A bar owner quietly prospers within the system

Peggy "Bel-Air" Senne was born in a shebeen. He figures he'll die in one, too.

In South Africa's black townships, a shebeen is a place of booze - a bar, a tavern, a nightclub or a hole in the wall that serves drinks. In Soweto, the nation's largest township, the king of the shebeens is Peggy Senne, a bow- legged little man with a gravelly voice and bloodshot eyes from too many cigarettes and too many late nights out.

Booze is Senne's life, and he is proud of it. He calls himself a bootlegger, and the backyard shebeen called Peggy's Place has made him richer than most white men.

"I was born in a shebeen," he says, sucking on a cigarette in the cool of his living room, where the clinking of glasses and the hum of conversation filter in from Peggy's Place out back. "I went to school on shebeen money, got married on shebeen money, bought my first Bel-Air automobile on shebeen money. My kids went to college on shebeen money. "

If there is a success story in Soweto, it might as well be Peggy Senne. He has thrived within apartheid's boundaries, a black man grown great in a one- color world. Born into segregation, he has chosen to flourish within it, not fight to escape it.

There are many blacks like Peggy Senne in South Africa. They accept their lot, and profit nonetheless. They build their lives quietly, within bounds, leaving to others the terrifying struggles of liberation and revolution.

Senne is wealthy enough that he could afford a big apartment in the so- called gray areas of downtown Johannesburg, where people of color have breached apartheid's walls. He could even afford to pay a white man to buy him a house in the exclusive white suburbs, where a few well-to-do blacks have infiltrated.

He stays instead in Soweto, for it took him a long time to arrive. His family was evicted in the 1950s from a place called Sophiatown, then evicted again in the early 1960s from an eyesore known as the Western Native Township. In 1962, he found himself dumped into a four-room matchbox house in Soweto.

So naturally he opened a shebeen. It began in his dining room with a few crates of beer. Now he sells 8,000 cases of beer a week, plus huge quantities of liquor and wine. The little house has since grown up around the shebeen. Senne now owns one of the biggest homes in Soweto, with a separate two-story living wing and a big garage.

The white authorities cracked down on his new shebeen, of course, but not in the bloody racial clashes that have ruptured South African society for so long. They would simply confiscate his cars or his beer in return for allowing him to remain open.

CHALLENGING THE SYSTEM

In his own cautious way, Senne fought back. In 1979, he formed the Soweto Tavern Association to represent the shebeeners against the authorities. By 1984, he had persuaded the white government to legalize shebeens and charge them licensing fees and taxes. He had challenged the system, quietly but persistently, and finally it gave in.

"We all struggle in our own way," he says.

Senne has since stayed out of politics. He doesn't want any trouble. He just wants to sell his booze and see his customers have a good time.

"Look, I'm a shebeener, not a politician," he says. "Don't ask me political questions. I just take what comes. You've got to survive, man. "

Even so, racial politics engulf Soweto. Senne does what he must do. When the young radicals who call themselves "comrades" order him to shut down in support of a boycott or a strike, he obeys. He does not reopen until they tell him to. He does not, however, encourage young people to drink at Peggy's Place. He prefers mature customers, who don't talk politics.

He often wonders why the comrades are so bitter and so willing to suffer for their cause. He believes that a black man is far better off in South Africa now than when he was their age.

'SKY'S THE LIMIT'

"Our new generation sees no improvement," he says. "But if you ask me, things are much better - and they'll continue to get better. Before, you couldn't even buy the car you wanted. You couldn't form a company or apply for a loan. Now, the sky's the limit. I can go down to the white bank and take out a loan. They don't care what color I am, long as my credit's good. "

Senne offers himself up as proof that a black man can prosper despite apartheid. As a boy, he worked in his parents' shebeen. His mother was a maid. His father couldn't buy a car.

"My father rode a bicycle. I have seven cars," he says. He claims to be the first black man in South Africa to drive an American car - a Chevy Bel-Air in the 1950s. Now his main car is a silver 1988 Mercedes-Benz.

Senne wears his success. On this particular evening he wears a yellow cardigan over a golf shirt, mustard slacks, tassled loafers, tinted shades and gold - gold necklaces, gold bracelets, gold rings and a gold wristwatch.

There are three main avenues to wealth in the townships. One is elected office in the township council, where graft and bribes enrich a black man willing to serve within apartheid's edifice. Another is construction - for the thousands of blacks who can afford expensive additions to their little township homes.

A third avenue is booze, either a liquor store or a shebeen. A township is a place of joy and despair, and thus liquor is always required. Senne prides

himself on his ability to recognize the distinctive drinking habits of blacks, and to profit from them.

"A black man doesn't drink like a white man," he says. "A white man can drink at home. A black man, he has to drink in a place where there's people and talking and noise. And a black man wants to be able to drink early in the day if he wants to, and all night if he wants to do that. "

For those reasons, Peggy's Place opens early and closes late. "We're like a police station - we never close," he says. He and his wife take separate vacations so that Peggy's Place can always be open.

Resting on a sofa, Senne smokes his cigarette and totals up his blessings. He has a loving wife, Dorothy, better known as Cookie. He has four children - one a lawyer, he says proudly - and seven grandchildren. When he dies, he says, he will die a satisfied and comfortable man.

In the kitchen, Cookie is preparing dinner, humming softly. Inside Peggy's Place, some customers have already ordered drinks. The sound of their laughter is soothing.

Life is sweet, says Peggy Senne, looking out his living-room window at men unloading cases of beer from a truck guarded by a man with a shotgun. The beer bottles reach the floor of his garage with a satisfying clink, like the sound of money in the bank.