LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

      Stephen brought in a young man to look after her while he was at work, but after her mother protested that arrangement, her father employed a young woman. He then sent Josie to stay with his eldest sister, who lived a few miles from Josie’s mother in Johannesburg. There she claimed she was treated poorly—clothes her mother sent her ended up being given to her aunt’s daughter, for example. After Georgina brought a formal complaint to a court, her father took Josie back to Potchefstroom and called on his younger sister to stay with her.

      This arrangement did not work any better. Josie claimed that she was treated as if she were “in jail.” She was not allowed to play with her friends at school. On one occasion she ran away from home and met up with a group of her friends who were searching in a field for cow manure to use as cooking fuel. She had the shock of her life when what they thought was a pile of manure turned out to be a curled-up snake. She fled home, where she found that her father and other family members were frantically looking high and low for her because they thought her mother had kidnapped her. “Now instead of father scolding me for my wrong doings he took me on his lap and wept together with me as was his habit.”¹¹

      Once it became clear that Stephen’s sister could not look after her, Josie was shipped to the home of her uncle, Josiah Jolly Mpama, at Robinson Deep Mine in Johannesburg. “Life in that house,” as she described it, “was something unheard of.” In Potchefstroom she had attended an English-medium school, but at her new school, run by German-speaking Lutheran missionaries, English classes were held only a few times a week. Moreover, her aunt treated her abysmally, even withholding her food for lunch at school. Her uncle was aware of this, and he often slipped her food or money so she could buy lunch. His wife would also thrash Josie with a sjambok for the slightest offense, but after her uncle beat his wife so badly after one spanking that a doctor had to treat her, Josie was never again beaten when he was at home.¹² His wife also forced Josie to help her sell wine illegally to mine workers. Josie’s responsibility was to keep an eye out for “the detectives who if I see them coming should give her a warning.”

      Josie’s mother came to visit her occasionally on Sundays, but since her aunt was always present, Josie was afraid to speak up about her treatment. When her mother decided to remarry, she bought a nice outfit for Josie, but on the wedding day her aunt refused to let her bathe, dressed her in a plain frock, and made excuses for not attending the wedding reception.

      One day Josie was surprised when Georgina unexpectedly showed up at the school gate. She asked Josie if she wanted to come and live with her—something she had always hoped for. Her mother wrote a note to Josiah and his wife: “Don’t look for [Josie]. I have taken her. She is at my place and I shall only hand her up when the highest court in the land compels me too [sic].”¹³ A few days later Stephen arrived at Josie’s granny’s house, where they were staying. He spoke to her in isiZulu and told her that she had to go with him, but this time she “blankly refused and made him understand that I am now with mother and intend to stay with [her].”¹⁴ When her father grabbed her by the arm, she clung fiercely to a door and screamed so loudly that others intervened to separate them. Later her grandmother showed her father the bundle of clothes she was wearing when her mother fetched her at school. It contained “boots that had no soles. Socks that had just the up’s and the feet rags, bloomers that had so many windows that one could see the whole earth without opening one.”¹⁵ Stephen was so ashamed to learn this that he gave up on trying to keep her, even though his relatives swore that they would not “leave their blood with bushmans.”¹⁶ They were true to their word, for several weeks later they attempted to drag her out of the house. This time her mother’s husband and her brothers jumped into the fray. A fistfight broke out, and her father’s relatives were ejected from the premises. The fight then went to the courtroom, where her mother was charged with stealing a child. The case exposed all the unpleasant things her uncle and aunt had done to her, and she was allowed to stay with her mother at her grandmother’s place.

      In 1917, Josie’s mother’s legs began weakening, and her husband urged her and Josie to go back to Potchefstroom. He promised to support them with his job in Johannesburg. They bought a three-room house with a small garden. Josie attended school, while her mother earned money washing clothes for white families. But when her mother’s health worsened and she became an invalid, her husband reneged on his promise to look after them. Josie had to pitch in to wash and iron clothes on the side, and on Saturdays she cleaned the home of an elderly white woman.

      Eventually her need to support her mother forced her to leave school and serve an apprenticeship with a tailor. In 1918, she and her mother moved to Doornfontein in Johannesburg, where they rented a room. Josie found work at an Indian tailor shop making buttonholes and hand sewing. She also learned how to make trousers. But, always on the lookout for better-paying positions, she became a domestic servant for an elderly white couple. And knowing that cooks were paid a bit more, she learned enough, “with the aid of cooking books and recipes in newspapers,” to find work as a servant and cook. She even polished floors, despite the toll it took on her knees and legs.

      Working for a family of Russian Jews, she learned for the first time about the communist revolution of 1917. They “spoke about a revolution in that country and me, not knowing anything about politics and the birth of a new world, took no notice of what they were speaking about. Until 1928 when I got an idea of the revolution of which they spoke.”¹⁷

      Josie had her first child, Carol, with a Coloured man in Doornfontein in 1920, but she kept her maiden name. Around the time of the Rand Rebellion in 1922, when a white mine workers’ strike almost brought Johannesburg to its knees, Josie, Carol, and her mother moved back to Potchefstroom and stayed in Stephen’s comfortable house in the location surrounded by fig and apple trees. She gave birth to a second daughter, Francis, by another man in 1926.¹⁸

      Although her childhood was rough, she acknowledged in an interview late in her life that she “learnt the value of doing things myself instead of always depending on the next person.”¹⁹

      While Josie and her mother were eking out a living, Stephen was doing well as an interpreter at the magistrate’s court until a reorganization of staff led to his being retrenched in May 1912. After that he was used on a temporary basis.²⁰ He was a highly respected figure in Potchefstroom. In 1915, the local magistrate described him this way: “I may add that so far as this particular Native is concerned I can only say that in regard to linguistic accomplishments, civility, sobriety, general behavior and ability, he is altogether exceptional.”²¹ But in late 1916, his world was turned upside down when he was charged with knowingly receiving stolen property.

      The case revolved around some sheets of corrugated iron that another black person, John Konden, had stolen from his employer and various other people and sold to Mpama in August 1916. Konden claimed that Mpama bought the goods knowing they were stolen. He testified that Mpama had seen him in front of the courthouse and asked him if he had any sheets of corrugated iron for sale. Because Mpama made it clear to him that he did not want to buy costly material from a white person, Konden inferred that Mpama did not care how he procured the material. He then stole the iron sheets as well as pipes and gutters. After delivering the goods to Mpama’s home during the day, Mpama upbraided him for not bringing them at night. Then, when Konden was caught stealing some doors, he confessed to the police that Mpama had paid him for the sheets in front of the post office.

      Mpama’s version of his dealings with Konden was very different. He said he was tending his garden at his home when Konden came by and asked him why he did not put a furrow under the bridge in his garden so that water could flow easier. Konden offered to sell him materials for the furrow. When he arrived several days later with some secondhand sheets of corrugated iron in a handcart, Mpama bought five of them and placed them in his backyard.

      The investigating officer, Detective Robert Glass, questioned Mpama about where he had bought the iron sheets. Put on the defensive, Mpama first denied knowing Konden at all. Then, when Glass said that he would search Mpama’s home, Mpama admitted that Konden had given him one piece of piping as a present. After going to Mpama’s house, Glass found some of the stolen property, which had identifying marks, in the backyard. When Glass asked

Скачать книгу