CHAPTER – THE MAGISTRATE
Few things in my childhood memory are engraved deeper and more hurtful, than the day, in 1961, when my sister, my brother and I, appeared before the town’s magistrate. Our grandparents, Mamma and Pappa, takes us there that day. They don’t say where we are going. They just ask us to dress in our Sunday clothes, and we all walk to town.
I’m turning nine; my older sister is ten, and my younger brother, is seven. I become extremely anxious as we enter the building. It feels so cold inside. I notice the few items of furniture in such a big building – just a wooden bench here and there, in the cold passage. The floor is polished a shiny red. We sit on one of the wooden benches until a door opens, and we are called in. When I see the man behind the desk, I know we are in trouble, though I cannot think why.
His face is heavy and square, like the wooden desk he is seated at. To his left is a steel cabinet, grey and cold. The wooden floor shines bright lines where the strips of sun fall through the horizontal blinds. The smell of cobra wax is in strong my nose. On the far side to his right are two dark, wooden chairs neatly placed next to each other. There is nothing else in that room.
He looks at us. His hands are placed on the desk in front of him: heavy; thick, hairy fingers, intertwined. He is not friendly at all. It feels as if his small eyes pierce right through me, so I become very afraid for my siblings. He looks from one to the other, and back to me – up and down. Why did Mamma and Pappa bring us here?
We all stand in front of his desk, looking at him. I’m on the end, next to my brother, who is the youngest. Next to him is Pappa. Mamma stands next to Pappa, and the eldest of our children, my sister, is next to Mamma, on my far right. I look over to Pappa. I can see my grandpa is visibly awkward and nervous in front of the big, white man. I’m becoming uneasy. Pappa’s face is ashen, and he just looks at the desk, in front of him, almost apologetically. The fingers of his left-hand play lightly with the seam of his pants, down his left side. Then the fingers on the desk start to move; changing places, and I know he is going to speak now.
When he speaks, he startles me: ‘So, dís die drie!’ (So, these are the three!)
He speaks to Mamma and Pappa. Pappa nods, and grunts a soft ‘Ja, Baas’.
Then he looks at me, again – long and hard. I have my Sunday double-breasted, short pants suit on. It is a smart suit. White shirt and a tie, that Pappa showed me how to knot. There is Vaseline on my brown legs, and I have cleaned my toenails, on Mamma’s instructions.
‘Wat is jóú naam?’ (What’s yóúr name?)
I hesitate for just a second, or two, then I say, barely audible, ‘Donnie’.
So I move my feet slightly, and give him my full name, ‘Donald Clarke Witbooi’.
The magistrate keeps that stern gaze firmly fixed on me, and I look back at him, as firmly as I can. I am afraid of him, yes, but I have learned my short life not to show fear; not to back down when challenged, and to face the consequences if there are any. I decided from the first minute in that office that I do not like the man. I know instinctively I’m in the magistrate’s office.
I have heard of magistrates: they’re the ones who send people to jail. Everybody I know is afraid of that magistrate. They say he gives a person six months – for nothing! You walk in the street, drunk – six months. You fight in your house, or in your own yard – six months. That was why, when Ketokkels appeared for drunkenness, and the magistrate worked for a few minutes too long with the papers in front of him, Ketokkels said from the bench, ‘Gee my ses maande, man! Ek sien jou bek staan reg vir ses maande!’
He actually got nine months – three more, for disrespecting the bench. The man at the desk, in front of me, is a dangerous man. That I know well.
‘En joune?’
My little brother is ready for the question, because he fires back at him, in his best voice: ‘Gareth Davis Witbooi’.
He has just started school a few months ago, and school is in everything he does, and says, just like Teacher will want it. He stands there, his little face slightly red with a blush borne from him also unsure of what is happening in that room. I turn slightly towards him, so he can feel my arm against his. Then he asks my oldest sister. She looks him squarely in the face when she answers: ‘Lydia Sophia Witbooi’. Lydia is tough. Her face shows nothing, but I know she is thinking what I’m thinking: what is going on here?
