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    Reclassified
    Reclassified
    Reclassified
    Ebook522 pages8 hours

    Reclassified

    By Vincent Gray

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    About this ebook

    Following the revolutionary overthrow of Apartheid Hannah made the following confession to her brother: I have been officially Coloured since 1990. To be honest with you, in my heart, especially during the revolutionary struggle in the 1980s, and following my arrest, I began to self-identify as Coloured, it was this that kept me going, and it was this which motivated me to take the huge risks. In fact for most of my life after school I wanted to be Coloured, I wanted to be the progeny of miscegenation. I fell in love with the word ‘miscegenation’. Anyway to cut a long story short. After my detention I reapplied for an ID book and in the application forms I recorded my identity as Coloured. And then in 2000 I had my DNA analysed. You, Elsabe and I are genetically Coloured we are a mixture of Dutch, Cape Malay, Khoi San and Xhosa. We are not white genetically speaking nor are mom and dad or Oupa and Ouma. We are all Coloured.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVincent Gray
    Release dateNov 21, 2020
    ISBN9781005470258
    Reclassified
    Author

    Vincent Gray

    As a son of a miner, I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg. I matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school, I was conscripted into the South African Defence Force for compulsory national military service when I was 17 years old. After my military service, I went to the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree I worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. As an obligatory member of the South African Citizen Miltary Force, I was called up to do 3-month camps on the 'Border' which was the theatre of the so-called counter-insurgency 'Bush War'. In between postgraduate university studies I also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales rep. In my career as an academic, I was a molecular biologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, where I lectured courses in microbiology, molecular biology, biotechnology and evolutionary biology. On the research side, I was involved in genomics, and plant and microbial biotechnology. I also conducted research into the genomics of strange and weird animals known as entomopathogenic nematodes. I retired in 2019, however, I am currently an honorary professor at the University of the Witwaterand and I also work as a research writing consultant for the University of Johannesburg.

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      Book preview

      Reclassified - Vincent Gray

      RECLASSIFIED

      New edition of the original Farewell to Innocence: The full uncensored saga of Hannah Zeeman

      By

      Vincent Gray

      Smashwords Edition 2020

      New and revised edition of the original Farewell to Innocence: The full uncensored saga of Hannah Zeeman

      Published by Vincent Gray

      Copyright © 2020 Vincent Gray

      ISBN: 9781005470258

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

      This book is a work of fiction. All the characters developed in this novel are fictional creations of the writer’s imagination and are not modelled on any real persons. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

      Author Biography

      As a son of a miner the author was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg during the 1960s and matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school he was conscripted into the South African Defence Force (SADF) for compulsory national military service at the age of seventeen. On completion of his military service he studied courses in Zoology, Botany and Microbiology at the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree he worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. Following the initial conscription into military service in the SADF, like all other white South African males of his generation, he was then drafted into one of the many South African Citizen Military Regiments. During the 1970s he was called up as a citizen-soldier to do three-month military camps on the 'Border' which was the operational theatre of the so-called counter insurgency 'Bush War' during the Apartheid years. Before and in between university studies he also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales representative. The author is now a retired professor whose career as an academic in the Biological Sciences has spanned a period of thirty-three years mainly at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Before retirement he lectured and carried out research in the field of molecular biology with a special interest in the molecular basis of evolution. He continues to pursue his interest in evolutionary biology. Other interests which the author pursues includes radical theology, philosophy and literature. For more biographical details see Vincent Gray – Google Scholar and https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Vincent_Gray.

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      The Tale of the Sakabula Bird

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      Farewell to Innocence: The full uncensored saga of Hannah Zeeman

      Send Him My Love (Short Story)

      Three Days in Phoenix (Short Story)

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      Dedicated to my wife Melodie and my daughter Ruth

      Table of Contents

      Preface

      Chapter 1: Who Am I?

