Racism
I am not sure what you call me, but
I am very prejudice against ignorant people! Some of us try hard in life to accomplish something of worth. Others just want to find an excuse for not having to do the work. My prejudice knows no racial boundaries. Ignorant lazy people exist in all the races.
You drive around neighborhoods and you can almost tell the ethnic flavor just from the yards. When you are in a nice neighborhood where people
by earnsale"> make money and
spend money on their homes it is also predominately white. Find a neighborhood of trash and it is usually non-white.
White man for centuries thought Blacks were slower than whites. Is there any
by earnsale"> truth to that I wonder?
Africa is the oldest civilizations on earth. Why are they not the example of success? In fact much of it is as backward as ever.
Here in America I used to say, give the Blacks a city of their own and let them
by earnsale"> manage it. Today Detroit is a prime example.
You cannot deny history.
We get CBSR TV episodes over her in South Africa and I often what the show set in Detroit about a huge pawnbroker shop "Hardcore Pawn" They often show visuals of the City of Detroit and man oh man! it is far more run down with countless houses in a state of utter decay. We do not have a city in such a terrible state of neglect, even her in supposedly darkest Africa (South Africa).
I was born and raised in South Africa, worked on the gold mines for 8 years and never, ever, experience any problems with my fellow black workers. If you show respect to another human, he will nearly always reciprocate that respect back to you.
The mine I worked at had 40,000 black miners from all corners of South Africa and also from some nearby states. By comparison in that same mine there was only about 2,500 white workers.
While not trying to excuse the inexcusable policy of Apartheid of the white led Afrikaner South African regime, the racism in South Africa, did not come close to the hideous racism I saw in Mississippi. South Africa was made a pariah of the world, by hypocrites who were doing the exact same thing in their own countries.
I hope you guys will be interested in my upbringing in South Africa after world war 11 some of it below
You will see I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth!
Alan McDougall’s Memories of His time in
Randgate 1940 until 1950
I was born in the Robinson Hospital in Randfontein, near the small town of Randgate, 121 Langerman, and Street, where my family and I had our very first home We resided there until we relocated to Carletonville in 1950. Rangate located near the bigger town of Randfontein in the Transvaal Province (Now Guateng) of the Republic of South Africa. In front of our very ordinary little grey walled tin roofed two bedroom home, ran a sand road where my siblings and I could play Randgate was a small town, where many poor Afrikaans speaking people lived, of whom most despised the English Speaking town because we were of British Stock Randgate had no tarred streets, but these sand roads that were great to play in so long ago. (I looked up Randgate on Google map, and saw our house in still there, somewhat altered and all the streets were now tarred)
Dad, was born Lynden McDougall in Grahams Town Cape Province on the 6th. December 1909, he died in like he wanted to, with some of his beloved family by his bedside, in the small flat mom he and mom had occupied for a few happy years before his demise, in Durban Natal Province of South Africa at age 78 in the year 1987. Mom was born 23rd May 1921 and died in hospital after a short illness in Carletonville Transvaal Province of South Africa also at the age of 78 in the year 1999. They both developed heart problems during their lives and this was the prime case of death to both, dad had a pacemaker and mom suffered from a slowly increasing heart failure.
My father and mother were always called Bubbles (Mom) and Piper (Dad), who gave them these affectionate nick names, remains a mystery to me up to this day.
Our house in Randgate was/is situated in the Transvaal Province deep in the interior of the South Africa Highvelt. Randgate and the larger town of Randfontein in the area were built by the mining companies to house the many white workers of the gold mines. There were huge deposits of gold ore far beneath the surface of the earth, which had to be laboriously extracted from the stubborn rock by the thousands of miners both white and black at sometimes huge cost in human lives, because of the extremely dangerous working conditions that could at times be kilometre underground. My dad Lynden McDougall (Piper) worked back then at what the largest and richest gold mine in the world, namely at; the Randfontein Estates Gold Mining Company. This colossal Gold Mine was located at nearby, Randfontein some 8 kilometres away from our home in Randgate.
