APARTHEID: A PERSONAL ENCOUNTER; A PERSONAL MIRACLE?

Apartheid was a system of total race separation, and the TOTAL domination by whites, especially Afrikaners, over all other races. Each race lived in it's own allocated area, and no mixing of any kind was ever allowed. Special permission had to be obtained from a magistrate even to attend a wedding or funeral in the area of another race, or, especially for blacks, to go to any area in which they were not registered. In apartheid South Africa this was a rare thing to be allowed, or even considered.
Each race was classified to the n-th degree; there were even "degrees of whiteness" and "degrees of blackness". Every black South African HAD to carry a "pass book", in which ALL details of the person where noted. Failure to carry this book AT ALL TIMES meant instant imprisonment. Blacks were only "temporary" city dwellers, and their pass books stated which city, and even which suburb in the city, they were allowed to work in.

Thanks to the efforts of my parents, I had been brought up differently. I was an activist in our liberation struggle from a young age.

An idle conversation with friends at work reminded me of something that happened in my own life. As I write this, I weep as I recall the utter humiliation purposely inflicted by this evil and abhorrent system.

Lebang, Poki, and I were reminiscing about the hated "pass laws" during tea break at iThemba the other week, and we laughed as we recalled how people would recognise the sound made by the dreaded police vans (pickups?), called Kwela Kwela’s: 

these large vans had an engine sound that everyone recognised, and this sound was the signal to run and hide anywhere they could. People also gave a series of coded whistles with a specific meaning ... the Kwela Kwela's were around. It actually became a game of cat-and-mouse, and avoiding or escaping from a pursuing policeman was almost a guarantee of a free beer on Friday payday evening as the chase and the escape was described to friends in the shebeens (illegal liquor houses) in the townships. This is one of my stories from my experiences with the pass laws.

It was winter-ish 1980 about-ish; Sihle (say See-shleh) and I were having an evening of company and fun at a favourite shebeen of mine in Soweto, Lee's Place. 

The quart bottles of beer were delicious, and conversation and music competed for what little air there was inside the shebeen. The whistles began in the distance, and were picked up, getting closer - the Kwela Kwela’s were coming. Everybody in the shebeen reacted immediately: the owner and her family grabbed the stock ran away with it to a safe hiding place; customers began jumping the back walls; Sihle and I raced to the bike. We had no time to put on our helmets: as the engine fired and burst into life we saw the lights of the first police cars in the smoky haze above the houses; Sihle jumped onto the passenger seat grabbing my waist even before he was properly seated; he knew how to do these things. I opened the throttle wide and the Yamaha blasted off. A police car spotted us about two blocks further up, and the chase was on. I was illegally in Soweto (not my area) at about 2 a.m. and, horror of horrors: I had a BLACK guy as my passenger! But there was more at stake than just this.

I was riding a Yamaha two-stroke, the RD400 twin, a very agile and very fast machine.  

Sihle was a natural on a bike and I loved having him as a passenger; he glued himself to my back, following my every movement as I desperately twisted and turned at high speed through the rutted streets of Soweto. We had to get to the Soweto Highway, or to the other main access road, the Potchefstroom Main Road, where I could open up and escape them; I chose Potch Main Road coz I knew that way better, and began heading there; we had a bit less than two miles to cover.

The police had the advantage in the narrow Soweto streets, they had four wheels, and their car could corner much better than the "Yummie" on the rutted and sandy Soweto roads; my only advantage was the phenomenal acceleration of the Yamaha along the straights, but there was no way that I could take the corners fast, we would have crashed.

This was race we could not afford to lose: Sihle was a cadre in Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress. (Umkhonto weSizwe = The Spear of the Nation) and had crossed from Botswana into South Africa on a mission. The security police had been tipped off that he was in the country, and were looking for him. He would have been a real prize for the uniformed police who were chasing us. When handed over to the security police, he would have been tortured, probably would have died, in order to get the information he carried, and I, already known to those swine, could well have suffered the same fate. We were at war with the apartheid government.

The police must have realised that I was heading for the Potchefstroom Main Road, and radioed for help. 