      Chapter 2: Hotazel and Puberty

      Chapter 3: Awakening of Adolescence

      Chapter 4: Teenage Years

      Chapter 5: My First Year

      Chapter 6: My Second Year

      Chapter 7: First Overseas Trip

      Chapter 8: Student Bible Group

      Chapter 9: My Third Year

      Chapter 10: Sodwana Bay Adventure

      Chapter 11: Student Politics

      Chapter 12: Zoology Field Trip

      Chapter 13: Honours Year

      Chapter 14: Cause and Effect

      Chapter 15: University of Cape Town

      Chapter 16: The Underground

      Chapter 17: Nonhlanhla's Silhouette

      Chapter 18: Reunions

      Chapter 19: Arrest and Detention

      Chapter 20: My Childhood Bedroom

      Chapter 21: Yael

      Chapter 22: Sailor Boy Seamstress

      Chapter 23: Final Disclosure

      Preface

      As Aristotle said in his Poetics, the plot is the soul of all narratives, and I leave it to the reader to discern any underlying plot hidden in this autobiographical narrative, a narrative composed of a series of interpolations: That is textual interpolations capturing moments which embody discrete and scattered scenes all of which were born from sudden dreamlike, yet vivid bursts of memory. I can assure you that the chronology or plot or story line or ‘narratology’ of this autobiographical narrative has emerged quite unintentionally, possibly even contingently, purely as the result of a fairly mechanical process on my part as the creative editor or redactor of the story of my life. You don’t keep a personal journal or diary to intentionally narrate the plot of your life as you have lived it moment by moment, especially at the end of your life. That would be presumptuous. Yet I am not entirely innocent regarding the textualization of my life, even if I never felt that my life was extraordinary. Even the most mundane existence hides in its own closet an infinity of secrets which are the private possessions of their holder. We all bear the burden of our own secrets. Confession is an unburdening of secrets and it’s the first step towards forgiveness and absolution. I forgive myself.

      Hannah Zeeman

      Chapter 1: Who am I?

      1

      My name is Hannah Petronella Hendrina Wilhelmina Zeeman. I am no longer ashamed of my name. I am no longer uncomfortable with the fact that I speak mainly English rather than Afrikaans even though I am fluent in Afrikaans. I speak English mainly because my family inadvertently became Anglicized Afrikaners. In other words English speaking Afrikaners. I will have more to say about this later. For the purposes of this story I think it is order to provide a short answer to the question: what is an Afrikaner? The Afrikaans word ‘Afrikaner’ simply means African. Which also means that from the very beginning Afrikaners have ambiguously or ironically or paradoxically or ignorantly or even inadvertently identified themselves as Africans. There is no historical certainty regarding when and for what reason or even how the appellation ‘Afrikaner’ first came into use. It is likely that originally the appellation applied to the Coloured offspring of miscegenous unions, which was a fairly common occurrence in the Cape Colony. However, it is on record that in March 1707 a young white man whose name was Hendrik Biebouw, and who also had Coloured siblings, responded angrily when threatened with a jail sentence by magistrate Johannes Starrenburg as punishment for disorderly behaviour, with the words: "Ik ben een Afrikaander – al slaat de landdrost mij dood, of al zetten hij mij in de tronk, ik zal, nog wil niet zwijgen!" (I am an African – even if the magistrate were to beat me to death, or put me in jail, I shall not be, nor will I stay, silent!). It was also possible that the word Afrikaner had attained popular currency in the Cape Colony as a common appellation of self-designation and self-identity within the first generation of Dutch settlers.

      How did I land up on this continent called Africa? Or in other words how did I become an Afrikaner? Historically it is because I happen to be a descendent of one Mr Ambroos Zeeman who settled in the Cape of Good Hope in 1661. He was a slave trader connected with the Dutch East India Company, or the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, which was founded by the Dutch in 1602. This also means that I have an ancestral link to the Netherlands. However, those ancestral gates have long since closed forever. The historical and cultural umbilical cord connecting my family with the Netherlands has been severed forever. And in the intervening period between then (1602) and now, Afrikaans having split off from Dutch evolved into a native language of Africa, or an indigenized language of Africa.

