Fatima Chapter 10 | 1949: Johnny-Bhai & Suleiman

The Raj Mahal Hotel sat awkwardly between the main shopping centre and the bus terminal; a large squat building that was devoid of any decoration or flourish. It was, in many ways, a no man’s land within the community, neither here nor there. Only men frequented it, and the ‘hotel’ served more as a hostel for men who had migrated into the neighbourhood from the countryside in search of work. Its primary function was as a beer hall, and it was loved and loathed in equal measure.

It must be said, however, that the Raj Mahal’s bar and kitchen qualified it as an establishment with a little more to offer than your average hostel. Its kitchen offered the finest quality chicken giblets, covered in mixed masala, deep fried and served covered in a curry sauce that had simmered for many hours. If one was really hungry there were mutton, chicken and vegetable curries – with rice – on offer. Alternatively, one could order a curry with roti instead.

The Raj Mahal’s exterior may have been drab and unremarkable, but its bar was lively and animated, serving as the local watering hole for the neighbourhood’s men. Although the local men who frequented the bar knew that there were also ‘ladies of the night’ on offer upstairs, they fiercely denied it to their wives.

It was in that bar that Suleiman first met Johnny-Bhai. At the time, he was a mere twenty four years old, but he had already acquired a world-weary disposure. Johhny-Bhai was slightly older than Suleiman, and – as a teacher at a local school – had the benefit of an education over him. Nonetheless, he quickly recognized the intensity that lay behind Suleiman’s thickly browed eyes. They revealed a man who was beyond his physical years in experience and intellect. His limited education did nothing to hide the vast universe of thoughts and emotions he held within him. He was a proud man, even at his young age, and Johnny-Bhai was intrigued by him.

In turn, Suleiman was struck by Johnny-Bhai’s ability to articulate the affairs of the world with clarity and economy. Despite Suleiman’s usual conceptual fluency, and his ability to deploy cogent arguments, events of late proved of such magnitude that Suleiman struggled to adequately marshal his thoughts about it into speech.

These days, Suleiman seemed restless. Most people put it down to his possession of a mind that was made to do much more outside of the cage that it found itself in. After all, he was already well-known for his endless questioning, and his proclivity for issuing abrupt statements that jumped out at the person he was speaking to, jolting them out of the familiarity of routine exchanges. But to those who knew him well, or were perceptive enough to gauge his character, it was evident that recently, when he put his thoughts into words, they were often delivered too bluntly, devoid of any finesse or subtlety.

To Suleiman, the ability to articulate one’s thoughts was an enviable talent, as it promised a release of a kind, one that now evaded him at every turn. His over-active mind, perpetually characterised by disquiet, never seemed to be able to find a suitable outlet.

The recent turn of events in the country vexed him greatly. There was an unmistakeable heaviness about Suleiman as he went about his daily interactions, and his usual wit had given way to a dark cynicism. He seemed to be searching for an explanation for how things had come to be the way they were, but it was precisely that, that constantly eluded his sensibilities. His emotions rose up and his face reddened whenever he tried to make sense of the inexplicable manner in which change had occasioned itself upon the land.

Suleiman had already indulged in several drinks before introducing himself to Johnny-Bhai at the bar. Perhaps his recent travails had driven him to consume more than his usual amount of alcohol because he was more amorous than his usual self, leaning over to introduce himself to Johnny-Bhai unprompted. Johnny-Bhai had, for the briefest moment, raised his eyebrows when he’d heard the name ‘Suleiman’ being offered. Sensing the nature of his inquiry, Suleiman took a matter-of-fact tone,

“I know, I’m a Muslim, but you know where I’m from it’s not wrong to take a few drinks.  In India people aren’t always as strict as people here think.  You know, we like to have a good time too, and enjoy the same things as everybody else.”

“Oh you’re not alone,” Johnny-Bhai replied, “most of my Muslim friends also take a drink.  I’m no-one to judge you bhai; even my wife gets upset with me for my ‘daroo-love’ she calls it.  She says I come here to see my ‘daroo-love’, my other woman is this bar to her.  She thinks all I do is come here to sit and talk shit with the boys.  Anyways, it’s better if that’s what she thinks.  She’s a good woman my wife.”

“So you don’t come here to talk shit then?” Suleiman joked clumsily, his youthfulness betraying him. His eyes swept across the room as he leaned forward.

“All I hear is people talking shit most of the time!”

He smiled, as if to joke, but there was a distinct cynicism in his voice.  His brow had furrowed and his eyes had glowered when he said it.  There was no doubt.  His contempt for the world had spilled over and breached the facade of his smiling demeanour, his furrowed brow betraying his feelings.

To Johnny-Bhai something was obviously brewing in Suleiman. Its intensity was palpable. He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but he paused instead, inhaling the words that were about to be released. The pause served as an invitation to Suleiman, who burst into a monologue of sorts. Perhaps the alcohol had loosened his tongue because he spoke as though he were actually continuing a monologue that had until now been contained within him.

“You know, where I come from there wasn’t this ‘race classification thing’.  What is this now; this Ghetto Bill?  I escaped the caste system in India to have to deal with this?  What will my children be now?  They won’t be Indian?  They must be something else?  My friend, this world is a crazy place.  For some it is easy, for others it is a battle let me tell you.”

Johnny-Bhai sympathised with this young chap. His sincerity and honesty was indisputable. He asked after Suleiman’s age,

“If you don’t mind me asking bhai, how old are you?”

“I’m 24!” Suleiman blurted out from his bearded chin.

