by Elsa Joubert
But deep in her heart she knew: What has to be, has to be. If it could so happen to Rosie in the Groote Schuur hospital, how could Thandi go free?
On Sundays she was glad to be with her brothers again. Jakkie told her about his schoolwork.
Do you find your work easier now? she asked. B fore Pieta died it had been a struggle.
It’s better now, sisi, he said. He was wearing a green and red striped T-shirt, his long tufted hair brushed high and back, like an Afro-wig, his eyes shining as if wet. His face was pointed and his nose high-bridged like oompie Pengi’s was. As he talked his head moved like that of a playful pony. He was full of fun like buti Plank when he was young. Only, thought Poppie, he doesn’t drink, he loves his books. In that he’s like Mosie.
Yes, sisi, how shall I put it, I think my brains grew bigger those years that I spent out of school. It’s no bother to me now.
Jakkie had almost caught up with Bonsile. He was studying for Standard Eight.
Bonsile will go back to school one day, too.
Just give me one more year, sisi, then I’m neck and neck with Bonsile.
Jakkie is going to become a preacher, said mama. He loves his church more than any one of us. He’s the best singer too.
Like them, Jakkie liked it best to speak in Afrikaans. It was what had stayed with him from his youth in Lamberts Bay.
I don’t speak well, he joked, it’s location Afrikaans.
The Nyanga children struggled to speak it, but Katie, working sleep-in with Afrikaans people, Mrs Louw, had become quite fluent. Mosie, on the other hand, still struggled with his Xhosa. Katie and Baby teased him when he made mistakes. Buti, they would say, that’s not the way to say it in Xhosa. But his English had improved, because of working for English people all these years. And because of that the people in Cape Town took him for coloured or mixed rather than Xhosa.
Ag, I’m just an Afrikaner, that’s all that I am, said Mosie.
67
Six months after she had returned to Cape Town, Poppie received a telegram from Herschel. She felt great fear. She was standing in Mrs Swanepoel’s kitchen, but her fingers had no strength to open the telegram.
Please open it, madam, she asked. She forced herself to read it. No, it’s not my children, she told the madam. It’s my husband’s buti, we called him Spannerboy. He had an accident and went back to the tribal land, and now he’s dead.
That afternoon she sent money to Herschel to help pay for the funeral.
This now has taken all the money I saved for the children’s schooling next year, she told Hannie. I’m sorry that he’s dead, because although he was sickly, while he was alive his wife had to be good to my children. I don’t know if she’ll turn against them now.
On Sunday she told mama and buti Mosie of his death and they started at her again: Tata-ka-Bonsile’s only brother is dead. He had first right over the children. But now he’s passed by and the children belong to us. They must come back here.
She paid no attention to what they said. I know the law better than they, she thought. They must go their own way, and I must go mine. I did not choose to go this way, but my feet have been put on this road and I cannot turn back.
Constance wrote a letter telling about her husband’s death. He became weaker, she wrote. Afterwards he would not leave the house. Then the fits started, and cold fever. We took him by car to the hospital in Sterkspruit, and the doctor injected him, because he was getting fits all the time. The next day he died.
Poppie once again sent money to her. But she did not send for the children to come back.
You are too independent, my little sister, Mosie said. You keep your children away from us, you take your own decisions without discussing it with us. My heart is heavy for Fezi. ‘Cause why I have no boy child of my own. He’s older than my girl children. He’s my son since the night he was born.
It worried Poppie to have misunderstanding between herself and Mosie.
I take my decisions because I have no husband, and because I don’t want no quarrel with you, my buti. Because when it comes to my children, you turn from me. I was sent by force to the tribal lands, and my children must take the road their feet were set upon.
When speaking like this, she felt the strength in her. I am forty years old, she thought. I am stronger than buti Mosie or buti Plank or Johnnie Drop-Eye. I am bigger than them.