      2

      It goes without saying, as you will discover for yourself, that my Afrikaner ancestry and credentials are indeed impeccable. With regard to my more recent Afrikaner ancestry, my great grandfather, Petrus Hendrik Zeeman, died fighting in the anti-colonial Anglo Boer War against the British. In the Battle of Spioenkop he succumbed heroically in a ferocious military confrontation with the British colonial forces. Briefly, the chain of events leading to the Battle of Spioenkop were triggered by the Boer besiegement of a British garrison in the town of Ladysmith. A substantial British military column made up of cavalry and infantry and equipped with a range of artillery pieces was mobilized to relieve the siege. In order to reach Ladysmith the column had to cross the Tugela River. Their approach towards the Tugela River was from the south. To repulse the advance of the British forces the Boer commandos had embedded themselves in trenches which they had dug into the high ground offered by the string of koppies or hillocks on the northern side of Tugela River. They had also positioned their artillery strategically on the koppies overlooking the hilly savannah landscape through which the Tugela River meandered. They were able to block all rail and road traffic across the river thereby isolating Ladysmith which was situated some 38 km to the north of the river. From the vantage of the high ground the Boers could also monitor the military manoeuvres of the British and guess the nature and intentions of their battle plans and tactics. On the southern side of the river lay the town of Colenso. In the Battle of Colenso all attempts the British made to breach the river were defeated by intense and devastating Boer rifle and artillery fire. Following their defeat on the 15th of December 1899 the British retreated southwards beyond the river to a zone of safety close to the towns of Frere and Chieveley to repair for a resumption of the military campaign to liberate Ladysmith, and also to await the arrival of substantial reinforcements to bolster their campaign. By January 1900 they were battle ready to resume the advance on Ladysmith once more. The plan entailed a two prong attack in which pontoon bridges would be used to cross the Tugela River at two different points, one upstream to the west at Trichardt’s Drift and the other downstream to the east at Potgieter’s Drift. On the northern side of the river the koppie (hillock) called Spioenkop was positioned roughly midway between Trichardt’s Drift and Potgieter’s Drift.

      To outline in broad strokes the battle in which my great grandfather died on Spioenkop, this is how the events unfolded: Following the resumption of the campaign, with massive military reinforcements, the British troops made a night crossing of the Tugela River at Trichardt’s Drift and Potgieter's Drift, following which they dug trenches and embedded themselves among the foot hills on the lower lying terraces. High above them loomed the steep boulder strewn slopes and rocky jutting crests of the chain of koppies including Spioenkop which were held by the Boers. For days on end the British firing from artillery positions on hill tops south of the Tugela bombarded the Boer stone parapet fortified trench positions strung out along the upper terraces and tops of the chains of hills on the northern side of the Tugela River. After considerable procrastination and indecision on the part of the British orders to attack Spioenkop were finally given. Spioenkop was identified as the commanding hill. Its strategic flat lichen covered rocky summit raising 453 meters above the Tugela River would be a topological asset in their campaign to liberate Ladysmith. At 11:00 pm on the night of the 23rd of January 1900, in the first stage of the attack, under the cover of darkness, a column of infantrymen began the steep ascent of Spioenkop up along the hill’s western spur. Eventually they discovered that the spur flattened and widened and in the pitch darkness it appeared to them that they had actually reached the summit of Spioenkop. Without realizing it they had only reached an upper terrace about 90 to 100 metres immediately below the crest of the actual summit. It was 3:00 am, Wednesday 24th of January, when the noise of their arrival on the terrace woke up a Boer picket who had been asleep on the same terrace. In the commotion and confusion which followed one who was bayonetted to death, the other Boers grabbing their bandoliers and rifles managed to escape into the darkness down the steep rocky slopes. Still thinking that they had reached the summit the infantrymen by cheering loudly managed to alert the gunners stationed on a nearby koppie who responded immediately by firing a star shell which exploded high in the night sky, briefly illuminating like a flash of lightning the surrounding landscape. This signalled the go ahead for all the artillery batteries to commence firing shells at all approaches to prevent the Boers from retaking Spioenkop. On the actual summit there were some 50 Boers and German volunteers sleeping-over after having setup up a 75 mm field gun. At 4:00 am the infantrymen attempted to dig trenches, however because of extreme rockiness of the substrate they could only manage to dig shallow trenches less than half a metre deep. In the early morning the koppies were shrouded in thick mist and consequently visibility was poor. Also in the meantime the Boers who had managed to escape from Spioenkop had already alerted General Botha. Botha was a calm and collected personality and possessed the mind of a capable and enterprising military strategist. Unshakable, he made up his mind that they would be able to retake Spioenkop even if it meant a bloody battle to the death. One of these men who helped to retake Spioenkop was one Petrus Hendrik Zeeman whose pregnant wife and two young daughters were being held as inmates in a British concentration camp. In the misty dawn like ghosts the Boer commandos stalked silently up the eastern ridge of Spioenkop. And with the break of day, the mist lifted and the sun shone brightly on the slopes and terraces of Spioenkop. And suddenly, the silence which had until then enveloped the hilly landscape was shattered by the booming of artillery and the incessant sharp cracking of rifle fire. In the desperate struggle to retake the summit of Spioenkop the Boer commandos engaged the British troops on the ridges, spurs, terraces, slopes and amongst the rocks and boulders in eyeball close-range fierce rifle fire fights. When the ammunition of both sides eventually run out after a sustained and intense fire fight, the Boers engaged the English-speaking enemy in desperate and bloody hand-to-hand fixed bayonet combat. In the heavy thick summer heat of the late afternoon on the 24th of January 1900, after what had turned out to be a most horrific and brutal battle, the routed British forces, having lost a senior ranking officer in the battle, retreated from the slopes of Spioenkop in a state of shock, confusion, panic and fear. In their haste to escape the horror of the battlefield they abandoned their wounded, dying and dead, whose bodies filled the shallow trenches which had been frantically scraped out of the rocky hard dry soil while under heavy Boer rifle and artillery fire. Later the hundreds of khaki clade corpses of the slain British soldiers were buried in the same shallow graves in which they had fallen. As I have said, at the time of the battle both of my great grandmothers were being held with their young children as prisoners in one of the many concentration camps, which were scattered over the Boer Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, which the British had set up for the internment of Boer women and their children. This was after the British soldiers in their scorched earth campaign against the Boer guerrilla forces had burnt down their homesteads and shot all their livestock. My grandfather Lukas Jacobus Zeeman was born on the 25th of January 1900 in a tent in a concentration camp. Ultimately, the war was about the control and exploitation of the world’s richest goldfield. And colonial imperialist exploitation of the goldfields necessitated the political dismantling of the Boer Republics. As a result of the British scorched earth campaign the rural landscape had been left in a state of complete ruin and devastation. As a direct consequence of this the Afrikaner citizens of the former Boer Republics were thrown into a state of deep and complete destitution. Following the total destruction of their livelihoods and means of subsistence they were left with no option but to flock in their masses to the surrounding towns and cities. They became refugees within their own country. In their own country, as a defeated people, they were forced to endure humiliation, oppression, dispossession, starvation and poverty. This was the state in which the Afrikaners found themselves at the turn of the century. And it was the discovery of the world’s largest and richest goldfields on the Witwatersrand which had contributed to the sudden drastic and tragic changes in their economic and political fortunes at the dawn of the 20th Century. In terms of historical truth, these were my people. In the full and brazen light, which will expose the depth and extent of the ambiguities and contradictions of my life and existence, I embrace this fact.

