19 July
Standing at about five-feet-ten, Nombulela walks with a slight limp and a side-to-side sway. Her broad smile highlights the remaining four upper front teeth and bare gums, and causes her eyes to squint behind a pair of thin glasses. In her sixty years of life, she saw almost the entirety of the apartheid era in South Africa and has seen the country move out of it, especially those living in the townships. A mother to four children, one of whom lost his life in a shooting, and grandmother of six; a former and divorced housewife; a business woman; and an entrepreneur: Nombulela embodies the tenacity and ingenuity of the disenfranchised.
She owns and operates the bed-and-breakfast that Jamie, another TWA fellow, and I are staying in for our home-stay in Langa, the oldest township in Cape Town. The word “township” carries quite a few stigmas and causes a range of reactions, depending on listener’s skin color. For most foreigners, the township is a place of interest, where one might sneak a snapshot or two without looking intrusive or impolite. The poverty, captured in iconic shanties and garbage-laden streets, can be hypnotic. For white South Africans, the entrance to townships can be a demarcation one crosses only to visit a specific site or to attend an event—such as to have a meal and watch a soccer match at the wildly popular Mzoli’s Restaurant in Gugulethu (not far from Mzoli’s was where Amy Biehl was murdered in 1993)—but not a place that one would simply drive through or stop in. Especially after dark, townships become dangerous to those who do not live there.
Langa, named after the Xhosa chief Langalibalele, was established in 1923 to separate black South Africans from the whites by isolating them in designated areas outside of the city centers. Movement between Langa and Pinelands, its closest white urban area, is restricted by a complicated system of intertwining streets, railways, and the seemingly endless fences. (On a recent run, Heather and I lost ourselves in conversation, failed to make a turn to stay inside Pinelands limits, and started to head toward Langa. By the time we realized where we were, we had to retrace every step to get back inside city limits even though the street we need to be on was on the other side of a barbed-wire fence.) When the apartheid laws took their effect in 1948, passage in and out of townships became more difficult, and within the townships were disputes between various ethnic groups and types of migrant workers. Toward the end of apartheid, when the white government feared that it would soon lose power to the rising African National Congress (ANC) party, led by Nelson Mandela, it helped to fuel violent battles inside the townships between different political and ethnic groups vying for control. The township war of the early 1990s served as a justification for the government that blacks cannot be trusted with political powers, as they would simply resort to killing one another and taking revenge on the whites. Because of much suppression of information by the police and government at the time, a lot of history was lost or reshaped, and the parts of the truth surfaced only years later in the 1998 report released by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. All sides were justifiably blamed for atrocities of various kinds.
Today, townships still hold much of the black African population that lives around the major cities. Like any overcrowded housing projects, townships have gang and petty crime problems. “Outsiders” need escorts after dark and, in some areas, in daylight. Before sending the fellows into Langa, TWA and LEAP administrators took the precautions of finding the right homes for each visitor, and meeting the needs of those who opted not to stay in the township. When Jamie and I took the school bus home with the LEAP students, two of them escorted us to our new home because we had arrived after dark on Sunday night and were not certain where the bed-and-breakfast was located from the bus stop. Even though we have been treated only kindly by our neighbors, who probably could not help but look at the tall caucasian and his short Asian friend walking around with high school-aged students, we use common sense and keep on the alert when traveling on foot.
I had read in U.S. newspapers about bed-and-breakfasts in townships, especially the ones on Soweto that were to host many of the Dutch World Cup fans, but the articles gave no images of what these places looked like. Nombulela’s property has a shoe-box design: rectangular, much deeper and than wide, and reflects various stages of adding-on. When she first arrived with her family, the six of them lived in what is now the dining room and a small part of the kitchen, a space of about 12 feet by 12 feet, the size of a bedroom in the United States. (In the picture with Jamie in the doorway, the end of the couch in the foreground and where Jamie is standing mark the old house.) Now the old room has extended forward toward the street by twice the original size, including a living room and covered car patio. Going back from the dining room is the widened kitchen, another bedroom, and a door leading to the outdoor back, where laundry is hung and there is an unused outhouse. Adjacent to the living and dining rooms and kitchen are three more bedrooms, in addition to the master in the far back. The four-bedroom complex takes up surprisingly little space. Nombulela occupies one room and rents out two of the others.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
On our second night at the home, after a long Monday at work, Jamie and I were treated to a home-cooked dinner. We were staying at a bed-and-breakfast-and-dinner. As hoped for, Nombulela made a traditional African meal of pap (similar to grits) with chicken and gravy. She patiently slowed down each step of the recipe so that I could take mental measurements of the ingredients, as she only measured by her eyes and the feel of her hands. We sat and ate dinner together and got past the small talk quickly. She was shocked to hear that in the United States there are poor white people who do not have their own homes, that there are homeless shelters and soup kitchens, and that there is a wealth gap that is growing even as we spoke.
She told us about growing up in a family of eleven kids, whose parents could not afford schooling for all of them. As a result, Nombulela completed sixth grade and stopped attending school to help around the house. As a black woman without an education, her options were limited, and she fell into a marriage at 20 and became a housewife. Eleven years later her husband divorced her and left her and the children with almost nothing. After she appealed to the magistrate in Cape Town, the judgment dictated that he would pay 20 Rand per child each month for child support. The letter also spelled out many other requirements as his responsibilities, which he eventually ignored, except he did pay the child support. Nombulela has kept the letter and shown it to her children once they were old enough to understand. She promised to show it to us during our stay as well.
While paying child support, the former husband also showered the four children with gifts to provoke Nombulela, and the plan worked. Although without a formal education, Nombulela was street smart and had good business instincts. She started her own home-grown ginger beer (a non-alcoholic soft drink) business and devised the best available business plan. She told her kids that they had to use the money their father gave them to purchase the ginger beer and resell it. On a given day, she assigned each child a strategic spot in the neighborhood and allotted to each a case of ginger root beer. Their task was to enjoy each bottle slowly and to entice walkers-by on a warm day. When asked by the thirsty strangers, they were to direct them to the source. Within two years she earned enough money to deem the laborious process of producing ginger beer not worth the profit.
She closed down the ginger beer factory and opened a coat shop. Through some arrangement, she was able to purchase a package of 100 coats at a time, in which were a few that she could sell at high enough prices to make an outright profit on the whole batch. The rest she would augment and try to sell from her home, at other shops, or anywhere else that would allow them. After a few years and with all of her children graduated from school, Nombulela “retired” in 2005. She instructed that her children, who were then adults, had to make their own living. They could be her neighbors and eat as many meals at her table as they would like, but they must get their own homes. Her three children and their families all live in their own homes across the street.
In 2007, two years into retirement, she felt the bug bite and opened the bed-and-breakfast, her third entrepreneurial venture. Although she does not need a substantial income, she appreciates cooking for people in her home and talking with them. In telling her story, she said, she heals. In hearing other people’s story, she also heals through sympathy. While we were cooking dinner together, she kept interrupting her story by asking about my family’s. At one point, she looked at me with understanding eyes and said of my mother: “She’s strong. She’s suffered a lot.”
Nombulela is a strong woman. She has willed her success and has endured life’s hardships as a single mother. She never remarried, even though her former husband is struggling with his fourth wife. I did not need to ask her reasons why before she leaned back and offered, “My marriage was a problem that is needed.”
“Without family, what have you got?” she went on. “I have beautiful kids, adult children, and I have beautiful grandchildren. I have my family.”
I’m almost certainly taking an argumentative view here, but you ask why we need a world in which colour is a distinction. In a broad, sweeping liberal view you are right, but in SA as well as in many countries, colour defines not only race but society as well. As many people find a root in their God, so they find roots and belonging in their culture – and in SA, culture has as much to do with upbringing as it has to do with racial classifications. To define ones self as Coloured, Xhosa or Afrikaans, etc. means to belong to a group with roots, support, identity and beliefs. Culture and and a sense of belonging is so important to human nature – why else would 3rd generation Americans venture off to Ireland to find their ancestors? As long as these racial distinctions don’t marginalise others or isolate themselves from others, I have no problem with people identifying themselves by their race and affiliation.
You raise a fair point and make a good case. Neither do I have a problem with “people identifying themselves by their race and affiliation.” Everything human points to the fact that we need an identification with both culture and affiliation of some sort. I would distinguish a bit more race and culture, though. My comment was not meant to dismiss any view of race as an identifier. That would be impossible and even impractical. And the comment was made a-la-blog perhaps too much sarcasm. I’ll offer one short observation to help explain how I see race and culture as different. When I was living in Texas, I once went to a karaoke bar and saw a Chinese man wearing a full get-up of cowboy gear sing a country song with a country accent. Talking with him afterward revealed that the accent was real even when he spoke. The color of his skin did little to indicate to which culture he belonged.