The Dirtiest Job in the World
By KENNETH MACKENZIE
THERE is a man in Cape Town---a courteous Afrikaner called Mr. M. N. S. Riekert- whose job it is to summon people into his otlice and scrutinise them; to note the kink in their hair, the colour of their skin, the shape of their nostrils; to ask them about their friends and the schools they went to; to demand to see their mothers and grandfathers and aunts and finally to recommend whether they should be officially registered as `white' or not. It is possibly the dirtiest job in the world.
Some of the misery that can be caused by the Government's desire that everyone shall be classi- fied—that the off-white shall be distinguished from the lily-white—has come to the notice of the world recently in the case of two-year-old Thomas Beecher.
Thomas was found in a paper bag inside a church when he was a few hours old. No one knew who his parents were and as his skin seemed the requisite shade of pinko-grey he was given as a foster-child to a young British couple, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Beecher. By the time he was one he looked vaguely sallow and the welfare officials, moved by some deep-seated tribal instinct, de- cided he should be classified as 'Coloured' or of mixed white and non-white descent. ('It is no good arguing with me, I've seen the child and I know he is Coloured,' one official told a reporter.) This classification would have meant in the long run that Thomas would be doomed to life as a second-class citizen, without access to the best cinemas, bars and beaches, excluded from a num- ber of skilled jobs and with almost no political rights. In the short run it meant separation from the Beechers, who had grown to love him; apar- theid decrees that the continuation of white civilisation depends on white and sallow not living in the same house and loving each other. Fortu- nately, lawyers and the press intervened, and instead the whole family has been permitted to take a Comet to England and sanity.
Other classification dramas do not end so happily. Here in Cape Town our Mr. Riekert has a more difficult time than his colleagues in other cities. In the first hundred years of the white settle- ment at the Cape there was an acute shortage of white women and no very strong prejudices against Eastern slave girls. Since then the fairer of the mixed descendants have regularly passed into the white group. Qualified historians reckon that almost all the older and prouder Afrikaans families have some non-white blood in them.
In 1950 the Government decided to unscramble the omelette, Mr. Rickert does his humiliating work in secret, but some of the cases have become public knowledge. A glance at one or two of them shows the type of suffering this racial inquisition can bring.
A woman with several children had married for a second time some years after her first husband's death and was living reasonably happily, accepted as a white, in a Cape Town suburb. Then investi- gations by Mr. Riekert's bloodhounds revealed that there was some doubt about her first hus- band's race and an inquiry was begun. The final findings are not available—these things take months and even years--but the result so far has been that the stepfather has lost the affection he had for the children, that one teenage child has' run away frorh home and cannot be traced, and that the women herself is seriously ill.
Another man had a good whites-only job on the railways and was married for twenty years to the daughter of a prominent Nationalist. Then Mr. Riekert adjudged him Coloured. These arc his own words about what happened : 'When my wife heard, she collapsed, crying and saying in Afri- kaans: "You have brought shame on me. Go away from me." The atmosphere in my home changed from devotion to hatred. My wife called me a "Hotnot." Eventually I had to get out of the house. A little later my wife sued me for divorce. It was at this time that I decided f could stand it no longer. I took a bottle of aspirins to do away with myself. I was very ill 'hut recovered. At the end of the divorce proceedings my wife collapsed. She remained bedridden until she died three years later.'
Another family's troubles began when their seven-year-old daughter was refused admission to a whites-only school. The parents lived as whites, but there was some doubt about the maternal grandfather. It took three years before they couk establish their whiteness and the child wa admitted to the school. During that time the gir
did not go to any school—to send her to k Coloured school would have been admittint defeat. And three times the father had to take whole family to be inspected by various officials
Perhaps the most gruesome story of all con- cerns a family of five sons and an elderly mother. Four of the sons were clearly white but one was suspiciously dark-skinned. The family were brought before Mr. Rickert and examined and interrogated. Then the five sons left the mother alone with the officials. She, no doubt fearing that the darkness of one threatened the status of all, brought herself to confess to these minor civil ser- vants that the dark son was conceived out of wedlock from a different father from his brothers.
These borderline cases are, of course, relatively few. Most people are securely in their racial group. But the doubtfuls are enough to illustrate vividly how false the whole theory of race purity is, and their treatment demolishes the apologists' claims that apartheid is an honourable attempt to solve a difficult race problem.
Perhaps the Government is building houses, improving the medical services, and so on. But it is also trying to take children away from loving parents; and driving to suicide men whose only sin is to have the wrong ancestors. And every day, in an office in Cape Town, it is insulting the human spirit.
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