      3

      And so by the vagaries of descent I have been assigned to that demographic group of South Africans who are recognized as being white. I also belong to that subgroup of whites who are not fully Afrikaans nor fully English. I grew up living in the interstitial spaces of two languages, two cultures and two white ethnicities, while never been fully at home in either language or culture or ethnic group. So in a way I am one of those white South Africans, an umlungu as they call us, the kind of person who does not really have a mother tongue or an unambiguous sense of ethnic identity. By sheer contingency and not by choice I have become predominantly English speaking. So in a real sense English has become my adopted language. In South Africa, like many Indians, Coloureds, Whites and now also many Blacks, I have also become ‘English’ without having any intimate or special kind of ancestral connection to England.

      My relationship to England, an island which I have been fortunate enough to have visited many times, is one without any sense of rootedness. Yet when staying or travelling in the UK everything felt both alien and familiar at the same time. Is this something experienced by all non-British English speakers? Viewed from the vantage point of the global south England for me exists as a remote and distant country. This remoteness and distance is historical, cultural and social, and it’s this kind of distance and remoteness which reinforces its foreignness. Two kinds of Britain have always lived in my mind the one shaped and coloured by novels authored by English writers, and then there is the actual country that I have experienced at first hand as a visitor, a country which always failed to live up to my expectations, especially as a speaker of the English language. As a consequence of having no ancestral connection with England a visit to its shores was never experienced as any kind of nostalgic home-coming. I always felt more foreign in England than in Spain or France or Holland or even America. Outside of Africa I felt most at home in France, a country that I have had the opportunity to also visit regularly. However, I do not feel European in any way, and I do not feel any connection with Europe. Except for Africa I am a foreigner everywhere in the world.

      4

      So in fact, I am not really English nor do I wish to be English. Maybe English speakers outnumber the English. English as a world language belongs to anyone who cares enough about the language to claim it as their own. English knows no nationality, race, colour, creed, country, culture and ethnicity. English as a language is at home in the world no matter where that home happens to be. English has colonized my mind. English is a language which assimilates foreign words and concepts. It is a language which has colonized the minds of natives and aboriginals, filling their minds with words that embody foreign concepts and meanings which cannot be decolonized. So I reconciled myself to speaking English as my preferred language. I don’t really know why I am expressing these thoughts about English, but English is the language in which I now live, and it is also the language which I have taken ownership of without being English, it is now my language.

