As our magistrate was explaining our situation to the chief magistrate of Umtata, the latter gentleman said something like, “Oh, their father just happens to be right here,” and then put the regent on the telephone. When the magistrate informed the regent what we were requesting, the regent exploded. “Arrest those boys!” he shouted, loud enough that we could hear his voice through the receiver. “Arrest them and bring them back here immediately!” The chief magistrate put down the phone. He regarded us angrily. “You boys are thieves and liars,” he told us. “You have presumed upon my good offices and then deceived me. Now, I am going to have you arrested.”
I immediately rose to our defense. From my studies at Fort Hare, I had a little knowledge of law and I put it to use. I said that we had told him lies, that was true. But we had committed no offense and violated no laws, and we could not be arrested simply on the recommendation of a chief, even if he happened to be our father. The magistrate backed off and did not arrest us, but told us to leave his office and never to darken his door again.
Chief Mpondombini was also annoyed, and left us to our own devices. Justice remembered that he had a friend in Queenstown named Sidney Nxu who was working in the office of a white attorney. We went to see this fellow, explained our situation, and he told us that the mother of the attorney he worked for was driving into Johannesburg and he would see if she would offer us a lift. He told us that his mother would give us a ride if we paid a fee of fifteen pounds sterling. This was a vast sum, far more than the cost of a train ticket. The fee virtually depleted our savings, but we had no choice. We decided to risk getting our passes stamped and the correct travel documents once we were in Johannesburg.
We left early the following morning. In those days, it was customary for blacks to ride in the back seat of the car if a white was driving. The two of us sat in that fashion, with Justice directly behind the woman. Justice was a friendly, exuberant person and immediately began chatting to me. This made the old woman extremely uncomfortable. She had obviously never been in the company of a black who had no inhibitions around whites. After only a few miles, she told Justice that she wanted him to switch seats with me, so that she could keep an eye on him, and for the rest of the journey she watched him like a hawk. But after a while, Justice’s charm worked on her and she would occasionally laugh at something he said.
At about ten o’clock that evening, we saw before us, glinting in the distance, a maze of lights that seemed to stretch in all directions. Electricity, to me, had always been a novelty and a luxury, and here was a vast landscape of electricity, a city of light. I was terribly excited to see the city I had been hearing about since I was a child. Johannesburg had always been depicted as a city of dreams, a place where one could transform oneself from a poor peasant to a wealthy sophisticate, a city of danger and of opportunity. I remembered the stories that Banabakhe had told us at circumcision school, of buildings so tall you could not see the tops, of crowds of people speaking languages you had never heard of, of sleek motorcars and beautiful women and dashing gangsters. It was eGoli, the city of gold, where I would soon be making my home.
On the outskirts of the city the traffic became denser. I had never seen so many cars on the road at one time — even in Umtata, there were never more than a handful of cars and here there were thousands. We drove around the city, rather than through it, but I could see the silhouette of the tall, blocky buildings, even darker against the dark night sky. I looked at great billboards by the side of the road, advertising cigarettes and candy and beer. It all seemed tremendously glamorous.
Soon we were in an area of stately mansions, even the smallest of which was bigger than the regent’s palace, with grand front lawns and tall iron gates. This was the suburb where the old lady’s daughter lived, and we pulled into the long driveway of one of these beautiful homes. Justice and I were dispatched to the servants’ wing, where we were to spend the night. We thanked the old lady, and then crawled off to sleep on the floor. But the prospect of Johannesburg was so exciting to me that I felt like I slept on a beautiful feather bed that night. The possibilities seemed infinite. I had reached the end of what seemed like a long journey, but was actually the very beginning of a much longer and more trying journey that would test me in ways that I could not then have imagined.
Part Two
JOHANNESBURG
9
IT WAS DAWN when we reached the offices of Crown Mines, which were located on the plateau of a great hill overlooking the still dark metropolis. Johannesburg was a city built up around the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886, and Crown Mines was the largest gold mine in the city of gold. I expected to see a grand building like the government offices in Umtata, but the Crown Mine offices were rusted tin shanties on the face of the mine.
There is nothing magical about a gold mine. Barren and pockmarked, all dirt and no trees, fenced in all sides, a gold mine resembles a war-torn battlefield. The noise was harsh and ubiquitous: the rasp of shaft-lifts, the jangling power drills, the distant rumble of dynamite, the barked orders. Everywhere I looked I saw black men in dusty overalls looking tired and bent. They lived on the grounds in bleak, single-sex barracks that contained hundreds of concrete bunks separated from each other by only a few inches.
Gold-mining on the Witwatersrand was costly because the ore was low grade and deep under the earth. Only the presence of cheap labor in the form of thousands of Africans working long hours for little pay with no rights made gold-mining profitable for the mining houses — white-owned companies that became wealthy beyond the dreams of Croesus on the backs of the African people. I had never seen such enterprise before, such great machines, such methodical organization, and such backbreaking work. It was my first sight of South African capitalism at work, and I knew I was in for a new kind of education.
We went straight to the chief induna, or headman. His name was Piliso, a tough old fellow who had seen life at its most pitiless. Piliso knew about Justice, as the regent had sent a letter months before making arrangements for him to receive a clerical job, the most coveted and respected job in the mine compound. I, however, was unknown to him. Justice explained that I was his brother.
“I was expecting only Justice,” Piliso responded. “Your father’s letter mentions nothing about a brother.” He looked me over rather skeptically. But Justice pleaded with him, saying it had simply been an oversight, and that the regent had already posted a letter about me. Piliso’s crusty exterior hid a sympathetic side, and he took me on as a mine policeman, saying that if I worked out, he would give me a clerical post in three months’ time.
The regent’s word carried weight at Crown Mines. This was true of all chiefs in South Africa. Mining officials were eager to recruit labor in the countryside, and the chiefs had authority over the men they needed. They wanted the chiefs to encourage their subjects to come to the Reef. The chiefs were treated with great deference; the mining houses provided special lodgings for them whenever they came to visit. One letter from the regent was enough to secure a man a good job, and Justice and I were treated with extra care because of our connection. We were to be given free rations, sleeping quarters, and a small salary. We did not stay in the barracks that first night. For our first few days, Piliso, out of courtesy to the regent, invited Justice and me to stay with him.