“Lieutenant,” said Zondi, “with respect, there is white man’s rubbish, and there is black man’s rubbish – and the poorer the black man, the bigger is the difference. A boiler boy, boss, is a very poor man indeed.”
– James McClure, The Song Dog, 1991, page 211
Few countries show greater contrasts than South Africa, and with all due respect to J. M. Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer, perhaps no writer better captured that environment than James McClure, via his fantastic mysteries featuring the detective duo of Afrikaner Tromp Kramer and Zulu Mickey Zondi, in Trekkersburg (a thinly fictionalized Pietermaritzburg).
Kenya, Nairobi, Kibera, shoes for sale
Pietermaritzburg it was where Mohandas K. Gandhi, Esquire, was thrown off the train as a bloody kaffir, and essayists have seen in Kramer and Zondi’s stories (among them The Steam Pig, The Caterpillar Cop, The Gooseberry Fool, and The Blood of an Englishman) a passionate indictment of apartheid. (And it’s true that with apartheid’s end, so ended McClure’s series, but that might also have been due to his rising journalistic success in England, where he rose to editor of the weekly Oxford Times.) To me they were and are simply beautifully crafted windows into tribalism and deep poverty in a developing nation.
South Africa, Robertson, self-built rural home
South Africa is a nation of tribes: even the newest visitor sooner discovers the Anglo, Afrikaans, Indian, Xhosa and Zulu, to say nothing of the many others. When I finally got to South Africa, and by now I’ve been five or six times, striking to me is always how everybody immediately knows each other’s tribe. Every facet of South African life is influenced by tribalism. Tribal identification (and I include the English and the Afrikaners as examples) is reflected in language, culture, business configuration, neighborhoods, government, and housing.
Kenya, Nairobi, Mavoko, “feel at home”
Zondi’s quote, so matter-of-fact, reflects not racism per se, but economic stratification (which in South Africa is and always has been racial). There is rich country rubbish, and poor country rubbish. In any very poor country, you see people using and wearing and consuming rich-country rubbish. (Eighties-vintage computers wind up in African or Asian or South American classrooms.)
Kenya, Nairobi, Kibera, electronics parts for sale
I came upon McClure’s work in 1985, long before AHI was even a glimmer of an idea, and it whetted my appetite for South Africa. Since then I’ve found my way to Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, and even Pietermaritzburg, fallen hopelessly in love with the country, its people, and the wondrous experiment they started in 1994, and done small bits here and there to help improve South African housing affordability.
South Africa, Boshoek, in a police station
The next time you see a photo from a developing nation, take a look at the people’s baseball caps, tee-shirts, logos and slogans: developed world castoffs are developing nation consumer goods.
Kenya, Nairobi, Mavoko, slum kids
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