Song of the Township
Robbie Hift
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www.hift.co.za
Foreword
The true stories that follow describe what life was like in South Africa towards the end of the Apartheid regime. During the civil war and the struggle for freedom, ’The Song of the Township‘ is the sound of life – the sound coming from a battle-torn Black school where 1,500 young boys and girls were struggling to find a future. It is the story of the many peoples of our ‘Rainbow Nation’ who lived in the heart of a very poor township. The story begins in 1987, but one can’t help but wonder if the song of the township is not exactly the same 30 years later in 2020!
Umlazi Township in Durban is typical of all townships in South Africa. Here we find a quarter of a million African people struggling to survive from one meal to the next. They are caught relentlessly in the grip of protest marches, forced strikes and the ruthless killings of the innocent in the middle of a civil war.
All the characters of this book are fictitious and the names of places have been changed but they are based on real people.
When King Solomon wrote his immortal words in the Holy Bible, he could have been speaking about one of our little townships:
"A time to be born
and a time to die.
A time to plant
and a time to uproot.
A time to love
and a time to hate.
A time for war and a time for peace.
For everything under the sun
There is a season."
(Extract from Ecclesiastes 3:2-8)
1.The Cock Crows at Dawn
"Time Past, Time Present and Time Future
are all perhaps contained in Time Present. "
– Burnt Norton by T.S. Eliot
In the 21st Century, any schoolteacher who dares to cane a naughty pupil in a classroom would very quickly find himself out on his ear, without a job and facing a very serious court case from the irate parents for injury to a minor. However, back in 1987, life was very different and the school children lived in fear of the teacher’s stick - as you will see from this story. I wish to take you back in time to the 1980’s towards the end of the Apartheid era in South Africa. Allow me to paint you a picture of the strange days of that era. Allow the inhabitants to sing you the rare and wonderful song of the township…
"You know how it is in the morning," said young Thabo, "The cock crows at dawn. The sun rises above the hills and you slide deeper down into the warm blankets while your eyes are still closed. Then you lie there as long as you can, until the last possible moment when you have to get out of bed to face the harsh light of day."
Thabo Zulu was only fifteen. Standing tall with gangly legs and a dark black skin, the youngster had a head of curly woollen hair. He was slightly built with deep-set intelligent eyes and a worldly wise way of cocking his head at each problem that came his way. Thabo lived with his parents and his three brothers and two sisters in a tiny two-roomed shack in Umlazi Township on the outskirts of Durban a large metropolitan coastal city. There was a communal tap in the street outside and a long-drop toilet made of rusted corrugated iron with a scarred wooden door. There was no electricity in the shack therefore Thabo’s stout mother cooked their meagre meals on a paraffin stove, and Thabo did his homework by the light of a candle at night. There was never enough money to afford the simple necessities of life let alone an alarm clock! His mother and father found it hard enough to feed all those hungry mouths so do you know how they managed to awaken at four thirty in the morning? Every morning at sunrise, they relied on the crowing of the cock in the backyard to awaken the family with his insistent "Cock-a-doodle doo,".
I was Thabo’s Std 7 English teacher and the young boy once confided in me, with a lopsided grin, “Last year we were very hungry and one Sunday, when my parents were at church, my brother and I killed the cock and cooked it for lunch. My father was furious with us but he also ate some of the chicken. But the next week, we could never wake up on time! My father was late for work, the children late for school, so we had to get another cock to wake us up in the morning!"
Thabo's job was to get his younger brothers out of bed and dressed. If he failed to do so, his father was certain to thrash him. When tiny Thabo shook his brothers awake they always complained long and loudly.
"So you can't win," Thabo told me theatrically, "whichever way you look at it. It is always the same: dress in a hurry, eat the lumpy porridge which my sulky sister prepares in a hurry and rush out the door. Halfway down the road to the station, "Oh no! I've forgotten my train ticket again." So I turn and race back home to face my mother's scolding tongue, "You'll be late for school, Thabo. Just look at you! You've forgotten your tie!"”
“Please tell me more about your life, Thabo,” I asked him curiously. “Your life is so different from mine.”
He nodded and took me into his confidence, sharing his story in the present tense, “It’s early and on my way to the train, I have to hurry on back down the road past the shebeen where they sell illegal liquor from early in the morning and the gangsters hang out to smoke a pipe of zol. I must face the jeering taunts of the tsotsis. The tsotsis are the thugs who hang around the shebeen. They are busy thinking up ways to steal money so they can buy a beer or some drugs to take the hard edge off the day.