Johnny Bhai’s surprise showed.  Suleiman seemed much older.  His beard and his bearing gave him an age beyond his years. Sensing Johnny-Bhai’s surprise, Suleiman expounded;

“I’ve been on my own since I was ten years old.  I’ve worked most of my life; fourteen years now!”

“That’s a long time bhai!” Johnny-Bhai nodded. 

“Not a lot of people understand” Suleiman sighed. “They don’t even usually want to hear about it.  People don’t really talk; they just want to laugh and joke a bit.  I like to laugh too, but ... I don’t know … sometimes things frustrate me.  Tell me, Johnny-Bhai,” he paused for a while and caught his breath, “why … whyyy these politicians …” he flustered.

His eyes squeezed up tight when he’d said ‘why’. It seemed to lock up his brain.  Johnny-Bhai’s lips pursed, but no words came out. He drew in a breath as Suleiman continued …

“Why they say they going to do something if they don’t?”

“I mean … why?” he pleaded.

Johnny-Bhai sensed that Suleiman’s life had left many scars on him, too many to speak all at once, but all recorded and carried.  When you make every triumph over adversity a mark of strength you carry a record with you, like a memorial of battles fought and lost.  If you forgot them you forgot your way in life, so they had to be carried.  A personal history informs a person’s internal world. Their history – its narrative – becomes a metaphor for their existence. They are indelibly tied to it through struggle, loss and triumph.  As the last survivors of the Nazi death camps still wheel themselves over snow covered roads to the sites of mechanised death every year, so too did the survivors of this new diaspora make constant pilgrimages to the sites of their pain and loss. The painful points of separation and loss – from family, community, their homes and their land – echoed through the ages and were transferred from one generation to the next. It was unavoidable in their world because their every action and reaction was to the past and could be traced back to these events. The events of the past shaped the realities of the present. 

Johnny-Bhai paused for a moment. Speaking in English he asked,

“Solly? You ok with me calling you ‘Solly’ eh?”

“Ya”, Suleiman answered, clearly disinterested in his name. Suleiman nodded to indicate that he wanted to hear what Johnny-Bhai had to say. Johnny-Bhai shifted position on his bar stool and shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, they know that society has a short memory Solly.  You see, they know that they can tell us one thing five years ago and change it to another later because people tend to forget.  With all these different faces all the time one is never quite sure who is promising what and on behalf of whom.  The whites are the most guilty of this because as long as things work out well for them they forget even more quickly, but some of our people behave the same too – especially the merchants.  You see this NIC, ‘congress’; I know Gandhi-ji was involved but it is mainly run by the rich fullahs, the merchant castes.  They negotiate our survival under them with the white man; we get the raw end of the stick again. They are not really for us.”

“My father came here to cut cane bhai; he was like you, started looking after himself very young, a very strong man.  He died after being beaten on the farm one day. It affected his mind and started acting strange, you know, like he was shell-shocked or something. One day he went down to the river and drowned himself.  My mother couldn’t support me after that and I went away to a missionary school.  There was a Christian family on the farm who helped get me in there.  They had good relations with the priests.  That’s why I have the name ‘Johnny’ – the nuns used to call me Johnny coz I was always asking to be baptised when I was little; you know, like John the Baptist. They always used to laugh when I said that, so I kept saying it over and over. You know, fate is strange, that is where I learnt to read and write properly and got a good education. But after I finished school there was nowhere for me to go.  I had to go to India to study further.”

At this point in the conversation the bartender shuffled down the length of the bar – as was his routine – rubbing down the thick wooden bar top with a greyish-brown all-purpose cloth. His large arms ground the cloth so far into the wooden slab that despite the daily dribs and drabs of beer and hot curried chicken giblets that had settled on it over the years, it dutifully shone with a dull gleam when he was done. He tossed the cloth over his right shoulder and stood back to admire his work, before moving down the bar to check on his patrons. That cloth would remain on his right shoulder for the remainder of the day and night, until he departed the bar and headed home for a late supper.

Suleiman studied Johnny-Bhai carefully. His gaze gave the impression that he was both present and absent at the same time; it went into and through Johnny-Bhai, so much so that he felt a bit uncomfortable. Suleiman didn’t trust easily, and it was his way to carefully examine the people he interacted with; to test them with questions, even rhetorical ones, and gauge their responses. He proceeded, gesticulating with his large, spade shaped hands towards the ceiling.

“And why they spend so much money on the army when the war is over instead of building schools for us?  They tax us so why can’t they build some schools for our children.”

“There are two answers to those two questions Solly,” Johnny-Bhai shrugged, tilting his head up from atop his gangly neck so his eyes met Suleiman’s. His left eyebrow raised in unison with the movement of his head. 

Suleiman nodded in expectation. His eyes remained fixed in anticipation on the face of Johnny-Bhai. Johnny Bhai gesticulated upwards from the elbow with a light-bulb screw of the left hand, his long fingers flowering outwards.

“They need us as labour, that’s why they don’t build schools.  And the reason why they are spending so much on the army is that they’ve always had to enforce their civilisation through the barrel of a gun.  It is not a civilisation that spreads naturally; it isn’t even really based on religion but on the greed and ideas of man.  It is based on migrating slave labour to wage labour.  Why school us ... to replace them?” He sniggered at the absurdity of the question.

Suleiman eyed him curiously.  He had answered him with such clarity that Suleiman felt a need to open up to this man with more of the bouncing balls in his head, the ones that bounced highest when he was indoors.

