The Scholarship Kids

What’s in a name?

With the exception of family members, as well as the public figures Alimuddin Zumla and Michel Droit, the names of all other individuals have been changed to respect their privacy.

PART ONE

South Africa

1957-1968

1. Comatose in Cape Town

Three momentous events took place in 1957. The Russians launched the first satellite into space; Elvis Presley’s ‘All Shook Up’ topped the charts for eight consecutive weeks; and my twin brother Michael and I popped into the world in Cape Town, South Africa, at around midnight in late September.

The first two events made headline news. Alas, no reporters were dispatched to Somerset Hospital to cover the start of our interesting life story, a lapse of judgement on the part of newspaper editors that this book will seek to put right.

Fast-forward several years to 1965, and the Russians were behind in the space race, The Beatles were singing up a storm, and Michael and I were living in the Cape Town suburb of Wynberg, enjoying a normal, almost pedestrian middle-class upbringing.

Well, normal and pedestrian in the South African context of the time, anyway. This was, after all, the heyday of the National Party government’s policy of racial segregation, better known as apartheid. We were classified as coloured, a term that in South Africa denotes people of mixed race. Whites, coloureds, Indians and blacks lived in separate neighbourhoods, went to separate schools, watched movies in separate movie theatres, and used separate trains and buses. All separate, and very much unequal. Only whites had political rights, voted in elections and had a say in how the country was run.

All the same, our suburb was peaceful and pleasant. The streets were wide and clean. Front gardens bloomed behind brick walls and wooden fences, lovingly tended and obsessively watered by their fastidious owners. The only real noise was that of suburban trains when they chugged past at the top of Mission Road, where we lived. In fact, the railway was the dividing line between white Wynberg and coloured Wynberg. So, we quite literally came from the wrong side of the tracks. The whites on the other side had nicer houses on prettier streets, drove fancier cars and ate in restaurants we weren’t allowed into.

One of those restaurants was a trendy American-style diner in the town centre. My childhood dream was to just walk inside, sit down and order a hamburger and fries, with a giant strawberry milkshake on the side. Whenever I saw white kids seated at the counter tucking into their feast, my mouth would water and my heart race with longing.

Can’t we go inside? I once asked Mom during a shopping trip.

Don’t be silly! she hissed dismissively, as if I had asked for the moon.

Coloureds from Cape Town have an interesting history, and genetic studies suggest we may well have the highest degree of mixed ancestry in the world.

It all started in the seventeenth century with the arrival of Dutch soldiers and employees of the Dutch East India Company in the Netherlands. Thanks to its strategic position at the tip of the African continent, the Cape was the ideal location for a supply station to service the ships sailing to the Dutch East Indies, a colony in East Asia. But there wasn’t enough local labour, so the Dutch shipped in slaves from the East Indies and nearby islands off the African coast such as Mauritius, Madagascar and the Seychelles. The Dutch settlers were followed later by settlers from Britain, Germany, France and other European countries. Coloureds thus descend from the intermarriage and intermixing of white settlers with these slaves, as well as the indigenous population of South Africa. It’s a process that never really stopped.

Take our family, the Gentles. Our story has all the hallmarks of a TV drama, complete with tales of hope, struggle and triumph. My great-grandfather on my father’s side was a Scotsman called Robert Gentle – I bear his name today. He came to South Africa in the mid-1800s and settled in the small town of Colesberg. There he built a freight-forwarding business, became a town councillor, married a coloured woman by the name of Maria Jacobs and started the Gentle lineage. Such racial intermarriage was not uncommon at the time.

My grandfather on my mother’s side was an Indian with the surname of Singh and was born on the ship that brought his parents from India to South Africa in search of a better life. He obviously found his sea legs early, for as a young adult, he worked as an accountant on a passenger ship that travelled regularly between Durban and Cape Town. It was on one of these trips that he met his future wife, a coloured woman called Elizabeth Sampson, a nanny to a prominent white family on board. To get around the restrictions of apartheid, my grandfather changed his surname to Leon, apparently the family name of the accommodating Jewish businessman he had once worked for. Having started his married life, he went on to become a small businessman in the town of Wellington, eventually specialising in the fish trade.

Our family history is by no means unique, and many coloured families in and around Cape Town have similar tales to tell that would keep even the most jaded genealogist on the edge of their seat.

