The Other Room

By Sidney Owitz

The Other Room is a sequel to Portraits in a Gallery where the stories of a number of portraits hanging on the walls in a gallery were discussed. This is not unlike Pictures at an Exhibition, a collection of descriptive musical pieces by Modest Moussorgsky on viewing his friends art works at an exhibition. The Other Room is the adjacent room to the main gallery where further portraits are being displayed. Each portrait is given a life of its own. It is hoped that for those who cannot see the actual portraits the description of the subjects will be even more complete than the viewing of them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 15, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452095233

Sidney Owitz

Sidney Owitz was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he was educated. He graduated as a physician at the University of Cape Town. After practicing Medicine in South Africa for twelve years he came to the United States and became an anesthesiologist. He lives in Florida with his family.

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DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my wife, Joan, and children, Stephanie, Valerie, David and Darron.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The cover photograph, for which I am most thankful, was taken by Frayda Galvin

Contents

1. PROLOGUE

2. THE LIFE OF A TSOTSIE

3. THE MAN FROM IQUITOS

4. THE QUIET MAN

5. RICHES TO RAGS

6. THE GOOD GUY

7. THERESA

8. FRANKIE

PROLOGUE

This book is a sequel to Portraits in a Gallery [published by AuthorHouse]. For those who have been fortunate enough to have read that book it will be remembered that the tour bus had stopped at the museum, but had not remained long enough for the passengers to spend enough time in the gallery to view and appreciate the portraits, each of which had an interesting life story to tell, since there were many more sights still to be visited in the city. Therefore the tour guide rushed them along in order to keep up with their schedule. Actually there was another room in the gallery adjacent to the main collection, also devoted to portraiture which the members of the group completely ignored. The guide failed to point out the existence of the other room adjacent to the main gallery, which contained more portraits with equally intriguing biographies. The Other Room is a compilation of the lives of a number of these people whose portraits grace the walls. The reader is afforded the opportunity to visit The Other Room and discover the lives of these memorable subjects.

Many organized touring companies display brochures advertising their tours. They feel that the more places of interest that they claim to visit per day the more popular their excursions will be. However, sometimes the day proves to be not long enough for all these points of interest to be fully appreciated. Thus there is a constant rush in an exhausting day, and many sights can only be rapidly scanned instead of being enjoyed leisurely.

The Portraits in a Gallery and in The Other Room, too, have suffered as a result of this costly breakneck tour. Instead, in order to make amends I ask you to relax, sit back, and I will relate to you the stories of the people in The Other Room.

THE LIFE OF A TSOTSIE

Sophiatown is a city within a city. The people of the outer city, which is Johanesburg, were ashamed of the inner city. Visitors, when shown around Johanesburg with pride, were never taken to Sophiatown. It was an embarrassment. Actually, going there was tantamount to risking your life. Yes, it was a dangerous place - robberies, muggings, rape and murders were a part of everyday life. In fact, most Johannesburg citizens never went to Sophiatown; it was regarded as a void in their city, an unfortunate atrocity. It was a festering sore that could not be healed. It should be dismantled, they said, and the inhabitants sent away. This blight of the city - like Alexandra Township, another enclave of the black population amid a sea of white faces all around them - was the home of a portion of the city’s labor force. Johannesburg was a city inhabited by Europeans [the colloquial term referring to all white people]. The bulk of the black population, however, lived on the outskirts of the city in townships collectively known as Soweto [South-west Townships]. The working class people from the townships were bussed to and from the city daily for the purpose of work; these folk constituted the major portion of the labor force of the city. It was almost impossible to earn a living within the townships of Johannesburg as there were almost no industrial plants or manufacturing businesses there. Only a few store-keepers selling essential groceries existed in those areas. Everyone else worked in the city in businesses or industry or in private dwellings.

Esrom was born in Sophiatown. He grew up there, and seldom had any contact with any white people. He roamed the streets of this urban ghetto which the whites had been considering for some time to convert into an industrial complex and transplanting its inhabitants to the Soweto area. It was all a part of a larger plan to keep the city white. The administration wanted to remove black islands like Sophiatown from the jewel that was Johannesburg. With all the blacks herded together in one large district out there in Soweto it would be easier to control and safer for the city. Security for the whites against any possible future attack from within was always a consideration.

