Tag: South Africa

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News

Cry, the Beloved Country


I recently reread this excerpt from “Cry, the Beloved Country,” by Alan Paton.  I’m typing it here because I admire it so much.

“There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it. The road climbs seven miles into them, to Carisbrooke; and from there, if there is no mist, you look down on one of the fairest valleys of Africa. About you there is grass and bracken and birds of the veld. Below you is the valley of the Umzimkulu, on its journey from the Drakensberg to the sea; and beyond and behind the river, great hill after hill; and beyond and behind them, the mountains of Ingeli and East Griqualand.

The grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. It holds the rain and the mist, and they seep into the ground, feeding the streams to every kloof. It is well tended, and not too many cattle feed upon it; not too many fires burn it, laying bare the soil. Stand unshod upon it, for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.”

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News

Cyril Ramaphosa elected to lead South Africa’s ANC: reactions

South Africa’s ruling party elected Cyril Ramaphosa as its new leader on Monday, setting the stage for the passing of the country’s presidency from the embattled Jacob Zuma.

Ramaphosa, a lawyer, businessman and former colleague of Nelson Mandela who campaigned on a platform to root out corruption, unify the party and shore up South Africa’s economy, edged Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the president’s former wife, by fewer than 200 votes.

The rand surged against the dollar in response to the victory, as investors voiced relief at rejection of the populism espoused by Dlamini-Zuma and the prospect for reform following years of corruption that have scrambled South Africa’s prospects and led ratings agencies to lower their assessments of the country’s creditworthiness.

Still, the scale of South Africa’s challenges – including an economy that is growing about 1% annually and one in three workers unemployed – will confront Ramaphosa, who as head of the ANC is likely to become South Africa’s next president. He’ll also have to fend off threats from within the party, where he will be surrounded in the leadership by supporters of Dlamini-Zuma.

Here’s a sampling of reaction across South Africa and around the world:

Eusebius McKaiser, South African journalist and political analyst: “The central problem Ramaphosa will face as he takes the helm of the ANC is that the party is so politically damaged that he might find himself becoming the first ANC leader to lose a general election since South Africa became a democracy in 1994.”

Win Thin, a currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman: Ramaphosa “will not have a magic wand that can make South Africa’s structural problems vanish overnight.”

William Gumede, executive chairman of the Democracy Works Foundation, “Ramaphosa has a better chance of renewing confidence, not only in the markets but also inside the A.N.C., where reformers may now feel they have a place.”

Fatima Hlongeni, a community worker in Soweto who grew up there with Ramaphosa: “I’m happy that we now have a president of the ANC from Soweto. We hope that he can help to bring development here.”

Steven Friedman, political scientist at the University of Johannesburg: “He’s not the kind of muscleman politician that will go in and clean up. He’s more of a conciliator and bridge mender. There are all these wild expectations now.”

Richard Calland, professor at the University of Cape Town and expert on the ANC: “The ANC will struggle to rebrand itself as a party of the progressive center … the paradox is that Dlamini-Zuma lost but her faction won.”

Ben Payton, head of Africa Research at Verisk Maplecroft, a risk advisory firm in the U.K.: “It stretches credibility to imagine that Ramaphosa could win the ANC leadership without striking deals with key power brokers who seek to maintain a patronage-based political system.”

Julius Malema, leader of the EFF, one of South Africa’s two main opposition parties, and a former member of the ANC: “Nothing has really changed‚ the core of the corrupt premier league [referring to the party’s provincial leaders] is at the center of the organization.”

Zwelethu Jolobe, political scientist, University of Cape Town: “What we have seen here‚ however‚ is that there are mixed slates. Both camps [Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma] have people in the top six.”

Oscar Mabuyane, ANC chairperson, Eastern Cape province: “This will collapse factionalism in how we elect leaders. We think we got a collective leadership that will take us to 2019 (general elections).”

