor) store with a huge wine area off to one side.  Peter’s policy is to buy a case of 12 bottles of wine at a time and never spend more than R3.00 for a bottle.  We easily come up with a selection of 12 different, interesting-looking wines that average R2.50 each.  God, that’s criminal – only a little over US$1.00 a bottle at the current rate of exchange.

Peter’s daughter, Pippa, deciding what to do with the ball. 

Next, we go over to a girl’s school playground to watch Peter’s 13-year-old daughter play in a girls’ netball tournament.  Netball is sort of like basketball but kind of a wimpy sport by comparison.  There’s no dribbling; only passing.  Defense can’t interfere with the shooter who can take all the time she wants lining up her shot.  The basket is lower than in U.S. basketball, but there is no backboard. 

That afternoon, it’s off to watch a rugby test (game) between Grahamstown and Graaff-Reinet, private, all-male secondary schools.  Peter and I sit in the stands with shouting parents.  Reminds me of Celina High School football games in the early 1960s except they have all-boys cheering sections.  Male munchkins in matching blazers and ties shout corny cheers.  They have relatively ineffective cheerleaders except for a Grahamstown lad who screams so loud he turns red in the face.  Rugby is a fairly interesting game to watch when the ball keeps moving.  Peter says there are too many lulls in this particular game due to injuries.  

I comment that some psychologist should do a study of the differences between the impacts of USA and RSA school dress codes.  Wonder how it would have affected me to wear a coat and tie to school every day.  I’d probably be even more uptight as an adult than I already am.  High school games impress me now as strange silliness whether they take place in Celina, Ohio USA or Grahamstown, RSA.  Of course they’re not silly to students and parents who consider them life-and-death matters.

Rugby test between Grahamstown and Graaff-Reinet

After the game, we go back to Peter’s beautiful old home where he introduces me to Wisemen, a 19-year-old black fellow who is trying to finish high school.  Peter and his family have sort of adopted Wisemen, who lives in a room in an old carriage house out behind the main house.  He impresses me as a bright, articulate chap.  Wisemen tells me his school in a local black township was closed last year by boycotts.  He thought it would be open this year, but the “Comrades” called another boycott a few weeks after it opened.  Wisemen is now in a bind.  He wants to finish school, but he’d certainly be killed, beaten up, or his family’s house in the township burned down if he tried to attend.  He tells me that little kids are still going to school under police protection.  Sometimes the army comes in to the township, and the soldiers go house to house forcing the older kids to go to school.  They go when forced but ignore their lessons under these circumstances.  Wisemen is now studying on his own.  He wanted to take the Standard 9 (11^th grade) exam this year, but the examiner won’t let him do it.  Later Peter’s wife, Freida, tells me Wisemen tried to register too late for the exam.  

Wisemen has seen his older siblings leave school at an early age and wind up with nothing, especially one sister who has had several babies already.  He wants to do better.  Wisemen realizes that blacks will never be able to govern South Africa without good educations.  He tells me conditions in his township are very bad now. The Comrades, ranging in age from teenagers to older men, call the shots. 

Later Peter comments that the obvious question is why can’t Wisemen go to a white government (public) school in their area since he is now living here.  Blacks can now go to private schools but only the well-to-do can afford it.  Many private schools now cost around $8000/year.  That’s more expensive than most universities here. 

Freida thinks that if every white family in South Africa “adopted” a young black like Wisemen, they could go a long way toward improving the lot of young blacks and getting them educated.  She is a conservative-talking Afrikaner but seems socially concerned.  However, she and her 20-year-old daughter, Tersha, from her first marriage really go after me on the ol’ “world doesn’t understand us” theme.  Tersha says, “We should have killed all the blacks here like you did with your Red Indians (the South African term for Native Americans) and the Australians did with the Aborigines.”  She’s really angry and adds that foreigners can’t expect to understand South Africa when South Africans who have lived here their whole lives can’t understand it.  I comment that South Africans seem too emotionally involved with the situation to be objective about it.  Tersha lashes out with a litany of the faults of other countries.  I note that there are many things wrong with the U.S., but I don’t excuse my country’s faults by attacking other countries for theirs. 

Peter becomes impatient with listening to his step daughter’s crap.  He breaks in to ask which part of the conversation I’m going to report on.  Will I write about Tersha’s “We should have killed all the blacks” comments or Freida’s feelings that each white family should help out one young black person.  I reply that I must report both.  Peter says I’ll only report Tersha’s comments if I really want to sell some articles because that’s what the American press wants to hear.  I respond that I refuse to do that.  The South African situation is too complex for me to be practicing “selective journalism”.

Later I tell Peter that reactions like Tersha’s seem to come from people who, deep down, are scared of the future.  They see me as a symbol of a world that keeps picking on them and are unwilling or unable to look at themselves and ask, “Just why does the world pick on us anyway?  Could any of this be OUR fault?”       

Peter replies that Tersha’s talk is that of a selfish young lady who now has a white Rhodesian (Zimbabwean) boyfriend.  A year or two ago she was advocating multi-racial marriage and various other liberal causes.  If she gets another boyfriend next year, she will parrot what he believes.

Tersha’s comments sound the same as many I’ve heard from South African whites when their guard is down.  Frankly, I’m getting sick of listening to the lot of them with their same old tired, unsophisticated arguments.  They must have all learned this garbage in school.  Or, maybe from SABC-TV.

After dinner, I watch a “Winds of War” episode on TV with Peter’s family.  I wonder if South Africans see the analogy of “winds of war” blowing over their own country?  Or is it pure escapism – looking at other people’s problems and avoiding their own?  When Ensign Henry’s sister says, “At least I didn’t hurt Mom and Dad by marrying a Jew,” I stifle myself from shouting, “Well, at least that’s better than marrying a kaffir, isn’t it folks?”  Woops, my nasty, cynical side is showing again. 

              This 1983 TV mini-series starring Robert Mitchum made it to South Africa in 1986.

                  Source:  justwatch.com