Apartheid South Africa:
Identity - We and They
How did apartheid create and
enforce divisions based on ideas of
“we and they”?
Source 1
The Population Registration Act (No. 30) of 1950 provided the basis for separating
the population of South Africa into different races. Under the terms of this act, all
residents of South Africa were to be classified as white, coloured, or native (later
called Bantu) people. Indians, whom the National Party in 1948 had refused to
recognize as permanent inhabitants of South Africa, were included under the
category "Asian" in 1959. The act required that people be classified primarily on
the basis of their "community acceptability"; later amendments placed greater
stress on "appearance". The act also provided for the compilation of a population
register for the whole country and for the issuing of identity cards. The Act was
typified by humiliating tests, which determined race through perceived linguistic
and/or physical characteristics. It could lead to members of an extended family
being classified as belonging to different races, e.g. parents White, children
Coloured.
An Office for Race Classification was set up to overview the classification process.
This is how the Act defined the “White”, “Coloured” and “Bantu” population
groups:
"A White person is one who is in appearance obviously white – and not generally
accepted as Coloured – or who is generally accepted as White – and is not
obviously Non-White, provided that a person shall not be classified as a White
person if one of his natural parents has been classified as a Coloured person or a
Bantu..."
"A Bantu is a person who is, or is generally accepted as, a member of any
aboriginal race or tribe of Africa..."
"A Coloured is a person who is not a White person or a Bantu..."
Source 2
All South Africans were issued with identity numbers that indicated the population
group to which they had been allocated. The South African Identity Number was 13
digits long. The first six digits gave the birth date of the holder (year, month, and
date). The next four digits acted as a serial number to distinguish people born on
the same day, and to differentiate between the sexes: digits 0000 to 4999 were for
females, 5000 to 9999 for males. The eleventh digit indicated whether the holder
was a South African citizen (0) or not (1) – the latter for foreigners who had rights
of residency. The penultimate digit recorded race, according to the above list –
from Whites (0) to Other Coloured (7). The final digit of the ID number was an
arithmetical control (like the last digit on ISBN numbers).
Source 3
Nomvuyo Ngcelwane grew up in District Six. Many stories from District Six are
about ‘Coloured’ people who were forced to leave the suburb due to the Group
Areas Act. Nomyuvo writes of her experiences as a young black girl in this area
that was demolished by the apartheid state. In this excerpt from her
autobiography, Sala Kahle District Six An African Women’s Perspective, she
describes the “dompas” (pass books) and the police.
Note: In the source the writer uses the word “kaffir”. This was an offensive and
derogatory term used to describe black people.
Sometimes the police came only to raid those who did not have a “pass”. The
“dompas” was a booklet issued by the government to Africans, certifying their
identity and granting them permission to stay in a particular area.
One Sunday afternoon, the police came across the usual Sunday gathering at
Cross Street and asked to see everybody’s pass. One of the residents — in fact,
the father of Dennis and Lillian, my friend — who was Xhosa by birth but who
“played Coloured”, did not produce a “dompas”. He presented an identity
document. The officer looked at the document for a moment and threw it back
in the man’s face, hitting him on his left eye.
“Kaffir,” the officer demanded, “waar is jou dompas?” — Where is your dompas?
The man, who used to be called Dan but who had changed his name to Daniels
and used it as his surname, tried to explain to the officer that this was unfair,
because he, Daniels, had already explained to him and his colleague that he did
not have to carry a pass. He carried an identity document, because he was
Coloured.
“Hey, don’t play games with me,” said the officer. “When we walked in you were
all speaking kaffir-taal.”
“Not me,” said Dan. “I wasn’t speaking Xhosa.”
The officer stared at his neck and said, “You say you’re Coloured?”
“Yes,” replied Lillian’s father.
“Can you then explain the two scratches on your neck? Kaffirs have that when
they use muti.”
Dan kept quiet and just stared at the officer.
“Talk man, do you still say that you are Coloured?”
“Yes,” replied Lillian’s father, with a frown. “I showed you my ID.”
The other officer intervened by looking at the identity document, and when he
had satisfied his curiosity, he pulled his colleague by the arm and they left.
“He can’t do anything about it even if he’s suspicious,” said Lillian’s father to his
friends. “They made me Coloured the day they gave me that identity document.
I can prove that in a court of law.”
The other men did not say much, only one responded.
“You have to be so careful these days,” Lillian’s father said, looking around.
“These Boere seem to know our life style. Did you hear the remark about the
umqaphulo?” he asked, referring to the two scratches. “And what do they know
about umuti?”
“They get the information from their Black colleagues,” replied one man.
“We’ll always do something to get round their laws,” said Lillian’s father. “It’s not
that I wanted to be Coloured, it’s because of their job reservation laws!
Coloureds have a much better chance in the workplace. An African won’t get a
job, even if he qualifies for it. Before he can get the job, it has to be offered to
three Coloureds. It’s only after they’ve all turned the job down that us Africans will
be next in line.” Lillian’s father turned to the men on his left. “You know, as well as
I do. With the pass laws that keep us out of the urban areas, there is little chance
for a Black person to get a proper job and survive.”