Adam Habib, vice chancellor of the University of Witwatersrand: “It is a split leadership team but maybe that is for the better. For those who worry about Ramaphosa being paralyzed‚ remember that he has both Mantashe [elected ANC national chairperson] and Mashatile [elected ANC treasurer general]‚ both of whom are politically astute. He has political support and should use it.”

Categories
Economy

Ending poverty in Africa will require both growth and inclusiveness says Oxfam

Focusing solely on the sum of goods and services produced within their borders cannot alone reduce the inequality that plagues the economies of countries throughout southern Africa, a report published by Oxfam International concludes.

Despite periods of economic growth during the past two decades, the benefits have yet to reach the poorest in countries such as Swaziland, Nigeria, Namibia and South Africa, notes Oxfam, which adds that the inequality falls most heavily on women and young people.

“The shape of many of the continent’s economies – characterized by an overreliance on the extractive sector, inadequate investment in agriculture and large informal sectors – has meant that the consequences of inequality have mostly been felt by the young and by women,” concludes Katy Wright, author of the report, which was released in the run-up to the recent World Economic Forum on Africa. “Instead of focusing solely on GDP and hoping to tweak it to make it more inclusive, leaders should focus directly on reducing inequality and eliminating poverty, in ways that lead to economic prosperity for all.”

“These aims should be placed above GDP growth – not because growth is unimportant, but because poverty and inequality represent the most significant barriers in Africa to achieving sustainable and inclusive growth,” she adds.

Swaziland has the greatest inequality in the world, followed by Nigeria, Namibia and South Africa, notes Wright (below chart). Oxfam found recently that three billionaires in South Africa have the same wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the population.

The 20 most unequal countries in the world, using raw and adjusted Gini measurements

Across Africa, up to three-quarters of women work in the agricultural, low-paid and informal sectors, notes Wright, who adds that women who work in manufacturing, services and trade earn about 70 percent of that of their male counterparts.

The continent also has yet to deliver jobs to a majority people under the age of 24, who, she notes, have the potential to drive economic prosperity with the right investments and policies. In South Africa alone, more than half of all young people are likely to be unemployed.

The report recommends that countries boost their tax-to-GDP ratios to at least one-quarter, including reducing tax avoidance and “enhancing capacity to collect taxes from highly paid individuals and large firms.”

According to Oxfam, governments also must meet commitments to spend a fifth of their national budget on education and 15% of their budgets on health, and “make explicit plans to reduce poverty and eliminate inequality” in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, a series of 17 goals that aim to end poverty, protect the planet, and promote peace and prosperity.

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Sports

Gift Ngoepe makes baseball history

This spring, a South African is playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates, which is giving baseball fans a thrill.

On Wednesday Mpho Ngoepe, who was born and raised near Johannesburg, become became the first African-born player to appear in a major-league game. It happened at PNC Park, in the bottom of the fourth inning.

Ngoepe, whose first name means “gift” in Sotho, singled off Jon Lester in his first at-bat en route to a 6-5 victory win over the Cubs.

“To accomplish this only for me but for my country and my continent is something so special,” Ngoepe later told reporters. “There are 1.62 billion people on our continent. To be the first person out of 1.62 billion to do this is amazing.”

It was 2:49 a.m. in South Africa, where sport usually means soccer, cricket, rugby or golf. But as Gary Smith detailed in a profile of Ngoepe eight years ago for Sports Illustrated, Ngoepe grew up beside a baseball diamond.

His mother, Maureen, raised Gift and his brother, Victor, who plays for the Pirates’ Gulf Coast League team, in a seven-and-a-half-by-nine-foot room adjacent to the clubhouse of the Randburg Mets, an amateur baseball club in Johannesburg’s northwestern suburbs.

“The Mets’ shower became Gift’s scrubbing room; their baseball field, 40 yards from his bed, his front yard,” writes Smith. “The new and larger tuck shop that was added later became Gift’s kitchen, its refrigerator became his family’s.”

