‘Good, I’ll make an appointment to see him after school tomorrow.’
Singe ’n Burn proved more difficult than we had anticipated. He was not at all sure of the attitude the Nationalist government might take to one of the country’s most famous English-speaking private schools becoming the cradle of black adult learning.
There were, of course, black schools and some very good ones. But most Africans left school before they reached high school and a great many more after only two or three years of the most basic education. Some, perhaps a majority, never made it to school at all. If, in later years, they wished to learn to read and write, then no adult school facilities existed for them.
We seemed to have reached a stalemate, with Singe ’n Burn promising to put the issue to the school governors, where it was almost certain to be defeated. Their idea of Christian gentleman did not include the brotherhood of man, if it meant lowering the colour bar.
Our arguments had been sound but our politics naive. In South Africa, when a black skin is involved, politics and social justice have very little in common.
‘We’ve been a couple of schmucks to think he’d buy it straight off like that, we’re going to have to make the bastard feel guilty, it always works with a Renaissance man,’ Hymie said. We were sitting in the prefects’ common room which was seldom used by the other prefects after school and was a nice private place to talk or work.
‘I thought we’d already made him feel guilty?’
‘Guilty in the mind, intellectual guilt yes. But guilty so it hurts inside, that’s different. Jews are expert at soul guilt. Let me illustrate what I mean. Until we fought in Sophiatown, the only black people I knew well were Mary, our cook, and Jefferson, the butler. And, of course, the various other nameless servants who pretended to work around the place. The afternoon of the fight was the first time I had ever been close to African people. I mean actually experienced them as people, not just servants or faithful family retainers, but as people with problems. I mean just like other ordinary people. I haven’t told you before, but the effect was shattering. I found myself liking them. More than that, I understood for the very first time how the persecuted Jew must have felt. When they sang for you, not just for Gideon, that was understandable, but for you also, the generosity of spirit made me ashamed of my white skin. That’s the sort of guilt I mean.’
‘Christ, Hymie, you didn’t tell me any of this.’
‘So what’s to tell? You can’t tell it, you have to feel it. That’s what Singe ’n Burn needs. He needs to feel not what he is denying but whom he is denying. We’re going to introduce him to Gideon.’
‘You had ten thousand Africans singing Sikelel’ i Afrika to experience, do you think Gideon can convince him on his own? He’s the only tone deaf Zulu ever born.’ It was true, Gideon had a singing voice like a rusty rasp on hardwood.
‘No, of course not. But by the time we’re finished with that cheeky black bastard he’s going to sound like Othello.’
Hymie and I composed a speech for Gideon Mandoma which, I must say, was pretty terrific. The idea was that Gideon would learn it in Zulu and I’d translate it into English as though hearing it for the first time. Singe ’n Burn would be so knocked out by the language, the poetry and the brilliance that he would realise the black man was not just a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, nor even a noble savage, but someone who had all the brilliant potential even to become one of Sinjun’s People.
We trained Gideon in the speech and, dressed in a white shirt, neatly patched pair of pants from an old suit and with his old black shoes shining, we presented ourselves at Singe ’n Burn’s study. I must say he was very gracious and we all sat in his big old leather armchairs and Miss Perkins, his secretary, brought us tea and Marie biscuits. We’d anticipated the offer of tea and had practised Gideon in the balancing of a cup on his knee so he looked pretty suave and at home. But I knew on the inside he’d be all tom-toms and flutter.
I explained to Singe ’n Burn that Gideon’s English wasn’t sufficiently fluent for him to conduct a conversation and that I would act as interpreter. I think the fact that one of Sinjun’s People could conduct the interview in Zulu impressed the old boy no end.
Gideon, as we had rehearsed it, began in English. His beautiful white teeth flashing in one of his best smiles: ‘Excuse for my English, sir, she is not so good for tell this thing in my heart.’
The head nodded sympathetically. I could see the plan beginning to work already. Gideon cleared his throat and then began in Zulu. After each carefully rehearsed sentence I translated in my best voice, keeping it low and dramatic.
