Honorary White (17 page)

“But I am black and my presence among you should help you to appreciate the stupidity of the assumptions that Blacks are less capable, less intelligent and less human than Whites. The real difference between your black countrymen and myself lies in access to opportunity. The question you'll have to face is, how much opportunity would you wish to see granted to Blacks, the opportunity to vote, to negotiate the sale of their labor, to own land on which to build their homes, to compete according to their abilities?”

“What about the risks?” from another. “The risks of revenge on the part of the Blacks? You seem to expect us to take an objective view of what is primarily an emotional matter.”

“Just as you expect me to respond objectively to your questions about Blacks,” I replied.

“The point is well taken,” interposed President Bozzoli. “Now, Mr. Braithwaite, in the light of what you've been saying to us, would you consider returning to spend some time here on campus? Say, three to six months as guest professor? My feeling is that it would be of tremendous benefit to this university.”

Hearing the words coming from him in soft, measured tone I was immediately flattered. Then in a flash came the image of what would happen to me.

“Good God,” I exclaimed.

“What's the matter?” he asked. “Have I taken you by surprise?”

“You have, but I've just realized what that would mean. Your Government could require me to live in one of the black townships. Soweto, possibly.”

“What's the objection?” someone asked.

“Objection! Have you been to Soweto? No, thank you. I like the idea of living where I can afford and moving about with freedom. I won't be herded.” That train ride appeared in my mind, a horrifying apparition.

“That could easily be taken care of,” Mrs. Bozzoli intervened. “You could live in our house, be part of our household for the time you are here.” Said so naturally, not a moment of hesitation.

“But there's the matter of movement.” I was frantically searching for excuses, knocked off base by my own unpreparedness for this. Who would have imagined an invitation to stay on this White-only campus? “I'd be literally restricted to the campus. I couldn't walk into a cinema in town, or a restaurant or anything. I don't think I could stand that.”

“Seems like a small sacrifice, in view of the arguments you've recently raised,” some remarked. Belatedly I remembered Mrs. Bozzoli's invitation to share their home. How would I get out of that.

“I could not accept your invitation if I agreed to come back,” I said to her. “It would be quite unworkable. I would need a separate place where I could meet and talk with anyone at any time without having the comings and goings imposed upon you.”

“Then we'd arrange for you to have a faculty apartment.” She had the reply in a moment. I felt cornered.

“Your being here would be wonderful for us, for our students and for our community,” Dr. Bozzoli said. “The response you've already had should be some indication of how deeply we all appreciate what you've been saying to us. I'm sure we would be taking some small risk in having you disturb our complacency, but we are willing to take it. What about you? If we are to work together for realistic social change, it will take more than a short lecture or two. Our staff and students would need to talk with you, get a feel of your mind and spirit at close quarters. They would need to touch you, intellectually and spiritually. It would take a little time for us to learn about you and from you, as it would take a little time for you to learn about us.”

“Perhaps Mr. Braithwaite's comfort is more important than his political posture,” someone suggested softly, coating the barb with a light layer of laughter. I heard it and it disturbed me. Was that how they saw me?

“Dr. Bozzoli, I was completely unprepared for your invitation and would like to think about it. I must confess that my very immediate reaction to it is negative, because of how this society treats its Blacks. However, please let me have some time to think about it.”

“That's very reasonable,” he replied. “Sorry I sprang it on you like that, but the thought came to me just as unexpectedly. I'd like to see this university as an institution that's able to meet and accommodate a challenge. Your presence here would be very timely. If we all really want positive change to take place, some of us critics must step off the sidelines and jump into the game. I suppose I'm inviting you to take risks, but the decision must be yours. We would welcome your presence at this university.”

I thought of all the Blacks who had warned me that, somehow, I would be used by the Whites. Could this invitation be regarded as a way of using me? The Principal had no doubt about my uncompromising attitude to his Government's racial policies. He was not, in any way, asking me to dilute or abandon those views. It was an invitation, pure and simple. Why should I be looking over my shoulder for those Blacks who might censure me. Hadn't I always taken pride in my personal freedom of spirit? If one of the black colleges had extended such an invitation, would I have hesitated? Was my personal comfort at issue here, as had been hinted?

