“I had a Grade 9 boy who clearly had a mixed genetic history. Teachers from the German Schulle came to entice him away from us in Manenberg. He stayed. But he also bunked. So I had occasion to ask his dad to bring him to school on a day. It turned out that the boy stayed home to collect fares in a taxi. The taxi was driven by his dad. His dad did not own the taxi. His dad had a target for the morning set by the silent owner. On reaching the target, the rest of the takings constituted his wages for the day.“ Photographer: Armand Hough / African News Agency (ANA)
Last week, I wrote what I considered a passionate piece based on the shenanigans going on in the streets of our province.
The piece was not published because my day in the lights is a Wednesday, and last Wednesday was a public holiday. Sadly for me, it will not see the light of day, for I have pulled it from being published this week. The whole scenario has changed and that piece, of which I was very proud, will never see the light of day.
Such are the disappointments and vagaries of fate that we suffer because certain people place themselves above the law. It is now known that there were negotiations and agreements, the content and nature of which we will never know. But we know that whatever was decided was fashioned on the first betrayal of 1994. From that year, everything we held as holy and sacrosanct went out the window.
I am not stupid enough to name names and attract the unwelcome attention of masterless men who think nothing of maiming or even killing anything that remotely questions their blatant disregard for common decency. Therefore I shall spend this week relating a story out of my own life experience, and hope to avoid being declamatory, critical or even remotely confrontational.
It started during my tenure as principal of a new high school – the first face-brick high school in Manenberg. It occurred during the years 1983 and 1993. These were the years of open and public defiance against an army that patrolled with guns, whips, tear gas and Casspirs to repress the defiance campaign going on daily for 10 long years.
Try to recontextualise the inflated stories that are sometimes disseminated about certain schools along the green belt of the road from Cape Town to Fish Hoek, as if we on the Cape Flats and in the ghettos and townships did nothing. And know that we did as well as those who are lauded and awarded doctorates long after the dust has settled. We all were involved. Not all of us were elitist schools with dubious reputations based on an unrealistic model.
We dealt with a generation who did not know brick houses, hot water and regular meals. Our pupils asked us why we pushed them so hard for the unemployment queue. Our matrics did not end up studying under a permit at a white academic ethnic enclave. They ended up as students at Bush Colleges, throw-away victims of racist legislation.
I had a Grade 9 boy who clearly had a mixed genetic history. Teachers from the German Schulle came to entice him away from us in Manenberg. He stayed. But he also bunked. So I had occasion to ask his dad to bring him to school on a day.
It turned out that the boy stayed home to collect fares in a taxi. The taxi was driven by his dad. His dad did not own the taxi. His dad had a target for the morning set by the silent owner. On reaching the target, the rest of the takings constituted his wages for the day.
The boy earned, when asked, R85. I pointed out to him that one could hardly make a living, or marry and have a family on R85 a week. His father interjected: ‘No, sir, I pay him R85 a day.’
Right then and there I saw the mountain we had to climb. Here was an instant gratification of real living needs versus the long-term prospect of school, albeit with an offer from – dare I say it – a white school. Do not ask how it was resolved. That happened more than three decades ago.
The reality is still the same. Negotiations still favour the haves. The law has no teeth, and senior politicians debate good governance and service delivery with the uneducated.
I have no more to say. I hope you can see how my heart bleeds. I do not wear my heart on my sleeve, I bleed between the lines. You go ahead and read between them.
* Alex Tabisher.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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