NF (1957) Going Home Read Online Free

Government would not let me in and why.
    He looked at me long and earnestly. ‘Never seen a commie before,’ he said.
    ‘There used to be plenty in South Africa before it was illegal.’
    ‘Never heard of that. Well, look then, tell me, what is it about?’
    ‘In South Africa, what is important now is that we are against racial inequality.’
    His face fell; he was a small boy. ‘Now look, man, hell! I don’t see that.’
    ‘Sooner or later you’ll have to.’
    ‘But they’re nothing but children, man! You must know that. Look how they live! It makes me just about sick to go into one of their locations. Besides, I don’t like their colour, I just don’t like it.’
    He paused, very serious, wrestling with himself. ‘You think I’ve just been brought up to be like that?’
    ‘Yes, I do.’
    ‘It’s no good, I don’t see it. Now look here’—and he turned earnestly towards me—‘would you let a black man marry your daughter?’
    ‘If my daughter wanted it.’
    He slowly went a dark red. ‘I don’t like to hear a woman talk like that. I just don’t like it.’ A pause. ‘Then I can see why they didn’t let you in, man. Women shouldn’t go around saying things like that. No, you mustn’t talk like that, I don’t like to hear it.’ His face slowly went back to normal. Then he said: ‘But I’ve enjoyed talking. I always want to know about these things. I’ve never been out of South Africa before. If I can leave my little pigeons and get up to the Copper Belt and earn some money, then I want to come to England. They say that Kaffirs are just like everybody else there?’
    ‘Just like everybody else.’
    ‘I don’t think I should like to see that. It wouldn’t seem right to me. But hell, man, that means they can go with the women? Sorry, talking like this, but it’s not personal. But you can’t have them going with the women. If I had a sister, I wouldn’t like…’
    This is the stock South African conversation; and it goes on just as if nothing had happened. But what is happening is that the poorer of the white people are becoming more and more like the poorer of the Africans.
     
    In the Lusaka airport there was a five-hour wait for the connection south to Salisbury.
    Sitting in the little garden were a group of white people, toasting themselves in the sun, carefully accumulating pigment under their precious white skins.
    The mystiques of sun-tanning are becoming as complicated and irrational as those of food and sex. What could be odderthan to see people whose very existence depends on their paleness of skin deliberately darkening themselves on the preserved ‘white’ beaches of the coasts, or on the banks of ‘white’ swimming baths? But in a country where anyone who works in the open must become dark-skinned, and where it is impossible to distinguish between deep sunburn and the skin of a coloured person, one acquires a mysterious sixth sense that tells one immediately if a person is ‘white’ or not.
    Having been in Britain for so long, I had lost this sense; and, sitting in a café in Bulawayo, I was pleased to see a group of people come in who had dark brown skins. The spirit of Partnership, I thought, was really relaxing the colour bar. A few minutes later a man came in who I thought was indistinguishable from those already sitting there. He went to sit at a table by himself. At once the woman behind the counter came over and said: ‘You know you are not allowed to come in here.’ He got up and went out without a word. It seemed that the first group were Italians.
     
    In 1949, on the boat coming to Britain, where most of the passengers were elderly ladies playing bridge and knitting, were two attractive young women. They did not mix with the rest at all, were spoken of as ‘Durban society girls’. One was a tall, slim, pale creature with smooth, dark hair and intelligent, dark eyes kept deliberately languid. The other was a plump little yellow-head, not pretty, but as it