I didn't know. I really needed time to think.

“Don't worry for a moment about your accommodation, or anything else,” Mrs. Bozzoli insisted. “Just come, we need you.”

“Very few outsiders find their way to South Africa's academic centers,” a professor added. “Our students and teachers are facing the grim prospect of intellectual ingrowth. Challenge from a source uncommitted to this country could be a very important catalyst, at this time when we are all searching for answers. At least, give us an opportunity to see ourselves as we are seen, from the outside.”

I wanted to shout at them, “I'll think about it!” Couldn't they imagine how depressing, how nerve-racking it was for me in their city? Would it be enough for me to be with them and the students? Was there no way in which I might, at the same time, be of service to the Blacks, for my soul's sake?

Dr. Bozzoli interrupted to explain that I had been dragged away from some students who were still waiting for me at my hotel room, thus making it easy for me to say my adieux and leave.

 

The students had finished their meal and were dallying over coffee and cigarettes, looking relaxed and comfortable. I wondered again what my black friends in Soweto would think of this scene if they could see it. And the young, aggressive Indian of Robben Island: wouldn't he see this as definitive evidence that I had sold out?

Before I'd left the students, there'd been some talk of underground action. I wished to learn more about that and asked them. Perhaps, in my absence they had decided they'd said enough; I made several attempts to steer the conversation back to the topics we had been discussing, but soon became aware of their resistance.

“I think we were sort of blowing off steam,” one said. “When one is talking with someone like you, one is apt to overreach oneself. If you have a social conscience you cannot avoid awareness of the inequities around you. You want to do something about them, and that brings you up hard against authority. In this society authority is inflexible. So you have a choice. Either you follow the lead of your social conscience and take the risks or you shut up. If you're wealthy, you can get away with an occasional gesture, like taking some token interest in a nursery school for black children, or inviting a black writer or politician into your home. If you're not wealthy or influential, you compromise. They have ways of making you compromise, or they break you. By fear and intimidation. You know, we've been wondering something while you were away. If you were South African, how long do you think you'd last?”

“The point is,” I replied, “I'm not South African. If I had been I might never have become the man I am. All the odds are against it.”

For a while we continued to chat about other things, the U.'s drama program, films, sports.

Then they left. I wondered whether Dr. Bozzoli's appearance had affected them. I had introduced them collectively, so it was very unlikely that he had taken particular notice of any individual. In any case, I felt sure he was not more than pleasantly surprised to find me surrounded by a group of students, none of whom was personally known to him.

Yet it was clear that they had been turned off. For some reason fear had got into them, so there it was again. From every side I was hearing about it. Everywhere I saw evidence of it. From Blacks. From Whites. From black housewives and workers, and now from white students.

All of them, black and white, seemed powerless against the forces which intimidated and frightened them, yet there were undercurrents of rebellion; the earlier outburst of the students, the blacks' smoldering rage. With the entrenched Government resisting every effort toward positive change, the future offered nothing but violence and bloodshed. The Government was ready for a confrontation. Their huge stockpiles of armaments and their aggressive intransigence suggested that they would even welcome it. Everything pointed to a collision course.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY WAS
spent in preparation for my departure from South Africa. The officials at the Tourist Bureau who advised me were courteous and helpful, clearly concerned with projecting the right image. While waiting there, I picked up a copy of the day's
Rand Daily Mail.
It carried a story on the Government's intention to impose new curbs on “some groups.” The State President, Mr. Fouche, warned that a number of pressure groups were “trying to bring about unconstitutional political, social, and economic change in South Africa,” and claimed that “implicit in their call for change was the threat of internal violence. These groups do not have in mind normal evolutionary change,” Mr. Fouche was quoted as saying. “They are bent upon radical, even revolutionary political activities.” He claimed that they were financed from abroad and expressed the Government's determination to curb them. Oblique reference was made to NUSAS and the black South African Students' Organization, most of whose leaders were already banned or restricted.

In the opposition's response to Mr. Fouche, Mrs. Helen Suzman, the most vocal, spoke in defense of the predominantly white NUSAS, saying, “I do not always agree with everything NUSAS does, but I hope there are enough who will see that the Government does not financially starve NUSAS into submission. I believe it is important that NUSAS be allowed to operate. This is an organization of young people who care about racial injustices … ”

Not a single word in defense of SASO, the black organization.

A shocking story caught my attention. An eleven-year-old black child, Godfrey Lambert, had been picking up pieces of coal at the Beaufort West railway yard and was caught by three white railway workers who undressed him, smeared his body with grease and held him in front of the fire door of a blazing locomotive engine. The child had been literally roasted and was horribly scarred, physically and psychologically.

“At night he wakes up screaming,” his mother said, adding that she feared her son's mind was permanently damaged.

The white railway workers were each sentenced to six lashes and a year's imprisonment, suspended for three years.

I tried to imagine a parallel situation in which three Blacks brutalized a white child. In a South African court, the death penalty would have seemed lenient punishment indeed!

God, could I in my right mind consider returning to this country to work and live among people who could condone such atrocities? To suspend sentence on three such savages was nothing short of condoning their act. Reading about it stirred the rage inside me. In fact, reading the newspaper altogether was a frustrating exercise. The entertainment page advertised theatre, cinema, concerts, dogracing, etc., but I knew those ads were not directed to me and other Blacks. No need to include the “Whites Only” tag. But why the hell was I even bothering to think about it? Had I indeed been seduced into imagining myself exempt? Christ! Chasing around the country as a tourist with hardly a moment to spare was one thing. Wherever I went the Information Office would get the word there ahead of me and dictate that courtesy be shown me. Living in Johannesburg for three months within sight and sound of familiar amenities would be quite another thing.

Could I cope with it? What did it matter if my color barred me from cinemas and restaurants and bars? Was my own comfort so overriding a priority? The native Blacks had each known a lifetime of exclusion from all these things. Wouldn't the work with students and faculty be enough? I could always seek out my fellow Blacks in the black townships. If my feeling of identification was real, why did that prospect bother me?

And that other thing, the continued probing and questioning from the Blacks themselves. How much more of that could I take? Their sly, oblique quizzing always made me feel guilty of the comfort I enjoyed, the privileges I could exercise. But had I not earned each privilege, each area of comfort? Was I not autonomous, free to design my own life, answerable only to myself? Outside South Africa any of these Blacks could live as I live, be free to fulfill himself. Why should I be on the defensive? Why should I allow myself to be forced into playing someone else's role?

If I returned to South Africa, Dr. Bozzoli promised complete access to students and faculty, and complete freedom to be myself, thinking as I thought, believing as I believed, making no secret of my distaste for their racial policies. How long would they and the Government accommodate me and my views? Dr. Bozzoli probably thought he was making me a simple proposition. Hell, about as simple as the maze of a man's life.

 

Early next morning I packed my bags. All that remained was to pay my bill and get out to the airport. In the park across the street the scrawny black boys were already at their interminable games, dodging between the black workers who hurried past them. Hungry, uncared-for, this was their youth. What of their tomorrow and adulthood? Did they have any hopes, any aspirations? Did they know anything about love of country, these children who had been denied even love of family? It is said that the future of a country is invested in its youth. What part of South Africa's future was invested in these boys?

The hotel receptionist had proudly mentioned the national motto, “Unity is Strength.” Where was the unity? Was the strength that of arms and armaments? Was it understood that the words completely excluded any participation by Blacks? From my window the view offered a sense of ordered progress, of controlled growth, with no sign of the suppurating evils and the frustration and hatred they bred.

Those hurrying black figures seemed concerned only with getting to their jobs on time, neatly dressed, faces revealing nothing of their thoughts. Where did I hear that the black man was content with his lot? Those hurrying men and women were no different from myself except in experience of living in freedom.

At the hotel entrance, the car was waiting to take me to the airport.