‘I do not come from a nation of slaves, but I have been made a slave. I come from a people who are brave men, but I am made to weep. I, who am to become a chief, have become what no man ought to be, a man without rights and without a future.’ I paused dramatically before continuing, ‘I am seventeen summers, I have killed a lion and sat on the mat of the high chief, but I have been given my place. That place is not a seat at the white man’s table, and that place is not a voice in the white man’s indaba.’ I could see Singe ’n Burn was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He wouldn’t know what hit him by the time we were through. Talk about guilt, old Singe hadn’t seen anything yet.
To my surprise Gideon suddenly stopped following the script. ‘My bondage is not of the white man’s making. My bondage is not forced upon me by the white man’s sjambok. My bondage is in my own brain. Here in my head I carry the Zulu pride of my ancestors but I also carry no learning. My stupidity is my bondage, it is the instrument of the black man’s misery and despair. If the white man would give me his rights and the same voice, I would not be able to use them, I would still be in bondage. I would still be a servant, a black Kaffir, an inferior human, because I would not know how to use these rights, how to make my voice felt amongst the people. Please, sir, my mind cries for knowledge. I wish to cup knowledge in my hand and drink it as one drinks water by the side of a stream. I am naked without knowledge. I am a nothing without learning. Please, sir, give me this knowledge, give me this learning, so that I too can be a man.’
Gideon’s words had been so easily put that I had no trouble making an almost perfect translation and his flow was hardly interrupted. The tears rolled down his cheeks and he made no effort to wipe them away. I realised suddenly that for a Zulu to cry is a great shame, but he couldn’t wipe away his tears with the cup and saucer balanced on his knee. I leaned forward and removed the cup and looked over at Hymie, not daring to look at Singe ’n Burn. I could see Hymie was annoyed that I’d removed Gideon’s cup, the tears were the best part, the clincher. Othello had nothing on Hymie’s cheeky black bastard.
‘The tears are not for myself, they are for the people, Inkosi,’ Gideon said softly, wiping them away with the back of his hand. I sneaked a look at Singe ’n Burn and saw his eyes had grown misty and he too was struggling with his emotions.
‘Remarkable, quite remarkable.’ Then turning to Hymie and me, he said: ‘This young man shall have his school and I charge you both to give of your best.’
We’d won! Singe ’n Burn, the senior house master from Winchester School and trustee of the great private school tradition to the colonies, Renaissance man and liberal thinker, had been made to touch the heart and feel the soul of black Africa.
Hymie was the first to react. ‘Can the school supply exercise books and stationery, sir?’ Singe ’n Burn nodded.
‘See Miss Perkins for a stationery authority, Levy. Your students must be properly equipped.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ I said then turned to Gideon to tell him the news. Gideon broke into a giant smile.
‘Many boy, same like me, we thank you, Inkosi.’ Singe ’n Burn acknowledged Gideon with a nod of his head. It was plain he was enchanted with the young Zulu chief.
The school began with the black boxers from Solly’s gym its only pupils. Within a month, local chauffeurs, cooks and houseboys had swelled the ranks and Pissy Johnson, Cunning-Spider and Atherton, as well as two guys from School House who could speak Sotho, were roped in to teach on Saturday nights.
Even before the head’s agreement we had despatched a long letter to Miss Bornstein asking her how we should best go about teaching language and numbers to adult Africans; she had responded with a superb set of teaching notes and several textbooks which enabled Hymie and me to prepare a complete curriculum which I was able to translate into Sotho, Zulu, Shangaan as well as Fanagalo.
With Singe ’n Burn’s approval we also set about teaching the curriculum to the newly elected Sinjun’s People so that the night school could be carried on after Hymie and I matriculated at the end of the year.
After only a few weeks the results were astonishing. Students, loaded down with homework after Saturday night’s four-hour teaching session, would return with everything done, anxious for more. Word of the school spread