We heard them shooting, but we were gradually inching away from them, gaining a lead of about 200 yards, maybe a bit more. In those days, police could shoot without question. As we eventually swung toward the final exit to Potch Main Road, near Baragwanath Hospital entrance, with about 150 yards to go, we saw a white police car blocking the narrow road ahead. The police were out of the car, and they had guns. 

But, I had worked at Bara Hospital for several years, and I knew this area very well - and the police had positioned their car in exactly the right spot for us to escape them: they were wedged in across the road right in the exit to Potch Main Road, and it would take a bit of maneuvering for them to get out. Positioned as they were, they would also block any pursuit by the car behind us.

There was a Shell Garage (Gas station) on the corner on our right near this exit (We drive on the LEFT side of the road here) which had a rear service road for the workshops; a well-used pedestrian footpath led through the bushes from this service road, exiting on the pavement (sidewalk) alongside Potch Main Road; I had myself used this footpath as a shortcut. I often used to fill up at this garage on the Yummie, and the guys there knew me and the Yummie, and they knew the sound of the big two-stroke; in the cold winter's night air, they must have heard us long before got near the garage; there were no big bikes in Soweto those days, so they must have known it was me; also, they were used to me coming along that route at night.

Taking the corner into the exit road, I dropped the Yamaha sideways, kicking down in the gears, the rear wheel spinning as it swung backwards into the direction we had been travelling. Rubber smoked, sand and grit spat, the tire bit into the tarmac and we reared up briefly, bouncing down again as Sihle and I automatically leaned forward to counteract the wheelie. Engine banshee-screaming as only a big two stroke can at full throttle, the bike took off up the ramp onto the forecourt of the garage, becoming momentarily airborne; our helmetless state, the police blockade, the shots from the pursuing car, must have made the attendants realise that this was no ordinary chase. And they laughed great African laughs and cheered and waved at us as we shot past them to the service road: they stood in a line between us and the blockading police! All of us, from the smallest child to the oldest grannies, were involved in this war.

We got to Potch Main Road, and I opened up and went at maximum revs through all the gears until sixth gear. We had made it, and we were shouting and laughing into the wind. I took side roads through the suburbs until we made it back to my place in Hillbrow. Parking the bike, we danced around and hugged each other, and then went of to a rooftop shebeen to celebrate. We got home about 6.30 a.m. and slept the sweet sleep of victors ... even if we were rather tipsy victors!

It is odd the little things that one remembers in situations like this: Sihle was softly laughing while all of this was happening; and I heard him say, “Yee haaa!” as the bike bucked and bounced under full power up the ramp onto the forecourt. Lol, we talked about this "yee hah" for years!

Poetry ...

I wrote this in memory of all of my friends who died fighting for our freedom, but especially for the best and dearest friend that I have ever had .... Sipho, who was killed less that one year before we had our first ever free elections in South Africa.
 

Requiem for a Hero

Noble comrade warrior,
With twisted limbs athwart your breached body,
Down deep into the dark Afric' earth
Your lifesblood slowly trickles.
Your heroic soul rises
From that cruelly shattered form,
Which once we knew ~and loved ~ as you,
To be gathered to your forebears,
There to gladly stand amidst the thronging heroes
Who so proudly died before.

But though your cold brow shall never know
a loving mother's smoothing touch,
Nor misted fathers eye your final resting place behold,
Yet we believe that you
~ and those that died with you ~
Still walk your birthright land,
And have at last received,
From the warm, compassionate heart of Mother Africa,
Eternal Freedom.

And we, who now can walk our treasured land freed of oppressive yoke

~ free because you died ~

Hear, in parents' easy laughter and schoolchild's merry song,
A faint, far-off paean of joyous liberty.
We hear long-dead voices in the droning of the bees.
In the wind, a ceaseless, ghostly singing,
As from unchained souls.

Within our hearts
You will not die.

Shane William Wilson.
Johannesburg, 1995.

Sokrates: on the price of a true and honourable lover.

Sokrates had asked a young man what price one ought to pay for a true and honourable lover. The young fellow, seeking to show that he knew a thing or two, "answered at once that one ought not to pay anything."

