Free Honorary White by E. R. Braithwaite

functional, as if contemptuous of the squalor though firmly anchored in it.
    These were the hostels, one for men and one for women, built to house cheap black labor necessary for the numerous manpower-hungry industrial projects which are mushrooming around Johannesburg. They were designed to accommodate the largest number of workers in the least possible space, and are a honeycomb of tiny, cell-like rooms. Cold running water and toilets are provided at one central location in each building.
    Most of the black workers in Johannesburg and its environs are young men born in ghettos like Soweto and Alexandra; others are migrant workers from the Bantustans of the Transvaal, Transkei­, Zululand, and other outlying territories, or immigrants from Rhodesia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and even Mozambique. These migrant and immigrant workers are not permitted to travel with their wives, and see them for only a short time each year, at Christmas, when they are given leave to return home.
    â€œWell, what do you think of all this?” my companion asked.
    â€œIt stinks,” I replied, meaning the garbage.
    â€œWhat about those?” pointing to the hostels.
    â€œAt least they’re an improvement on the tin shacks around them.”
    â€œYou think so? Talk to some of the fellows who live in them. Best that can be said of them, they have electricity and running water. They’d never house white men in places like that.”
    â€œCould I take a look?”
    â€œDoubt it. They don’t encourage outsiders. We could peep in if you like. Many of the ground floor rooms have broken windows and nobody seems to be in any hurry to repair them.”
    I declined, not wanting to intrude on the hostel residents, but my friend led the way through the weeds and stunted trees to the base of one of the hostels.
    â€œThis is the women’s unit,” he said. “All these lower rooms are empty. Peeping Toms and things like that, you know. And besides, most of the women stay in the hostel only for a short while then try to find jobs as domestics with the chance of living in their employers’ houses.”
    I looked through one of the broken windows. The narrow room contained a small iron cot with a thin, plastic-covered mattress. A rickety wooden table completed the furniture.
    â€œThe men’s hostel is always filled to capacity, with a waiting list of others wanting to get in,” he said.
    â€œWhere do they live while they’re waiting?”
    â€œYou really want to see?”
    He led me back toward the shacks and we had to pick our way over piles of garbage and around a partly enclosed but uncovered hole which evidently served as the communal lavatory. There was a water spigot a few yards away. We entered one of the ramshackle houses and he knocked on an inner door, then pushed it open to let us into a pitiful room about eight foot square. Although we had come in from bright sunlight the room was in near total darkness; the only window was tightly sealed with burlap. A young man crouched by a single lighted candle, eating something with his fingers from a metal pot. My companion made the introduction, but, in the circumstances, no attempt was made to shake hands. I could not see the young man’s face clearly in the prevailing gloom and I knew he could not see mine. He sat on the edge of a cot, one of three which ringed the room. He told us that six of them, five other men and himself, lived there, sleeping two to a cot. I tried to imagine what it was like.
    The young man finished his meal, wiped his fingers with a piece of paper and stood up. I saw that he was neatly dressed in short, sharply creased slacks and shiny shoes. He said he was employed as a clerk with a local engineering firm, having graduated from the Orlando High School in Soweto. He suggested that we leave as he had arranged to meet some of his friends nearby. As we were leaving, I noticed that another of the cots was occupied,