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Kaffir Boy
Chapter One

It was early morning on a bitterly cold winter day in 1965. I was lying on a bed of cardboard, under a kitchen table, peering through a large hole in the blanket at the spooky darkness around me. I was wide awake and terrified. All night long I had been having nightmares in which throngs of black people sprawled dead in pools of red blood, surrounded by all sorts of slimy, creeping creatures. These nightmares had plagued me since I turned five two weeks ago. I thought of waking my mother in the next room, but my father's words of warning not to wake her on account of bad dreams stopped me. All was quiet, save for the snores of my sister Florah—three years old—huddled alongside me, under the same blanket, and the squeaks of rats in the cupboard. From time to time the moon shone eerily through the window. Afraid to go back to sleep lest I have another nightmare, I stayed awake, peering at the quivering blackness through the hole. The darkness seemed alive.

My father woke up and began arguing sharply with my mother in the bedroom. It was five o'clock by the kikilihoo (cock's crow), time for him to go to work. He always went to work at this time—and he was angry at my mother for forgetting to prepare his scufftin (food for work). Soon he emerged, holding a flickering tallow candle in one hand, and a worn-out Stetson hat in the other. He silently went about preparing his scufftin from what was left of yesterday's pap'n vleis (porridge and meat). He wrapped the scufftin in sheets of old newspapers, took the family's waslap (washcloth) from the window, dampened it with water from a mug and wiped his face. He drank what was left of the water in the mug. Minutes later he was out the door, on this way to work, but not before I had said to him: "Don't forget our fish and chips, Papa."

"Fish and chips is tomorrow, son. Today is Thursday. Payday is tomorrow."

"Bye-bye, Papa."

"Go back to sleep."

As soon as he had left, my mother, clad only in her skimpy underwear, came into the kitchen, chamber pot in hand. The chamber pot dripped and had a bad smell, like the one which always pervaded the yard whenever our neighbors hung urine-soaked blankets and cardboard on fences to dry under the blazing African sun.

"Where are you going, Mama?"

"To the outhouse."

"Those bad dreams came back, Mama."

"I'll be back soon."

Before she left, she blew out the candle to save it from burning out and took with her a book of matches. I lingered between sleep and wakefulness, anticipating my mother's speedy return. Twenty minutes passed without any sign of her. I grew more afraid of the darkness. I shut my eyes, pulled the blanket over my head and minutes later I was in dreamland. I had been asleep but a short while when my mother came bursting through the door, yelling, in a winded voice, "Get up, Johannes! Get up quickly!" And as she yelled she reached under the table and shook me vigorously.

"Hunh?" I mumbled sleepily, stirring but not waking up, thinking it a dream. "Get up! Get up!" she yelled again, yanking the torn blanket covering Florah and me, and almost instantly I awoke and heard a door shut with a resounding slam. From then on things became rather entangled for me. Unaware that I was still under the table, I jerked upward, and my head banged against the top of the table. I winced but didn't cry. My father had warned me that men and boys never cry, ever. Still only half awake, I began crawling on my hands and knees from under the table, but the darkness was all around me, and I couldn't see where I was going.

As I was crawling blindly, my face rammed into one of the concrete slabs propping one of the table's legs. I let out a scream and drew back momentarily, dazed and smarting. At this point half my mind still told me that I was in a dream, but the hot pain all over my face convinced me otherwise. I resumed groping for a way from under the table, to find out where my mother had suddenly gone, and why she had awakened me. Finally I was out. I leaned myself for a while against the side of the table and waited for the throbbing pain in my head to cease.

Suddenly, as I stood leaning against the table, from outside came a series of dreadful noises. Sirens blared, voices screamed and shouted, wood cracked and windows shattered, children bawled, dogs barked and footsteps pounded. I was bewildered. I had never heard such a racket before. I was instantly seized by a feeling of terror.
(Photo: A South African police raid)

"Mama! Where are you?" I screamed, groping about with one hand, the other clutching the table. I did not know whether my mother had gone back out, or was still in the house.