“Say that again,” said another man in the group.
Sala Kahle District Six An African Women’s Perspective – Nomvuyo Ngcelwane, Kwela
Books, Roggebaai, 1998, p 63 – 64
ISSUES TO THINK ABOUT
What do you think the affects on people were of the government only making it
law that black people carry passes?
Why do you think Lilian’s father would chose to change his identity to ‘Coloured’?
Do you agree with his decision to do so?
What cultural criteria did the policemen use to categorise Lilian’s father?
How did Lilian’s father’s classification as ‘Coloured’ and the policemen’s views of
him show up apartheid’s race classifications?
Do these racial classifications still exist today even though the laws have changed?
Should these classifications exist? Are they harmful? Can they change?
Source 4
Woza Albert is one of the many plays written during apartheid that criticised the
policies of the National Party government. The play, written by Percy Mtwa,
Mbongeni Ngema, Barney Simon, helped to inform, not only South Africans but also
the rest of the world about the evils of apartheid. In the introduction to their play
the authors write,
“Most of the South African government’s policies are the result, they say, of
their Christian Nationalist principles. Woza Albert! is our fantasy of a Second
Coming to South Africa by Morena, the Saviour.”
The play, about the second coming of Jesus as a black man to apartheid South
Africa, was first performed at the Market Theatre in 1981. The opening scene
depicts an interaction between a policeman and black musician.
Scene One
Percy: reappears wearing his pink nose and a policeman’s cap. He is applauding
patronisingly. Mbongeni stares at him, stops applauding.
PERCY: Hey! Beautiful audience, hey? Beautiful musician, né? Okay, now let us
see how beautiful his pass-book is! (To appalled Mbongeni:) Your pass!
MBONGENI: (playing for time): Excuse my boss, excuse? What?
PERCY: (smugly, to audience with his back to Mbongeni): Okay, I’ll start again.
You know you’re a black man, don’t you?
MBONGENI: Yes, my boss.
PERCY: And you live here in South Africa?
MBONGENI (attempting to sidle off-stage behind Percy’s back): Yes, my boss.
PERCY: So you know that you must always carry your pass.
MBONGENI: Yes, my boss.
PERCY: Okay, now what happens if you don’t have your pass?
MBONGENI: I go to jail, my boss.
PERCY: And what happens if your pass is not in order?
MBONGENI: (nearly off-stage): I go to jail, my boss.
PERCY: (wheels on Mbongeni): H-E-E-EY! Your pass!!!
MBONGENI: (effusively): OOOOhhh, my pass, my constable! (Moves to Percy,
holding out his pass.) Here’s my pass my lieutenant.
PERCY: Okay, now let’s have a look. (Examines the pass.) Where do you work?
MBONGENI: I work here, my Captain.
PERCY: You work here? If you worked here your passbook would be written
‘Market Theatre, Johannesburg’. But look, it is written ‘Kentucky Southern Fried’. Is
this Kentucky Southern Fried? And look at the date. It tells me you haven’t
worked in four years. This is vagrancy, you’re unemployed. (To audience:) Ja, this
is what I call ‘loafer-skap!’.
MBONGENI: No, my Colonel, I am a guitarist, I’ve been playing music for five
years, my boss.
PERCY: Hey, you lie, you fuckin’ entertainer!
MBONGENI: It’s true, it’s true, my boss.
PERCY: Can you show me where it is written ‘musician’? Hey? Where’s a guitar?
Where’s a guitar? Where’s a guitar?
MBONGENI: Ag, nee — my Brigadier, I am self-employed!
PERCY: Self-employed? (Chuckling collusively to audience:) Hell, but these kaffirs
can lie, hey?
MBONGENI: Maar, dis die waarheid, but it is true — my General!
PERCY: You know where you should be?
MBONGENI: No, my boss.
PERCY: You should be in prison!
MBONGENI: No, my boss.
PERCY: And when you come out of prison, do you know where you should go?
MBONGENI: No, my boss.
PERCY: Back to the bush with the baboons. That’s where you belong! Kom hierso!
Section 29. (To audience, pleasantly:) Do you know about Section 29? That’s a
nice little law specially made for loafers like him. And I’ve got a nice little place
waiting for him in Modder-B Prison. Kom jong! (Pulls Mbongeni by his track-suit.)
MBONGENI (aside): Shit!
PERCY: (threatening): What did you say? Wat het jy gesê?
MBONGENI: Nothing — my President!
Woza Albert – Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema, Barney Simon, Methuen Drama, London,
1990, p 1 – 5
ISSUES TO THINK ABOUT
What do you think were the intentions of the writers of this scene? How have they
achieved their intentions?
What do you notice about the way in which Percy addresses the policeman? What
does this tell you about authority and people’s reactions to it?
How do you think the pass laws would have affected black people’s feelings of
being a ‘South African’?
