Free Swimming with Cobras by Rosemary Smith

Cape.

Working days
    St Clement’s Anglican Church was situated in the coloured community next to the railway station. The Black Sash hired its hall for our weekly advice office sessions, setting out Sunday school benches and sometimes pews from the church for our clients to sit in while they waited. The hall was bitterly cold in winter and stifling in summer. Rain on the zinc roof sounded like pebbles in a tin can. Tired-looking posters proclaimed, “God is Love”.
    Despite this uninspiring setting and our amateurish operations – there was no fancy equipment, not even a telephone, and our records were kept in shoeboxes - the advice office fulfilled an indispensable function in the coloured and black communities. It was known as a place where assistance could be found, not in the form of handouts but in more empowering ways. We engaged with people on a personal level, heard their stories and took practical or paralegal steps to give them even the smallest measure of control over their situations. Sometimes the helpful action was as small as a phone call to an employer or a creditor made from a callbox or our own homes, or a letter written to a state department on a client’s behalf. Few of our clients had access to telephones and many were illiterate.
    Most white South Africans, if they knew about the Black Sash at all, would have associated it with anti-apartheid demonstrations and viewed it with suspicion. Very few would have been aware of this other branch of Black Sash activity, carried out behind the scenes through its network of advice offices. Established first in Cape Town in 1958 and later in major centres all over the country, the advice bureaux were the agencies through which the Sash engaged with the poor, helping them steer their way through the debilitating circumstances of poverty and proscriptive legislation. Through this work we gathered an enormous wealth of information and insight regarding the life of the oppressed and the apparatus of the oppressor. The advice offices really were the engine room of the Black Sash and it was a matter of pride to the organisation that its political demonstrations and social justice campaigns arose not out of sentiment or idealism but out of solid information and analysis, gleaned from its own hard work.
    While I was by nature drawn to the principled actions and expressive dynamism of the Sash’s public activities, my training in welfare drew me equally strongly to the advice office. Apart from paid interpreters, advice office staffers were all volunteers. Most of us had other jobs during the week, so we worked on Saturday mornings on a roster system.
    One cold morning in August 1976 I was on duty interviewing clients at a rickety school desk in the crowded St Clements hall, when I became aware of a keening sound at the table next to mine. The woman being interviewed was rocking to and fro in her chair and was clearly distressed. There was no privacy in the hall and the sad sound was beginning to make all other conversation impossible. So we took her into the church where we shut the door, and in between sobs she told us her story. Her daughter, a deaf teenager with speaking difficulties, had disappeared. She travelled regularly by rail to a special school in Umtata (now Mthatha) in the Transkei, a long and convoluted journey that involved changing trains. Her mother always asked the train guard to look after her, but this time her daughter had not arrived. She had reported the disappearance and was now frantic with worry. We decided to accompany her to the railway station to see if we could expedite her search.
    The station had Victorian gables and lofty waiting rooms with benches marked “Whites only”. Steam engines were still pulling trains on this line and the metallic smell of railway smoke hung in the air. The booking clerk directed us to the railway policeman whose dingy office adjoined the shunting yard. The official knew of the case.