"Over here," a voice suddenly whispered from somewhere behind me. It was my mother's voice, but it sounded so faint I could barely hear it. I turned my head and strained to see where it was coming from and saw nothing but darkness. Where was my mother? Why was it so dark? Why the dreadful noises outside? My imagination ran wild. The pitch-black room seemed alive with the voodoo spirits of my mother's tales, ready to pounce on me if I as much as took a step from where I was standing.

"Mama! Where are you?" I screamed again, fear mounting inside me.

"I'm over here," the disembodied voice of my mother said from somewhere in the dark.

I swung around and saw a candle coming out of the bedroom. It stopped briefly by the door. It was my mother. In the dim candlelight, her body, crouched like that of an animal cowering in fear, cast an oblong, eerie shadow on the flaking whitewashed wall. She stole over to where I stood transfixed, handed me the flickering candle and told me to keep it down and away from the window.

"What's the matter, Mama?"

"Not so loud," she cautioned, a finger on her lips. Still clad only in her underwear, she hurriedly draped a tattered black shawl, which had been lying on a tin chair nearby, over her shoulders, but the shawl didn't cover much. She reached under the kitchen table and grabbed the torn blanket and draped it in place of the shawl and took the shawl and spread it over the newspapers and cardboard covering Florah.

"What's the matter, Mama?"

"Peri-Urban is here."

"Peri-Urban!" I gasped and stiffened at the name of the dreaded Alexandra Police Squad. To me nothing, short of a white man, was more terrifying; not even a bogeyman. Memories of previous encounters with the police began haunting me. Will the two fat black policemen with sjamboks (animal-hide whips used to enforce apartheid) and truncheons burst open the door again? And will the one with the twirled mustache and big hands grit his teeth at me while threatening, "Speak up, boy! or I'll let you taste my sjambok!" and thereafter spit in my face and hit me on the head with a truncheon for refusing to tell where my mother and father were hiding? And will the tall, carroty-haired white man in fatigues stand by the doorjamb again, whistling a strange tune and staring fear into Florah and me?

"W-where a-are t-they?" I stammered.

"Outside. Don't be afraid now. They're still in the next neighborhood. I was in the outhouse when the alarm came." "When the alarm came" meant people leaping over fences in a mad dash to escape the police.

I nodded sheepishly, the sleep now completely gone from my eyes. I was now standing—naked, cold and trembling—in the middle of the room. My mother took the candle from my hand and told me to dress. I reached under the kitchen table for my patched khaki shorts and dressed hurriedly. Meanwhile the pandemonium outside was intensifying with each minute. The raid, it seemed, was gathering momentum. Suddenly a gust of wind puffed through the sackcloth covering a hole in the window. The candle flickered but did not go out. I felt something warm soak my groin and trickle down my legs. I tried to stem the flow of urine by pressing my thighs together, but I was too late. A puddle had formed about my feet, and I scattered it with my toes. My mother handed me the candle and headed toward the table in the corner. As she went along she said, without turning to face me, "Take good care of your brother and sister while I'm gone, you hear?"

"Yes, Mama."

I knew she had to leave, she had to flee from the police and leave us children alone as she had done so many times before. By now my mother had reached the table, and her big brown eyes darted about its top, searching for something.

"Where's my passbook?" she asked in a frantic voice, her tense body bent low over the table. "Bring the candle over here. Keep it down! Away from the window!" As I hurried the candle, which had now burnt to a stub, over to her, a loud scream leaped out from the dark outside. Alarmed, I stumbled and fell headlong into my mother's arms. As she steadied me she continued asking, "Where's my passbook? Where it is?" I did not know; I could not answer; I could not think; my mind had suddenly gone blank. She grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me, yelling frantically, "Where is it! Where is it! Oh, God. Where is it, child? Where is the book? Hurry, or they'll find me!"

"What book?" I said blankly.

"The little book I showed you and your sister last night, remember?" She stared at me anxiously, but my eyes merely widened in confusion. No matter how hard I tried it seemed I could not rid my mind of the sinister force that had suddenly blotted out all memory.

