On that long-gone day as a cub reporter, Maimane scribbled an address on a piece of paper and flung it at me, all the while muttering dire imprecations about girl reporters. Tail between my legs, I took the piece of paper and slunk out of the office. The place I was headed for was a block of flats within walking distance of our offices; lucky for me as there was no office car available that day. I got there. And I paced up and down on the pavement outside. I was terrified. I asked myself what the hell I’d been thinking of when I decided I wanted to write, to be a reporter for chrissakes. I could have been strutting about in a classroom, lording it over a bunch of cowering, snot-nosed and noisy, six-year-olds… Eventually, I summoned up enough courage to enter the building and head for the designated flat. I got the shock of my life.

Waiting outside were about six or seven or ten other newshawks and cameramen – all after the same thing I’d been sent to get by my news editor. These dudes and dudesses were all white, from English and Afrikaans newspapers around the country. I stood there for quite a few minutes, debating whether I should unceremoniously bolt from the scene or knock on the door and take my chances. I steeled myself and latched on to the latter – and was amazed when the door opened to reveal a rather sad-looking, red-eyed woman who appeared to be white.

Freedom Writer book cover

There was a clamour from the waiting crowd, but the woman shook her head at them, looked at me and bade me tremulously to enter. To my great surprise she shut the door in the faces of the rest, took my elbow and led me into the sitting room. She started crying and through her tears she said, ‘If there is any reporter I would rather talk to, it would be you.’ I was twenty, inexperienced, vulnerable and easily moved to tears. I know I cried – she cried and I cried – all the way through the interview.

Thus I wrote my first Immorality Act news report for Golden City Post. Only a few months had to elapse before prescription applied in terms of the law in this case, when the couple would have become immune to the peculiarities – not to mention humiliation and indignities – of this law. They had two children, a boy (who grew up to become a teacher) and girl. I met both of them, especially in later years. I don’t think they would like to have this particularly stressful period in their lives laid bare now, some forty-odd years later – so no names, no pack-drill. But I do know that their beleaguered parents appreciated the way in which I wrote their story.

Some way back in this missive (missile, memory-recall – oh yeah, autobiography), I said I would explain the moniker Sharon Davis and my first step in my writing career. Okay. In or about 1955/56, my friends at high school dared me to enter a short story competition run by a publication called New Age. It was the successor to The Guardian, a left-wing weekly newspaper which had been banned by the apartheid regime.

I took up their challenge using my little portable Olivetti typewriter that my Daddy had bought me for my 15th birthday while I was attending shorthand and typing classes run by Mrs Mouton in Fordsburg.

From left, Rashid Seria, the late Mike Norton, Juby Mayet, Charles Nqakula, Marimuthu Subramoney and Phil Mthimkhulu at a Union of Black Journalists congress in Durban, 1977. (Photo: Mayet family archive / Courtesy Jacana Media)

I was too shy (or too cowardly, maybe) to use my own name. I thought about this for a while, then decided on Sharon Davis – the Sharon part coming from the Bible (‘I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys’: chapter 2 verse 1 of ‘The Song of Solomon’ in the Old Testament) and the Davis part coming from Sammy Davis Junior. Oh, I loved Sammy – I used to drive my mother (and anybody else within hearing distance) absolutely nuts with my most favourite LP with Sammy singing ‘That Old Black Magic’. I placed that LP on the turntable the minute I came home from school every afternoon.

Annerha (as the lovely Dolly Hassim used to say), there came a day when yours truly received a letter from New Age commanding my presence at their offices because I was a runner-up in their writing competition. I’m not too sure of my memory now, but I think the great authors Richard Rive, Peter Abrahams and/or Alex La Guma were among the winners. The letter was signed by New Age editor Ruth First, who had from 1947 edited The Guardian.

 (Tragically, First was killed in August 1982 by a letter bomb believed to have been sent by agents of the apartheid regime). So, accompanied by the ever-faithful Spooky, I made my way through town, down Commissioner Street to the offices of New Age.

I was met by First and her husband Joe Slovo, who were both quite amazed when I informed them that I had come in response to the letter (which I produced) regarding the short story I had entered in the competition. I was a teenager, hair in pigtails, wearing my gym dress, white ankle socks and black lace-up school shoes. I guess I understood them being startled by my appearance because my story had been quite a grown-up one. Based on the Immorality Act, it was about a white guy and an Indian chick who fell in love with each other. They were caught, and because he didn’t want to have his love dragged through the courts with sleazy publicity and all that, he committed suicide to protect the chick. Hmm, rather maudlin.

