Memory is the Weapon

Don Mattera

• Publisher: African Perspectives Publishing
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780620394871
• eBook ISBN: 9780992187576
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Donato Francesco Mattera has been celebrated as a journalist, editor, writer and poet. He is also acknowledged as one of the foremost activists in the struggle for a democratic South Africa, and helped to found both the Union of Black Journalists, the African Writers Association and the Congress of South African Writers. Born in 1935 in Western Native Township (now Westbury) across the road from Sophiatown, Mattera can lay claim to an intriguingly diverse lineage: his paternal grandfather was Italian, and he has Tswana, Khoi-Khoi and Xhosa blood in his veins. Yet diversity was hardly being celebrated at that time. In one of apartheids most infamous actions, the vibrant multicultural Sophiatown was destroyed in 1955 and replaced with the white suburb of Triomf, and the wrenching displacement, can be felt in Matteras writing. The story of his life in Sophiatown as told in this essay is intricate. Covering Matteras teenage years from 1948 to 1962 when Sophiatown was bulldozed out of existence, it weaves together both his personal experience and political development. In telling the story of his life as a coloured teenager, Mattera takes on the ambitious goal of making us recapture the crucial events of the 1950s in Sophiatown, one of the most important decades in the history of black political struggles in South Africa.

chapter one

Demolition

Wednesday 22 July 1962. The night had been a restless one, nightmarish and foreboding. I awoke in a cold sweat. The room was stuffy and I was choking. Fresh air, God how I needed fresh air to rush into my lungs and fill them with a burst of life. I opened the squeaking door and the crisp, sharp breath of the early morning pricked my nostrils. I drew in great gasps of the life-giving gas. Refreshed in mind but not in body, I noticed with a slight irritation that the dirt bin had been toppled over by the township’s ever-hungry dogs. Scraps of debris blew against my legs when a sudden cold breeze whipped the untied gate. The dusty, untarred street, once crushed and trampled on by thousands of black feet, was subdued and uninhabited. The sound of motor vehicles revving incessantly burst the stillness.

Life came to the streets in the age-old tradition; silhouettes of moving objects and people who spoke in hushed and muffled tones. The winter had been unkind and the two-room council shacks permeated that unkindness into our very beds. The thin chimneys gave out smoke-signals. Just looking at the smoke itself gave one hope. Only a few homes had electric power and the majority of the residents of Western Native Township used coal stoves and paraffin appliances for cooking, lighting and heating.

Many people lived and died by candlelight.

As a child I had always loved and been deeply fascinated by the outlines of trees and the silhouetted movement of people at dusk, and at those pristine hours preceding dawn. The magical sound of voices fading in the distance, of workers on their way to the city, or the sight of the crouched or straight figures of women carrying the usual bundles on their heads – washed and neatly pressed for the madams of white Johannesburg. These moments brought with them the sense of proximity and warmth I had enjoyed when my mother was employed at the homes of white people. I used to marvel at the grace and ease with which black women balanced the huge bundles on their heads, jabbering away at each other as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

Wrinkled grandmamas or middle-aged aunts, these women were mobile laundry services, domestic workers, child governesses, cooks and ‘errand girls’ all wrapped in one. My mother was one of them and she spent all her adolescence and adult life giving to the children of her employers those things that I should have received. For many black women these jobs were, and still are, a source of vital income; some of these women were, and still are, sole breadwinners. Work was work; besides there were kind and thoughtful employers.

I was unemployed at the time and penniless. What money I had was spent on food and clothes for my young children: Anthony who was five at the time, and Teressa, a two-year-old. My common-law wife Martha, who was expecting our third child, was fast asleep. Ethnically, she was a Shangaan. Her forefathers had travelled from Mozambique into the Northern Transvaal in South Africa, and finally settled in Sophiatown, Johannesburg. I had met her on my release from prison in February of 1956 after I was acquitted on a murder charge. Martha was sitting on a wooden bench at the bus terminus on the corner of Millar and Victoria Streets in Sophiatown. A coal brazier burned hot and red in front of her. Yellow maize cobs crackled and braised in the heat. Near her was a huge tin which contained several cooked and steaming cobs. Pearly-white teeth shone in her mouth and her eyes were as big as two full moons. A few minutes later she was mine, like so many other girls in Sophiatown and Western Native Township. During those days it was risky business to refuse me, the leader of the Vultures gang. It didn’t matter whether a girl loved me or not; it was one of the fringe benefits of being a gangster.

