Born a Crime
——the growth of a colored boy under apartheid
Run!
Late at night, a little boy was running followed by a black woman. They were running fast, like a running athlete sprints at the end of a run, like the gazelle runs from the lion. Driven by an overwhelming urge to escape, they spared no efforts to run. Once they eventually got rid of the danger, the pain of scratches kicked in.
“Well, at least we’re safe, thank God.”
“No, Mom! This was not thanks to God! You should have listened to God when he told us to stay at home when the car wouldn’t start, because clearly the Devil tricked us into coming out tonight.”
“No, Trevor! That’s not how the Devil works. This is part of God’s plan, and if he wanted us here then he had a reason...”
“Look, Mom. I know you love Jesus, but maybe next week you could ask him to meet us at our house. Because this really wasn’t a fun night.”
The mother broke out in a huge smile and the little boy burst into laughter, too. They stood there, arms and legs covered in blood and dirt, laughing together through the ache.
The boy is our protagonist, and at the same time, the author himself. He was born in South Africa. To be specifically, he is a light-skinned boy. It seems there is no need to stress out this point, for the normalization of people of mixed blood today. However, given the “Immorality Act” issued by South Africa in 1927, carnal intercourse between Europeans and natives was considered illegal and once the one was found guilty, he or she would be imprisoned. The boy’s mother is a native, pure black woman, while the father is a Swiss. Therefore, the born of this boy is a crime, which gives the name of the book. I later looked up the specific birthday of the author, who was born in 1984, which means after 57 years, when ideologies of other countries had undergone a sea change, the act was still effective in South Africa.
His father is not on his birth certificate. He was neither allowed to call “daddy” or “mom” in the public place nor walk after his parents too close for fear that the intimate relationship may raise too many questions. He spared most of his childhood in Soweto, a government-sanctioned ghetto for black South Africans, where the identity as a laborer was the only reason to be permitted to live there. The city was rife with insurrection and turbulence. But it was easy for military to suppress and lock the people because there were only two roads in and out. Gunshots and screams were the unique symphony of this city while tear gas created hazy, dreamy stage effect.
Needless to say, white people by no means would stay at that district. The places like Soweto were for white authority to keep the black under control. Namely, it was the purpose of a malicious system—apartheid, a means to cement white supremacy and extend racial separation.
At that time, although there were colored people (neither black or white, like the boy), black people, white people and Indian people in South Africa, all of them were classified into two types, whites and nonwhites. On top of that, more than 87 percent of South Africa’s land was allocated for the white minority who accounted for around 20 percent of the population. White areas and nonwhite areas were separated by buffer zones of empty land. The boundary between those areas was so cruel that it carved the land up—one was the paradise, peaceful and wealthy; the other was the hell, dark and tortured. Furthermore, to reinforce the segregation of the races and prevent blacks from encroaching on white areas, nonwhites were required to carry documents as permits for the presence in restricted areas.
What gave me pause to think was that, as it was said in the book, apartheid was “genius”. Black South Africans vastly outnumbered whites. So it is not a huge leap to think of the overwhelming power of the majority. So long as the black converged, the situation would be likely to be turned upside down. However, apartheid made it a different case. The “genius” lied in the success to drive the majority to turn on each other. As the author said: “You separate people into groups and make them hate one another so you can run them all.”
Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Sotho, Venda, Ndebele, Tsonga, Pedi were the different tribes with different languages in South Africa. Long before apartheid, they clashed against each other. When the white authority came to power, they systematically classified them into an assortment of subgroups. Then the groups were given different levels of rights and privileges. Thereby, they kept rivalries and even ignored the power of gathering together, targeting their common rivalry. It struck me that the conspiracy is somewhat similar to an ancient Chinese story that a sandpiper and a mussel were at a deadlock by attacking each while a fisherman beside harvested them all—the third party benefits from the tussle.
Moreover, the Bantus schools built by government only taught knowledge about agriculture to the black. In other words, they taught them how to be a professional slave. A man without knowledge is a helpless man who lacks support and motivation. Under apartheid, it makes sense that black people without equal education were not supposed to break the shackles.
The boy’s mother, however, is an exception. Accept the misery destiny? Walk along the rocky road paved by others? Obey the rules willingly? For her, it was not the case. She was a rebel, who moved from Soweto to an area only for whites and violated the law by giving birth to the boy. As the author said: “She refused to be bound by ridiculous ideas of what black people couldn’t or shouldn’t do.”
As we know, Mandela led the black people to freedom. He is great. But from my perspective, the mother is great too. She is a piece of billowy dark clouds before a heavy rainstorm, a spark before it turns into a big fire. She may be anonymous in that great anti-apartheid campaign, though.
After apartheid officially ended, sad to say, the sharp division with the white and black still existed. While the whites indulged in the swimming pool in their fancy houses, the black boys from ghettos had to be questioned frequently by the police when they got on the freeway. The detrimental effects perpetuates itself through inequalities in treatment and resources. The remaining influence of apartheid, the policy that had deeply ingrained in the people of South Africa, is so powerful that so far, it still cannot be wiped out.
When I searched supplement information about this topic, an anti-apartheid song named “gimme hope jo'anna” caught my eyes. My preconception about the song was that this could be a intensely sad song. But after listening it, I found that with lively drum beat and catchy lyrics, it could sound like a happy song if the listener doesn’t have any clue about the background. I would like to share the lyrics:
Well Jo'anna she runs a country
She runs in Durban and the Transvaal
She makes a few of her people happy, oh
She don't care about the rest at all
She's got a system they call apartheid
It keeps a brother in a subjection
But maybe pressure will make Jo'anna see
How everybody could a live as one
......
The mother and the boy, was running at late night. What were they escaping from? In fact, on their way back to home in a minibus, a Zulu driver threatened the mother after hearing her speaking in Xhosa and finding out that her son was mixed. Thereby, they had to jump out of the bus and escape.
Run. Run. Run. Were they only running from the angry bus driver? That is not true. They were running from discrimination, poverty, and suppression. Run. Run. Run. At this dangerous night, running was the only way to survive.
Certainly, a few hours later, we can see the sunrise.
