Blanche La Guma dedicated her life to ending apartheid in South Africa though her various roles as a professional nurse, wife, mother, and underground Communist activist. She is a former deputy representative of The African National Congress. Martin Klammer is a professor of Africana Studies at Luther College. He lives in Decorah, Iowa.

In the Dark with My Dress on Fire

My Life in Cape Town, London, Havana and Home Again

By Blanche La Guma, Martin Klammer

Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd

Copyright © 2010 Blanche La Guma and Martin Klammer
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77009-922-7
CHAPTER 1

‘We were poor, but we never felt poor’

I was born at home in the early hours of the morning of 30 November 1927 in Athlone, about seven miles as the crow flies from the centre of Cape Town. I arrived two months prematurely – a tiny ‘shoebox baby’. I was the fifth and last child, one of two girls in the family of Peter and Sophia Herman.

At first my mother didn’t even know she was in labour. After my birth the doctor who delivered me, Charles Shapiro, advised my mother to keep me warm. I was fed with a pipette, a thin tube attached to a small bottle slightly tilted to allow the milk to flow gently into my throat while my mother held me. Babies as small and weak as I was often died soon after birth. Yet I wasn’t placed in an incubator or sent to hospital for special treatment. The doctor must have thought it wasn’t worth the effort, since ambulance and hospital services would have been poor in Athlone, a suburb that was itself in its infancy.

Dr Shapiro did his best under the circumstances. He was the first doctor in Athlone, a kind and understanding Jewish man fulfilling an important humanitarian role for very poor people. When patients couldn’t pay he didn’t go after them, nor did he turn them down when they called on him again. My mother, in fact, was one of those who needed a long time to settle their bills.

* * *

Our family was of mixed ancestry. On my father’s side the family name was Hermann, later anglicised to Herman. My mother’s surname, Mocke, was Dutch. But behind the German and Dutch on both sides there is some degree of Khoisan in us, and so we are of mixed race. In South African racial terminology we are ‘coloured’. To use that term is not to be racist, as in the days of apartheid when the entire system was built on racial classifications. I’m just facing the truth of who I am and where my family comes from.

Neither of my parents was Capetonian by birth. My mother, Sophia Elizabeth, was born in Kimberley in 1893, the youngest of five girls. Her father, Jacobus (Koos) Mocke, was of such fair complexion that he could pass for white. He even managed to slip into Victoria College, now Stellenbosch University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree. He was a carpenter and cabinet-maker, a very religious man who made church pulpits among other things. Before that he’d been a diamond prospector in Kimberley in the late 1800s, having trekked with my grandmother, Elizabeth Wales, from Beaufort West to Kimberley by oxwagon. When he died in 1906, my mother went to Johannesburg to live with one older sister and then another. Having both parents die when she was young must have been difficult, and living with a sister is not the same as growing up with a parent. In 1912 when she was 19, my mother fell pregnant and gave birth out of wedlock to my eldest brother, Herbert.

My father, Peter Cornelius Herman, was born in 1888 in Port Elizabeth, the seventh of ten children. He grew up in a harsh household ruled by his father, a minister in the Congregational Church. I never met the man, but from what my father said he sounded like a horrible chap, one of those authoritarian preachers whose children must do as they say. He walked with his Bible in front while his wife and children came tripping along behind. He was selfish and cruel, and he treated my father terribly. When my father was 12 or 13 a foal disappeared from among the many horses his father owned. To discipline my father whom he accused of losing the foal, my grandfather tied him down with his head between his legs – not just for an afternoon but for three days. As a result my father developed a deformity for the rest of his life. His back was bent so badly that a hump formed between his shoulders. His spinal column never straightened out and he always leaned forward a bit.

Though my father completed only four or five years of school, he could read and write and do sums. After the gold mines opened in Johannesburg, his family moved there and he got a job in Robinson Deep, one of the deepest mines in South Africa. Few people know that coloured men as well as blacks worked on the mines. Later, just before the First World War, my father took work on the farms in South West Africa (now Namibia) under the colonial Germans, who were very harsh. At one point he worked there with Jimmy La Guma, Alex’s father.

My father met my mother in Johannesburg, in what circumstances I never knew. My mother had Herbert by that time and needed support, which my father was happy to provide, though his family treated her terribly. Because she had a child out of wedlock, they didn’t think she was good enough for him – or for them. When he took her to meet them, they didn’t even want to know her. And they certainly didn’t want Herbert’s surname to change from Mocke to Herman.

My father felt differently. He was extremely fond of my mother. From the first he treated Herbert as if he were his own child, taking him under his wing and giving him his surname. In fact, I think it was partly because Dad’s family didn’t approve of his marrying Mother that they left Jo’burg and came to Cape Town, where they were married in 1915 in St Mary’s Anglican Church, Woodstock. He was 27, she was 22, and Herbert was 3.

