Swimming with Cobras (10 page)

The feeding scheme was often given donations of food, an excess from a student function perhaps or a surplus of carrots from the market. Once Margaret and I drove out to a nearby farm to collect a donation of pineapples. We took baskets and boxes and a pair of old gloves for the prickly work of loading the fruit, but when we arrived we discovered that we were also expected to pick the pines ourselves. Margaret didn't falter, and armed with one glove each we set to. Fortunately a group of farm workers arrived in time to lend their skilful hands and soon our kombi was loaded with a bountiful harvest.

Reconciling the public's idea of gifts with our policy of becoming less of a hand-out agency was quite a balancing act, but over the years we managed to get our message across. Nothing, thankfully, ever rivalled an event I took part in shortly after arriving at GADRA. A service organisation wishing to donate food parcels asked us to identify our “most needy” cases, who would personally receive the gifts at a handing-over ceremony. It was difficult enough just deciding who the most needy were, but then we discovered that the venue for this proposed display of charity was to be an industrial site, which entailed a considerable walk. Some of our clients were frail and elderly and a few were disabled. The reason for selecting this out-of-the-way venue, it transpired, was that GADRA had a reputation for being political and the donors did not want to attract too much attention. That word again – I could hardly contain my frustration. “Political!” I spluttered. “What does that mean?” My more seasoned colleagues remained poker-faced and we proceeded with the bizarre scene. Names were called and people received their parcels with humble bob curtsies, after which they sang a hymn of thanks and had their photograph taken with the donors. That event bothered me for a long time – it seemed to be part of the very paternalism we were trying to eradicate.

A lot of GADRA's work involved pensioners and one of our campaigns targeted the poorly organised pay-out system in which people waited in long queues for up to 10 hours at a time to receive their grants. Waiting in bad weather or in the fetid atmosphere of a community hall was an exhausting ordeal for the elderly and disabled, and in some instances people fell ill or even died in the queue. It was not uncommon for those in need to start standing before sunrise, not only to be certain of an early place but also to ensure being served before the money ran out. The latter happened from time to time and then pensioners had no choice but to queue again the next day. It seemed to us a simple matter to streamline the method by staggering the pay-out days: old age on one day, disability on another, and so on. We also proposed better systems of queuing. A tiresome bureaucratic tussle ensued. GADRA and the Black Sash collaborated on this campaign, attending endless meetings with officials. The changes came slowly, but at last our ideas were adopted.

Pension fraud was commonplace, often perpetrated by unscrupulous family members or neighbours posing as procurators, with the result that many who were incapable of walking insisted on collecting their money in person. On one occasion I saw a young disabled man crawling to collect his grant. Once a year all pension holders had to present themselves to verify that they were still alive. On such days we witnessed Hogarthian scenes of the halt, maimed, aged and blind shuffling along, supported by sons or daughters, transported in wheelbarrows or carried on someone's back.

I was once asked to help the Family and Marriage Association of South Africa (FAMSA) with the case of an old man from Malawi who had spent the better part of his life as a waiter in a Grahamstown hotel. He had fallen ill and was unable to continue his duties. It was difficult to establish exactly how old he was but his face was lined, his hair grizzled and he walked with a shuffle. The hotel gave him no pension, feeling that they had fulfilled their obligation by caring for him while he was sick. With no chance of a state pension, he wanted to return to Malawi. I was reminded of the words of a Mozambican migrant worker to an advice office volunteer in the Transvaal: “You pick us like grapes, suck us dry and then throw us down.”

We were able to contact the old man's family and arrange a passport, then sent him on his way with an air ticket provided by the Black Sash. In Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg he was met by Sash volunteers who provided overnight accommodation then steered him towards his connecting fights to Malawi.

While all these arrangements were being made there was the matter of the old man's luggage. He carried all his worldly belongings in two beaten up hospital sterilising boxes that we knew would never survive a trip to Malawi. But he was adamant that they must go with him and even when FAMSA produced a suitcase, he would not reconsider. So off he set from Grahamstown with the boxes held together by string, but in Port Elizabeth they were prised off him with promises that they would be sent on. In due course there was a letter of gratitude from his daughter. “My father was lost and destroyed,” she wrote, “but now because you forewarned he is safe and sound. When he left Nyasaland it was a dense forest with a village here and there, now it's a new city.” We could just imagine the old man's bewilderment. The letter ended with a request for the boxes. “I would like to make my Dad happy in his old age if it is the last thing I do before he moves to the next world.” Alas the boxes never reached Malawi, but at least his worldly goods in sturdier packages, did.

Once a man who had spent a lifetime in a psychiatric hospital appeared on the GADRA doorstep. He had no family or friends and we had to organise a life for him, which involved getting an identity book, clothes and somewhere to live. When his story appeared in the newspaper we received offers of clothing and food from white Grahamstonians, but some were not prepared to bring these donations to our office. The township was an unknown world to them, an alien place where conditions were too frightening to contemplate. For many white South Africans the real fright they were avoiding was the unspeakable poverty that would meet their eyes. Local poet Lungile Lose, standing among the densely packed shacks of the township and looking over towards the whitewashed town, captures the chasm between the two worlds in his poem
Tantyi and Town (distant view).

A racked house

Faces me boldly,

Ponds of water here and there

Make one screw one's nose.

Brown, rusty – most houses,

Paint here and there.

White smoke tries unsuccessfully

To conceal the houses from heaven.

Dark heavy clouds hover above Tantyi;

Foamy white clouds dance above town.

All the houses are white.

Did it snow over there?

I wish it would snow here too.

At GADRA and in the Black Sash advice office we sometimes despaired that the weight of poverty would ever be lifted from people's backs. This was especially so when our work tended to be merely palliative. In the Black Sash, at least, our activities were always aimed at bringing about social change and our efforts were buoyed by positive activism. At the end of a day's work at GADRA, if there were no meetings to attend, I would sometimes take Garp, our black Labrador, into the hills behind our house. There amongst the Australian gum trees and the white arum lilies beside the dam I would take deep breaths and clear my mind, burdened by the hardships I was witnessing at work but at least feeling less paralysed by confusion and guilt.

At home I had the help and support of Hilda Faltein, who started work with us as a young woman in the late 1960s. She worked full time for many years and then continued to come in as a part-time char. Our children loved her and related to her as a second mother, especially when their own was rushing off to endless meetings. I always tried to keep mindful of Hilda's circumstances and conditions of employment, especially as the plight of domestic workers was a recurring theme in the advice office.

With no legislation to regulate the employer/employee relationship in this sector at that time, workers were universally – and sometimes grossly – exploited. Long hours, poor wages and unreasonable expectations were commonplace. I dealt with a case where a worker was left in charge of a small child who caught the flu. She was dismissed on the grounds of neglect, and the employer was intent on deducting from her final wages the price of the cough medicine and the cost of the visit to the doctor. I managed to persuade her not to take such gratuitous action, but this small victory made little difference to the dismissed worker's plight. One employer, giving me a catalogue of her worker's misdemeanours, grumbled, “She's becoming too white!” A similar attitude was revealed in an advertisement in the Situations Vacant column of the
Grocott's Mail
, placed by a well-meaning employer: “Domestic worker looking for full-time employment. Owner leaving town.”

One worker complained that she had too little time off to go to church on Sundays. “They won't bury you if you don't attend church!” she worried. She told of how the maids (there were three of them in the house) were kept waiting for what seemed like hours while dinners were in progress. Her employers were well-known members of the Grahamstown community with a high profile in the Progressive Party, so it was a tricky interview the advice office worker had with them, but more free Sundays were negotiated. Years later, when this employer was old, widowed and quite disabled, he told me during a bedside visit of his gratitude to this same domestic worker, not only for her years of service but also for the many intimate things he now needed her to do for him.