      5

      I was born in Johannesburg and for the first years of my life I grew in up in City Deep, a mining suburb in the south of Johannesburg. It was while we were still living in the mine house at City Deep that my father bought the two-door 1934 Riley Nine Lynx Tourer. As a young child I watched them push the car into the garage. After my father had counted out the British or English pounds, also the currency of the Union of South Africa at that time, the men who had towed the car to our home left after counting their money. Give me one hundred English pounds and you can have it. One hundred English pounds, cash! Give me a hundred. This is the memory I cherish in my mind when I think of that day when he paid for the Riley which he had wanted so badly. Corelle also loved the Riley. Eventually I inherited the Riley, but that is another story. Alone with my dad I watched him take ownership of his purchase, taking possession of his baby which he wanted so badly, yes he wanted it so very badly. Standing next to him in the garage I watched as he lifted the bonnet and began examining the engine under the bright leadlight which he had clamped to the underside of the open bonnet. I must have asked him a thousand questions about the Riley. Without becoming impatient he took the time and made the effort to satisfy the curiosity of his little daughter. Overhauling the engine, he said, was the first job that he was going to tackle, but first we must inspect the engine. He placed a large wooden block in the front of the car and lifted me onto it so that standing on the block I could also peer down on the engine lit up under the spotlight beneath the hood. After he had finished his examination of the engine he ran his palm lovingly over the front fender. He explained that he had to fix the engine so that it would work again. This meant that he would have to lift the engine out. To me this seemed to be a task too daunting to even be considered as a possibility. He wanted to start right away. While he was draining the oil from the engine, mom came into the garage with Elsabe in her arms. She did not look very happy. She said that we could ill-afford such an extravagant hobby, a hobby which involved the restoration of vintage sports cars. That was all she said after glancing at the Riley. Before leaving she looked at me and asked if I was coming. I replied that I wanted to stay with daddy and watch what he was going to do. She left without me, carrying Elsabe she walked back along the concrete footpath that separated the house from the backyard lawn over which the washing lines were strung, slamming the kitchen door behind her. I did not follow her, I stayed behind with my father. After draining the oil he leaned over the engine, clutching a spanner in his hand, he began to deftly unscrew bolts that were hidden from sight in every nook and cranny of the engine, all the time speaking to himself. Standing on the wooden box, leaning over the fender I too peered down at the engine, observing what he was doing. I listened while I watched him work under the glare of the bright light. I asked him if the car was a girl or boy because he keep on referring to the car in the gendered terms of ‘she’ and ‘her’. He replied without hesitation that the car was a she. He said all cars were she’s. It was a bewildering revelation to learn that all cars were girls. No car was a ‘he’. Out of curiosity I began into interrogate him on whether all machines were also girls. Yes, he confirmed, all machines, all cars, all trucks, all boats, all ships, all aeroplanes and all steam engines were girls, they were all ‘she’s’, not one was a boy. The feminization of all machinery was something that astonished me as a child. And it took a conscious effort on my part to accept that this was the reality of the world of machinery and engines and all things with mechanical moving parts, covered in grease and oil, they were all girls. So the Riley that my dad was going to restore was a girl. Should we give her a name I asked? Yes, you can give her a name he answered with a distracted look on his face. I thought and thought. Eventually I came up with Doris. The car will be called Doris after Doris Day, the singer of ‘Que, Sera, Sera’, which was my favourite song at the time, together with Patti Page’s ‘Doggie in the Window’. On second thoughts it was going to be a toss-up between Doris and Patti. When I finally informed my father that I had decided to name the car Doris he asked if the car was going to have a surname I immediately answered that Patti would be her surname. So the Riley was baptized ‘Doris Patti’.

      He disconnected all her wires, pipes and hoses. He unbolted and removed her radiator, carburettor, and alternator. He jacked up Doris Patti so that he could unbolt her transmission and unbolt all her remaining bolts which fixed her engine to her chassis. Once her mounting bolts were removed he hoisted her engine out. While her engine hung suspended in the air I helped my father push the car out of the garage. He lowered her engine so that it rested on blocks of wood which he had arranged on the floor in the middle of the garage. Bathed under a cone of light in the dim garage he stared at her engine. Now the engine by itself had become a she. He had to do this and he had to do that to her to get her working again.

