Writings / Creative Non-Fiction: Isme Bennie

Getting Educated

I am no longer living in Vereeniging, my South African hometown. It is still my home town, and I go there for weekends and vacations, but now I am at university in Johannesburg.

There is nothing to keep young people in Vereeniging with its two cinemas and one main street. There are the industries – coal, steel and so on – and some of my classmates will stay on to work in them. But many of us will leave. For a nice middle-class Jewish girl like me, going to university, getting a B.A. and a husband, that’s the desired path. I had the odd fantasy about being a dress designer or an architect and drew pictures of clothes and plans of houses throughout my high school years, but these fantasies were never encouraged, and my mother was of the “why look for trouble” school.

I was only sixteen when I finished high school and left for the city and higher education. There were few accommodation options then for young women students, and so I signed up for the university’s only women’s residence. I joined the hundred-and-fifty or so women – all white and from all over southern Africa: Mozambique, the Rhodesia’s and South West Africa as those countries were named in those days. I am writing about the 1950’s. The life in a university residence in those times may not be of any great interest today, but those privileged years represent a small slice of a social history, perhaps also the South Africa of those times in a microcosm.

The residence, Lady Isabel Dalrymple House, commonly called Sunnyside, had a reputation for being a traditional residence exclusively for young women students from out-of- town. It was set in well-manicured grounds on the campus, a three-storey white building with a small parking area in front. It backed onto one of the main city thoroughfares, Empire Road, where in the 50s we could see women of the Black Sash – a non-violent white women’s resistance organization – standing on its sidewalks in silent vigil to protest the apartheid government’s moves to set up a separate school system for non-whites, legislation which was extended to include universities during my time as a student.

But in February 1957, young and politically unsophisticated, I arrived from Vereeniging, only thirty-six miles away, by car with my mother and suitcases, radio and other bits and pieces for my new life. I had no sooner unpacked than I was summoned to the front door. There was no intercom system then, nor phones in the rooms. Maids (black) did door duty in the day time, and first-year students did it on a rotation basis nights and weekends. You were fetched to the door to meet with your visitor or date. If it was a male, he never got beyond reception. One of the second-year guys from my hometown had come to say hello and to check out the new crop of arrivals. He came from the men’s residence a few hundred yards away. In those first months we shared several activities with the men’s residence: an “exchange” dance, when we trooped over to be selected by the new men as dinner partners, a very demeaning experience, particularly if you were one of the last to be chosen, as I was. We also got together with the men for a concert of sorts. I remember performing to Green Door. Before all of this though, we had initiation – dressing up in weird clothing and marching in pairs with the freshmen to something called Fresher’s Flick. The women were called Freshettes.

Accommodation was handed out based on academic success. I did well in high school so had a room of my own. There was no such thing as “en suite.”  Bathrooms and showers and toilets were down the hall. Rooms were minimal though quite pleasant. Today dorms have mini-fridges and microwaves and television sets and other accoutrements. In those days South Africa did not even have television! The rooms were cleaned by the maids and they changed the linen every week. The maids were under the supervision of the matrons (white), who took care of the daily running of the place.

We ate in a communal dining room. Breakfast and lunch were casual, but dinner started on time and we wore black academic gowns, and for formal occasions, a white dress under the gown.  Food was institutional, but not horrible. Dinner could be slices of grey roast meat. Left-over cheese ended up as Welsh rarebit. We had tea in a common room every afternoon, with nice cake or cookies. There was a senior common room, and a junior common room. We would walk up the hill to pick up sausages and other goodies from a German deli, or from a “café” on the edge of the campus. The university commissary was close by too.  In fourth year we often picnicked in the garden rather than go in to dinner.  And my mother sent her special cookies or chocolate cake regularly.

