Native tongue Bafana Khumalo
I HATE them all. My parents, my friends, my schoolteachers and all the other scum who taught me that going to school is a two-year guarantee ticket out of the ghetto.
You have gathered that this column is going to be one of those do-it-yourself psychotherapy sessions, haven’t you?
“Why do you hate your parents, teachers and the scum?” you ask with that well practised, professionally sympathetic salesman delivery.
“They did not tell me that it took a lot more than a degree to get out of the ghetto,” I sob as I make myself comfortable on the couch. “Especially the schoolteachers who told me to memorise some excerpts from Shakespeare to ensure that I get the Mercedes-Benz faster than the boys who were playing truant.”
The indoctrination had started and for most of my life it went on. I was being taught that I was going to be a better darkie, that if I paid my dues properly I would be admitted into the privileged circle of society. A wry joke that did the rounds back then was: “I am getting educated so that I can become a white person when I am qualified.”
Well, I learnt all those excerpts. Did I learn them or what? I even read Chaucer — some dead Englishman who wrote dead English and nearly destroyed my little native mind. Night after night I would pore over the text, my brow furrowed as I tried to make sense of some incomprehensible foreign nonsense while thinking of the lecturer who had told me to appreciate the rhythm and the humour in the prose. I could not even understand the language, let alone find something musical or funny about it.
I thought I was dying. I found respite in the fantasy of the Merc — while proclaiming to the strugglers my deep hatred for capitalist excesses.
I also was thinking of the poor bastards in the townships who did not stand a chance of having their own offices, a white secretary and their own house in an area like Selection Park. This was where all the then recently economically liberated darkies could stay and engage in behaviour that they thought to be cultured. Behaviour like making an appointment with your neighbour for your children to go over and play with his children.
If I was lucky, I thought, I could even make friends with a good white man and he could sign a lease on my behalf in order for me to get a flat in Hillbrow. Back then on the chosen few lived on the Hill. It was not the violence infested ghetto it has been allowed to become now.
Chief in this fantasy was a friend of mine with whom I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. His name doesn’t matter, he is not important enough to drop, and I would not want to drop it anyway as he would most probably kick my butt for using his name in such a lowly publication. He was a good guy and when I was reading Chaucer he was doing time for a small matter of stealing someone’s car.
When he came back, he cleaned up his act — made sure that he didn’t get caught again. He has been out for five years now and I have been working for seven years. This friend of mine has become a manager and no longer goes out to steal cars but has a number of young boys who — seeing the kind of life he lives — aspire to be like him and do jobs for him for a cut of the spoils.
It is a life with all the trappings of success. Every so often he has a new car, he is reputed to have property somewhere in the suburbs which he rents out. I don’t know why I think this is a lie. It is probably because of envy that I think that scum like my friend would not have the business acumen to do something that astute.
Whenever I am feeling less than happy about my lot in life I always think of my friend; that my life is more profound than his; that I will one day get a better job and finally get all those trappings without having to look over my shoulder for the police, as he always does. I always think that I am influencing the captains of industry for the betterment of our people.
Last week I met him at his home. He was lounging about on his lawn and we chatted about nothing of consequence — I cannot talk to him about anything of social and political import, I always condescend. In the midst of our conversation, the shrill ring of the cellular telephone — more common in boardrooms than in township backyards — interrupted us. He whipped out that little toy and had an animated conversation.
I have to confess that I went dark green with envy. Although I always am the first one to say something derisive about people who use cellular phones, in this instance it definitely was a badge of success.
Damn, thought I to myself. This fool, this thug, this thief is making it faster than I am. Should I consider a career change?
Most of all I was envious of the influence he has over township youth who see him with all those trappings of wealth and choose to go out and steal someone’s car rather than pay their dues to the system and live honestly.