Are We There Yet? (9 page)

We wound up at Wandie's, a popular lunch stop for the tourist buses that wheeze diesel through Soweto most days. It was late afternoon and the sharpness of the light had only just begun to soften. Burnished and backlit, the city took its foot off the accelerator. Commuters leapt lazily from minicab taxis, flicking smiling jibes and laughing farewells over their shoulders. The tempo had dropped from samba to slow groove and ambling in the twilight was the order of the day.

Across a rush-choked stream lay a football field we had passed earlier in the day. A sun-roasted slab of rectangular desolation, it sported the agricultural equivalent of a comb-over, with modest patches of jaundiced grass vainly clinging to a bald pate. Now, though, it was redolent with cries of “man on” and the leather-cushioned thud of perfectly executed volleys.

It was the soundtrack to my childhood and struggling to see a ball in the remnants of light leaking below the horizon was one of few experiences I shared with black boys growing up in the townships. The sports club where I played junior football was the first in the country to become multiracial. In 1978 the Wanderers Club displayed remarkable courage by instituting this policy which skirted dangerously close to being illegal. Not that we realised the enormity of the situation at the time. We just turned up to training one day to find a new centre back named Jacob in the squad. The novelty of his colour had dissipated by the end of the warm-up and the rest of us were impressed by his defensive instincts, aerial skills and willingness to dish out the odd elbow to the team pratt, a malicious turd of a child called Steven Hess with an overbite and a delicious sister called Terry who stood me up on a date some years later.

Jacob became the rock to which our defence was anchored and he and I played together for five seasons. He was my first black mate and the team formed a fiercely protective barrier around him when we toured regional centres where racism often surfaced. He came over to my house a couple of times, but I never went to his. The closest I came was when my visibly apprehensive father dropped him off on the outskirts of Alexandra after a game one night. We crunched to a halt on a rutted gravel road, the Merc's light refracting through a bottle graveyard by the kerb before dissolving into a darkness flecked by a sprinkling of distant coal fires. The township had no streetlights at the time, yet my father wore the unmistakable pallor of a person standing directly beneath one. It was the first time I had seen him jittery.

“This is fine,” said Jacob, perceptive enough to lie. “My house is not far away. Thanks for the lift, Mr Smiedt.” With that he broke into a megawatt grin, leapt from the car with his kit bag slung coolly over his shoulder and was absorbed into the night as if by osmosis.

At the time sport was strictly defined along racial lines, of course. Rugby was a white game whereas soccer was predominantly played and watched by the black population, with Soweto clubs such as Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates generating a rivalry on a par with Liverpool and Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. The inclusion of players like Jacob led to white boys like me being invited to play curtain-raisers for national soccer league games. As a result I found myself among eleven excited under-12s making our way down the players' tunnel of Soweto's Orlando Stadium on a handful of occasions. Someone once told me that when you die, the journey involves travelling a dark corridor towards a welcoming light – if that is true, I found heaven in Soweto.

Orlando Stadium is a seething bowl of rivalry and expectation on match day. Comprised of wooden benches that accommodate far more spectators than modern plastic seating, the stands rise at impossibly sharp angles from the turf, giving spectators the appearance of being stacked one upon another like a chanting human pyramid. Being a goalkeeper I was closer to the fans than most. Aside from my coach and some team-mates, there was not a white face in the 50,000-strong gathering but we cared not a jot – we were playing before a packed stadium on turf so luxurious I even had a few practice dives. Much to the delight of those behind the goals.

At one point a wily striker suppurating chicanery and arrogance razored our defence and deftly lobbed the ball over my head, resulting in squeals of delight from the fans a few steps to my rear. In a moment of athleticism so rare in my subsequent sporting endeavours that I sadly still cling to it today, I flung myself backwards like a diver off a high board, threw a hand toward the ball and tipped it over the crossbar.

The crowd roared their approval and I turned around to see tens of thousands of football aficionados nudging their mates with “Did you see that?” expressions plastered on their beaming faces. They continued to shout encouragement throughout the game and even applauded me off at full-time with “Good boy, keeper”. It was once-in-a-lifetime glory and I have Soweto to thank for it.

Oupa snapped me out my liniment-scented reverie with a coldie and the news that the dinner buffet was on. We made our way through a cosy terrace where a group of African-Americans were posing with Wandile Ndaba, proprietor, raconteur and Soweto bon vivant. “Welcome,” he declared to the group who I later learned were IT consultants from Detroit. “Welcome home.” Oupa rolled his eyes but the Yanks beamed like returning soldiers who'd just set foot on Mom and Pop's doorstep in Encephalitis, Arkansas.

