Yonela Diko
Townships are very fascinating communal spaces that have been forged through no more than a sheer force of will. Considering the numbers that usually reside in these spaces, it is only through a certain set of codes, a certain understood order, behavioural patterns, and general customs that there is even order that is transferable from one generation to the other.
To a visitor, such codes may seem petty, even unnecessary, but to those who have had to take in new members in thousands almost daily, only when such codes are observed that these spaces don’t collapse.
You don’t need to be from another country to be a foreigner in the townships; people from suburbs become foreigners in the townships and if they mock or show disdain to the codes that have sustained townships, they become vulnerable and never enjoy the protection that is usually extended to those who adhere to the codes.
A few years back, at a time I could afford to live anywhere, I decided to live in the Philippi township and share space with people who care. First and foremost, in the townships, people notice you, they pay attention to you, they observe your behaviour, your demeanour, who you speak with, how you speak, but more importantly, how you treat others. This is of course a huge contrast to suburbs where you barely know your neighbour whose door is sometimes three feet away from yours.
I knew from the onset I would stand out like a sore thumb. I did not dress in the wretched elegance of my brothers, I did not share their speech patterns; I had a clean-cut look that betrayed me even if I would claim to be a township product, I had no roots there to protect me so that I could be understood as the son of so and so and be given the benefit of the doubt. I was a new guy who needed to be observed closely before he was categorised.
What I did understand was that there were certain township codes I had been told of, along with my own experience of coming from a rural small town where everybody knows everybody’s business – so that beginning from the time you left for UCT, you are closely observed whether your education will now cause you to think you are better, to think you were to be listened to and others be damned, and whether you could still sit down on the floor and eat pap and stew with your hands; I knew the basics.
The first thing I did was to greet everyone. I could never pass neighbours in my street, sitting outside their yards and not shout greeting, I could not pass familiar faces on the street and not greet, I could not pass the corner shebeen house, always full of street men and women and not pause for a second and greet. It was my daily ritual and I did it with ease, with no sense of rush, even though I never truly sat down with them for a drink. I figured they did not really want me to pretend that I like their lifestyle, but at least I should show them that I cared.
Care and respect, I know they are the basics of township codes. As I kept going into the local spaza shops, mainly owned by Somalis, I noticed the dismissive, if not silly, attitude of theirs in the spaza shops, like people who felt we needed them more than they need us. At times, I would stand there and they would be lingering inside their spaza shop eating and drinking as if a customer has not just stepped inside, and generally poor service irks me, so I would snap. We had clashes a few times and they came to show me reluctant respect.
I wondered, however, how these people could survive the townships without showing care and respect; the two most important township codes.
Along with care was the question of giving. Townships are full of struggling people, so if you started embarking on giving away your money to people, you may not have money yourself. The worst thing you could do, however, is to be dismissive to people who in most cases are satisfied with R2 here or R5 here and would go to great lengths to honour you just for extending such a small courtesy. I came to realise that after a while, even as I sparingly gave money, I came to represent hope to these people, they could spend the whole day waiting for me, just for the possibility that I may give them something, even though they knew I hardly gave them any. They looked forward to the attempt and the ensuring conversations.
What I noticed, and I blamed this on having dealt with so many beggars, was that Somalis had that crass dismissiveness of someone who is utterly tired of poor beggars – beggars who loafed around instead of trying to make their own way, and occasionally they would utter those words. I knew they had missed the point and their move was not wise.
The second thing I knew, townships showed disdain for foreigners (me being number one as I was using my foreign advantage to come and break the codes). I knew that my clean-cut look, the sense that I looked like I had a little money, was probably very appealing to young girls looking for an escape and a good time. I took it upon myself that I would never use my appeal to disadvantage my brothers who work hard to earn respect and love from their most treasured people, their women.
Again, here, I would always see young girls lingering around spaza shops, with loose and overfamiliar ways of talking with the Somalis, and I would wonder again, why would the Somalis not be aware that their money gives them an advantage that appeals to women, and if they had come to understand townships, they would not abuse that advantage.
Ultimately, on a warm summer day, another fellow streetmate, who was a guy who always seemed happy to see me, came to give me a feedback about what the streets were saying about me. “People love you my man, they really do,” he said. “The streets are talking man. They say that guy always greet, he is so kind, so caring, even the thugs who were asking about you we told them to stay away from that guy, he is a valued member of this community.”
Even writing about this covers me with emotion, I was moved by that feedback. I had not thought much about the impact of my action more than the belief that my actions were what had sustained the townships for decades. It almost feels like I had been in the military and I learnt a few codes. Rondebosch may be my home now, but I live by the same codes; respect and care, I have applied that even in politics, and it has won me grudging respect from the opposition.
Now I understood why despite coming back in the dark early hours of the morning from my ANC work, I was always safe. I loved my people back. I could never say a bad word about the teenage girls who were getting pregnant regularly, the unemployed youth spending their time in the shebeen dancing and being merry; they were my brothers and sisters, I knew them when they were young, full of dreams. “A doctor,” some may have responded when people asked what they would be; “a teacher”, “a nurse”, “a pilot”, some may have said. I understood that something largely external, internal too, had stifled and even killed those dreams.
Like it or not, as a politician and a member of the ANC, I needed to do more to help change the environment and take my people to the shore. But Somalis and Nigerians and all shop owners did not have the advantage of thought, they would be heard occasionally joining the chorus that South Africans are lazy but spoilt with so much opportunity – and there, many codes, respect and care would be broken by visitors who have no idea that were it not for those codes, such spaces would have eaten their own children and the foreigners, too. And for two weeks, they ate the foreigner.
As we speak integration, business as usual is not going to cut it. Foreign nationals have to observe the township codes that all of us who come from outside must observe.
l Diko is founder and chairman of ROOT (Responsibilities Of Our Time), a foundation and publishing company (that will publish his first book of the same title at the end of November), a clothing line and other spin-offs.