Ngoepe became water boy, batboy and, eventually, player for the Mets. From there he advanced to baseball’s European Academy in Italy, where the Pirates signed him.

Though Ngoepe impressed scouts with his defensive skills, he struggled at the plate until he focused on hitting right-handed after years as a switch hitter.

Ngoepe later said he almost cried as a trotted out from the dugout to take his position at second base. I told myself not to cry because I’m in the big leagues and I’m a big guy now,” Ngoepe said. “(Catcher Francisco) Cervelli hugged me and I could feel my heart beat through my chest.”

In his first big-league start, on Friday night in Miami against the Marlins, Ngoepe notched three hits in three at-bats, including a run batted in. In all, the Pirates scored 12 runs to the Marlins’ two.

Ngoepe journeyed through the minor leagues for nearly nine years before his appearance in the big leagues. His mother died four years ago. On Thursday, Deadspin asked him what he misses about South Africa.

“I just miss the people,” he said. “In South Africa, we’re more like a family. We call it a braai, but you call it a barbecue. And we just braai anytime. It’s just like, you can call a friend and be like, ‘Hey, Hannah, we’re having a braai right now, come on over.’ And you’d be coming on over at this very moment. For no current reason. We’re just having a braai.”

Categories
News

South Africa marks Human Rights Day

South Africa will pause Tuesday to mark the anniversary of a massacre that highlighted the horror of apartheid and led the republic to enshrine human rights.

Human Rights Day, a public holiday, commemorates the events of March 21, 1960, when the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), a political party that had formed a year earlier as a breakaway from the African National Congress (ANC), called on members to leave at home the passbooks the apartheid government used to control the movement of black, Indian and coloured people in urban areas, and offer themselves for arrest in an act of mass resistance.

In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela, the ANC leader whom the government imprisoned for 27 years and who later became South Africa’s first democratically elected president, describes the demonstration in Sharpeville, a township located about 35 miles south of Johannesburg.

“In the early afternoon, a crowd of several thousand surrounded the police station. The demonstrators were controlled and unarmed. The police force of seventy-five was greatly outnumbered and panicky. No one heard warning shots or an order to shoot, but suddenly, the police opened fire on the crowed and continued to shoot as the demonstrators turned and ran in fear. When the area had cleared, sixty-nine Africans lay dead, most of them shot in the back as they were fleeing. All told, more than seven hundred shorts had been fired into the crowd, wounding more than four hundred people, including dozens of women and children. It was a massacre, and the next day press photos displayed the savagery on front pages around the world.”

The atrocity led the United Nations Security Council, for the first time, to urge the government of South Africa to promote racial equality, and began an exodus of capital from the country. The killings also  hardened the resolve of Mandela and other leaders, who went on to advocate for action aimed at disrupting the apartheid state.

After Mandela became president, the country officially declared the day a public holiday and adopted a bill of rights that guarantees equality and human dignity.

President Jacob Zuma is expected to travel on Tuesday to the Eastern Cape province, where he will honor Steve Biko, the anti-apartheid leader who died 40 years ago, at the age of 30, in a Pretoria prison after being tortured by white officers of the government’s security service.

The PAC will host a march to commemorate the massacre at Sharpeville. “This is the most important day of our time as we commemorate the lives of [the] Sharpeville 69 and the fight against pass laws,” Tshego Mosala, the group’s spokesperson, told the Citizen newspaper.

Categories
Sports

NBA announces first-ever exhibition in Africa, South Africa sport minister condemns xenophobia

The news that the NBA will stage its first-ever exhibition game on the continent in South Africa later this year comes amid a wave of anti-immigrant violence that is engulfing the republic.

At roughly the same time Wednesday that the league announced a matchup to be played this August in Johannesburg, President Jacob Zuma vowed to deal with the “underlying issues,” including a jobless rate that hovers around 25%, that have contributed to attacks on foreigners.

