Ties that Bind. Shannon Walsh

the bath which I then cleaned until it was shiny shiny.You think she got my message? Wrong. Doesn’t she leave me a note? Stella, wash the panty when you wash the bath.What do you mean what did I do? I did not go to school for nothing. I found a pen in her bookshelf and found a piece of paper and wrote her a note too: ‘Medem,’ I said in the note, ‘please excuse me but I did not think anyone can ask another person to wash their panty. I was taught that a panty is the most intimate thing … my mother told me no one else should even see my panty. I really don’t see how I can be asked to wash someone else’s panty.’That was the end of that panty nonsense.¹¹ (Lines delivered as both Lebo and Sisonke laugh) SISONKE … The most intimate thing. Cleaning and feeding whites in a racist society is intimate. And we all know that intimacy is complicated. In 2010, Sarit Swisa, a Master’s student at this institution [University of the Witwatersrand] interviewed young white South Africans about their attitudes towards the nannies who raised them. LEBO Ethan: Ja, like I have racial issues but it would never, she’s different. She doesn’t fall under that category in my book and ... the thing is as well; she’s the only domestic that we’ve ever had that I’ve been close to. The rest have been ... they come, they go, they steal, they this, they that. I don’t trust them.Laura: Like, even from a young age we always tried to help her to get better at her English and um, my mom used to pay for her to study while she was working for us so that she could not be a maid but she just chose that, that was better for her. But at least she did get an opportunity to study and stuff so, which is good for her SISONKE & LEBO if she ever decides to do anything else.¹² (Chorus) SISONKE These children remind us that white people have never quite known what to do with black people’s feelings. Our labor has mattered: our arms that push strollers; our backs that carry white infants; our hands that wash white women’s panties.More than that, as Rian Malan reminds us in this passage from his memoir, black female bodies have often been used in other ways by white male teenagers: LEBO After practice I set off on foot down to Abbotswold Road, swept along by a gang of jeering, sniggering teenage boys. Whenever I stopped, they joshed and jeered so I had to keep going. We came to a big white house. My mates decamped outside under a streetlight and I slunk down the dark alley that led to the servant’s quarters, moving on tiptoe because what I was about to do was unlawful. I tapped an iron door and the black woman opened it, wearing a satin nightgown. The room smelled of all the things I associated with servants: red floor polish, putu, and Lifebuoy soap. Even her bed was waist-high on bricks to thwart the tokoloshe. I took off my clothes and clambered onto it and then I was in her arms, overpowered by the smell of her, and terrified, utterly terrified. I couldn’t talk to her because we had few words in common. I didn’t know what to do. I recoiled at the thought of French-kissing her, but I did it anyway because I was a social democrat and I did not want to insult her. And then I pulled up the nightie and instants later it was over. I rolled off and asked, ‘Was I good? Am I big enough?’ She said yes. She was very kind.¹³ SISONKE & LEBO This is why we cannot yet be friends. SISONKE Like many others, this ritual of white male bonding and friendship involved violence and laughter at the expense of a black body. These bodies are often but not always female. This news item too began with laughter, the object of a joke was a Muslim man with a beard. LEBO: Kazi (27), from Ventersdorp, was with his father’s friend Anser Mahmood when they were attacked at a Chicken Licken outlet on Monday.‘Two white people ... they called him [Osama] bin Laden in Afrikaans because of his beard ... and then they called us kaffirs’, Mahmood told Sapa by telephone on Wednesday.‘I don’t know what he hit me with. I was unconscious.’‘Nobody helps us. They wanted me dead also, but I survived.’North West police said a murder docket had been opened for Kazi’s killing.¹⁴ SISONKE The white men who killed Kazi were brothers: a bond even closer than friendship. It was a bond that allowed them to beat a black body to death. Roedolf Viviers was sentenced to just eight years for the murder. His brother walked free. I think of Xolela Mangcu who has noted that: LEBO & SISONKE This country is moving closer and closer to the brink of racial war, simply because white people refuse to take seriously the pain of black people.¹⁵ SISONKE The present climate is combustible in part because whiteness itself is constructed as being under fire. Inside the laager, whites have a camaraderie, united by their victimhood and blacks increasing ‘racialism’.The celebrated artist Willem Boshoff offers a stunning example of this mentality: LEBO I am proud to be labelled racist if it means that:I am revolted by dim-witted 4x4 politiciansI appreciate security walls electrical fences, alarms and guard dogsI detest crime and criminals no matter what the colour of their skinI fly into a rage when sports teams are forced to select undeserving playersI could scream in frustration when jobs are given to unqualified people …¹⁶ SISONKE The ideology whites have built in service of themselves in this country lives and breathes through their allegiances to one another. It is facilitated by friendship and a sense of being attacked by people who don’t look like them. SISONKE Many blacks are outraged by Boshoff but Ferial Haffajee has a different take: she is tired of black outrage because she thinks that whites are of diminishing importance in South Africa. She writes: LEBO Think Bonang. Cassper. Minenhle. Do we celebrate how lovely we are as deeply as we rage at remnant racism?¹⁷ SISONKE Haffajee has no time for this talk about black victimization. She doesn’t understand our race obsession when we are now in charge: LEBO I see a generation saying it is enslaved in a system of white supremacy. I feel I live in another world in one country; my freedom is precious and I would yield to nobody, especially 21 years after it finally arrived. I imagine no white supremacy because freedom means I don’t have to countenance it any longer. And if found, you can today, kick it away like a cowboy boot from a piece of tumbleweed in a Western.¹⁸ SISONKE I don’t agree with her but I accept that her challenge forces us to imagine what it will be like to one day to: LEBO & SISONKE kick racism away like a cowboy boots from a piece of tumbleweed!Whoooo! (Laughter and triumphant sounds from Lebo and Sisonke.) SISONKE This day will come I hope, but it will need white people to think about the words of Njabulo Ndebele: LEBO If South African whiteness has an opportunity to write a new chapter in world history, it will have to come out from under the umbrella of international whiteness and repudiate it. Putting itself at risk, it will have to declare that it is home now, sharing in the vulnerability of other compatriot bodies. South African whiteness will have to declare that its dignity is inseparable from the dignity of black bodies.¹⁹