CASEY MOTSISI - QUOTATION

Even now the incident is still fresh in my mind. It happened five years back. It could have happened yesterday. It happens almost every day in South Africa. There were three of us. Myself, a friend snd the lste Henry Nxumalo, one-time News Editor of the Golden City Post. We were walking down Main Street, Johannesburg, a few minutes after five o'clock heading towards our favourite shebeen in Malay Camp for a sundowner. As we walked, an African tore past us, running, perhaps, to catch a train. A white nan coming from the opposite direction bullied him out of the pavement into the street by jabbing him viciously in the ribs with his elbow. the white man was a tottering elder in his late fifties whereas the African was a young, powerfully built strappling in his early twenties. In sheer strength, the African could have licked three of the white man's type---with one hand tied behind his back as is the popular boast of boxers who really never make the grade. I expected the African to fly into a rage. But he did not do anything like that and, I must confess, I felt a little disappointed. Instead, he spun around, looked at the white man, and said: 'Ai, this European is fond of playing,' and trotted away.

- Casey Motsisi, "May We Never Lose That Sense of Humour", Contact, February 21, 1959.