*
“Here is a letter for you from Germany,” Greta yelled. “It’s got nice stamps on it. Can I have them?”
“Ja sure.” I climbed out of the swimming pool and grabbed a towel.
“Is it from your family?”
“Ja,” I opened the airmail envelope and pulled out 2 sheets of paper.
“Do they write anything about how the water goes down the drain over there?” Greta wanted to know.
“You mean if it goes clockwise like here or the other way round?”
“Ja.”
Let’s see. It says here that my sisters are on a skiing course with the school, my aunt is going to have a baby, Friederieke is in Italy with the swimming club…ah ja, here we go: In the northern hemisphere the water goes anti-clockwise down the drain; researched by my brother Daniel. He tried about 20 basins.”
“So Tracy from my class was right,” Greta said.
“I think it’s all bullshit,” Ludwig threw in. “It depends on how you pull the plug out and if the basin is level, stuff like that.”
“So Tracy from my class is not right,” Greta said with a grin.
“I don’t know,” I tore the stamps off and gave them to her. “Mebbe you must find yourself a sponsor to provide you with the ideal basin for scientific research.”
“Hello,” somebody standing at the stoep door said.
“Gee Opheibia,” Greta gasped. “We thought you got killed or something.”
“What happened, Opheibia?” Ludwig asked. “I’m nearly deaf with the kitchen sessions these kids had.”
“Ag Master it was terrible,” Opheibia rolled her Rs even more than Mevrou van der Bijl, my Afrikaans teacher. “Master, my little girl got sick. She got pneumonia in the lungs, Master. That poor child rattled like the cattle train. Jirrah, there is no hospital close to the township, Master, I thought my Lena would die.”
It suddenly hit me that I had never thought of Opheibia as a person who also had a private life, a family, worries and dreams like all of us.
Hells bells. How could that have happened to me?
“I’m sorry to hear that, Opheibia,” Ludwig said. “Is she all right now?”
“Well enough that my mother can look after her again. But my mother is getting old, hey. She’s got artheritis in her bones. Jirrah, she can hardly walk sometimes. And she’s got my 2 other kids and the 3 of my sister to look after.”
Opheibia picked up my host siblings’ wet costumes and towels from the floor and said: “You kids go and have a bath now and I’ll cook you a nice supper.”
Hell, I nearly cried.
Here she is looking after other people’s children while her own are condemned by these shit laws to grow up without her.
“Opheibia’s lucky that the cops didn’t get her,” Ludwig said.
“Why?”
“Because black people can’t just travel around the country.”
“What do you mean?”
“First of all every black person must carry a passbook at all times, and in this passbook must be the name and the address of their employer. I, as Opheibia’s employer have to sign her book every month, so if she gets into a police control while she goes shopping or something the cops know that she’s got a job and a right to be here.”
“I’ve heard about that. The blacks call it dompas and they hate it and I don’t blame them.”
“Ja, it’s an extreme measure of control and you know that there were already pass laws in the late 1800s to control the movement of black miners. I guess those guys were pissed off from the very first day. And then in 1952, the Nats came up with that law that every black above the age of 16 has to carry a passbook for influx control reasons. They said they want all the blacks who move from the rural areas to the towns to have a job and a house in the township.”
“But it’s against human rights and dignity to restrict one group of the population like that.”
“That’s why in 1960 thousands of blacks went on a protest march in Sharpeville. They went to the police station and burnt their passbooks. The police killed and wounded hundreds.”
“And South Africa still has got the pass laws.”
“Ja, and if you ask me, there is bound to be another Sharpeville. It’s only a matter of time.”
“I guess it’s one reason why the whites are so shit scared of the Swart Gevaar,” I said. “But I don’t understand why Opheibia, who has a passbook, could also get into trouble.”
“Because when she travels she has got to have a letter from me that says that I allowed her to travel and on what dates. She came back a few days after the date I put in my letter. That’s against the law and the cops could have put her in the can.”
I couldn’t believe it. “You know what Ludwig, you whites here are lucky that the blacks haven’t blown up the place already.”