The NBA didn’t comment on the attacks, which have left at least seven people dead and forced thousands of immigrants from Malawi, Zimbabwe and elsewhere to seek shelter in camps.

But Fikile Mbalula, South Africa’s minister of sport, who attended the NBA’s announcement, condemned the xenophobia and mistreatment of migrants.

“We have here in South Africa coexisted with people who have oppressed us for more than 300 years,” said Mbalula. “And yet there are criminals who can’t tolerate their own blood, and their own brothers and sisters. And we say, as South Africa, not in our name.”

The exhibition is slated to feature a contest between a squad composed of African players and an outfit made up of players from the U.S. and elsewhere. Luol Deng, a forward for the Miami Heat who was born in South Sudan, will captain Team Africa. Chris Paul of the L.A. Clippers will skipper Team World.

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News

South Africa with (and without) the Internet

Sunset in South Africa's Midlands
Sunset in South Africa’s Midlands

At around 4:00 p.m. on Sunday the power went out here in the part of South Africa’s Kwa-Zulu Natal province that we live, one in a series of rolling blackouts by the republic’s main utility, which struggles to meet demand.

The weather outside was 75 degrees with a light breeze that carried a trace of smoke. My significant other and I heard a beep that signaled the shutdown, then the appliances kicked off.

The outage seemed like a good time to get out of the house. We resolved to bicycle around the village, a circuit that takes about an hour.

Others had similar thoughts. On our road, a neighbor walked her beagle. A couple from the cul-de-sac at the end were out with their two retrievers. Our ridgebacks, Tala and Juma, raced to them. The wife, who happens to be the vet who cares for our dogs, pushed their infant daughter in a stroller.

Later the sun set and the stars appeared. One burned a bright yellow.

That’s how it’s been here the past 10 days, when a combination of power cuts and spotty Internet conspired to connect me more closely with the days and nights.

Internet in the village comes from Telkom, a state-owned monopoly that serves most of the republic. Our house receives Internet via so-called ADSL, a pre-broadband era technology that, in theory, delivers Internet over copper telephone lines at speeds of around 5 gigabytes per second on a good day.

The ADSL here gives out at sundown sometimes. The house receives about one bar of cellphone service, which means you can’t use your phone as a hotspot.

Service delivery can be spotty in South Africa. Of course, we’re well off compared with most people. Nearly 65% of households in South Africa have no access to the Internet, according to the latest census.

Our spotty Internet connection feels like a throwback to the mid-1990s in the U.S., when the World Wide Web had just appeared and most of us dialed into the Internet via modems.

You connect when you can.

That leaves plenty to discover when you can’t connect. A week ago we biked along the beach in Durban, from the city front to the Blue Lagoon, where on Sundays Indian families, three and four generations strong, gather. We read a book of drawings by Jean-Michel Basquiat and watched a documentary about the artist in downtown Manhattan in the 1990s. We hooked up the speakers to the stereo that had been unconnected for years and listened to jazz. I began reading “The Fear,” a chronicle by the journalist Peter Godwin about Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe.

Most days the dogs and I walk together at a farm nearby. They wake me in the morning.

Internet and more
Internet and more

If I want to work with an Internet connection, I head to the village library, where I can pick up a cellphone signal from Vodacom that registers four or five bars.

The library, which occupies a low-slung building, has sections in English, Zulu and Afrikaans. It also displays the latest local newspapers and periodicals. One day recently, I read the Mercury, a daily from Durban, flipped through an issue of GQ’s South Africa edition, and lost myself in an collection of essays by Nadine Gordimer, the South African writer who died last year.

The place is pin quiet. Sometimes the librarians chat softly in Zulu.

