We all broke out laughing about it.
It was only Peter Mofolo who looked at me disapprovingly and told us that it was no laughing matter. I put it down to the fact that Peter Mofolo, a grandson of the great Sesotho novelist Thomas Mofolo, was just jealous because he didn't have an anathema of his own. Or maybe he just wanted to get even after I had tried to embarrass him in front of his friends a few days before. We had just read Thomas Mofolo's novel
Moeti oa Bochabela
(
The Traveller from the East
) which was a set book in our class when I hollered at him: âHey Pinky, your grandfather wrote shit, man!'
We called him Pinky because like a lot of his Bataung clan who are descendants of the Khoikhoi he was light in complexion.
âOh, yeah?' he said. âAnd what did yours write?'
That shut me up. My grandfather had not written a damn thing. All he knew was to make shoes.
I liked Pinky a lot, even though he was now being dismissive of my anathema.
This is how the anathema came to pass. I was in church singing
hymns and minding my own business. It was not my choice to be there. School regulations forced every student to go to church on Sundays. Although Peka High School was owned jointly by the Protestant Church of Lesotho and the Anglican Church, the authorities were so liberal that they allowed students to attend their own denominations, as long as they were in the vicinity of Peka village. Since I was a Catholic, I walked to St Rose â about ten miles from the high school â for my weekly dose of obligatory religion.
I noticed that as Father Hamel conducted the Holy Mass he kept looking in my direction. After a while he beckoned the catechist and whispered something in his ear, just as he was preparing for the Sacrament. The catechist tiptoed to me and whispered in my ear.
âFather Hamel wants you to leave his church right away,' he said.
âWhy?' I asked.
âBecause you are from Peka High School.'
He was looking at my green blazer with the yellow badge. The badge was my pride because I had designed it for the school that very year. I took particular pleasure in the open book with a flaming torch and the motto:
Luceat Lux Vestra
â Let your light shine. That's how the priest knew I was from the high school â the green blazer with the yellow badge.
âNo, tell him I'm not going anywhere,' I said.
The catechist was taken aback that I was defying his boss. He stood there for a while staring at me. But I did not budge. I focused on the hymnal instead. He tiptoed back to the priest.
The time for the Sacrament came and I joined the line. When it was my turn to receive the body of Christ the priest skipped me and gave it to the next person. âWell, he can keep his Sacrament,' I said to myself and went back to the pews.
After the service Father Hamel rushed out in full gear, without first taking off his surplice and stole as he normally did. As the congregation streamed out of the church he was already waiting outside the door, a thing he had never done before. He was not in the habit of greeting his congregants at the door after the service.
It turned out he was waiting for me.
âWhy did you refuse when I ordered you out of my church?' he asked.
âBecause I didn't understand why you wanted me to leave,' I said.
âBecause you are a Communist, that's why. I don't want Communists in my church.'
So, that was the reason. I knew immediately that it was nothing personal. I was being crucified solely because I was a student at Peka High School, which was known far and wide as the breeding ground of Ntsu Mokhehle's BCP. The party had been declared Communist by the Roman Catholic Church because it received support from Chairman Mao of China. The Roman Catholic Church had actively campaigned for Chief Leabua Jonathan's BNP, which had contributed to the BNP's winning the last elections. The Catholics were in the majority in Lesotho. The BCP, on the other hand, received most of its support from the Protestant denominations, which were much poorer and smaller. So, it was not only the urban/rural divide that was a factor in the BNP winning those elections; it was also the Catholic/Protestant chasm. Father Hamel was known to preach unashamedly against the BCP in his church at St Rose. That was why activists from the local branch of the BCP once kidnapped him, put him in a sack and abandoned him in the fields many miles away just to teach him a lesson. He became even more rabid after that.
âIt is not your church, you don't own it, so I'll be here again next Sunday and every Sunday for as long as I want,' I said, looking down at him. He was a puny man with a bald pate and white tufts above each ear.
Those who had gathered to listen were aghast at my defiance of the man of God. As far as they were concerned this was proof that I was indeed a Communist. Only a Communist would dare argue with a man of God.
On my way back to school I rethought my defiance. Perhaps it was a good thing that I had been expelled from church. I hated going to church anyway but was forced to by school rules. Now I had a good reason not to go.
On Monday I told the principal, Mr Tseliso Makhakhe, what had
happened the previous day. I had hoped that he would leave it at that and it would be the end of my Sunday treks to St Rose, or any other church for that matter. But he did not. He ordered me into his Volkswagen Beetle and drove to St Rose. Father Hamel was strolling among the flowers. As soon as he saw us he walked very fast to his office and closed the fine mesh screen door. We stood outside on the steps and looked at him sitting at the desk facing the door.
âCan we come in?' asked Mr Makhakhe.
âNo,' said the priest.
I think Mr Makhakhe decided he was not going to demean himself talking to this man from the steps; he walked away. I didn't follow him. I was rather annoyed that Father Hamel should treat my principal like an errant school boy.
âYou are very rude,' I said to him.
âYou dare talk to me like that?' he said. âYou are beyond redemption. I give you an anathema.'
âWhat?' I asked in utter amazement.
âYou heard me. I give you an anathema.'
âCome on, Mda,' said the principal, already walking back to where he had parked his car around the corner. âLet's go.'
âIf that is a curse at all I'm giving it back to you, Father Hamel,' I said. I was rather annoyed that he didn't respond to this, so I added, âI give you a hundred anathemas. A thousand anathemas even. So, you take that and smoke it.'