When I get to the train station, the train is full up and there is standing room only, as always. So I squeeze in next to the fat aunty for protection so that some other boy won't steal my train ticket. But I wish the aunty wouldn't squeeze so hard against me! It makes me feel embarrassed the way she touches me. I slide away from her once the train is moving and keep a tight hand on my schoolbag. If it gets stolen, my father will kill me. "Oh no! There's a History test today and I forgot to learn. The teacher will cane me for sure. I am sure he enjoys it, the swine!"
I jump out the train at Umlazi Station and run past the street vendors selling fruit. I wonder if I can grab an orange, but it’s too dangerous because old Mkhize has an eye like a hawk watching us young kids.”
Thabo is caught up in his tale and continues passionately,” "Oh no, I can see the Kombi taxi already leaving the train station. When will the next one come?" I dump my bag by the side of the road and try to hitch a ride. Eish! The cars are going so fast and no-one will stop for me. Then I see my little Princess coming along through the crowd of pushing people. It's so nice to see a friendly face in this cold world. "Sakubona, Princess. Kunjani wena?" (Hello, Princess, how are you?)
Princess is shaking and tearful. She is only a small girl in Std.6 with thin, bony legs and tearful eyes. Her school dress is torn and I know her father will be cross because he is out of work now for seven months. She greets me by crying out, "Thabo, some bad boys cut my dress! They told me not to go to school. Why are they so jealous?"
"Haai! I am so sorry, my friend, it is too bad! They are jealous because they can't get into school because there are no places left in the school. Already we are sitting three to a desk and sharing one pencil between the three of us. That is why they cut your dress. Don't cry, my baby. Oh look! Here is a taxi at last."”
Thabo is a natural storyteller and like most Africans, he speaks in the present tense as he warms to his tale. He looks me full in the eyes and continues, “The Kombi taxi screeches to the kerb and the sliding door rumbles open. The driver’s mate is hanging out the door, clutching the doorframe with one hand and collecting money from the passengers with the other hand. The taxi is already nearly full with men and women off to work and the taxi is riding dangerously low on the axels. The impatient crowd in the road all push and shove to get in. I use my favourite trick and I squeeze my small body between their legs to get in before they can see me! Then I hear a wail from Princess outside who failed to get in. "Don't leave me, Thabo, I am afraid!"
Thabo is thinking aloud for me. “If I am late for school, I will get a hiding, but if I leave Princess here at the taxi rank someone will probably steal her schoolbag for money. Eish! It’s too bad, but I can’t leave her behind so I slide out of the taxi onto the road again and the taxi roars off in a cloud of dust.
"Princess, we are going to be late and it is all your fault!" I say to her. I am not happy. No, not happy at all. Every day I come late at school and the teacher, he hits me so hard my backside is still sore from the day before. But then my princess smiles up at me and it make my heart go ‘boom boom’. She puts her tiny hands up and gently pulls my head down to her lips and she whispers in my ear, "Thank you, Thabo. Thank you for waiting for me. I am so happy to have you as my friend."”
Thabo’s story made a deep impression on me as his White schoolteacher. In those early days in 1987, I remember so well driving my car to school each day along the bumpy, dusty roads through the black township of Umlazi. Mile after mile of wood and rusty corrugated iron shacks overflowing with barefoot kids and unemployed men and women who live in communal chaos. Most of the shacks do not have electricity and the shack dwellers have to make fires outside their doors in order to cook their food in fire-blackened iron pots. There is no running water in the houses and instead there is a communal cold water tap up the road that serves many homes with water. At the back of several shacks is a long drop toilet which consists of a deep hole dug into the ground with a corrugated iron shelter surrounding the hole.
Many of the children are never sure who their real mommy and daddy are. “Will my daddy ever come home again?” is the cry of countless children. Many of them are at the mercy of some “uncle” or “granny” who lives off child labour. They live surrounded by grim shebeens where the tavern keepers trundle crates of beer in wheelbarrows to supply desperate men - those sad souls who go to seek some temporary relief from hell in a quart bottle of beer.
The gravel road passes through a deep valley and on the hills above, the commuter train rumbles slowly along transporting hundreds of daily workers to the main city of Durban, 10 kilometres away. Driving on that road can be a nightmare as chickens, goats and pigs unpredictably swerve drunkenly in front of the car’s wheels.
The dirt road is full of potholes from the last rain. It twists and winds past the football stadium, on and on past the Full Gospel Church and past the place where a boy in my Std 8 class was murdered by a gang of thugs. Young Sipho refused to hand over the ten rand note in his pocket. He was only fourteen years old when he was stabbed to death. I felt so sad for his family because the year before Sipho’s murder, his father had refused to stay away from work during a general workers’ strike. Angry protesters stuck Sipho’s father into a pile of car tyres, poured petrol over the tyres and set fire to him.