The black African Gold miners were nearly all migrant labourers who came from remote rural areas from all of over southern Africa. Unlike the privileged white miners these African miners had to leave their families, wife’s, children and parents far away at their rural homes sometimes for years at a time, before returning home with a little accumulated money. Because the African miners were sole bread- winners for their very remote extended families, the mine bosses insisted on a contract rule that by automatic postal transfer, that each month the black miner send his family a percentage of their wage to their families. There could be as many as 45 thousand black African miners working on one large mine. One gold mine might have many shafts and headgear's to access the gold ore which was only located at great depths beneath the surface of the earth. These black mine workers where housed in huge mine compounds, of up to 60,000 single men The mines supplied their food and lodging free, and this was one of the justifications the mining houses gave for the very low wages they paid these hard working people. It was simply, the cheaper the wage bill of the mining houses, the greater their profit.
The lack of conflict over the years in these huge mine compounds was truly amazing in my opinion. If one takes into consideration that the make up of these black African varied considerable. These miners came from different tribes, spoke different languages had different cultures, yet lived peacefully under one roof so to speak. At the compounds each tribe had a Headman or “Induna” who represented them in any dispute with management or misunderstanding between members of their own tribe. In intertribal relations one “Induna would dialogue with the “Induna” of another tribe until any dispute was resolved.
These miners who were exploited and given slave wages rebelled and demanded a better wage all sadly in vain. Thus they repeatedly went on strike for higher wages.
To resist the black miners demand, the mine houses such as Gold Fields and Anglo American imported dirt cheap peasants from the Chinese mainland, much to their later regret. These callous Chinese men were said to murder and slaughter their black African co-workers, while deep underground and eat them because they liked human flesh and were cannibals. This is what moms, mother or Nanny told me?, and she said one could see scores of these dangerous pigtail savages passing in front of her home each day on way to work.
Note the present Chinese South Africans did not originate from this source, and have the same civil rights as any other community in our country , whom have contributed out of proportion, in the positive to the rest of the population in South African society,
Following a severe labour shortage, due to constant strikes by both white and black gold miners, the South African government, resolved to import cheap indentured labourers from China. The earliest of these Chinese labourers arrived in 1904 to work on the gold mines of Transvaal. Within a year there were 34 000 and the number increased to 62 000. Both black and white mine workers resented the move because it reduced the cost of labour and forced many. White mine workers out of employment. Black labourers returned to the mines in sufficient numbers eventually and in 1907 the government started to repatriate the Chinese workers. By March 1910 the repatriation was completed.
Dads Job on the gold mine, that of a Winding Engine Driver, this job it was of an extremely very stressful and responsible nature indeed. In order to become competent and qualify for the task of operating these huge 1 megawatt winding engines dads, to study in order to qualify for this job he had to pass a difficult, Winding Engine Drivers Government Certificate of Competency. In order to get to work each day, he had to ride his bicycle to work and back from home in Rangate some 8 to 10 kilometres away. He worked three shifts, all his long 36 years on the gold mines, these shifts were namely:, morning shift 7am to 3pm, afternoon shift from 3pm to 11pm and night shift from 11pm to 7am To get to work on time dad get up at 5am in winter when it was still dark, for his morning shift, return in the dark of night from his afternoon shift, and ride his bike in darkness for his night shift which started at 11 pm.
Riding a bicycle alone in the dark of night, to get to work, was really risky in the war years, because there was a lot of hatred from some of the Afrikaner community against the South African English speaking people, who were support the war efforts of the Allies. English people could be accosted by Afrikaner thugs and beaten up, if found alone and unable to protect themselves. Some Afrikaner leaders during the war supported Hitler and his Nazi philosophy outright in their news papers. Just to mention on of them namely; John Voster who would later become both Prime Minister and President of the Apartheid nationalist party ruled Republic of South Africa. My dad told me that they must have buried their heads in the sand if they thought that they would get any preferential treatment from Adolph Hitler and his Nazi regime if they won the war.
The Afrikaners who protested against South Africa being in the war, would often go out in groups or gangs looking for victims and accost South African Soldiers, walking alone, and beat them up, at times so badly at times, that a few of these brave soldiers died, before even given the chance of active service overseas. During the World War 2 my father was considered a “key man” because he was responsible for hoisting the precious gold ore to the surface which was essential part of funding some of the war effort.
In our Randgate Home, we did not initially have the luxury of an indoor flush toilet, but had to go to tiny room in our backyard, do our business in a large smelly black bucket, during all hours’ day or night. The smelly bucket was only picked up and replaced in the early mornings by a clean bucked once a week. The people who had to carry out this, smelly task, was from a tribe of black Africans, who would tolerate this unpleasant task because their culture allowed them to do it. There was an alleyway between the houses and these unfortunate guys had to come down them in the dark of night, with horse driven carts to change to the buckets each week. Later we got a septic tank located in the back yard and from then on had the unbelievable luxury of an indoor flush toilet.
