Absolutes and Ambiguity in the Land of Black and White

SOWETO, South Africa -- When the first breezes of black freedom rustled across this country, Danny and Gwendoline Maimane had big dreams: More money. A better school for their children. A lift out of this dusty township into one of the lush Johannesburg suburbs reserved for whites. And, maybe, a little more respect.

But that seemed a long way off a dozen years ago as they sat on the old sofa in their rented four-room “matchbox” house, identical to every other on the unnamed street. “Can you call this a house?” Danny demanded then. “I guess you can, but only because it has a roof on top.”

A decade of black rule hasn’t made every dream come true. But Danny Maimane had a sly smile on his face recently when he welcomed a visitor back to No. 3243, Zone 2, Diepkloof, Soweto.

“Notice anything different?” he asked.

Yes, indeed. The matchbox has been replaced by a home with 11 small rooms, including three bedrooms, three bathrooms and a small patch of grass in front that Danny trims on the weekends with his new lawn mower and spruces up with impatiens and tulips. What’s more, the Maimanes now own that house, along with the three televisions and the new computer inside.

“It’s been a success story, if you think of where we came from,” Danny said later, sitting on a new leather sofa in the living room. Added Gwendoline: “We’d like to have more. But, at the moment, this is the best we can do in life.”

The first decade of black-majority rule in South Africa has passed like an afternoon rain shower, sprinkling big money and fancy suburban homes on some and bypassing others still trapped in a cycle of tin shacks and joblessness.

But for the country’s 35.5 million blacks, including working families such as the Maimanes who have gone into debt to finance their new lifestyles, the most significant change has been more than economic. For them, the last 10 years have meant freedom: the freedom to vote, to shop, to move, to work and to live as they please.

Twelve years ago, Danny worked as a clerk, logging and sorting checks at a white-owned downtown bank. Now 56, he still walks through the marble entrance of First National Bank’s headquarters, where he was promoted four years ago to senior clerk. Lacking a high school diploma, Danny figures he’s probably reached his career zenith, despite taking night-school classes over the years.

But he’s seen some striking recent changes at the bank. The ruling African National Congress has pressured companies doing business with the government to get more blacks in the workforce and, particularly, into management positions. More blacks are being hired every day, though not yet among his own superiors.

“It’s moving in the right direction,” he said. “I wish, though, that the government would emphasize competence.” He’s seen several blacks given jobs they weren’t qualified to handle. “It’s not good to be put in a position where you are a failure.”

Nevertheless, whites and blacks in the office are getting along better. “We still have some extreme cases,” he said. “But the atmosphere is much more relaxed. Most whites are jumping on board. They seem to have accepted that we are other human beings, too.”

Gwendoline, a soft-spoken 51-year-old, still works as a nurse on Ward 20 of Soweto’s giant Baragwanath Hospital. These days, her ward’s 69 beds are filled, often with rural blacks who have moved to the city in search of work; government figures put unemployment at more than 25%. The AIDS epidemic also has put a strain on the hospital.

Sometimes, she is the only nurse responsible for those 69 patients. “When you run it alone, that is terrible,” she said. “You end up not doing things you should be doing for them.” The government has vowed to increase the staff, but healthcare has not been an ANC success story. “We are being promised help,” Gwendoline said, sounding doubtful.

Their son, Sepadi, now 21, has had trouble finding steady work. A decade ago, he was attending a special school for children with learning disabilities. He earned a certificate as a body shop worker but couldn’t land a job.

But their daughter, Obakeng, 17, is at the forefront of an important educational trend in South Africa. Even though the state-run Diepdale High School is only four blocks from her home, she travels each day to Sandton, Johannesburg’s wealthy northern suburb, where she is a senior at the bucolic Waverly Girls High School.

Waverly is a semiprivate school, receiving government subsidies but sweetening its educational experience -- and lowering its class size -- with money from school fees. The Maimanes, whose combined take-home salary is about $15,000, pay about $900 a year for her school.

Obakeng, who favors blue jeans worn fashionably torn at the knees, is clearly charged up by the school. “We kids at school talk about politics,” she said. “And openly. We’re interacting with anybody.”

Waverly once was 70% white, reflecting the makeup of the neighborhood before black liberation. But enrollment has doubled since 1993, when students were first allowed to pick their schools, to 810. Of those young women in blue uniforms and white socks today, all but 26 are black, and many of those blacks live nearby.

For the Maimane family, the toughest decision by far since casting their vote for the ANC in 1994 was whether to stay in Soweto. No longer could they shrug and blame their presence here on apartheid. The freedom to leave forced them to reexamine their lives here.

Danny had lived at No. 3243 since he was 10, when the white government forced his father, along with thousands of others, to leave Alexandra, a township in the middle of Sandton that the authorities hoped to raze. (Alexandra is still there.) They were deposited in Zone 2, which was reserved for the Tswana people. Gwendoline’s family moved from Alexandra a year later, ending up in Zone 5 because her father was a Xhosa.

Before the ’94 elections, the couple had dreamed of moving to one of the newer neighborhoods being built in Soweto or into the Johannesburg suburbs. But then the ANC took power and offered longtime residents the chance to buy their property.

When imposed on them by the system of racial separation, the sprawling township of 2 million people had felt like an urban prison -- a giant maze of narrow, unmarked streets clogged with pedestrians and traffic. A coal-smoke haze still blankets Soweto, and trees, parks and basketball courts remain rare. Too many young men are idle during the day. Drugs and crime are a problem.

But to the Maimanes, it seemed like, well, home. Danny was a faithful member of Emmanuel Lutheran Church down the block, and he valued his reputation locally for resolving crises. Said Gwendoline: “Danny is the most honored man around here.”

As they pondered whether to stay or move, they began hearing from friends who had moved to the suburbs but were coming back to Soweto on weekends. In the suburbs, those refugees said, people didn’t really know their neighbors.

“If I feel like having two slices of bread and we don’t have any, I just go next door and they give me some,” Obakeng said. In the suburbs, she added, “I’d be too embarrassed to ask a neighbor for food.”

“Here, you find this thing we call ubuntu,” Danny said. “I’ve tried to explain it to whites at work and they can’t understand. People in the township are quick to help the next person. You don’t have to phone for help. It will just come.”

“Not that I think I’m the alpha and omega of people’s lives,” Gwendoline added, “but you make a difference in the township.”

It didn’t take the Maimanes long to decide to buy their property and invest in it. They put the equivalent of about $1,000 down and borrowed $10,000 from Danny’s employer. Then they hired a black contractor and built the new house on the same lot.

“There’s no better place than this,” Danny said.

Apartheid left many blacks, the Maimanes included, with low-paying jobs and skimpy savings. But they’ve watched a growing black elite, with college degrees and ANC connections, earn enough money to move to the fanciest suburbs and become loyal customers at the Mercedes-Benz and BMW dealerships.

Rather than feeling jealous, seeing those upwardly mobile success stories “gives you a psychological boost,” Gwendoline said.

“The whites still have economic power, but we blacks have political power,” Obakeng said. “Sometimes, when we’re riding the bus to school and we see these rich black men in their fancy cars, all of us get so proud. We say, ‘Way to go, man!’ ”

As she spoke, Danny smiled. “This is all for them,” he said, pointing to his daughter. “A level playing field. Equal opportunity for everyone. It’s for her. She might become a manager in the future.”

Already, the Maimanes say they and their friends are finding day-to-day discrimination by whites a distant memory. “You find the whites at the shops come up to you and say, ‘Please, may I help you?’ ” Gwendoline said. “Before, she would come to you last. It’ll never be 100%, but we’re getting a bit of respect.”