opposition underground. The Population Registration Act classified South Africans into racial categories: Bantu (African, approximately 80 percent of the population), White (approximately 10 percent), and Coloured (7 percent); a fourth category, Asian, was later added for people of South Asian origin (3 percent). The Group Areas Act carved up the country according to racial category, ensuring that the white minority would hold 80 percent of the land, including all the cities and the best of the farmland. Years of forced removal followed: homes were bulldozed, possessions destroyed, and communities demolished. Three and a half million blacks, mostly African, but coloured and Asian as well, suffered this fate. This act also changed my father’s law practice. He rapidly gained expertise in the complex and often incomprehensible law, interpreting it for his clients and helping them maneuver their way through it. As a white he had to apply for special permission to work in his own office, subject to renewal every five years. Until it no longer was.
He set up his practice in Athlone after graduating from law school. He was the youngest of six brothers and the only one to attend university. A young radical at the time, he was connected with the Unity Movement, a largely coloured, Trotskyist anti-apartheid movement. “I could have opened my office in the center of the city when I qualified,” he told me. “But I didn’t want to spend my days handling the divorces and wills of privileged white clients.” In Athlone, he could train black lawyers and provide legal services to people who confronted real problems.
My father never turned away clients because they couldn’t afford his fee. Tucked away at the end of the garden at the back of the house where we lived until I was eight, was a chicken run where gifts from grateful clients happily clucked and scratched and occasionally deigned to lay an egg. We could not bring ourselves to slaughter them, so they would be given away when they got too old to be of use. Or so I was led to believe.
2 — “But It Makes No Sense”
One or two afternoons a week I hang out at my father’s storefront office after school. As I walk into the busy interior, the first thing I notice is the musty smell of dust that has settled into files and deeds and law books and Hansards; that has filtered in from the unpaved road outside to settle in the cracks and crevices of the rough wood floor. I take delight in lifting the broad, hinged wooden flap, smooth from wear, that opens upward to allow people to pass into the cluttered central area where Khadija, my father’s secretary, sits, clacking away on her typewriter. On one side is my father’s office. On the other, the offices of the coloured law clerks and administrator, barely large enough for their desks and a chair or two for clients. It feels cozy and familiar. As cozy and familiar as hanging out in our kitchen at home.
It is the early 1950s and I am about eight years old, fascinated by the world spinning around me from my vantage point on the sidewalk. I am neatly dressed in my school uniform, a light green dress with a small round collar, short puff sleeves and belted waist, bright white socks and black lace-ups. My thick curly black hair is parted down the middle, tightly pulled into two large bunches secured in place with an elastic band and bright ribbons, or loose and springy, held back by an Alice band. I smile politely at clients entering the office and then return to my observations of the street. Women—young, middle-aged, elderly—pass at a pace suited to their age and economic standing, some bent over from the weight of their lives, others smartly dressed and striding out. Men of dubious occupation congregate on the corner or hang out in front of the bottle store across the street where they are permitted to buy wine but not hard liquor, a privilege that Africans cannot legally enjoy. They sway on their feet, tattered shirts hanging over tattered trousers. I have been adopted by these men. Khadija calls them skelms—scoundrels—and tells me to quit smiling at every no-good skollie who walks past. But I tell her they are my friends and I like it when they call out to me: “Hey skattie, hoe gaan’it?” And I reply politely, “Goed, dankie!” Then they laugh and tell me I am their pretty little gogga while I ponder that “bug” is a term of endearment.
Honking cars rattle by, backfiring. Dogs bark. People call to each other from opposite sides of the street. The sound of children playing street games fills the afternoon air. So does the yelling, laughing, bantering, conversing in an Afrikaans dialect that I can’t quite understand but don’t have to. Body language and tone tell me all. The streets crackle with activity and noise. I know, although I am too young to analyze the reasons why, that this area belongs to its residents. Here they can express themselves freely understand each other and their culture, and know what it means to carve out home in their own community. It is a different world from the one I live in, with its large houses and green lawns and flower gardens, where neighbors nod friendly hellos when they happen upon each other but little else. And where blacks—whether coloured or African—are there to serve their white baas and madam and to be subservient.
I am perhaps ten when I begin to question the dissonance between the two Cape Towns I know. Cracks form and light enters. I stare out the window of my father’s car as we take the twenty-minute drive home. The Athlone houses are small and cramped; most have no space for gardens or children to play. The paint is worn, the cars are old, and the kids playing outside are wearing clothes that if they were mine, my mother would have said, “These are getting too worn out” or “You are growing like a beanstalk, they’re too small,” and she would have packed into a shopping bag and handed to our maid. We cross the railroad track into Rondebosch. What I see regularly and have accepted as normal begins to trouble me. Here the streets are quiet, broad, paved. The houses always look freshly painted, with neatly cropped hedges, colorful gardens, and rolling lawns all kept up by men and women who come from areas like Athlone or the African townships outside of Cape Town, or even from the Bantustans (the “homelands” in which Africans were forced to live, to keep them out of urban areas) farther away. Cars are parked in locked garages. Everyone living here is white.
I glance sideways at my father’s profile, testing his mood. This is the time I have him to myself, but it’s not always easy. He has strong views and his authoritarian tone renders me mute. I need to sense approval before I initiate a conversation. Sometimes a silence envelopes the car and he seems to forget that I am there. Other times, if it has been a good day, the mood is more relaxed and I feel free to ask questions. This day is a good day.
“Why, Daddy?” I ask as we near home, “Why the difference?” He looks at me and raises his eyebrows. He suddenly hits the brake as a dog darts across the street, and he thrusts his left hand across my chest so that I won’t be thrown forward. My chest hurts a bit. I try to ignore it. He is silent for a moment.
“It’s because the government thinks blacks are inferior. This is a very racist country.” His voice sounds annoyed, but this time I know it’s not because of me. “All privileges are reserved for the whites.” Although we are in the minority, he tells me, laws ensure that we live well.
I don’t really understand. “What do you mean?”
He tells me that to maintain our good life, blacks, particularly Africans, hold all the inferior jobs and are paid very badly. “The children of my clients go to schools that are cramped and overcrowded.” I think of my own school, Oakhurst, with its airy classrooms and playing fields.
“It’s even worse, though,” he says. “African kids don’t have to go to school, and their education is different from yours.”
I am still puzzled. “But why?”
“The government thinks they don’t need the same education as you, because they will end up working in the mines and factories. They won’t become doctors or lawyers like you.”
My mind battles and fumbles to absorb this. It is as if the color of the air has changed. A film that I didn’t know existed dissolves to allow sharper focus. All I can think is that it’s so unfair. It makes no sense. He repeats what he has often told me, that I need to understand that my sister and I are very fortunate.
