You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
136 | denis beckett<br />
english establishment the ethic is to look as bored as possible;<br />
showing interest is for the lower classes. The Boere fit inbetween,<br />
which is the way that South africa works on the whole. Look at<br />
companies. In the in-crowd english outfits it’s first names from<br />
the word go. If you ask for Mr Smith or Miss Jones they take you<br />
for a carpet salesman. In afrikaans companies you don’t even<br />
think of first-naming your boss, and in black ones you know<br />
him only by his praise-name and you go without a murmur<br />
when he sends you for cigarettes.<br />
Manas’s ministers were unhappy to a man – some about the<br />
police; some about zabalaza, the Struggle; most about both<br />
and all about their impotence. Their impotence was what I<br />
was talking about. I was saying their impotence sprang from<br />
the great South african mistake, and that they could take it<br />
in hand. I said they need to build a notion of a liberation that<br />
really meant liberation, rather than the simple swop usually<br />
perceived. One said, “It’s okay for you to talk like that, but if we<br />
do we get arrested.” another, “We can’t do that, or the comrades<br />
will accuse us of selling out”.<br />
Manas’s guys at least responded to the self-interest factor. as<br />
per convention they did not believe in a pale mouth saying roll<br />
on one man one vote. It had to be a plot or a trick. I had a surge<br />
of eloquence that day, making the case that my personal selfinterested<br />
life would work better with a mass of black people<br />
exercising the vote than a mass of black people fighting for the<br />
right to vote. at the end one guy said, “This is better than …”<br />
and he put on heavy mimicry of a white liberal accent, “ …<br />
Oh you poor poor people, we do so empathise with you”, and<br />
cheers filled the air.<br />
My racism heresies, too, went down better in this kind of<br />
circle. My head lived in the society I wanted more than in the<br />
society that existed, and in the society I wanted race was no<br />
big deal. Where cohesion was important to people – Jews or<br />
Muslims or whites or afrikaners or Zulus or Hare Krishnas<br />
or whoever – ways would be worked out, possibly at a cost; if<br />
your neighbours felt you turned your back to them, build them
Change language