***

After I had fallen pregnant, Spooky insisted we married, and despite my protestations and all the obstacles that lined the rocky road to our marriage, we were joined in holy matrimony. First legally in the Magistrates’ Court on 17 September 1958 and then in a nikkah four days later. Thing is, the baby I was expecting was not Spooky’s. During the first heady months of my career in the newspaper world, various things happened. One was an assignment to find accommodation for Miriam Makeba and her new husband (or husband-to-be at that time – I can’t quite remember). He was Sonny Pillay, then billed as South Africa’s answer to Frank Sinatra. He was, as you can gather from the name, an Indian oke, from Durbs – tall, dark, lean, good-looking and with a voice to make you absolutely swoon.

***

Now where were we? Oh yeah, 1958 – a big year in my life. There was a dude called Lofty from Cape Town who had come chasing after the love of his life, Veronica. I don’t know what it was about me, but it seemed that I was forever befriending and assisting stray people (and animals), giving them shelter and sustenance and all like that. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I was a reporter on Golden City Post, which apart from being a newspaper, also seemed to shine like a beacon to people in need – whether it was publicity they were after, or a need to adopt a baby, or find a place to live or whatever.

Juby Mayet (centre) with five of her eight children in the 1970s. Photo: Mayet family archive

So, comes Lofty and Veronica, who was apparently a former beauty queen. Once again, it was up to the intrepid young girl reporter to find them accommodation, feed them, show them around Jozi and the whole damn tooty. I don’t know what spiel Lofty sold the big dudes at Bailey’s organisation to make him their blue-eyed boy, but I eventually came to discover that he was a bit of a conman. He didn’t exactly take food out of the mouths of senile old ladies, but he was a charmer – with rugged good looks reminiscent of an older Jack Palance, a natty dresser and a smooth talker.

While he was in Jozi trying to smooth out his love troubles with Ronnie, he conceived an idea of a great musical show – Africa Sings. I had fallen unashamedly for his charms (Veronica didn’t mind – she was a woman of the world and even advised me on my mode of dress and how to handle men) and I was ever ready to assist with Lofty’s project. Pappie was an artist of sorts – carpenter, builder, cabinet-maker and he could paint too. I roped him in to build and paint the sets for Lofty’s show, at a very nominal fee, which, I am sorry to say, was never settled in full. But never mind all that.

What was great about Africa Sings was that we had a new find – Letta Mbulu, all of 14 years at the time and with a voice like brown velvet chocolate. She went on to make her very indelible mark on the world and now, all these decades later, still married to equally world-famous musician Caiphus Semenya, she thrills us with her incredible voice.

Sadly, Lofty’s musical sank with nary a trace – I don’t know why. Lack of experience in the field, maybe. Insufficient funds, not enough publicity, Lofty’s preoccupation with his personal problems. During this time, I met a character who shall be nameless (he may be married – probably is, with a family of his own). He had become involved in the production of Lofty’s show, but I had met him earlier, at a party at Jackie Heyns’s house in Jeppe.

This guy was – looks-wise anyway – any girl’s dream come true. He was tall, fair, lean, dark-haired and simply beautiful. He tried to rape me – and was stunned when I fought him off successfully. He couldn’t believe that I was still a virgin. This happened in a Morris Minor car (his, I think) when he was delegated at a party to get more grog from a shebeen somewhere in Fordsie/Lebanesetown and I brashly volunteered to accompany him. I was wearing the dress I had on when I posed for the cover of Drum. It was bright orange with black dots, sleeveless, somewhat low-cut and full-skirted – a Marilyn Monroe kind of dress, you might say. (I loved Marilyn too).

Juby Mayet interviewed on TV in 2017 after winning a lifetime acheivement award for her journalism. Photo: Youtube/SABC

***

I am not absolutely sure about this, but I don’t think I ever told him that I was pregnant. If I did tell him, I doubt that it made any impression on him because we just kind of drifted away from each other. It didn’t make much of an impression on me either – it was only going to change my whole life. I pondered deeply about what I was going to do about this problem. I had long ago made up my mind that I was not going to get married and settle down into the rut in which so many women in my community found themselves. All on my lonesome, I decided that I would have this baby – whether my parents kicked me out of home or not – and work and take care of him or her to the best of my ability. DM

Freedom Writer: My Life and Times by Juby Mayet is published by Jacana Media.