"Remember the little black book with my picture in it. Where is it?" my mother said, again grabbing me and shaking me, begging me to remember. I could not snap out of my amnesia.

The noise outside had risen to a dreadful crescendo. Suddenly several gunshots rang out in quick succession. Shouts of "Follow that Kaffir! He can't get far! He's wounded!" followed the shots. Somehow it all jolted me back to consciousness, and I remembered where my mother's little black book was: under the pallet of cardboard where I had tucked it the night before, hoping to sneak it out the next day and show it to my friends at play—who had already shown me their mothers'—to see whose mother's picture was the most beautiful.

"It's under the table, Mama!" I cried out.

My mother thanked her ancestors. Hurriedly, she circled the table, reached under it, rolled Florah away from the damp cardboard, lifted them up, and underneath, on the earthern floor, she found her little black book. I heaved a great sigh of relief as I watched her tuck it into her bosom.

My sister's naked, frail body, now on the bare floor, shook from the icy cold seeping through a hole under the door. She coughed, then moaned—a prolonged rasping sound; but she did not wake up. My mother quickly straightened out the cardboard and rolled Florah back to sleep and covered her with more newspapers and cardboard. More screams came from outside as more doors and windows were being busted by the police. The vicious barking of dogs escalated, as did the thudding of running feet. Shouts of "Mbambe! Mbambe! (Grab him! Catch him!)" followed the screams of police whistles.

My mother was headed for the bedroom door when a shaft of very bright light flashed through the uncurtained window and fell upon her. Instantly she leaped behind the door and remained hidden behind it. Alarmed, I dropped the candle, spilling the molten wax on my feet. The room was plunged into utter darkness, for the bright light disappeared barely seconds after it had flashed through the window and flooded the kitchen. This time it stayed. It seemed daylight.

My mother crept from behind the bedroom door and started toward the kitchen door, on tiptoe. As she neared it, my year-old brother, George, who slept with my mother and father on the only bed in the house, started screaming, piercing the tenuous stillness of the house. His screamed stopped my mother dead in her tracks. She spun around and said to me, in a whisper, "Go quiet your brother."

"Yes, Mama," I said, but I did not go. I could not go. I seemed rooted to the spot by a terrifying fear of the unknown.

"I'll be gone a short while," my mother, now by the door, whispered. She stealthily opened it a crack, her blanketed body still in a crouch, her head almost touching the floor. She hesitated a moment or two before peering through the opening. The storm of screams that came through the door made me think that the world was somehow coming to an end. Through the opening I saw policemen, with flashlights and what looked like raised cavemen's clubs, move searchingly about several shacks across the street.

"Don't forget to lock the door securely behind me," my mother said as she ran her eyes up and down the street. More gunshots rang out. More screams and more shouts came from somewhere deep in the neighborhood.

"Don't go, Mama!" I cried. "Please don't go! Don't leave us, please!"

She did not answer, but continued opening the door a little wider and inching her blanketed body, still bent low, slowly forward until she was halfway in and halfway out. Meanwhile in the bedroom George continued bawling. I hated it when he cried like that, for it heightened, and made more real, my feelings of confusion, terror and helplessness.

"Let him suck your thumb," my mother said, now almost out of the house. She was still bent low. She spat on the doorknob twice, a ritual that, she once told me, protected the innocent and kept all evil spirits away, including the police. I felt vaguely reassured seeing her perform the ritual.

"And don't forget now," she said, "don't ever be afraid. I'll be back soon." Those were her last words; and as I watched her disappear behind the shacks, swallowed up by the ominous darkness and ominous sounds, her figure like that of a black-coated ghost, she seemed less of the mother I knew and loved, and more of a desperate fugitive fleeing off to her secret lair somewhere in the inky blackness.

