'Room 226' by Hilda Bernstein

When I had become, not adjusted, but resigned to living for the time being in Johannesburg because I had married a South African and started to establish a family, I found myself, like other whiteSouth Africans and quite a number of non-whites too, employing a domestic servant.

My antagonism to things South African extended to the idea of telling someone else to do work that I had been accustomed to doing myself. And in any case I simply did not know how to give orders. It embarrassed me. However, the practical convenience of having the servant outweighed any theoretical dislike of the idea. It meant I was released to do other, more interesting things. The pity of it, of course, is that the majority of white housewives, released from the repetitive drudgery of washing, cooking, cleaning and the rest, don't make more use of this freedom, but spend it gathering in groups over bridge or tea tables to discuss the never-exhausted topic – the servant problem. And I suspect that the minority of women who have used their lives to do something worthwhile, in whatever sphere, would have found ways of doing the same even with the millstone handicap of having to do all their own housework. But it would have been harder.

The person who made it easier for me to plunge into public activity in the 1950s and 1960s, to become a city councillor, and to spend days and weeks and months running around Johannesburg and its townships, was a woman who I will always think of as ‘my most unforgettable character’. (The Reader’s Digest used to run a series under that name, usually about American eccentrics whose qualities of kindness or generosity or disregard for the material things of life made them stand out from their compatriots.)

Bessie had three children of her own. But when her eldest daughter was about twelve and her third child four she left them with her parents in the country and came to look after my children. Her husband had died some years before, and in the country town – Newcastle – from which she had come the top wage Bessie could earn as a domestic servant was about £2.10 a month. As her parents were now too old to work and she had to support them as well as her three children, she had no alternative but to come to Johannesburg where wages were higher.

She started work at about six-thirty every morning and the working day was long. Two afternoons a week, Thursdays and Sundays, she was ‘off’. As if the hours she worked were not long enough, many times when I was ill, or in a nursing home having a baby, or otherwise in need of assistance, she would relinquish her free time and continue working. This I never asked for, and sometimes tried to persuade her not to do. But she did not listen.

She rarely complained; the strongest expression she used was not for herself but for her people. When one of her numerous relatives was caught in the net of the pass or other laws she would say, ‘It’s too heavy, too heavy.’ It was the weight of the load carried by all Africans, by all poor people, that was too heavy. Life itself became too heavy for her in the end.

She was the one in a large family who always bore the burden of the family’s responsibilities. One of her brothers worked as an unpaid squatter on a white man’s farm: six months’ work for the farmer, and in return a small piece of land and six months’ work for himself. He fell ill, became too weak to work and returned to his parents’ home in Newcastle. As he lay ill and dying the white farmer came and took away his wife and two young daughters, because he had not yet finished the six months’ work that was his due to the farmer. He died alone while they were still labouring in serfdom. Bessie had to go and bury her brother and help his family.

All through the years Bessie sent money to her parents and paid what rent and rates were due on their small piece of ground. Her father told her that when he died the land would be hers. But when he did die he left only the intention, not a written will, and by native law the land became the property of a second son. This one was a ne-er-do-well, often drunk, often beating his womenfolk. The fact that it was Bessie who paid for everything – funeral, transfer deeds – did not count; nor could lawyers do anything to help her, save take more money to confirm that the land was not hers.

After she had lived with us in Johannesburg for some years, Bessie had another baby, the father a Zulu flat-worker. She returned to Newcastle for the birth and came back to me with the baby when he was only two months old. But Bessie’s mother wanted the child and demanded that she should leave him with her. This Bessie, as a good daughter, could not refuse, so she took her baby to Newcastle.

There he fell ill. Once more Bessie needed money for the train fare to fetch her baby. It was a shock to see him, he had grown so thin and weak. He recovered and, when he was once again fat and healthy, Bessie said she would take him back to her mother. ‘Let him stay here,’ we urged her. ‘Your mother can’t feed him properly. He needs you.’ Bessie sighed and shrugged. ‘She’s too old to care for the baby,’’she said. ‘Then why take him back?’ ‘She has asked for him,’ she replied.

Once again the baby became ill. She was informed by a letter written by a relative. We thought then that he had recovered, but one afternoon a telegram arrived. Bessie stared at it in horror, for she knew that any telegram could only convey bad news. ‘Read it to me.’ I read: ‘Come at once. The baby is dead.’ She let out a desperate cry and flinging her apron over her head she ran to her room. But a short time later she returned to the house and, seizing a duster, started polishing a table with fierce intensity while asking me to find out about train fares and when would be the best time to get a Newcastle train. All afternoon she worked and polished and could not be persuaded to stop for a moment.

Bessie's eldest daughter, Nancy, came to Johannesburg as soon as she was old enough and worked as a domestic servant. Her second child was a boy called Sampson, who stayed in Newcastle until he had finished school, and when he was about seventeen came to Johannesburg to work. He found a job in a hotel, but he couldn't get a pass; because he was not born in Johannesburg he had no right to work there, even though his mother lived there. After a few weeks his employer informed him that he could not keep him on without a pass. He was forced to return to Newcastle, there to work for a while in a very low-paid job, far from the protective eye of his mother. There now took place a series of events that have happened thousands of times over. After saving some money Sampson came back to Johannesburg and found a job. He then returned to Newcastle with a letter from his employer requesting that he should be given a pass and permit to work in Johannesburg. The Native Commissioner in Newcastle gave him the permit, but it was conditional. The pass had been endorsed permitting him to ‘reside and work in the proclaimed areas of Johannesburg’ only for that one employer.