Categories
Home Life

On taking notes

In an article recently for The New Yorker, the writer John McPhee describes some of his experiences over the course of more than 50 years of interviewing people, including Special Agent Ronald Rawalt, a mineralogist from the FBI whose work in Mexico solved the murder of an American drug agent there; the actor Richard Burton, who “interviewed himself,” according to McPhee; and Alan Hume, M.D., a surgeon in Maine who “talked clearly, rapidly, volubly, and technically.”

McPhee has some advice for anyone who makes a living that involves recording what other people say. “Whatever you do, don’t rely on memory,” he writes. “Don’t imagine that you will be able to remember in the evening what people said during the day.” Good point, in my experience, as limited as it may be compared with McPhee’s. Even when I’m not on deadline, I make it a practice to read my notes the same day I’ve interviewed someone, as a way to reflect on what he or she told me, to identify gaps in my understanding and to decipher the scrawl that I tend to produce when I’m scribbling.

Lots of people take notes but journalists may be the only ones for whom writing down what other people tell us is the work itself. In December I met Bohlale Ratefane, a woman who works the lost luggage counter for South African Airways at Johannesburg’s Tambo airport. Ratefane wrote notes to herself in a black notebook with a worn cover while juggling both a BlackBerry and a smartphone. She wrote in the notebook seemingly at random, back and forth among the pages, but the system must have made sense to her because she found the entry she needed every time. She worked the notebooks and phones to perfection in pursuit of her prey, which included suitcases and passports that had become separated from their owners.

Recently I came across a story that I wrote two autumns go, during a football game between Columbia and Dartmouth that I had gone to cover for a class at journalism school. The draft had been piled among a series of notes that I’ve carried with me since then as I’ve traveled from New York City to South Africa and back.

About midway through the fourth quarter on that Saturday in October, I wandered over to the Big Green’s side of the stands, where I met Elliott Olshansky. I had sought out Olshansky because he and a cluster of fans cheered for Dartmouth on nearly every play. As it happened, Olshansky graduated from Dartmouth in 2004 and aspired to be a writer and an entrepreneur. “I’m in this weird limbo between where I am and where I want to be,” he told me.

I liked his comment and used it in my first draft of the story. My professor also liked the comment but suggested that I discard it nonetheless. “It doesn’t really advance your central point,” he wrote in tracked changes through the middle of the paragraph. My professor was right about the quote. The story was tighter without it.

Still, I’m glad I’ve preserved that first draft of the story long enough to read Olshansky’s comment anew. That’s because the in-between state that Olshansky described himself as occupying has become a home of sorts to me. I’ve recently returned to New York from South Africa to work on a project that combines my training in law and journalism. But I also look forward in August to returning to South Africa, where there are stories that I want to report and write, and where my partner lives and works.

When I met Olshansky he had recently published an e-book about the rules of dating from a guy’s perspective. “Guy-lit,” according to Olshansky, who also was pursuing an MBA at Fordham. Aspiring entrepreneur and writer – that was where Olshansky stood as we parted on that sunny afternoon, when I did not yet realize his observation might one day resonate with me.

Writing in my notebook what Olshansky said and discovering the quote anew 18 months later underscores for me another reason one writes things down in the first place. Mostly we take notes to remember, but the notes that we take also help us to see things in new ways. Our drafts may be a means to an end, but they become a part of us too.

 

Categories
Life

Car Talk: Part III

discI returned to Class Auto in Pietermaritzburg on Wednesday afternoon for another test to determine whether my partner’s Land Rover deserved a designation of roadworthy. Our Land Rover specialist, Steve, had repaired each of 10 defects inspectors  flagged in January.

This was a second run at roadworthy. The Land Rover had earned it in November, but my partner and I squandered the status – a requirement for registering a vehicle in South Africa – by failing to register the Land Rover within 60 days. When I returned to Class Auto in January with the vehicle, its roadworthy status hinged, in the view of the inspector on duty that day, on our making the 10 repairs. Steve agreed to do the work and I resolved not to let the certification, if we were able to earn it anew, lapse again.