Johnny-Bhai took in the scene around him before moving in closer to Suleiman, as though his words were now for Suleiman’s ears only. He raised the index finger of his right hand for emphasis. It hovered near Suleiman’s left ear,

“Things are going to get worse for us, as bad as it’s been for the native Africans all along.”

“The working man has always been a slave to the capitalists.  Even their own people lived like rats in the sewers of their great industrial revolution.  They created the first ghettoes in their own cities, with the rich infected with pleasure and luxury, the poor working like slaves from a young age.  It’s a pattern that the rich have continued through the ages.  It just takes different forms.”

Johnny-Bhai rested his right hand on his knee, tapping it repeatedly with his long fingers for emphasis while he spoke, his head nodding in agreement with his own words,

“You know, in India the Sidhars promised the Indian indentured labourers a lot! But when they got here they found that laws had been passed that made them little more than slaves.  They could be arrested for straying a distance of more than two miles from the residence of the farm-owner or businessman employing them.  And they used the Africans to arrest us. They know what they’re doing Solly! Even in India they’re busy dividing and conquering.  They are masters at oppression and take-over, of looting and pillaging, not of civilisation.”

Suleiman thirsted after knowledge. His busy, juggling mind was always looking to pick up a new concept to throw into its framework and test it, but he lacked the inputs he needed to develop it. He had spent time teaching himself to read, but his reading was laboured and slow. Johnny-Bhai seemed to have uncovered answers where Suleiman had spent much of his life struggling.  He was always occupied with questions but he rarely produced answers that satisfied him.  He lacked the knowledge of the world around him to be able to take a position on things. 

Until meeting Johnny-Bhai that day he’d been growing inside his own mind, drawing on his own life experience to make judgements about the world he observed around him.  He’d always looked inwards for answers and for strength.  He had to; there was no-one he could turn to.  Perhaps God had put Johnny-Bhai here so that he could satisfy his appetite for questions and help make some order of his jumbled up head.  He wondered if Johnny-Bhai had answers about what alternatives there were and he rather apathetically half-commented and questioned at the same time,

“Well Johnny-Bhai you know a lot! I respect that.  I’m a simple man and for me it feels like the world is a hard place that never changes.  Is there any other way that it will ever work?”

Johnny-Bhai shifted position on his stool, and turned to face Suleiman, his beer in his right hand and a stubby half-drawn cigarette in his left hand.

“That depends on how you look at the situation.  Power is not absolute and it isn’t really controlled through the barrel of a gun.  It is enforced through it but that often renders both powerless to some degree.”

Suleiman listened.  He felt as though all the neurons in his brain were alight at the same time.  He was experiencing the thrill of discovery, when ideas meet reality. He felt elevated, ironically enlightened while sat in the dark recesses of the bar.

“Their economies are built on the backs of the working man.  If the working man manages to unite then he has some power to negotiate changes.  If he doesn’t, he remains divided and conquered; a source of labour and a human being without representation in the world.”

A shadow of someone entering the bar on Johnny-Bhai’s right distracted him for a second, and Suleiman was quick to notice. Despite giving the impression of being somewhat distracted he was always keenly aware of his surroundings. He looked over his left shoulder and saw a short, stout man with a broad grin on his face sauntering in. His nickname was known to Suleiman – “Billy” Pather – and Suleiman quickly registered Johnny-Bhai’s discomfort. Billy was a well-known “sellout” who served as an informant to the police. It was wise to guard one’s words around him.

They surveyed the room, and spotting an empty metal trestle in the corner of the room, made their way over towards it. Suleiman placed an order for some snacks, so it would appear that they had moved to a more comfortable location where they could eat.

Once seated and assured of their privacy, Johnny-Bhai continued his Marxist exposition in Gujerati,

“If the working man can educate himself then he can represent himself.  That is why they deny us opportunities to get educated.  They know that our ignorance is their strength.  They make money from it.”

“So what can the working man do?” asked Suleiman.

“The fact is,” Johnny-Bhai laboured, “if we don’t work their economies don’t run!”

“But then we starve,” said Suleiman.

“Yes,” said Johnny-Bhai, “but we are starving most of the time.  When we stop working they start to starve too, and for the first time they feel vulnerable.  They need to know what kind of power can be demonstrated through mass action of the working classes.  This is what chokes them up; when their pockets are hit.”

He paused, anticipating more questions from Suleiman, but when none came, he continued.

“I don’t think fighting them is the solution.  It only gives them more reason to dig in.  If we fight then they say they are justified in their violence, even though theirs came first.  You see, their society – I told you – has a short memory, but ours is very long. Every generation of ours has suffered worse and worse under the British and we suffer it every day so we don’t forget that easily.”

“You see, what makes us different is simple. The poor man has little to lose but his integrity. A rich man has no need for integrity; he has his wealth, and will sacrifice his integrity to keep it. That’s all there is to it, and that is why we can win against them. Integrity is always worth more than gold. Gold is unreliable.”

Suleiman sat back in his chair.  His beer seemed to draw back into the metal trestle table upon which it rested; it had lunged into the metal surface when he’d drawn himself back into the chair.  He couldn’t really be that drunk, he thought.  Maybe it was that his mind was wobbling from having all these new ideas thrown at it.  It had been pushed beyond a limit, and was now in flux. He would probably not be able to sleep tonight.

Yet, it was only his skitterish eyes that betrayed the impact of this assault of information upon his mind.  The simplicity with which Johnny-Bhai had swept away a vast array of thoughts, ideas and questions that had plagued Suleiman through most of his life left him somewhat unhinged, but optimistic.  He had always been in ‘why’ mode.  Now it seemed there were answers out there.  The world was a big place, and he realised that looking inwards was not the way to grow his understanding of it. 