Coloureds come in varying hues, from nearly white at one end to very brown at the other – often in the same family. In any other context, that would prompt snide innuendo about extramarital hanky-panky, but not here. For example, my father’s dark complexion contrasted markedly with that of his distinctly fairer siblings, although their facial features and mannerisms were remarkably similar.

Coloureds also sport a wide variety of family names that reveal something of the origins of their forebears. Typical examples in our neighbourhood and at school were Smith, Moore and Pearson (Britain); Du Toit, La Grange and Fouché (France); Lange, Schuller and Seevogel (Germany); and Kloppers, Engelbrecht and Van der Westhuizen (the Netherlands). We were the ultimate melting pot and presented a tragicomic dilemma for the government when it came to deciding who belonged where in the complex and often arbitrary racial hierarchy of apartheid.

*

In the heart of our neighbourhood, and right opposite our house, was a park about the size of a football field. It was a child’s dream, with swings, seesaws, a jungle gym, a slide and a merry-go-round. It was well maintained and even boasted a park attendant, whom we called Parkie. When he wasn’t trying to keep the neighbourhood kids out of mischief on his hallowed turf, he would be quietly seated in his shed-cum-office, reading his Bible. Every few weeks, the sharp, sweet fragrance of freshly mown grass would be carried on the breeze from the park and waft across the road to our house.

The streets were well lit at night, and I never once heard of a house being broken into or a car stolen, at least not on Mission Road. Dad rarely bothered locking the car in the garage at night and would just leave it in the driveway. Not that our old, second-hand Vauxhall was worth stealing.

People greeted each other politely in the streets. Adults reprimanded children for being rude or littering. The height of hooliganism was when the neighbourhood drunk tottered home on Friday nights, causing curtains to part and parents to tut-tut while children sniggered. This was the 1960s, a more deferential time when old-fashioned values of politeness and decorum reigned, adults called the shots and children knew their place.

Many families in the neighbourhood owned their homes. We didn’t, though – our parents simply couldn’t afford it. But our rented three-bedroomed house was spacious and had everything we needed. Underfoot were wooden parquet floors of the kind you would kill for today, but back then they were fairly common and probably meant you couldn’t afford wall-to-wall carpeting.

Almost everyone we knew in Wynberg was a teacher. Our parents were teachers; their friends were teachers; my aunt who lived down the road was a teacher. Dad taught woodwork and technical drawing at high school, while Mom was a primary-school teacher. She read music and was quite good at the piano, so she taught music too.

In our corner of Wynberg, we all spoke English at home. However, we also managed well with Afrikaans, a form of Dutch that evolved over time after the arrival of the first Dutch settlers. To this day, coloured families in Cape Town are typically bilingual, speaking both English and Afrikaans, leaning perhaps to one side or the other depending on where they live and what they do.

I remember our childhood in Wynberg as a magical time when we could simply enjoy being children in a safe and protected environment. That was possible in a staid, conservative city like Cape Town where most businesses closed promptly at five, casinos were outlawed and nightlife was a contradiction in terms. The place was a hotbed of moderation. On Sundays, with most people in church, the city centre was like a ghost town. All that was missing was the tumbleweed blowing down a forlorn and desolate Adderley Street. Never mind Sleepless in Seattle; we had Comatose in Cape Town.

The 1960s was, however, also a time of huge technological and social change that not even sleepy Cape Town could escape. The very first supermarkets were springing up one by one, revolutionising the way people shopped; the jet age was kicking into high gear, shrinking the world for those who could afford it; and the Americans were heading down the home straight in the race to land a man on the moon.

For us, at least, it was an exciting time to be alive.

2. Quiet, please!

A well-known print advertisement when we were growing up read something like this: At 60 miles an hour, the loudest sound in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock. Our house was a bit like that Rolls-Royce.

After we’d all finished dinner, tuned in to the radio (South Africa didn’t yet have television) and settled in for the evening, virtually the only sound in the house was the clock ticking in the living room. That’s because we were all quietly reading. At 23 Mission Road, Wynberg, reading wasn’t just an occasional occurrence; it was a way of life.

Dad would be comfortably seated in his armchair, reading the main section of the Cape Argus, the evening newspaper. Mom would be on the sofa reading the lifestyle section. Michael and I would be curled up on the carpet in our pyjamas, reading the comic section. Afterwards, we’d all swap sections. By the end of the evening, there’d be a mess of pages on the floor. Dad hated that – he referred to it as ‘undressing’ the newspaper.