Now back at Class Auto, I forked over the fee of about $30 (the third time we would pay for testing). The Indian man behind the counter asked for my keys and offered me a seat on a vinyl sofa that lines one wall of the office. Within about five minutes, an inspector entered the room, retrieved the keys and headed out to the Land Rover, which he proceeded to drive into a shed where he and his colleagues would poke at the vehicle until satisfied.

While I waited, I read something about Beyoncé in a stale copy of People and glanced up occasionally to check on the Land Rover. At one interval I saw its tail lights illuminate, first the right one then the left, as the inspectors worked their way around the vehicle and down their checklist. I wanted to photograph the scene but I didn’t dare for fear the man in the office think me an undercover inspector and withhold a roadworthy designation for a second time.

Instead I fiddled with my iPhone and waited for what felt like 20 minutes. A Zulu guy joined me on the sofa while inspectors scoured his four-wheel-drive vehicle. Then the inspector who had tested the Land Rover returned to the office, plopped the keys on the counter and handed a green form to his colleague, a woman who stood on the other side of the shelf.

“Who’s Land Rover?” she called to the two of us without looking up. “That’s mine,” I answered. “It’s passed,” she said. “Just give us five minutes for the paperwork.”

Passed. My face felt flush as relief coursed through me. As promised, the woman handed me a form that proclaimed the Land Rover to be roadworthy. I headed out into the sunshine and texted Steve. “Passed,” I typed. “Thanks, Steve!” “Brilliant!” came the reply a moment later.

I also emailed my partner. “Whose Land Rover?” read the subject line of the message, which recounted the moment the woman told me the Land Rover had passed. “Did you see my message,” I asked my partner excitedly when she arrived home that evening. She hadn’t seen it, which gave me license to deliver the news to her anew. “We’ll need to go together in the morning to register the vehicle,” I added.

That demanded speed. My partner and I were scheduled to fly to New York the following day. I would not be returning to South Africa for six months. My partner would be back in 14 days but said she would be too busy to register the vehicle then. That left Thursday morning before we headed to the airport.

The next day at about 7:30 a.m. we headed to One-Stop Licensing, a business in Pietermaritzburg that, for a fee of about $8, handles paperwork one needs for registration. With my partner beside me in the Land Rover, I pulled out of our street and drove to the N3, the highway that connects Johannesburg and Durban, for the roughly seven-mile trip to One-Stop.

Trouble loomed as soon as we entered the highway. All three lanes were jammed and traffic had slowed to a speed of about 5 mph. About 1,000 feet ahead a police car had parked at a 45-degree angle in the center lane, forcing traffic to move left or right and intensifying the congestion. As we rolled, my partner, who had worked all night and had yet to pack, began to fret. “I can’t do this,” she said, covering her eyes with her hand. “I have two presentations and a meeting in Boston and I haven’t even packed yet. I can’t do that in an hour.”

My partner’s misgivings and the tie-up on the N3 left me wondering if my determination to register the Land Rover had exceeded the bounds of common sense. Then we received what in retrospect seems to have been a sign from a higher power. A pickup stuck in the jam about four vehicles ahead of us turned right onto the grass that separates the eastbound and westbound lanes and pulled back onto the highway heading in the opposite direction. The remedy was one that drivers who are stuck in traffic resort to sometimes after determining that the benefits of freeing themselves outweigh the costs of an illegal move.

We resolved to do the same. That’s when a Land Rover, with its clearance, comes in handy. I rolled the vehicle onto the median as my partner talked me through the maneuver. “All clear,” she said as she looked toward the westbound lanes. I shifted into second, heaved the vehicle up onto the roadway and accelerated.

We had escaped the jam but still had an unregistered vehicle. “Take Old Howick,” said my partner, referring to a route that would allow us to avoid the highway. “Are you sure,” I asked, fearful of encountering more traffic at what by then become had rush hour between Hilton and Pietermaritzburg. “Just go,” she said.

