My experiences as a whitey in black township schools

I was encouraged and puzzled by Khadija Sharife’s recent post, simply one of Rumi’s stunning poems. The poem is beautiful, the lack of commentary and any particular reason for posting it, rather odd. I know the poem speaks for itself, but …

I was encouraged because, though I have published bits and pieces of my poems in my blogs, I decided to dedicate most of this blog to one of my poems, “The Faces”, which explores a whitey growing up in Apartheid South Africa and then through SA’s move into a fledgling democracy. Among other issues, a white teenager’s budding sexuality and relationship to blacks is also described.

I also decided to publish this poem because some commentators on my recent blogs, have challenged me on what do I know about living or working in townships. I taught in a black township school for two years during the Apartheid era and made friends among my black colleagues and students and made enemies with the black government spies.

In my last blog I mentioned that I “served” , most reluctantly, in the SADF, which was from 1982 – 1984. Unlike what one or two commentators and other readers may think, I certainly did not do my two years with the SADF willingly. During that period, at the age of nineteen, I awoled, stowed away on a cargo ship headed for France with a fellow awoller. We eventually gave ourselves up and were dropped off at Walvis Bay in then South West Africa. We were faced with three charges. The military charge of general desertion, the civilian charge of illegal immigration and the shipping company sued us for petrol costs to leave its course and unceremoniously drop us off at Walvis Bay. The police stood there, scratching their heads, unsure as to what they should do with us. Die kak was lekker diep.

However, each charge helped us get off the others: the magistrate looked at us, shaking his head in commiseration after we had already been one month in police detention in Walvis Bay awaiting the trial. He knew we still had to face the formidable military charge of general desertion and the whopping charge from the shipping company. We both got suspended sentences.

A month later I stood before an army captain, also shaking his head, at my military trial. (My china belonged to another military camp.) He knew I had by then spent two months in detention, effectively in jail, punishment enough, including some solitary confinement (ons wil nie jou bliksemde politieke hoor, kaffirboetie). He dropped the charge to only AWOL as we did, technically, very technically (man oh man, I had needed the toilet desperately), give ourselves up on the ship. He knew I still had to pay two thousand rand (this was in 1983) to the shipping company. I got another suspended sentence.

A few days later I was walking free on a weekend pass in a daze through the Carlton Centre in Jo’burg, a white teenager who in a few months out of school had seen a lot, quite a bit of it in handcuffs, and I looked around at docile, peaceful shoppers and saw them and life very differently.

Impulsive moves like the above is why I am now living in and loving Shanghai, China.

Here is the poem, “The Faces”.

The Faces

On growing up in South Africa, before and during the political change
from Apartheid to a fledgling democracy.

I never knew your face in infancy.
From the earliest I was slung, froglike
Against your back, a warm stoep on which I slurred
In and out of sleep, drowsing in the jostle
Of your hips. You often chattered loudly to others
Who smelled the same –
the soap in linen, heated milk in bottles.
It was a conversation I still
Don’t understand, unlike the language
Of my infant body pressed to yours,
Or your deep black arms,
Where I was raised in the rhythm
Of being picked up and held and placed down.

One day our family left forever. From the back
Of the car my hand waved, pale and small.
Your raised arm and smile were a blur.
That was the day
You first had a face.
It opened, because,
After the car and goodbyes had disappeared,
You must have wept. I know you did. I wept.

– For Timothy

Your cheeks and forehead were a cracked, grooved leather
I only feel thirty years on. At school, aged 64,
You had the title of ‘tea boy’. Your face –
Brittle as a boot trudged through the sole,
Worn and weathered every day – always clung
To a sadness and a peace that even then
Reminded me of washing hung out to dry.
Your face
Quietened me, a Standard Two schoolboy watching you
Smiling while kids swiped sugar from the teachers’ tea-tray.

I’d also quieten when your fingers roamed
Over our school books. You’d help the boys cover them
With paper and sticky tape. All our faces bowed
Over the job while your leathery cheeks
Smoothed out
From some remembrance –
Which also moistened your eyes,
Making thoughtful your working hands.

You died.
A stooped, shuffling presence abruptly gone.
For years after, you would enter my dreams.
You would crouch in the night on windowsills
And cupboards, teeth and fists clenched.
Your body
Would be bloodied and daubed with paint,
Face thrust forward, contorted, glaring.

III

Caked in mud from kleilat fights, we sneaked
Along a wall erected near our homes.
The bricks
Reeked of burned paraffin and chickens.
One of us scrambled up the wall, grinned and gestured
Frantically. We peered over at a woman, massive
Bare breasts shiny, black and quivering
As a cream was slopped on.
The nipples
Gazed up at us, impossibly long, purple and pointed.
And unbelievable as the feelings – like icy water splashed
Suddenly against the stomach – tingling
And delicious while we sniggered.

That day you had no face, nothing I could touch.
But mud, squished in our hands and slapped
On the tips of tall, whippy sticks,
Was no longer as palpable as our desires
While we giggled on the wall:
Those were faceless, and never spoken.

English Lesson, Langa High

– for Theo Kenke, Standard 9 student, stabbed to death

At funerals rain knots soil into mud.
It thickens to hemp the unworded belief
Spaded earth cures, covering everything.
Rain declares redundant the weeping,
Helps open a narrow, six-foot trapdoor
So a rope can twang taut.
That much is certain
In today’s class. The rope of memory, grief,
The tight, throttling bewilderment in the faces
Of the mourning family, the feel of the shaken bodies,
Which the schoolchildren suddenly recall
Because of my lesson: Abstract Nouns. ‘Remember
They’re words you can’t touch or see, like sympathy.
For example, ‘We have sympathy for Theo’s family’.
The noun is not like wood, which we can touch.’

Langa High, 1989

A hint of TB films their eyes, sandpapers coughs.
The children’s cheekbones are a deep brown gloss
Reflecting hours of cold and rain in the door-less
And windowless school prefab. The schoolbooks are awash
With the ink in the homework done by candlelight or no light
Checked today in the lighthouse of textbooks
On Christian scripture and English grammar.
Maybe their eyes cling to the possibility
Of hope and love in my teaching.
Maybe they don’t know where else to stare.
Chalk in waves
Erupts on the wet blackboard ideas about
“The love of God” and “subject-verb concordance”.

Concepts never taken home. There, fingers still struggle
For warmth and food. And nothing I’ve learned
Is like the fragrance in young damp bodies,
Sodden shoes and a few raincoats dearly clung to.

– For Basil Mamatu, Langa High, 1989.

Gunfire outside the staffroom; dull sick thickenings
Against the ears. A merry Guy Fawkes’ crackle absurd
While our stomachs and palms liquefy.
For a year we’ve shared a desk, clucked and tutted
At homework not done, slapped hands, thighs
And shoulders at jokes about Blacks & Boere.
Your eyes disappeared in chocolate folds
That twinkled with tears above the grin.
Humour became a toyi-toyi;
Two grown men staggering
And wheezing around a desk cluttered with books,
Leftover vetkoek and Cornish pasties.

Today there is gunfire.
I look into your eyes and see our fear.
The quietness between shots,
Screaming and stampeding deepens the tension
In our lips and jaws.
We no longer know what’s become
Of our children.
You cup your face.
Touch
Becomes a way of remembering and the room
Fills with that fragrance in raincoats and children.
Now it’s your face which opens. Hear the weeping.