Lydia is a pretty girl. She looks like my Dad – dark, Indian complexion; straight, sharp features, with straight black hair hanging far down her back. Gareth is fair. He takes after our mother and Mamma. He too inherited our Dad’s dark, straight hair. I look like neither of my siblings. I’m brown, with features of my great-grandparents on my mother’s side. They are of Khoi-descent, and I have stayed for long periods with my great-grandmother in her house till I was about five. When she became sick, I was sent back to our house. She died shortly after that. My father also died – in a car accident the year before we appeared in the magistrate’s office. My mother went to work in Cape Town and left us with her parents, Mamma and Pappa. So, I’m not sure if that has anything to do with us appearing before the magistrate. The man behind the desk studies the papers in front of him for a while, then he looks up, and asks Pappa,
‘Waar is die kinders se ma dan?’ (Where are the mother of these children, then?)
Mamma speaks first, ‘Ons weetie, Meneer!’ (We don’t know, Sir!)
I am so surprised. Mamma is lying! My mother is in Cape Town – working! For us! She sends us Christmas clothes every Christmas. At Easter, we also receive a box with Easter eggs, clothes, and other things. Mamma is lying to a magistrate! She can get six months!
The man speaks again. That heavy, grating voice addresses us.
‘Wil julle by julle ouma en oupa bly, of moet ek julle weg stuur?’ is his question. (Do you want to stay with your grandparents, or must I send you away?)
I look up sharply at Pappa, but he is looking at the magistrate. His lips move a bit, but it is his head that shakes unmistakably in a ‘No’, as if the question is directed at him. I look at Mamma. Mamma is crying into a small hankerchief she presses to her eyes. She too shakes her head vigorously through the tears and looks at Lydia next to her. Lydia is quick and firm with a ’Nee!’ and so Gareth and I follow with our own, ‘Nee’s!’
‘As ek julle weg stuur, dan stuur ek een Transvaal toe; die ander twee na twee ander plekke toe. Julle sal mekaar nooit weer sien nie!’ ( I’ll send you away – one to the Transvaal, the other two to different places. You will never see each other again!)
He says those words so callously; as if he is giving some worthless things away to people in far-away places we don’t even know. I think to myself the man wants us to scream out in fear.
Mamma is sobbing audibly by then, and I look across, to them, to intervene, and stop this man from sending us away. Suddenly I know why we are here! I become overwhelmed with a sadness that I have never experienced before, not even when I heard Dad had passed away. We are about to be thrown away! Like dirt! Like scrap! My shoulders draw up, and I turn side-ways, away from Gareth. The sobs come from deep inside. Why is my father dead? Where is my mother? She must be here for us! It is quiet in that room, only my sobs can be heard. Strange anger comes over me, while I’m sobbing. I turn towards the enemy behind the desk, and I cry openly, my face towards him. I must have looked such a pitiful sight, because he turns his face away as if my tears embarrass him. I cry without any shame, because of the hopeless situation we are in. I cry for my siblings, whom I cannot defend against this magistrate. If it was somebody else, I can run into the street, pick up some stones, run back in, and throw him with it; throw him with it, and throw him with it! But he is the magistrate. He can do such things. He can do anything to us. That’s why I cried.
After a few minutes, I calmed down, and a strong sense of defiance comes over me. I compose myself. I stand there looking straight at the magistrate. I have shown him weakness, and I am showing him defiance now, despite my weak position. I want him to see my hate, and I want him to ask me about it. I look across to Mamma for support. She is still keeping her hanky to her face, and when she looks at me, it is a hopeless look that says to me, ‘Mamma can’t help you, my klong!’ The magistrate looks on his desk when his voice comes again asking whether we want to stay with Mamma and Pappa. We answer hurriedly, and in a chorus, ‘Ja, asseblief!’ (‘Yes, please!’)