He knew what excellence was, it was achieved when he could pick up and throw a concept out with ease, intermediating it with a few others before catching it again safely, placed on the ground or launching it into the air again, into the mind-ether of his juggled-up head.  He would have to be able to learn from some of the people around him in order to reach that place.

They paused, and the silence between them grew until Suleiman continued.

“I haven’t met many men like you, you know; educated.  I learnt to read, but I didn’t finish school because I had to work.  I’ve worked hard, with my hands, for years but it doesn’t seem to get any easier bhai.”

“My father died young and my mother was forced to send me away.  Things were very difficult for her and she thought that it was better to send me away to a possibility of an orphan’s future here than the certainty of a beggars future in India.  I didn’t understand it when I was a child but now that I’m a father with two children I am being forced to make the same choice."

"... I fought in the war for this country and now I am being told that my family and I are not the same! I am Indian and they are coloured?  Because of their hair?” he spluttered; with his rage overflowing, his spittle had also welled up in his mouth, edged over the corners of his lips and was now making little flecks appear on the metal table in front of them.  It was as if a fountain had sprayed around Suleiman’s beer.

“What kind of man am I to allow this?”

He was pitiful now, and his pain manifested physically; little trembles developed into patterns and scattered across his cheeks – like spidered aneurisms – his face reddening more all the time. The look of concentration and fixation now long disappeared, the boy in him had begun to show through.  He was still a young man after all and he was churning in a well of pain, trapped in his own mind. 

He downed the dregs of his drink in a single gulp, stood up, and fondly extended his farewell greetings to Johnny Bhai,

“Thank you bhai, thank you, you bring me comfort.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to truly speak! I will see you again?” he said, leaning slightly backward again but now standing in his famous posture.

“I’m here most days after work,” he said, “I stop by before going home for supper.  It’s a chance to meet all the men and get an idea of what is going on.”

Their relationship would grow and Johnny-Bhai would be in Suleiman’s life all through the years into his second marriage with Mariam.  It was his meetings with Johnny-Bhai where Suleiman would have a few drinks and Mariam was averse to this.  She harboured no feelings of animosity against Johnny-Bhai, she just preferred that Suleiman wouldn’t drink.  Their friendship though, was never about alcohol.  It was about having someone to talk to.  It was something human.

To view the previous chapter of Fatima click here.

Fatima Chapter 9 |1962: Like Father Like Son

 

Between the 60s and the 80s, Shakes’ was the countries best black batsmen, on paper and in person.  Perhaps he could have been as good as Barry Richards, who’d been reared and nurtured on the best facilities available in the country and was coached by some of the best players in the world. 

Shake’s, however, was forced to leave Natal at six, in 1954 by order to live in Volksrust in Transvaal, where he had 3 teachers in his school.  His father Ahmed had been born in the Transvaal, and under the Immigration Act of 1905 which restricted Indians from moving between provinces he had to go back.  Ahmed had married Hanifa in Durban and had wished to stay there with her sister and his brother and their new family, but was forced to leave after a series of attempts to find a solution to their woes.  It was a cruel system, which wore heavily on them and there was a deep sadness when they were forced to pack up.

“Mahomed?”

“Yes … what is it?”

“There’s someone at the door!”

“Why do they always have to come so early, at 3 ‘o clock in the morning?  Don’t they know we have children?  They don’t have any feeling these people.  They just want our land, to chase us back to India so they can take everything we built.”

“Shush ma, it’s not the time now.”

“Tell them that!”

Shakes could hear shuffling, while his father got out of bed, found his slippers and made his way to the door.  He had a dugu behind the door in his right hand but placed it next to the wall, but within reach, after he’d looked out the window.  It was cold.  In these parts of Natal, in "cane country", the valleys held cold pockets which could freeze the water dripping out of a tap, forming a long icicle to the floor by morning.  He knew who it was.  They always came at this hour to make the point that you should feel harassed.  These were the herders, they herded people out of their homes and onto long journeys to faraway places, often away from family. 

“Hey Sammy!”

“Open up man! We can’t stand here all morning waiting for you.  I saw you in the window there!”

He turned to his partner and muttered under his breath,

“These focken coolies kry geen slaap met al daai Kerrie.  Hulle’s te besig om te kak!”

(“These coolies get no sleep with all that curry.  They’re too busy shitting themselves”)

Mahomed opened the door and felt the freshness of the morning air.  It was crisp and clean, marred only by the occasion of two policemen, dressed in suits, who looked like they’d been up drinking all night.  Their ties were loosened, and their pants had creased in various junctions, indicating long periods of sitting or lying down.  The one policeman had a smudge of red to the right of his collar along the side of his neck.  He looked quite happy with himself, and held a piece of paper in his hand, which he waved in Mahomeds face,

“You see this?  You know what it means?  It means you must get out of Natal!”

“You, and your brother!”

“It means you have to leave before the end of this month.  It’s official.  I don’t know why I have to keep coming here over and over again.  This is the last time! Next time we come here you will be under arrest … you hear me?”

He leaned forward now, peering at Mahomed through glazed eyes.  Mahomed reached out and wordlessly accepted the paper.  He took a look at it briefly and scanned over the page.

“It says here, that I have to vacate the province by 1955”

“Look here, don’t get funny with me eh?  I’m tired, I’m not here to put up with your shit.  All you coolies have a story.  What’s the story now?”

Mahomed passed the piece of paper back to him.  He looked at it, squinted for a while and looked over at his partner, “Hennie, can’t you fucking type man?  You put next year’s date on this thing!”

