To Survive and Succeed - Mkhuseli Jack

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because he was short and stocky. My brother called him ‘Goeffie’ because of his huge body. The two of them had numerous verbal and even physical clashes. Bonakele had a short temper and he, too, had become vulgar. And yet, in this volatile, violence-prone workplace, I did acknowledge one positive aspect to this deeply flawed ‘boer’: for him, today’s fight was never tomorrow’s fight.

      The Jeffreys Bay Bantu Community School was four kilometres from Paradise Beach and was under the principalship of a Mrs Dano. She ran the school from Sub A to Standard 4. In 1973 they were going to experiment with establishing a Standard 5 for the first time. How my admission was arranged I do not know but fortunately there was no problem with pass laws as my address was given as the construction campsite a few kilometres away.

      After a month of schooling and living on the construction site, both my brothers started to run into serious pass law problems. Bonakele was forced to leave the Jeffreys Bay area and started to look for work on farms near St Francis Bay. However, help was at hand. My Uncle Oudenks was now working for a farmer on the outskirts of Jeffreys Bay. The servants’ quarters were less than 30 metres from the old shopping complex. I was about to live closer to school than in my entire, albeit brief, school life, and I had the company of two of my cousins who were at the same school. My favourite aunt, Nowise, was as kind and welcoming as she had been when my family and I were dumped on her doorstep after our eviction.

      Soon after I moved in, a huge and significant shift in my health occurred: my asthma left me forever. It had started when we were evicted and moved in with Uncle Oudenks and now it lifted when I joined the family again.

      Things looked positive. I was doing extremely well academically and was made prefect for the entire school. Mrs Dano, who was not aware of the travails we had faced as a family, believed in me. I represented the school at rugby, even though we did not have the numbers for a full under-thirteen side, and our teacher and coach had to borrow players from the neighbouring coloured school when we had an inter-school match.

      I was also encouraged by the district inspector, Mr Curnick Mdyesha, to forge ahead with my schooling. He told Mrs Dano that I was a bright child and there was definitely a bright future for me. Yet, despite such affirmation, I was haunted by the spectre of knowing that my schooldays were numbered.

      This was made clear to me when the only black policeman in the Jeffreys Bay area, one Cisko Tsholoba, started passing comments and claiming that I was at the school illegally. He took pride in harassing non-law-abiding Africans. I feared him, especially since he lived next to the school and had a habit of summoning me to his house. He would interrogate me rudely and tell me to stop thinking I was smart. He hated my brothers, especially Galelekile. Things got worse for me when both Galelekiles showed their dislike of him. They challenged him on numerous occasions and warned him to stop harassing me. Standing up to a bullying policeman in those apartheid days was a bold move.

      Ironically, while attending school in Jeffreys Bay, Zulu re-entered my life. I got an afternoon gardening job at his house. His wife Helda was a tall, slender woman and I thought she was genuinely beautiful. She was the direct opposite of her foul-mouthed ogre of a husband. She was kind and would give me my two slices of bread with butter and apricot jam and coffee on the family’s own plates, which was most unusual. In those days labourers’ plates were stored in the same place as the bowls and dishes used to feed the dogs and cats and they were not to be washed with those of the white people. Helda never once shouted at me and was always interested in hearing about my schooling.

      Jeffreys Bay was largely inhabited by coloured people whose main occupation was fishing. Some worked in the construction industry as semi-skilled labourers, while others sold products made out of seashells. The number of blacks living in the township area was fewer than 300.

      As I have mentioned, I was a bit provocative as a young boy and at times prone to a bit of bullying myself. This did not end well for me, but end it did when one day I challenged a young coloured boy I used to walk past every time I went to my gardening job. He was always quiet, never saying a word even when I greeted him. One day I went up to him to harass and bully him but I was walking into big trouble. He suddenly had a knife in his right hand. Still, I taunted him. He did not retaliate. I moved behind him and began to kick him just as I had seen on the screen in the bioscope. I kicked him so hard that I lost my balance. A split second later, I felt warm blood streaming down my back and I collapsed to the ground. I regained consciousness in the Humansdorp provincial hospital. I had been stabbed in my right shoulder and the doctor told me it was a miracle that I survived.

      The hospital discharged me after stitching my wound. It was a very cold day and I was not warmly dressed. I walked gingerly to the old Humansdorp-Jeffreys Bay road and slowly started walking the long way home. I was spotted by a petrol attendant who took off his jacket and put it around me. When I told him what had happened, he immediately said I could not continue walking in that condition. This good Samaritan carried me, a wounded sixteen-year-old farm boy, on his shoulders to spend the night at his house with his family. He was a priest of one the Zionist churches. Had he not come to my rescue, I doubt I would have lived to see the light of day and his kindness had a positive impact on my life. The boy who stabbed me was convicted and given a suspended sentence.

      I had been happily ensconced at my new school for three months when disaster struck again. Uncle Oudenks was fired after a fight with his boss. He and his family were kicked off the farm but, as ever, they found a way to carry on. My cousins and I went to live with Galelekile and his wife Nosapho in Driewerf, about four kilometres from Humansdorp. My schooling continued. I had to walk eight kilometres a day again, but I was in class and six months later I passed Standard 5.

      In December that year Galelekile was also fired. He then became so fed up with the oppressive culture of white farming life that he decided to leave it altogether.

      At that time the apartheid government was hitting the throttle with its racist plan to empty the republic of excess blacks and was trying to lure or force blacks into the so-called independent bantustan state of Ciskei. Galelekile got himself on the list of people who were being encouraged by the government to ‘relocate’ to Mdantsane township, close to East London. I was left in the lurch. Again.

      In January 1974 my walk to school became a lot longer than it had been the previous year. I was back living with my Uncle Oudenks who had found a job working for someone as a contractor. We lived on the northern side of Humansdorp, close to Arcadia township, which was designated for people classified as coloured. The whole of that year I walked between Humansdorp and Jeffreys Bay – a long and tedious twelve kilometres there and twelve kilometres back. I walked alone; my cousins had dropped out of school that year.

      What whites came to call my ‘cheekiness’ was fostered by Australian and Californian surfers who gave me lifts from Jeffreys Bay to Humansdorp. These blond, long-haired hippies who drove Kombis with their surfboards on top were on their way to Bruce’s Beauties and Seal Point, internationally renowned surfing spots. Black people loved these surfers, who were seen as different from ‘our’ white people. They were patient and spoke to me as though we were equals, which was uplifting. They told me about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the United States. They smoked a lot of dagga and did not seem to do much work. At the time, my political understanding was limited to what I heard from these surfers.

      I passed Standard 6 with flying colours and had successfully made arrangements for my schooling the following year. I had applied to and was accepted at Nathaniel Phamla High in Peddie. The good news was that I was going to stay at the boarding school. I was very excited and my family was ecstatic about my achievement. That year I worked as a gardener at Paradise Beach and during those December holidays I collected enough money to pay for my school and boarding fees, books and transport. I did not have the depressing experience of previous years.

      As I was preparing to go Peddie to start school the next year, I heard a rumour that my grandfather was opposed to me going to high school. Apparently he felt that Peddie was infested with witches and thought that a troublesome child like me would not last long there and would die within a short space of time. In isiXhosa my grandpa said ‘uyakuf’ eluhlaza’, meaning I would die without having been sick. This new crisis paralysed me mentally.

      My

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