The buffet was comprised of a dozen three-legged cast-iron pots arranged in two rows of six. Since prime cuts were usually beyond the budget of your average township chef, many perfected the art of slow cooking the gristled goat flesh and sinewy steak purchased at street-side slaughter spots until it didn't so much fall off the bone as leap from it. Pepper-scented chicken curries inveigled beside tomato-laced mutton stews and bubbling birianis. This fare was accompanied by pap, a white maize meal staple that is cooked with water until it reaches a consistency thick enough to mop up gravy flotsam.

I could hear my arteries hardening as dish after dish streaked with pearls of glistening oil was piled onto the mound in the centre of the plate.

Oupa joined me at the table clutching another pair of frost-kissed Castle Lager longnecks which played consort supreme to the meal by taking a crisp blade to the sauce-soaked meat.

By the time he suggested it was time to head back into Johannesburg, an obscene tally of carnivorous indulgence had left my face coated in a happy sheen, my fingers bearing the saffron stains of the tandoori junkie and my stomach groaning the painful symphony of distension.

Over the course of a single day my heart had been stolen, broken, melted and coated with cholesterol by South Africa's blackest city. My next meal would be in its whitest.

Chapter 4

Postoria

Heading north from Johannesburg, a gentle sense of anticipation settled on me as I realised that from this point in the journey onwards, I would be experiencing destinations I had not lived in but only visited. The first was Pretoria. Located just seventy kilometres north of Johannesburg, it might well have been another planet when I was growing up.

The two cities could not be more different. Johannesburg was a pulsating commercial harlot founded on profit over principles where English was the language of choice. Pretoria was a staid and graceful administrative centre which formed the capital of a republic founded by Afrikaners fleeing British rule.

It was in Pretoria that my brother Richard underwent basic training as part of his two-year compulsory military service and we made the journey to visit him at the air force base most weekends. Between mouthfuls of Jewish comfort food such as fried fish and chopped herring, he would regale us with tales of 4 am inspections, beds whose corners could only be cajoled into the required right angle by slipping in a metal food tray, and the virulent anti-Semitism displayed by some in his barracks. Although he had never been fitter or stronger, I'd never seen him look so miserable as he did trudging back to his dormitory clutching some home-made fudge with which he would vainly try to soften the suspicions and stereotypes his cohorts held about Jews.

The base was a spirit-sapping paean to the philosophy of breaking down recruits in order to build them up again. However, the most noticeable attribute of Valhalla was that there was no irony in its name. It was the plushest, plumbest posting you could get for basic training and Richard was only stationed there through the intercession of a family friend who was well connected in the defence hierarchy.

In the early 80s, countryside of mild undulation and grassy hue separated Johannesburg and Pretoria to the extent that the halfway point was marked by a solitary oak by the side of the highway. Today the green belt has shrunk to a shoelace as business parks and factories flee ever northwards from Johannesburg's CBD and industrial suburbs. At the same time Pretoria is expanding southwards with fresh-out- of-the-box suburbs like Centurion.

Naming a posh new enclave after a Roman commander chosen to lead one hundred men into battle struck me as an odd choice for a capital city trying to shed its reputation as the spiritual home of apartheid. I mean, if you go to all the trouble of building a lake as the suburb's centrepiece, surely Greenbanks, Waterview or even Lapland might have been more appropriate.

However, the gladiatorial mores of locals was underlined just before the turn-off to Centurion – where the world champion one-day cricket team was to kick off its defence of the title – with a billboard that read “Die Aussies Die”. And a warm welcome to you too.

I obviously wasn't the only one who believed this simply wasn't cricket because the billboard was removed some weeks later amid justifications from a tanty-tossing art director who believed it was nothing more than an innocent jibe in the context of good-natured sporting rivalry.

Pretoria has always had an air of quiet prosperity about it. The streets are wide, neat and lined with stately jacarandas that wrap a lilac pashmina around the city's shoulders every spring. Through my childhood and teen years it was decried as a larger regional centre which was to urban sophistication what rhinestones are to denim. Those who had ventured there for business trips entertained us with stories such as the time so-and-so ordered a cappuccino and was told, “Sorry, we've run out. Do you mind if I serve it in a mug?” There were also myriad hilarities regarding English-speakers from Johannesburg trying to make it through working lunches with Afrikaners from Pretoria. My favourite involved a cousin who had sailed through one such meal impressing his clients with his bilingual capabilities. Things went downhill rapidly, however, when he meant to order
aarbaie
(strawberries) for dessert but instead requested
ambaie
(piles).

