In a neighboring village, there was an African dance-hall known as Ntselamanzi, which catered to the cream of local black society and was off-limits to undergraduates. But one night, desperate to practice our steps with the gentler sex, we put on our suits, stole out of our dormitory, and made it to the dance-hall. It was a sumptuous place, and we felt very daring. I noticed a lovely young woman across the floor and politely asked her to dance. A moment later, she was in my arms. We moved well together and I imagined what a striking figure I was cutting on the floor. After a few minutes, I asked her her name. “Mrs. Bokwe,” she said softly. I almost dropped her right there and scampered off the floor. I glanced across the floor and saw Dr. Roseberry Bokwe, one of the most respected African leaders and scholars of the time, chatting with his brother-in-law and my professor, Z. K. Matthews. I apologized to Mrs. Bokwe and then sheepishly escorted her to the side under the curious eyes of Dr. Bokwe and Professor Matthews. I wanted to sink beneath the floorboards. I had violated any number of university regulations. But Professor Matthews, who was in charge of discipline at Fort Hare, never said a word to me. He was willing to tolerate what he considered high spirits as long as it was balanced by hard work. I don’t think I ever studied more diligently than in the weeks after our evening at Ntselamanzi.
Fort Hare was characterized by a level of sophistication, both intellectual and social, that was new and strange to me. By Western standards, Fort Hare’s worldliness may not seem like much, but to a country boy like myself, it was a revelation. I wore pajamas for the first time, finding them uncomfortable in the beginning, but gradually growing used to them. I had never used a toothbrush and toothpaste before; at home, we used ash to whiten our teeth and toothpicks to clean them. The water-flush toilets and hot-water showers were also a novelty to me. I used toilet soap for the first time, not the blue detergent that I had washed with for so many years at home.
Perhaps as a result of all this unfamiliarity, I yearned for some of the simple pleasures that I had known as a boy. I was not alone in this feeling and I joined a group of young men who engaged in secret evening expeditions to the university’s farmland, where we built a fire and roasted mealies. We would then sit around, eating the ears of corn and telling tall tales. We did not do this because we were hungry, but out of a need to recapture what was most homelike to us. We boasted about our conquests, our athletic prowess, and how much money we were going to make once we had graduated. Although I felt myself to be a sophisticated young fellow, I was still a country boy who missed country pleasures.
While Fort Hare was a sanctuary removed from the world, we were keenly interested in the progress of World War II. Like my classmates, I was an ardent supporter of Great Britain, and I was enormously excited to learn that the speaker at the university’s graduation ceremony at the end of my first year would be England’s great advocate in South Africa, the former prime minister Jan Smuts. It was a great honor for Fort Hare to play host to a man acclaimed as a world statesman. Smuts, then deputy prime minister, was campaigning around the country for South Africa to declare war on Germany while the prime minister, J. B. Hertzog, advocated neutrality. I was extremely curious to see a world leader like Smuts from up close.
While Hertzog had, three years earlier, led the drive to remove the last African voters from the common voters roll in the Cape, I found Smuts a sympathetic figure. I cared more that he had helped found the League of Nations, promoting freedom around the world, than the fact that he had repressed freedom at home.
Smuts spoke about the importance of supporting Great Britain against the Germans and the idea that England stood for the same Western values that we, as South Africans, stood for. I remember thinking that his accent in English was almost as poor as mine! Along with my fellow classmates, I heartily applauded him, cheering Smuts’s call to do battle for the freedom of Europe, forgetting that we did not have that freedom here in our own land.
Smuts was preaching to the converted at Fort Hare. Each evening, the warden of Wesley House used to review the military situation in Europe, and late at night, we would huddle around an old radio and listen to BBC broadcasts of Winston Churchill’s stirring speeches. But even though we supported Smuts’s position, his visit provoked much discussion. During one session, a contemporary of mine, Nyathi Khongisa, who was considered an extremely clever fellow, condemned Smuts as a racist. He said that we might consider ourselves “black Englishmen,” but the English had oppressed us at the same time they tried to “civilize” us. Whatever the mutual antagonism between Boer and British, he said, the two white groups would unite to confront the black threat. Khongisa’s views stunned us and seemed dangerously radical. A fellow student whispered to me that Nyathi was a member of the African National Congress, an organization that I had vaguely heard of but knew very little about. Following South Africa’s declaration of war against Germany, Hertzog resigned and Smuts became prime minister.
During my second year at Fort Hare, I invited my friend Paul Mahabane to spend the winter holidays with me in the Transkei. Paul was from Bloemfontein and was well known on campus because his father, the Reverend Zaccheus Mahabane, had twice been president-general of the African National Congress. His connection to this organization, about which I still knew very little, gave him the reputation of a rebel.
One day, during the holiday, Paul and I went to Umtata, the capital of the Transkei, which then consisted of a few paved streets and some government buildings. We were standing outside the post office when the local magistrate, a white man in his sixties, approached Paul and asked him to go inside to buy him some postage stamps. It was quite common for any white person to call on any black person to perform a chore. The magistrate attempted to hand Paul some change, but Paul would not take it. The magistrate was offended. “Do you know who I am?” he said, his face turning red with irritation. “It is not necessary to know who you are,” Mahabane said. “I know what you are.” The magistrate asked him exactly what he meant by that. “I mean that you are a rogue!” Paul said heatedly. The magistrate boiled over and exclaimed, “You’ll pay dearly for this!” and then walked away.
I was extremely uncomfortable with Paul’s behavior. While I respected his courage, I also found it disturbing. The magistrate knew precisely who I was and I know that if he had asked me rather than Paul, I would have simply performed the errand and forgotten about it. But I admired Paul for what he had done, even though I was not yet ready to do the same thing myself. I was beginning to realize that a black man did not have to accept the dozens of petty indignities directed at him each day.
After my holiday, I returned to school early in the new year feeling strong and renewed. I concentrated on my studies, pointing toward examinations in October. In a year’s time, I imagined that I would have a B.A., just like clever Gertrude Ntlabathi. A university degree, I believed, was a passport not only to community leadership but to financial success. We had been told over and over again by the principal, Dr. Alexander Kerr, and Professors Jabavu and Matthews how, as graduates of Fort Hare, we were the African elite. I believed that the world would be at my feet.
As a B.A., I would finally be able to restore to my mother the wealth and prestige that she had lost after my father’s death. I would build her a proper home in Qunu, with a garden and modern furniture and fittings. I would support her and my sisters so that they could afford the things that they had so long been denied. This was my dream and it seemed within reach.