She came into the city quite often to see me and we would go shopping or to visit relatives. We went to see King Kong together, the enormously successful   “African jazz opera” which was performed in front of a multi-racial audience at the University’s Great Hall, one of the few venues where blacks and whites could assemble together. The musical had an all-black cast, it launched Miriam Makeba’s career, and captured the flavor and vitality – as well as the sadness and poignancy – of life in the black townships. I can still feel and hear King Kong.

During the two years it played across the country, it was seen by about two hundred thousand South Africans, the majority of them white. It was a revelation to many South Africans that art did not recognize racial barriers. But still the stranglehold of apartheid on the arts continued. Some of my fellow residents had become politicized, but residence was not a hotbed of political activity. Being in residence made attending early morning classes easier. We were right there on the campus. We rolled up our pajama pants under a coat, and off we went. The swimming pool was almost at the door too, for an afternoon’s reading in the sun. And for meeting guys.

I wasn’t a great student or ‘joiner.’ I started with all kinds of enthusiasms for joining theatre groups and so on but never did. I wanted to wear the university’s blue, white and yellow striped blazer, so I did all the chores – selling the university magazine and so on – to earn the necessary points. I did knit a cardigan in the university colors which I wore to the big rugby matches against out main rival, the Afrikaans university in Pretoria. I did the course work that I had to do, I managed to pass, and, like students then, did not challenge or question. This was me at the time.

In our first few months in residence, lectures were organized for us, some on sex education. There were still young women who needed to know where babies came from. South Africa was very conservative and straight-laced. Many of us came from small towns or rural communities, several from convent schools. A first-year colleague from Mozambique was not allowed to go out at night without a chaperone. We gossiped a lot – usually late at night in one’s or another’s room, smoking and eating my mother’s goodies. Some of us continued long-distance relationships with boyfriends from home, many others paired up quickly with men from the student body. We never let on if we “did it.”  Not in those days. Abortion gossip circulated, someone had tried with a knitting needle. And one of us got pregnant and left to have a baby.

Our residence had its own float, for Rag, an annual event that no longer exists. It was a fund-raiser. We decorated trucks for a carnival-like procession through the city – much like the Macy’s Christmas Parade – and collected money from the people watching on the streets. One float was for the Rag Queen and her Princesses. One of the princesses from my time almost became the wife of a U.S. president many years later had John Kerry only won.

The city centre then was a busy shopping Mecca, with big department stores, hotels, cinemas and good restaurants. Today it is decaying and dangerous, avoided by the more affluent who have moved to the gated communities of the Northern suburbs.

Our residence phone system was basic. There was a bank of public phones, four I think. They were manned by the maids during the day and by first-year students the rest of the time, who – like the front door monitors – fetched us to the phone. The corridors were long and spread out, and there were no elevators, so by the time one reached the phone, the caller might be long gone.

We had House Dances twice a year to which one invited a date. The invitation process – asking or receiving a reply – was stressful, particularly given the unreliability of the phone system. Bedrooms at the front of the building were set aside for small groups, two or three couples, and dancing took place in the dining room. Punch (non-alcoholic) was made in the Matrons’ bathtub. One year a couple of women came together, one dressed in a man’s suit. It was quite the talk.

There was a curfew system. We had to be in by 8.00 p.m. most nights, and could only be out later a certain number of nights per week – two I think in first year.  Saturday night was the big going out night. The place was abuzz with women in curlers who were ironing, showering, getting ready for a date or a party. To be in on a Saturday night was depressing, almost demeaning. In those days, women did not go out together at night, to a movie or a restaurant. It wasn’t the danger factor, like today, it was just not done. Going-out nights required asking for permission during set office hours from the dean or the assistant dean. One signed in and out, and being late was a serious offence. As we progressed through the years toward a degree, the rules became much more flexible, just as the choice of rooms got better.

Friendships were strong and would stand through the years that followed. Romance was rife, engagements happened. Many of us stayed until we graduated. Then we went on to new lives, to marriage or to chosen careers, and many of us to other countries, with awakened consciences as we grew up and experienced the real world out there!