Free Honorary White by E. R. Braithwaite Page A

someone making the most of having the entire cot to himself. No electricity, no running water, no sewage facilities, no privacy, no sunlight, no air.
    â€œChrist!” the word slipped out.
    â€œGetting to you, eh?” my friend said. “I sometimes read about how you black Americans riot because of your living conditions. We’d trade with you any day, and think ourselves lucky. How long do you think you’d remain human in a room like that? You can hardly close your eyes before there’s someone wanting to stick it up your ass. Hell, no women available, so what can you expect. The women who live here stay indoors at night. Rape around here is less a crime than a daily hazard.”
    â€œDon’t these fellows ever take any action?”
    â€œAction? What action? In this country you work or you starve. If you have a job you hang onto it because you know that there are several others just waiting for you to slip. Action? You mean like striking? Shit, they’d throw you in jail so fast! Don’t forget you’re talking about Blacks.”
    God, no wonder the white guide had kept far away from this place! These black men and women actually had to pay to stay in stinkholes like this. Somebody was making a fortune out of all this misery and it wasn’t the Blacks. They could not own property, thus could not be landlords. So it had to be either the Government, through its Bantu Councils, or private industry, growing fat on Government contracts.
    â€œWe welcome evolution but we are opposed to revolution.” The banker had repeatedly chanted the Government’s slogan. So had the MP, Englebrecht. Didn’t they realize that it was in places like this that revolutions were born and bred? Maybe they’d never seen sights like these, even though they festered right under their very eyes. In other places, others had been similarly blind and uncaring until someone had rubbed their insensitive noses in the shit.
    My friend led me on through the darkening township. I felt that he was slyly pleased at the way I had been affected by the hostel visit, and how carefully I was stepping around the mounds of garbage in our path. People sat on the stoops of the shacks chatting with each other, seeming unmindful of the ugly chaos around them.
    â€œHow would you like to spend a week or two here?” He was smiling. Laughing at me.
    â€œNot for anything,” I answered. I wanted to get away from there, away from the stench, the dilapidation, the all-pervading air of decay. It was getting me down. I couldn’t understand how he could be so at ease, so comfortable. Then I remembered this was what he wrote about in his poems.
    â€œA bit different from your guided tour of Soweto, isn’t it?” he grinned. “The Information Office never brings tourists down here. No smooth roads for the cars, no fancy playgrounds for happy, smiling black children. No Government show pieces. All we have is what you see. Decay and death, and we’re forced to live in it. Nowhere to move to, and even if we found somewhere better, how the hell would we get permission to move? You saw what the inside of that hostel unit looked like? Some rooms in these other places are worse. Much worse. And people live here and rear their children. Right here in these miserable holes. Christ Almighty, it’s inhuman!”
    â€œI agree,” I told him.
    â€œYou agree!” He suddenly turned on me, the thin face tight with anger, a trickle of spittle escaping his mouth. “You agree! That’s mighty big of you, my friend. But in a few minutes you’ll walk away from it, back to your fancy hotel. I suppose you’ll take a nice hot bath and wash away every memory of this stinking slum. You agree! That’s nice. That’s very nice. We agree too, but we still have to live in this shit. And pay for the privilege. Do you realize that? We pay rent to live in these stinking, rotten holes. Come with