Because in her heart she knew that what she had undergone would come their way too. I have gone ahead of you, buti Mosie, she said. Your feet too will be set on the road that mine were put upon. That you cannot escape.
68
Sunday after Sunday in the afternoons when she was off and visiting the location they were discussing it – Mosie and Johnnie Drop-Eye and Jakkie, who, because he was still at school, knew more about politics than his elder brothers. It was the end of 1975 and the independence of the Transkei was not far off. Representatives of Sebe, Prime Minister of the Ciskei, and Matanzima, Prime Minister of the Transkei, came to address meetings in the location.
I’m worried like, Mosie told Poppie. They always hammer this homeland story: And if you’re not Transkei, you’re Ciskei by force. Even we who are city-born.
They were sitting in the front room. The front door was wide open, because of the heat. They could watch the people walking past in the street and the children playing in groups.
The people from the tribal lands, they don’t mind, like Spannerboy and my brothers-in-law that passed by; they know it’s their home place. But take myself and Johnnie and Jakkie, we’ve never been there. Now we don’t know how to handle it. It’s here we were born and grew up. We feel they are pushing us along a road we don’t want to be pushed on.
Another day Mosie said, after a meeting: The homeland boys, they are happy, ja. They’re getting their self-government. But now I ask like: What kind of government is that? I know people who vote because they’re bribed. The chief goes to him and says: Old man, you must sign here. The old man wants to sleep or wants to go out, and says: Man, sign for me where you like. Most of them don’t know what they are voting for. For the homeland black, it’s all right. They have land there, and their people live there, they are used to the Transkei. All right, they don’t mind, but I, to tell you the truth, I’m somewhere else. Look, it’s my home, this place, I’m not worried about the Transkei or the Ciskei.
Poppie was changing Vukile’s clothes, she carried him to the front room.
Now you’re upset, buti, she told him. I always said you didn’t know what you were talking about when you went on at me about the land. Now you’ll feel what it’s like.
Johnnie was still living with Mosie. Once they tried to build him a house at Cross Roads. He and Mosie and Jakkie planted the corner beams, supporting and cross poles, and fixed a few corrugated iron sheets, but before they finished building, the stuff had been stolen and carried away. Now he was saving his money to buy more sheets and poles. The girl he married in the Xhosa way lived with them too.
This pass business is such a mess, the government can do what it likes, it doesn’t bother me any more. But I’ve been working here for fifteen years, I qualify for a permanent permit, and God hear me, I’m going to stay. I’ll try again to build at Cross Roads, ja, that’s my plan.
They’ll run you out of Cross Roads, buti, said Jakkie, who had been listening to the talk. They’ll get you back in the homelands, before you can kiss your arse.
This made Johnnie laugh, and Mosie laugh as they forgot their troubles for the time being. We’re the new homeland boys, they joked. We’ll carry kieries.
But the thought gnawed at Mosie. If the government has to send you somewhere, he thought, it should send you back to where you were born. Send me to Upington and Johnnie to Namaqualand, not to the homeland. And the people of Prieska and Britstown and De Aar, they don’t know the homelands.
I don’t know about the chiefs, said Jakkie, I can’t get used to this chief story. I’m a city boy. I don’t trust this chief busine
ss. That’s what worries me, like.
Only after she had been back for several months, did Poppie tell her brothers about the claim she made in Herschel for a plot of land for Bonsile.
It was his pa’s wish, she told them, that time he visited us in East London. I was forced to do it. But it worries me. It’s a greater trouble than yours, buti.
Why, sisi, they asked.
It’s all a muddle, she said. In Herschel I heard talk that Herschel and Glen Gray are becoming part of the Transkei. The people don’t know if they want it or not, some want it, others don’t. And what worries me, is: if Bonsile takes the plot in Herschel and Herschel becomes Transkei then he’ll be a Transkei citizen.
So what, ‘cause why, what’s the difference?
