From: hornpete@uctvax.uct.ac.za (Peter Horn)
Newsgroups: alt.prose
Subject: The kaffir who read books
Date: 8 Oct 92 09:53:20 +0200
Organization: University of Cape Town

The kaffir who read books

Around here there are not all that many people who read. Mind you, there are
quite a lot who can read, they have been to school and all that, but I mean
read for pleasure. Those who have been to school regard reading as something
which you do to pass the exam, and they firmly believe that you would decidedly
not inflict that kind of pain on yourself unless you really have to. Anyway, if
you would want to indulge in  that perverse, masochistic kind of pain, where
would you get anything to read, except perhaps an old newspaper or women's
glossy magazine which some white madam threw into the trashcan. Books being
expensive as they are, the cheapest cost as much as three days salary, and most
people here certainly have better things to do with their hard earned cash than
to buy books. And as for libraries: well, however hard you look, you will not
find any libraries in this place. Because, see, blacks don't read, or so they
say.
So everybody agreed that Mbulelo was quite strange, and probably a little mad:
whenever the weather was bearable, he would sit in front of his wooden shack on
a little bench he had made himself, one of his tattered books in his hand,
reading intently. His eyes were the only thing which moved from side to side,
up and down, occassionally he would mumble something, sometimes he would laugh,
when nobody around could find anything ridiculous in the surrounding, sometimes
he would be sad even if it was the most wonderful April sunshine day with the
children playing their noisy games and everybody around seemed to be happy.
Those who knew Mbulelo before he could read said that he never really went to
school and learned to read and write at all. He learned to read as an adult,
when his son went to school, and he asked his son to teach him the rudiments of
reading. Now imagine this: an adult, grown man, learning from an eight year
old. We were all laughing, of course. Anyway, we all agreed, adults can no
longer learn the stuff they teach you at school. That kind of stuff you can
only learn at school, where the teachers beat it into you, until your stubborn
brain capitulates and absorbs it long enough for it to be able to pass the
exam. Learning, we all knew, only occured if you used a long stick, and you
can't, after all, cane an adult.
The funny thing was, he proved us all wrong. It took him three years to go
through the graded readers of his son in the evenings in the light of a
petroleum lamp, and on Sundays, then he seemed to have got the hang of it,
because he got two old children's books from the white madam where he worked as
a gardener on Saturdays, for his son, as he said, but in reality for himself as
well. When the two of them were through the children's books he looked out for
other reading material. There was, of course the occasional discarded
newspaper, he would pick up, but he did not really like to read the papers,
unlike John, the newspaperboy who regularly reads the newspaper while he sits
on the kerb of the traffic island, waiting for cars to stop and hail him with
outstretched arm. No, he wanted books, real books. Now, as I said before, books
were way too expensive for all of us. Besides when he once went into a bookshop
he was so overawed by the amount of books that he had no idea which books to
spend his twenty Rand on which he had saved up over the last six months. After
staring at the unbelievable riches stacked on the shelves and on display tables
for a few minutes, one of the salesladies approached, saying: 
And what do you want, boy? 
He was completely flustered and stammered that he wanted to buy a book. 
Oh, so you are a white educated kaffir, are you, she screamed laughing, oh, you
can read. A book, she laughed, he wants a book. Sure, so what about some
Shakespeare? 
That was the ultimate in white wit. Shakespeare to her must have been the
summit of white culture, something which no native would ever be able to
understand, because even she, the saleslady in a bookshop, could not understand
Shakespeare when she was required to read Hamlet for matric.
Is it a good book, asked Mbulelo, this Shakespeare?
This of course brought forth more hoots of laughter from the saleslady. He
wanted to buy a book, and had not even heard of Shakespeare. And she shouted to
the cashier:
 This black gentleman wants to read Shakespeare! Imagine. Shakespeare!
As it turned out, they did not have any Shakespeare in the shop, because
Shakespeare is not much in demand even in white suburbs, and Mbulelo grabbed
his twenty Rand and left the shop, followed by hysterical peals of laughter.
