Election Day and other stories

By Samuel Mphuthi

In 1994 South Africans had their first democratic elections which meant different type of living for different races coming from apartheid. It is through these new ways of living that the stories of this book are born. It is through these stories we learn about the frustration, courage and coming together of people of which was never heard of during apartheid. At the end we see heroes and heroines as the citizens learn to exercise tolerance, acceptance and working together beyond their diversity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digital On Demand
• Release date: Jun 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9780796115270

Book preview

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Election Day

A collection of short stories



Sam Mphuthi

I dedicate this book to Dr Nelson Mandela and many others who sacrificed their lives for the new democratic South Africa which emerged from the 1994 Elections.

Publication of this book was made possible by a generous grant from the Centre for the Book’s Community Publishing Programme.

Election Day

First edition 2017. All rights reserved.

© 2016 Samuel Mphuthi.

Published by the National Library of South Africa’s Centre for the Book.

ISBN 978-0-620-69659-3

eISBN: 978-0-7961-1527-0

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright holders.

Contents

Foreword

Election Day

The Silence: AdmissionOfGuilt

Home Affairs

Across The Colour Line

Getting Married

In Honour of The Late Piet Khumalo

My Hero

Not All That Glitters Is Gold

The Dogs Were Provoked

The Letter To The Grave

Foreword

My journey began in 1999 when I was just two years into my teaching career. I was inspired by a colleague as he told us of his journey to Cape Town by air. At that stage I had never even been close to an aircraft. I told myself that one day I would board a plane. I did not have money to save for this but inside me a dream was growing.

The dream came true ten years later in 2010 when I flew to the South African teachers’ awards ceremony. My second trip by air was in 2011 when I flew to Cape Town for the Argo awards, and this time a new dream was born: to go overseas one day. Because I believed that it would happen, in 2013 I found myself on a plane to the USA where I spent seven weeks in Nevada and Washington DC.

I had learnt that if you believe in your dreams and work hard towards them, you won’t fail.

Samuel Mphuthi

1

Election Day

I still remember the day vividly: 27th of April, 1994. The majority of South Africans were looking forward to the historic election, all except for some white people, and that group included my father, my brother and my grandfather it has to be said, who strongly resisted the change. I had a different point of view but kept quiet because I was the black sheep of the family. My father always said, I don’t know what I did to have given birth to a son like you. You are a disgrace to me and to this family! Just look at the type of job you choose to do: teaching is for women and blacks.

My grandfather, Kobus van der Merwe, grew up on Houtfontein, a farm in the Free State, not too far from Paul Roux. My father, Jakob van der Merwe, was born on Houtfontein; my big brother Jaapie and I were born on Houtfontein, and our kids were born there too.

In 1989 when Mr Mandela was released from prison I was in my fifth year as a teacher at Paul Roux High School. Most of us had a lot of misgivings about the future. Never in our lives had we shared anything with a black person. So the idea that we were about to share the ruling of the country with people who had been our servants, together with the thoughts of the horrible things we had done to them over the years, made us very uncomfortable. As an individual I had no problem with the new developments in our country, but for my grandfather Kobus, my father Jakob and my big brother Jaapie, it was a different kettle of fish altogether. Each week, while the boerewors sizzled on the braai grid, my grandfather would mutter about the state of the country.

I am telling you people, I foresee disaster with this democratic election, democratic government, democratic country and democratic everything they are talking about. I wish I was already dead before this nonsense began, he said from the depths of his deck chair, stressing the point with his beer bottle.

"Ek sê vir jou, Pa, (I’m telling you, Dad) it is only bullshit, this thing of democracy, said my father. These people can never be equal to us, period. They are our servants, it is how God created them. There will always be slaves and there will always be masters for those slaves. The less I say about my brother’s view, the better. Let me just mention that as a full- time soldier in the South African Defence Force, he only understood one way to solve each and every little problem. Kill the bastards and save our fathers’ country, once and for all."

Despite the grumbles of not only my grandfather, my father and my brother and a number of other white people in this country, the 1994 elections went ahead as scheduled. A few days later we watched the inauguration of the first democratically elected president of South Africa on TV. Later that year my grandfather Kobus passed away, leaving Houtfontein and its maize fields to my father. Shortly afterwards, my brother Jaapie resigned from the restructured Defence Force as, he said, I’m not prepared to take orders from a black! and he joined my parents on the farm.

As for me, I continued teaching at Paul Roux High School. The changes in our country after the election meant that we fell into the same category as the secondary school in the township across the road. We now had to admit black learners if their parents chose to enrol them at Paul Roux

High School. Our own learners were encouraged to transfer to Reabetswe Secondary School if they so wished. But not a single parent from the white community was prepared to let his child attend a township school. Some of these parents couldn’t even cope with the thought that their children would be sharing a class with black learners at Paul Roux and moved their offspring to neighbouring towns where most of the former whites-only schools were able to maintain their status. Unfortunately, as educators we were not given a choice. The new authorities wanted us to move to where our services were most needed, and so it was that I became the first victim of the redeployment of educators in a democratic South Africa.

I wasn’t prepared for the challenges of teaching in an overcrowded classroom, the limited resources, or the language barrier, but I learned to cope with the situation. I just didn’t expect the simmering hostility from my new colleagues. They looked at me as if I was the grandson of the person who had introduced apartheid in South Africa all those years ago, or as if my father had been the judge who sent Mr Mandela to Robben Island.

I knew that during those dark years of Nationalist government not all the whites in South Africa had agreed with apartheid. Some of them had raised their voices and called for the freedom of their black brothers while others had merely been silent partners in the struggle. Yet, when I moved to Reabetswe Secondary School, I found that some of my colleagues were ignorant of this. One particular individual hated my guts. This person was Trevor Obakeng.

Trevor Obakeng was a hardcore revolutionary, a die-hard comrade. He was site-steward of the teachers’ union at the school and as a result he held most of the power. At times it looked as if he had more influence than the principal. During staff meetings, I was always the victim of Trevor’s verbal abuse. My original ideas would be shot to the ground before I could complete a single sentence. To make matters worse, none of the other educators stood up for me, the only white person in that staff room. Sometimes the staff would conduct their meetings in their mother tongue, despite the fact that they knew I could not understand a word of what they were saying. I would have resigned after the first week but my conscience reminded me that I had voted for peace, prosperity, equality, forgiveness, reconciliation and reconstruction in the 1994 elections. If I quit, my vote would have gone to waste and I would have failed Mr Nelson Mandela and his vision of a non-racial, non-sexist democratic South Africa; a country free from both white and black domination. And in my heart I knew that his long walk to freedom had contained huge obstacles; mountains of suffering that were a lot bigger than my own.

Inspired by these noble thoughts, I decided not to give up my position as the only white educator at Reabetswe. Instead, I joined the school’s evening classes so that I could learn the language of my colleagues and of the learners at my school. At least I’d understand the staff meetings. My new classmates were old men and women from Reabetswe township who could not read or write. I must say that they were the only people, together with Mrs Motaung, our adult educator, who made me feel that despite my colour, I belonged in the new and democratic South Africa.

Mr van der Merwe, you are an amazing person, Mrs Motaung would say to me in front of the class. "I don’t know of any other