Source 5
During apartheid, many black South Africans had two names. One was the name
that they were given t by their parents and was in their own language. The other
was a European name, that their employers would refer to them by. In the poem,
My Name, Magoleng wa Selepe writes about the effects of this.
My Name
Nomgqibelo Ncamisile Mnqhibisa
Look what they have done to my name. . .
the wonderful name of my great-great-grandmothers
Nomgqibelo Ncamisile Mnqhibisa
The burly bureaucrat was surprised.
What he heard was music to his ears
‘Wat is daai, sé nou weer?’
‘I am from Chief Daluxolo Velayigodle of emaMpodweni
And my name is Nomgqibelo Ncamisile Mnqhibisa.’
Messia, help me!
My name is so simple
and yet so meaningful,
but to this man it is trash. . .
He gives me a name
Convenient enough to answer his whim:
I end up being
Maria. . .
I. . .
Nomgqibelo Ncamisile Mnqhibisa.
Magoleng wa Selepe - My Name, A Century of South African Poetry, AD. Donker,
Jeppestown, 1996, p 350
ISSUES TO THINK ABOUT
How would you describe the feelings expressed in this poem?
What has been done to her by the apartheid official?
How does this poem represent the effects of apartheid on black people?
How did the apartheid divisions of
“we and they” affect South
Africans?
Source 1
William Modisane, better known as Bloke Modisane, was a South African writer,
actor and journalist for Drum Magazine. He tried to promote non-racism in the arts
by making concerts and theatre available to Black audiences and tried to further
the efforts of the non-racial arts organisations. In 1959 he moved to England.In
1963, he published his autobiography Blame me on history. This detailed his
despair at the bulldozing of Sophiatown, where he had lived and his frustration and
anger with apartheid. As a result, the book was banned in 1966.
This extract is from his autobiography.
All of us in South Africa have been conditioned to the attitudes and the
prejudices of our society. We are educated into an acceptance that racially we
are different, that the white man has advanced to such a high degree of
civilisation that it will take the Native 2 000 years to attain that degree. This single
fact exists as a premise in the minds of people who may otherwise not themselves
be necessarily prejudiced. I was a dinner guest at the home of Dr Ellen Hellmann
in Houghton. After dinner we retired to the living-room for coffee whilst listening to
European classical music. I suppose I must have visibly seemed to be enjoying
and recognising the music.
‘Do you like this music?’ Dr Bodo Koch said.
‘Yes.’
‘I thought you people like only jazz,’ Dr Koch said. ‘Jazz has no meaning for me, I
think it’s all noise.’
‘I like both,’ I said.
‘I can’t understand that,’ he said, ‘I’ve been surrounded by this music all my life –
it was the first sound I ever heard. I don’t suppose it may have been the same for
you.’
Dr Bodo Koch is above race prejudice, even though it may not seem so within
the implications of what he said, but he and I are products – and perhaps victims
– of the attitudes of our society.
Bloke Modisane, Blame me on History, AD Donker, 1986 (First published in 1963), pp 93
and 94
Source 2
This extract is from an interview with Gertrude Fester in 1987 from a book, Lives
of Courage, by Diana Russell. Gertrude Fester was a member of the United
Women’s Congress.
I come from quite a comfortably off Coloured family…My family is not politically
involved, although they’re very sympathetic…I remember going to the park to
play as a child. Although there were no ‘Europeans Only’ signs up, we knew we
weren’t supposed to enter, so we went in when no one was around and played
quickly, feeling very scared. When the white children came, we’d sometimes be
defiant and stay there and fight them.
My mother comes from a rural area and I remember going there every holiday. It
was really terrible because we couldn’t go into shops. We had to use a little
window at the side. We couldn’t go into cafés to get a cold drink. We couldn’t
even go to a public toilet. These restrictions became part of my consciousness. I
will always be scared to go into a restaurant. It’s not easy to unlearn these things.
Experiences like this give you a permanent inferiority complex. For example, I was
studying in Holland in 1981. I’d been living there for a year when I walked down
the street one evening looking for a pub with a whole group of mostly black
student. But every time we came to one, I’d say, ‘No, we mustn’t go in there.’ I’d
rejected about ten or twelve pubs in this way, so people asked, ’What’s wrong
with you?’ I realised that I was scared to go in! I’ve had these kind of scared
feelings my whole life. Most of the cinemas in South Africa are open to black
people now, but I don’t have the courage to go to many of them. It’s the same
with a new restaurant.
My sister, a radiographer, was living in England for sixteen years. She came back
here with her husband on holiday two years ago. We travelled up the coast
stopping at a lovely restaurant. My mother was hovering outside until I brought
her in. She is normally a very confident woman, but she became completely
subservient. Before we left, my sister said she wanted to go to the toilet. She
asked us, ‘Are you sure it’s safe to go in?’ In the end, she didn’t go because she
was scared despite having lived out of this country for sixteen years.
