I suppose I would have enjoyed my schooling years had I not had to get up at 5am in the dark winters, walk to the top of Mncube Drive and wait for several minutes for the school bus to collect and take us to suburbia. When the bus got stoned, two or three times around the Diepkloof area, Arrow Coaches threw in the towel and more discreet mini-buses picked us up and dropped us off at our doorsteps. Young boys attending school in the township, dressed in the mandatory grey pants and white shirt, threw those stones. One time a girl sitting next to me got her eyebrow cut pretty badly from the flying glass — she still bears the scar.
We were the original buppies. But few have truly expressed their potential. One would have expected us to be today’s captains of industry, wouldn’t one? Our country’s political and corporate leaders, today’s buppies, are not the private school kids. No. The girls and boys I went to school with are, frankly speaking, nowhere to be noted professionally, except for a few. The lovely accent stuck, but that was about it, I’m afraid.
We found it impossible to fit into our social circle at school or at home in the township, as there was absolutely no precedent for our lot. We were apartheid’s guinea pigs, the first black test-tube babies — and the experiment failed. The boys in particular weren’t fully accepted by their white counterparts and were regarded as sissies in the black community. To prove that they too were tough, they got involved in crime. It would start off with forming or joining a friendly cool-cat’s gang, then progress to selling weed, dealing guns, maybe gang rape. Some went to prison, much to their professional parents’ great consternation and eternal puzzlement.
Our parents, God bless their souls, had no succession plan in mind for us. It wasn’t clear how far our ”superior” education could take us. It was the 1980s and they had no plan. How could they have known what this high-risk gamble would do to their children? What they were going through. Academically, we were very good, but generally not as competitive as the white kids, only because the logistics of leading two lives was too complicated and we had far greater home responsibilities. While our township-school peers developed a healthy appetite for power, we lost the plot in the confusion and never quite regained it.
But it wasn’t all pain. The original buppies threw school ”socials” in a manner yet unsurpassed. Man, we had those dance halls cooking! Those were the days of Kamazu, Stimela, Soul II Soul, The Chimes, Joyce Sims, Colonel Abraham and Adeva’s Musical Freedom. The guys were cute too! It was a small market so fame came easily. Legends were born. There was one guy at St Benedict’s that I took a shy liking to. He was cool, calm and had the most collected perm in town. I’d get a glimpse of him on the afternoon Kombi route. I expected him to go very far one day. I hear he bombed out and lost his looks (and, thankfully, the hair).
The most charming all-rounders were guys from the now defunct St John Bosco. I like to think I helped establish one of them by accompanying him to his matric dance. (I did, however, abscond to a competitor’s afterparty. Bummer.) I wasn’t hot about the St David’s contingent — aloof rugby types, yawn. Too many of the guys one knew either dropped out of varsity, are hustling heavily or behind bars for white-collar crimes.
This is the story I shared at a dinner recently. The host, a banker, attested to being an erstwhile stone-thrower of the grey and white ensemble and here we were, enjoying a good meal together. He’d been a student activist leader and had regarded us, middle-class brats, as the enemy. ”The sellouts”. Listen, our parents just wanted a decent education for us. That’s all. We were being regimented to stealthily earn our way to the top of middle-management, while our township-bred counterparts were readying themselves to take over the very top rungs. How difficult could it be after all? In a bygone empowerment venture they made sure I, the other, quickly dropped my cynicism about entering investment areas we knew little about. ”It doesn’t matter, man, one learns,” they’d characteristically chide me. That’s the spirit and look where they are now: today’s buppies in a friendlier environment. Amen.