‘Sal julle die kinders kan grootmaak op jou drie pond in die week wat jy kry?’ the magistrate asks Pappa.
(Will you be able to raise the children on your three pounds a week?)
Mamma and Pappa both answer together with a firm ‘Ja! Ja, ons kan!’ (Yes! Yes, we can!)
From that point on, I pay full attention to every word and every movement of the magistrate. He is writing in his papers for a long time, while we just stand there. I’m composed now because I have figured out what is going on. This is Welfare! This is what Mamma was talking about the past few weeks:
‘The Welfare will take you away! Miena must come and fetch her children’, and she instructed Pappa:
‘The children must get Welfare! Tell your baas to speak to the magistrate!’
That is why we are there: we must get Welfare. The magistrate wanted to see us. He is filling in papers for us – for Welfare. It is when he looks up, at Pappa and says, ‘Hans, julle moet nou altwee hier teken. Kom! Kom teken hierso!’ (Hans, you must come sign here. Come! Come, sign here!), that I realise that he knows Pappa. He knows about us. Pappa’s Baas at the work must have spoken to him.
When we walk home, about half an hour later, I’m a very angry, little boy. We could have been separated – for life. Mamma and Pappa stood up for us in a magistrate’s office by lying to the magistrate. That was the only way to keep us out of those orphanages. I’m angrily kicking an old, empty tin, along with me, as I walk, until Mamma orders me to stop. I am thoroughly confused, angry, and embarrassed.
I did not realize it then, but that day, I came face to face with power, for the first time, in my young life. It was a raw, ruthless, and unfeeling power that had made me cry. I saw it; I felt it. It brushed past me, and I did not like it. It made me feel helpless, weak, and vulnerable.
Outside of our house, in my early teens, I become a rebellious, young boy. Authority is difficult to accept. I am always in trouble. Older people complain to Mamma about me being disrespectful. Teachers have their hands full with me. Mothers complain their children are being beaten up for little reason. Older boys avoid confrontation with me. I attract, as my friends, only the rough-and-ready type of boy; those from broken homes; from homes where alcohol abuse is rife; and the fighter-type boy – the throw-aways. Together we are a formidable group, not easily confronted, even by grown men.
Inside the house of my grandparents, we three Witbooi-children are showered with love and care, and we give back to our grandparents all respect and love due to parents, which they are to us. I do better in school than most children. Despite not being an A-model in behaviour, I make up to become an A-model in my schoolwork. So when the time comes, plans are made to send me to high school, in another town, far from home, warts and all.
I’m given a hundred lectures on respect, manners, and how to behave once ‘you put your feet under somebody else’s table’. We’ve heard the last refrain so many times so that we complete the refrain before Mamma completes it!
I have no idea what awaits me in this other world I’m going to. I’m curious, nervous, and uncertain about what to expect. One thing I’m sure of: I’m not afraid of high school.
CHAPTER
My first recollection of kindness, other than that of my grandparents, comes from a total stranger and is quite vivid in my mind: Standard 7; first year at high school; 14 years old, turning 15, in June of that year – 1967. It is break-time at school, and I’m is sitting under one of those majestic oak trees that line the entire front of the school. The whole place looks like something out of the movies: the oak trees, and the gravel road leading up to the entrance from the walled gate. On either side of the gravel road, you see open stretches of playing fields. Behind the trees is the school – a white-washed two-storeyed building with large white, casement windows, lending to it, a rather Southern cotton-fields homestead look. Roman pillars reach high to the top of the second level. Once you climb some steps to the wooden double doors, at the entrance, you get the feeling you are about to enter a hallowed space.
I have chosen my tree, for spending break times under, to the far right of the gravel road, as you come up to the entrance. Someone, long before me, has placed a comfortable flat stone underneath the tree. There I sit during breaks. I quickly slip the shoes from my burning feet, and peel the socks off, almost in one movement. I bend double over my knees, and my hands begin to work my feet. I’m in discomfort. My shoes are at least one size too small! They’re killing me, but that was all his granny had for me.