Russell, D, Live of Courage, Basic Books Inc, 1989, pp 244 & 245
Source 3
This is an extract from Ezekiel Mphahlele’s autobiography, Down Second
Avenue. He shares some of his experiences as a child in Pretoria and his
interactions with white children. We can see how black and white children
saw each other differently and reacted differently to each other.
Note: In the source the writer refers to Pretoria as a “Jim Crow” town.
Between 1876 and 1965 in some states in the USA, laws referred to as the Jim
Crow Laws were passed that segregated black and white people. As in South
Africa, trains, busses, schools and public places in some states were segregated
according to race.
Pretoria has always been a tough Jim Crow town. No better than the outside
dorps in any of the provinces. Some of the English families my mother worked for
from time to time were patronising towards me. Others resisted me. She worked
for a Dr. Broderick once. His children often came to me or called, ‘John, you
want Eva?’ Eva was my mother, John was not my name. Or ‘Eva, here’s your
son.’ Then they looked me up and down, faces screwed up, eyes squinted.
Sometimes they tossed me an orange. I never got used to being examined like
that. I resented it but at the same time feared that any moment the children
might decide to tell their parents that I was undesirable. Apparently they didn’t.
But after a time I just went straight to lean against the side wall of my mother’s
little room and waited until she should come out of the big house. She continued
to work for English families. She always refused to learn Afrikaans and she spoke
English with ease although with a number of errors; most of it self-taught through
working continuously for English-speaking families. We spoke northern Sotho at
home and a mixture of Afrikaans and Sotho outside.
The Afrikaans people for whom Aunt Dora washed made no bones about the
fact that they didn’t want me to get into their kitchen. Their children merely
peeped through a window. Otherwise, I didn’t seem to exist. I felt easier that
way. If a child wanted to let the mother know I was about, it said, ‘Ma, die
wasgoed kaffir is hier – Mummy, the washing Kaffir has come.’ And the child took
no more notice of me.
I came to learn the hard way that one had to keep out of the white man’s way.
There was enough hardship in my home without deliberately waiting to absorb
the cruder impacts from our surroundings. So if a group of whites walked, as they
invariably did, abreast of one another on pavements, we gave way. In a sense
we were happy enough that we could visit public places like the Museum, the
Zoo, the Union Buildings and so on, on certain days only, when the whites would
not be there as well. We Blacks were not even tolerated near the fence of a
park. Such places were foreign to us, and so we loved to stand with our faces
pressed against the wire fence, to admire and envy white children playing on
swings and ‘horses’. To us they were performing a feat, and we often shouted to
congratulate them on their antics. When we were barked away by the white
caretaker, I hated him, and hated the children and envied them...
December 16th was Dingaan’s Day. A public holiday meant to commemorate
the death of Piet Retief and his men at the hands of ‘treacherous Dingaan’, the
Zulu king and Shaka’s brother.
It was common for Afrikaners on Dingaan’s Day to parade along Church Street in
the centre of Pretoria on horseback. They wore Voortrekker clothing and largebrimmed hats and big broad bandoliers. It was quite a spectacle as these men,
some of them Anglo-Boer War veterans, grimly filed down the street, obviously
admired by the large crowds of whites on the sidewalks and rooftops.
I came from the suburbs that Dingaan’s Day of 1934, when I saw these droves of
horsemen go down the main street. Just then I spotted Rebone tentatively
craning her neck on the fringe of the crowd of whites. When I joined her, she told
me she had been to the station to see her aunt off to Johannesburg.
‘Let’s go deeper in,’ she said in her usual animated fashion.
‘I’m scared.’
‘C’mon, Eseki, they won’t bite us.’
‘We never do it here.’
‘But we’re already here.’ And she pulled me by the arm. It was no use now, we
were already inside the crowd. We hadn’t been standing long inside there when
a huge bony Afrikaner prodded me in the ribs and said, ‘Step out, Kaffir! This is no
monkey show.’
‘We’re only looking,’ Rebone said.
In a split second I felt a large hand take me by the scruff of the neck and push
me out. Another hand from nowhere reached out for me. Another slapped me a
few times on the cheek. My face ran into yet another object, so that I felt a sting
on the bridge of my nose. I don’t know how I was eventually thrust out of the
crowd, but I stumbled down the curb. Only then did I feel that someone had
kicked me in the back as well. Rebone joined me lower down the street.
We didn’t speak for a while. Then, ‘The stinking Boers!’ she blurted.
‘Boer or no Boer, it’s your fault.’
‘They’d have done it anyhow, wherever we might have been standing.’
‘We could run.’
‘They like to chase, these people. We’d be lekker sport for them.’
It hurt more because she was right. ‘What did they do to you?’ I asked.
‘Just a few hard ones on my cheek.’
‘Was Prospect Township like this?’
‘They do it differently there. The Police do it for the rest of them.’
‘We had no right to go in among that crowd, we shouldn’t have gone in.’ Tears
were gathering in my eyes, and a lump of bitterness stopped in my throat, and I
couldn’t speak any more. But deep down in the cool depths of this well of
bitterness, I felt a strong current of admiration for Rebone. And the cool freshness
of it made itself felt deep down in the pit of my stomach.
Down Second Avenue – Ezekiel Mphahlele, Faber & Faber, London, p 102 – 105
ISSUES TO THINK ABOUT
What does the reaction of the Dr Broderick’s children and Dora’s employer’s
children to Ezekiel reveal about the effects of apartheid on children?
How did apartheid attempt to inculcate a feeling of inferiority within black
children?
According to this source, who were the perpetrators of apartheid?
Maya Angelou is quoted as saying, “Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host.
But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”
Explain Ezekiel’s bitterness. What caused these feelings within him?
Using your knowledge of apartheid, explain how bitterness turned into anger and
what the effects of this were.
Source 4
William Modisane, better known as Bloke Modisane, was a South African writer,
actor and journalist for Drum Magazine. He tried to promote non-racism in the arts
by making concerts and theatre available to Black audiences and tried to further
the efforts of the non-racial arts organisations. In 1959 he moved to England. In
1963, he published his autobiography Blame me on history. This detailed his
despair at the bulldozing of Sophiatown, where he had lived and his frustration and
anger with apartheid. As a result, the book was banned in 1966.
In this extract from his autobiography, Bloke Modisane tells of his feelings when
meeting a white person begging.
I was accosted by a white hobo [homeless person] in Jeppe Street
[Johannesburg]. She was as poor as a black, and, some would say, a dirty black.
She was carrying a thin, dirty, hungry child. I know the look of hunger too well.
‘Please my boy,’ she said, devastated by humiliation. ‘Give me a sixpence (5c)
for coffee.’
This scene, her obvious sense of superiority, catalysed a complicated system of
responses. Since poverty is black, she and I were locked into a common
humanity, something which she would not acknowledge. She was white, a
member of the privileged class, and I was black. The traditional divides had to be
maintained. For me it immediately became a crack in the myth of white
supremacy. I was instead in a position of superiority, possessed by an authority
complex. This was invested upon me by her privation [poverty]…I gave her a
shilling [10c].
Even in this I was emphasising my superiority over her, and yet it was interesting to
note that even in her destitute moment she did not lose sight of the fact that I
must be reminded that she was a member of the superior race group; this fact
she [emphasised] by addressing me as ‘boy’. She and I, in our moment of battle
for superiority, were victims responding to race prejudice…
Blame me on History, Thames & Hudson (1963), London pp. 155 & 156
Source 5
In his first job, Bloke Modisane made friends with Philip Stein, a colleague. He
describes the first time each of them visited the other’s home.
In accepting my invitation and coming to my room in Sophiatown [Philip]
became the first white person to be received socially…he smiled as the startled
neighbours paraded outside the door, staring at what must have been an
unusual sight. We had tea, and to them – it was possibly as much of a surprise to
me – the sight of a white man sitting down to tea in a black house, drinking out of
a cup which had been used by an African, shocked them visibly even more than
I. I introduced him to my mother who pretended a calm, I presume for the
benefit of the neighbours, but I could sense a conflict in her, she was unable to
decide on the correct form of address, but finally her training prevailed, and she
called him Baas Philip. I decided to let her work it out for herself and it took her a
long time to accustom herself to calling my white friends by their first names….
When I visited Philip’s home the reaction was similar, but different also. His parents
received me with courtesy and kindness; apparently it was the first time for them
too. They were pointedly careful not to embarrass me by word or deed, and that
in itself…made me feel uncomfortable. Philip invited me into his room to look at
his books. We talked for a while and he left me, and I was sitting in there
pretending to read when he returned with a tray of food. He lunched with his
parents, and yet I did not feel slighted. The ordeal would have been unbearable
for all concerned. It is perhaps significant that I was not made to sit in the backyard or the kitchen, which would have been the South African thing to do.
Philip’s parents belonged to another generation, perhaps not as flexible as to
throw over their behaviour patterns overnight. I understood this and I think Philip
knew.
Blame me on History – Bloke Modisane, Thames & Hudson (1963), London, pp. 92 & 93
Source 6
Chris van Wyk, an anti-apartheid activist, writer and poet who was classified as
“Coloured” during apartheid, explains the context of his poem, “My Mother”, in
this extract from his autobiography, Shirley, Goodness and Mercy: A Childhood
Memoir.
“For Months – possibly years – we work at getting our freedom. We spend almost
every weekend of our lives attending public meetings, writing and printing
pamphlets, designing and putting up banners, gathering up signatures for our
‘Release Mandela’ campaign. (I sign about twenty times, my own name and a
good few aliases.) We also get chased by the police, by thugs who believe we’re
up to no good, by police dogs, by township dogs. It’s mostly exciting work. But
the state resists us with all its might and among us are banned and jailed. And
sadly there are also regular funerals of comrades killed by police bullets. At
some of these public meetings I am called upon to render a poem or two in
between the speeches. This is one of them”:
My Mother
My mother could never carry me
While they used the warmth of her womb
To forge their hearts into hatred
My mother could never wean me
Because they dried her out
Until her breasts were arid tufts of drought
My mother could never embrace me
While she kept house for them
Held their children
My mother is a boesman meid
A kaffir girl
A coolie auntie
Who wears beads of sweat around her neck
And chains around her ankles
But defrocked of her dignity she
has broken free of the heirlooms of oppression
And dresses in the fatigues of those
Grown tired of serving evil gods
Now my mother is dressed to kill.