I checked into my hotel in the Hatfield district then took a stroll. As I walked I discovered that the city had undergone a radical metamorphosis. Home to three universities, as well as the University of South Africa, the world's largest correspondence institution, Pretoria feels like a casting call for
Dawson's Creek.

Hatfield's streets were lined with pubs, cafes, clubs and restaurants between which flitted packs of three-sheets engineering faculty lads and cliques of mocha-skinned nymphs wearing gravity-defying hipsters and “yes but not with you” expressions.

Then there were the Afrikaners. How could a race with such ugly ideas produce such beautiful women? I followed a group of these celestial creatures into a square bounded by four pubs whose patrons were all watching South Africa take on the West Indies in the opening match of the World Cup. Regardless of whether they were in the German, Irish or ultraviolet-suffused Cheeky Monkey bar, punters had draped themselves in flags and cheered every boundary while their bored girlfriends silently wished the overs away.

Nursing an amber, I occupied a stool in the corner of the Red Wolf bar and was immediately struck by the relaxed nature of the city's inhabitants. Unlike their counterparts in Johannesburg who clutched their bags to their chests like fullbacks taking a Gary Owen, the women in Pretoria were entirely comfortable leaving their totes on pub tables while ordering a drink at the bar.

As the game progressed, the home team's fortunes sank. With defeat looming, you could cut the testosterone with a knife. It soared even higher when a few stultified girlfriends decided they'd had enough of this shared experience and wanted to call it a night.

There are two things I cannot look away from: one is traffic accidents and the other is a couple arguing in public. Invasive? Perhaps. Intriguing? Certainly. I was entertained by unresolved issues being raised from relationship limbo on three fronts. It was a veritable cavalcade of confrontation as phrases that began with “You never …”, “Well, you always …” and “How was I supposed to know?” ricocheted around me like emotional ammunition.

Suitably entertained, I made my way to a steakhouse where I spent the meal trying to figure out whether the cowhide motif was horribly inappropriate or merely brutally honest.

Energised by Pretoria's vibrancy and the party-till-you-puke philosophy of the locals in this area, I pooh-poohed the idea of returning to the hotel and took to the streets for a stroll, my hands thrust deep in my pockets as I am wont to do in moments of simple contentment.

I chanced upon a gloriously glitzy pool hall where I played the kind of immaculate stick you do when alone in a foreign country after several stubbies. The table beside mine was being used by a pair of local women in their early twenties who struck up a conversation by asking if I was practising for a tournament. Spoken for though I am, it was the most flattering opening line I'd ever received. I asked them if my perception that Pretoria was far more laid-back than its stressed southern neighbour was accurate.

“Sure,” replied a freckle-flecked blonde of tousled allure named Marli. Pausing to mentally translate from her first language of Afrikaans into English for my benefit, she continued, “But we still have a high crime rate here. My car has been broken into so many times that now I just leave the electrical cords exposed under the steering wheel so thieves think someone else has got there first and couldn't start the thing.” Call me crazy, but there's something pretty cute about a woman who can hotwire her own car.

I woke up the next morning with a companion I hadn't counted on: a hangover that carpeted my tongue with shag pile and made my skull feel as if it was being tattooed from the inside. This was exacerbated by the fact that it had barely gone 6 am and I had been roused by a piano accordion. With a mouth foul in more ways than one, I peered out of the window to see a solitary jive merchant alternating between singing and whistling as he cajoled a melody from the cumbersome instrument. Unlike the Bavarian Brunnhildes one usually sees playing the piano accordion with graceful wrist movements, caressing fingers and the kind of anguished expression that suggests either infinite melancholy, polka-induced psychosis or chronic constipation, this musician brought a different energy to the instrument.

He played it more like a percussion instrument, pumping bellows with the urgent rhythm of a conjugal visit. The combination of his voice, the accordion's joyful wheeze and his uncle-dancing-at-a-wedding shuffle stopped a commuter exiting the station. Then another. And another. The music went from being infectious to sparking a full-blown epidemic of exuberance as a twenty-strong crowd of toe-tappers gathered in minutes. Just as quickly, however, they dissipated amid glances at wristwatches and the arrival of buses. No hat had been placed on the floor as a shrapnel receptacle and not a cent had been solicited. It had been music for the pleasure of its sharing and I couldn't have asked for a better start to the day.