“What … oh shit, never mind, I’ll do it again!”

“Should I be expecting you tomorrow at this time again?”

“What?  Did you say something coolie?  I don’t remember asking you to speak! We’ll be back whenever the hell we want and you can be damn sure that you’re not going to be here in a month’s time!”

Mahomed asked them with a straight face, deadpan and person-less in its gaze.  He didn’t want to antagonise them.  It was best to play a simpleton role and say as little as possible.  He didn’t trust the whites anymore.  In the old days things had been okay, but now there was a new more sinister force at work.  They were feared and revered and expected it of everyone. 

“Could you perhaps drop off the next notice at my shop during the day?  I’m sure it would be easier for you too …”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that my wife is worried about disturbing the children this way - They have to go to school!”

“Your wife?” he looked at Mahomed mockingly.  “Tell that Mary to do as you say and not to try to get you into shit eh?  Our job is not under your command.  I’m not a patient man and you’ll find that out if we have to arrest you.  We will see you again when we are ready with your documents.  You should start packing soon – and your brother too!”

The policeman spoke as though he was the law.  In reality, this is exactly what was achieved by the repeated and systematic use of the police to enforce obscene political and economic agendas rather than to protect and serve society.  Many individuals became the face of the law and were actually criminals within the law. 

The Immigration Act had placed severe restraints on an Indian community which generally thrives on interaction, economic, social and cultural.  It was a way of trying to address ‘The Indian Question’, much like the hitherto ‘Native Question’.  White settlers were equally afraid of brown settlers as they were of natives.  This is why brown settlers are not the same, even though they are often viewed in that light.  While they may have no customary rights, they do bring a custom of their own, which takes root and finds a place amongst the already existing customs. 

In Volksrust, they settled next to each other again, brother and brother, sister and sister, and started up a new business.  They would live here until 1962, whereupon a change in legislation allowed them to move back to Natal.  They did so immediately.  It was more than just a will to go back to a place full of family; it was also to right the grievous wrong that was done against them as a family.  Shake’s had no formal instruction in cricket as a result until, at 14, he returned to Durban.

Here, he attended high school in the city, at Orient High.  The Orient High school playground lies behind Curries fountain, with only a wall raised high up at the back of the playground as an obstacle, overlooked by the back of a large stadium score board.  The classroom windows look out onto Greyville race-course and Sydenham road, at the foothills of which Orient High School found itself. 

At first, he found Natal Indians a bit strange.  Their accents were different and they spoke faster.  He learnt quickly about the school and was chosen for the first team while he was still sixteen.  There was no coach for the team like in most Indian schools, even over the next thirty years.  Shakes would spend hours reading and searching for cricketing books and advice.  He knew that knowledge was essential for success.  He’d learnt that from his father.

Later, he played for local cricket teams which were multi-racial.  He would always refuse to play for a team which only accepted one colour or race of player and not another, even if they were an Indians only team.  This mould had been cast by his fore-runner, Ali Parker.  Parker was already a legend, having played for a whole variety of brown teams; Indian, coloured and Malay.  He probably only never played for a black team because he didn’t look black enough, but he’d set the precedent for Shakes when it came to integrated sport.  Sporting symbols were powerful symbols for the public under apartheid and Shake’s walked in his steps, even taking over the coveted captaincy of Natal Province when Ali would retire.  Shakes was the provincial captain of Natal Schools and Orient high from 1966 to 1969, when Natal won the inter-provincial cup for the first time in its history.  There were the makings of a legend in him, but it was to be of a different kind.  The world would complicate his plans, his desires to play cricket would have to play second fiddle to his desire to be an equal. 

“Equality first!” would be his essential consistent message throughout his career. 

I guess he also had a certain bloody-mindedness about him which hung loosely upon his frame … which Fatima loved about him.  He was a man after her own heart.  He knew where to stand his ground and where to give way. 

He was elevated to great heights in the local Indian newspapers and community and was widely known among non-whites in three provinces.  However, the white press never even heard of him until 1972, until he attended a coaching session at Natal University, along with a few other players.  It was controversial to accept white help at this stage in the seventies, when the struggle had intensified and black consciousness and student uprisings had grown to an explosive state.  The Natal Mercury reported it as if they’d found diamonds in the ghetto.  It hid the fact that there were so many other players and so many ordinary cricket loving fans who’d thrown their support into the survival of the sport for their children and others.  He felt disappointed at how they’d represented it, even though they’d mentioned him favourably.  They were pulling the old trick; they wanted to isolate and elevate a few token black players as a ‘shining example of their own nobility’ towards these underclass races which so desperately required their charity. 

“Fucking goras,” he thought, “always the fucking same! They steal everything we fucking own and then we have to beg for scraps from them.  They’re thieves, nothing better, nothing less! I’m not their fucking coolie – they can get someone else to go play in their ‘tea-garden’ games with the natives for entertainment.  I’m a professional, I want to compete!”

His mind turned to an earlier meeting he’d had with some senior SACBOC members who’d told him with regret and urgency that there was ‘no future’ for him in South Africa.  The white fullahs didn’t want to budge.  For all the modernisation and nobility they claimed it was just another rue of theirs; something they could hold up as an example of a happy country to the world outside, which was still largely inactive in its response to Apartheid.  White South Africa was doing well and didn’t need Shakes – he would have to play abroad if he wanted to get anywhere.

