Sunday, 28 December 1986: A Day of Sharply-Contrasted South Africans
8:15 PM, Lenox Hotel, Cape Town
My Cape Town vacation is winding to a close. Fortunately, there have been a few good days to go along with the lonely ones. Yesterday wasn’t bad at all. My friends, Helize and Barend, had both invited me to go with them to a party which was to be attended by a number of people involved in the arts.
In the morning, I took a train to the community where Helize is staying with her parents while home for the holidays. I got to the station about 25 minutes early and got to talking with a 50ish, stocky Afrikaner train crewman. He started out with the usual, “What do you think of South Africa?” I replied with my usual smile and, “It’s a very fascinating and complex place.” The Afrikaners usually seem to like that response. He then asked if I’d had any trouble with their Kaffirs (the South African equivalent of “niggers”). I think conservative, uneducated Afrikaners use the word to see where I stand and pick an argument with me. I swallowed my anger and unemotionally replied “Not at all”.
He continued with more of the usual stuff: “Why doesn’t the U.S. keep its nose out of our internal politics?” Lately, I’ve decided to try answering this one but not telling them what they want to here. My reply was roughly: “I think the U.S. Congress and citizens are essentially saying that they no longer want to have a close economic and cultural relationship with a country whose internal politics they find objectionable.” He came back with something about South Africans being able to fix their own internal issues without the rest of the world butting in. “Who do Americans think they are criticizing us when they can’t take care of their own racial problems? Why is South Africa being singled out?” I don’t have very satisfactory answers to these questions as he certainly was raising good points about American racism. I don’t think I could come up with any answers that would make any difference with guys like this anyway.
My point is that many white
South Africans like this guy just don’t get it.
They simply don’t understand why the rest of the world is so hostile
toward South Africa. I don’t know if
there is anything foreigners or anti-Apartheid South Africans can say or do to
get them to see things differently. It
got me wondering about the processes that get people to change their opinions. Obviously, some people change deeply-held
beliefs within the course of their lifetimes.
Perhaps I should examine my own experiences with dramatically changing
my own political and religious beliefs between ages 18 and 22. I can’t put a finger on any one incident that
caused this change. It just slowly
evolved over time. But why did I change
my views of, for example, Roman Catholicism, civil rights/racism, and the Viet
Nam War when so many others did not?
Perhaps my openness to change and the pluralistic environment at Ohio
State University, where I spent my undergraduate years, had a lot to do with
it.
Greenmarket Square, Cape Town, December 30, 1986. How was it that these three people of
different races seemed to have no problem with sharing a bench together while
many South Africans wouldn’t have been caught dead doing so?
After I arrived at Helize’s home, her father and I had much the same conversation I’d had with the trainman. Here was an educated man – a retired Dutch Reformed Church minister – saying much the same stuff as the uneducated trainman. It occurs to me that they probably pick up their ideas from the speeches of President P.W. Botha and other government officials. After all, they are continually exposed to this rhetoric on the government-controlled TV and radio news. The minister was a humorless man and did not exude any Christian charity. He told me had visited Zimbabwe and described the Shona people as “dirty”. When I think of the Shonas, I remember their warmth and friendliness.
When I first arrived in South Africa nearly nine months ago, I brought along my prejudices and sympathies. Still, I tried to have an open mind and listen to the conservatives (i.e., people who support the government’s policies and even those who oppose the government because they feel it has become too liberal in its racial policies). Eventually, one winds up taking sides. Frankly, I’m not very drawn to conservative South Africans. While they are often kind to me, I find them generally to be intellectually dull with drab personalities.
Although in her mid-30s, Helize is still trying to separate herself from her father’s domineering Afrikaner demeanor. She says they argue frequently, but she still feels guilt-bound to her family. On the way to the party, we had a long talk about how one breaks free of domineering, narrow-minded parents.
The party was an odd assortment of artsy-fartsy types and was held at the home of a gay gynecologist. Several fellas were holding hands with each other and Barend remarked this morning that several people had disappeared upstairs during the course of the evening. Did they climb the stairs to do drug or do each other...or maybe both? How can I ever forget the image of a large loquacious lesbian playing the piano and singing South African folk songs in Afrikaans? A coloured artist was holding forth with several white women in a very intellectual masturbatory conversation that went way over my unsophisticated brain. I preferred the long conversation I later had with a pretty British entomologist.
After scarfing down some delicious braaied steak, boerewors, and smoked snook, and quaffing inordinate amounts of wine, I got to talking politics with several white liberals on the outside deck in the warm summer evening air. One of the women had “lost” two sons who have left the country to avoid two years of national service or six years in prison. Another had a son who was due to be called up this July. She didn’t know what he would do. Of course, it’s the brightest and most rebellious youth who are leaving the country. One woman said that several thousand young men haven’t reported for their call-ups this year. Many are presumed to have joined the ranks of the “hoppers”, young guys who keep hopping from place to place hoping the government won’t catch up with them.
My conversational companions pointed out that, of course, older people are leaving South Africa as well. Although they are limited to taking the equivalent of US$20,000 out of the country legally, some are resorting to all kinds of crazy methods to get wealth out of the country. The example of some people having gold melted down and put inside an art object was mentioned.
Still, one of the women admitted that it is an exciting time to be in South Africa. She said I would be surprised at the number of people holding “teas” these days where they discuss ways to undermine government policies. I admire the spirit of these people. It reminds me of the American civil rights and anti-Viet Nam War campaigns of the 1960s. I find it very interesting to watch although I’m glad that I’m not in their shoes.
It was the best party I’ve been to since leaving Colorado. Barend got drunk as a skunk, and I was somewhat sloshed as well. The three of us finally make it back to Cape Town around 1:00 AM. This morning when I met Helize for a late breakfast, she told me that Barend had come on to the porch where she was sleeping around 7:00 to inform her that he had vomited around 4:00 AM and felt much better now. Apparently so, because by the time I got there, the ol’ curmudgeonly poet was as loveably obnoxious as ever. Despite his rough edges, I find it hard not to like Barend and the same goes for Helize who is certainly a bit feisty herself.
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