That was the last time he entered a bookshop, because soon afterwards he found
a much cheaper source of books, affordable even for him, and in a much less
threatening atmosphere. Working as a gardener for one of the churches in the
Southern suburbs he was required to help with the annual church bazaar. And
there among the cookie stands, and the koeksister stands, the stands with white
elephants and "antique" crockery, between the braaivleis stand and the school
uniform stand he found a table full of books, the price uniformly sixpence or a
shilling. Now a sixpence then was a lot of money, but he could scrape that
together every few weeks, and so he searched for notices saying: church basaar
or school basaar, and in this way started to build up his library. There were
old schoolbooks - he even found a tattered copy of Shakespeare's Macbeth there,
complete with annotations which explained the antiquated words which he could
not understand at first -, there were travel books, there were novels, poetry
anthologies and history books. 
For many years he collected second hand books, and he even built himself a
bookrack in the shack where there was hardly enough place to sit down or to
sleep anyway, of wooden planks and bricks which he picked up wherever he found
them. At first it was vary hard going: the English in which these books were
written was mostly far beyond his understanding, and even his son, who went to
school, could not explain what many of the words meant. But somewhere he found
an old English-Kaffir Dictionary which translated some of the unfamiliar words
into words he knew, and after some time of faithfully looking up every word he
did not understand, he began to grasp the meaning of unfamiliar words from
their context. From that moment on the speed of his reading became faster and
faster. He even found that with the help of the glossary and the explanatory
notes he could read Shakespeare, who at first had seemed to write totally
unintelligible gibberish, and whom he now enjoyed thoroughly. "Foul whisperings
are abroad", he read out to his son, "unnatural deeds do breed unnatural
troubles:  infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets".
That sounds like a good description of the South African situation, said his
son.
Well, Shakespeare is for everyone, said Mbulelo.
Amongs the discarded best sellers from England and America he once picked up a
novel by an African writer, the orange cover bleached, the author's photograph
cut by white creases, but it was a recognizably African face in its dignity and
sadness.
Hey, he said to his son, when he came home: Look what I picked up today at the
Bishop's school bazaar. And he held out the tattered copy of his book, the
pages coming loose from the spine, to his son.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, his son decyphered, giving the African name an English
pronunciation. What a strange name.
An African writer, shouted Mbulelo. You know, I never believed that there were
Africans who wrote books.
Petals of Blood, read the son. Now what does that mean? Petals of Blood? Must
be a crime novel!
For the next few days father and son read to each other this novel whenever
there was a free moment in their lifes, and they followed the story of Munira,
Wanja, Karega and Abdulla with bated breath. At first it really looked like a
thriller with three guys  murdered, and the suspects picked up by the police, a
kind of jigsaw puzzle, where you attempted to guess who the murderer is, before
the author tells you. But then they understood that the novel was really about
the destruction of village life and that things in Kenya were not so different
from things in South Africa, when the writer described how all the young men
and women move away from the village to the big town after the glittering metal
and how the village becomes a place of old women who looked after their
grandchildren dropped there by their mothers working in town. They read how a
once thriving community not afraid to live on the sweat of their hands, started
its decline and depopulation, and how in turn it becomes the property of fat
stomach developers who exploit its position on the Trans-Africa road, they read
about Dedan Kimathi and the battle against the English and the betrayal of the
people by those who became its leaders after the war, they read about the
drought and the poverty and the hunger of the people, about their long journey
to the big town and their attempt to obtain help from the elected leaders of
the people, they read how the people of Ilmorog were cheated out of their land
by their black brothers who had become vultures of the people, who had now
become the directors of multinational companies, and how these same directors
who had betrayed the people all along burn to death in the house of Wanja. And
while they found Kenya in the school atlas, somewhere far away in East Africa,
what happened in the novel sounded very like their own experience.
This was the time of the student unrest, a state of emergency had been
declared, and Mbulelo was much worried about the education of his son, as the
boycotts grew longer, the school became more like a wartime ruin everyday, the
books were burned, tables splintered, chairs were used as barricades, and the
windows smashed by flying stones and police bullets. He had long arguments with
his son who was now fourteen about the necessity of education, and he countered
all arguments by his sons about the necessity to bring down the apartheid
regime first before they could get a decent education with his standard
argument that he was obviously merely too lazy or too stupid to benefit from
education, and anyway apartheid may be around for some time to come, whereas if
he did not make it at school he would not get another chance. To make up at
least partially for what he saw as the loss of a singular opportunity he made
his son read to him his history and physics books, explain to him mathematics
and poetry, recite geography and grammar.
Of course his son tried to escape this unofficial school whenever he could to
his comrades, and one day he simply did not return from one of his exploits.
