“Okay. I suppose it makes sense to make one now. After what happened at the farm with Mandla and those thugs.”
I nod, though that’s not the reason I’ve finally drawn up a will. As scary as that ordeal was, it didn’t make me aware of my own mortality. I’ve just come to realize more and more that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. And I’ve never had more plans than I have now. If I’m going to be tempting fate with them, best I’m prepared for any eventuality.
“Could you please go over it and then sign as a witness? Send it to the law firm when you get back to Cape Town?” I ask.
“Of course.”
“Thank you.”
“What’s the other one?” Vince asks as he begins to open it.
“The signed divorce papers.”
He freezes, dropping the envelope like a hot potato, and then lets out a long breath as he runs both hands through his hair. “Ruth, I’m sorry that I sent you those without any warning. It just felt like it was time, you know, since—”
“Don’t apologize. It absolutely was time.” I nod emphatically so he’ll think I mean it. I clear my throat. “Thank you for the maintenance payments you’ve included. I know I said before that I wouldn’t accept them, but now with everything with Mandla . . . Well, you’ve been more than generous and I appreciate it.”
“Please don’t thank me.” There are tears in his eyes.
There are tears in mine too.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
Zodwa
3 May 1996
Rhema Bible Church, Randburg, Johannesburg
Zodwa is seated in a row with Mandla, Ruth, and Delilah on one side of her, and Mama Beauty and her white friend, Robin, on the other. Mama Beauty insisted on being there to support Zodwa despite the fact that she’d had no word yet from the commission about her own daughter.
After Zodwa introduces everyone from her side, Mama Beauty introduces Robin as her “white daughter,” which makes the both of them smile.
“It’s good to see the rainbow nation is alive and well,” Delilah says in reply. “And that we aren’t the only unusual South African family.”
“There are more of us than you might suspect,” Mama Beauty says but she’s staring distractedly at Mandla as she speaks. She seems fixated on the boy and it makes Zodwa nervous.
Zodwa is relieved when a distinguished-looking man with gray hair, seated at a long table at the front of the room, speaks into his microphone. He asks for everyone’s attention, and the buzz dies down as all heads turn to him. He identifies himself as Dr. Boraine, the deputy chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and then introduces the rest of the committee, including the chairman, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who sits to his left and wears the Anglican maroon skullcap and robe.
A murmur of appreciation ripples through the crowd as Desmond Tutu raises his hand in greeting and Zodwa shares everyone’s collective thrill to be in such close proximity to him. The Archbishop’s face is appropriately somber and he exudes a quiet power that belies his small stature.
“Chairperson, I call the first witness and ask him to please come to the witness stand.”
Zodwa holds her breath as Cyril Malema makes his way over and takes a seat. He’s bent over like a man four decades older and wears an ill-fitting suit, but at least he looks sober, which is a small miracle considering the state he was in when Zodwa last saw him.
“Mr. Cyril Malema, I would like to begin by welcoming you and thanking you very sincerely for your willingness to participate in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Would you please stand and take the oath?”
Cyril takes the oath, his hand placed on the Bible. Both his voice and his fingers tremble.
Dr. Boraine begins his questioning. “Now, Mr. Malema. In your own words, please tell us what you’ve come here today to share with us.”
Cyril clears his throat, the sound discordant in the microphone, and begins speaking. His voice is reedy and tremulous. “I was a member of the Inkatha Freedom Party Youth Brigade in 1984, and I was sent on a mission with Dumisa Khumalo, Jakes Mogwase, and Kabetso Hlongwane that resulted in fatalities.”
Zodwa’s heartbeat, which has already accelerated, begins to gallop at the mention of her brother.
“What mission were you sent on?” Dr. Boraine asks while straightening his glasses.
“I was told to take Jakes and Kabetso to the border so they could cross over for military training.”
“Where exactly was this? And what was the date?”
“It was at the Limpopo River border of Botswana. The date was August 23, 1984.”
This is already more information than Zodwa was ever able to get out of him and she leans forward, eager to hear the rest.
Dr. Boraine consults his notes and then asks, “What about Dumisa Khumalo? Was he also supposed to cross the border?”
“No, sir. Dumisa just came with me for the mission.”
“And what were your instructions?”
“To drop the two men off at a meeting point at the river to meet their contact.”
“Can you tell us what happened that night, Mr. Malema?”
“Yes, sir. When we stopped at the designated spot, Jakes and Kabetso got out of the car to smoke while Dumisa and I stayed inside. As we waited for the contact who would take them across, lights were suddenly trained on us and there was screaming. It was an ambush by the security police, and they opened fire on us.”
Mama Beauty takes Zodwa’s hand and squeezes it as a cry suddenly erupts from an older woman seated off to the side. Judging by the way those around her console her, Zodwa assumes she must be one of the men’s mother. Zodwa wishes she was sitting next to the woman so she could hold her as they both endure this ordeal.
“Did either of the men survive?” Dr. Boraine continues once the woman has quietened down to a whimper.