Off we went, down Old Howick, which descends a mountain from Hilton into Pietermaritzburg. Happily for us the traffic moved and we arrived at One-Stop around 8:45 a.m.

We headed into the whitewashed building that serves as One-Stop’s offices, where we encountered no queue at the counter. “I’m back,” I said eagerly to the woman who manages the shop. “I obtained the roadworthy just as you advised.”

I’m not sure the woman remembered me but she smiled as I spread the forms for registration on the counter. “My partner is here and she has her passport and two photos,” I added proudly, as if I might get extra credit for doing something required.

For her part, my partner stepped to the counter and laid her passport and photos beside the forms. At last, I thought. We’re here and this is happening.

My partner had brought the two photos because One-Stop had told me she would need them to apply for a traffic registration number, an identifier the South African government issues to drivers. “How long will this take,” my partner asked. “We are flying today.”

“Today,” asked the woman. “This takes about two hours. But there’s no queue at the registration office, which is in the building behind us. You can go over there and handle this directly. Otherwise, we’ll walk your application over there but that could take two hours until we drop the application off and pick it up.”

The woman’s colleague, a nice young Zulu woman, offered to escort us to the licensing office, which is housed in a temporary structure about 100 yards behind One-Stop. “OK,” I said. “Please walk over with us so we don’t get lost.” Though we would have to have closed our eyes to miss the destination, I feared anything that might derail our effort.

classTogether with the woman, my partner and I headed out of One-Stop, into the sunshine, out the gate and up the road one stop to the licensing bureau. “If are able to register this vehicle I will hug you,” I said to the woman, who smiled. “This has been a journey.”

Once inside the woman approached one of the clerks, who sit behind glass that resembles a bank. “First you’ll get the traffic identification number, then if you’d like, you can register the vehicle,” our guide told us. “May I find you if there’s a problem,” I asked her, not wanting her to abandon us. “Yes, that’s OK, but you should be fine,” she said.

After about five minutes my partner got to the window, where the clerk, a Zulu woman who wore reading glasses, examined my partner’s passport. “This is expired,” the clerk said. “Expired,” asked my partner as we each gasped. “No, not expired,” said my partner, pointing to a page. “See here.”

window

The clerk looked at the page then smiled. “I’m here for 14 years but I go back and forth to the states because that’s where the funders are who let me do work in South Africa,” said my partner.

“Better there,” said the woman.

“No, not better,” said my partner. “Cold. Better here.”

“How great is this,” I said to my partner while the woman sifted through varied forms, occasionally entering information into a computer. “I love places like this. This is where the business of the country happens.”

“I would give anything not to have to do this,” my partner replied.

The woman smiled and continued to stamp the paperwork, which included her cutting a piece of clear tape and using it to fasten the two photos to the form. “You don’t see that in the states,” my partner said to me. “A scissor and two sheets of tape for an application.”

While we waited for the woman to process the papers, we noted a sign advising the public that the system that processes credit card payment had malfunctioned. Cash only, we learned. “This will be 1,100 rand,” the woman said through the window. I checked my wallet, which held 600 rand. My partner had no cash on her.

“Where’s an ATM,” my partner asked the clerk. “Out the road and turn left, and you’ll seen an ABSA on your right,” the clerk said. “He’ll go get cash and I’ll wait here,” my partner told her.

With that the clerk nodded and I trotted out of the building and toward the Land Rover, which remained parked in front of One-Stop. As I ran I tugged on my shorts, which seemed to falling down and tried to be careful not to trip in my flip-flops.

I drove out of the parking lot and toward the bank, where I swung the Land Rover into the first space I could find, jumped out and jogged to a row of ATMs. I withdrew 2000 rand, made sure I had my wallet in hand, then turned and ran back to the Land Rover and returned to One-Stop, then trotted back over to the licensing office.