      By nightfall he had disassembled the entire engine into its component parts. I learnt that the engine block had to go to the machine shop. Some of the engine parts had to be replaced with new parts and other parts had to be reconditioned, and other parts had to be remade from scratch from blocks of steel using machine tools such as grinders, drills and laths. After overhauling the engine he then single-handedly put the engine back using the chain, block and tackle. Hoisting it up high and then lowering it down so that it rested comfortably in its place on the chassis. I have never forgotten that distinctive metallic sound of the ratchet as my dad pulled on the chains. Once everything was reconnected including the battery he turned the ignition key and to my amazement the engine started. Now he could drive the car in and out of the garage.

      6

      As usual, after he had fetched us from Sunday school he continued working on the Riley. And also as usual Malcolm and I joined him outside by the garage while his was busy with the Riley. Malcolm generally made a nuisance of himself. Once fiddling with the bonnet he managed to collapse it on dad’s head while he was busy working on the engine. On another occasion also after Sunday school while dressed in his Sunday best Malcolm began to kick the front tire of the Riley with his shiny new black shoes. ‘Stop kicking the tire with your new shoes’, I heard dad’s voice coming from under the car. I was sitting in the front seat playing with the steering wheel and dad was busy working on connecting some cable under the car. Corelle was also present. On most Sundays Corelle, who was my mom’s best friend, would visit us for the entire day. She and mom had been friends since their childhood days. They often joked that they were sisters. While mom was busy preparing the Sunday roast Corelle would often join us outside. Sometimes she would bring dad some tea on a little silver tray that she had given to my mom as a birthday present. I always called her auntie Corelle. While she stood holding the tray I was my usual loquacious self:

      ‘Look auntie Corelle I am driving daddy’s Riley. Auntie Corelle do know that I have given the car a name, her name is Doris Patti.’

      The Riley resting on four jack trestles had been lifted high off the ground. I climbed down from the passenger seat and crawled under the car.

      ‘Hannah you going to get you nice Sunday school dress all grubby and dirty,’ I heard Corelle say. My dad spoke Afrikaans to Corelle. Corelle spoke English like a Boer, the same as my Mom. My dad’s English was unaccented. It was the English of Johannesburg.

      Lying on my back next to my father I looked up Corelle’s dress. The whole world was upside down from my vantage point. I could see her stocking encased legs, her suspenders and her panties as her skirt billowed in the light fresh breeze. Then I could see Malcolm’s knees, socks and shoes. He was standing next to Corelle. Ignoring dad, Malcolm continued to kick the front tire and the toe cups of his shiny black shoes were becoming increasingly damaged with each kick. Dad was becoming increasing irritated with Malcolm’s constant kicking of the tire and reprimanded him again, this time angrily, telling him to stop destroying his shoes immediately. Malcolm ran bawling to mom who was busy in the kitchen preparing the Sunday roast. Knowing that mom would soon storm out of the kitchen I quickly crawled out from under the car and climbed back onto the front seat. Corelle also quickly climbed into the passenger seat next to me just as mom came screaming out of the kitchen wanting to know why dad had yelled at Malcolm and why he had upset the child by threatening to take away his new Sunday school shoes. It was a lie, dad did not threaten to take away his shoes. Corelle smiled sweetly at me. Her eyes sparkled with conspiracy. I smiled back at her as mom dressed in her apron over her Sunday best outfit walked back to the kitchen with Malcolm, still snivelling, holding her hand. As soon as mom disappeared into the kitchen Corelle hugged me, kissing me on the cheek.

      ‘You are definitely daddy’s little girl hey? You are such a pretty little girl I wish you were mine.’

      Then mom called from the kitchen. Lunch was ready. Dad crawled out from under the car, took his greasy and oily overalls off. After washing his hands and face he would join us at the table still smelling of grease and oil. We ate our Sunday lunch at the kitchen table. It was the same table on which they had cut Malcolm’s hair. He had a shock of dark curly locks which covered his ears and almost reached his shoulders. I don’t think that he ever had a proper hair cut since his birth. Ouma Zeeman had brought her scissors and clippers. Dad and Oupa Zeeman had to hold him down on the table as he screamed blue murder, kicking and twisting. Lying on his back on the kitchen table with his head hanging over the edge of the table having his locks shorn off, with his body writhing about violently like a captured wild animal, it was a sight to witness, and I could not help imagining the likeness of the scene to the sacrifice of Isaac. On the same table Oupa Vollenhoven deftly butchered the carcase of a sheep with a sharp knife and hacksaw. When he first laid the skinned carcase on the table I thought the carcase was from their dog. The head was missing so I could not tell what kind of animal the carcase belonged to. I was convinced that Oupa and Ouma had killed their Alsatian and that the carcase belonged to their dog. It took a lot convincing before I believed that they had not slaughtered and skinned the Alsatian and that we were not going to eat their dog for supper. During Sunday lunches Dad sat at the head of the table and Elsabe sat in the highchair next to mom and mom feed her in between eating her own meal. Malcolm sat next to me and Corelle sat on opposite side of the table. We ate the roast lamb with mint sauce that mom had prepared from the mint which grew in the garden next to the tap. It was also during lunch that Corelle announced:

