Read Sometimes There Is a Void Online
Authors: Zakes Mda
Sometimes There Is a Void (28 page)
Mr Malahleha's daughters were scarred for life. The older one became a wanderer, sleeping rough on store verandas and abusing herself so horrendously that it seemed she was competing with the abuse that she had received from the men in uniform with their deadly weapons.
A new culture of brutality was being cultivated right in front of our eyes. Mafeteng had lost its innocence.
A deep sorrow invaded my body and sat inside my chest like a granite rock. It weighed me down and all I did was to sit in the room I shared with my three brothers and grieve. It made no difference that no member of my family was directly affected â we were never invaded, the soldiers stayed clear of our house because politicians of all parties, including the BNP, had this reverence for my father. Mafeteng was bleeding. Her grief was mine. I wanted to escape. But I had nowhere to go. I was already in exile.
Some relief, not quite the escape I yearned for, came in the form of a new temporary job at one of the two local high schools. I was recruited at Bereng High School to take over the classes of the Sesotho teacher, Mrs Mohapi, who had gone on maternity leave. Here I had my first taste of teaching at a regular high school where I interacted with other teachers in the staffroom. The principal was Moses Mampa, Scutum's son â you remember my first Latin teacher at Peka High? We hit it off immediately, especially because he was a poet whose lyrics moved me no end. Especially
during those times of war. Another colleague who became a close friend was Mpho Malie. At the time we had no idea that one day he would become an important politician and a Minister of Commerce and Industry in a subsequent Lesotho government after peace had returned.
during those times of war. Another colleague who became a close friend was Mpho Malie. At the time we had no idea that one day he would become an important politician and a Minister of Commerce and Industry in a subsequent Lesotho government after peace had returned.
Those were wonderful times except for the little problem that I was teaching Sesotho Literature and Language, in which I had little expertise. I had studied Sesotho at Peka High School where my teacher was Matlatsa Mokhehle, Ntsu Mokhehle's brother who was also in the BCP leadership in his own right. I had excelled in written essays, grammar and proverbs, but my spoken Sesotho left much to be desired. The students complained that I was teaching them their language in English. Fortunately, they took their complaints to my mother at home rather than to the principal. I think this had become a joke among them. I was relieved when Mrs Mohapi's maternity leave was over after three months and she came back to take over her classes.
I had to say goodbye to my staffroom friends, to my students and, most sadly, to my job. Once more I was plunged into the world of unemployment, of wasting away in the skanky shebeens of Mafeteng, and of dodging patrols of Potiane's Police Mobile Unit and the Young Pioneers who had tasted so much blood that when they didn't find curfew-breakers they created them by dragging targeted men and women from their homes to the streets and then beating them up for breaking the curfew.
I watched at first hand the new culture of impunity that was taking root throughout the ranks of the Lesotho Mounted Police, the paramilitary Police Mobile Unit and the civilian militia of the ruling BNP known as the Young Pioneers. Corrupt politicians used these organs to suppress the populace in the most savage way, and these organs became a law unto themselves.
That was the beginning of what we see today.
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EVERY TIME WE RETURN
from a visit to the Bee People Gugu and I are brimming with euphoria. Yes, the Bee People and the mountain of
Dyarhom are euphoriants. The joie de vivre of the underprivileged, the scents of the shrubs mixed with the aroma of honey, the crispness of the mountain air, the clearness of the streams, the imposing cliffs, the frolicking of the rock rabbits, cannot but leave their spell on us until we get to the exhaust fumes of Johannesburg. We are also pleased that our guest, Goretti Kyomuhendo, was able to see other parts of South Africa which are quite different from the city of Durban where she lives for the duration of her studies.
from a visit to the Bee People Gugu and I are brimming with euphoria. Yes, the Bee People and the mountain of
Dyarhom are euphoriants. The joie de vivre of the underprivileged, the scents of the shrubs mixed with the aroma of honey, the crispness of the mountain air, the clearness of the streams, the imposing cliffs, the frolicking of the rock rabbits, cannot but leave their spell on us until we get to the exhaust fumes of Johannesburg. We are also pleased that our guest, Goretti Kyomuhendo, was able to see other parts of South Africa which are quite different from the city of Durban where she lives for the duration of her studies.
Back at my house in Weltevredenpark â a suburb that was all-white during apartheid and mostly Afrikaner; the name is Afrikaans for âwell-contentedness' â I share with her some articles that I have recently written for South African newspapers on issues ranging from crime to criticism of the corruption of some of our political leaders. I have been a frank commentator on the social and political scene and have made quite a few powerful people unhappy.