I left the yard plagued by bad thoughts. A man on a bicycle cursed, swore and kicked at the dogs that barked and snapped at his heels. I found a stone and flung it wildly at them, hitting one so that it yelped. The barking stopped and the man continued his journey in peace. Behind him in the east, the sun appeared to be rising from the concrete cradle of the Golden City, Johannesburg. The first weak rays kissed the shacks dispassionately, almost shyly like a girl on her first date. Abram’s Supply Store in Gerty Street, the Sophiatown street where my folks lived before the removals had, as well as the familiar smell of groceries, many bittersweet memories. Errands that I ran for my family and our neighbours, the fights and games I shared with other kids, all came alive as I moved around the shop.

Abram, a tall Indian trader with a hooked nose and beady, alert eyes, was well-known to me and my family. I remember him best as the man who had paid young urchins, including me, a pittance for selling vegetables from early morning to sunset. A shrewd and capable businessman, Abram always sold his goods cheaper than the other shops. If you had something to sell and needed quick money, Abram would buy. He was loved by the worst thieves in the business because he never squealed on anyone when the going got tough. I knew many white inspectors who ‘ate’ from his hands. As an African saying goes: ‘When a man is eating, his eyes hardly stray.’ Essop, Abram’s eldest son, was one of my closest friends; in fact we took care of each other: I protected him with my fists, and he reciprocated with his father’s money or goods. Some cynical people called it protection fees, but I saw his response as an act of mutual understanding. I was no Al Capone.

Abram was chewing on seeds commonly eaten by some Indians. He kept nodding as someone hidden from my view spoke to him.

‘Ja, Mattera was very, very lucky. Do you know what he got for his stands? Almost nine thousand pounds. Nine thousand! You tell me a rich man like him still getting all that money!’ The speaker moved briefly into my line of vision. He was a huge Boer called Potgieter whose big eyes sat in a coarse and heavily wrinkled face with unusually large, protruding ears. A thick nose jutted out of his face, and although his features gave no indication of this, ‘Baas Pottie’ as he preferred to be called, was a kind soul. His tobacco-stained teeth hardly moved as he addressed the Indian trader. The discussion continued: ‘Ja jong, old Mattera was blerry lucky.’ This time there was a note of envy in Potgieter’s voice. ‘Even that native doctor, ou Xuma, for all his communist politics, didn’t get half as much, and he’s one of those Congress people who went to court about refusing to move. Do you remember all those threats? Xuma has gone and we now know who the real bosses are.’ His eyes glowed and some powerful oxygen filled his lungs so that his chest expanded to twice its normal size.

I knew then that pride was the child of victory...

Abram nodded sheepishly. But he knew in his heart of hearts that someday he too would be forced to pack up and sell; it was just a matter of time. The reddish juice rolled from the side of his mouth as he spoke. ‘I’ve often wondered what that old Italian did with his money,’ said Abram, and then answering himself, he added, ‘Those good-for-nothing sons of his must have wasted most of it on liquor and women. If there’s one family that should have ended up being millionaires it’s those Matteras. But what can you expect from coloured people?’ My blood boiled.

‘Ah huh,’ agreed the Boer without further ado. What the Indian had said about the liquor and the women was true; it was his generalisation about coloureds that needled me.

‘You know meneer,’ said Abram, using the Afrikaans word for ‘mister’, ‘I remember when Mattera still had buses and lots of money; I can’t understand what happened to that family. They must be cursed or something’.

His words cut deep and though they were a bitter indictment, they were true because my grandfather’s children, with few exceptions, had wasted their lives on drink, mostly the destructive concoctions brewed in the township shebeens. The bus company had had to be sold because of the irresponsibility of my uncles. When I looked at Potgieter and saw the unctuous expression in his face, I understood why he had so readily concurred with the Indian’s generalisation about Coloureds.

Abram said, ‘So meneer, you say Mattera’s houses are coming down tomorrow, eh?’

