Kaffir Boy Rules and Order Quotes

And in that shack I was born, a few months before sixty-nine unarmed black protesters were massacred – many shot in the back as they fled for safety – by South African policemen during a peaceful demonstration against the pass laws in Sharpeville on March 21, 1960. Pass laws regulate the movement of blacks in so-called white South Africa. And it was the pass laws that, in those not so long ago days of my childhood and youth, first awakened me to the realities of life as a Kaffir boy in South Africa. (1.11)

That evening the neighborhood was gripped by rumors that the Peri-Urban police were going to launch another raid soon, to "clean up" the neighbourhood, so to speak, because the one that morning had been – by police standards – unsuccessful. The back-to-back raids, the rumors went, marked the beginning of the annual "Operation Clean-up Month," a month during which hundreds of black policemen, led by white officers, combed the entire Alexandra ghetto – street by street and yard by yard – searching for people whose passbooks were not in order, gangsters, prostitutes, black families living illegally in the township, shebeen owners and those persons deemed "undesirables" under the Influx Control Law. I did not understand what many of these names meant, though I was told that we and most of our neighbours were counted under them. (3.1)

"Hurry up, old man!" the interrogator said, as my father fidgeted with his overalls, "we haven't got all day. Do you have it or don't you?" he said, trying to wring a bribe out of my father.

"Nkosi, I beg you," my father whimpered, dropping his bony shoulders and letting the overalls dangle limply at his side. "I have no money," he sighed.

"Nothing," the policeman cried, astonished; the black policemen were used to getting bribes.

"Nothing, nkosi," my father said, slowly running his right hand through his kinky hair. "Not a cent. I have no job. I just applied for a permit to look for a job yesterday."

"Well," frowned the policeman, closing the bulky book in my father's face, "I gave you your chance. You refused it. Now hurry up and put on your clothes and come with us." (3.83-87)

But other men were not so lucky. They had no money, having paid it all out in bribes over the course of many arrests. They would be carted in vans and trucks to Number Four, a notorious prison for black people in Johannesburg. Repeat offenders and those whose passbook crimes were considered more serious would be processed to a maximum-security penitentiary called Moderbee, on the outskirts of Kempton Park. I would often hear the womenfolk say that Moderbee was a "hell which changed black men into brutes, no matter how tough and stubborn they may be." Almost every night before we went to bed, whenever my mother happened to have one of her premonitions, she would pray in earnest to our ancestral spirits that the day never would come when my father would be sent to Modderbee. (4.13)

My father had been arrested that morning at the bus stop – for being unemployed. A man who had been with him as they waited for the bus to Johannesburg to apply for permits had brought my mother the grim news. The man's story was as follows: as he and my father waited fro the bus several police vans suddenly swooped upon the bus stop. People fled in all directions. My father was nabbed as he tried to leap a fence. His pass was scanned and found to contain an out-of-work stamp; he was taken in. His crime, unemployment, was one of the worst a black man could commit. (6.4)

At home, as we washed the ash off our faces, legs and arms, and off the items we had gathered for the day, I asked her for more details about how a dead black baby ended up in a garbage dump. She told me that some maids and nannies who worked for white people, because of fears of losing their jobs in the event of an accidental pregnancy, would often smother the baby and dump the corpse in garbage bins so they could continue working.

"Wouldn't the police arrest such people for murder?" I asked in shock.

"Police don't arrest black people for killing black people," my mother said. (7.68-70)

"They say next time they pick me up," she told my father, "they'll deport me back to the homeland. And you, too, for having a wife without a permit."

"What can we do?" my father asked.

"If only I could get a permit," my mother lamented. My parents now lived the lives of perpetual fugitives, fleeing by day and fleeing by night, making sure they were never caught together under the same roof as husband and wife. (11.16-18)

Turning to me, he said, "What's shameful about working in white people's gardens? My grandmother too worked there when I was going to school. That's how I was able to go through school. That's nothing to be ashamed of. Those are the kinds of jobs white people have in abundance for us. You should be thankful she's working there, otherwise you wouldn't be getting all those books."

From that day onward, I never again felt ashamed to tell people, when they asked me, that Granny was a gardener, or that she, my mother and my father never went to school. In a way, that incident helped me overcome the type of shame that leads many people to deny their heritage, to forget where they come from, for the sake of acceptance. (29.41-42)

Bootlegging was a serious crime and those caught during raids were handed huge fines. Some were given long jail sentences or deported to the tribal reserves. Yet despite such hazards, the bootlegging club continued to grow; new members were added each day, more than making up for those arrested daily.

It came as no surprise, therefore, when one Friday evening my father said to my mother, as the family sat for dinner: "Now that we're both working, how about starting a little beer business. Other wives are doing it. Look at our neighbors, they've made such big profits they've even bought a new bathtub and a wardrobe."

Aware of the risks involved, my mother was quick to reply, "You know about raids on shebeens, don't you? Our pass and permit problems are enough to worry about." (29.47-49)

One day I was arrested for being in a white neighbourhood after the ten o'clock evening curfew, and for being without a pass. I told the arresting officers, one black and one white, that I was a student. Luckily I was in the habit of carrying several books with the name of my former school on them. They let me go with the warning to get a pass.

"You're eighteen now," said the black officer. "You should have got one two years ago."

I began making plans to go apply for one, even though I detested the idea of carrying a pass. At the pass office I was interrogated by a young black man in a checkered suit who appeared to enjoy the job he was doing: putting his own folks through hell. (53.1-3)