But I’ve got a house in Mdantsane which is Ciskei, said Poppie. Now if Bonsile becomes a Transkei citizen, I lose the house in the Ciskei. Now I’d rather keep the house in Mdantsane, but I’ve paid the tax in Herschel, so where am I now?
You’d better be careful, sisi, said Jakkie. You’re in more of a mess than what we are.
Jakkie tried to tum the conversation. He started joking.
You must come help me sing, my sisi. I said to buti Mosie, why didn’t you come help me sing at the watch last night, man. The people they sang so out of tune, I said, but man, this woman is never going to get to Heaven...
Jakkie liked to go to the all-night watch, Poppie knew. Every Friday night if there was a funeral on the Saturday, he attended the watch. He prayed and read from the Bible. Mama had got used to him being out all night.
He was fond of Bonsile’s child. He would pick him up and throw him in the air till he started screaming.
If I had a job, I’d give you money for this child, sisi. He pinched Vukile’s cheeks. Just wait, his cheeks will soon be fat.
Don’t worry so much, partner, Johnnie told Mosie, things will come right like. We’ll force them to come right like.
But Mosie wasn’t satisfied. I don’t know where I am. I’m doubtful, I don’t know what tomorrow will be like. The future is uncertain. I don’t know what will happen to my children, tomorrow when I die. Will they be sent away, somewhere? What will become of them? Will they get a place to live, or just anywhere with people they don’t know? There is no certainty, only unrest. I feel it everywhere. The people are restless like.
SEVEN
The revolt of the children
69
When we heard of the riots in Soweto, the black township of Johannesburg, says Poppie, it seemed a far away thing. It seemed not to come from the talk of Mosie and Jakkie and Johnnie Drop-Eye or their friends. It was not trouble about the homelands, Sebe or Matanzima or about passes and travel papers which they spoke now. We heard children were stoning the schools and refusing to go to classes because of the Bantu education law which makes the black children’s schooling different from the white children’s. We thought the trouble would pass, we said to one another: It is a matter for the teachers to show themselves stronger than their pupils.
But it did not pass. And the children were not children of Lower Primary or Higher Primary schools. We called them children, because they were still kwedin, but in fact they were young men and women. Like Jakkie who had left school to earn money for mama after Pieta’s death, and then gone back after five years to start his Standard Six again. Or Baby’s friend, Kathleen, whose brother had said to her: Go back to school, I’ll pay for your books and uniform. Then you work as char on Saturdays and Sundays. You are too clever to remain a char for always.
There were large numbers of these older ones at school, who led the younger ones-twenty-two years old, twenty-three years, twenty-four years, young men already, but children because they were uncircumcised, kwedini, not yet a man.
So it did not die down in Soweto. Because the children were fighting for more than not learning Afrikaans or not having this special Bantu education thing. They were fighting because of their parents’ unrest which came over them like a fever too. We heard on the radio that the children threw stones and burnt schools and stormed the administration buildings and we heard that they were shot for it.
Now that worked on me, because why, I have children too, and the thing that happened to those children in Soweto, tomorrow it could happen to mine. That’s why it affected me badly. Because I read newspapers and listen to the radio too. Sunday in church the minister told us what had happened in Soweto and we prayed for the children that had been shot. A week later a memorial service was held. Then we knew the trouble would come down over us as well. There was no doubt in our hearts. We all knew it would come.
It had taken that course with the strike of ‘sixty when the trouble spread from Sharpeville to Cape Town. It would take that course again.
Baby was the first to meet up with it. She went to the post office in Nyanga with Katie’s child on her back.
I went to phone, she told mama later, I was waiting at the telephone booth when the school children came along, pushing and shoving me aside. I heard them phoning from the telephone booth: We want to talk to the School Board, they said. They must have got through because I heard the money clinking and one was more eager to grab the mouthpiece than the other, I heard them say: We don’t want to learn Afrikaans no more, we don’t want Bantu education no more. Everyone grabbing the phone said the same thing till the time was up.