Shirley, Goodness & Mercy A Childhood Memoir – Chris van Wyk, Picador Africa,
Johannesburg, 2004, p 306 – 307
ISSUES TO THINK ABOUT
Who is van Wyk is referring to as ‘they’? How do you know this?
Why has van Wyk chosen the terms he has used in the third stanza?
What has happened to van Wyk’s ‘mother’ after she has lost her dignity?
What could this poem be about other than van Wyk’s own mother?
What does this poem imply about relations between black and white people and
the effects of apartheid on black people?
Source 7
For her book, Lives of Courage Women for a new South Africa (1989), Diana Russell
interviewed 60 South African women about their role in the fight against
apartheid. This is an extract from an interview in 1987 with Hettie V.
I grew up in a small Afrikaans community within a larger English community where
everyone knew everyone else. I come from quite a middle-class family, but my
parents sent all of us children to a very working-class high school to develop a
social conscience. The school had been set up for poor Afrikaners, so we were
among the wealthiest people in the school…
I was a member of the Voortrekker Youth Movement until I was about seventeen.
We all learned to shoot guns at about ten years of age, and we used to go to
camps where we’d participate in staged battles. Some of us would stand guard
against the ‘terrorists’ who would attack the camp in the middle of the night. I
wasn’t a willing or good Voortrekker. In fact, I was quite a rebel within the
movement.
We were being prepared to deal with the ‘black onslaught’ [the expectation of
being attacked by black people], and we used .22 guns which were loaded with
real bullets. We learned about politics basic survival, how to operate a two-way
radio, how to do first aid. It was designed to fit us all into the civil defense system.
In general, children learn to shoot in Afrikaans schools from the age of about
twelve. It is part of the school cadet system for men, and the Youth Preparedness
Programme teaches both girls and boys to shoot. In 1976 the school cadets
patrolled our school with guns from the school armoury. People stood guard at
night and over weekends in anticipation that the school would be attacked,
though this never happened.
Lives of Courage Women for a new South Africa – Diana E. H. Russell, Virago Press,
London, 1989, pp 280 & 281
Source 8
The following attribution accompanied the photograph below which appeared in
the book, Beyond the Barricades Popular resistance in South Africa in the 1980s :
“P. W. Botha takes the salute at a military parade in Pretoria, November
1980. Before he became state president of South Africa in 1983, Botha
headed the Ministry of Defense and later became prime minister in 1978. He
is shown here with his close supporter General Magnus Malan, minister of
Defense, on his left. During Botha’s presidency, South Africa has been
transformed into an increasingly militarized “emergency state,” under siege
from elements both within and outside the country. General MaIan is widely
regarded as the most influential member of South Africa’s powerful National
Security Council.”
Beyond the Barricades Popular resistance in South Africa in the 1980’s, Kliptown,
London, 1989, p 13
ISSUES TO THINK ABOUT
How can you use this photograph to understand how white people believed South
Africa was their land?
Do you blame those who held these views for believing this? Explain your answer.
How can the armed forces be used in establishing the idea of ‘we’ and ‘they’?
How do you think events such as these would have impacted on black South
Africans?
“Meids” and “Medems”
Source 1
Many wealthier South African families employ domestic workers and so many South
African women work as domestic workers. This job is unique in that the employee
works within her employer’s living space and is privy to the employer’s private
life, intimate relations and personal things. Domestic workers are often considered
‘part of the family’ and are included in family occasions such as birthday parties
and even, in some cases, holiday trips. However, the domestic workers role at
these functions is almost always, not as a guest, as the actual family and friends
are, but as a cleaner. While some employers treat their domestic employee with
respect and appreciation many continue to take advantage of the privacy their
home provides to mistreat their employee. This was all the more prevalent during
apartheid when many white employers viewed their domestic worker or “meid”
[maid] as inferior to them because she was black.
Stella is a domestic worker working for a white woman during apartheid. She
shares her views of her ‘medem’ [madam] with a fellow domestic worker.
‘Saw your medem’s car drive off. Guess she’s off to her Self Defence class?
Thought I’d pop over… ‘I don’t know why I go on working for such a sour
suurlemoen of a woman, you know? Believe me, I know we say a lot of bad
things about stork legs, your medem, but at least with her, you know where you
stand. Not that change-face so-and-so I work for.
‘I’m sure you’ve seen her with her always-mouth-open-face: she could win a Mrs
Sunshine Sweetest Smile Competition; couldn’t she? Always cheerful she looks,
hey? Don’t be fooled. I could tell you things about that woman—things you
would never believe.