Rangate was populated mostly by bitter Afrikaners who, still remembered the legacy of Boer War and considered any English speaking South African as the hated Brit. We were referred to mockingly as “Rooineks” (Rednecks) and chased and beaten up any time these idiots could corner us (Bruce and I) away from home and alone unable to defend ourselves, because we were still little innocent boys. But we were very fast and speedy runners and were seldom caught by them, “especially Bruce who could run like the wind.
However, all was not negative, I remember the great games of imagination I played with my best friend at the time, my cousin Ann Doble, we climbed the many pine trees on her dads small plot, played in the sand and really had good moments back then. I vividly recall the hiss of paraffin lamps and walking into dark rooms with a candle in my hand. Our home in Randgate was situated across a grassy veldt, from Aunt Bobby’s plot. There were times an angry bull, somewhere in the veldt bull that we had to dodge to get their plot safely. Our house had a very large kitchen in which a large black coal stove, had to be fired up daily my mother, or servant, so that our meals could be cooked and the constant coffee or key kettle kept boiling. This stove also heated up the house in winter as well as the bath water.
When Dad came home from work, especially in winter, he would sit in a comfortable chair and put his feet up near the large black coal stove for warmth, while we all looked at the glow from a little red glass light on the stove as we all debated the events of the day. Large kitchen was out of proportion to the rest of our house, which had two small bedrooms and a small lounge. There was a connecting passage, with four doors that could be shut inward, blocking out the light from the bedroom windows, leaving a nice dark place for us to play in no matter what the hour of the day.
Dad love for flowers was already evident in Randgate and he cultivated a large garden of carnations which he tried to sell and make a small profit from. It proved too labour intensive, especially in light of the fact that the flowers had to be picked and delivered fresh to the market. As a shrift worker this endeavour proved impossible. Dad later sold this part of his property in Randgate, to an agent who built a very large brick house right next to our very little humble home.
The back door was always open; there was no fear of crime in those peaceful days, to us of course, even though there was a war raging far overseas, in which many brave South African volunteer soldiers died.
As far as I can recall only one member of our family got killed in World War 2 namely an uncle (Basil?) on my mom’s side of the family. Uncle Richard Sherbrook (Uncle Dick to us) who was married to our Aunt Elizabeth at the time, served in the Italian Campaign of the war, but did not participate in actual combat. Of course he told us stories of sorties that he was supposed to have been part of, but they were just elaborate made up stories, in my opinion, he served as an aircraft electrician in the war.
As I write this document more and more memories of my early childhood in Randgate continue to flood into my mind Some of these recollections that remain vivid in my memory are those of birds chirping and singing, doves cooing, in the trees, cocks crowing in the early morning, dogs barking far out in the background, clean air, warm sunshine, security, the smell of pine and blue gum trees, soft rain falling on our tin roof house giving white noise that was like a lullaby that often put us to sleep, bright nights that blazed with clear visible stars because of the unpolluted atmosphere. When rain fell on the sand road in front of our house it gave off a wonderful fragrance from the soil. No crime, no high razor wires, no high security walls or burglar proofing, no noise from traffic! Oh! I can go on and on.
I can still see me, as little boy or two or three, looking up at the beautiful dark night with the Milky Way, a bright ribbon ablaze and aglow across the night sky, which in the darkness of the pure clean evening air, also shone bright with a trillion billion stars of the infinite universe above. In the wondering in my childlike mind, even then as a tiny little boy I thought about what beautiful glory God had done by creating this awesome universe, from 1 child on I never questioned what to me the fact that Almighty God created the Universe was. In fact it was back then that the night sky, the universe everything else around me began to fascinate me.
I developed an insatiable curiosity, from that very young age to obtain an understanding and knowledge of just about everything, around me, that has not been satisfied to this day. Because of my insatiable curiosity, I used to bombard my father with endless question, almost driving him to distraction at times, but mostly he did his best to answer my probing mind
The cars of that time were not reliable and made out of heavy steel and guzzlers of petrol(Gas) which was not really a problem because it was dirt cheap with compared to the hugely expensive price of petrol no days. A trip to Johannesburg was a long and protracted journey in which much planning and preparation had to be taken. For instance one needed to carry a lot of spare parts and fix your own punctures on the side of the road, there was no AA to call like there is today.
