Clinton St. Quarterly, Vol. 7 No. 3 | Fall 1985 (Seattle) /// Issue 13 of 24 /// Master# 61 of 73

They speak more than 10 different languages, We have to communicate with them, and they have to be able to talk to each other. With my methods, I can teach them in three or four days.” De Villiers verbally rushed ahead, not pausing to mention that only an extravagant definition would include Fanakalo as a “language.” It is a pidgin, suited only for rudimentary commands. You cannot imagine someone using it to discuss, for instance, the subtleties of trade unionism' or politics. He described how he gives tests to divide black recruits into “the leaders, the mechanicals, and the lower class.” He vigorously shepherded us over to a “leader” identification test that he had invented himself. A half-dozen black men, each wearing a different colored hard hat, stood around a jumble of large wooden slabs, which de Villiers explained were the pieces of a gigantic puzzle. “There is a way to do this,” de Villiers said conspiratorially to us. “But I’m not interested in whether they finish it. I’m going to watch their leadership qualities. I want to see who takes charge. We need good leaders to bring obedience into the others.” He signalled the men to begin. They rushed around attempting with partial success to fit the unwieldly wooden pieces together. After five minutes, he merrily called time and invited us to comment. There followed a brief discussion about the relative degrees of initiative displayed by “red hat,” “green hat,” and the others. De Villiers said he was proud of this particular group. “They carried on,” he explained happily. “Others sometimes give up and say, ‘Let’s go ask the baas.’" As the tourists talked and gestured, the black men waited, well within earshot. A couple of them gave brief, flickering glares of resentment. Their sidelong glances were just barely detectable. We continued on to one of the hostels, the single-sex compounds where virtually all black miners live for ten or eleven months a year. This, the newest of four at the mine, was an octagonal complex housing four thousand men, with twenty to a room. The place had the masculine, regimented feel of an army base. Hundreds of men moved along the paths between the various buildings; the day shift had apparently just completed work. There was not a single woman in sight. The hostel superintendent was a flinty white man caller Verster. One of his favorite words was “traditional.” He sounded like an amateur anthropologist as he used it frequently in reference to the habits of his charges. Verster first led us to one of the hostel rooms. It was clean and bright, with ten double bunk-beds lined up along the brick walls. A few curtains had been placed strategically, evidently to provide YOGURT KEFIR SOUR CREAM CREAM CHEESE LOWFAT YOGURT COTTAGE CHEESE (206) 385-6122 □oasaaaaa snaaa AND JEFFERSON, COUNTY piccolo s Seattle s Finest Gourmet Pizza ^uest Suites Overnight Accommodations ■ 13 SUITES FURNISHED IN OLD VICTORIAN STYLING • PHONE & COLOR TV IN ALL SUITES • CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST • EACH SUITE COMPLETE WITH KITCHEN & BATH. • CHILDREN ACCEPTED. • ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED ^fedf 5hdl ^R^aurant In the historic Lewis Building • 630 Water Street Open 7 Days a Week Dinner Wed-Mon 5pm-llpm Appetizers till Midnight Continental Cuisine Unique, Relaxing Atmosphere LIVE DINNER MUSIC EVERY NIGHT Private Parties "the cornerstone of good health" Fresh, friendly, fun! Hreekiast Springfield Creamery Springfield, Oregon §2.00 OFF any small or medium pizza §3.00 OFF any large pizza aaaa Baaaaaaaq stag as i-aaaa a little privacy. “All the men in each room are from the same tri—er, ethnic group,” Verster caught himself. “They like staying together that way—it’s their tradition.” We arrived at the immense dining hall just as a section of the day shift poured in. The men moved through the serving line at a dogtrot, stretching out their enamel plates for the food. They were almost all between eighteen and thirty- five years old. Verster, with a tone of concern like the manager of a livestock feedlot, encouraged the visitors to inspect the provisions. “There’s the mielie meal,” he said, gesturing toward a metal vat that was big enough to pour molten steel. “That’s their traditional food. Further along are vegetables and fruits. They get meat twice a week. We make sure they have two thousand, eight-hundred and fifty calories a day. The kitchen is open twenty-four hours, so they come when they want.” The long line of miners continued jogging along. Servers ladled the food into plates like fast-paced robots. Most of the men ignored the visitors; a couple of older ones genuflected slightly toward Verster. One woman tourist approved eagerly of the cleanliness. “I’ve seen dirtier boarding schools,” she said. Verster nodded in happy agreement. He led the way to the beer hall. “They The gold industry is South Africa’s major employer, with 575,000 workers, all but 40,000 of whom are black. Each year, South Africa mines about half of the world’s gold. get one and one-quarter liters of sorghum beer a day for free. That’s their traditional drink. They can of course buy more, at a subsidized price.” Then, the medical clinic. “We insist they go, even with just a little scratch,” he explained. His solicitude for the men's health is no doubt strengthened by the desire of his superiors to avoid lost man-days and injury compensation payments. He next indicated an open-air