Esrom never knew who his father was. Nor was his mother, Francina, sure which one of many men could have sired him. She had five other children, and did a fairly good job rearing them with the means at her disposal. Francina worked in a grocery store on the corner, and usually earned almost enough to pay the rent and feed her family. What she could not afford to buy she was able to steal from the store. She had already been arrested for petty thefts involving other stores, and spent short periods in jail during which time her children were taken care of by neighbors. Subsequently she learned the art of brewing strange alcoholic concoctions at the back of her house in order to help make ends meet. She served ‘skokiaan’ [an illegal brew] in her home, and became famous as the local shebeen queen. Her home became a hive of activity for the neighborhood, a place to spend the night away from home in gay abandon. Frequently riots broke out at her house when drunken customers fought and stabbed each other on Saturday nights. The police were called out, arrests were made and the injured were removed to Baragwanath Hospital. Francina spent more time in jail for the sale of illegal liquor. Thanks to the neighbors Esrom and his brothers were not entirely neglected. There is a camaraderie amongst felons.

Despite living a precarious sort of existence the children survived – or perhaps because of this type of existence they learned how to survive. At an early age Esrom and his brothers found themselves as members of a gang. There were many gangs from which to choose, and these groups became very competitive with each other. Membership was at a premium, and these gangs often fought with one another, meting out and sustaining casualties. This was like war. They ran around the streets without shoes, even in winter; they were scantily clad and they each carried a knife in their pockets. They invaded the white areas of the adjacent suburbs prepared to practice the art of robbery and self-protection that they had learnt on their local streets. They stole fruit and candies from the street vendors. They entered stores in large groups, bamboozling the store owner, asking to see different articles, and in the confusion some of them were able to pilfer and walk out with a few items, which they later sold on the streets at competitive prices. As their hunting grounds expanded beyond Sophiatown and its environs they created fear among the white citizens who demanded increased police protection. With the growing number of cases of robberies, rapes and petty crime the clamor for the removal of Sophiatown from their midst became even more urgent.

Esrom was a busy little boy. Every morning he left the house and joined other young lads, not much older than himself. The streets were their arena. Sometimes his brothers were with him while on other occasions they were given different assignments. Nevertheless, there were jobs to be done, and all bases had to be covered. Each one was allowed to take possession of what he stole, but his allegiance was to the gang who provided him with protection. One would be taking his life in his hands if he ever tried to join another gang. It was a system of private enterprise, even though they acted as a team. Occasionally when the booty was large the bigger and more forceful leaders demanded a share of the intake. Nobody could argue for fear of assault and excommunication. This was the way of survival. The law of the jungle held sway here. Morality was never an option. The white folk called them ‘tsotsies’, but to them the term was a badge of pride. Any young boy who did not participate was at risk of being attacked by the gang. Join us or die!

Francina was aware that her children were all gang members. She knew that for their safety it was the best thing that they could do. She did not encourage them, but she also did not urge them to leave the gang because she knew that in order to live in Sophiatown one had to hunt with the pack. Pity the child who did not belong to a gang! The only escape would be to move elsewhere. Where could they go? Going elsewhere would probably mean moving into the same sort of living conditions, so why move to a strange environment only to find that nothing has changed? Elsewhere might even prove to be less lucrative or more dangerous. Over here one had only to be careful and alert in order to remain alive and not be apprehended by the police. One needed eyes at the back of the head!

They all knew that the white man was their enemy. They tried not to confront whites openly as no good could come of that, but crime against them was a blessing in disguise! If their pockets could be picked in crowded stores or handbags wrenched from their unsuspecting wives and daughters in the parking lots of malls much could be gained. Large amounts of cash were easily collected, and credit cards were given by the younger to the older gang members who knew what to do with them until the owner reported a missing card. Esrom was too young for car-jacking, but some of his older brothers were very successful in that specialty, where large sums of money resulted from such an enterprise. Stolen cars were driven to the Botswana border and sold for large sums of money. Sometimes Esrom went for the ride, and when he returned a few days later he was not chastised by his mother for having been away from home for one or two nights; she knew that it was a necessary experience for doing business. In order to stay alive Esrom required to learn all aspects of the trade.

On one occasion Esrom and his friend Lytie, one or two years older than him, were walking down the street just outside Sophiatown. The sun had scarcely risen, and the streets were still empty. They heard a faint cry, as though for help. They slowly approached the area from where the sound emanated. The sound grew louder, and they heard the distinct words Please help me. As they drew closer they could see that the voice was coming out of a construction hole in the ground. There was not a living soul around. They peeked into the hole, and Lytie shone his flashlight which he had stolen from the corner store the previous day. The light shone into the face of a man trapped in the hole.

He shouted Bring a rope or a ladder so that I can get out of here. Quickly! Please don’t waste time!

We will help you, sir answered Lytie.

Where are you going to get a rope or a ladder? asked Esrom of Lytie.

