Native tongue Bafana Khumalo
WE were about to clinch the deal and I was hoping that nothing would happen at this crucial moment to jeopardise my opportunity to gain worldwide fame. You know how important fame is to me, don’t you? This was my chance to write for an insignificant American publication. My byline was going to be seen — and immediately forgotten — by some fringe sector of American society.
I was elated as the American editor and I sat in an outdoor restaurant, finalising the deal. Despite my professed hatred for Americans and everything that they stand for, I am not averse to depositing a couple of hundred dollars in my account. You know how lousy the pay is at the Weekly Mail & Guardian.
You can understand that I was in no mood for any nonsense and you probably know that it is at times like these that nonsense comes. And so it came, in the form of a slightly built man who, approaching from a distance of about five metres, cased the establishment and located his target: yours truly and the editor at whose feeble jokes I was laughing heartily — too heartily, now that I think of it.
As the man approached I tried to avert his gaze, praying that he would find somebody else to bother. No such luck. He homed in and greeted us politely in Afrikaans. I felt obliged to steer the conversation toward English for he was addressing my dollar-laden but Afrikaans-deficient companion. He told us his problem and proceeded to ask for “a few cents to buy some food, broers. I swear I’m going to buy food and not drink. As you can see I haven’t been drinking.”
Usually when a person asks for money from two people, one white and one black, they address the white component of the couple. That saves me from having to deal with them. I just look the other way, enjoying my companions’ squirming as they try not to give anything to the person seeking help and, at the same time, worry that their refusal will be seen as an act of rabid racism by yours truly.
Not this time. I was the one who was trying to prove myself a humane person and I was not going to fail. My editor companion is employed by one of those human rights publications which decry the human rights abuse in the rest of the world while looking the other way when a Rodney King-type of incident happens closer to home, so I had to show him that I was a paragon of kindness.
I, therefore, not as an act of kindness to a fellow man who was seeing hard times, but as an act of irritation, whipped a few coins from my pocket and handed them to our intruder.
He must have seen the corner I was in and he was not going to let me slip out of it that easily. He looked at the coins in his hand and then looked at us — with an aggrieved expression — and slowly shook his head. “This is not enough,” he said with indignation. He proceeded to tell me that for R2 he couldn’t even buy a packet of chips. I would have to increase my contribution to his personal reconstruction and development programme.
This, I must concede, was a first for me. I am used to people intending to take advantage of my kindness — which I believe is as deep as the oceans. Sometimes I am not in any position to give anything. If, however, I am sufficiently well-off, I am the one who decides what amount I am going to give. No correspondence is entered into. Those are the rules, aren’t they?
My friend didn’t share such sentiments. He was not going to be treated as a poor man with no class but was going to make his position in society well known. Finally, to get the man out of my hair as well as my chance of worldwide fame, I took another rand out of my pocket. He left, a satisfied man. I remained a seething man trying to pretend that everything was “cool man, no sweat at all”.
This scene came back to me a couple of days later, when I was in one of the trendoid restaurants in Yeoville. I had just finished having a meal and the waitress gave me my bill. I decided to see whether she was not overcharging me or doing anything felonious. Well, she definitely was not overcharging me but what she was doing was, to say the least, bloody presumptuous. She had calculated the bill and added for herself a 10 percent tip.
I know that people who wait on one in restaurants are getting a raw deal and I would be the first to take up arms on their behalf. If that fails or is voted an ineffective means of struggle, I will take the second best option, generosity. This, however, is not an all-embracing, democratic stance which says equal tips for all waiters regardless of colour, creed, sexual proclivity or attitude. I am quite intolerant of waiters who are rude and somehow manage to suggest that they are doing me a favour. These I don’t tip. If, however, I enjoyed my meal and the waiter made me feel like a customer — I don’t mean the sycophantic snivelling one gets from some waiters who spend 90 percent of the time asking you if everything is OK even when they can clearly see that you are busy whispering lies into someone’s illicit ear — I will tip.
This particular waitress had been very efficient and courteous throughout her service and I was going to give generously, but she had made the mistake of calculating the service charge for me and no one tells me how to spend my money.
Poor woman. She was less lucky than our intruder who could name his price. I was with my good friend Mduduzi — the social climber — and I didn’t feel the need to impress him.