Always Another Country

by Sisonke Msimang

  We pull up to the house after the long drive from Durban and the old woman who comes out to greet us seems both pleased to see us and slightly bewildered. She is faced with an African family of five. Three tall teenage girls, a short mother and an imposing father.

  Immediately, Mummy charms the old lady with some little chatter about the drive. Baba impresses her with his knowledge of the region. The three of us are gangly and quiet – but we greet her politely and in impeccable English so she seems pleased. She walks us into the house and shows us around wearing an air of indulgent befuddlement.

  We settle into our rooms and rest a bit before dinner. Over dinner I am surly and I excuse myself early. I tell Mummy and Baba I am not feeling well but the truth is my rage will not allow me to sit at the table with the other guests and pretend this house isn’t haunted by the ghosts of colonialists.

  In the morning I am ravenous so there is no avoiding breakfast. We sit at the table and the smell of mdogo wafts through the house. My favourite – sour porridge. I dig in. ‘You are enjoying your porridge young lady?’ says our host. ‘I am,’ I say.

  ‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it? My Zulu made it.’

  I am stunned. Mummy and Baba are stunned. Mandla and Zeng are stunned. I put my spoon down.

  ‘Who made it?’ I ask, giving her a chance to self-correct.

  ‘My Zulu made it,’ she says oblivious to her racism.

  ‘Is she yours?’ I begin to ask. ‘Like, as in, you own—’

  Mummy cuts me off. ‘Sonke . . .’ she warns.

  I look from her face to Baba’s. He looks amused – as if he is prepared to let the chips fall where they may.

  I decide to go for it. Mummy’s warning lingers in the air, though; it has succeeded in slowing me down.

  ‘I am just wondering,’ I continue, ‘whether she has a name. The person who makes the porridge. Because she isn’t your Zulu. She is a person.’

  I am angry that I have not been direct enough. If I were at school, in Minnesota with my friends, cloaked in the anonymity of not having Mummy and Baba around, I would simply say, ‘This is racist bullshit.’

  But I am not in Minnesota. I am in South Africa and my parents are watching me so I go easy on the old lady and berate myself internally for it.

  She does not see it the same way.

  ‘Yes I know she has a name but there is nothing wrong with me calling her my Zulu. That is what we do here and nobody minds.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  I am seething now.

  ‘No one has ever said a word about it,’ she continues blithely.

  ‘Well that’s that then,’ I say evenly. I look at her with contempt. She looks slightly scared, though she isn’t sure why she is scared.

  The table is silent for a long uncomfortable moment.

  No one chews or swallows. We do not touch our food.

  Mummy breaks the silence.

  ‘Well, I think it’s time for us to start our day,’ she says in an upbeat and cheery way. ‘We have a lot of walking to do today.’

  The old lady’s Zulu bustles in the background, collecting plates and washing dishes.

  We gather our things from the bedrooms. We load them into the car in silence. We get in the car and Baba drives. We sit in silence.

  Finally Baba says, ‘We shall have to make sure there is a Zulu to cook us some porridge at the next place we stay, guys.’

  We burst into laughter – relieved and angry all at once.

  ‘Wowowowowow,’ says Mandla deadpan but with characteristic wryness.

  ‘Wow,’ agrees Mummy – also deadpan.

  ‘Wow,’ says Zeng.

  ‘Wow,’ I add.

  ‘What a wow,’ says Baba.

  We drive to the battlefield of Rorke’s Drift, to hear about how our people fought bravely but were defeated.

  * * *

  Years later, I discover a penny-farthing is an odd-shaped bike – the ones with an enormous front wheel and a tiny rear one. I Google it and Wikipedia throws me a gem: ‘An attribute of the penny-farthing is that the rider sits high and nearly over the front axle. When the wheel strikes rocks and ruts, or under hard braking, the rider can be pitched forward off the bicycle head-first. Headers were relatively common and a significant, sometimes fatal, hazard.’

  I wish I had known then – I would have had even more biting fodder for Mummy. With the passage of time and everything I now know about what South Africa has become, it seems apt that our attempt to get to know our history better was launched in a farmhouse named after an obsolete British invention.

  I imagine the old lady as she was twenty years ago. In my daydream, instead of riding in a bakkie in keeping with her local circumstances, she is sitting atop a high-wheeler bicycle. She is bumping along, propelling herself towards a future in which she no longer understands the landscape. She rides over the fields where Zulu fought Brit and lost. Suddenly she looks down and realises she is riding over the bones of the dead. She loses control. The penny-farthing begins a slow sideways fall. In the process she is hurled off it and into the air. I see her frail frame suspended mid-flight – a grey blot in a blue Midlands sky. Can you see her? She is up in the air like so many of her time and her generation. If you listen closely, you may just hear her calling out for her Zulu.

  Freedom

  Suddenly, freedom is no longer coming: it has arrived. The date is 27 April. The year is 1994. On this day, black South Africans gain full citizenship rights and white South Africans begin to put the stain of racist shame behind them. The occasion is momentous.

  In countless acts across the country, as the day unfolds white and black South Africans move towards one another like newlyweds about to take a vow.

