A2696-A4-003-Jpeg.Pdf
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
THE ISOLATED VISITORS 29th August, 1964 ^ H I S week, thanks to Chief Kaiser Matanzima’s visit to Johannesburg, Soweto is host to a set of very important personalities. The Transkei Cabinet Ministers have been with us since the beginning of the week. Chief Matanzima’s name has soared to new heights of fame, especially among lower primary school children. These are the children who were instructed to line the streets and cheer the Chief Minister and his party. The children were obviously overjoyed to see Chief Kaiser and his White-chauffeured car. They are likely to go on cheering cars and horse-drawn carts for many days after the chiefs departure. It is the older people who have not been so thrilled with the whole affair. Some of us, especially journalists, are a little disappointed. We had hoped that there would be a state banquet for the visiting Cabinet. This would have been the first time Black journalists would have attended anything like that in this country. But I don’t hear any talk of a banquet. Instead the visitors went to have tea at the Vocational Training Centre on Monday. Now I have come to associate tea with Y.W.C.A. occasions, certainly not parliamentary events. Besides, even at the tea party some of us were let down. Only invited people were allowed in. I was, like many other people, rather bruised that I was not invited. It appears that invitation letters were distributed only late on Sunday. I met some of the invitees and they told me theirs reached them only after they had gone to bed on the night before the tea party. The general secrecy which surrounds the Chief Minister’s movements has caused a lot of surprise in Soweto. Eyebrows were raised, too. when the visitors turned up escorted by a host of policemen. This was, after all, the first time African leaders had been seen enjoying so much police protection in ohannesburg. When not in jail, Soweto leaders are often on the run from the police. That the Chief Minister has generally avoided people and politics has also proved somewhat disappointing. ^ of all places, at Nelson Mandela s house. I found the Chief Minister playing with Mandela s daughter on his lap. ® As a relation of the Mandelas, Chief Matanzima was on a tamily call. He was told who I was and he immediately burst f'll■ l^now who he is . I don’t want reporters here, you ral them one thing and they go and write their own things J hey must ail come together at a Press conference and I wili tace them there.” the week, however, when I asked where and when he Press conference was to be held, I was told the Chief Minister had not made up his mind yet. That was yet another disappointment for me. It is not often that Black journalists get an opportunity to interview a head of government in this country. It has always been my ambition to attend a conference of this sort * tl's way American journalists do at the White House. It would have been fun, for instance, to ask the Chief Minister about his views on Transkeians who might wish to ^gn up as mercenaries for Tshombe’s struggle against the Congolese rebels. I could have asked him whether he had ieade?s ^ the African states and meet other African Meanwhile 1 have managed to see the Minister of Justice Mr. George Matanzima. If there are more like him in the I ranskei Cabinet, then this is indeed a collection of intelligent worthwhile men. ^ For George, as Transkeians call him, is a hard-thinking politician. He calls himself a politician, a legal man and a scientist, i hanks to his easy-going manner and personal warmth, I s^nt more than half an hour chatting about the Pranskei with him — the first Minister of Justice I have ever interviewed. Ours was, however, a private, informal conversation and not for publication. I can only describe my impressions of the Minister. To me, he stood out as the most colourful of the Transkeian personalities. He was as articulate and self-confident as any of the big business executives I have come across in Johannes burg. He could certainly do a lot to show the outside world what this country can produce in the way of fully-developed Black citizens. I could not help feeling, however, that the Minister is living partly in a world of make-believe. This was especially true when he referred to the Transkei as a separate state, a neigh bour to South Africa, although we all know that the Transkei is still really governed from Pretoria. Unhappily, the public may not have learned much about who the members of the Transkei Cabinet are and what they are about when they leave Johannesburg. Their visit is near ing its end now and they are still carefully isolated from the people. TRYING TO AVOID BITTERNESS 5th September, 1964 J F I should leave this country and decide not to come back. it will be because of a desire to avoid perishing in my own bitterness a bitterness born of being reduced to a second-hand citizen. Now I do not wish to despise or hate anyone. For in my business the writing business, nothing could be more disas- ^ous. I could not write feelingly about anyone if I allowed bitterness to run away with my head. For I want to write about people, not enemies. reason that I have never been able to call Wh'tes “baas” or “missus.” I could do it easily if I wished to mock and despise White people, and I would know all the time that I was playing the fool. T have seen friends of mine adopt this attitude to Whites I his was especially true during the prohibition days when non-Whites were not allowed to drink in Johannesburg. They nevertheless got their drink, some of it through White liquor runners who cherished the commission which accrued from making these clandestine purchases for non-Whites. City slickers from Soweto would approach White tramps in town when they needed booze. “Baas,” a man would say can the baas please buy me a bottle of brandy?” There was no question of these men regarding the tramps as social equals, let alone superiors. If anything, the idea that the tramps still regarded themselves as bosses was always a source of amusement. The pm e thing happens in the factories in town. Africans will spring to attention before the most junior White member of the staff. Others wear a permanent grin on their faces to give the impression that they are willing servants of the “baas.” I saw the same thing in the platteland when a friend and I were arrested while investigating farm-labour conditions for a magazine feature. My friend, a photographer, had brought several cameras with him as well as a light meter. On arresting us, the police seized all his cameras. After questioning us at great length, occasionally swearing at us and threatening to kick our teeth in, the police noticed that they had not taken the photographer’s light meter. “What is that,” one of them asked. “This, baas,” answered the photographer, smiling mis- chieviously, “is a very good machine. It helps us keep in touch with the head office in Johannesburg. Everything you say is transmitted automatically to the baas in Johannesburg.” The photographer’s yarn worked wonders in this part of the platteland. The police went into conference and immediately returned our cameras and let us go. But, much as I admired my friend’s sense of humour, I knew that I could not have pulled the same trick myself. I could not have achieved that benign, boy-to-baas expression which I saw on my friend’s face as he talked to the constable. I am reminded of these things because, early this week, I listened to a prosperous businessman speak at a send-off party given for Chief Kaiser Matanzima in .Soweto. The man told us that he had gone a long way in business because he had always humbled himself before the White man. He always saluted White people and did not protest if they called him “kaffertjie.” In other words, this man tells the White people only those things which he thinks they would be pleased to know. There is really not much communication between him and the people he meets. This businessman is unlikely to speak his mind openly for fear of disturbing the peace which now prevails between himself and the men he salutes. Now there are those of us who believe we can and should get ahead in life without saluting anyone for it. We are the sort of people who are likely to run into trouble with White clerks behind Government and municipal counters. There was a time when it was fun for me to challenge White officialdom by asserting myself as a man, not a boy. But not any more. The business of expecting war each time I go to buy a stamp has ceased to be a game. There are too many moments when I feel like giving in and letting this country go the wav of its choice. ^ It is during such moments that bitterness threatens to swallow me and I lie awake considering the possibility of leaving for good. L YES, THERE IS TOO MUCH SELF-PITY 12th September. 1964 GOMEONE who calls himself “Group Loyalty” wrote a letter to the Editor this week and said, among other things, that I was “overcome by self-pity at being a second-class citizen.” Now I don’t know whether self-pity actually overcomes me, but I have a feeling that the writer of this letter is probably right in suggesting that I do in fact suffer from self-pity.