In 1972 white South Africans were living large.  The economy was strong (at over 2 pounds to the rand) and they could afford anything and go anywhere in the world.  The by then forcibly removed minions had been forced out into the townships, Bantustans and homelands, limbless coloured and Indian suburbs and a Nazi styled ‘lebensraum’ had been accomplished with great gusto.  They were happy.  They were comfortable.  They had wars and fears, but they were rich enough to continue them with impunity.  Nothing could shake them from their arrogance.  Southern Africa was to be of their design. 

Ironically, they benefited out of the cold war by pretending to be a considerable anti-communist power.  In actual fact, the international community had armed a Nazi state on the tip of Africa and charged it with ‘bringing stability’ to the region.  Even if it was a Nazi outpost, to the west, white Nazi’s were still better than black communists.  The Nazis went ahead and created large social infrastructures and state organs to administrate them – actually a white socialism.  

Armed with deterministic vision they recreated the landscapes, skyscapes and peoplescapes of the country by the pen and the gun, while the western world turned its head away, preferring white capitalist Nazis over black skinned communists, even though those black-skinned communists represented the majority of their peoples at the time.  Much like Vietnam, their cold war ‘help’ was un-invited and resulted in a repressive State which presided over 1.5 million deaths and 4 million homeless in the Southern African region.  Apartheid was declared a ‘crime against humanity’ by the UN in 1973[1].  Everybody knew about it; it’s just that nobody could be bothered to make the effort to do anything substantial about it because,

“Hell, if we need Nazis to fight off the communists, then so be it!”

Without the red-fear that gripped the capitalist world Apartheid would probably not have existed.  It probably wouldn’t have got very far without a considerably well-armed state that was propped up and armed by countries that are foreign to the continent (like Israel is today). 

In 1976 all hell would break loose when black school children would be shot and slaughtered indiscriminately across the country, starting with the Soweto uprisings.  The apartheid government would mow down the children in Soweto like skittles, and it seemed like a game to them; firing indiscriminately into crowds and groups of people where-ever they saw fit.  They would drag whole school loads of children off to jail and regularly shot and killed children with live ammunition, claiming (very much like Israeli soldiers do) that ‘stones and rocks’ were being thrown at them.  A generation of criminalised children developed a deep hatred, along with their parents and the communities, for the police and the army.  The hate already ran so deep that communities often preferred their own internal forms of vigilante policing to the police itself.  This was also responsible for the rise of many gangs and protection rackets in the communities accompanied by the spread of weapons, gambling, black-market goods and alcohol and drugs, as various groups, whether gangs, families or rings of businessmen took up the challenge of control and supply. 

Apartheid was not just enforced by the Afrikaner; it was endorsed by the west in its double language of duplicitous diplomacy.  Everybody wanted South African gold, diamonds, fruit, wine, maize, stock, minerals, etc.  Why sully their relationships over another ‘African’ problem?  In a sense it was true.  The Afrikaners were settlers with no traceable origin and place to return to and were thus Africans – they had nowhere to go! It was thus just another African dictatorship which they had to deal with! They happened to be white and capitalist enough – that made it easier.  The Afrikaner, originally a farmer, a boer; a person who farmed the earth and lived by knowing its ways, would now be exposed to the onslaught of the American capitalist dream, without even a real democracy.

“Yelll; this was nice!”

But it would ruin them too, creating generations of racist ignorant newly elevated white working class yobs who would grow further and further from their origins, creating myths and legends of their origins already having initially stolen the patois language of slaves and calling it their own to start with.  The first written Afrikaans is written in Arabic script, by Malay craftsmen, artisans or slaves.  The Afrikaners had hijacked a language in the quest for a valid sense of nationalism and used it to define themselves.  The fact that millions of coloured people also spoke Afrikaans didn’t cross their minds in any significant way.  They were ‘mixed’, but if you were light enough and had straight hair then you could qualify as white - it was a programme of genetic correction.  This would tear coloured families apart, leaving some parts stranded in ghettoes and prisons and some parts or individuals elevated to ‘white’ status.  White families too would hide and disguise their mixed looking children, developing deep psychologies of denial, entrenching further the social lie in their minds further; that being white was a culture and not just a colour. 

In 1972, Shakes would leave South Africa to England.  His overseas fair was funded by a game played in support of his talent by team-mates and adversaries alike.  Even though he played for Natal, the Transvaal Cricket Board organised the fund-raising event in his honour.  Non-white players were easily united into a cause.  Their everyday lives gave them a deep empathy for players trapped within this everyday system of robbery.  They were desperate to prove to the world that they shouldn’t be ignored, that they weren’t worthless, that only the South African government hid them from view and that ultimately it hid all of us from view.  It was easy to unite when the enemy was so clear.  It was not without penalty though, and Shakes would learn that these attitudes weren’t only confined to South Africa.  In England, although employed as a club professional he would live through the unfamiliar cold and rain in a leaky caravan until the manager took pity on him and took him into his home.  The conditions were unfamiliar but he still played well, averaging 30 and making 720 runs that season.  He was hard to hold down, even under difficult conditions. 

His contract wasn’t renewed though, and after facing bowling from the groundsmen (an intentional slight) at Lancashire tryouts he could see that there was little hope for him.  He had lived in Natal and understood the English manner of humiliating you without direct comment.  He felt humiliated, and he left, as they wished.  With him went the dreams and hopes of a child, a man and a community of well-wishers who’d come to adore and believe in him. 

When Fatima had told him she was pregnant there was a moment of joy in him.  He knew that now there were only two people who needed him for his real person, his wife and the baby in her womb. 

“I can’t feed them with cricket,” he thought, sitting on the plane home from England. 