“No, they were both shot dead. As was Dumisa, while he was sitting in the passenger seat.”
It’s Zodwa’s turn to cry out. Her hands fly up to her mouth, too late to stifle the sound, and Delilah reaches over and wraps her arm around Zodwa’s shoulders.
“And how did the security police know that you were going to be there that night?”
Cyril Malema’s head drops into his hands and there’s a deathly hush in the room. He lifts his face again and says, “Because Dumisa and I told them.”
Zodwa goes cold.
No. I must have heard that wrong.
But the whole room breaks out into shouts and exclamations of shock and anger.
“Please, could I please ask for quiet? Could everyone please settle down? Thank you,” Dr. Boraine says after a few minutes and before addressing Cyril Malema again: “You told the security police you’d be there? You and Dumisa Khumalo informed on your own people?”
“Yes, sir.” Cyril begins to cry. “We were working as double agents, you see. The security police paid us a lot of money to give them information.”
Zodwa feels faint as chaos erupts around her. Voices rise in protest and condemnation, and the woman from before is wailing so loudly that Zodwa can’t hear her own thoughts. She’s grateful now to be seated so far away from that mother. She’s dimly aware that Mama Beauty’s grip on her hand has tightened like a vise.
“Please, I need to ask for silence so that Mr. Malema can continue with his testimony,” Dr. Boraine says, raising his voice.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s expression is pained. His eyebrows are knit together as he rests his chin on steepled fingers.
When the ruckus finally dies down, Dr. Boraine continues. “But why go with them that night if you had already sold your comrades out and knew what was going to happen?”
“It was Dumisa’s idea, sir. He said that being out there with them would deflect suspicion so no one would guess that we were a part of it. Dumisa wasn’t mean
t to be shot. That was a complete accident.”
Zodwa listens, numb with shock, as Cyril Malema goes on to tell how he assisted the security police with burying all three of his comrades’ bodies in shallow graves near the site of execution at the border. He trembles violently during his testimony—probably as much from alcohol withdrawal as from nerves—stopping repeatedly to cry and beg for forgiveness from Jakes’s and Kabetso’s families. He addresses the mothers by name but doesn’t look at them, speaking to his lap the whole time. Of course, there’s no begging for mercy from Zodwa. After all, her brother was the mastermind behind the atrocious scheme.
After the testimony is over, Zodwa wants so much to go to the two men’s mothers and beg for forgiveness for what Dumisa did but shame holds her back. For there’s no doubt in her mind that Cyril is telling the truth. Everything makes sense now, things Zodwa had never thought about as a child but that would have set off warning bells if she had.
Like how it was possible that Dumisa could send so much money back home on an entry-level administrator’s salary, and how he could afford a secondhand car and be saving for a house mere months after starting his first job. Leleti and Zodwa’s gogo should have realized something was amiss, but they saw only what they wanted to see.
Cyril’s alcoholism makes sense now too, as does what Zodwa considered to be his incoherent ramblings when she first met him.
They are coming for me. I can’t hide. There’s nowhere to hide. They’re going to kill me. Help me, sisi. Help me.
Zodwa had thought he believed the security police were still after him but, of course, he wasn’t talking about them at all. He was talking about his own people and the families of the ones he betrayed. After the ANC came into power, he’d realized that his day of reckoning would come.
Dr. Boraine announces a break and loud conversations start up once again. Zodwa is grateful for the noise. It means she doesn’t have to speak to Delilah, who stands and reaches out a hand for her.
“You all go ahead,” Mama Beauty says. “I think Zodwa just needs a few minutes. I will sit here with her.” She reassures them all that Zodwa will be fine and Zodwa nods to confirm it so that the sisters will go. As Ruth leads Mandla out of the row, it’s suddenly painful for Zodwa to look at her son, who looks so much like his Judas uncle.
Once everyone has cleared out, the noise trailing behind them, Zodwa finds that she can’t face Mama Beauty. Her freedom-fighter daughter might very well have been betrayed by someone like Dumisa; someone pretending to care about the struggle but who was only in it for himself.
“My child,” Mama Beauty says, reaching out and taking Zodwa’s hand again. “This has been a terrible blow for you, I know. One of the hardest things in life is finding out that those we love the most are the ones we know the least.” She squeezes Zodwa’s fingers. “Sometimes good people do terrible things. It does not make them rotten to the core; it just means that they made bad decisions. Dumisa is still Dumisa. He is still your brother. Only now he is a little less of a myth and a little more a mere mortal.”
Mama Beauty is right. To think that Dumisa has been hailed a hero his whole life. To think that Zodwa forever felt like she lived in his shadow, as if she could never measure up. She thinks back to the last conversation they ever had.
You are a Khumalo, just like me. We are a great people, proudly Zulu. We meet the eyes of the world. And if we do not like what we see when we go out into it, then what do we do?
We change it.
Yes, we change it. We make it better. Now is my time but one day it will be yours. When that time comes, make me proud, little sister.
