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AS I DRIVE BACK
from Bensonvale I wonder how things would have turned out for me, my brothers and my sister if we had not left Sterkspruit. We would have lived here for the rest of our lives, and become teachers and nurses like everyone else, without the exposure to the world that was a result of the single occasion the Boers came for my father in the middle of the night; a whole contingent of white policemen with bright flashlights. They turned the house upside down, looking for âterrorist' documents and banned books. My father's Communist books were nowhere to be found. I later learnt that he had earlier that week asked our nanny to bury them underground at her place. How did he know he was going to be raided by the police? He must have got a tip from an insider â maybe from a sympathetic black cop.
They took him away in a
kwela-kwela
police van with bars on the windows. My mother sat at the kitchen table and wept.
The following week was very important for me because I was
representing Tapoleng Primary School in a track meet where Herschel District primary schools were competing. I had outrun all competition in middle and long distance races at my school, and it was time to use my famous long strides to bring the trophy to Tapoleng. But how could I do it with my father in jail? It was not so much for him that I felt sorry, but for my mother. I knew he was strong and could handle any situation. After all, we were all terrified of him. I didn't see how he could fail to terrify the Boers as well. But my mother did not take the arrest well. She worried about how they were treating him in jail and whether they were torturing him or not. Fortunately, she was allowed to take him some food, but never to see him. She cried a lot even as she kept on reminding herself that she needed to be brave for the children.
I lost the race.
The following Monday I went to school as usual, but something unusual happened at the morning assembly. After the prayers the principal Mr Moleko, also known as Mkhulu-Baas, made a speech about the folly of trying to fight against the white man in South Africa.
âThere are people who think they can win against the white man,' he said out of the blue. âThat is very stupid.
Umlungu mdala
â the white man is old and wise. What do you think a black person can do to make South Africa a better country? A black person is a baby. If you try to stand up against the white man you will end up in jail.'
I knew immediately that the nincompoop in the threadbare grey suit was talking about my father and I hated him for it.
One evening when we were eating dinner father came home. He was on the run from the police and had come to take a few of his things and to say goodbye.
He went into exile in the British Protectorate of Basutoland, as Lesotho was then known.
We pieced things together later. He was being accused of holding secret meetings all over the Cape, planning the violent overthrow of the state. We had not been aware of all these nocturnal activities because he seemed to be a looming presence at home all the time. A few days after he had been locked up there was a line-up, an identification parade. A certain Mr X was to point out the man who addressed a
secret meeting of a PAC cell in a town called Elliot where some acts of sabotage were planned. Mr X was a secret state witness who had attended the meeting, and therefore could not be identified by name. My father knew immediately that the police had already tutored Mr X on how to identify him. He therefore took off his coat and gave it to the man next to him to wear â the people in the line-up were black men picked from the street, and he knew the particular man to whom he gave his coat. He also changed the order of the line-up. Mr X arrived wearing a mask, looked at the men in the line-up and pointed at the man wearing my father's coat.
âThat's the man,' he said. âThat's the man who addressed the meeting in Elliot.'
Of course the man would not have held a meeting in Elliot or anywhere else for that matter. The police were angry that their identification parade had been foiled by my father's cunning. They had to release him, but he knew that was only temporary. It would take them hours rather than days to find other ways of getting him. They would never give up. That was why he didn't wait for them to rearrest him but escaped to Basutoland.
Once more we were without a father.
The first place to knell his absence was the garden. Old Xhamela had long gone to work for the South African Railways and Harbours and father's peach trees lost their sculpted shapes. Weeds grew rampant and the seedbeds lay without new seedlings of cabbages, tomatoes and beetroot.
For many days after my father left I could see that my mother's eyes were red from crying. But soon she got used to the idea of his absence. After all, she had lived alone in Johannesburg for many years while he was either serving articles in the Transkei or was travelling the length and breadth of South Africa, first organising for the ANC Youth League and in later years for the Africanists. She kept herself busy by playing tennis at the township tennis courts whenever she was off-duty from Empilisweni Hospital and sometimes I joined her. Until one day she beat me six-love. I gave up tennis for ever.
I must admit that I enjoyed the freedom that resulted from my
father's exile. For the first time I was able to build a loft and keep pigeons, which my father would never have allowed. Also, my mother was at work for the whole day most days. Or she was doing night-duty, which meant that I could join Cousin Mlungisi in some of his nighttime activities. For instance I could go stand outside Keneiloe's gate and whistle until she came out of the house. Cousin Mlungisi's girlfriends came out to him when he whistled, and then they would repair behind the outhouse toilet to do naughty things. But my Keneiloe could never come to me. Her parents were too strict. She only stood at the door and waved at me so that I could see she had heard the whistling. Then she walked back into the house before Hopestill got suspicious. That was good enough for me; I had âchecked' my girl. I was a fulfilled boy as I walked back home where I had to sneak into my room even though my mother was absent because the nanny was likely to squeal on me if she discovered I had gone to âcheck' girls.
When Hopestill visited, she and my mother talked about the hardships caused by my father's absence. They giggled like school girls at something she said to Hopestill. Then Hopestill whispered something back and they burst out laughing. I loved Hopestill at those moments. She was so beautiful. She looked very much like Keneiloe. Then my mother said in a solemn tone, âBut, Hope, I think it's a good thing he left when he did. Look at what the Boers have done to Bhut' Walter and Nel.' She was talking about her friends Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela.