      ‘Did you know that Hannah has given the vintage car a name?’ ‘Nooo, I did not know that,’ my mom replied with a frown on her forehead. ‘Yes she has, such a clever girl, the car’s name is Doris Patti. Don’t you think that is so sweet?’

      After lunch dad would go back to work on the car and then at three-o-clock Oupa and Ouma Zeeman or Oupa and Ouma Vollenhoven would arrive. After the visitors had arrived mom would stick her head out of the kitchen door, yell at him to stop working and come in. She would have to do this several times, each time reminding him that it was time to stop working on the car as his tea was getting cold, also reminding him that he was being very inconsiderate working on the Riley while Oupa and Ouma Vollenhoven were visiting. Eventually Corelle would also get up to tell him to stop working, adding that mom was now getting really agitated. At five-o-clock Oupa and Ouma would be ready to leave. It was also time for Elsabe to be bathed, fed and put to sleep.

      7

      The sun had already set. At seven mom complained that she could barely keep her eyes open. Elsabe and Malcolm were fast asleep in bed, but I was still up, wide awake. It was getting late, as usual dad had to take Corelle home. Mom looking weary would apologise for being such a bad host, barely able to keep her eyes open she excused herself. Apologizing once more for not coming along on the drive, but then someone had to stay behind with the kids. Instead I would go with. The drone and motion of the car made me sleepy and I would fall asleep on the back seat. I would wake up again when we arrived at Corelle’s flat at the edge of Hillbrow. Dad would park the Hudson next to Berea Park across the road from Corelle’s flat. Leaving me behind in the car he would reassure me that he would be back very soon. I would fall asleep again on the back seat of the locked car. When we got back home mom would already be in bed dead to the world. With me submerged in a deep asleep he would carry my sleep-limp body cradled in his arms into the house, unbuckle my shoes, and tuck me into bed. In the morning I would wake up still wearing my Sunday school dress and white socks.

      Soon it was Christmas again. The Christmas before we had driven in the Hudson to Germiston Lake where dad, unseen under the shrouding cover of a rapidly descending twilight, surreptitiously sawed off the top portion of a young sapling conifer which became our Christmas tree. Now we had bought a real Christmas tree from the nursery, a cone shaped grey-green conifer, perfect for decorating with its horizontal branches bristling with brushes of spikey prickly needles. It had been planted into a large green painted tin drum and dad decorated it with tinsel and coloured lights. After that Christmas he planted it in the middle of the front lawn. Years later when we drove past the City Deep mine houses we would spot our old home among the other houses. Our Christmas tree had grown into a towering cone shaped grey-green pine tree with thick horizontal branches sprouting long brushes of spikey prickly needles.

      8

      Out of the blue I learnt that we were moving. Just before we moved from City Deep to Stilfontein Uncle Roger moved with his family to Empangeni to establish a sugarcane farm. I thought that I would never see my cousins again. However at the end of grade one during the December holidays we went to visit Uncle Roger on his sugarcane farm. One morning we woke to a huge commotion. We heard Auntie Anna shouting.

      ‘There is a rhinoceros in the backyard!’

      We jumped out of our beds and run barefoot into the kitchen dressed in our ankle length nighties, and sure enough there was indeed a black rhino in the backyard facing the kitchen door. We climbed onto the kitchen counters next to the sink, kneeling on the counter with our faces pressed against the window panes we stared in total disbelief at the rhino. Auntie Anna brandishing the kitchen broom standing her ground under the threshold of the doorway began to shout: ‘shoo, shoo, shoo,’ while waving the broom in a menacing manner. After a few minutes the rhino turned around and trotted off, disappearing into the surrounding bush.