Even in the plane cabin he felt the claustrophobic atmosphere that a mixed group of South Africans always had.  They were all more or less silent, nobody wanted to hear what each other really had to say.  Banal conversations, alluding to anything other than politics filled up the plane in a low background murmur.  Only a loud Zulu voice could be heard laughing away somewhere.  Looks of disdain passed from the white female passengers to each other.  They curled their noses up as if they expected to smell him in his voice.

***First posted on 31 July 2016. Thereafter lightly edited.

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[1] 14 December 1973 The General Assembly declared that the South African regime has "no right to represent the people of South Africa" and that the liberation movements recognised by the OAU are "the authentic representatives of the overwhelming majority of the South African people".  [Resolution 3151 G (XXVIII)]


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Fatima Chapter 8 |1974: Shakes the Samurai

In those days lives, families and customs were differently crafted in society, and while they were doing the same things we do now, they did them differently.  Each generation is bound to this cycle.  The Chinese say that it is tradition to break tradition.  The forms of tradition and ritual are complex entities, they are weaved into collective and individual psyches, actions, reactions, processes and objects that surround us, driving us one way or another towards the four corners of our cages.  Members of south African prison gangs in this country call their world ‘die vier hoeke’ and we have similarly metaphoric corners that manufacture the various shapes and shadows of our experiences, while the themes remain the same; love, betrayal, status, jealousy, revenge, slavery, domination, and occasional redemption.   . 

Shakes was born into a large family, who were upper caste orthodox Muslims who had come to South Africa as ‘passenger Indians’.  These were Indians who had paid their own fare to South Africa and had emigrated specifically to start up businesses that could reap the benefits of a large newly settled population of indentured labourers from India, and the opportunities that a new land teeming with resources and activities afforded. 

His father presided over a large extended family and they all lived on the same street on the North Coast of Natal, in sugar cane country.  There were many brothers and sisters, and while little quarrels and differences occurred, they were part of everyday life and there was a middle-class, Victorian dignity about how conflicts were handled.  His father was a busy but kind and gentle man who handled the extended family affairs and was the residing patriarch of the family.  All decisions were passed through him, and he was the leader amongst the group of elders in the family.  He was an excellent role model to those around him and took a personal interest in each and every family member.  He was slow to disapprove and the children of the family loved him dearly while still holding a deep respect for him, which they learnt from the adults around them.

His mother was the love of his life.  She adored him as her youngest and he grew up in her company as a little boy always doted upon and loved by her.  He would sit on her lap as she cleaned dahl, beans or shelled peas on long childhood afternoons.  She was a saint to him; a simple woman with a graceful manner about her, never angering easily or prone to self-pity.  She accepted the path that life opened up for her with a grace and ease that few manage and was the image of charity, never acquiring more than she needed.  She always cleaned out her closet of an old item whenever a new item was acquired for her, leaving her closet always a reflection of her mind, uncluttered by owing too much excess and the proliferation of choice.  She lived simply, ate simply, loved simply and was imbued with a deep wisdom of things because she always stayed focussed on what was most important.  Maybe it was this quality that made Shakes such a good cricketer and batsmen in particular; the ability to stay calm and keep focussed on the task at hand is something he learnt by an osmosis of a kind, just from being around her so much. 

It left him with a kind of essential zen in his nature and this gave him a regal bearing.  It was this nature that most women found irresistible.  He was a calm, highly attractive guy who was a huge success and didn’t flaunt it around.  He treated everyone with the same good natured interest, and while he wasn’t a conversation maker he was always sincere in his interactions.  Sometimes he joked, and one would get a glimpse of the lightness in his mind and the softness of his nature.  It was the seventies and he was a player of sorts, whose philandering was as normal a role to play as his un-touted status as a sportsman.  He was a jock, but not a braggart, and this drew women to him in flocks and droves.  His good looks and high-caste notwithstanding, he was the model fantasy for a new generation of women both in South Africa and abroad.  South African Indian women viewed him as a Bollywood movie star is, lauded and cheered.  It did not sit comfortably with his modest inner nature, but he reaped the rewards of it anyway.  He was a samurai on the field and with women.  His cricket bat and his dick were instruments of desire where he found the deeper parts of himself, explored his creative impulses fully and became more known to himself through spontaneous invention through form.  He loved women; they gave him the comfort of his mother and eased the loneliness of travel, new cities and new faces.

There were many changes occurring in South Africa.  Forced removal had already taken place and the group areas act had already done a good job of separating races from each other physically, psychologically and spiritually. 

The churches had split, with the right wing Nederlandse Gereformeerde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church) taking the role of an active agent of apartheid, selling it as a spiritually inspired dream, and the Anglican and Catholic churches on the left, staying true to their original parishes of a mix of black and white citizens.  To the right wing NG Kerk, the Afrikaners were like the Jews, Gods chosen people in Africa who had once made a covenant with God.  The discourse in the other churches was too liberal, the Catholic Church even had communist bishops.  The bishop of Rio, Dom Helder Camara had once said, 

“When I feed the poor they call me a saint, when I ask why the poor are starving they call me a communist.” 

It was the protestant churches that flourished under apartheid however, as they had played an active evangelical role in poorer communities which were isolated from main-stream South Africa and the economy.  These communities had a deep need for knowledge of their place in the world, and in a variety of ways the churches helped people escape the indignity of being brown.  If one was a Christian, one was somehow more acceptable in mainstream society, even though you were still a second class citizen you could still be ‘trusted’. 