Sokrates replied:

"Many things have their price which are not upon the market. Let us see if this is one of them. If we come into the company of such a lover, it seems to me that one of three things will happen.

Either he will succeed in making us his equal in honour;

or, if he fails to do both this and to free himself from love, seeking to please us he will become less good than he was;

or, if he is of stronger mind, remembering what is due to the gods and to his own soul, he will be master of himself and go away.

Or can you see some other conclusion than these?"

The young man replied that he could see no other conclusion.

Sokrates continued:

"So, then, it now appears, does it not, that the price of an honourable lover is to be honourable ourselves, and that we shall neither get him nor keep him, if we offer anything less? And thus, we find that what we thought was to be had for love turns out to be the costliest of them all."

"Love is not a god, for a god cannot want anything; but love is one of those great spirits who are messengers between gods and men.

Love does not visit fools, who are content with their low condition; but love visits those who are aware of their own need's desire by them embracing those who are beautiful and the good, in order to beget and create goodness and beauty; for creation is man's immortality and brings him nearest to the gods."

"All creatures cherish the children of their flesh; yet the noblest progeny of love are wisdom and glorious deeds, for mortal children die, but these live forever; and these are begotten not of the body but of the soul.

Mortal passion sinks us in mortal pleasure, so that the wings of the soul grow weak; and such lovers may chance to rise to the good, but not to the very best.

But the winged soul rises from love to love, from the beauty that is born and dies, to the beauty that is, in itself, eternal ... the life itself, of which mortal beauty is only a moving shadow flung briefly upon a wall."

Eddiue Cantor .... not just an entertainer!

THIS IS A BRIEF EXTRACT FROM THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE ON THIS EXTRAORDINARY MAN:

In the 1950s, he was one of the alternating hosts of the television show The Colgate Comedy Hour, in which he would introduce variety acts and play comic characters like "Maxie the Taxi." However, the show landed Cantor in an unlikely controversy when a young Sammy Davis, Jr. appeared as a guest performer.


Cantor embraced Davis and mopped Davis's brow with his handkerchief after his performance. Worried sponsors led NBC to threaten cancellation of the show; other sources claim that NBC threatened to cancel the show when Davis was booked for two weeks straight. Cantor's response to the controversy was to book Davis for the rest of the season.

Right: 7 year-old Sammy Davis Jr.

Makin' Whoopee .... BEWARE! IT CAN BE VERY COSTLY!

Oct 28, '08 10:41 AM for everyone

IThe advice given in this song should be taken to heart by every person alive, especially men. Its fearsome warnings have been passed on to us by all the great singers.

Its warnings were first sounded by Eddie Cantor in the 1928 musical Whoopee! Walter Donaldson wrote the music and Gus Kahn was the lyricist.

The title is a slang expression for bonking, and the song itself is a dire warning, largely to men, about falling into the trap of marriage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANRPmTZRqkg"Makin' Whoopee" begins with the celebration of a wedding, honeymoon, and the early years of marital bliss, but moves on to babies and responsibilities, and ultimately on to affairs and possible divorce, ending with a judge's advice.




Another bride, another June
another sunny honey moon
another season, another reason
For makin' whoopie





A lot of shoes, a lot of rice
the groom is nervous, he answers twice
its so Killin'
that he's so willin'
To make whoopee



Picture a little love nest
down where the roses cling
Picture the same sweet love nest
think what a year can bring...




He's washing dishes and baby clothes
He's so ambitious he even sews
But don't forget folks
thats what you get folks
For makin whoopee






Another year or maybe less
what's this I hear? Well you can't you guess?
She feels neglected
and he's suspected
Of makin' whoopee




She sits alone most every night
He doesn't phone her he doesn't write
He says he's busy
But she say's "Is he?
He's makin' whoopee"



He doesn't make much money
Only five thousand per
Some judge who thinks he's funny
says "You'll pay six to her"




He says "Now judge suppose i fail?"
The judge says "Budge right into jail
you better keep her I think it's cheaper
Than makin' whoopee"

(You better keep her
I know it's cheaper
than makin' whoopee)



Here is the full 1930's version:

MAKING WHOOPEE
(Gus Kahn)

Every time I hear that dear old wedding march
I feel rather glad I have a broken arch
I have heard a lot of married people talk
And I know that marriage is a long, long walk
To most people weddings mean romance
But I prefer a picnic or a dance.

