John Matshikiza:WITH THE LID OFF
Abstraction rules. I am one of many abstractions, queuing with my faceless peers for the chance to vote for abstract promises. Crime will be defeated. There shall be jobs and housing. Your neighbours shall end up loving you as you love them.
An abstract situation. A man looks at me deadpan and extols the virtues of the car he’s trying to sell me. I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me, and neither of us knows how far he can push the boundaries of dishonesty. He knows the car he’s trying to sell me is a crock, even though it looks quite good. He knows that this is South Africa, and I have to have a car, and that I am trying to make the best marriage between my slender resources and my urgent need. If I don’t have wheels, I can’t work. If I don’t work, I can’t afford a set of wheels.
The man is trying to sell me his crock because he is desperately trying to upgrade his own status and get his hands on a reliable car for as cheap as possible – reliable, affordable and fancy at the same time. He knows just the kind of thing his heart is set on. We exchange phone numbers and walk away, holding our breath.
I look the next guy deadpan, straight in the eye, and try to sell him the crock that has been ruining my lifestyle for the last four years. I want to buy the other man’s crock. I want to believe that the other man is not lying to me. I want to buy his car and hope for the best. I need to sell my car for more money than it’s worth so that I can afford the other man’s crock. Push the doo-doo down the line and walk away.
This is all because we don’t have a decent transport system. The top people in government and the captains of industry don’t understand my problem. They do not have to worry about how they are going to get to work. Their work comes and gets them, and in style.
The rest of us, formerly honest people, are turned into desperadoes, and a desperado will do anything to anybody. It’s all anonymous and abstract anyway, so why lose sleep about it?
I have my limits. I will no longer be abused by a privatised pirate in a minibus made up of many stolen parts, who curses me as I sit on his seats, who looks down on me because I can’t afford my own wheels and have to rely on his instead. I have my dignity. Most people do. But most people can’t afford to stand on that dignity. They have to use every desperate means necessary to get to their place of employment. That’s if they have a job. Sometimes they just have to get to the hospital, or to their grandmother, or to the railway station so that they can get the hell out of here. They still have to run the same gauntlet. Nobody cares who you are or how delicate your situation is, because we’re all just abstractions bursting into each other’s universe now. The struggle is definitely over.
Back to this business about the car. The car thing has been going on for too many weeks now. A new car is out. A new car costs the same as a house. A second-hand car costs about two thirds of a second-hand house. A second-hand car that doesn’t set you back an extra house-ful is not to be trusted. Unless you strike lucky, which is why you keep on looking in the papers and coming across more and more second-hand desperadoes.
Two things you can’t do without in this town: a car, and a roof over your head. Food comes second. You can go a whole day without food, but try going a whole day without a car, and a whole night without a home. It’s bad, Jack. And nobody cares.
But I suppose I might as well come to the point. The point is: if, by some chance, you strike lucky enough to become the possessor (never the owner – the banks own stuff, you pay for it) of a car and/or a house, your problems are just beginning. Anonymous people want your stuff, and don’t give a damn how you suffered to get it. That’s what gets me.
This house I possess. This car. I’m losing heart. The attacks are getting more frequent. I feel like a beast at bay.
I loathe and fear becoming part of the “they” conversation, and yet there is no other vocabulary in this nightmare. “They” don’t show their faces. They come at night, or in broad daylight while I am at work, and devastate their way into my life. The old house, for which I can’t find a reliable tenant because the neighbourhood is shot to hell, is being gradually dismantled by looters, in spite of an armed guard and an alarm system. In the new house, our sleep is disrupted by the sound of anonymous hands trying to pull the burglar bars from the window of our bedroom. They don’t know me, but they want my stuff, and they want my blood.
If I could put a face to the act, I could put a scream in my voice and release something. But in this abstract silence, I am silenced.