A Just Defiance. Peter Harris

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СКАЧАТЬ From time to time, Jabu went with his mother to visit the house where his stepfather worked. He never went inside. He waited at the back near the staff quarters, occasionally seeing the white occupants, distant but not unfriendly. A different world. Jumbo gave them leftovers, bread and sometimes vegetables and meat. It was delicious and a change from the pap and wild spinach that was their staple diet.

      Once a week, usually a Saturday, his mother cooked meat on a coal stove. It was a great treat. There was no electricity in the house. Jabu helped with the washing up, taking the plates and pots out to the only tap on the property a few metres from the house.

      He was close to his mother. A large and enveloping woman, she was strong and always in control. Yet she never seemed to sleep. His grandmother made umqombothi, selling the traditional beer from the front room of the house.

      Jabu did not have much contact with white people. He grew up afraid of whites, although he’d never met any whites or talked with them. He thought they hated him. Surely that was why they made black people stay in distant places. He heard stories of black people being arrested and beaten for being in white areas or for being ‘cheeky’. The white police, cruising the township in their vans, dogs snarling in the back, were trouble. They terrified Jabu and he ran whenever he saw them. To Jabu, whites had big houses and cars; all the black people he knew served them or worked for them.

      His first encounter with whites occurred when he was about eleven years old while visiting Jumbo at the Highlands North house. Jumbo had given him a packet of leftovers and on the way to the bus stop Jabu ate from the packet. He hadn’t gone far when he noticed a white boy with an Alsatian on a leash, the kind of dog that barked in the back of police vans. The white boy, about his age, looked at him expressionlessly as he passed. Keeping his eyes down, Jabu quickened his pace, but the white boy’s stare made him uneasy. He didn’t want to be thought ‘cheeky’ but he couldn’t resist a backward glance. As he turned, he saw the white boy let go of the leash, just letting it drop from his hand. The dog sprang forward.

      Jabu ran, clutching the packet of leftovers. The dog was gaining. He looked back to see the boy standing still, curious but detached, and the dog racing at him. Jabu dropped the packet of food, even as he did so worrying that his mother would be cross with him. On his left was the open gate of a house, it was his only escape. He rushed through and shut the gate. In the street the dog snapped and snarled, bearing its teeth. Jabu stood petrified.

      He didn’t hear the white man approaching. The first he knew of him was when a large hand gripped his shoulder. He screamed. Terrified of the dog and the man, he cowered speechless.

      ‘Are you trying to break into my house?’ the man asked loudly in Afrikaans.

      ‘No, baas, the dog wanted to bite me,’ said Jabu but the man wasn’t listening, was dragging him to the house, hitting him, kicking him.

      The man phoned the police. ‘I caught a small kaffir breaking into my house,’ he told them. Soon two white policemen arrived and Jabu was thrown into the back of their van. The boy and the dog were nowhere to be seen. In the van, the fear gone, Jabu got angry. At the police station he was uncooperative and a black police constable threatened to lock him up for the night if he didn’t make a statement. Jabu spent his first night in prison.

      Meanwhile Jabu’s mother was frantically searching for him. Like Jumbo she too was a domestic worker. The next day she explained the situation to her white employer and asked for time off. The woman kindly offered to help her and, after phoning a number of police stations, tracked down Jabu and had him released. On the way home, the boy told his mother what had happened. She said nothing. It was the way of things.

      Throughout his school years, Jabu got good marks and sometimes first-class passes. He was among the smartest in the class, although no match for a stocky boy called Cyril Ramaphosa. They became friends. But at the age of sixteen Jabu was taken out of school and the friendship dwindled. Times were hard for the Masinas; they needed Jabu to start earning.

      For the next eight years he worked in factories and warehouses until he felt doomed to a life of manual labour and wages that were a pittance.

      At the age of twenty-four, Jabu went back to high school where he had to repeat Standard Seven. He passed and went into Standard Eight, determined that he would get his matric. But there were no exams in June that year due to student protests and boycotts. It was 1976. Jabu was not involved in the student movement or in politics, determined to keep his promise to his headmaster who had said that he would only take him back if he stayed away from the girls and did nothing wrong. It wasn’t easy. The events of June drew him in. The primary cause of the protests was the use of Afrikaans as the language of instruction. Jabu had no problem with Afrikaans, having grown up in Western Native Township where the majority of the residents were ‘coloured’ and spoke Afrikaans. But he sympathised with the other students. He also knew that this was not purely about Afrikaans, but also about the youth who would not accept their fate, like their parents and, perhaps, as he did. So he went with the crowd, but he did not lead it.

      He joined the rampaging students. Police firing teargas were everywhere. In the chaos of burning buildings, he saw the bodies of those who’d been shot, heard mothers screaming as they searched for their children in the black smoke. Saw dogs scavenging among the bodies and the debris. Watched as police vehicles appeared out of the smoke and gunfire rang out as the students dispersed, only to regroup and converge on another target. The night brought some relief to the noise and the gunfire.

      The uprising continued for the rest of 1976 and schooling was disrupted. Jabu saw his dream of getting an education fading. Through the first half of 1977 he worked hard. In June, the unrest erupted again in commemoration of those who’d died the previous year. Again schooling ceased. Again there were no exams.

      Jabu was becoming frustrated and despondent. He was now twenty-six years old. He heard of students leaving the country, of ANC recruiters offering passage to Mozambique and Swaziland. There was talk of joining the ANC in exile to fight the Nationalist government. At first Jabu thought the talk mere bravado. He returned to school, but a police presence on the grounds meant frequent disruptions. Studying was impossible.

      Jabu’s thoughts turned to the ANC. He heard from a friend called Caesar that if you joined the organisation in exile you would be looked after and get a good education. He decided to leave the country and made the necessary contacts. Some nights later, with Caesar and a woman, Popone Dube, he climbed through the border fence into Swaziland.

      They were met by an ANC representative and taken to a house in Manzini, called the ‘White House’. Here they ate and spent the night. Jabu was exhausted and scared, but convinced an education was worth the hardship.

      The following day, the three were visited by a man who introduced himself as John Nkadimeng. He’d arranged their passage into Mozambique and that night they were driven across the border in a Land Rover. The well-built man at the wheel said, ‘Welcome to the ranks of the ANC. I am Jacob Zuma.’ He was at ease, friendly, cracking jokes, interested in them. Eventually they reached Maputo and a large house that Jabu learnt was a ‘transit’ house called Matola, after the suburb.

      The next morning, Jabu met Solly Simelane, the ANC area commander. Did he want to finish his education or go for military training? Jabu opted to finish his schooling. That day he and a host of young people sat about in the house and its orchard, talking, already missing home. Jabu contributed little. He wondered if he’d done the right thing. If he’d ever see his family again. He was comforted by the fatherly figure of Jacob Zuma, moving in and out of the house, smiling, bringing documents for them to sign, making them feel at home in a foreign place.

      That night Jabu woke drenched in sweat. It was hot and stifling in the room and he needed air. Outside in the orchard he СКАЧАТЬ