Dad had a few of these metal monsters while in Randgate and the constantly broke down. I recall especial the little Messersmit car he had which broke down time and time again with dad trying everything to get it to run for a few days so he could get a break from riding his bicycle to work This never happened and he gave up trying to repair this very badly made car, which almost gave him a nervous breakdown,
Our young mother, Eleanor May, born 23rd May 1921, was only nineteen years young at the time of my birth, she told to me that while carrying me she suffered the most terrible heartburn and informed my father that she was going to have a redhead to the disbelief of my father as both he and my mother had dark hair.
And yes when I popped into this world I was a baby with the brightest red hair that anyone in the family could remember. I was to hate this hair most of my life and was teased by my school mates because of it. I also developed freckles all over my body later and despised them even more that my red hair. Thankfully, my hair slowly darkened until it became auburn as a teenager. Mom told me she had to endure sitting through four hour long “Gone with the Wind” movie the final stage of pregnancy with me, suffering from the most appalling heartburn.
My elder brother Bruce Kingsly McDougall was only 22 months old at the time of my birth and he was born when our mom was only 17 years young.
Although mom’s real name was, Eleanor - May Davis she was always called lovingly bubbles by our Dad and was known by this name all the days of her life by the entire family. I can especially remember how mom would lovingly take special care for us when any of us were ill. She had special problems with the health of both me and Roger, in that we got rheumatic fever. Elisabeth or Snooks our youngest sister Jean as we call her, was a very difficult baby that never seemed to stop crying in the first year of her life. She almost drove dad mad because of his abnormal sensitivity to sound and the least noise would wake him up during the day when he was on night shift. Aunt Bessie (Elizabeth Sherbrook) moms younger sister and our beloved aunt, while also very young and married, would always take one of us or the other into her home to help mom out, when things got too difficult for our then young mother, to cope on her own with the five of us five lively siblings.
Mom had all this great responsibility when she was not much more than a child herself (she married dad when she was only 17 years old and gave birth to the elder sibling in our family, Bruce when she was only 18. She and dad attempted many religious systems in her lifetime. As a very young woman, even still a girl, mom had to cope with five children as well as a very difficult person dad that was then with his up and down moods swings. Mom had to see that the house was always clean, buy the food, clothing, cover our school books, for us five of us on very little money and make up the school lunches for five kids. She also had to cope with one or the other kid that were sick at one time or the other. She had to tip- toe and hushes us to silence when dad was sleeping in the day due to being on night shrift. She sometimes even took us all to Aunt Bessie house or her mothers house to avoid waking up, dad was sleeping in the day to avoid having to deal with his possible rage and bad mood that was likely to follow.
Religion played a huge part in both mom and dads lives and after rejecting most of them as not satisfying their deepest longings, they she finally became fundamental Christians, which gave them much comfort in their old age. Mom and dad really loved God and prayed for all us children to the very end their lives. Mom was a wonderful mother but dad could be very hard to live with at times, because of his mood swings but, when they finally left life to heaven, and they parted in absolute friendship and love. She was a wonderful person in all ways and did not have an evil bone in her body. A person of few words but what came out of her was always wise and good. All her children and whole family respected her greatly and loved her beyond mere words. She dead peacefully in 1997 at the good old age of 78
Dad religious convictions in my opinion were much deeper and more profound that that of moms. Dad was a person with deep conviction and profound wisdom, mom although loving was more superficial. Dad lived his Christian walk and mom followed dad, when he left one belief system in time she would follow. Dad was a person who could make friends with the greatest of ease, he was talkative, but he was also a very good listener and did not insist that his point of view was always the correct one.
Mom’s father came over from London to South Africa in the early 1900 s. He was a Jew whose surname was Sideraksy that he changed to Barney Davies, in S.A. He was killed in a motor bike accident in 1920 long before we were born. As far as I can recall, from talking to mom, he was a loving and caring father to her and her siblings. Our grandmother, moms mother, Doris Irene had four daughters by him. Namely; my mother the eldest born 23 May 1921, beloved aunt Elisabeth or loving known by us all as auntie Bessie born 22 may 1926, Norma (who was adopted by an aunt), date of birth unknown and finally the youngest girl aunt Dot. He was a most kind and likable man and it is a pity we never had the joy of meeting him.
