to 1939

Begin at the beginning! Excellent advice, provided you know where it is. I do not. Could it have been the 1928 elections – a big event in the life of Durban's small white community?

I was eight years old. For a short while before and after school games took on an election colouring. We gave up games of cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians in favour of the gang warfare of the South African Party (SAP) versus Labour. English-speaking Durban was overwhelmingly SAP. Labour Party support was small and Afrikaner Nationalist support even smaller. For reasons unknown I declared myself for Labour. I knew nothing about Labour or anything else at issue in the elections. My parents, as far as I recall, had no Labour leanings.

I must have been seeking attention for myself. If so, it certainly worked. I was chased about the playground by a rowdy nine-year- old SAP mob and was duly scragged in the grass. No one got hurt; when the bell sounded we dusted ourselves off and went in to class together, without any animosity.

Near the school there lived a family with four or five sons in different classes. I grew friendly enough with the one in my class to go to his home one day after school. His mother gave us tea and jam sandwiches.

Why should I remember this out of all my childhood? Perhaps I remember – or was I told? – that there was something special about the Hennessys. They were fully accepted at school, but seemed to hold themselves aloof, as though they were a clan of their own. The boys were all dark skinned, their mother even darker. I remember suggestions – I do not know from whom – that I should not get too friendly with them and should avoid visiting their home.