He worked there for a while, but then was offered a better job, which he took. The change of employment had to be registered at the pass office. When he handed his pass to the official with a note from his prospective employer, his pass was stamped ‘Endorsed out’. This meant that he had to return to Newcastle – permanently – by the date stated, never again to live or work in Johannesburg.

By that time Bessie’s father had died, the land had reverted to her brother, and Bessie had brought her mother and her youngest child to Johannesburg, where she had invested her life savings in a little house in the township of Dube. Even this had only been made possible through the hours we spent patiently arguing with officials and persuading them to allow her, a woman, to buy a house because houses were sold only to men. Sampson therefore no longer had a home in Newcastle. His uncle had sold the land. All his family were now in Johannesburg. Being ‘endorsed out’ meant that he must go and work on a farm for slave wages. He was, at that time, not more than about nineteen years old.

I phoned the municipality and after much difficulty obtained the information from a senior official that Sampson had the right to appeal against the endorsement of his pass. ‘Come to room 226,’1 was told. Before Sampson and I had even entered the huge building of the Municipal Non-European Affairs Department in Albert Street, we were told that our quest was useless. This information was conveyed by the uniformed African whose job it was to keep non-Europeans from entering the department by the main entrance. When I asked the way to Room 226 he took Sampson’s pass, looked at it, shook his head, returned it to me and indicated that I was wasting my time.

‘They can't do anything for you there,’ he said. When I persisted he directed me up the stairs to Room 226, but said that the native boy (Sampson) would have to go round the back way. I explained to Sampson that he must go out of the side entrance to the back entrance, up the stairs, and meet me again outside Room 226.

After keeping us waiting long enough to impress us with their busyness and importance, two clerks in Room 226 allowed me to come in and tell Sampson's story while he – ‘the boy’ – waited outside. The clerk merely glanced at the pass. ‘Can’t do anything here,’ he said. ‘You could try Room 51.’

Off we went to Room 51, I going down one flight by the front stairs, Sampson having to go by the back. There we met, waited, repeated our story, handed the pass to the clerk. He simply shook his head and said, ‘You are wasting your time.’ Slowly and loudly, as if speaking to a thick-headed foreigner who refused to understand plain English, I explained again. ‘His mother lives in Dube. He is contributing towards the rent of the house. He hasn't any relatives or anywhere to live in Newcastle.’ ‘

It’s nothing to do with us,’ the clerk said. ‘His pass had been endorsed by the government. They’re the only ones who can change that. You can try Mr Ferreira if you like, Room 21, Government Pass Offices, Market Street.’

We went to the other end of town, to the old, sad buildings with their endless, sad queues; and we found Mr Ferreira. He listened to the story, took the pass, shook his head. ‘This boy was born in Newcastle. He must return there.’

I had now spent several hours shuttling from one offfice to another and waiting outside doors. ‘Look,’ I said, with that damp feeling that I get in the nose and throat in such situations, ‘I’ve just explained. His mother now has a house in Johannesburg. She needs his contribution toward the rent. All his family live in Johannesburg, He hasn’t anywhere to go in Newcastle, no home, no family, no job. He has a job here and a house here.’

Mr Ferreira said ‘That’s got nothing to do with it. He was born in Newcastle. He had no right to come to Johannesburg in the first place. His mother had no right to come here. They shouldn’t have let her have the house. His pass can't be changed.’

The next day, when I had calmed down and was once more in a fighting mood, I phoned the Non European Affairs Department and asked to speak to a senior official. I told him Sampson’s story and asked him if it was true that Sampson had the right to have his case reconsidered.

He was very polite. The higher up the official the politer they are. He assured me that Sampson had the right to appeal. ‘Bring him to the Non-European Affairs Department,’ he said. ‘Room 226.’

For a while Sampson worked in his new job, while his former employer continued to sign his pass to overcome the difficulty of not being allowed to change his job without being endorsed out. Then he tried, like thousands of other (many succeeded), to buy a pass. He did not get one. He had to leave his job when the police began to make enquiries at his former place of work. He joined up with other young lads of his own age, passless and usually jobless, adept at dodging the pick-up vans, even at recognising the ghost squad (police who dressed in shabby civilian clothes to intercept and catch pass offenders).

Years later, when Bessie was in hospital and dying, Sampson had become a true son of the slums, a tsotsi boy, familiar with the jails, familiar with the art of living on the fringes of existence. Bessie longed to see him, but he did not even bother to visit her, and only came once when we had sent, by devious ways, a message threatening him with retribution if he did not go.

There are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of Bessies in South Africa. They live in such homes as my Bessie had – a small room in the backyard of their white employers’ houses. These Bessies work for little reward. All Johannesburg’s fine homes, its beautiful northern suburbs with their tree-lined streets, the bougainvilleas and jacarandas, the magnificent gardens; its southern suburbs; Hillbrow with block upon block of luxury flats: all those places, with gleaming polished floors and well-pressed linen, represent the years of sacrifice of these women. They needed so little to make them happy. All Bessie wanted was a small home – even a couple of rooms – where she could have her children with her. It was like reaching for the moon.

‘Tula, tula,’ she would whisper softly as she soothed a troublesome child to sleep. In return she had nothing; a baby who died of malnutrition, a daughter worn out with child-bearing and poverty, a son who joined the tsotsis. I can never forget her.

© Hilda Bernstein

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