Back to Villa Park. Jenny Robson

      

      Back toVilla Park

      Jenny Robson

      Tafelberg

      Dedicated to Rhondda Strugnell

      of Maun, Botswana.

      When I needed a neighbour,

      you were there.

      It is not what you call me but what I answer to

      that matters most.

      African proverb

      I used to think that we white Africans were hard to

      sympathise with because we were that least defensible of all

      constituencies, the Unwronged.

      Peter Godwin,

      When a Crocodile Eats the Sun

      1

      Mr Nkum-whatever-whatever

      All I want from life is a little fairness, okay? Just for the world to give me a bit of justice. Is that so much to ask? To hope for? I don’t reckon so.

      But did I get any? Hell no!

      That Mr Nkum-whatever-his-name-is, he just came up be­hind me. He grabbed my shirt collar and yanked me out of my chair like I was a dog or something. Then he grabbed my ­answer sheet off the desk so he could read my name.

      “Mr Dirk Karel Strydom!” he said in this posh voice. “We have no place for your kind here at Kagiso Holdings. No, thank you very much! We at Kagiso Holdings must protect our reputa­tion for integrity and high standards. We are not prepared to employ people of your calibre, not even in our training schemes.”

      He started shoving me in front of him between the rows of desks, all the way from the back of the conference room right up to the door.

      And did he even give me a chance to explain things? Because I could have. I could have told him all about Janie September. I could have told the whole story about Janie and her mother Dorcas and what they did. But did he think to ask me what was going on? Hell no!

      He just kept shoving me, this black man in his expensive fancy suit and with his expensive fancy gold watch. Well, this Double A.

      *

      That’s what Bethany says I’m supposed to call them: Double As.

      “You have to, like, call a spade a spade!” she says. “You gotta use words that, like, reflect reality. They are Double As. They are the Affirmative Action brigade, right? The whole system is set up for their benefit, so they’re always going to end up the winners. You have to face it head on. Then you can, like, find ways to deal with it.”

      Bethany mocked me so much when I said I was going to Kagiso Holdings. She said it was a waste of time. I showed her the letter they sent me.

      Dear Mr Strydom

      Thank you for your interest in our Youth Training Scheme. We invite you to attend a preliminary interview at 8am on 13 September …

      It was typed on fancy paper with a proper logo at the top: three men’s heads in a row all facing upwards. A black one, a grey one, a white one.

      “Get real, Karel!” Bethany said. She always calls me Karel, even though my proper name is Dirk. “Do you really think they’ll give you a place? You poor delusional! You’re a pale male, idiot. You’re a Zed. You don’t stand a hope in hell.”

      But I didn’t want to hear negative stuff like that. I was excited. Very hopeful.

      “So why did they send me a letter then? They could see my surname; they could see what I am.”

      “Who knows? Maybe they want to check if you’re Single A? Lots of coloureds have, like, Afrikaans surnames.”

      “Okay, so then why have they got a white head in their logo? Look!”

      “Oh, come on! That’s just for show, just for PC purposes. Political correctness, right? Just to fool suckers like you.” Bethany often talks to me like I am a child. Or an idiot.

      But I ignored that. Already planning in my head what answers I could give to their interview questions to show I was enthusiastic and willing to learn, like their advert said. And after all, 13 September was my birthday. That was a sign that things would go well for me, surely?

      *

      “Preliminary interview” – hah!

      When I walked into that conference room this morning, it was a shock. It was full of other applicants all sitting at rows and rows of desks. It was like a huge classroom all over again. I couldn’t even see an empty desk for those first few minutes. What kind of interview gets held like this? I mean, is it fair to call it an interview when fifty other people are there at 8am as well?

      Then this great big Double A in his fancy grey-striped suit came striding in like he owned the place. With a small white woman following him with a pile of papers and a bundle of pens.

      And he said, “Good morning, young people. I am Mr Nkum …” Well, I can’t remember the rest of his name. It was one of those names that goes on and on. “I am Mr Nkum-whatever-whatever. I am the Director of Human Resources here at Kagiso Holdings. So, welcome all. As you can see, we have many of you keen to join us. We will have to whittle you down with a test or two. Just to check your basic numeracy skills. That will make my job easier.” He laughed like he’d made some huge joke.

      But I was already panicking. Test!? The letter never said anything about a test! And is that fair, I ask you, not to give any warning? To say it is a preliminary interview and then to shove papers in front of us full of maths questions? Is that justice? Hell no!

      So, actually, Bethany was right. It was a waste of time and I didn’t stand a chance.

      I wasn’t even halfway through the test before I got chucked out like a bag of rubbish. Pushed out past all the rows of other job-seekers.

      Most of them were Double As too. And most of them were laughing.

      I hate it when people laugh at me. It makes me want to go crazy. I want to smash my fist into their smirking lips and loosen their teeth till the blood flows.

      They used to laugh at me, back at that school in Port Alfred too. Back when I lived there on the pineapple farm with my sister, Fat Sonya. They used to call me dom-ass. I think because my surname was Strydom. Big joke! Ha ha! And because the teachers were always shaking their heads at me and telling me to do stuff over again and giving me Fs for my essays.

      They said I must do grade eleven over again. Can you imag­ine! That’s why I came back here to Johannesburg – there was no ways I was staying in that school for another two years. So I stole money out my sister Sonya’s purse and I caught the bus all the way up to Joburg. I wanted to get far away from the smell of rotten pineapples and the sound of people laughing at me.

      So much for that idea! Here I was after all those kilometres through the night in the bus. And still people were laughing at me!

      Before Mr Nkum-whatever slammed the door, I got the chance to take one last look at Janie September. She wasn’t laughing. She sat there at the back next to the empty desk that I’d just got dragged from. And like always, her eyebrows were high and curved on her forehead as if she was surprised. Surprised, but not much interested.

      Did she remember me? Did she recognise me at all?

      Mr Nkum-something gave one last shove so I was over the threshold and out in the passage. In his hand he still had my crumpled-up test. He didn’t even bother to look at my date of birth that I’d printed right there under my name in extra-big digits.

      If he had, he would have seen that today is my birthday. And not just any birthday. My eighteenth! What kind of a way is that to treat someone on their eighteenth?

      The conference room doors banged shut on me.

      I was so angry, I smashed my fists against