We are not going to get anything for him. Didn’t you see his face? He was a white man

With that, Lytie picked up some large stones, and started throwing them into the hole. Esrom followed suit. They picked up any form of heavy trash and metal equipment that they could find at the construction site, and threw it down the hole, aiming at the poor prisoner trapped there. The man screamed Stop it! Stop it! You will kill me!

The bombardment continued and so did the screaming. Then there was silence. Esrom and Lytie walked away as though nothing had happened. They continued on their way. There was work to be done, and they could not waste their time on a job that brought in no income. Time is money!

Esrom grew up to be a strong healthy lad. He certainly pulled his weight in the gang, and brought home a fair share of the booty, which, together with his brothers’ efforts, helped his family survive. All the brothers had conflicts with the law from time to time and spent different times in jail. Esrom, on the other hand, was very fortunate perhaps because he was more careful or maybe he was just lucky. He was sometimes chided by his fellow gang members for never having been to jail; they said that it was because he did not take on ‘big cases’. Thereafter he tried to become involved in bigger matters.

However, he was finally caught red-handed during an armed robbery. A number of his gang members broke into a wealthy home in the northern suburbs. The home owner woke up in the midst of the stealthy ransacking of his house. He was the first to shoot. Gun-fire broke out. The home-owner was left unscathed; the robbers disappeared, but Esrom who had been shot in the belly was not able to get away. The police had been summoned, and when they arrived they saw that he was bleeding profusely from his abdominal wound. He was taken to the Emergency Room at the local hospital under police surveillance. He had multiple perforations in his bowel, and his liver, too, was penetrated by a bullet. After many units of blood transfusions and abdominal surgery [at the expense of the tax-payer] and a prolonged convalescence Esrom finally recovered. That was not the end of his troubles, because he was forced to remain as a prisoner of the state until his appearance at the trial.

Following the court hearing Esrom spent the next three years in jail for armed robbery, which also included hard labor. The sentence was delivered by the magistrate of the local court. Esrom was now a member of a road-building corps under the leadership of a prison guard. It was probably the first time in his life that he was performing honest work. When the self-same magistrate who meted out Esrom’s sentence required re-modeling of his garden a band of convicts was sent out to his address to perform the job. By co-incidence Esrom was among those who were sent to complete the landscaping project. He recognized the magistrate but did not look upon him as an enemy, rather as a judge who had to do his duty.

When Esrom was finally discharged from his prison confinement he decided to search for an honest job instead of continuing with petty – and also not so petty - thievery. He was now a grown man, and he felt that he was too old to belong to a gang; also, he was aware of the dangers of armed robberies and did not want to get involved with the law. He thought he should become a more responsible citizen as he would like to marry one day and have his own children. He saw that many of his comrades had fallen by the wayside, succumbing to alcohol and drugs, long jail sentences, permanent injuries and ending up with poor prospects for the future. Many gang members had inevitably shortened lives, and Esrom wanted his life to be somewhat different as he could foresee an early demise, too, if he continued in the same direction.

In the meantime, despite opposition from the residents and liberal groups, including churches and some intellectual voices, the government decreed that Sophiatown as a residential area was closing down in order to make way for an industrial complex. The inhabitants who had been living there for many years would have to find accommodation elsewhere. That was not an easy task, as most of Johannesburg was white and would not accept them. The apartheid laws of the country separated black areas from white ones. Now they would have to seek accommodation in Soweto and its surrounding areas which were a fair distance from their work-places. This would also entail transportation costs and increased time in traveling. The outcry continued for many months but it soon fizzled out, and the residents of Sophiatown remained embittered, but were forced to find homes outside the city area.

Esrom went to live in a hostel in Soweto. With minimal education since he dropped out of school very early in his life he decided to seek a manual job. He went back to the magistrate whose garden he had helped to re-landscape. This was the only white man that he knew, and he seemed to be a kind and honest man who had always spoken to him respectfully. The work that he had done there was the only honest job that he had ever done.

I remember you the magistrate immediately remarked. You were the tsotsie I put into jail! A tsotsie is the term applied to a good-for-nothing untrustworthy teen-ager who idles about.

Yes, master he agreed, in a supplicating tone. I am now looking for work. I was also working to build your new garden while I was still a prisoner. Do you need somebody for your kitchen or your garden? I can work hard, master.

Hennie Muller, the magistrate, pondered the situation for a while. He certainly required help in the garden, in the kitchen and for odd jobs around the house; but this young fellow was a felon with a police record and a jail sentence in his history. He had a fine outward manner about him and he did not appear to be idling his time away while he was doing his hard labor in the garden, but