Although we no longer had to draw water from the communal borehole for father to water his plants, and we didn't have to stand to attention and repeat
âewe, tata'
after every one of his admonishing sentences, we still had to work in the house. My mother was no pushover. We had to clean the house, scrub the linoleum floors and apply Cobra Floor Polish. As was the case growing up in Soweto, where there was no distinction between work for girls or for boys and we all performed the same chores, it was the same here in Sterkspruit. That was how our mothers brought us up. I learnt to cook at an early age. I was also an expert at keeping the red stoep outside my father's office gleaming with Sunbeam Polish.
On Sundays my mother insisted that we go to the Roman Catholic Church which was located at Makhetheng Township on the other side of Sterkspruit. Before my father's exile neither of our parents minded that we frequented the Methodist Church instead of our own denomination. Everyone in Tienbank, except us, was a Methodist. So we preferred going to the Methodist Church near Tapoleng Primary with the rest of our friends. After all, it was the church that Keneiloe attended and it gave us the opportunity to walk home from church together. Going to the Catholic Church was quite an ordeal because it was more than an hour's walk just to get there. And another hour back. Taking into account that Mass lasted for one hour, it meant that we had to invest three whole hours on Sunday just to make my mother happy.
I also had to go to the church on some Saturdays because I was training to be an altar boy. A bigger boy was assigned to teach me the ropes, and on those Sundays when I had to wear the red cassock and white surplice I swelled with pride and felt that the three hours were worth it. It was just unfortunate that Keneiloe was not there to hear me chant
Kyrie Eleison Kristu Eleison
or to see me, in the absence of the regular thurifer, wave the thurible with pomp and ceremony, filling the small church with nostril-stinging incense; or, in the presence of the regular thurifer, to hear the ring of my altar bell.
On some Saturdays the altar servers rehearsed the Monody of Gregorian Chants. The rotund white priest whose name I have long forgotten paced the floor in front of us chanting in a shaky voice:
Adoremus in aeternum sanctissimum Sacramentum. Laudate Dominum omnes gentes: laudate eum omnes populi. Quoniam confirmata est super nos misericordia ejus: et veritas Domini manet in aeternum. Adoremus â¦
We will adore for eternity the most holy Sacrament. Praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise Him all ye peoples. Because His mercy is confirmed upon us: and the truth of the Lord remains forever. Let us adore
â¦
We repeated the Latin chants after him. But the thurifer was more interested in gossip than in adoring the Sacrament. He whispered to me that the priest was pretending to be engrossed in Gregorian Chants
whereas what he was really doing was checking out the thighs of the boys in their shorts for the one he would invite to his room.
âTo his room? What for?' I asked.
âWhy, to eat him
mawutwana
, of course.'
I didn't understand this eating business so I whispered back, âWhat do you mean to eat him? What is
mawutwana
?'
The boys laughed at my naivete but soon shut up when the priest glared at them sternly while continuing with his chants. He walked out of the door, still chanting.
âWhere does this one come from?' asked the thurifer staring at me incredulously. âDon't you know that priests eat pretty boys like you?'
âBut this one is a good priest,' said a tiny server in defence of the man of the cloth. âHe does not hurt boys; he only puts his thingy between the thighs. The Father before him put it in the
sebono
.'
âMama's little boy! Mama's little boy!' chanted the thurifer to the tune of Gregorian Chants. But the return of the priest put an end to the teasing and the banter. The priest was still chanting and had a cane with him, which he gently beat against his hand while looking at the thurifer as a way of warning him and any other server who was bent on chattering instead of focusing on the Chants that the cane would eat into the offender's flesh.
My concentration was no longer on the Monody; it worried me no end that I was ignorant of what the servers were talking about; that I was not in the loop; that I was an outsider who knew nothing about eating
mawutwana
. At least I knew
sebono
was a Sesotho word for anus. Most of the servers came from Basutoland where the Catholic Church was much stronger, so they spoke in Sesotho most of the time. Even the Holy Mass at our little church was conducted in Latin and Sesotho. I would be sure to ask Cousin Mlungisi what
mawutwana
was. He was a man of the world and would know about it, especially since it was associated with
sebono
which sounded quite dirty. Cousin Mlungisi knew all things dirty.
Alas, even Cousin Mlungisi was not worldly enough to know anything about
mawutwana
.
I subsequently learnt from the thurifer that
mawutwana
referred to
sex between males and that the eating had to do with engaging in that act with the priest, who then gave the boys nice second-hand clothes that were donated by rich countries to give to the poor. I never experienced any of that myself as no priest approached me. The thurifer said it was because I was always so smartly dressed with new and clean clothes and shimmering black shoes. I was obviously not from a poor family and the priest knew that I didn't need anything from him in exchange for
mawutwana
. Despite this assurance that I was not a good candidate for priestly sex, the thurifer never stopped bugging me about coming with him to the church office when the priest was alone. He assured me that he was going to teach me how to entice him. If I didn't need clothes I could ask for money instead. A fleeting thought crossed my mind. The well had run dry since my father left; I could no longer steal money from his pants at night. I therefore could no longer afford to buy my comic books. My mother was very good at hiding her money. In any event, I would feel very bad stealing from her when she was struggling on her own without my father. What if I took up the thurifer's offer? But I just couldn't imagine myself doing anything of the sort.
I longed for the Sundays when my mother would be on duty so that I could sneak back to the Methodist Church and bask in the Glory of Keneiloe.
One Monday I went to school as usual. At recess I played soccer in the playground in front of the classrooms. I stood between a pile of bricks that we used as goalposts and dived to stop the tennis ball that we used for soccer from passing through. I was about to do one of my catlike lunges when two police vans stopped on the road and a group of armed policemen in uniform jumped out and marched military-style to the principal's office. Somehow I knew they had come for me.