‘Ja,’ came the cold reply. ‘But it wasn’t really necessary for him to move out, he’s a white man and the law doesn’t really apply to him. We told him so but he chose to move to Albertsville to be close to his daughter. The irony is that Albertsville has also been allocated to whites, but knowing him, I’m sure he will move out again to live with his coloured family.’

Abram interjected: ‘For a white person that Italian is really attached and dedicated to his children. It’s not every day that you come across a white man who doesn’t dump his coloured offspring; Mattera is a rare case.’

The Indian’s face assumed a new and strong bearing, and his words gave me some warmth. I had also been quietly impressed by his perception especially as he had always appeared to be entirely engrossed in his money-spinning wholesale grocery business. Abram was among the wealthiest shopkeepers in Sophiatown and he had a clientele which stretched into areas far beyond the borders of our township. Potgieter nodded sullenly and bit his lower lip. He looked the Indian straight in the eye and frowned, exposing a sea of wrinkles that I had not detected on his face before. Abram had also been a victim of subtle extortion perpetrated by members of the police force and government officials like Potgieter who took free supplies of groceries and cigarettes as if they were in silent partnership with him. It was not uncommon to see a burly policeman or some white government official or health inspector enter the store, go behind the counter and help himself to anything he wanted.

… How strong are those who wield power and represent the law of the land which is not necessarily the law of justice nor the law of the statute book? How mighty are the men who wear the uniforms of that power and authority, and strut the streets and enter at will, the homes of the unarmed and the fearful?

Abram understood and complied with those displays of power and authority without any visible opposition although his two eldest sons Essop and Ali openly objected to the ‘legal’ extortion. But their father knew the risks involved in challenging that power and authority. So whenever officialdom strutted arrogantly into his small but well-stocked shop and helped itself to his commodities, all he did was grin fawningly and beguilingly, and greet the leeching Boers.

‘Take one, meneer; take one you power-mongering man. Take one hundred; one thousand, take all and be damned...’

And the Boers took; for mighty are they who carry guns.

All the Indian and other black people could do was grin and smile while their honour and dignity were trampled on and abused.

When Potgieter looked wryly at the Indian because he had alluded to the paternal loyalty of my grandfather to his family, it was because Abram had obviously touched on a sensitive and sacred subject which was and still is taboo among the Afrikaner. The Boers had sought to obliterate from their shady genealogical history any genetic connection between themselves and the Coloureds. The Boer scientists and sociologists and their many blood specialists compiled studies and findings in order to dispel the fears of their own doubting Thomases and refute beyond all reasonable and religious doubt any link with the ‘Boesmans and Hotnots’ – the derogatory names they gave to the Coloureds. Coloureds are a nation unto themselves, assert the Boer geneticists. A nation with its own culture, its own civilisation and its own destiny – a doctrine many Coloureds believe and perpetuate in their homes and schools and churches, and in every walk of their lives. A ‘colouredness’ bloated by a false sense of nationhood; almost white but not black, not African despite the genetic throwbacks. Many of them, supporting the racial theories of the Boers, formed Coloureds-only political parties and openly campaigned for nationhood under the apartheid policy.

But despite the purist Boer theses and refutations, there are thousands of African women like my own mother, who know differently. Women, who have lived in the backyard rooms and worked in white homes and who, perhaps out of loneliness and a longing for love and physical contact or out of human weakness, overcome by the voracious carnality of white men, shared beds with their bosses. These, and other women of darker hues, would have testified against the Boer purists, had it not been for the government’s ‘Immorality Laws’ which outlawed sex and marriage across the colour lines.

Women who knew differently, but remained silent for fear of being raided and charged and dragged before the courts to be publicly tried, humiliated and jailed. No. Such secrets are better hidden in the closets of the heart where no policemen or spies can reach, where there are no keyholes to peep through nor trees from which to watch and condemn.

Potgieter appeared to be shaken by Abram’s words.

‘Meneer,’ the Indian’s voice was somewhat subdued, almost a solicitation, ‘couldn’t his houses have been resold?’

