Storm in a tin cup

In the home where I grew up, we always kept an enamel tin cup under the sink in the kitchen. Whether it was the manse in Johannesburg, the hillside house in Westville or the sprawling, rather cracked 19th Century country house in the Eastern Cape town of Alice, you could open that particular kitchen cabinet and there it would be – a thin, tin, enamel covered cup with a chip or two where the enamel had been knocked off. I never remember touching this cup. It was kept for a special purpose – to give a cup of hot sugary tea to any poor, hungry, Black person who might come to our door. And there were plenty who regularly came. Usually the tea was served with thick wedges of white bread that were spread with mixed fruit jam and no butter.

This was charity, this was mercy in the South Africa where I grew up. My parents were good, kind people who empathised with the plight of those struggling to survive the harshness of poverty under a regime that denied their humanity. No-one was ever turned away from our door without something – food, a little money, some old clothes, piece work in the garden. I learnt compassion and empathy from my parents. I learnt to see the humanity of a Black person, the need to respond with kindness and sacrifice to those living in poverty. I am forever grateful to my parents for this legacy.

But at the same time, now, in mid-life, I can’t shake the picture of that tin cup. I have one myself. I take it on mountain hikes. It’s light and unbreakable and quite an institution in its own tea time! Yet even now, it feels like I am crossing boundaries when I use it. You see, whilst that tin cup under the sink represented compassion and kindness, it held another message too. That Black people were somehow dirty, diseased, not to be trusted with a china cup and not to share what was ours. That the best was to be kept for us.

After the tin cup was used – served by my mother from the back door, or taken to the yard gate – it was placed apart from our dishes, and washed separately then placed back under the sink to await its next charitable assignment.

How deep do these childhood impressions run in me, in you – if you are White and about my age or older? And have we ever really dealt with them, or just moved on into post-apartheid restaurants and homes without recognising the racism that was hard-wired into us as little children. Perhaps that is why we retreat behind our high walls and keep family trees proving European ancestors that could get us a different passport ‘if it came to that’. Perhaps this is what is at the root of our sense of entitlement and the arrogance we so often display. Somewhere, deep inside, we are still formed to believe we are better … right… justified…

We may no longer keep a tin cup under our sink, but the storm that was brewed in that cup continues to be brewed. And so often our children, with no living memory of apartheid, continue to drink it. It is a storm in a tin cup that won’t just go away. It is one we need to face and deal with – if not for our own sake, then for the sake of our children and grandchildren and those of the people who for so long were given tin cups from under sinks to drink from.