Another nice thing happened that Monday evening – so nice I forgot about my plan.

I got a call from my friend Jos. I recognised his voice straight away, even though we haven’t spoken in, like, three years: soft, gentlemanly, so polite. Even though his accent is a bit strange. That’s because he’s been in the UK these past three years.

“Jos! Oh man! It’s great to hear you! Are you back home from London now?”

See, Jos was in London studying music. He plays the clarinet. I mean, like top class. He’s played here in the City Orchestra.

“Yes, Dennis. Back home now. I’m in my old practice room if you want to come say hello.”

Of course I wanted to! I ran across to the Music College on Seventh Avenue. I ran down the long passage to Jos’s practice room. I could hear his clarinet through the closed door.

It’s a haunting, beautiful sound. I mean, I don’t like old fashioned music. Like Beethoven and that kind of stuff. But when Jos plays his clarinet, I could sit and listen for hours.

I pushed open the door and gave him a big bear-hug. “Jos! Oh man! Welcome home!” The clarinet was digging into my ribs from the hug, but I didn’t care.

He rubbed my arm in that gentle, calm way he has. And we went off for a coffee together at a coffee shop nearby.

“Tell me,” I said. “I want to know all about London.”

So he told me. All sorts of funny stories about his London landlady who had red hair and was a chain-smoker and mad as a bat. I was laughing my head off.

Then, like the gentleman he is, he wanted to know all about me and how things were going. Damn! It was so good to see him again.

But then – then I noticed a bunch of white guys standing at the counter. They were all staring at Jos and me, laughing, whispering to each other, rolling their eyes.

And I know why. Oh yes, I knew straight away! It’s because Jos is black and I am white and we were sitting there together chatting and laughing like good friends.

See? There are still racist people around in our rainbow nation, people who can’t understand that blacks and whites can be friends. Suddenly I remembered my plan, my brilliant bullet-point plan.

Hey, maybe once it has worked for Attie, I will put it on the internet?

Then other people can try it on their racist friends too? And soon all the bigots will learn their lesson and we can be a rainbow nation at peace with itself, like Mr Mandela said.

Maybe I will get famous for it? Maybe it will be called The Dennis Smith Plan., and they will ask me to come to universities and explain it.

It was late when I left Jos. But I was so fired up with my plan that I phoned Samson right away.

He answered. “Eish, monna! Aren’t you sleeping yet? What can this black brother do for my honkie friend?”

And that’s when I realised: my plan was doomed. Useless! No ways would it ever work. I had only reached bullet number three and already it was all falling apart.

Maybe Pa was right. Maybe I don’t have two brain-cells to rub together.

***

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