Roots of Outrage. John Davis Gordon

tossed back her long hair like a whiplash and beamed up at Frikkie: ‘Come in! The water’s lovely!’

      And Frikkie hurled himself in after her. He landed in a mighty belly-flop to roars of delight and ‘Go, Frikkie, Go!’ and ‘Faster, Frikkie, Faster!’ from the gleeful teenagers. Frikkie van Schalkwyk thrashed with all his might across the pool to apprehend the delinquent Patti Gandhi, and Patti Gandhi laughed and reached the ladder on the other side just as Frikkie was reaching the middle.

      She scrambled lightly up it, her. golden body glinting, and she skipped joyfully to the head of the pool to draw Frikkie that way and cried: ‘This way, Frikkie –’

      Frikkie changed direction and thrashed towards her, and Patti skipped back the other way and shouted: ‘Over here, now, Frikkie, over here –’

      But Frikkie van Schalkwyk, custodian of the Municipality of Umtata Bye-Laws (Recreational Facilities) (Swimming Pool) as amended, was no fool, hey. Not for him to thrash this way and that to the tune of a cheeky bladdy Coolie, hey: he heaved himself up the ladder in a furious gush, and stomped off to summon the police, to laughter and cries of ‘Spoil-sport.’ Patti Gandhi sauntered back to the high diving-board, grinning, and began to climb again.

      Luke Mahoney was near the foot of the ladder. He watched Patti climb, looking up at her legs, and the beauty of what he saw, her lovely rounded bottom, her golden thighs, the sheer female magnificence of her, was to stay with him for the rest of his life.

      Patti reached the top, unzipped her little hold-all, and pulled out the chain. She wrapped it once around her waist, and padlocked it into position. She wrapped the other end around the ladder, and padlocked that. She picked up both sets of keys and slipped them into the panties of her bikini. Then she lay down decorously to sunbathe while she waited for the police.

      ‘Where’re the keys?’ the sergeant demanded.

      ‘Up my pussy,’ Patti smiled.

      It took an hour to get Patti Gandhi down because the police had to retreat to find bolt-cutters. She was sorely tempted to push the policeman off the high-dive into the water, uniform and all, but she resisted it: No violence, great-uncle Mahatma Gandhi had said, Passive resistance only … But passive resistance meant she had to be carried down the ladder over the shoulder of the sergeant (who enjoyed clutching her lovely thigh), had to be carried bodily out of the swimming pool grounds.

      She made a very dramatic spectacle, her beautiful buttocks up in the air, her long black hair hanging down the policeman’s rear, sweeping the ground, being carried away by the long arm of the law to face justice. There was no more laughter: a silence that was almost awe had descended on two hundred white teenagers, almost shame. Patti Gandhi had made her point. Her great-uncle would have been proud of her.

      Luke Mahoney pulled on his clothes, jumped on his bicycle and rode flat out up the hill to the golf club to find his father, his face suffused with anger, his heart bursting with guilt, and pity. ‘I’ll finish my game,’ George said, on the tenth green, ‘it won’t do her any harm to spend a few hours in the cells before I get her out. It may save her from many, many more in the future. That girl is headed for big trouble …’

      ‘She’s in very big trouble now!’ Colonel Visser said furiously. ‘Christ, man, Mr Mahoney, I’ve turned a blind eye to the convent, and I’ve given her two chances in two days! Christ, girl, what have you got – a death wish?!’

      ‘On the contrary, sir,’ Patti said quietly, ‘I have a life wish.’

      ‘A life wish …’ Colonel Visser groaned. ‘Christ, young lady, I’ve tried to give you a decent life, and to do that I risked my life – my career. Got, man, if my superiors in Pretoria knew that I knew about that convent business, I would face disciplinary proceedings, hey!’ He held a finger out at her nose. I risked my career for you, because your father here has never given us any trouble! But you! You’re a disgrace to your family and your race! …’

      ‘Oh my goodness gracious me, sir,’ Mr Gandhi said, ‘I apologise for my daughter, sir …’

      ‘Apologise to the magistrate on Monday!’ Colonel Visser shouted at Patti, ‘apologise for all the trouble you’ve put us to! And the trouble you’ve caused Mr Mahoney! Apologise for the shame you’ve caused your father, who’s never put a foot wrong in his life here!’ He wagged a finger: ‘Take my advice and throw yourself on the mercy of the court, young lady, and apologize. And maybe that will save you from reform school!’

      Patti looked at the good colonel with big beautiful almond eyes: Reform school?’

      ‘Yes! Because you’re a born troublemaker if ever I saw one –’

      ‘Trouble?’ Patti said with big eyes. ‘I’m causing trouble?’

      ‘Yes! Breaking the law deliberately! Christ, man, can’t you see what trouble, what … chaos people like you could cause in this town – in this country! Christ, man, we live surrounded by millions of kaffirs! Can you imagine the trouble if millions of kaffirs came into this town and tried to swim in our swimming pool! Or went to the library and demanded books?! Or went to the Rex Café, hey, man?! Got, man, there would be chaos, hey! And that’s why these laws are necessary! Yes, necessary! There must be order, hey! And you, young lady –’ he jabbed his finger at her – ‘are trying to destroy this order with your bladdy silly nonsense!’

      He turned to George Mahoney: ‘No, sir, I can’t withdraw the charges this time! Okay, I’ll give her bail, but it’s Juvenile Court on Monday! And then she’s on that bus to Natal to the other Indians if she wants any further education, hey! No more convent, thank you very much! Not only does she bite the hand that helps her, she commits malicious damage to property, cutting a hole in the Municipality’s fence!’

      Patti leapt to her feet. ‘“Malicious Damage to Property”?’ she cried. She pointed north furiously: ‘At this moment, as we speak, the bulldozers of the South African government are smashing down the whole of Sophiatown!’

3

      Sophiatown. A teeming black city within the golden city of Johannesburg, a sprawling mass of run-down houses and shacks, grubby shops and fly-blown markets, bleak churches and mosques, bazaars and shebeens and brothels and sweatshops and junkyards and outdoor lavatories, a slum city of rutted lanes that turned to mud in the rains and swirling dust in the hot dry winds of the highveld winter, a sprawling slum of blacks and Coloureds and Indians and Chinese and poor-whites, mangy dogs and scrawny chickens, riddled with gangs of tearaways and petty criminals, a city of thieving and robbery and knifing and murder and fighting and trickery and protection rackets and disposal of stolen property, drug-dealing and the illegal brewing of the fire-water called skokiaan: Sophiatown was an eyesore, insanitary, an offence to the exquisite sensibilities of the new social science called Apartheid.

      ‘But only because it’s in the wrong place in terms of this dreadful Group Areas Act!’ George Mahoney thundered in parliament. ‘If Sophiatown were safely out of sight beyond the mine-dumps it would not matter a jot to this government that it is an insanitary place, Sophiatown could then rot in Hell for all this government cares!’

      ‘Is the Honourable Member for Transkei aware that Sophiatown is also a den of iniquity where so-called liberal young whites, such as university students, think it’s funny to go dancing to black music, dancing amongst blacks, dancing with blacks even, and drinking illegally in their shebeens, and smoking dagga and even contravening the Immorality Act with black prostitutes, hey!’

      ‘Good gracious me!’ George Mahoney cried. ‘What will these students think of next!’

      Yes, Sophiatown was also fun. A fun place to go slumming, if you had the nerve. To risk your skin and risk the cops. A place of jazz bands, zoot