Generous

It is good to be home. So good to be cutting through the maze of warnings that come pre-packaged with any trip to South Africa. When my friend R was here from Australia, I drove great distances to avoid HIllbrow and central Johannesburg, mapping our journey according family and friends’ advice, according to an ancient history of when I lived here and got robbed there, smash ‘n’ grabbed there, and there. 

There’s this mist of a movie that can be projected up onto the streetscapes of Jo'burg, that looks something like …  me, a lone whitey, driving down a busy city street, where I am suddenly helpless as some predatory young man makes his way to me, to impose theft, murder or rape on me.

The art of living here is to dissolve those kind of scripts, remain present, and yes, be careful, but DRIVE. LIVE. BE. Like the province of Gauteng the cityscapes move quickly. What was once a smash ‘n’ grab hotspot is still the same underpass, but the pillars holding the throbbing freeway up are beautifully mosaic-ed, and yesterday there was a lazy Sunday air with people  walking, sitting, waiting, praying – the church ladies in their beautiful white and green cottons seated in a circle near the intersection, softly singing, probably waiting.  Allelujah.

For how many years have I avoided that underpass? Because once, about 15 years ago, the passenger window was smashed and my bag removed. I got such a fright, as did the drivers around me, that we all stopped to talk and recover, the Indian couple behind me was as shocked as I at how swift the thief had been, and pulled over to check if I was ok. It was the beginning of the flavour of crime that was to seep into our city, before the protective film for car glass, now available, to thwart the smash ‘n’ grabbers, before the myriad of beggars and concocted street life of today.

But I was saying, how I love to be back. How very lucky I am to be here, and how very blessed it feels to be inhabiting this life. Last week I got my new South African passport, with great ease and efficiency at Centurion Home Affairs. I was thrilled. To me it was a sign, that I am home, that this is my country, my earth, my place of belonging.  

Passport tucked into my bag, I went to my mother’s house to see my family, my visiting cousin and her husband and children who were heading back to Toronto shortly.  My cousin and I had spoken at length about what it means to leave, to come back. She and her husband did not want to raise their children in South Africa – they wanted them to be free of racial discrimination. Which is honorable, as it is so inbuilt in our experience of this country. It doesn’t seem to be possible to spend a day with a group of people without someone referring to blacks or whites.

On this family day, the man who works in my mother’s garden, A, a tall, older Zulu man, was finishing his planting and trimming. He came to the door to speak to my mother, and P, my six year old Canadian nephew ran across the room to greet him and yelled out, “Are you family?” My cousin and I were so moved, it was incredibly precious that he perceived A to be our people. Onse mense.

On top of this warm occurrence, I’ve made a friend who is also new to Johannesburg – a brilliant, funny, warm and delicious man with the most glorious manners and the wickedest hooligan streak I have seen in a while. An authentic hooligan, but one who can dance and whose southern accent melts me into the moment. What exquisite fun it is to be moving around the city with him, talking about race, culture, heart stories, plans, prospects. I feel so very loved by existence to have this person in my life, to come and colour in the places that were left in outline, where I’ve been waiting for the quality masculine to take space. I won’t say more about that, as it is a little complicated, but what I will say is thank you, gracias, baie dankie for coming this way, hooligan. 

Having someone like this is like a tide that washes in and out – it shapes me, and then leaves and I find my ground again, and as I’m formulating an idea he gently comes in again and tells me some other interesting story about his ancestors or his family, about slaves who rose to surgeons, about perceptions of race and I love that finally I have someone to talk to, who is firm in his ideology, but willing to stretch and listen and breathe in the stories that insert themselves into my psyche, the stories that bring poignancy and a surprise to  what we think we knew.

One such story I told him yesterday was about my father, my kind, gregarious and generous father who retired about 20 years ago and couldn’t stand the inertia of being homebound, so went to work for our neighbour, who owned a significant advertising agency.  Dad died a few years later, shockingly suddenly, and in those days of mourning that followed, a small group of black staff from the advertising agency arrived at my mother’s house, to express their condolences. They did this by handing over an envelope, to which every black staff member had contributed cash, to express their respect for my father and their support of my mother. Of course, my mother did not need the money, but of course, was deeply profoundly touched by this humble, generous act.

From this and other stories I know my father was a good man, I know he would help people where he could and was generous. He would slip a R10 note to a man who was standing at the meat counter, counting coins to see what he could afford. So yes, my lovely hooligan, in this system where we whites benefitted from the oppression of millions, these little gestures of kindness hold value. They were too small and could’ve been grander, but this, my father helping a man, thank God keeps a flame of compassion alive. I can hear a cynical voice that would say it’s pathetic, a gesture that would be a one off help to a man who lived a miserable existence of endless poverty with no hope of prosperity. But to me, my father’s gestures are meaningful, the envelope brought to my grieving mother meaningful, that in this vulgar system of degradation and exploitation, small acts of kindness are the pennies that contribute to our survival here, now. Inshallah.