Complicit [’67 ��" ’75]

 

Apartheid’s a funny word isn’t it?

Not ha-ha funny, but funny.

I didn’t know what it meant.

I just fancied somewhere sunny.

A land that promised milk and honey.

 

All grown up, with the mind of a child,

I chose to live as a collaborator.

It was oh so simple.

10 quid I think it cost me.

I was one in a million,

Seeking my fortune

On streets built from gold.

One of a million collaborators,

Who’d never heard of Mandela,

Nelson or Winnie.

Robben Island could have been on the Moon.

No-one talked of Sharpeville,

Even those who knew.

It was ancient history,

Just something buried in the past.

No need to salve our conscience.

 

We were outnumbered 5 to 1,

But someone had to take care

Of the uneducated masses.

Why were they uneducated, I wondered?

We paid our servants well (well, relatively well).

Peanuts some said, a pittance.

Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.

We gave them holidays (well, weekends off),

Unpaid naturally.

When we spoke of them,

They were ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ or ‘Kaffir’

But it was never said to their face.

When we spoke to them,

They were “Flora” or “Jacob”.

They were hard work.

Do this; do that,

It was exhausting,

Always having to tell them what to do.

We lived in style

A style that, as kids,

We could have only dreamed of.

We had our place in the sun.

We had no thought for the suppressed,

Those of different shades,

The Non-Whites; the Coloureds.

The Xhosa and the Zulu.

They had their very own homelands,

Bantustans they were called.

They were everywhere, all over the place.

Not in my back-yard though.

What’s a few hundred miles between friends?

We were never too sure

Where the maid or the gardener lived.

Few of us ever asked.

Few of us wanted to know.

Some, we heard, lived in hostels,

A sort of home away from home.

 

What brought me to this Godless place?

A place overrun with Christians,

Some more Christian than others.

What of the Utopia I was promised?

I doubt Jesus envisioned

Life lived in this manner.

We had our churches,

‘Whites Only’ of course.

The non-whites had their beliefs

But practiced them out in the bundu.

Sin was frowned upon on Sundays,                  

And discouraged the rest of the week.

 

We were well protected.

That nice Mr Vorster and his boys

Gave us all the security we could wish for,

And a bit more.

All the colours of the rainbow,

Shielded from the outsiders.

The world that didn’t understand.

We all had our individual identity,

And the freedom to be ourselves.

What more could anyone wish for?

 

I wish I could say I saw the light,

But that would be too easy.

I acknowledge my complicity.

I played the white man for far too long.

I left behind a million, and more,

Living in blissful ignorance,

Flourishing in the darkness,

Safely cocooned.

 

Of course the bubble burst,      

But life was good for a while.

Not for everyone of course.

Now the whole world knows Mandela,

Nelson and Winnie,

And we are reconciled.

Some, more so than others.

 

I knew nothing!

In my adolescence

I should have been more aware,

But ignorance is no defence.