got married immediately after she got her BA at the age of twenty-one. With four biological children and hundreds of university students, Lauren rarely dresses up and is perpetually kitted out in khakis and one of Michael’s shirts.
Although she loves children, I do not quite understand why Lauren had four of her own. When she is reading a good book (which is more often than you know), she shuns motherly responsibility entirely and gives the children to her maid, MaRosie. This may explain why the last two enunciated ‘Rosie’ before they could say Mama. ‘When they are good, they are mine,’ she likes to joke. ‘When they are noisy, they are MaRosie’s.’
Lauren and I met when my family moved in next door. Realising I had no sugar for that refreshing cup of tea one simply must have after unpacking, and noting that I was surrounded by white people in my new home, I tentatively rang her gate bell. She seemed the less intimidating and more liberal of my two neighbours. I had judged correctly. She and Mike invited us in and Mike and Mandla were soon sharing a six-pack while my son, Hintsa, had quickly become ‘just like a brother’ to Junior, Elizabeth, Charles and Diana. Lauren and I got along like a house on fire and in no time she became the third member of the Awesome Twosome that Siz and I had been.
Lauren has one major flaw, though . . . and that is her inherent racism. She does not notice it, or chooses to say she doesn’t, but Siz and I can tell from the way she treats her maid. You would think a progressive someone in a progressive institute of higher learning would not have the hang-ups of other white surburbanites, but nope. She tells Siz and me ‘I love everyone’. She always gives money to begging white alcoholics holding placards at the traffic lights reading: ‘Four children, all unemployed because of BEE; wife dead; farm taken by Mugabe’s government,’ but she treats simple, hard-working, poor, black folk with suspicion. I recall one time a pair of her shoes went missing and she was on the brink of firing Rosie when she found them on the back seat of her car. You would think, of course, that since MaRosie is so good with her children she would respect her as an equal, but sadly no . . . and this bothers me.
Because Lauren is my neighbour I, more than Siz or anyone else, see the treatment she metes out to MaRosie. It’s a source of constant annoyance to see someone older than my mother treated with so much contempt by someone who, by the grace of heavens, is neither of her race nor her child. Poor Rosie, who Lauren considers ‘part of the family’ (a poor relation maybe?) has to wake up at four-thirty to iron everybody’s clothes before they go to work or school because Lauren always insists that clothes should be ‘freshly pressed’. Rosie then has to make breakfast. Even in these days of fortified cereals, Lauren insists on Rosie making a full English every day of the week. ‘You know breakfast is the most important meal of the day,’ Lauren justifies when I question her about this interesting habit. No wonder Lauren and her babies are all a little horizontally-gifted.
Because of Lauren’s size, I enjoy going shopping with her because, for once, I can have a bigger female friend to ask: ‘Do I look fat in this?’ even when I know I look damn good. I have often thought that maybe Lauren treats MaRosie the way she does so that she can feel good about herself. ‘I am white. I have a good job. I PAY you. Get it together,’ seems to be her attitude.
But when I see the relationship that Lauren has with Ma, I wonder whether she really is a racist, or whether I am just racially sensitive. Maybe she is just ‘classist’? Lauren and Siz’s mother burn the phone lines between East London and Johannesburg, for no apparent reason other than to confide about the latest royal scandal or royal outfit. In our private conversations, Siz and I often imitate them.
Siz as Ma: ‘You won’t believe this . . . I just found out that Queen Elizabeth and I share not only the same dislike for people who act in a common way, but also the same birthday.’
Me as Lauren: ‘I know. I forgot to tell you that when I was reading the official biography I noted that she was also born on the twenty-first of April. That’s probably why you are such a strong person, Ma . . . and very colour-coordinated, just like the Queen. Although, I must say, even when you reach her age I think you will still be looking better than her. You do know we’re actually related? My mother’s cousin was married to the Queen’s second cousin twice removed.’
Siz as Ma: ‘Of course my darling, but back to me. My girl, you know God didn’t fault me in the looks department. In fact, maybe we should try to see the Queen and give her some fashion advice. I think you and I should go to the Chelsea Flower Show next month.’
Me as Lauren: ‘I was just thinking about that. There might be some Americans there who we can teach a thing or two about culture.’
Siz as Ma: ‘Truly, my child. You are right. You are always right darling. And a True Leo. Why can’t Nosizwe and Thandi be more like you?’
Siz and I have nicknamed Lauren and Mama ‘OBE’s’ – Odious Babes of the Empire.
3. And Then There is Me
Chapter 3
And Then There is Me
And then there is me. I like to think I was given the name Thandi because of the great love that I know my parents had for each other. I am neither silver-spoon nor wooden-spoon born, but an average South African – although both Siz and Lauren claim they are more South African than I will ever be and that, with my immense global experience, I am far from being average. (Although, when I describe myself as an ‘average South African’, I am talking of South Africa being a middle-income country, developmentally speaking, and yours truly being a middle-class person; which makes me an average citizen.) But, having dished the dirt on my friends, I will tell you the biased version of my own story. It goes like this:
My father and my mother would be referred to as ‘coloureds’ (whatever colour that is) during the apartheid era, and even today in South Africa’s post-apartheid days. They were both politically active, joining the African National Congress and border-jumping at a time when other so-called ‘coloureds’ were just grateful that, in spite of the hardships of the apartheid regime, they still had it better than the (to use the terminology of that dark shadow in our nation’s history) ‘kaffirs’.
My father left South Africa in 1970 to join Umkhonto we Sizwe in Tanzania and that is where he met my mother. I was born in Dar es Salaam, where my father was undergoing military training and my mother had every woman’s dream job (at that time), the highly-esteemed role of typist.
My paternal grandfather was a Scotsman who had an affair with his former maid, my grandmother. The result of this union was my father. I grew up with an aversion towards white men as my father had told me that my grandmother was raped.
Whether it was that my father read too many Malcolm X speeches or simply a sign of the times in which he grew up, my father tended to exaggerate. It was only when I came back home as a young adult that I realised that my Makhulu could never have been raped. Her boss was definitely guilty of sexual exploitation, but the grandmother I knew, who spoke her mind to one and all, would never have been forced into sex. Even the white sergeants at Orlando Police Station knew not to mess with her.
My take on it, after knowing her, is that perhaps she thought she would be able to do a coup d’etat on the Missus but when the Missus found out, she got fired and became a liquor trader on the alternative market (also known as the black market!) which is how she put my father through school. If my father wants to justify the fact that he is strongly anti-white by stating that his mother was raped, I let him be. (What surprises me is that he chose the ANC as a political home, as opposed to the blacker and, back then, more militant Pan-Africanist Congress.)
It may have been to fit in with his comrades that my father used his mother’s last name, acted blacker than the blackest, and instilled in me the same values. One thing I applaud my father for is that he has never (as a few other so-called ‘coloureds’ have done) claimed to have Khoisan heritage in order to take advantage of the special allowances reserved for those very indigenous people. He states that the Khoisan are disadvantaged enough without him having to jump on the bandwagon. He is just a black man – and he speaks all the local languages as though he was born and bred in every province of this great country.
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