Later that evening when it was dark a girl of his son's age came around to his
house to say that his son had been detained at  school.
At that time there was talk that the squatter community where Mbulelo lived was
to be moved to Kayelitsha. Mbulelo at first did not take this all too
seriously, because there had been various attempts in the past he could
remember, where the government had tried to "clean up" the squatter camps, but
since they had won a Supreme Court legal battle in 1976 entitling them to stay,
there had been no serious attempt to move them. The daily hassles and
harrassment continued all the time, of course, and if you did not have a valid
passport, and sometimes even if you had one, you very often enjoyed a free ride
to the Transkei, although you had to pay the fare to come back, clandestinely.
At that time there were almost daily police raids to catch "illegal" squatters.
There were fights between the people, people were killed, cars set alight,
windows broken, telephone wires cut. As Mbulelo did not like the way the
squatter leader Ngxobongwana handled the situation, he moved his shack to a new
site, which was called KTC, and later "New Crossroads". It was there that the
police were particularly heavy-handed, but since his pass was in order, and
since he had regular employment, for the moment he succeeded in holding on to
his shack.
When one community councillor who surveyed the shacks at Crossroads accompanied
by two policemen told him, that all this squatting was against the laws of the
country, and that they had all broken the law, Mbulelo said quietly: These laws
are crazy. I am sure that God does not agree with these laws of the white man.
A man has to live somewhere, and since there are no houses for us we live here,
and we have been living here for many years.
Despite the constant harrassment Mbulelo was much more worried about his son
than his shack, as for more than three months he did not hear anything from
him, although an occasional nightly visitor in his son's age group would tell
him that while he had been tortured in jail he seemed to be in good health
again, and there was nothing to worry about. Mbulelo who knew how such messages
are smuggled out of jail, resigned himself to waiting. Finally he received his
first letter from Tom himself, who assured him that he was fine. 
Mbulelo did not belong to either the comrades of the UDF nor to the new group
which had formed in Crossroads, the Witdoeke, the thugs who were supporting the
squatter leader Ngxobongwana, and at first he did not understand why two black
groups should attack each other, tear down each others shacks, burn them and
kill each other. But when the people living in KTC refused to move to
Kayelitsha - "Asiyi eKhayelitsha!" they chanted - he joined them in their
protests, and when he was asked to help with the teaching in the school which
the squatters had built in New Crossroads, he did so whenever he had some free
time.
At times the police would come with their hippos and yellow mellows and arrest
people and cart them away to Bishop Lavis, Pollsmoore and Mitchells Plain.
There were protests and then the police would shoot with rubber bullets and
teargas. The homes of some of the people who had been arrested were burned at
night by unknown people. When some comrades threw a hand-grenade into the house
of one of the leaders of "fathers", the leader swore revenge: "We cannot leave
our children to play with us, we are seriously injured already. The children
are very disrespectful to the fathers. What we need is more discipline in the
townships. Unless the maqabane cool down the people of Old Cross Roads will
hunt them down and beat them again. The maqabane have to stop making petrol
bombs and holding Kangaroo courts. We will not allow them to punish and beat
their own people." Mbubelo tended to agree with that. He did not like all this
fighting and chaos.
But as his son was a wellknown leader of the "children", his house even at that
time was, unknown to him, on the hitlist of the "fathers". They wanted to
punish anybody who had helped the "comrades" or who was connected with them. So
on the night of the 29th April he was woken up by several shots. Voices
screaming in terror mingled with the sound of several shots striking his
corrugated iron roof. His door was kicked in, several policemen burst in, and
roughly pulled Mbulelo outside. They pointed their guns at him and asked him
where his son had hidden his weapons and the land mines. Mbulelo told them that
he knew nothing about this. They hit him and dragged him away to a yellow
mellow. As he turned he saw a group of witdoeke pouring petrol over the wooden
planks of his house and put it to fire.
When Mbulelo was released the next morning, he returned to KTC. He found his
house totally burned down. Many other houses had been burned. Nothing which
belonged to him remained except for a few pans and pots, blackened by soot. He
picked up the remnants of his belongings, and together with a friend walked
over to Portland Cement, where, after he had phoned his employer, over the next
few days he built another, even smaller shack. He bought a new suit and a new
working outfit fairly cheaply from a friend who peddled stolen goods in the
squatter camp. Then he went back to work.