I can remember frequent times in my classroom, when half the children wore a small square of black material on their white shirts. When I asked curiously, “Why are you wearing a square of black material?” the young boy or girl would reply sadly, “My brother was killed by the tsotsis last night because he refused to join their gang.”
While driving to school one day in 1987 I noticed the primary school on the left hill was closed, the windows smashed in by rocks thanks to a political group who petrol bombed it. However, higher up the hill, our large technical school, Hartfontein High, is still open, because it is surrounded by concrete palisade fencing to keep the warring factions out and the children safe inside. For how long? The unspoken question always hangs in the air: "When will the next bloodbath begin?" A White man must walk very warily when he comes to work in the township because racial tensions are very high during these troubled days of Apartheid. Fifteen hundred children in the overcrowded technical school and hundreds more each year crying out for entrance and regretfully being turned away. A staff of eighty seven teachers comprising of five Whites, two Indians and eighty African teachers. What a broiling pot of vastly differing cultures.
As I arrive at the school I can hear the bell ringing. It is 6.50 am in the cold African sunrise. A Black teacher stands on duty at the steel main gate with a Malacca cane in hand and meets the pupils as they arrive. Those students that come after 7a.m. get caned automatically. Both the boys and girls get the stick. Usually two stokes on the hand. It makes no difference if they are little girls in Std 6 or grown teenagers in Std10. Late means late!
As a white man I was surprised. I had previously been teaching in a White school where corporal punishment was heavily disapproved of and hitting children was considered taboo.
I walked up to this African teacher at the gate and I questioned Mr Khumalo. He was a broad-chested Zulu man with a shaved bald head, long drooping moustache and old eyes that had seen it all. He stood on gate duty dressed in his three-piece suit and holding a Malacca cane. He explained to me in his ponderous African accent, "Our African people have no idea of Western time. For generations we watch the sun slowly arise, then we know it is time to go to work. Then when the sun rises till midday and we know it is time to eat. Then the sun slowly goes down till it gets dark and we go to sleep. Now the White man comes along with his terrible clock and we are forced to adjust our whole concept of time. To our people, 6.45 am and 7.30 am are one and the same time. The only way to make them realize this new concept of time is by hitting them with a stick.
Sometimes the bus drivers boycott the buses for higher wages and the children have to walk seven or eight kilometres to school which makes them late. Many of the parents cannot afford train or taxi fare, so the children have to get up at 4 am and walk very far in the dark and they struggle to make it on time. The situation is very hard for us Blacks."
We stood watching as a kombi taxi came roaring up the road and stopped in front of the school gate with a screech of brakes. Young Thabo and Princess jumped out of the taxi and came running up the hill to the school. "Oh! God, please help me," panted Thabo desperately as he and Princess raced up to us.
The stern teacher stood ominously silent and waited for them to produce their identification cards, tapping his whippy Malacca cane on the palm of his calloused hand. "Why are you late?" thundered Mr Khumalo in a terrible voice. "Look at the time! It is half-past-seven. You are nearly one hour late!" Impatiently he manoeuvred Thabo around with the stick until Thabo's small bottom was lined up for a thrashing. Raising his hand high above his head, Mr Khumalo thrashed the boy hard. ’Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!’ Thabo didn't utter a sound. He was too proud for that, but his body was shaking and a tear fell silently from his eye. Princess was next.
"Lift up your hand!" shouted Mr Khumalo, "You must come to school on time. Get up one hour earlier next time!" ’Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!” on her hand and Princess squealed, "AAAIE! No more!"
"Now you two naughty children get to class!" ordered the teacher sternly. Then he turned his terrible attention on the next latecomers to come straggling up the road.
I asked the teacher in surprise, "Do you hit them when they come late even if the buses are on strike?"
Mr Khumalo frowned, "There is a very important principle here that you need to understand. We are training up the next generation to run this country after Apartheid finally crumbles. We know that democracy will soon come to our country after nearly 50 years of struggle. We can feel the pressure on the government growing stronger and
Impressum
Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Texte: Robbie Hift
Bildmaterialien: Robbie Hift
Cover: Robbie Hift
Lektorat: Robbie Hift
Korrektorat: Robbie Hift
Übersetzung: Robbie Hift
Satz: Robbie Hift
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 28.06.2022
ISBN: 978-3-7554-1638-8
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