His hypocrisy makes her sick and she realizes suddenly that she no longer needs to use him as a yardstick. It’s both a liberating and heartbreaking thought. “Thank you, Mama Beauty.”
“The right thing is to go speak to those mothers no matter how difficult it may be, but before you go, I want to say that as you have just discovered with your brother, secrets never stay buried for long. I do not know your reasons for lying to those women about Mandla being your son, nor do I understand why Leleti lied about your son dying in birth, but I hope the time comes when you can bring your secrets into the light. As those wiser than us have said, ‘The truth shall set you free.’” With that, she leans forward and kisses Zodwa’s forehead before sighing and standing up.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
Ruth
17 July 1996
Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa
Isn’t there a later semester you can sign up for so that you aren’t wasting the whole year?” Dee asks Zodwa, who’s at the stove cooking Mandla’s lunch. Mandla is sitting on the kitchen counter squirming as Dee tries to put a bow tie on him.
I can’t believe Dee’s nagging the poor girl about her studies again. She was bitterly disappointed when Zodwa changed her plans at the beginning of the year and decided not to study for a social work degree at UNISA. She carried on and on about the wasted potential, especially since Zodwa did so well with her matric exams, but I don’t see what the big deal is.
“We can help you with some of the fees,” Dee is saying now, “if finances are the problem.”
“Thank you, but no.” Zodwa smiles to take the sting out of it but she’s made it clear the topic isn’t up for any further discussion.
I’m relieved because we have way more important things we should all be focusing on. “Off the furniture, Jez.” I clap my hands and she shoots me an injured look.
“Relax,” Dee says, calling Jez over for an ear rub. “The home assessment is just a formality. Lindiwe knows how we live.”
“Still, I want everything to go well. Zodwa, did you make those scones I asked you to?”
“Yes, Madam Ruth.”
“Please put them out with the three different jams and the clotted cream.”
Why are the cushions all askew again, I wonder, and where did the dust come from when Zodwa cleaned just this morning? I wish I’d gotten flowers for the lounge table but it’s too late now.
I’ve been on edge all week because the social worker from the orphanage is coming to do a home assessment as part of the adoption proceedings. It hasn’t helped that Zodwa has been so distracted I’ve had to micromanage her, following her from room to room to make sure everything is perfect.
I don’t know what’s gotten into Zodwa lately. All I can think is that it’s her upcoming trip home to lay her brother to rest that’s worrying her, because she’s been moody and a million miles away these past few days.
“There you go! All done,” Dee says as she lifts Mandla from the counter and puts him down.
He’s an absolute vision in his blue suit, white shirt, pink-and-blue-polka-dotted bow tie, shiny black shoes, and dapper trilby hat. My baby looks just like a little man.
“He looks like he’s auditioning for a role in The Music Man,” Dee says dryly.
“Clothes maketh the man. And woman,” I add, eyeing her up and down. “You could have made some effort yourself.”
“What?” Dee looks down at her beige pants and blouse. “This is clean and ironed.”
I’m about to tell her that her definition of making an effort needs reevaluating when the intercom buzzes and we all collectively jump. Zodwa’s busy placing bowls of jam on a plate and drops one. Strawberry jam splatters onto Mandla’s jacket.
“Damn it, Zodwa!”
“Sorry, Madam Ruth.”
“Do you think you could get the door so I can wipe him down?”
Jesus, do I have to do every damn thing myself?
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
Zodwa
17 July 1996
Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa
Zodwa walks to the door, forcing a smile. Being here, having to cook and clean so that Ruth can make a good impression on the person who will decide if Mandla can be adopted, is exc
ruciating.
He has a mother who loves him and would give anything to be with him. He doesn’t need another one.
But, of course, that’s just the thing: he does.
Zodwa opens the door, surprised when the face on the other side is one she knows. Judging by the woman’s puzzled expression as she beholds Zodwa, she recognizes her too but is also struggling to place her.
“Hello,” the woman says.
That’s when Zodwa realizes who she is and her blood runs cold.
It’s the social worker from the last orphanage she went to in her quest to find Mandla. Zodwa’s first instinct is terror that the woman will recognize her and expose her as Mandla’s mother. But then, when the social worker’s own expression becomes fearful, their conversation from that day comes back to Zodwa, unspooling like thread in her mind.
And that’s where you still live? In a shack?
What’s your health like?
My health?
Sorry, it’s an occupational hazard. I noticed you have a cough and just wanted to make sure you’re taking care of it.
It’s just a cold. It’s almost gone.
Good. Maybe get some Borstol for it.
I will.
Can you check your files to see if there are any possible matches?
I don’t need to. I know all the children here and none of them fits the description.
The social worker hadn’t been able to meet Zodwa’s eyes that day when she’d handed Dumisa’s baby photo back. It had bothered Zodwa then, how fixated she’d been on the picture at first, and then how quickly that intense focus had turned to dismissal.
And then she realizes the truth: The social worker lied to her. Before Zodwa can stop herself, she blurts out, “You knew!”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
Ruth
17 July 1996
Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa
If You Want to Make God Laugh Page 31