I immediately slammed the door shut, bolted it in three places, blew out the candle and then scampered to the bedroom, where my brother was still crying. But as I flung open the bedroom door a new and more dreadful fear gripped me and made me turn and run back to the front door. I suddenly remembered how the police had smashed open the door during a raid one morning even though it had been bolted. I must barricade the door this time, I told myself; that will stop them. I started dragging things from all over the kitchen and piling them up against the door—a barrel half-filled with drinking water, a scuttle half-filled with coal and several tin chairs. Satisfied that the door was now impregnable, I then scuttled back to the bedroom and there leaped onto the bed by the latticed window.

"Shut up, you fool!" I yelled at my brother, but he did not quiet. I then uttered the phrase, "There's a white man outside," which to small black children had the same effect as "There's a bogeyman outside," but still he would not stop. I then stuck my thumb into his wide-open mouth, as my mother had told me. But George had other plans for my thumb. He sank his teeth into it. Howling with pain, I grabbed him by the feet and tossed him over and spanked him on the buttocks.

"Don't ever do that!"

He became hysterical and went into a seizure of screams. His body writhed and his mouth frothed. Again I grabbed his tiny feet and shook him violently, begging him to stop screaming. But still he would not quiet. I screamed at him some more. That made him worse. In desperation I wrenched his ears and pinched him black and blue, but still he continued hollering. In despair I gave up, for the time being, attempts to quiet him. My head spun and did not know what to do.

I glanced at the window. It was getting light outside. I saw two black policemen breaking down a door at the far end of the yard. A half-naked, near-hysterical, jet-black woman was being led out of an outhouse by a fat laughing black policeman who, from time to time, prodded her private parts with a truncheon. The storm of noises had now subsided somewhat, but I could still hear doors and windows being smashed, and dogs barking and children screaming. I jerked George and pinned him against the window, hoping that he would somehow understand why I needed him to shut up; but that did not help, for his eyes were shut, and he continued to scream and writhe. My eyes roved frantically about in the semi-dark room and came to rest on a heavy black blanket hanging limply from the side of the bed. Aha! I quickly grabbed it and pulled it over George's head to muffle his screams. I pinned it tightly with both hands over his small head as he lay writhing. It worked! For though he continued screaming, I could hardly hear him. He struggled and struggled and I pinned the blanket tighter and tighter. It never crossed by mind that my brother might suffocate. As he no longer screamed, I waited, from time to time glancing nervously at the window.

Suddenly I heard the bedroom door open and shut. Startled, I let go of my hold on the blanket and turned my head toward the door only to see Florah, her eyes wild with fear, come rushing in, screaming, her hands over her head. She came over to the bedside and began tugging frantically at the blanket.

"Where's Mama! I want Mama! Where's Mama!"

"Shut up!" I raged. "Go back to sleep before I hit you!"

She did not leave.

"I'm scared," she whimpered. "I want Mama."

"Shut up, you fool!" I screamed at her again. "The white man is outside, and he's going to get you and eat you!" I should not have said that. My sister became hysterical. She flung herself at the bed and tried to claw her way up. Enraged, I slapped her hard across the mouth. She staggered but did not fall. She promptly returned to the bedside and resumed her tugging of the blanket more determinedly. My brother too was now screaming. My head felt hot with confusion and desperation. I did not know what to do. I wished my mother were present. I wished the police were blotted off the face of the earth.

I could still hear footsteps pounding, children screaming and dogs barking, so I quickly hauled my sister onto the bed, seeing that she was resolved not to return to the kitchen. We coiled together on the narrow bed, the three of us, but because of all the awkward movements everyone was making, the bricks propping the legs of the bed shifted, and it wobbled as if about to collapse. I held my breath, and the bed did not fall. I carefully pulled the blanket tautly over the three of us. Under the blanket I saw nothing but darkness.

But the din outside after a temporary lull surged and made its way through the bolted door, through the barricade, through the kitchen, through the blanket, through the blackness and into my finger-plugged ears, as if the bed were perched in the midst of all the pandemonium. My mind blazed with questions. What was really going on outside? Were the barking dogs police dogs? Who was shooting whom? Were the Msomi (legendary black gangsters of the Fifties and early Sixties) gangs involved? I had often been told that police dogs ate black people when given the order by white people—were they eating people this time? Suppose my mother had been apprehended. Would the police dogs eat her up too? What was happening to my friends?