      9

      It felt like that we had barely settled down in Stilfontein when we learnt that we would be moving once more, this time to a place called Hotazel, which my mother pronounced as follows: Hot-as-hell. So we going to move to a very hot place. I felt quite perturbed at the prospect. Before we moved from Stilfontein to Hotazel I remembered that my mom had said something about the mine houses in Hotazel that struck me as being quite odd especially as a child. She said that the houses in Hotazel had floors covered with Marley tiles. As a young child I could not understand why she seemed to be so thrilled that our new home soon to be in Hotazel had floors that were covered with Marley tiles. I tried to imagine what a Marley tiled floor looked like. For some weird reason the word ‘Marley’ made me think of marbles. I developed this mental image that the surfaces of the floors of the Hotazel houses had marbles stuck into concrete.

      Our house in Stilfontein had polished wooden parquet flooring which I liked. I was not very happy about leaving Stilfontein, especially leaving my room which had just been painted pink. I was also leaving behind the newly built Strathvaal Primary School.

      However, my older brother Malcolm was ecstatic. If anyone wanted to escape from Stilfontein it was my brother. For some unexplainable and mysterious reason he had decided to fling fist sized clods of red earth at the white washed walls of the home of Dr Simon Cohen our neighbour. Dr Cohen a medical doctor was the local general practitioner in Stilfontein. He lived with his wife and two young daughters in the neat little house next to our home. His wife, was a sophisticated Jewish woman as I remember her. Being a housewife was her main job which involved supervising the domestic servant and looking after their two daughters.

      As a friend of her daughters I was a frequent visitor in their home. We would listen for hours to LPs of ‘The Snow Goose’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ on their brand new Pilot Radiogram. Compared to my mother Mrs Cohen was a wonderful mother to her two daughters and an excellent host to me as a regular visitor, a Gentile intruder into her kosher home. Malcolm was mom’s favourite. Elsabe and I often felt like second class children. My mother was always on our case. The bonds between my mother, Elsabe and me were never strong as far as I can remember. There were the odd moments when my mother become our wonderful friend and indulged our ever wish.

      An act of vandalism had been committed and the suspect was Malcolm. I had to go and find Malcolm who had disappeared off the face of the earth after committing the deed. Malcolm’s friend Kevin and I set out on a search for Malcolm while my hysterical mother Mrs Amanda Zeeman was having one of her dramatic cadenzas. Kevin reckoned that Malcolm was playing pin ball at a Café up the road on the bult (hill) which was next door to the old Strathvaal Primary School where I had been first enrolled as a grade one pupil. The memories and smells of that first year of school are still vivid in my mind, the apricot jam sandwiches wrapped in wax wrap, the little plastic bottle filled with Oros orange juice, the little black slate board, pencils, exercise books and the English reader. Every day I would walk home down the bult along the tar road with my big brother Malcolm and his gang of friends. Every day we had to contend with the harassment of a pet crow that would be waiting to ambush us.

      We saw Malcolm coming the downhill walking with his hands in his pockets quite nonchalantly as if he did not have a care in the world. My instruction from my mother was to tell Malcolm to come home immediately. I was to say nothing else. Kevin wanted to embellish on my mom’s message with other threatening information like for instance that he must come home immediately because the doctor was going to give him an injection.

      Before I could inform Malcolm that mom wanted him to come home right away without any dilly-dallying along the way, Kevin immediately blurted out that Dr Cohen was going to give him an injection. Malcolm instantly put two and two together and his face turned ashen white with apprehension. I became livid with anger at his stupidity and insolence. I began to shout at him in the street so that the whole neighbourhood could hear what he had done. How could he spend the afternoon playing pin ball with not a care in the world after he had defaced the walls of the Cohen’s home? How could he entertain the possibility that his act would have no consequences for him?

      It was pathetic to watch him. He howled for the remainder of the afternoon until nightfall while he washed down the Cohen’s wall down with a hose and tried unsuccessfully to mop and wipe away the red stains from the walls. Dad had to pay for the repainting of the outside walls of the Cohen’s home. Malcolm did not get a hiding. His punishment was the humiliation that he had to endure as the Cohens, mom, Kevin, Elsabe, the domestic servants and I stood watching him trying to clean the red stains from the wall.

      10

      After a while I made peace with my fate that my new bedroom in Hotazel would have thousands of different coloured glass marbles stuck into the concrete floor. Mom always exaggerated. She said the manganese mine was in the Kalahari Desert which was covered in sand dunes for as far as the eye could see. They were flown in a small aircraft to the desert to visit the mine. My dad who was a mechanical

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