Nursing a stream of cappuccinos in the hotel restaurant, I mused on the idea that the drink had been named after the Capuchin monks who came up with the idea of diluting black coffee with warm milk. As caffeine and my blood stream renewed their happy acquaintance, my mind began idly to contemplate various other useful articles that had been named after the folk who had presumably inspired or invented them. You had your Stanley knife, your Phillips head, and my personal favourite, your Lazy Susan.

It was peak hour by the time I joined the traffic and crawled through the stately suburb of Arcadia, which boasts a hundred embassies in a five-kilometre radius. Heading away from the CBD, my route took me past a series of gushing fountains fed by the natural springs that prompted the city's forefathers to settle here.

My destination was the Voortrekker Monument. Commanding views across the city, the monument is a granite cube as high as the statue of Christ over Rio, forty metres wide and forty metres long. Designed by Gerard Moerdijk, it was reputedly inspired by the ruins of an African civilisation in what is present day Zimbabwe. Which is an odd twist for a structure that for both devotees and critics was apartheid's holy tabernacle.

Its original raison d'êtremental was to commemorate the Great Trek, a flight to freedom undertaken by thousands of Afrikaners who left the Cape in the 1830s. Under various leaders along different routes, the Voortrekkers, as they were known, shared a common motivation: the desire to be free of British rule and the abolitionist philosophies that were gaining political clout in London.

This seminal migration was to form the cornerstone of Afrikaner identity and shared numerous parallels with the settlement of the American West which took place at roughly the same time.

It was a journey Homer would have written off as improbable. Over the course of six years, 15,000 Afrikaners dragged their wagons, families and dreams of autonomy over mountains that shattered axles like toothpicks, interminable deserts and swamps swarming with malarial mosquitos gagging to go Dutch. These calamities were compounded by battles with hostile tribes prepared to kill to protect their ancestral lands. With Bibles in one hand and muskets in the other, the Voortrekkers inflicted and suffered horrific casualties.

The monument commemorates their sacrifices and ethos. It is ringed by a fence made of black steel spears which represents the ocean of assegai-wielding warriors the Voortrekkers had to navigate. Beyond this lies an encircling wall carved with sixty-four ox wagons replicating the laagers into which the settler would manoeuvre their convoy in preparation for battle. Every corner of the building is redolent with symbolism. The busts of slain leaders squint out over the countryside they died to call home. Above the entrance a menacing granite buffalo head – the most dangerous wild animal in the land – dares would-be assailants to have a go if they reckon they're hard enough.

I struck up a conversation with a guide named Conrad, whose tour group had descended on the souvenir shop with the giddy lack of discrimination that comes with being armed with pound sterling in Africa.

A proud Afrikaner, Conrad said, “When I was growing up, this place was like a church to us”.

Inside, it is more mausoleum than cathedral. One of the walls is taken up entirely by mosaic windows of a shade presumably intended to have been golden but which instead bestows upon the few sombre visitors an unflattering jaundice. The remaining walls are occupied by the world's largest marble friezes depicting a series of crucial moments during the Great Trek. Because the craftsfolk and facilities for creating a work of this size were not available in South Africa when the monument was constructed, sketches were made and dispatched to Italy. As a result, your average Zulu depicted in the frieze possesses a nose so Roman it might as well be diagonally parked across a laneway pavement in the shadow of St Peters.

The most brutal and detailed of these friezes commemorates the Battle of Blood River where 10,000 Zulus were routed by Boer leader Andries Pretorius, after whom the city was named, and his band of 470 commandos. The story goes on that Pretorians vowed to God that if they were victorious by His hard, the day would be forever commemorated.

Nowhere is the import of this battle and the implications victory carried for the Afrikaners more dramatically displayed than on a granite tomb that forms the museum's altar. Located a floor below the entrance and best viewed through a balustraded oval hole cut into the marble floor, it is made of black granite into which is chiselled the words
“Ons Vir Jou Suid Afrika”
(We For You South Africa). The entire monument structure is crafted around this cenotaph and every year at 12pm on December 16 (the day of the battle of Blood River) a ray of sunlight passes over the inscription confirming Afrikaaners' divinely mandated rights to the land.

For reasons best known to themselves, the initial administrators were so concerned that black visitors would throng this monument to their subjugation that they instituted a policy whereby visitors of colour would only be permitted on the premises on Tuesdays. From the 1950s, however, they were banned altogether. It was a policy that stood firm for half a century and the dozen black teenagers who were dragging themselves around the place on the day I visited seemed somewhat underwhelmed by it all.