Thankfully, the principal did not hear me utter this curse. He would have been disappointed because he knew me as a quiet respectful boy who would not raise his voice to an adult.
If I thought this banishment from the Roman Catholic Church would bring an end to my church-going days once and for all I was soon proved wrong. As we were driving back to school Mr Makhakhe said, âWe are not going to beg Hamel to take you back in his church. You'll go to the Anglican Church instead. Anyway, their services are almost the same as yours.'
Although this was disappointing it was better than walking all those miles every Sunday. The Anglican chapel was on campus and the lay
preacher who conducted the services there was my erstwhile English and Latin teacher, Mr A S Mampa, the one we called Scutum. He preached in English and Jama Mbeki was his Sesotho interpreter. It always amazed me how excellent Jama was in Sesotho even though he was a Xhosa from the Eastern Cape. At the time I was not aware of his deep Lesotho connections: his mother was a Mosotho from the Moerane family. The great maestro that I told you about was his mother's brother. He knew how to translate Scutum's jokes into Sesotho without losing the nuances that made them funny.
Jama completed high school ahead of me, so I took over as Scutum's interpreter when he left. But I could never match his voice that undulated in keeping with Scutum's emotions as he narrated some apocalyptic event in the Bible that had to be taken as a warning lest we went through the same mess if we didn't heed the word of God.
I also led, as Jama had done, in the singing of hymns. The Spirit took possession of me as I sang âOnward Christian Soldiers' or âRock of Ages Cleft For Me'. These were Scutum's favourite hymns and he joined in his basso with gusto as did the all-boys congregation in four-part harmony.
I took a break from these sacred tasks only on those Sundays when our school orchestra was required to play at the Church of Lesotho. There again I would play my flute in praise of the Lord.
It was quite ironic that I, an atheist, was playing such an active role in spreading the Gospel. But then I was not a dogmatic atheist who would have nothing to do with religion. For me, all the rituals of Christianity were an act â a performance â that we could all enjoy in the same way that I enjoyed creating plays, participating in them or just watching them. God and all the members of his family were characters we had created and interacted with in our histrionic routines on Sundays. It was the sense of community that I relished in the rituals of worship, even though I knew that whatever or whoever was being worshipped existed only in our collective imagination. Why not play along if the performance gave one solace and fulfilment?
My scepticism about religion evolved over time. Even as I served as an altar boy years before I was beginning to have some doubts about
God. The question that kept on nagging me even as a child was: if God created the world and everything on it, who created God? And then who created that creator ⦠ad infinitum? If everything must have a source, what is God's source? Of course I would never raise these questions with my mother, let alone with my father.
And then from the Peka High School library â the very library that had introduced me to such British and American playwrights as Joe Orton, Harold Pinter, Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee â I came across a book on world religions. I immersed myself in the world of Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Baha'i, Judaism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Zoroastrianism and a host of others, including some African Traditional and Diasporic religions. It struck me that the adherents of each one of these religions were adamant that theirs was the correct path. Yet all these religions, even those that were monotheistic, professed different philosophies and values. They might have similarities in some of their messages, but they differed significantly in particulars. Sometimes they even worshipped different deities.
I wrote an article for the school magazine,
Lux Vestra
, titled: âWho Has the Right Path?' What I was really asking, in fact, was what arrogance makes Christians think that they are right and everyone else is wrong? I went further to question the whole notion of God, and came to the conclusion that he was a human creation. When pre-scientific societies couldn't deal with natural forces over which they had no control, and when they couldn't provide answers to the mysteries of the universe, they had to attribute them to some supernatural power.
I shared this article with my father during the holidays. He read it there and then, looked at me and said, âWhat is the point of this?'
I was disappointed. I was hoping for praise from this man who had been extremely tolerant even of rigid atheists like John Motloheloa. I thought I was growing up to be an independent thinker, but he was dismissive of the whole effort, which proved to me that like most Christians he was so certain of the correctness of his faith that even raising the kind of questions my article was trying to put on the agenda was foolhardy, if not downright reprobate. And this from a man I had never seen go to church or pray even for a single day.
I began to read extensively, trying to find answers to these nagging questions. I read books that tried to explain and simplify Charles Darwin's theories of the evolution that resulted from the process of natural selection. Surely the world could not have been created in six days!
Later Gordon Tube, another teacher of English Literature, introduced us to
Androcles and the Lion
by George Bernard Shaw which was a prescribed text for drama. My leap into atheism was complete. Our class loved the play, an adaptation of the old story of Androclus, a slave in ancient Rome who was escaping from the cruelties of slavery and took refuge in a cave, into which a lion with a thorn in its paw came. The lion was in great pain and Androclus extracted the thorn. He was later captured and thrown into the arena to be devoured by the lions as a spectacle for the ladies and gentlemen of Rome. When the lion came into the arena it recognised Androclus as the guy who saved it from the thorn and, instead of eating him, it caressed him. Shaw made Androcles a Christian and in his play martyrdom and persecution were portrayed through comedy, some of which I found to be slapstick.
Though we all admired Shaw's humour in the play, it was really the Preface whose polemics captivated me. I was struck by the fact that the Preface was longer than the play. Through a long examination of the Gospel Shaw put Christianity on trial and, after reading it, religious belief, and theism itself, sounded quite ridiculous.
Shaw's atheism gave me permission to be atheistic without any apology. It confirmed what I had suspected all along: there is no God! For the first time I realised that I was not alone in my unbelief when I read: