Back to Villa Park

By Jenny Robson

The story takes place on the day of Dirk’s eighteenth birthday, when he has applied for a position in a youth training programme at Kagiso Holdings. At seventeen, and without finishing school, he had hitchhiked back to Johannesburg, where he lived with his parents until he was twelve years old. Now, back in Villa Park, his old Johannesburg neighbourhood, Dirk lives in the maid’s quarters of the house in Groenewald Street where he lived as a boy.

At the Kagiso Holdings interview Dirk finds he is unable to answer the questions in the test he is given, and copies from the girl in front of him. When he is discovered, he is kicked out of the interview. His day goes from bad to worse – and as the story unfolds, the reader learns of Dirk’s life up to now; why he was living with his sister for the last five years, and why he has come back to Joburg. Dirk eventually learns that while life can be “unfair”, we all have the power to treat fairly the people we encounter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Jun 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9780624058809

Jenny Robson

Jenny Robson was born in Cape Town. After studying Primary School Teaching in Mowbray and obtaining a degree in Philosophy through the University of South Africa, she worked as a teacher in Simonstown before going to Botswana, where she worked as a music teacher in Orapa for many years. She currently teaches at an International School in the town of Maun, on the banks of the Okavango. She did not start writing until the age of 38. To date she has published more than thirty books for children and young adults*, as well as a novel for adults and numerous short stories. Her texts depict South African teenagers with their dreams, their fears, their hopes and their problems, which resemble those experienced by young people outside the African continent. For this reason her books have been published in the Netherlands, South Korea, Ireland and Germany, where she was nominated for the prestigious Jugendliterturpreis in 2013.

Book preview

Dedicated to Rhondda Strugnell

of Maun, Botswana.

When I needed a neighbour,

you were there.

It is not what you call me but what I answer to

that matters most.

African proverb

I used to think that we white Africans were hard to

sympathise with because we were that least defensible of all

constituencies, the Unwronged.

Peter Godwin,

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun

1

Mr Nkum-whatever-whatever

All I want from life is a little fairness, okay? Just for the world to give me a bit of justice. Is that so much to ask? To hope for? I don’t reckon so.

But did I get any? Hell no!

That Mr Nkum-whatever-his-name-is, he just came up be­hind me. He grabbed my shirt collar and yanked me out of my chair like I was a dog or something. Then he grabbed my ­answer sheet off the desk so he could read my name.

Mr Dirk Karel Strydom! he said in this posh voice. We have no place for your kind here at Kagiso Holdings. No, thank you very much! We at Kagiso Holdings must protect our reputa­tion for integrity and high standards. We are not prepared to employ people of your calibre, not even in our training schemes.

He started shoving me in front of him between the rows of desks, all the way from the back of the conference room right up to the door.

And did he even give me a chance to explain things? Because I could have. I could have told him all about Janie September. I could have told the whole story about Janie and her mother Dorcas and what they did. But did he think to ask me what was going on? Hell no!

He just kept shoving me, this black man in his expensive fancy suit and with his expensive fancy gold watch. Well, this Double A.

*

That’s what Bethany says I’m supposed to call them: Double As.

You have to, like, call a spade a spade! she says. You gotta use words that, like, reflect reality. They are Double As. They are the Affirmative Action brigade, right? The whole system is set up for their benefit, so they’re always going to end up the winners. You have to face it head on. Then you can, like, find ways to deal with it.

Bethany mocked me so much when I said I was going to Kagiso Holdings. She said it was a waste of time. I showed her the letter they sent me.

Dear Mr Strydom

Thank you for your interest in our Youth Training Scheme. We invite you to attend a preliminary interview at 8am on 13 September …

It was typed on fancy paper with a proper logo at the top: three men’s heads in a row all facing upwards. A black one, a grey one, a white one.

Get real, Karel! Bethany said. She always calls me Karel, even though my proper name is Dirk. Do you really think they’ll give you a place? You poor delusional! You’re a pale male, idiot. You’re a Zed. You don’t stand a hope in hell.

But I didn’t want to hear negative stuff like that. I was excited. Very hopeful.

So why did they send me a letter then? They could see my surname; they could see what I am.

Who knows? Maybe they want to check if you’re Single A? Lots of coloureds have, like, Afrikaans surnames.

Okay, so then why have they got a white head in their logo? Look!

Oh, come on! That’s just for show, just for PC purposes. Political correctness, right? Just to fool suckers like you. Bethany often talks to me like I am a child. Or an idiot.

But I ignored that. Already planning in my head what answers I could give to their interview questions to show I was enthusiastic and willing to learn, like their advert said. And after all, 13 September was my birthday. That was a sign that things would go well for me, surely?

*

Preliminary interview – hah!

When I walked into that conference room this morning, it was a shock. It was full of other applicants all sitting at rows and rows of desks. It was like a huge classroom all over again. I couldn’t even see an empty desk for those first few minutes. What kind of interview gets held like this? I mean, is it fair to call it an interview when fifty other people are there at 8am as well?

Then this great big Double A in his fancy grey-striped suit came striding in like he owned the place. With a small white woman following him with a pile of papers and a bundle of pens.

And he said, Good morning, young people. I am Mr Nkum … Well, I can’t remember the rest of his name. It was one of those names that goes on and on. I am Mr Nkum-whatever-whatever. I am the Director of Human Resources here at Kagiso Holdings. So, welcome all. As you can see, we have many of you keen to join us. We will have to whittle you down with a test or two. Just to check your basic numeracy skills. That will make my job easier. He laughed like he’d made some huge joke.

But I was already panicking. Test!? The letter never said anything about a test! And is that fair, I ask you, not to give any warning? To say it is a preliminary interview and then to shove papers in front of us full of maths questions? Is that justice? Hell no!

So, actually, Bethany was right. It was a waste of time and I didn’t stand a chance.

I wasn’t even halfway through the test before I got chucked out like a bag of rubbish. Pushed out past all the rows of other job-seekers.

Most of them were Double As too. And most of them were laughing.

I hate it when people laugh at me. It makes me want to go crazy. I want to smash my fist into their smirking lips and loosen their teeth till the blood flows.

They used to laugh at me, back at that school in Port Alfred too. Back when I lived there on the pineapple farm with my sister, Fat Sonya. They used to call me dom-ass. I think because my surname was Strydom. Big joke! Ha ha! And because the teachers were always shaking their heads at me and telling me to do stuff over again and giving me Fs for my essays.

They said I must do grade eleven over again. Can you imag­ine! That’s why I came back here to Johannesburg – there was no ways I was staying in that school for another two years. So I stole money out my sister Sonya’s purse and I caught the bus all the way up to Joburg. I wanted to get far away from the smell of rotten pineapples and the sound of people laughing at me.

So much for that idea! Here I was after all those kilometres through the night in the bus. And still people were laughing at me!

Before Mr Nkum-whatever slammed the door, I got the chance to take one last look at Janie September. She wasn’t laughing. She sat there at the back next to the empty desk that I’d just got dragged from. And like always, her eyebrows were high and curved on her forehead as if she was surprised. Surprised, but not much interested.

Did she remember me? Did she recognise me at all?

Mr Nkum-something gave one last shove so I was over the threshold and out in the passage. In his hand he still had my crumpled-up test. He didn’t even bother to look at my date of birth that I’d printed right there under my name in extra-big digits.

If he had, he would have seen that today is my birthday. And not just any birthday. My eighteenth! What kind of a way is that to treat someone on their eighteenth?

The conference room doors banged shut on me.

I was so angry, I smashed my fists against the fancy egg-shell-painted wall. Right underneath the photo of the chairman or whatever. Three times, four times. I smashed until there was blood and pain.

It’s strange. Because I haven’t smashed stuff for a long time.

Down the passage, the Double A receptionist looked at me with big eyes. Like I was frightening her.

That made me feel a bit better.

*

Mrs Mogwera remembered my birthday.

Early this morning when I was there in the bathroom of the maid’s quarters washing and shaving with cold water, she came walking across the backyard from her kitchen.

Carrying a present.

Just a small one, but properly wrapped up. With a ribbon round it, even.

See, that’s where I live: in the maid’s quarters of 5 Groenewald Street, Villa Park. Mrs Mogwera’s husband owns the property now.

She said, "Happy,