They never told Herbert he was illegitimate. Everything was fine until much later when Herbert was grown up and ran into Auntie Marie on the street. She was a real nasty bit of work. I always thought of her as ‘the Vixen’. She didn’t visit us much, but when she did it was only to see my father. She’d ignore my mother, refusing even to acknowledge when my mother spoke. Auntie Marie also made nasty comments like, ‘Are all these children Peter’s?’ Eventually my father asked her not to come around anymore, though she persisted. When Herbert met up with her, Auntie Marie asked, ‘Which name do you go under?’ He didn’t know he was illegitimate, so he said his name of course was Herbert Herman. She told him no, it wasn’t. Then the whole thing came out. But my parents were always good to Herbert.

* * *

My parents came looking for a better life in Cape Town where job opportunities for people of colour had always been slightly better than elsewhere. They lived in District Six in Sheppard Street, where my other siblings were born: an older sister, Ella, and older brothers Jim and George. I know that many people today who were forcibly removed from District Six in the 1960s and 1970s have fond memories of living there, but District Six in the 1920s and even later was frankly a slum which many people, including my parents, tried to leave. Nonetheless, the community spirit in District Six was always strong: people had a sense of belonging.

In the mid-1920s my parents moved to the Gleemoor area of Athlone where I was born. (My brothers, all born in District Six, called me ‘Vlak aap’ – Cape Flats little ape.) The city of Cape Town had begun a home ownership programme in Athlone to encourage coloured people to move out of the city into newly planned areas on the Cape Flats. It was really a segregation scheme disguised as a housing opportunity. I appreciate their sacrifice in buying a house on such little income.

The Cape Flats were swampy, low-lying, barren, and windswept. There were no roads, shops, or playing fields. When my parents moved into Gleemoor, my father called the area ‘godforsaken’. The roads were like white chalk. All my clothes were coloured white as a result, especially when it rained. Friends who lived in Woodstock or Salt River would ask, ‘Woon julle nog daar buite?’ (Are you still living out there in the countryside?) My parents joined the Gleemoor Civic Association to demand that the City Council make improvements such as street lights, tarred roads, and pavements, as well as filling in the swamps, establishing public transport, and building schools. My parents’ civic commitment would later become a model for me during our struggle against apartheid.

My father worked in the printing industry when work was hard to get and harder still to keep. Every time my father found a job, the firm would close down and he’d be out of work. Then came the Depression and the only money he made was delivering letters for the printers’ union secretary, who paid him ‘two-and-six’ – two shillings and sixpence.

My father travelled back and forth to Cape Town on his bicycle, looking for work. Once when he found a job after being out of work for ages, the boss wanted him to do something that my father felt was beneath his dignity. I don’t know what it was, but I remember him coming home. My mother was so pleased he’d got work that when she saw him arrive early, she said, ‘What happened?’

‘I chucked the job.’

‘You know things are terrible, Peter,’ she said. ‘What happened?’

‘I told the boss to put that job where the monkey puts his nuts!’

‘But Peter,’ she said, ‘do you even know where the monkey puts his nuts?’

My father paused. ‘I don’t actually,’ he said. ‘But that’s what they say!’

My father and mother had a good laugh about that. I learned something from him, which rubbed off on me. Rather lose your job and preserve your dignity than live for ever on your knees.

* * *

My mother worked as a domestic to augment my father’s income, washing and ironing and cleaning houses for white women. Most of the white madams were terrible. They had plenty of money yet they paid only ‘three-and-six’ (three shillings and sixpence) for working from eight to six, cleaning ten rooms in a double-storey house. They’d think nothing of paying one shilling and ninepence for ‘half’ a day, which was eight to three, or a penny to wash a shirt or a skirt, six pairs of socks or six hankies, and threepence for a sheet. My mother brought some of the washing home, using her own soap. I could see how badly she was treated and I felt bitter, really bitter. It was by watching her struggle to make ends meet that I developed my attitude against the exploitation of one human being by another.

During school holidays when I was about eight or nine years old, my mother didn’t know what to do with me, so she took me with her to work. I especially remember a Mrs Hudson in Rondebosch. When we got there she was sitting in her chair, leaning back with her legs apart and a fly on her forehead, looking terribly crude. She was drunk. ‘Go away, fly!’ she said. I almost died laughing.

‘Don’t you watch!’ my mother said. ‘Go play outside. I don’t want you in here.’ Everything about the woman was so different from what my mother taught us about dignity. I can still picture Mrs Hudson. She had all that money but no self-respect.

Later, when I was in my teens, I took the washing back to the madams’ homes on my bicycle. One of the places I went to was in Pinelands where we had to enter by the back door. We never entered through the front door.

Once when my brother George took the washing, this woman’s little boy named David was playing in the yard. The woman told George, ‘Give this to Master David.’

‘I only have one Master,’ my brother told her, ‘and that Master’s upstairs [meaning God]. I will never call your son a master.’

The woman later told my mother, ‘Don’t you ever send that rude boy of yours again. He’s got no manners. He doesn’t know how to treat people.’ All because he refused to call her child ‘master’.

