Chapter Eleven.
South Africa, 1992-1994.
When you read about South Africa during the early 1990’s, the emphasis is mainly positive: the release of Mandela; the referendum to end apartheid; the suspension of violence by the armed wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe [“Spear of the Nation”]; and the other giant steps leading to majority rule.
But South Africa simultaneously experienced another, more sinister series of events. In 1990, there was an ethnic massacre in Sebokeng, some fifty kilometres from Jo’burg. Throughout the early 1990’s, violence raged between supporters of the ANC and those of the predominately Zulu INKATHA. The latter organisation, backed by the South African Defense Force, committed outrages against ANC-dominated locales that provoked some in the ANCYL to respond in kind. While it did not derail the democratization process, this ugly infighting was ongoing.
The transition to majority rule also brought out xenophobic violence against workers from other African countries, drawn to South Africa by its relative prosperity. In my opinion, foreigners were scapegoated for the deprivations suffered by black South Africans, and for the frustrations attendant upon the process that would soon bring them a measure of relief. In sum, I found South Africa to be a hopeful, but very violent, place. It provided both a model for this nascent insurrectionist, and yet another warning.
About three years after Sebokeng, I witnessed a vivid instance of xenophobia in “Alex,” during a visit to recruit workers for the hotel where I was myself employed. (More on my job soon.) Having taken a matatu from the hotel, which was located in the bohemian enclave of Melville, to Alex, I was walking from the motor park to the hiring hall, a gathering place for job seekers. Since I had been to Alex before, to attend rallies and meetings, I knew my way around. I was also used to the sinister, looming tenements there, which housed refugees from across Africa. I had learned from an acquaintance in the ANCYL that residents called this township, “Gomorrah.” The nickname was prompted, no doubt, by the political and communal violence of 1991-92. So I knew enough to be wary that day.
Since the hiring hall was only some 150 metres from a police station, I was unprepared for what I witnessed. There, in front of me, surged a large, angry mob, perhaps fifty or sixty people, both men and women. They were heckling and prodding a poor fellow who had been stripped naked, and they were now in the process of “necklacing” him. If you are unfamiliar with this barbaric practice, it consists of enclosing the victim’s chest and arms in a rubber automobile, or truck, tire, dousing him with petrol, and setting him afire. Necklacing is usually fatal; where it is not, it can be even worse.
To an Acholi, practices such as necklacing are kir: they violate our taboo against murder. Pushing my way to the forefront of the mob, and assuming it would not entail too great a risk to myself, I resolved to try to help the victim. Accosting one of the ringleaders, a huge, fat fellow wearing torn shorts and a soiled singlet, I cautiously asked, “Excuse, please. But what has this man done?”
The fat fellow laughed scornfully, and replied, ”Better you ask who he is. He’s one of those damned foreigners who come here to steal our livelihood.”
“But how,” I persisted, “can you know this?”
“Huh!” he sneered. “Look how black he is! He is a Mozambiquan, the devil! He is too black to be a South African.” Then, he looked more closely at me. “Say, you, Tata! [“Daddy”] You also have the look of a foreigner. Is this the reason for why you are interfering?”
With that, prudence beckoned, and I disappeared into the crowd, doing my best to ignore the sobs and screams of the victim, accompanied by the repulsive smell of burning petrol, rubber and flesh. I felt so sorry for this poor man, whose sufferings could easily have been my own!
That day, I did no hiring, preferring temporarily to add the extra gardening and housekeeping chores to my own heavy workload. Three days later, I travelled to Soweto, where I hired a stout matron from Botswana and a wiry Zimbabwean, both of whom turned out to be good employees.
What lesson did I draw from that horrific incident in Alex? In a sense, the “lesson” was reinforcement of a truth I already understood: how internecine conflict dogs much of Africa (Nigeria, Kenya, etc.). Of course, the “divide and conquer” tactics of the colonialists bear much of the blame for this. Yet many of Africa’s interethnic conflicts antedated the colonial period, and others have been the fruits of misrule and deprivation since Independence.
That day in Alex, October 7, 1992, also reinforced the lesson I had learned from the importunate Zimbabwean on my very first day in Nairobi: the extent to which would-be progressives must be vigilant about what has since been dubbed “collateral damage.” A sub-tenet of this truth is how likely people like myself are to become victims of collateral damage.
I have twice mentioned my employment at a hotel in Melville. That I was able to get this excellent position I ultimately owed, once again, to my Kenyan benefactor, Mr. Eliyahu Josephai. The hotel was called “The Garden House.” As the name implies, it was a boutique hotel with fairly extensive grounds, including a small swimming pool (that nobody used). Like everyplace else in South Africa, the lovely hotel was also a prison; that is, it was surrounded by a high steel wall with a locked gate, as sole means of entrance and egress.
