Forbidden Friends chronicles the evolving friendship between the
author, Elizabeth Schneider, a white American, and Elizabeth
Mngadi, her black cleaning woman from Soweto. When the author moved
to Johannesburg in 1975, during the apartheid period, such personal
friendships were highly unusual-and strictly forbidden by the flat
manager. Slowly the two Elizabeths became friends over secret tea
breaks. The author, an anthropology graduate student at the time,
kept a detailed diary about her field trips to rural tribal
"homelands," their conversations about daily life in Soweto, and
their terrifying encounters with the police. These true stories,
many told with humor, reveal the dignity of people trying to rise
above a dehumanizing system. Excerpts: We got out of the flat
safely and downstairs to the garage without the manager, Mrs. Wood,
or Josiah, the building watchman, seeing us. There, inside the car,
plump Elizabeth crouched on the back floor of my little BMW with
difficulty as we drove out of the garage. A few blocks later, I let
her out to get into the front seat with me, as we usually did. Lt.
Esteheuzen laid his gun on his desk. Jack and I sat opposite him,
visibly shaken.... Then he slowly and deliberately removed the
bullets one by one, set them on end, looked at them thoughtfully,
then carefully reinserted them. After a long pause, he said, "Well,
I won't need Mr. Schneider anymore, but you," he said, looking at
me with another pause to let it sink in, "will return Monday
morning to answer some questions." "But I thought the 'X'...means
no, not him. Like the bike signs," one man said to me, puzzled, as
I was trying to help him understand the ballot.... "Should I put an
'X' in front of every name except Mandela's?" the cleaning woman
asked.
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