My SA favourites: Jelly and custard

Either you love it or you do not. Sorry vegans. The overly pigmented red is my favourite and is definitely incomplete without a generous layer of pale yellow creamy custard right on top.

I actually wanted jelly and custard to be the official dessert for my 21st birthday a few years back. I could not understand my dad’s vehement resistance to this idea, clearly struggling with an unpleasant association that I was about to hear about.

Around 1968, a young engineer was employed at the docks on the Waterfront in the Cape. At this point any reader will know what the engineer was about to find out.

The young apprentice would not ever be promoted. He would not receive health and safety training or insurance. He would not receive the same pay as his paler colleagues. He would not be treated as equal because of what he looked like.

I wish I could say this association with appearance inferred that his overalls were constantly messy and slouchy or that his unwilling attitude was constantly reflected between his brows. You would see none of that looking at him, but rather his damning looks implied something much worse for the times: he was brown.

And because he was brown there was another difference he noticed. At lunch time, in the middle of a day of pure exertion repairing ships, “the brown ones” did not get dessert with their fair colleagues. They did not get dessert at all.

I do not need to detail the socioeconomic context of SA pre-1994 for you to understand that this sort of microaggression had occurred long before the young engineer was employed and would certainly continue for the next while.

After a period of time that I do not know, the grievances at the docks were adding up. There is nothing like grumbling workers to ruin business, right?

So all the engineers, ship builders and workmen were gathered by management. They were asked: “What is going on here? What is your problem on these docks?”

The silence was like a black hole.

Can you believe that? In 1968 at the Cape Harbour, Globe Engineering’s employees were silent when asked about the workplace inequalities that knocked them daily.

They were asked a second time: “Come on. Why are you all so upset about working here?”

Not a word. The black hole of silence yawned until…

“Sir...” the engineer’s friend attempted in a raspy and sincere voice piped up from the back. He asserted his statement with his left had raised and his right eyebrow lowered: “Sir, we don’t get our jelly and custard.”

It is strange to me that this really happened in a room full of men worn out with indescribable workplace discrimination. Their first qualm raised was about the lack of access to the sweet edible delight that is jelly and custard.

But upon reflection, the worker’s plea makes so much sense. Jelly and custard is yummy. But, like so many of our South African favourites such as malva, koeksisters, a good curry or bunny chow — the taste is just so much better when shared between people.

This, of course, is the story of my dad’s first ever job. Now, every time I escort balanced spoonfuls of jelly and custard to my lips I am reminded of him.

Though I have always believed jelly and custard to be a kiddies party staple and typical of the lower-to-middle class, it was my dad who taught me that there was a time when jelly and custard was “nogals, posh”.

When my father enjoyed his dessert at my age, it was as much a victory for his taste buds as it was for him and his colleagues who were eventually able to enjoy it together.