Whites only / Slegs blankes

There are cat people. There are dog people. There are people who don’t care much for either, which is fair enough.

There’s another kind, too. The kind that us wit ouens don’t like to admit is ‘a thing’ — none of us rooted for the Nats back in the ’80s, right?— but it’s there: some of us clearly like pets more than people. And I don’t mean in that generalised world-weary kind of way that would stoke misanthropy in anyone these days. I mean in that old fashioned corruption of Darwinism — social Darwinism — in which white chaps reckon they’re evolution’s finest hour. Everyone else is pegged lower down the social rungs. Women, the darker hued, the Indigenous: all less intelligent, less capable, less human. Less subject, more object, who can be exploited and used for the benefit of the upper ranked.

I was reminded of this when I heard recently about the live-in carer in an upmarket retirement complex who was made to sleep in the garage.

Imagine: it’s 2020. You’re in the last months of your life. You’re loaded enough that you can pay someone to clean your shitty bum, oversee the medication that’s keeping you alive, nourish you not just with hearty food but with companionship. And yet you make her sleep in the garage, because you don’t think she’s worthy of the modest but empty spare room in your home. A spare room with an en suite shower, flushing toilet and the daily reminder that she deserves the dignity of running water, just like anyone else. As per our Constitution.

Although this story isn’t so much about pets and people, or what our treatment of both says about us. It’s about power, and the lengths we’ll go to when we start to lose it.

Teaser: apartheid didn’t die with the end of apartheid.

‘Blue, blistering barnacles!’ — Captain Haddock

The first time we met, the gnome-like German came flying out of his corner almost frothing with rage. The offence — oh, the offence doesn’t matter, but it involved some grey-area interpretation of the body corporate rules for walking pets in this complex.

I’d washed up here after my writing plans were scuppered by daily ’Berg thunderstorms and the likes, and I needed safe harbour to scrape the barnacles off the hull, so to speak. Two weeks of couch-surfing became two months. Mercifully, this gave shelter through a brutal month-long heatwave where midday temperatures topped out at between 30 and 35°C most days.

The rules around pets here are as strict as the buzz cuts on the lawns, and their enforcement as mean spirited. These rules are written to accommodate dog behaviour, because who walks cats, for heaven’s sakes? Cats don’t walk to heel the way dogs do. They’re in a different predator-prey arrangement with wildlife. And they’re far more dignified in how they manage their daily bowel movements.

Try telling that to a rabid soon-to-be octogenarian with too much time on his hands in which to confront the existential drama of knowing he’s in the final furlong of a life only he can judge as having been worthy or not. Much easier to firehose any passersby, with the body corporate rules as license for the over-reach and righteousness to justify the indignation.

It was tempting to offer him some medication for his condition: Viagra, to prop up the ego as his social rank wanes; Valium for the anger management.

The second and third meetings don’t warrant comment, but the thuggery hadn’t cooled.

This existential gloom is how my therapist explained the prickly edges of so many residents here, one of those gilded ‘lifestyles complexes’ where rich people in their senescence retreat as their sun begins to set. There were the mild-mannered questions about whether the two cats were properly harnessed, through to the Chernobyl Twins who nearly dispatched themselves early, such was their outrage that I wasn’t holding the cats’ leads in my actual hand (the cats are trained to run with drag leashes trailing behind them).

It soon became clear that one transgressed the rules around pets or estate aesthetics at one’s peril, because there are Trustees who are more concerned with pulling rank than creating community — and just waiting for a chance to write The Letter that everyone lives in fear of. No wonder the place seemed like a ghost town, people likely staying in self-imposed house arrest so as not to attract undue attention.

The final straw was a nasty comment about my clothing, sent over a WhatsApp group.

‘Oh, just be more thick skinned,’ one neighbour instructed.

I might have considered her advice if it hadn’t been for that thing with the live-in carer who was made to sleep in the garage, something seemingly overlooked by the very people who were enforcing the cat walking rules with such enthusiasm.

Orania: a sister-by-another-mister

People in the whites-only Afrikaner enclave of Orania at least are honest about their tribalism. No darkies, period. Not for the white-collar jobs, not for the blue-collar ones.

Gated communities like this one in the KZN Midlands can launder their tribalism through the respectability of class. ‘We worked hard for this, we earned it,’ they’ll say, without a nod to the fact that it’s that much more difficult to work hard and earn things when you live in a social structure that puts you in the garage, like a car or a lawnmower. Even the family guard dog gets better digs than this.

It was quite clear from the choice of words that reportedly come through when people dropped their guard: the ‘k****rs’ and ‘c***ns’ are mere units of labour. Useful when the lawns need mowing or an adult diaper needs changing. Other than that, they’re not welcome here.

White supremacy isn’t about preserving whiteness. It’s about holding on to power. It just happens that those who hold power are largely white.

Not everyone in this complex holds these views. But there are enough of those who do that it’s hard to disrupt the status quo without becoming the Quasimodo who gets driven from town by the pitchfork-wielding villagers. When you’ve got body corporate rules on your side, you can make life untenable for anyone who dares to put their head above the parapet. The renters, the widows, those whose fixed-income pensions are outgunned by inflation, those not versed in body corporate law — how do they take on a Trustee who has been conditioned by society to believe his rank allows him to bully others into compliance.

It’s risky to be the one who speaks up against injustice. Whether we’re talking macro-level — think Madiba, Steve Biko, Martin Luther King — or micro, like in this gated community. The powerful can take you out, using whatever means available, be it a police truncheon or a community rule about holding your cat’s lead in your hand.

When the good ship Story Ark hoisted anchor a few days ago and rumbled out the security gates for the last time, I said farewell to the guards who had been at their post for the duration. After so many entries and exits, there was a familial ease. Mostly men in their 20s and 30s, they were slow to smile at my silly jokes at first, but soon relaxed into a good humoured rapport. They were unfailingly professional.

‘I’m outa here,’ I said jovially. ‘I’ve been shouted at a few too many times by that lot,’ stabbing my thumb towards the van’s wake.

One of the guards became unexpectedly sombre.

‘If they’re like that to you, can you imagine how they are with us?’