The joke was that he single-handedly kept the South African newspaper industry going. He bought the Cape Times in the morning and the Cape Argus in the evening. If it was a particularly interesting news day, he’d even get the late edition and read into the night. On Sundays, he bought the Sunday Times, which had several sections and was as heavy as a brick. Dad had his own newspaper-delivery service: Michael and me. He would hand us a coin and send us to the corner shop down the road.

"Michael, go get the Argus. And make sure it’s the late edition."

But I went last time. It’s Robert’s turn!

An argument would inevitably ensue as we tried to exploit the fact that we were identical twins. But Dad was not that stupid.

Right – both of you go!

And if he ran out of cigarettes, the order would include a thirty-pack of Rothmans, his brand of choice.

Dad was a news junkie. Besides devouring newspapers, he listened to the main radio news bulletins morning, noon and night. You never spoke while the news was on. You might get away with ‘Please pass the salt’ at mealtimes, but that was pretty much it. You got an earful for breaking this cardinal rule.

Will you boys be quiet? The news is on! Sometimes, for good measure, he’d add a goddammit.

Mom preferred women’s magazines like Personality and Fair Lady. But, most of all, she was a book fan. She devoured detective stories and crime mysteries from popular writers of the day like Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Ed McBain. Mom also loved poetry and would occasionally recite lines from her favourite poems to herself while cooking or doing the dishes. Once a week, with Michael and me in tow, she’d load up on books at the local public library. She’d leave us in the children’s section so that we could hunt for our own titles – the Cat in the Hat series was an early favourite.

Our parents taught us to read at an early age. We were avidly devouring children’s books and comics even before we started primary school. The highlight of those early years was climbing into the car to go and buy the latest edition of our weekly British comics such as Beano, Beezer and Valiant. There was a thriving exchange market in the neighbourhood as children swapped the latest titles.

Mom and Dad had had neither the opportunity nor the means to go to university. However, they had trained as teachers at the local teacher-training college and seemed determined to bring that skill into our home. They drilled us in good English and taught us to speak properly. Gross grammatical mistakes were swiftly corrected. Especially by Dad, who couldn’t abide linguistic sloppiness.

Daddy, Michael say that—

"Michael says, goddammit!"

But he don’t want to—

"Not ‘he don’t’. He doesn’t!"

Dad had an excellent command of English and loved to wield it. Someone who didn’t like spending money wasn’t just stingy or tight-fisted; he was parsimonious. A person with an over-inflated sense of himself wasn’t just arrogant; he thought he was the cat’s whiskers. Dad’s favourite put-down was He doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. But his most memorable expression came when he wanted to go to the pub for a beer and didn’t want anyone to know.

Where are you going, Daddy?

I’m going to see a man about a dog!

I never did get to see that dog.

Our parents never dumbed down their English for us. They used whatever words and expressions came to mind and expected us to understand them.

Mommy, what are you doing?

You are so inquisitive!

"Inqui— what?"

Inquisitive. It means nosy.

The most-consulted book in the house was an unusually thick English dictionary. It sat on the bookshelf among the paperback novels, The Complete Works of Shakespeare and Poems of Wordsworth. The dictionary was completely dog-eared and worn. The front cover had fallen off. I often wondered why Mom and Dad didn’t just buy a new one. Probably because – to use another of their favourite expressions – money didn’t grow on trees.

By accident or design, our parents were inculcating in us a love of language and learning. Both would serve us well later in life.

*

This methodical, no-nonsense approach to learning continued when we went to school. Back then, discipline was king, and teachers had absolute authority. They enforced rigorous standards of behaviour and even did random checks to see whether our nails were clean.

I remember our teachers as consummate professionals, more elderly than young, and always impeccably dressed. They invested themselves fully in their task.

Excuse me, miss, I said one day, raising my hand after I’d completed a test. I’m finished.

She leaned over and stared at me. "You’re what?"

I’m finished.

No, you’re not. If you’re finished, you’re dead. Are you dead?

No, miss.

"I have finished. Or I am done. Say it."

I am done.

English got the most attention in class. There was lots of dictation, reading aloud and exercises to anchor the grammar. Even our handwriting wasn’t left to chance. Individual letters had to be joined up and look pretty, with thin upstrokes and thick downstrokes. When it came to arithmetic, we went the whole nine yards, from short division