The Verwoerd who Toyi-Toyied. Melanie Verwoerd
bag in amazement. I was only 24 years old and looked very young, but this was no regular student bag! At least the baby experience gave me some practice in dealing with the ‘demands’ of the job.
A year or so later, I was on counter duty in the library. Yet again, some stressed-out student was losing his cool because the book he needed was already out on loan. Having dealt with the beginnings of a two-year-old’s tantrums at home, I inadvertently slipped into my ‘mummy’ mode. Using a slow, well-verbalised, over-calm voice, I bent forward and said: ‘Now, I cannot help you if you shout, because I do not understand you. Take a deep breath – go on, in and out – and when you have calmed down, tell me what you want, and if I can, I will give it to you. No need for this.’ I heard the suppressed laughter from the other staff next to me, as well as the giggles from the other students behind him. But it did the trick.
The one part of the job I did enjoy was the interaction with the coloured and black workers. They were in the very low-paid positions, but we quickly connected and would have long political discussions. We were careful not to be overheard, since the mostly female, all-white Afrikaner librarians were extremely conservative. Political discussions like the ones we were having would have been frowned upon.
This was a time of great upheaval and uncertainty on the political front. In the early 1990s, the multi-party negotiations started. The violence was widespread and increasing, and at this stage it was mainly black-on-black. It filled our TV screens night after night. In fact, more people died in political violence between 1990 and 1994 than in the preceding ten years. Right-wing white politicians and church leaders were instilling more and more fear, and neo-Nazi movements such as the AWB (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging), with the charismatic (in Hitler-like fashion) Eugène Terre’Blanche at its head, gained momentum.
Wilhelm and I were watching the situation closely. I was part of a feminist discussion group and through one of the members, Wina du Plessis, the dynamic wife of Professor Lourens du Plessis, I heard that there was an ANC branch in the ‘white’ part of town. I knew that I wanted to do more, become more involved, so I cautiously made contact through Wina.
To say that it was a branch is perhaps something of an exaggeration. At any stage, there were never more than eight to ten white members. I first wanted to see if I would fit in, and quickly became close to the driving forces in the branch: Annie Gagiano (a dynamic professor in the English department), Wina du Plessis (a great feminist), Zelda Dalling (who was married to an independent MP) and Rudolf Mastenbroek (head of the student organisation NUSAS). Wilhelm supported my investigations, even though he was cautious. The ANC town branch met frequently in Zelda’s comfortable house, but I was not quite ready to sign up yet. This was about to change, thanks to two extraordinary Africans.
I had met Nomajoni (Emily) Makwena in 1988. Wilhelm and I looked after the three children of one of Wilhelm’s colleagues while the parents went overseas for three weeks. Emily (as I knew her then) was their live-in domestic worker. We immediately hit it off and would talk for hours. She is an exceptionally bright, caring and charming woman. We kept in touch afterwards, and when Wilhelm and I were in Oxford we wrote letters. On our return to South Africa, she begged me for some part-time work. I was reluctant because of the power relations and the trap of racial stereotypes, but Emily was clear: ‘That’s your problem, not mine. I need a job, I know you will pay me well, and we will stay friends. Deal with it!’ As always, she was right.
Emily (and her son Luthando) gradually became an inextricable part of our family. Even though she started with only one afternoon a week, she gradually worked more and more, and by the time our second baby, Wian, was born, she was with us full-time. At times, when she had personal problems, she and Luthando would live with us. She quickly became my children’s other mother, and they adored her (and still do). She in turn would talk of them as her children and would scold me if she thought that my parenting was not up to scratch.
Far more importantly, Emily became my bridge to the political world and the other South Africa that I did not know. Through her stories and explanations, I started to gain an insight into the lives that millions of Africans led in South Africa. She took me into the townships and showed me around, introducing me to the women. Through her patient education, my eyes were opened to the brutal realities of life in the townships, and of being black in South Africa.
In particular, the lives of the domestic workers distressed me. When I was growing up, we were the exception to most white South African homes in that we never had a full-time domestic worker. My mum, despite being a professional woman who always worked, did almost everything herself. From time to time we had someone come in for a few hours once a week to clean, but even that made my mum uncomfortable. When she designed and built our various houses, she never included a ‘maid’s room’, as was the practice, and begrudgingly had an outside toilet, only because it was a legal requirement. So the world of the live-in domestic worker was a shocking new discovery for me.
As I met more of Emily’s friends, I could not believe the conditions in which they were living and working. They had no formal hours and had to be on call 24 hours a day. Their average salary was less than R200 per month, and if anything broke, it was deducted from their pay. They rarely had leave (and often had to go with the family on holiday, to cook, clean and mind the children) and were not allowed to have partners or husbands stay over. Their rooms had no hot water, sometimes no electricity, and just a toilet (with no basin or shower). Often there was only a mattress on the floor. The most distressing thing was that, if they became pregnant, they had to send their baby away to their family in the rural areas – they rarely saw them afterwards – while they were raising the white family’s children. I was appalled. It was the early 1990s, not the 1700s!
What I found most baffling and infuriating was that I knew many employers personally. They were mostly well-off, educated, middle-class women, well known in Stellenbosch, who pretended to be defenders of human rights. These experiences caused more and more arguments between me and these women at social functions. The problem was that domestic workers, like farm workers, enjoyed little, if any, protection under the law. Something had to be done.
Emily and I decided to set up an organisation to defend the rights of domestic workers in Stellenbosch. I would negotiate a contract with the employer and monitor their conditions. Emily would be the head-hunter and trainer. Emily quickly had a list of competent women. We drew up their curricula vitae and I advertised our service. I started receiving calls from white women, but found the negotiations a sobering experience. I insisted on contracts, and that we would inspect the living conditions first. We also demanded decent wages, as recommended by the domestic workers’ union. We had a few successes, but for the most part our venture did not go down well, and word quickly spread that I was involved in Communist activities with ‘the blacks’. I was conscious that I was increasingly being pulled away from ‘my community’ and, like quicksand, sucked into the arms of another. But it was only after a meeting with one of the most exceptional men ever to live that my life took a radical new turn.
About a year after his release, Nelson Mandela was invited to a private meeting with some progressive Afrikaners in Stellenbosch. The cocktail party was to be held at Jannie Momberg’s house. Jannie was a very affluent Afrikaner. A former wine farmer, he had sold his farm, Neethlingshof (where Wilhelm and I had had our wedding reception), and gone into politics. He had truly done the rounds. He originally joined the right-wing Conservative Party, then switched to the governing National Party, but as things progressed he crossed the floor to the Democratic Party. (He later joined the ANC and became one of the senior whips in the new parliament.) Wilhelm and I knew the family through their children, who were our peers, and I was pleased – although slightly apprehensive – when Oom Jannie invited us.
The meeting caused a stir in Stellenbosch. On the night, various members of the press were present. Mandela, with his amazing charm, quickly put everyone at ease, and people started to talk to him. Being academics, they tended to keep their emotions under control and engage more intellectually.
We hung back, but at some point Oom Jannie spotted us. Never a very discreet diplomat, he pushed everyone away and pulled us closer, then introduced us to Mandela. The moment Mandela heard the surname, his eyes lit up. ‘Ah, I am so honoured to meet you,’ he said in a sincere, warm voice. My heart was racing.