Native tongue Bafana Khumalo
IT’S gone. It’s no more. The doors are boarded up and all the windows covered by huge steel shutters. There is silence. This is a sad day for me and I hope that my sadness makes me human in your eyes.
The source of my sorrow is the demise of a movie house in a neighbourhood I grew up in. It was here that I saw my first film. I can remember it quite clearly: after paying 20 cents I sat in the darkened cinema and the titles came up. This was to prove to be my most favourite moment at the movies for it promised all manner of pleasures and they were mine to savour.
The movie house was the Eyethu Cinema deep in the heart of Soweto. (I have always wanted to say that, “deep in the heart of Soweto”; it gives one’s writing a kind of poignant bongo-bongo quality.) Owned by the former mayor of Soweto, Ephraim Tshabalala, it was one of only two real cinemas in the township. In my younger days, if you wanted to get laid, the first place to start softening up the layee was at the Eyethu Cinema — and a double feature cost the princely sum of 40 cents.
There was a slight problem attached to using this place as a seduction set: one had to share the movie house with 10 year olds who knew very well that tongues were designed to fit only in one mouth and putting them in someone else’s mouth was a depraved act. They would make their feelings known to the lovers by making squeeshy sounds very loudly. If you tried to kick the hell out of them you would have to make sure that the resident bouncer, a particularly evil looking fellow whom everybody called Oom Piet, did not identify you as a troublemaker.
Although he was named Oom Piet, suggesting an affable nature, he is the only person in the world who would beat the hell out of people even though they were in the presence of their significant others, to whom they had just expressed an omnipotent self image.
It was here that I nearly saw a pornographic movie at the tender age of 19. I had heard through the grapevine that a movie of a particularly salacious nature was being shown. All my friends had gone to see it and promptly proceeded to relate the sleazy details to me. I, unlike my friends who did whatever they enjoyed and damned the rest of the world’s judgment of them, was quite concerned about my image. So, instead of going to view the movie in daylight like everybody else, I chose to sneak into the cinema in the middle of the night like the 19-year-old dirty old man I was. No one was going to think of me as a pervert, so I chose a night which I thought would be a slow one with as few people around as possible.
I should have gone straight in but, in my state of shame, I first cased the joint for about 15 minutes. My plan was to go in when most of the other patrons were already in and then sneak out when the movie was about to end. I would still pretend to be ignorant of the motion picture when asked about it.
When I felt safe, I tried to go in as quickly as possible. In all instances like this things always go wrong; as soon as I had bought my ticket and was about to enter the cinema, a friend walked by, recognising me. Being a friendly fellow, he felt that he should give me a hearty shout-from-across-the-street greeting. I would like to say that I have never been so embarrassed since, but, sadly, that was to be one of the first embarrassments in my life. I had to tell my friend that I was merely looking around and was about to go home. I never got to see the movie for I was not going to risk that again. I wonder what the big deal was?
Eyethu Cinema didn’t only show sleazy movies. It was also the only place in the country where a young black person could see the first movie version of Cry, The Beloved Country. It was the only place we could see black movie heroes and cheer them along as they beat the living daylights out of poor white trash. I liked those. They were mostly blaxploitation movies, but they sure were great movies to a youngster.
This honeymoon did not last forever. The powers that be decided, finally, that it was okay for us to sit in the same movie house as melanin-challenged folks — poor people, it must be terrible to have a skin that is so naked, with hardly a dark spot on it and, when it does go dark, it becomes a dark reddish colour.
When this happened, we all bought into the marketing hard sell. This hard sell said that going to a movie involves more than the screen, but also what you do before or after the film. So, they built these houses in complexes where one could have dinner before the movie and get drunk after seeing it. They also taught their staff how to behave. They did not have an Oom Piet and I was less likely to land on the floor with my glasses at the other end of the foyer if I caused some trouble, although I am certain that if I did cause trouble I would be dealt with.
Well, Eyethu is no more. I didn’t even know that it was no more. I only discovered a few weeks ago that that screen had gone dark. I have bought into the hard sell and, I suppose, other black businesses could learn something from the demise of this giant; there are many other competitors for your once-captive market and your market has grown beyond expecting a basic service: they want it all.