The next morning we go shopping for groceries at Pick-n-Pay at the Randpark Ridge Mall. Goretti is astonished that we pile our trolley with foodstuffs of all kinds, including varieties of cheese. She marvels at the fact that the black people of South Africa eat cheese. Everyone else in the supermarket â both black and white â is pushing a trolley laden with groceries.
âYou people live lives of extravagance here in South Africa,' she says. âIn Uganda we only go to the shop to buy the item we need at that time.'
Later, as we have a meal, she criticises one of my articles on crime for omitting the fact that the guns that were brought into the country by the guerrilla war waged by the liberation movement have contributed a lot to violent crime in South Africa. I see her point, but the focus of the article was on how in urban black communities we grew up lionising criminals, and how that has resulted in the present environment where crime is rampant and the communities are helpless. I wrote in the article that during apartheid the outlaw was the man. He challenged the law. The very law that was vicious towards us. That raided our homes in the middle of the night and reduced our mothers and fathers to whimpering bundles of shame. That locked up our fathers for not carrying a
dompas â
the ID documents that were carried only by blacks to ensure that they
were confined to their designated areas
.
The law that uprooted families, burying them alive in barren places called âhomelands', far away from places of employment. That whipped us and mowed us down with bullets. Yet these outlaws laughed in the face of the law. They spat at the law. They beat the system. They were the enemies of our enemies. They were on our side. The law was our enemy. It was not on our side. We would therefore not have anything to do with anything that had to do with the law. Even if we knew who the outlaws were in our midst and where they were hiding we would not tell. The worst thing any black township person could be was a snitch â or
impimpi
. The snitch was on the side of the law, and therefore the snitch was the enemy. A culture of shielding criminals and giving them succour and lionising them took root and continues to this day, even though the heavy boot of apartheid is no longer on our neck and we are now supposed to be running our own affairs. In my article, published in South Africa's
Mail & Guardian
, I come up with concrete suggestions on how this culture can be rooted out, using the family and community structures that are preyed upon by the criminals.
dompas â
the ID documents that were carried only by blacks to ensure that they
were confined to their designated areas
.
The law that uprooted families, burying them alive in barren places called âhomelands', far away from places of employment. That whipped us and mowed us down with bullets. Yet these outlaws laughed in the face of the law. They spat at the law. They beat the system. They were the enemies of our enemies. They were on our side. The law was our enemy. It was not on our side. We would therefore not have anything to do with anything that had to do with the law. Even if we knew who the outlaws were in our midst and where they were hiding we would not tell. The worst thing any black township person could be was a snitch â or
impimpi
. The snitch was on the side of the law, and therefore the snitch was the enemy. A culture of shielding criminals and giving them succour and lionising them took root and continues to this day, even though the heavy boot of apartheid is no longer on our neck and we are now supposed to be running our own affairs. In my article, published in South Africa's
Mail & Guardian
, I come up with concrete suggestions on how this culture can be rooted out, using the family and community structures that are preyed upon by the criminals.
As we debate this issue, Goretti asks why I decided to live in America when I have it made right here in my country: I drive a late model metallic grey Mercedes Benz, have a palatial suburban home with three garages, five bedrooms, two living rooms, a big dining room, a designer kitchen with all sorts of appliances and gadgets, a study, a gardener, two maids, a swimming pool and a back garden that is as big as a public park with swings, slides and jungle-gyms on which my kids played when they were young. I am obviously part of the new black elite of South Africa, enjoying the fruits of liberation, and I don't need to be in America, she says.
She is not the first person to ask me this question. Friends have wondered what the point of living in the USA is when I return to South Africa every few months to work with the Bee People in the Eastern Cape, with HIV-AIDS infected youths in Sophiatown and with playwrights at the Market Theatre in Newtown in Johannesburg.
âIt is some kind of self-imposed exile,' I tell her jokingly. âExile of a special kind. One day you'll know what happened because I am going to write about it in my memoirs.'
I tell her that until I took up the professorship at Ohio University I earned my entire livelihood from writing for the stage and television and from my fiction that has an international market. I worked as a full-time writer for seven years, thanks to the fact that dribs and drabs of dollars, pounds and euros become a small fortune when they are transferred to South Africa. But I have other skills for which I am highly trained. I can't practise them in South Africa because all doors are closed by the vast patronage system and crony capitalism that has emerged in my beloved country. Doors were banged in my face, that's why when the opportunity availed itself I left, though it was a difficult decision. We go to where our skills are appreciated first and foremost, and then of course rewarded.