‘Gets me downright mad to think of the way she has used me over the years. But,
I get even. I pay her back; and then some more.
‘She wipes her sunshine smile away when talks to me and she wants to tell me
something she knows is not nice.
“Stella,” she will say Thursday lunchtime, “can you please be back for dinner? I’m
having visitors tonight.”
‘Now, tell me that is not cruel. Here’s a woman who has seven days a week like
everybody else. When does she choose to entertain? On the one evening a
week she knows her maid is off. And her smile is there for everyone to see how
kind she is.
‘From the word go, I knew there was something not nice about this woman I work
for. First day here, what do I find? There’s her bath tub full of water. The same
water she’s just had a bath in. Her dirty water. Dirty from her own body. It is too
dirty for her to put her hand in and pull the plug out. Can you believe that? This
woman would leave her bath water for me to let it out?
‘I’m not saying she should wash the tub. Hey, she’s paying me to do that — O.K.
But, you mean she can’t let out her own, own water?
‘And, if you think that’s all I found in that tub you’re wrong. There, swimming,
afloat in that water of hers, was her panty… she’d left it in there for me to wash.
‘What! Me? I taught her a lesson, that very first day. I took something, a peg, I
think, and lifted that panty of hers and put it dripping wet, to the side of the bath
which I then cleaned until it was shiny-shiny.
‘You think she got my message? Wrong. Doesn’t she leave me a note: “Stella,
wash the panty when you wash the bath.”
‘What do you mean what did I do? I did not go to school for nothing. I found a
pen in her bookshelf and found a piece of paper and wrote her a note too:
“Medem,” I said in the note, ‘please excuse me but I did not think anyone can
ask another person to wash their panty. I was taught that a panty is the most
intimate thing… my mother told me no one else should even see my panty. I
really don’t see how I can be asked to wash someone else’s panty.”
‘That was the end of that panty nonsense…
‘And then every Sunday she’s off to Church. Hypocrites, these white people are.
Real hypocrites. Never practise what they preach.
‘She goes to Church every Sunday, but when Master isn’t here, you should see
what goes on in this place. Then, she comes home early from work: “Stella, you
can take the rest of the day off.”
‘What am I supposed to do with a half day off I didn’t know I was getting? You
think I have money to be running up and down for nothing? But, that doesn’t
worry Sunshine Smile. All she wants is that there’s no maid to see her business.
Hypocrite and skelm on top of it too.
‘But me, I take the cheek out of her. I take the half day off she gives me. But I stay
right here in my room and give myself a rest.
‘And she doesn’t know I need to rest. She thinks I am a donkey that can go on
and on working. When I’m off, do you know she can think nothing of giving me a
whole suitcase full of clothes. Don’t think she’s like other medems who give their
girls their old clothes. Not this one, my friend. She wants me to sell those clothes
for her.
‘“Here Stella,” the smile is bigger than the whole sky, “I’m sure your friends in
Langa would like these clothes. Almost new.”
‘That’s the woman I work for. It is not enough I work for her six to six, six days a
week. On my half day off I must be working for her. Selling her second-hand
clothes. She even pins the price on each one.
‘Now don’t think these almost new clothes have been dry-cleaned. You think
she’d spend her money like that? There, I must carry clothes smelling her smell,
carry them home and sell them to my friends. Of course, the one’s the donkey
can wash, those she sees to it that they are washed and ironed. She’s not stingy
with my strength, oh no!
‘Then she’ll take one of these clothes, look at it like it was a child going away,
and say — “Take this one for yourself.” That is how she pays me for carrying a
heavy suitcase, making my friends laugh at me selling her silly clothes. You know,
sometimes I just save myself the trouble, take the clothes and pay her the money
— bit by bit — until I’ve paid all of it. Then, when I find someone going back to
the village, I send the clothes to my relatives there.
‘You don’t think you would be sick working for someone like this—making you
work like a donkey and feeding you goat food? She really gets on my nerves. But
I must be careful. If there’s one thing that makes her out and out mad at me —
it’s when I’m sick.
‘My sickness she never understands. She thinks I’m made of stone. She, can be
sick and when she’s sick I must run all over the place making her feel good: “Turn
the TV on. Turn the TV off. Make me black tea. Warm me some milk. I want dry
toast. Give the margarine. Go get me the newspaper. I forgot, Cosmopolitan is
out. Take all calls and write down the messages. Is that Joan? I’ll take the call.
‘But I must never get sick. “You think I run a clinic here, my girl?” That’s what she
says first day I’m sick. Day number two: “Maybe you should go home and send
one of your daughters to help.”
‘You know this woman has children the same ages as mine. I must send my
children here to help her and her children while I’m sick. My children must miss
school to come and make sure their goat food is made, the beds are made, their
shoes are polished, their clothes are washed.