Auk, what is this thing you are doing? I asked one of the children I knew, but he cheeked me: Shut up, sisi, you’ll get hurt.
The same night they burned down the Nyanga post office. She saw the smoke rising from the school as well. She hid in the house, keeping the children with her, for she remembered the warning: You’ll get hurt, sisi. But the next day she went back to see what had happened. The post office windows were smashed and the roof and woodwork burnt out, inside it was still smouldering, it stank of burnt rubber and paint, torn-up papers lay in heaps in the gutters and in the road. The telephone had been pulled from the wall of the burnt-out booth. She picked it up from the gutter by its cord, it swung from her finger till she threw it from her.
And the nylons drove up and down the streets, slowly.
Mosie heard about the trouble that afternoon at work. At lunchtime a man driving a Volkswagen van arrived, his face grey with fear. The windows of the van had been shattered.
What happened? Mosie asked him.
Things look bad, he said. The schoolchildren are marching, but the skollies have joined in behind them, I had to drive hard to get away. It’s getting hot in the location, the children are rioting and they’ve started shooting at them.
But Johnnie Drop-Eye was the closest to the thing and could tell the best: The first thing I saw was private cars, white people and coloureds’ cars pulling off the road. I left my dairy to have a look-see. It was about two o’clock. Now the children were all coming from the school and they told me: The other schools have sent word we must come out. They’ll all be coming from other locations to our location, and the police vans are coming too.
The police drove slowly between the children, asking what was going on, and the children repeated: We don’t want to be taught Afrikaans no more.
When the teachers asked why they said that, when they didn’t object to learning Xhosa and English, the children said: We heard them saying that in the Soweto schools and now we say so too.
I stood listening to what the children said, they were young kids, Higher Primary School, then the police van came up. There was one white policeman and one coloured and the white policeman said: Then we’ll have to shoot, and that’s when I ran back to my milk dairy and told the people: Stay away from the streets, they’re going to shoot.
But the police didn’t shoot, they followed the children in the vans. It was when the children said: They’re going to shoot, that they picked up stones and bricks. That was how the bottle and stone throwing and shooting started, ja, and then the police vans moved in to break up the groups of children standing around.
70
It seems there’s big trouble, Mrs Swanepoel said, you must listen, Rachel. She herself listened in the sitting room.
Poppie heard: The black people in the Cape Town locations are rising, they are burning down buildings, smashing the beer halls, overturning cars and stoning the buses. Fifteen buildings have been burned down – post offices, government buildings, three shops in Langa, the Guguletu hall. Ambulances and fire engines scream through the streets, the police use shotguns to disperse the crowds. The buses are not running, clouds of smoke hang over the locations, all exits and entrances to the locations are closed, only the police may enter.
The next day mama rang her up from the white woman’s house where she charred.
Things look bad at the location, mama said, but we’re all still alive. Mama’s voice sounded as if she didn’t believe her own words. We counted ten burnt-out nylons in front of the pass office. And the skollies cleaned out the K.T.C. Bazaars in Guguletu. No more bread or milk’s coming to the location, so I’m taking food home this afternoon.
And the children, mama?
I don’t let mine out on the street, Poppie. The children were one and all drunk yesterday. They burnt down the beer halls and broke the bottles, and it was brandy and wine running all over the streets. The police came and the shooting started. But by then the children had swallowed the brandy and gin as if they were cool drinks.
But the children that were shot at, mama?
We can’t know to count, said mama. Mosie helped take pellets out of the children’s arms. He told me many had been taken to Groote Schuur hospital and Tygerberg and the Conradie hospital. Some people say that five died, others say ten. How can we count? For myself, I don’t know about anyone that is dead.
The riots were on Wednesday; on Thursday and Friday it was quiet and Saturday Poppie took her off day and went home. To Claremont by train and from there by bus to Manenberg. There the inspectors stopped the buses and they had to get down.