The school’s prospectus clearly said: grey socks, black shoes; grey pants, grey-blue shirt; school tie and blazer: all could be bought at one shop in the centre of town. After buying all of the clothes on the page, there wasn’t enough money for shoes. The shoes would come later, she promised. ‘Use those old ones so long – just dolly them up a bit’. The shoes aren’t even black. I used black Nugget to blacken them from dark brown to a matt black finish. Then I smeared the dark-brown laces with the Nugget, rolled them thoroughly over and over, and finally, I used newspaper to strip the wet nugget from the laces so that only a little Nugget was left on my hands after lacing the shoes up again. There!
But the school is far from where I board – easily three to four kilometres! That’s not really far to walk in the morning and back again in the afternoon, under other circumstances. But if you’re wearing shoes that bite you at every step, and a bookcase that’s heavy with books you don’t even use in class, not yet, then you’re in distress all the way. Around you boys and girls pass, chatting excitedly about whatever, while you stroll along, seemingly quite casually. In reality, you’re walking on live coals!
I reach school with minutes to go before the siren. So I walk straight to my line. I pass the school’s prefect inspection without looking in the faces of the prefects, and shuffle into the line, to my class. Once inside, at the first opportunity, I slip the shoes off my heels. Once I do that, there’s immediate relief on my burning toes. From then on, I focus on what’s happening in front. All will go well, until break-time. Then I slip my shoes on, pin my toes again, and walk slowly down the passage. I slide my shoulder against the wall until I turn into the short passage that leads outside. Once in heaven, I slump on my stone, pull the shoes off my feet, and peel the socks off, almost in one movement. Then the ritual begins – knees up; body bent forward over the knees, and I start rubbing my glowing toes and heels – very gently. Even blowing on them sometimes helps. The top of the toes are badly chaffed, I notice. The back of my heels are showing red, and will be worn through very soon, which will really be a disaster, I think! Bare-foot at high school? Oh, Lord, not that!
It is in that pose, early in the first term, in February, when my ritual is rudely interrupted by a shrill girl’s voice:
‘Jongetjie! Jy moet jou skoene aantrek! (Boy, you must put your shoes back on!)
She looks at me in disbelief at seeing me there – at school – without shoes!
Die prefects gat vir jou kantoor toe vat! (The prefects will take you to the office!)
I remain in my pose, with just a quick look up to see who it is. It’s one of the girls at the next tree. They also come there every break-time. They have made that tree theirs, just as I have made this tree, mine. I have noticed them there before. Every break-time they rush there, jostling for the best seat, and then eat their thick slices of bread. Further than that, I have never paid any attention to them. Now, one of them has noticed me, or something odd about me.
I try to ignore her and go on with my rubbing business. She remains standing a few metres away, looking at me, to my growing annoyance. I am compelled to speak to her.
‘Kyk hier! My voete is seer, ne! Die skoene druk my!’ (My feet ache! The shoes pinch me!’)
There you know now, I think! But she stands! Then she goes over the mark of common decency, and logic, in my book!
‘Het jy dan nie anner skoene nie?’
There is no way to answer her politely. Is it not obvious to her? Goodness! So I give her a look – a really angry look, one I call a Witbooi Special! The look comes from my crouched position: head turned at a 45-degree angle upwards, and sideways towards her. I catch her eyes in mine, and I keep her eyes for a moment. I watch how, in a few seconds, the question on her face freezes; how she suddenly realizes her question has already been answered. She swings around and walks briskly back to her friends. One of them darts towards her, and they run screaming onto the field where other school children are sitting around in groups, and others kick a ball around. The episode seems already forgotten in her mind, it looks like to me.
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Not true. When the girl gets home, she gets into her chores for the afternoon. She fetches the children from the creche on her way home. Once home, she makes sure they’re cleaned up, and changed into their play clothes, after which she gets stuck into preparing some sandwiches and juice for them. She gets herself some sandwiches, puts the radio on, and relaxes while she enjoys her sandwiches and tea. She knows very well she must not slack in her after-school chores when she gets home. Once the kids are playing in the yard, or are in their room, she runs through her chores quickly. She knows her chores so well, after all, she’s been doing it since she came to stay with her aunt about two years ago. She normally has a few minutes left, to check over the cleanliness of the house, before her aunt comes home.
It is during this time that the episode with the boy-without-shoes comes into her mind. Shame, she thinks. He must feel terrible among so many children, to be without proper shoes. Her mind goes back to her life before she came to live with her aunt. Will she ever forget what it’s like – to go without? Never! She hates every minute, every day, every week, and every year of that time!
Today she has seen a boy, she thinks, who looks like he is in the same position. It comes to her mind quite easily: she must see if she can help him. When she makes that decision, she makes it as a frail twelve-year- old innocent, caring, without any thought, other than she wants to help someone in need. Her mom will be so proud of her -there where she is. She will ask her cousin, who lives a short distance from them, for a pair he’s not using.
I did not think much of the incident with the girl, other than that I have become aware of this group of girls from that day on. They will eat their lunch, then get up, walk around, and then start a game, screaming with delight at throwing each other with rolled-up lunch paper, and getting a hit. So annoying, these girls! To their credit I must say they quickly run around, when the siren goes, to pick up all the papers they were playing with, as all the other children wherever they are sitting. My toes are really chaffed on top and very sore. But, when the bell goes, I quickly slip my socks on, pull the shoes on, lace them partly, and take my place in the line – just like everybody else. The only difference is, that I’m grimacing inside.
It goes on like this for another week. Then something happens. I’m nursing my feet, during break-time, on a Friday, when the same girl startles me by speaking to me, quite close. She puts a brown paper-bag, next to me.
‘Kyk ma’ of die vir jou gan fit. Dit was my cousin syne’. (See if this fits. It was my cousin’s).
She stands watching while I open the paper bag with one hand. It’s a pair of black school shoes – seconds!
‘Sal dit fit? (Will it fit?)
I suddenly have mixed feelings. Of course, they’ll fit! I can see that at a glance. But I’m not used to hand-outs. The devil comes to sit on my shoulder:
‘What does this mean? Don’t take handouts from anybody! They’ll laugh at you, every day! They’ll dance around you, and sing, ‘He’s wearing handouts! Lekke , lekke handouts!’
Another small voice said: ‘
‘You need the shoes! You’re already wearing seconds- too small seconds! Take it! Too proud? Your feet hurt! You can’t walk! Just polish them! Say thank you! Just say thank you to the girl! Go on!’
I hear myself say: ‘Ja. Pas. Dankie.’ (Yes. Fit. Thank you!)
There, it’s out! She gives the faintest of smiles, turns and walks back to her friends, who have engaged in a game of splashing water over each other. Then I remember something: Mamma will want to know the name of the girl. I muster up enough courage to call after her, just loud enough so she can hear:
‘Meisie!’ (Girl!) and when she turns, ‘Wat is jou naam?’ (What’s your name?)
She only half-turns, looks at me, and says, ‘Natalie!’.
Then she turns away again to look for her friends. No sooner has she turned, than she turns back again. She looks at me, her dark eyebrows raised, her hand turned open at her side, and her head tilted in a gesture that asks, ‘and yours?’
I understand, and say, ‘Donald’. She throws her dark eyes up, as if to memorize the name, and then turns to run after her friends.
And with that small gesture of kindness and compassion, Natalie comes into my life.
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Alex Marshall hails from Heidelberg in the Western Cape. He was a teacher at Trafalgar High School in District Six, whereafter he taught English at Masibambane High School in Kraaifontein. He was an activist for South African sports; has a great interest in history, and holds a master’s degree in Philosophy from UCT. Alex is passionate about reflecting on his community in his writing.