Another bride, another groom
The countryside is all in bloom;
The flow'rs 'n trees is,
The birds and bees is
Making whoopie.

The choir sings, "Here comes the bride"
Another victim is at her side
He's lost his reason
'Cause it's the season
For making whoopee.

    Down through the countless ages,
    You'll find it ev'rywhere:
    Somebody makes good wages,
    Somebody wants her share.

It's so he'll fall for
Making whoopee.

Another year, or maybe less
What's this I hear? Or can't you guess?
She feels neglected,
And he's suspected
Of making whoopee.

She sits alone 'most ev'ry night
He doesn't come home, or even write
He says he's busy
But she says, "Is he
Making whoopee?"

    He doesn't make much money
    Five thousand dollars per;
    Some judge who thinks he's funny
    Says, "You pay six to her."
He says, "Now judge, suppose I fail?"
The judge says, "Bud, right into jail.
You'd better keep her
You'll find it cheaper
Than making whoopee."

Boys will be boys .....

A young Roman recruit writes to his mother ... his homesickness shows, even though he tries to hide it.

Apollinaris is a soldier in the fleet ... a marine ...and he writes his letters after arrival in Italy. His home was in Arsinoites (Fayum) in Egypt.

This young man would once have walked these streets of his home town.

Ravenna and Misenum were the main naval bases in the mare nostrum though ships were regularly detached to other ports.



A Roman Marine

Letter of a Recruit: Apollinarius

Select Papyri I (1932) #111 (II. A.D.)

---

The site in modern Italy where he was when he wrote the letter

Apollinarius to Taesis, his mother and lady, many greetings!

Before all I pray for your health. I myself am well, and make supplication for you before the gods of this place. I wish you to know, mother, that I arrived in Rome in good health on the 20th of the month Pachon, and was posted to Misenum, though I have not let learned the name of my company (kenturian); for I had not gone to Misenum at the time of writing this letter. I beg you then, mother, look after yourself and do not worry about me; for I have come to a fine place. Please write me a letter about your welfare and that of my brothers and of all your folk. And whenever I find a messenger I will write to you; never will I be slow to write. Many salutations to my brothers and Apollinarius and his children, and Karalas and his children. I salute Ptolemaeus and Ptolemais and her children and Heraclous and her children. I salute all who love you, each by name. I pray for your health.

[Address:] Deliver at Karanis to Taesis, from her son Apollinarius of Misenum.

Misenum, upper left.



And schoolboys ....

‘Young people were characterised by an excess of blood and heat. In the course of the years, they would cool down and become more balanced. There was no need to be overly concerned about them.’

These inattentive and ungrateful students would have walked and hunted in these hills....

‘When I start my lecture, they just carry on winking at one another and talking about charioteers, miming, horses, dancers, past or future fights. Even better: some stand around like statues, their arms crossed. Others pick their nose with both hands, yet others remain seated when many people jump to their feet enthusiastically; they force enthusiastic listeners to sit down, and others count the number of newcomers, while yet others stare at the leaves on the trees.’

The orator Libanius (4th century AD) talks about a lecture he held for students in Antioch, Orations 3 in het Romeinse Rijk p.92).

Edith Sitwell ... Poet Extraordinaire. Her groundbreaking music style is now copied everywhere, every day.

Good taste is the worst vice
ever invented.

This quote by Edith Sitwell (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) pretty much sums up her attitude to those for whom pretentious "good taste" was a self-inflicted prison.

Standing just on six feet tall, she was born into an aristocratic family in Britain.
Always a free-thinker, daring always to flout convention, positioned firmly at the centre of controversy, sensitive always to the pain of others, she walked her own unique path through life to the rhythm of a drumbeat that she alone seemed able to hear... or understand.

So different was the rhythm incessantly thrumming in her mind that in the immediate post-Edwardian era in Britain she began a new style of song, using the spoken word and music in counterpoint and bizarre harmony.

