My Children! My Africa!

You have had to listen to a lot of talk this afternoon about traditional values, traditional society, your great ancestors, your glorious past. In spite of what has been implied I want to start off by telling you that I have as much respect and admiration for your history and tradition as anybody else. I believe most strongly that there are values and principles in traditional African society which could be studied with great profit by the Western Civilization so scornfully rejected by the previous speaker. But at the same time, I know, and you know, that Africa no longer lives in that past. For better or for worse it is part now of the twentieth century and all the nations on this continent are struggling very hard to come to terms with that reality. Arguments about sacred traditional values, the traditional way of life et cetera and et cetera, are used by those who would like to hold back Africa’s progress and keep it locked up in the past.

ISABEL: This one was a riot!

THAMI (Finger to his lips): Be careful.

ISABEL: Of what?

THAMI: That word.

ISABEL: Which one?

THAMI: Riot! Don’t say it in a black township. Police start shooting as soon as they hear it.

ISABEL: Oh. I’m sorry.

THAMI (Having a good laugh): It’s a joke Isabel.

ISABEL: Oh … you caught me off guard. I didn’t think you would joke about those things.

THAMI: Riots and police? Oh yes, we joke about them. We joke about everything.

I’ve actually been into it quite a few times. With my mom to visit Auntie, our maid, when she was sick. And with my dad when he had to take emergency medicines to the clinic. I can remember one visit, just sitting in the car and staring out of the window trying to imagine what it would be like to live my whole life in one of those little pondoks. No electricity, no running water, no privacy! Auntie’s little house has only got two small rooms and nine of them sleep there. I ended up being damn glad I was born with a white skin.

I am not shy about making eye contact. Well, when I did it this time, when it was my turn to speak and I stood up and looked at those forty unsmiling faces, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t prepared myself for one simple but all-important fact: they had no intention of being grateful to me. They were sitting there waiting to judge me, what I said and how I said it, on the basis of total equality. Maybe it doesn’t sound like such a big thing to you, but you must understand I had never really confronted that before, and I don’t just mean in debates. I mean in my life!

I discovered a new world! I’ve always thought about the location as just a sort of embarrassing backyard to our neat and proper little white world, where our maids and our gardeners and our delivery boys went at the end of the day. But it’s not. It’s a whole world of its own with its own life that has nothing to do with us. If you put together all the Brakwaters in the country, then it’s a pretty big one—and if you’ll excuse my language—there’s a hell of a lot of people living in it! That’s quite a discovery you know. But it’s also a little—what’s the word?—disconcerting! You see, it means that what I thought was out there for me…no! it’s worse than that! it’s what I was made to believe was out there for me…the ideas, the chances, the people…specially the people!…all of that is only a small fraction of what it could be.

The truth is, I’ve seen too much of it Isabel. Wasted people! Wasted chances! It’s become a phobia with me now. It’s not easy you know to be a teacher, to put your heart and soul into educating an eager young mind which you know will never get a chance to develop further and realize its full potential. The thought that you and Thami would be another two victims of this country’s lunacy, was almost too much for me.

Knowledge has banished fear.

THAMI: His ideas about change are the old-fashioned ones. And what have they achieved? Nothing. We are worse off now than we ever were. The people don’t want to listen to his kind of talk anymore.

ISABEL: I’m still lost, Thami. What kind of talk is that?

THAMI: You’ve just heard it, Isabel. It calls our struggle vandalism and lawless behavior. It’s the sort of talk that expects us to do nothing and wait quietly for white South Africa to wake up. If we listen to it our grandchildren still won’t know what it means to be Free.

I’ve told you before: sitting in a classroom doesn’t mean the same thing to me that it does to you. That classroom is a political reality in my life—it’s a part of the whole political system we’re up against and Mr. M has chosen to identify himself with it.

You used the word friendship a few minutes ago. It’s a beautiful word and I’ll do anything to make it true for us. But don’t let’s cheat Thami. If we can’t be open and honest with each other and say what is in our hearts, we’ve got no right to use it.

I’m sure it’s just my white selfishness and ignorance that is stopping me from understanding but it still doesn’t make sense. Why can’t we go on seeing each other and meeting as friends? Tell me what is wrong with our friendship?

MR. M: Do you think I agree with this inferior “Bantu Education” that is being forced on you?

THAMI: You teach it.

MR. M: But unhappily so! Most unhappily, unhappily so! Don’t you know that? Did you have your fingers in your ears the thousand times I’ve said so in the classroom? Where were you when I stood there and said I regarded it as my duty, my deepest obligation to you young men and women to sabotage it, and that my conscience would not let me rest until I had succeeded. And I have! Yes, I have succeeded! I have got irrefutable proof of my success. You! Yes. You can stand here and accuse me, unjustly, because I have also had a struggle and I have won mine. I have liberated your mind in spite of what the Bantu Education was trying to do to it.

There is nothing wrong with me! All I need is someone to tell me why he was killed. What madness drove those people to kill a man who had devoted his whole life to helping them. He was such a good man Thami! He was one of the most beautiful human beings I have ever known and his death is one of the ugliest things I have ever known.

I don’t call it murder, and I don’t call the people who did it a mad mob and yes, I do expect you to see it as an act of self-defense—listen to me!—blind and stupid but still self-defense.

[…]

Try to understand, Isabel. Try to imagine what it is like to be a black person, choking inside with rage and frustration, bitterness, and then to discover that one of your own kind is a traitor, has betrayed you to those responsible for the suffering and misery of your family, of your people. What would you do? Remember there is no magistrate or court you can drag him to and demand that he be tried for that crime. There is no justice for black people in this country other than what we make for ourselves. When you judge us for what happened in front of the school four days ago just remember that you carry a share of the responsibility for it. It is your laws that have made simple, decent black people so desperate that they turn into “mad mobs.”

THAMI: Sala Kakuhle Isabel. That’s the Xhosa good-bye.

ISABEL: I know it. U’sispumla taught me how to say it. Hamba Kakuhle Thami.

I’ve brought you something which I know will mean more to you than flowers or prayers ever could. A promise. I am going to make Anela Myalatya a promise.

You gave me a little lecture once about wasted lives . . . how much of it you’d seen, how much you hated it, how much you didn’t want that to happen to Thami and me. I sort of understood what you meant at the time. Now, I most certainly do. Your death has seen to that.

My promise to you is that I am going to try as hard as I can, in every way that I can, to see that it doesn’t happen to me. I am going to try my best to make my life useful in the way yours was. I want you to be proud of me. After all, I am one of your children you know. You did welcome me to your family.

(A pause) The future is still ours, Mr. M.