The reply was curt and abrupt: ‘No, they are too old; unlike those of Dr Xuma or Nanabhay in Toby Street which have already been bought. There was no need for Mattera to have moved out; he’s a white man you know.’ Potgieter’s words were empty, directed to himself; tokens of unspoken remorse and contrition.

‘He’s a white man…’ What did it matter that a man was white? Did black men not die or feel or bleed when they witnessed the execution of their dignity and manhood? Did black children not stare wide-eyed and afraid when the bulldozers came to their dreams like locusts to the corn? Some people cry when they are hurt, others want to kill. That was how I felt.

‘The houses will be demolished tomorrow along with those of Marshall and Mafethe the estate agent who initially also gave us some problems over the sale of his other properties.’

The scruffy Afrikaner’s words stung me with an intensity I could not understand. I stood momentarily immobilised, my body temperature changed several times. God, what was he saying, and why was I so upset especially as my people had moved out of the houses about six months ago? Was this perhaps the reason for all those dreams about lice and worms crawling out of my body? What horrible dreams they had been.

And now was this it? What did this bloody Boer mean: ‘will be demolished tomorrow’? The casual sentence touched a sore and vital spot inside of me. The houses had helped to shape my dreams and had given warmth to my spirit in the company and fellowship of my kin. I moved towards the two men, one a shrewd, scheming businessman and the other an Afrikaner with a soft heart whose mission to uphold and promote Hendrik Verwoerd’s apartheid had been tempered with a strange humaneness found only among the early pioneers of his nation. Abram noticed me and suddenly shrugged as if to convey some message to me, the contents of which I already knew.

I tugged the Boer’s coat sleeve. ‘Meneer, when are you people going to break down our houses? I heard you tell Abram about it.’

I may have been too abrupt, because he jerked his arm away and snarled, ‘what the hell do you mean by “you people”? Who is your “you people”...eh?’

The Boer’s face reddened for a second time. It was not the earlier shame Abram’s words had caused him to feel. It was anger at being made the equivalent of a black person. The phrase ‘you people’ (‘julle mense’) was for the exclusive use and reserve of the Boers; a term through which they separate themselves from the rest of the indigenous folk of Southern Africa. ‘Ons mense’ (our people) – which is a term of endearment to them, is diametrically opposed to ‘julle mense’ whenever political, educational, social and religious lines have to be defined. Say ‘julle mense’ to a group of diehard Afrikaner nationalists and you could end up lying on your back.

The year was 1962. There were many diehards around then...

Potgieter realised who I was. ‘Kleinbooi,’ (Little boy) he said with sudden tenderness, ‘Baas Pottie doesn’t go around smashing people’s houses – that’s for Speedy Demolishers; it’s their job although the government pays them. ‘Ons wil nie ons hande vuil maak nie; dis hulle werk’ (We don’t want to dirty our hands; it’s their job.) So don’t ‘you people’ me, understand! Otherwise Baas Pottie can become very nasty, you hear?’ Tenderness was now mixed with anger. No wrong moves, I warned myself.

He spoke again. ‘Anyway seun (son), if it means so much to you, your oupa’s (grandpa’s) houses are coming down tomorrow. Don’t ask me the time because I don’t think it’s going to make any difference to the old man, unless ‘you people’ have buckets of money hidden somewhere under his big house.’

Abram laughed. Perhaps he believed in the hidden money because lots of people including some of our own relatives were convinced that my grandfather had hidden a bucket of old gold coins in a cellar under his bedroom. All that would be painfully ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• CONTENTS
• ABOUT DON MATTERA
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE: DEMOLITION
• CHAPTER TWO: BAD NEWS
• CHAPTER THREE: TO BECOME A MAN
• CHAPTER FOUR: SOPHIATOWN
• CHAPTER FIVE: DAI-SOK
• CHAPTER SIX: A BRUSH WITH THE POLICE
• CHAPTER SEVEN: DUMAZILE
• CHAPTER EIGHT: OTHER FACES OF KOFIFI
• CHAPTER NINE: FATHER TREVOR HUDDLESTON
• CHAPTER TEN: PINOCCHIO
• CHAPTER ELEVEN: GANGLAND
• CHAPTER TWELVE: JAIL
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE CHANGE
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE BIG MOVE