The Manager, a canny, but congenial, Boer gentleman with a lovely young English wife, selected me from among hundreds of applicants for the position of “Assistant Manager for Guest Relations.” The principal reason I was chosen was my polyglotism. The creation of the new position had been prompted by the growing numbers of international tourists who were visiting the country in anticipation of celebrations for majority rule. Since many of the visitors hailed not only from Europe and the Americas, but from numerous African countries, my fluency in French, English, Luo, Kiswahili, and several other African languages (smatterings of which I had picked up in the course of my travels) was exactly what the hotel had had in mind when they created the position. This may also explain why, during my sixth month in the job, my duties were expanded, and my job title enhanced, to “Associate Manager for Guest & Staff Relations.” By then, I was earning the equivalent of a junior ministerial salary in Ngongo. Was it any wonder I was slow to return home?
As mentioned, my stay in South Africa wound up lasting almost three years, from 1992-94. It was only when “the dust finally settled,” so to speak -- when, on 27 April 1994, majority rule officially took effect -- that “vv,” or “YT,” resolved to pack his bags and face the inevitable. (I almost wrote, “bite the bullet,” but decided that the metaphor would carry unfortunate connotations.)
During these years, besides my job at the Garden House, my time was more than filled with other activities. Once again as an un-matriculated scholar, during each of three semesters, I took courses in Romance Languages and Global Economics, at “Wits,” as the locals called the University of Witwatersrand. Of course, these classes, six in all, were at the post-graduate level. Unfortunately, the last two were soon to be curtailed by my departure for Ngongo.
The “other activities” I mentioned numbered three, two of which were closely related. For, in addition to my studies, as in Nairobi, my political and social lives in S.A. were inseparable. In this case, I consorted with members of the ANCYL, attending many of their meetings, rallies and, of course, dance parties. In the course of these events, I once again significantly expanded my acquaintances.
The last sentence was not a sly reference to the several female cadres who were attracted to the tall, handsome, witty (ahem!) comrade from east-central Africa! I also found myself in frequent colloquy with a wide variety of other activists, ranging from tough working people and superannuated ANC fighters, to pontificating intellectuals and miscellaneous leaders, followers, and fellow travelers. You might say that all of these politico-social contacts in S.A. comprised a third strand in my ongoing studies. Not to be snide, but I could call this strand, “Psychology, Normal and Otherwise.” A couple of examples will suffice.
Scattered among the ANC membership were a few older men and women. I suppose these seniors were tolerated because Africans are supposed to respect their elders. But the seniors were a generally useless lot, whose main role was to windbag it at meetings, making the meetings even longer and more tedious than the squabbling of the rest of us made them. (By now, I was myself twenty-three, going on forty.)
Many of these senior windbags were enough to drive one to drink or, as preferred by the ANCYL, to ganja [“marijuana,” or “India Hemp”]. But a few were colorful, genuinely interesting characters. For whatever reason, I often found myself lending an ear to one or another of these garrulous oldsters. For instance, there was a broad-faced, light-skinned Ghanaian who must have been in his sixties, and who reminded me a bit of Mishach Ndukwe. This man’s formative years had been spent with the British Army’s West Africa Division in Burma, during World War Two. He would pour into my ear many sibilant war stories, presumably mixtures of truth and fantasy.
Another old fellow was even more entertaining. Having served with the ANC’s Umkhonto we Sizwe, this man had been captured by the South African Defense Force (SADF), and suffered a lengthy imprisonment, including torture, before escaping to Mozambique, where he signed on as a guerrilla fighter in that country’s own civil war. Piecing together his rambling, whispered monologues with what I had learned from more reliable sources, I deduced that he must have fought for FRELIMO, the Russian-backed side, against RENAMO, the South-African proxy. (Never mind what those initials represent! Post-Colonial African history is a veritable alphabet soup.)
His experiences of war had rendered the man, who styled himself “King Alfred the Greater,” more than a little mad. His ramblings included two recurrent themes: his stupendous battlefield exploits, and the failure of those in charge to compensate him adequately. I heard a great deal from King Alfred, whose fantasies were a welcome change, I suppose, from my round of hotel work, study, and politics.
Whenever I wearied of life, it seemed, Alfred was at my elbow, distracting me from some meeting or obligatory social event with his whispered ramblings. Another theme of these monologues were his audiences with African dictators who, in truth, seemed to share many of his paranoid tendencies. To hear the story of how Idi Amin Dada recognized Alfred’s superiority to the point of genuflecting and kissing his foot, or of how Ngongo’s own General Festus Nkwema seated him at his right hand for a sumptuous banquet that included crocodile croquettes, was a tonic for my often tedious existence.
To be continued...
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