‘I also discovered she doesn’t like me to be sick and stay here. I think she believes
my sickness will jump onto them and kill them all. It’s all right for me to catch their
germs when they are sick. But my germs — that’s a different story.
‘Ho! White people! You slave for them. Slave for their children. Slave for their
friends Even slave for their cats and dogs. And they thank you with a kick in the
back.
Living, Loving, and Lying awake at Night - Sindiwe Magona, David Philip, Claremont,
1991, p 18 – 21
ISSUES TO THINK ABOUT
What are Stella’s views of her employer?
How do you think Stella’s employer views her?
Do Stella and her employer understand each other and each other’s worlds?
Explain your answer.
How do you think the system of apartheid would have contributed to the
relationship between Stella and her employer?
Source 2
Extracts from interviews with domestic servants for a book Maids and Madams by
Jacklyn Cock, which examined domestic service in South Africa, 1980
-
-
-
-
An employer’s response on being asked whether she deducted breakages from
her servant’s pay: No… I don’t have any. I’ve worked out a way of coping with
that. The first time she chips a plate or a cup I call her outside. I take that plate or
cup and tell her to watch. I then drop it on the cement floor so it smashes. Then I
deduct the cost from her pay. You only have to do it once…
Another employer, talking about servants: You must keep them in their place…
not get too friendly. That’s why I don’t let her listen to the radio. If we listened to
the radio together she’d start getting familiar.
Asked what quality she liked least about her servant, one employer said: She
insists on wearing shoes in the house and I find the noise very irritating.
Commenting on a servant who left: She walked out. She said she didn’t want to
work on Sundays. She said she had to go to a church and feed her own children.
She didn’t think about us.
Why employ servants? I would prefer to be independent and do my own work. I
only keep four because I feel sorry for them.
Maids & madams: A study in the politics of exploitation – Jaclyn Cock, Ravan Press
(1980)
Source 3
During apartheid, the author, Sindiwe Magona, moved to Cape Town from
the Transkei and began work as a domestic worker. In her autobiography,
To my children’s children, she writes about how this job forced her to
confront understanding of ‘we’ and ‘they’ through her interactions with
her white employer.
I was taught by Mrs Garland to cook: stews, roasts, soups, fried fish and fish
frikkadels, cottage pie and a host of other dishes besides. She taught me how to
lay the table with proper arrangement of the cutlery, from outside inwards. She
had to start with telling me the difference between meat- and fish- and butterknives and forks! She taught patiently and I learnt eagerly.
It is here that I first encountered what was to become, later on and with other
employers, a veritable bane: A sense of inadequacy would engulf me when,
upon medem’s return from a trip to the hairdresser or the dentist or bridge or
bowls, tennis, swimming, squash, or whatever, I would report,
‘M’em, a lady came to see you and said she’d phone later on.’
‘Who was it?’
‘She said she was your friend, m’em!’ I’d reply, thinking ‘Awu, who ever heard of
a white lady giving a black woman her name?’
‘Was she fair or dark?’ me’m would ask, little realising she might as well ask me to
decipher the hieroglyphics!
‘Heela, are there dark white people?’ I would think.
‘She was white, me’m. A European.’ Thinking, ‘She knows she only has white
friends! What does she want from me?’
‘Oh, don’t be so stupid! Of course she was a European, but…’ hesitatingly,
thinking of a way of gleaning information from the certifiable idiot in her employ,
her ‘girl’, me…
‘Was the lady... eh... you know... was she... very very light or not so very very
light?’
Why didn’t I just tell her that to my unschooled eye, all white folk looked very very
white to me. That I did not have the skills to distinguish between a blonde and a
brunette? That her questions mystified me and put her, in my mind, in a group I
had begun suspecting of being headed for the loony bin! At that time I did not
even know the words brunette and blonde.
I grew up living among my own people where everyone, except the occasional
albino, has black hair, very dark brown eyes, and brown skin, in varying shades of
brownness, shades I was to discover later, medem and her ilk could not
distinguish. And I was in my thirties before anyone explained to me the trick
whites use to distinguish between themselves. This also explained to me why
white people looked the same to me. I had not been busy looking at the colour
of people’s eyes or the colour of their hair. NO.
To date, although I have managed to become a little adept at making these
distinctions, I would never bet my money on my remembering what colour soand-so’s eyes are if I am not looking at those eyes as I hazard the guess! Either I
haven’t noticed or I don’t remember. Well, many are the insults I suffered for my
disability.
To My Children’s Children – Sindiwe Magona David Philip, Claremont, 1990, p 121–
122
ISSUES TO THINK ABOUT
What evidence is there in Sandile’s story that we are more able to differentiate
between people we see as part of our in-group than between people we view as
different from us?
How does language impact on the way in which we see the world? How does the
having or not having of a word for a particular concept influence our society?
Can you think of any examples of how, as you grew up, you learnt new words for
people or characteristics of others and how these influenced your views or
understanding of others?
How do you think the interaction between Sandile and her employer was indicative
of inter-racial relations between white and black people during apartheid?