I passed my partner the cash. She counted out 1,100 rand and slid the notes through the slot beneath the window to the clerk. The clerk counted the money then turned slightly to type into a machine, before picking up the forms and returning them to us.

Then the clerk produced a form I had not seen. It was a registration document, which, at the bottom, included the disc – akin to an inspection decal in the states – that we sought.registration

I stared at the document, half expecting the paper to vanish before our eyes or the clerk to pull it back to her side of the glass. But the disc remained on our side.

My partner and I smiled, thanked the clerk and wished her “Shala gashle,” which is Zulu for “stay in peace.” Though we had the disc but we still needed license plates that would tie to the registration. The ones on the Land Rover had expired.

By then it was about 9:30 a.m. My partner had yet to pack but we resolved to finish the registration. We jogged back to One-Stop, where we paid another 170 rand for plates, which a clerk produced by hand in the rear of the shop. The plates numbered three in all: identical rectangular placards for the front and rear bumpers and a square one for the rear panel.

“We’re in a hurry,” my partner reminded the manager, who turned to the man making the plates and relayed the news that we had a plane to catch. Within a minute or two the man emerged from behind his workbench. He had three plates in hand as he headed toward the parking lot with my partner and me trailing. I ran ahead to start the Land Rover, which the man motioned me to pull to one side of the driveway.

I jumped out of the Land Rover while the man removed the old plates, wiped the new ones with a cloth, then mounted them by peeling away adhesive that revealed an adhesive strip that ran along the perimeter of each one and allowed the plates to be affixed to the vehicle.

platesWhile the man worked, my partner dropped the disc into a plastic holder affixed to the inside of the windshield on the passenger’s side. When the man finished we thanked him, tipped him 10 rand and drove away.

“I can’t believe it. We have a registered vehicle,” I said to my partner. “Thank you for getting all you did today to help finish what we started. Now we can drive to Durban or anywhere we’d like without having to worry what might happen if the police pull us over. We’re legal!”

My partner agreed. “You’ve been working on this since October,” she said. “I wanted you to be able to leave South Africa with it finished.”

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zumiThere’s a Zulu man who canvasses houses here in Hilton to ask for money. On Saturday he appeared at our gate, where he claimed he needs funds to buy a school uniform for his daughter.

The man, Bhekumzumi Sydney Zimu, 47, has appeared from time to time at my partner’s door for the past eight years. He’s a fixture in the neighborhood, you might say.

“Where is your daughter,” my partner asked Zumi, who had told us his daughter is in the eighth grade.

“In a boarding school in Willowfontein,” he answered. “She’s in grade 12.”

“I thought she was in the eighth grade,” my partner said.

“My older daughter is in twelfth grade,” Zumi said.

Zumi said the eighth grader attends school on a scholarship that leaves him responsible for her food and uniform, which he said he hopes to buy at a store in Pietermaritzburg.

My partner called a Zulu friend, whom she asked to speak with Zumi for the purpose of investigating his story. If it checked out, my partner and I discussed the possibility of driving him to the uniform shop, where a uniform sells for about $5 (U.S.). That would be one way to determine if he’s telling the truth.

Zumi talked with the friend for about four minutes then handed the phone back to my partner. His story was difficult to assess by phone, according to the friend, who recommended that we advise Zumi to come by the office where my partner and her friend work. There the mostly Zulu staff could assess the truth of his tale.

My partner relayed the decision to Zumi. She wrote out instructions to bring a letter from the school that identifies the daughter by name and attests to his being her father.

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Zumi said he would do that. Then he began, in his limited English, to tell us about a job he had in Hilton with a man who died. The man’s wife would not continue Zumi’s employment because she had never met Zumi and could not verify his story, he said. Without the job, Zumi needed money to finish putting up his house, which has unfinished walls he says.

We’ll see whether he shows up at the office. In the meantime, my partner is withholding judgment. “He rolls out all kinds of stories,” she says.

UPDATE: As of February 28, Zumi has yet to appear at the office.