Intermittent staccato phrasing; sometimes with the music; sometimes the words and phrasing was the music; jarring, yet essentially, strangely, harmonic; earthy; always in touch with what was happening around her, anticipating, leading, cajoling, her style was stunningly different to anything heard before, decades ahead of its time.

We instantly recognise her groundbreaking music style today in what we call ....

RAP!

DAME EDITH SITWELL WAS The world's

FIRST RAPPER

Pilot Officer John Henry Smythe ... an unsung hero

They served faithfully in a war that was not their own for the good of all humankind.

Had Hitler and his Nazis won WW2, the consequences for black people everywhere would have been too hideous to contemplate - - - Hitler believed that all black people should be eradicated. Johnny Smythe read Hitler's Mein Kampf before joining the RAF

Pilot Officer John Henry Smythe (1915-1996)
John Henry Smythe was born in Sierra Leone. He served with the Sierra Leone Defence Corps before volunteering for the RAF as a navigator. On the night of 18th November 1943 he was the navigator aboard a Short Stirling III heavy bomber of No 623 Squadron, one of 395 aircraft dispatched to attack the German city of Mannheim. The aircraft was crippled by anti-aircraft fire, and the crew was forced to parachute from the stricken aircraft. They were captured and spent the next 18 months in a prisoner of war camp. After the war Smythe stayed in the RAF until 1951 and in 1978 he received an OBE. He died in 1996 in Thame, Oxfordshire.

Johnny Smythe did not have to go to war.He was one of 55,000 people from Africa who volunteered to help Britain stop Hitler’s Germany. After Johnny’s plane was shot down over Germany, he spent 18 months in a Prisoner of War camp. He remembered what happened after the Russian Army liberated his camp. ‘They took me to a town near the camp and
I watched as they looted. A pretty German woman was crying because they had taken all her valuables. I wanted to help her but the Russians wouldn’t listen. I had hated the Germans and wanted to kill them all, but something changed inside me when I saw
her tears and the hopelessness on her face.’

Johnny was a Royal Air Force navigator who helped pilots flying planes like these Lancaster bombers stay on course during bombing raids. He was shot down over Germany on his 28th mission. Johnny volunteered to join the RAF because he hated Hitler for his racism. Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics but Hitler refused to shake his hand because he was African American. When he was captured, Johhny remembers; ‘The Germans couldn’t believe their eyes.
I’m sure that’s what saved me from being shot immediately. To see a black man – and an officer at that – was more than they could come to terms with. They just stood there gazing.’

Looking down on a Lancaster Bomber attack,Hamburg, 1943 ‘We were flying at 16,000 feet when the fighters came out of nowhere. They raked the fuselage and there were flames everywhere. Then the searchlights caught us. I was hit by shrapnel.


Pieces came from underneath, piercing my abdomen, going through my side. Another came through my seat and into my groin. I heard the pilot ordering us to bail out! We had some rough ones before but this seemed to be the end. I have tried to forget that night for 50 years.’ Stalag Luft I was a prisoner of war camp for almost 9,000 Allied airmen. Johnny helped other
prisoners try to escape but did not try to break out himself. He said, ‘I don’t think a six-foot-five black man would’ve got very far in Pomerania.’ Today there is a memorial at Stalag Luft I. In 2001, veterans and their families from America, Britain, Germany and Russia met at the camp in the spirit of reconciliation.

1915 Born in Freetown capitalof Sierra Leone.1940 Arrives in UK as RAF volunteer
1941 First mission 1943 On 28th mission over Germany, Smythe’s plane gets shot down
1943–1945 Stalag Luft I. POW camp. After the war, worked at Colonial Office
1948 travelled with Empire Windrush to bring 500 West Indian ex-servicemen and workers to UK
1950 Passed law exams; 1951 Married fiancée from Grenada. Sailed back to Freetown;
1961 Solicitor General of Sierra Leone. 1963 Lecture tour of the eastern United States
1978 Receives OBE –Order of the British Empire. 1993 Moved back to England
with his wife and 5 children; 1996 Died in Thame, Oxfordshire.

(Courtesy Imperial War Museum)