I ached with curiosity and fear. Should I go to the kitchen window and see what was going on in the streets? My sister had wet the bed, and it felt damp and cold. Childish curiosity finally overcame the fear, and I hopped out of bed and tiptoed to the kitchen window. I had barely reached the bedroom door when I heard my sister whimper.

"Where are you going? I'm scared." I looked over my shoulder and saw Florah on the edge of the bed, her legs dangling over the side, poised to follow.

"Shut up and go back to sleep!"

"I'm coming with you." She dropped her tiny feet to the floor.

"Dare and I'll whip you!"

She whined and retracted her body frame under the blanket. I slowly opened the bedroom door, taking care to keep low and away from the shaft of light still streaming through the uncurtained window. I reached the window. What next? A piece of sackcloth covered the bottom half of the window, where several panes were missing, the result of a rock hurled from the street one night long ago. My father hadn't replaced the window but used the flap as a watchpost whenever police raided the neighborhood.

With mounting excitement I raised myself toward the window and reached for the flap. I carefully pushed it to one side as I had seen my father do and then poked my head through; all the time my eyes were on the prowl for danger. My head was halfway in and halfway out when my eyes fell upon two tall black policemen emerging from a shack across the street. They joined two others standing alongside a white man by the entrance gate to one of the yards. The white man had a holstered gun slung low around his waist, as in the movies, and was pacing briskly about, shouting orders and pointing in all different directions. Further on in the yard, another white man, also with a gun, was supervising a group of about ten black policemen as they rounded up half-naked black men and women from the shacks. Children's screams issued from some of the shacks.

The sight had me spellbound. Suddenly the white man by the entrance gate pointed in the direction of our house. Two black policemen jumped and started across the street toward me. They were quickly joined by a third. I gasped with fear. A new terror gripped me and froze me by the window, my head still sticking halfway out. My mind went blank. I shut my eyes. My heart thumped somewhere in my throat. I overheard the three black policemen, as they came across the street, say to each other, "That's number thirty-seven."

"Yes. But I don't think we'll find any of the Msomi gang in there."

"Umlungu (the white man) thinks there may be a few hiding in there. If we don't find them, we can still make easy money. The yard is a haven for people without passbooks."

"But I think everybody has fled. Look at those busted doors."

"There's a few over there still shut."

"All right, then, let's go in."

Suddenly there was a tremendous thud, as if something heavy were crashing against the door, and I heard George's screams of pain pierce the air. I opened my eyes momentarily and saw the three black policemen, only a few steps from the door, stop and look at one another. I quickly retracted my head but remained crouched under the window, afraid of going anywhere lest I be seen. I heard the three policemen say to one another:

"You heard that?"

"Yes. It's an infant crying."

"I bet you they left that one alone too."

Suddenly my sister came screaming out of the bedroom, her hands over her head. "Yowee! Yowee!" she bawled. "Johannes! Come an' see! Come an' see!"

I stared at her, unable to move, not wanting to move.

"It's G-george," she stammered with horror. "B-blood, d-dead, b-blood, d-dead!" her voice trailed into sobs. She rushed over to where I stood and began pulling my hand, imploring me to go see my brother who, she said dramatically, was bleeding to death. My mouth contorted into frantic, inaudible "Go aways" and "shut ups" but she did not leave. I heard someone pounding at the door. In the confusion that followed, angry voices said,

"There's no point in going in. I've had enough of hollering infants."

"Me too."

"I bet you there's no one in there but the bloody children."

"You just took the words right out of my mouth."

"Then let's get back to the vans. We still have more streets to comb. This neighborhood is about dry anyway."

They left. It turned out that George had accidentally fallen off the bed and smashed his head against a pile of bricks at the foot of the bed, sustaining a deep cut across the forehead. The gash swelled and bled badly, stopping only after I had swathed his forehead with pieces of rags. The three of us cowered together in silence another three hours until my mother returned from the ditch where she had been hiding.

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