cinema. “They have films four times a week. They have several TV sets. They have soccer, athletics. On weekends, they do their tribal dancing—that’s traditional to the blacks.” A huge, uniformed black man was stationed at the hostel gate, checking the documents and the parcels of the miners as they entered. “They come and go as they like,” Verster emphasized. “The policeboy is just there to protect them, to keep out weapons and unauthorized (IN WALLINGFORD) I BL ^unch 4401 .Wallingford Ave. N. Seattle (206) 633-1175 d At the gate, Verster gestured back toward the mammoth complex with a proud, proprietary air. “They like it here,” he assured us. “When they come back, or go to work on another mine, the setup isn’t strange. It’s traditional for them.” Verster had unwittingly used the word properly for the first time. A system of work that requires most of the workers to be away from their families for most of the year may sound unnatural. But after nearly a century in southern Africa, it is, in fact, traditional. The mine supervisors hosted a luncheon at the nearby Klerksdorp Club. No workers, black or white, were present. One of the tourists, a stockbroker from Britain, apologetically ventured a question about a report he had seen in the morning Johannesburg newspaper. Some ten thousand black workers at the President Steyn mine further south in the Free State had stopped work and rioted against the introduction of a new pension plan. Police had killed at least one miner when they stormed into the compounds to quell the uprising. The Harties officials had been stupefied by the news. One of them said, in a wounded tone: “The new pension plan is an improvement. I don’t see how they can possible object to this benefit we’re giving them.” kJome months later, I described my tour to my friend Eric McCabe, a white former miner in his late thirties. He grinned happily at my descriptions: “You were probably on the doctored level for visitors. Nicely painted. Well lit. Plenty of fresh air. Nob too hot or cold. On the next level, okes [guys] might be working at a hundred degrees, with dry ice packs strapped to their bodies to keep them cool.” Eric laughed. “We used to trick the tourists, when they were going underground in the lift cage. The guy running it in the control room throws it into fast forward. The emergency brakes lock. But there’s give in the cable, so it doesn’t snap. It stretches. The miners in the cage expect it to kick up and down, but the tourists don’t know what’s happening. The cage bounces there in the shaft like "■ •“ ffia 'I H E 1 Is S H II BED & BREAKFAST AVAILABLE (206) 385-5954 -------------------- a yo-yo for a while. The tourists are as confused as chameleons in a Smartie box [a type of candy that comes in many colors]. They’re all sick. They’re really fucked. They’re not really interested in going anywhere else in the mine.” Eric no longer lives in South Africa. The police harassed him steadily about his black girl friend, so he and she moved to neighboring Swaziland, where there is no Immorality Act. He is a large, powerfully built man, who is covered in tattoos. One evening, he gave me the official version of life underground. “Here’s what’s supposed to happen. They start dropping the day shift at five or six, to the bottom level first. The blacks wait down there. They can’t even enter the stope (low-roofed chamber) until the white miner arrives, at seven. When you get there, you take your baas-boy, and your picannin, and check everything. You look for loose hanging rocks, or gas. Then, picannins with hose-pipes put down water to keep the dust down. There are signs around that say things like ‘Keep Dust Low.. .with H2O.’ “Next, you direct your timber-boys to put in the props... a solid pack here, a five-pointer there. You supervise your malaisha-boys, who are shoveling the blast from the previous day. You mark the rock-face, and you tell the machine-boys to start drilling. Then, you charge up. You chase everybody out before you start blasting.” Eric paused, a raconteur with timing. “That’s what’s supposed to happen.” He winked. “Here’s what really happens. You stay in the canteen on the surface until about nine, just talking shit with the other white miners. When you get to the face underground, the black guys are drilling holes already. They’ve put in the props and marked everything. Your picannin takes your jacket and boots, hangs them up, and brings you a cup of tea. You sit and read the newspaper. You might take a look now and then, just to make sure nobody’s fucking up. [You’re paid partly on the amount of rock you move.] But really, your baas-boy can take care of everything. About all you do is hand the oke the matches before you blast.” Eric waited for his story to register. Then he added: “ I trained twelve months for my blasting ticket. No baas-boy has had any course. But every single baas- boy in the mine, if they tested him right now for a fucking ticket, he’d get it.” He concluded maliciously: “I think they just don’t give blasting tickets to blacks because they might start to blow up whites all over the country.” James North has reported from the Third World for the last six years for such publications as The Nation and The New Republic. Freedom Rising copyright ®1985 by James North. Published by Macmillan, 866 Third Avenue, NYC, NY 10022, $19.95. 714 WASHINGTON AT QUINCY PORT TOWNSEND, WA A Pleasure you will repeat." - PORT TOWNSEND, WA Clinton St. Quarteirly 27

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