Shakes was a Muslim raised in a family where spiritual virtue was paramount.  He didn’t flaunt his spirituality but it was always a strong part of who he was.  He learnt religion from his mother and father.  In Islam, the mothers are the main spiritual teachers to boys and girls.  There is thus a strong maternal influence in the essential spirituality and the love of God and one’s own mother are often intricately interwoven.  A betrayal to God is like a betrayal to one’s mother and vice versa.  The Koran teaches;

“Heaven lies beneath your mothers feet …”

Thus, wherever he was he ensured that his religious obligations as a Muslim were fulfilled through the noon prayer every Friday.  When his mother would die, much later in his life, this would become a deeper way of connecting with her again and he would pray more often.  His prayers ensured his mothers spirit would rest easily, and was his way of showing her his love, despite his greater knowledge of the limitations of a purely spiritual view on the world.  In his world, the secular and spiritual worlds had different junctions and intersections from others but he never missed Friday noon prayers at a Mosque.  To miss three Fridays was to denounce one’s membership to Islam and this was something he could never do, despite his knowledge of different ways of existence.  Even when his travels took him abroad, he found a way to observe this basic rite of piety.

Shakes would break with tradition in a number of ways though.  The first would be when he travelled abroad to play county cricket as a professional in England, refusing to bow to the South African race restrictions on sport that were encoded in law by Dr Verwoerd.  The second would be to marry a woman of lower caste than himself, who was also from a family much poorer than his own.  In Indian tradition, the girls’ family pays for the wedding. 

Being low caste but rich still ensured an acceptability of a kind amongst the higher castes here in South Africa, but a low caste person who was poor was still largely an ‘untouchable’, even amongst Muslims.  In the Muslim Indian community caste was still rife and the lower castes were generically termed ‘Heddroos’ (pronounced quickly as ‘hair-throoze’).  They were Urdu speaking Muslims who had originated from Hyderabad.  The ‘Soorties’ were the upper caste Gujarati speaking Muslims.  They had originated from Gujarat and had mainly arrived in South Africa as ‘passenger Indians’ and had started up their own businesses and bought their own land. 

It was fortunate that Fatima was both Muslim and had Gujarati speaking origins.  It was thanks to their joint faith, Islam, that he was able to bend and break some of the old Indian traditions.  He was a Muslim, and he maintained, was required only to marry another Muslim.  After all, all were equal in Islam.  This ensured the support of his family in his decision, and to his credit, it was their respect for him and not just his achievements that enabled him to get away with this unorthodox arrangement.

The one tradition he kept though, would create a number of unorthodox arrangements throughout his life.  His later philandering during marriage, although adequately discreet, would have a toll on his family that he would never envisage.

In England, there were many girls who took to him quickly, and at the end of the sixties it was still a sexually vibrant environment where sex was regarded as a normal part of dating and interacting with a potential partner.  His sword was always out for action in those days, and it was hard to retreat from battle, even after marriage.  His instincts were still alive, having been cultivated in an environment where the psychology of casual sex and free love were encouraged.  He found it hard to separate this part of himself from the person he would be required to be when married.  Indeed,

“Even Islam acknowledges that a man can have more than one wife.  Why is that?” he thought.

His first trip to the UK had come during his courtship with Fatima.  She had been patient, still at school, awaiting the return of her great love with yearning.  She wrote him regularly and it fed a secret part of him while he was away.  He knew that he didn’t love her less because he had relations with other women as well.  She knew that he probably enjoyed the attention of other women but never entertained herself with the tortuous thought that he may find someone else.  Whenever she received a letter from him she would burst with joy at the slightest affections he wrote down.  Every declaration of love to her and allusions to their future married life together would restore her to her centre, making her stable and secure in his love.  As long as he loved her, she could take on the world – he would be her house built on rock.  He would be the four corners of her existence, providing her with meaning to her boundaries and enduring, constant love and support.  Unfortunately, he didn’t think that being faithful was necessary.  It is understandable why.

By the time he’d laid eyes on her he’d already been abroad and lived in the UK.  This was during the late 60s and he’d been thoroughly exposed to the principles of free love and casual relationships.  It was a changing world ideology and he’d been exposed to it at every level and felt a part of the socio-political winds of change that were sweeping the first world.  He knew that being a man or a woman in this society would mean something different in future, and he strayed from the example set for him by his own parents.  His father and his uncle had married two sisters.  It had been an arranged marriage, and the closeness of each of the siblings to each other guaranteed that they would always be there for each other, and they were to the very end of their days inseparable from each other as a family.  It was their tandem marriage that ensured the survival of the extended family unit, and formed the hub around which the other families revolved.  They brought everyone together.  Much later, when the older generation had begun to die out the extended family would become fragmented and while they were not completely apart, were never really together as they were in the old days. 

Co-location is the key to the success of extended family hierarchies.  When this was later savaged by the various apartheid relocations and removal schemes these family structures fell apart, and with them, their hierarchies and influence over each other decreased.  It increased a feeling of having to be sustainable within ones nuclear family units, rather than depend too greatly upon the extended network.  It wasn’t there every day in your face to remind you of its function in a real and meaningful way.  After all, clans and tribes are like any animal community, they stay together in order to reaffirm collectivist bonds and instincts.  Even sports teams are the same.  Face to face contact is important to maintain normal human relations and intuitions.  Shakes would find himself growing older in a world where his responsibilities were rapidly increasing, family bonds weakening and his cricketing career indelibly tied to the anti-apartheid struggle of the time with all its dilemmas, conflicts, surprises and forgotten promises.  The parts of the family that had managed to remain together would have to become a more dominant priority in his life.  The moment Nadia had been born he had ended his cricketing career and retired from professional sport.  

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