It has everything to do with my outsiderness. I have resisted the centre and have always drifted towards the periphery of things. If you stay with me you'll learn how, because of my being what Nelson Mandela called âtoo outspoken', I found myself and members of my family marginalised in our society.
In fact, I always tell my adult children that when they apply for jobs in South Africa they must not mention that they are related to me. I remember drumming it into the head of my eldest son, Neo, a talented painter and a former art director at an international advertising agency, that in the South African job market it is a disadvantage to know me. But he never learns. When he goes for job interviews the question invariably arises: âAre you related to Zakes Mda?' He always answers proudly: âYes, he is my dad.' And then of course they never call him back.
Well, he has the skills and the drive; he does not need a job from anyone. So, he starts his own advertising agency in partnership with some friends from Cape Town. He is a young black entrepreneur and through the government's Black Economic Empowerment programmes there are opportunities for the likes of him. Here again, when he goes for interviews and presentations, the perennial question comes and he answers it honestly.
âAs long as you continue to tell them that we are related you will never get any contracts from the government, from parastatals and from the corporate world in general. The people who are unhappy with me have long tentacles.'
âSo, you want me to lie, Dad, and say you're not my dad?' he asks.
âNo, I don't want you to lie,' I tell him. âI am advising you to give smart truthful answers. When they ask, “Are you related to Zakes Mda?” simply answer “I'm told we are related” and stop there. They won't ask any further.'
âTold we are related? Come on! I'll be misleading them into thinking that I don't know for sure if we are or not, or I don't even know you personally.'
âIf that's what they think that's not your problem because you didn't say so. You can't help it if they make that assumption.'
He shakes his head and laughs.
âI'm told we are related?' he repeats. âThat would be a lie.'
âThat's not a lie. You have no first-hand knowledge of your conception. You were
told
that we are related
â¦
by me and your mother.'
told
that we are related
â¦
by me and your mother.'
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MY SON'S CONCEPTION WAS
an accident. It started with my hesitating at a river. It was like going into exile one more time. Exile within exile. Two village men in Basotho blankets helped me with my suitcase and boxes of books, primus stove, pots, plates, blankets and groceries across the raging river. There was no bridge, they told me. The only way to and from the village of Likhakeng is to cross the river. I dread rivers. You will remember that my experience with them has not been a pleasant one. But I struggled on, resisting the force of the water, until I got to the other side.
an accident. It started with my hesitating at a river. It was like going into exile one more time. Exile within exile. Two village men in Basotho blankets helped me with my suitcase and boxes of books, primus stove, pots, plates, blankets and groceries across the raging river. There was no bridge, they told me. The only way to and from the village of Likhakeng is to cross the river. I dread rivers. You will remember that my experience with them has not been a pleasant one. But I struggled on, resisting the force of the water, until I got to the other side.
We walked on a winding footpath among fields of maize and grazing lands until we got to the village. The men took me to a grass-thatched one-roomed house, my new home. The only furniture was a single bed, a table and a chair.
I was the new teacher at Likhakeng Secondary School in the Leribe District, in northern Lesotho.
The following week I met my students, all twenty-three of them. And that was the whole school enrolment. I didn't expect that. In its previous incarnation as Harvey Secondary School it was a relatively
big school with a reputation for debauchery. It was closed down after a students' strike when I was still at Peka High School. Now, after a few years, the community of Likhakeng had opened it with this first group of boys and girls who were all doing Form A, as the first year of junior secondary school was called. I was here to teach English â both literature and language.
big school with a reputation for debauchery. It was closed down after a students' strike when I was still at Peka High School. Now, after a few years, the community of Likhakeng had opened it with this first group of boys and girls who were all doing Form A, as the first year of junior secondary school was called. I was here to teach English â both literature and language.
This is where I met the identical twins, Mpho and Mphonyane Seema. I was twenty-two, they were twenty. We fell in love. Me with both of them, and they with me. They dressed alike and everything about them was similar, down to their voices. For a long time I couldn't tell them apart. But that didn't matter because they were both my girlfriends. I think what initially attracted me to them was the fact that they were much more worldly wise than the ordinary village girls. I had not expected to meet such women in a remote village like that, who even spoke some Zulu. It turned out that they also had a home in Wattville, Benoni, near Johannesburg, where their father and two brothers worked. They spent a lot of time there. Their mother, however, lived in the village of Ha Qokolo, about ten miles or so away. She tended to the fields while the men worked in the factories of Johannesburg.
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