One Saturday evening, just after he had come back from work, he heard a few
shots. As he cautiously looked outside, he saw two white soldiers setting the
hut of his neighbour on fire. A bit further on he saw a man with the white
headband of the Witdoeke throw a burning tyre onto the roof of a house which
caught fire immediately. Mbulelo took his clothes and whatever else he could
carry and moved away through the night from the danger zone into the Port
Jackson bushes. He did not get much sleep that night. There was constant
gunfire throughout the night, the sounds of heavy motor vehicles churning up
the dust and the sand of the squatter camp, and the flickering light of flames
everywhere. By the time the sun came up the whole of Portland Cement was
ablaze.
During the day Mbulelo managed to rummage through the ruins of his second shack
and retrieve the few possessions which were not burned to ashes. That afternoon
he joined those who moved to Site C because he wanted to have some peace and
quiet, and because it was clear to him that Crossroads would remain a
battlefield until the last opponents of the move were either killed or in jail.
Mbulelo did not see his son for more than fifteen months, and by the time he
was released from police custody, their house was already destroyed and Mbulelo
had built a new one, and that had been destroyed, and Mbulelo lived in a tent
in site C in Kayalitsha. Many others were detained during this period, and many
more were killed. When his son did come home, he was taciturn and spent whole
days sitting in the tent or lying on the mattress not sleeping but not waking
either. 
Until one day he said: But father, where are all your books?
Ah, he said, you know they have all been burned in Crossroads. And I don't have
the money and the heart to buy books anymore. I was foolish enough to believe
that one should become educated and being educated one would escape from these
squatter camps. But to them you remain the kaffir, no matter what. Worse, you
are a kaffir who reads books, and since most of them don't read themselves they
feel threatened. They say they are civilised, but they only have a white skin.
And they know it, and they fear us being better than them.
His father sighed and walked out of the tent.
The next day his son walked all the way to Observatory because he had no money
fo the bus and searched for an address. Finally he found the house he was
looking for. But when he rang nobody opened. So he sat on the stairs in front
of the door for three and a half hours until a young man of about twenty five
came up the street.
Tom, the young man shouted, are you out? Come in, come in, and have a beer.
They sat down in the little room, after Walter had opened two beers and talked
about the time they had spent together in the struggle, and what had happened
to them since Tom had been detained, and it began to get dark, by the time Tom
came out with his request.
You know my father was a great collector of books. Reading was his greatest
pleasure since I taught him as an eight year old kid. Well when they destroyed
Crossroads all his books went up in flame. He hasn't been reading since. Nor
have I, except for the Bible in jail.
He hesitated.
Well, what I came to ask is, can you lend us a few books?
Sure, said Walter, as long as they do find their way back here. What do you
want to read in particular?
You wouldn't have any Ngugi wa Thiong'o, would you?
Sure, I have got everything he has ever published, well nearly. Why don't you
try Matigari? I loved that!
If it doesn't get burned again, I will bring it back as soon as we have read
it, said Tom with a smile.
So late that evening Tom went home with a copy of Matigari under his arm.
The next day was a Sunday, and they settled in the shade of the tent, and his
father opened the book and began to read to his son:
He held an AK 47 in his right hand. His left hand was raised to shield his face
while he looked across the river, as he had often done over many years, across
many hills and valleys, in the four corners of the globe.
-- 
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Peter Horn 
German Department, UCT 
43 Trevor Road, Lansdowne 7764, Cape, Republic of  South Africa . 
Phone Home ZA-(021)696-1983		e-Mail: HORNPETE@UCTVAX.UCT.AC.ZA 
      Work ZA-(021)650-2936		Fax ZA-(021) 650-3726 
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Peter Horn, Walking through our sleep (Poems), Ravan Press 1974
Peter Horn, Poems 1964-1989, Ravan Press 1991
Peter Horn, An Axe in the Ice (Poems), COSAW Publishing House 
forthcoming September/October 1992
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Ravan Press, P.O.Box 31134, Braamfontein 2017, Republic of South Africa
COSAW Publishing House, P.O.Box 421007, Fordsburg 2033, Republic of 
South Africa.
USA: Ohio University Press Fax (614) 593-4536
Britain: Central Books, Fax (71) 378-1811
Australia: New Era Books, Fax (02) 596-0045
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