That was the attitude of whites. Many of these madams were British, including this woman, who would actually boast that she was a colonial. They had their own country, yet they came to South Africa and exploited our people. It was easy here; it was good living for whites. My father once told his British boss: ‘South Africa is a place where the milk and honey flows and the sun always shines, and you come here to eat us up.’ For that he lost his job.

* * *

We were poor, always struggling to make ends meet. Only now do I realise how poor we were. It was normal to have only one pair of tackies (shoes). They were of such poor quality that they lasted only two weeks from the way I used to run and play. (I’d go barefoot until I could get another pair on my father’s next payday.) I had only one school uniform. After school I’d wash my blouse, hang it out to dry, and iron it to be ready the next morning. I had one dress for church. After I came home from church I’d put it aside, running around in my little petticoat before I’d put the dress back on for Sunday school in the afternoon. At Christmas I often didn’t have a special dress like other girls, so I just wore the one dress I had.

I don’t know how my mother managed, but she never complained. She learned to stretch the little money we had. We never went hungry. She could really stretch the stew by making a big pot so that we all had a serving with the vegetable. We never went into debt. ‘If you can’t buy anything with cash, then you can’t have it,’ my mother said. As long as we were looked after and cared for and had food to eat, we learned to understand that we just couldn’t have the fanciest clothes. The financial struggle must have been tremendous, but it never occurred to me that we were poor. Morally my parents were so strong that they overcame their financial difficulties. We were poor, but we never felt poor.

CHAPTER 2

‘I loved being the little girl doing all those fancy tricks’

I was terribly anaemic as a child. I had to take a strong iron tonic called Parrish’s Food in cod liver oil for many years. Every week I’d go with my mother to the clinic to get a little bottle, which I had to shake up before drinking. I had bottles and bottles of it as a child. I didn’t like it but I got used to it. My mother also gave me a soft-boiled egg each day from the chickens she kept. Because I was so thin and delicately built, I often played the fairy in school concerts. When I was about eight I stopped taking the tonic, but my mother remained protective of me well into my teens, always concerned I’d become ill.

As I grew older I began to enjoy outdoor activities and sport. My mother encouraged me to exercise to grow into a strong, healthy child because I’d been so weak when I was younger. When I was about 11 she bought me a bike. I could hardly believe it. There was always something I wanted but couldn’t have, like a nice dress, because we just didn’t have money. By that stage my mother must have decided she would get me the one thing I wanted so much, thinking I’d be more independent and get out and play if I had a bicycle. I remember it cost £8. That was a real sacrifice because we had no money. But I carried on so much about having a bike that she bought it on credit, something unheard of in our household. For a while she was able to pay the small monthly amount, but when she couldn’t keep it up, they came to fetch the bicycle. Everything she had paid was lost. I was in tears. That bike was my only means of getting around, my real friend.

When I was about 12, my brother George’s friend started coming to our house with his bicycle on Sundays, and I took advantage of the opportunity. The friend’s bike was what we called a ‘fix’ at that time. It had thin wheels and drop handles – a racer bike. It just flew.

As my brother and his friend would lie around and sleep all afternoon, I’d ask, ‘Can I go for a spin around the block?’ Then I’d take the bike and ride off. Once I’d left, nobody knew where I went. I didn’t even know where I was going. I kept on the main road, all the way to Somerset West or Simon’s Town. There were cars all the time going from Athlone towards Strand and Gordon’s Bay, or in the other direction to Muizenberg or Kalk Bay. I didn’t mind – I felt safe and on my own.

I really enjoyed those Sunday afternoons. I’d stop at the beach and swim or else cruise along with my thoughts, content with the bike just taking me where it would, and stop along the road to watch the vegetable growers and enjoy the peace and tranquillity of it all. When I got to Somerset West it didn’t seem like I had ridden over 40 kilometres. I’d come back before sunset during our long summer twilight. When I walked in George’s friend would say, ‘The block has got very big, hasn’t it?’

* * *

When I was about 10 or 11 my mother and I used to take the train into Cape Town on Sunday night to hear the municipal orchestra play at the City Hall under the direction of William J. Pickerill. At that time mainly whites attended, but there were also coloureds in the audience and we could sit anywhere. My mother was clearly trying to teach me to appreciate classical music. Though we didn’t have musical instruments at home, we did have a gramophone. The concerts gave me a much better understanding of what classical music was supposed to sound like. I enjoyed watching the different instruments and movements of the players. All the performers, of course, were white. Subsequently we also went to hear concerts by the Spes Bona Orchestra, an all-coloured orchestra with a coloured director, Dan Ulster, which performed in Gleemoor Town Hall in Athlone. These concerts always filled the hall with about 500 people attending.

(Continues…)Excerpted from In the Dark with My Dress on Fire by Blanche La Guma, Martin Klammer. Copyright © 2010 Blanche La Guma and Martin Klammer. Excerpted by permission of Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd.
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