The house I'd grown up in had a small maid's room upstairs and electric bells, even by the bath, wired to numbered hammers in a glass-fronted box in the kitchen, but these belonged to a bygone age. There was no maid and no ringing of bells when we lived there. My mother employed a series of chars with whom she often sat down and had a cup of tea. There was Mrs Shaw, whose husband was a lorry driver and whose passion was ballroom dancing. And Agnes who had spent her early life “in service” in a large country house. I think I grew up respecting them as I would anyone else who came to tea. And yet – I have an embarrassing memory. When Agnes was new in our employ I once unpacked our silver and glassware from the dining room cupboard and proudly displayed it for her benefit. It seems a strange thing to have done.

Still, when I arrived in South Africa I had very idealistic intentions as an employer of domestic help. I vowed never to use the word “servant” or to demean older women and men by calling them “girl” or “boy”. I was determined that my employees would be treated as equals and regarded with dignity. I fear that my practice did not always match my principles.

Once when English friends came to visit, they confided in us about a conversation they'd had with Hilda. When they had remarked to her that she must be very glad to have such good employers, her response had been rather lukewarm. I was taken aback. Was it just a bad day, or did I have cause to be ashamed? I reflected on how hard it must be to care full time for someone else's home and children. On top of these demanding duties, domestic workers still had their own homes and families to care for and their own worries to contend with. Considering the indispensable contribution they made to the middle-class lives of others, one had to concede that the wages they earned and acknowledgement they received were nowhere near an adequate recompense. Small wonder that Hilda sometimes arrived at work in a dark mood, which our children called a “munch” and I confess I found irritating. Other friends from England once pointed out that I often had conversations in front of Hilda without including her. No doubt Hilda's dignity sometimes hindered her from speaking up, but at other times she was not, as my mother would have said, “backward at coming forward,” and she told me in no uncertain terms when she felt something was not right. This could lead to a robust debate, or it could make me feel annoyed and guilty.

In 1980, Black Sash member Jacklyn Cock produced a book about domestic workers called
Maids and Madams
. Her research was done mostly in the Eastern Cape, which she called “the Deep South”. The book contained some revealing interviews. “They call me one of the family,” said one worker. “How can they say that?” “Holidays?” said another worker sardonically; “I go with the family to the seaside and work harder there than I do when they're at home!” “I live on the smell of their meat,” said yet another. Discussion of Jackie's book at a Grahamstown Black Sash meeting caused quite a furore, as some members became defensive about their own treatment of the women who worked for them. A slide and tape show of the book was aired around the country, and abroad by organisations such as Christian Aid. My voice, with its English accent, was used to represent the madam!

The subject of domestic work was very controversial and legal measures to regulate the practice were long overdue. It was no surprise in the early 1990s, during pre-democracy discussions, to find black caucuses citing domestic work as a matter of deep grievance and hear the wish expressed that there should be no more domestic labour once liberation had come. In the meantime, however, it was the conservative camp who reacted to Jacklyn's book as though it were a threat. After its publication she began to be pestered by anonymous letters and phone calls. At times she received up to five calls a day. She'd hear an alarm bell ringing, or the ticking of a clock, or what sounded like an electronic scream. Once after a very nasty attack of encephalitis a voice said, “You have been sick; we are going to make you sicker.” Then one night the lights in her house went out and there was a crash through the window. A 20cm stick of dynamite had been hurled through the window, landing on the dining room table. Police and explosives experts arrived and neighbouring houses were evacuated. Fortunately, although the dynamite smouldered for about half an hour, it failed to explode.

At GADRA and in the advice office we increasingly sensed that dynamite was smouldering all around us. The relentless poverty and deepening discontent, together with the escalating conflict between the forces of oppression and resistance, would surely soon explode. The Black Sash steadfastly stood against any form of violence but we grew fearful that the worst might be inevitable. The kind of treatment to which Jacklyn Cock was subjected became only too common in the years that followed, as the security forces tried to intimidate and clamp down on all elements of the liberation struggle.