  Until this point, whites have collectively been skittish about the impending day. They are afraid of how their lives will change. For so long they have understood the world in terms that are either black or white. Over-simplification has been a key ingredient in apartheid’s success. Now they are thrust into a world of grey – of doubt and anxiety and exhilaration.

  Despite their full participation in the steps that have led them here, many whites remain fearful of what this new era might bring. On this bright autumn day, they let go.

  The letting go has been months in the making. Jingles have played on the radio and television every day imploring us all to respect one another, to give peace a chance. Brenda Fassie’s ‘Black President’ has been on heavy rotation in shebeens and nightclubs across the country, getting us ready for Nelson Mandela’s confirmation as president of the Republic of South Africa. Posters in the green, black and gold of the ANC and the orange, blue and white of the National Party (NP) adorn streets in every city. Political rallies fill stadia, crowds roar their jubilation, singing, ‘Viva the ANC, viva! Long live the spirit of the UDF, long live!’ We race towards our destiny.

  When the day finally comes it is both climactic and oddly underwhelming. On one hand there is joy and noise and celebration. On the other is a barely audible sound. It is apartheid’s long slow hiss into obsolescence. Quite suddenly apartheid has lost its spectral force. It is a demon defeated, no longer a Klansman on a horse inspiring fear in the hearts of black people. The night rider who terrorised us for so long is revealed for what he is: a little boy in a billowing sheet with cut-out eyes. Sitting perfectly still underneath the uplifted sheet, he is peculiar and sad. He looks like he is trying to disappear.

  This revelation of this unveiling is greeted by a surprised moment of silence. But it is only a short pause. Within seconds South Africa is hurtling towards democracy.

  In the streets and across great swathes of rural country, the euphoric young rub shoulders with those who are simply grateful that they have lived to see this day. Old women achingly bend and tremblingly mark; they silently cross and dutifully fold.

  Even before papers are counted, victory is assured. The authority of those who have for so long been the wretched of this land is unmistakeable. ‘Lililililili!
’ Ululation fills town halls and ripples through trees and across valleys, lifting in the wind.

  Hands wave, bedecked in white gloves; we are isicathamiya and maskandi music. We are Hugh Masekela’s husky voice, we are the breath in his trumpet, a long purple note of freedom. We are slave quarters rising like hips to greet a lover long lost and now found; we are an embrace where two oceans meet.

  On this day, even the weather complies with our wishes. There are no rains, only blue skies and a stillness in the reeds. God has decreed that today nature will not interfere with the triumph of humanity.

  And so, with our landscape serving as a steady backdrop, we move and we groove, we sway and we sashay, starting in the fairest Cape and ascending north towards the mighty Limpopo. Watch! See how we shimmy, how we weave our bodies in a timeless domba. We are the sacred Venda python sloughing off our old skins as we enter history’s gates. We are majestic; glistening into the future, we wind and we wend and we dance ourselves to exhaustion. As the moon rises we know that soon, when the votes are counted and the results are announced, we will finally be free.

  * * *

  As South Africans rise to begin their day – to cast their ballots – I am in Minnesota, driving towards Chicago in a rented minivan. In the car with me are two Mandlas, a Kgomotso, a Lunga, a Sbusiso and a Rogene, all of us students at various universities in the Midwestern state of Minnesota. We are on our way to the South African consulate, determined not to miss out on history.

  We arrive at the consulate and we are ushered into a small waiting room and then into the area where we will vote. We left very early in the morning; I stand in the sterile booth under dead fluorescent light. Until now, I would have had no cause to be in this building; the consul would have turned me away. In one fell swoop this has changed. The irony of this hits me hard as I look at my identity document.

  I am twenty years old, about the same age that Baba was all those years ago when he left South Africa. I mark my ballot with a vote for Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress.

  Afterwards, I look for a phone. I have topped up my AT&T calling card in anticipation of the lengthy call. The phone rings in Durban, thousands of kilometres away, and Zeng picks up. I ask excitedly, ‘How was it?’ At fifteen she is too young to vote, but she has no trouble answering my question. ‘Amazing, Sonke. I wish you were here.’ She is in high spirits, and her voice has the quality of bubble gum; it carries across the static in the line like pink and blue glitter thrown into a breeze. She describes everything: the exuberance of the crowds, the fear that it might all go wrong; the hilarity of two old white women insisting on jumping the queue even as democratic elections were taking place that sought to put an end to that sort of behaviour.

  She laughs and, with her special brand of social commentary, she does a faux newsreader’s voice, saying, ‘Here, reporting live from the frontlines we have Mrs Smith. So, Mrs Smith, you want to skip the line because you’re white? What are you voting for then, Gogo? I think … yes, Mrs Smith, I can confirm that you get to stand at the back of the queue like everyone else, the old days are over!’ We laugh uproariously, grinning at what a long road it will be for some white folk, our missing each other tangible through our laughter.

  The phone is passed around. I speak to everyone – cousins and aunties and uncles. The house is full of relatives and friends who have come to share the day with us. Ours is the home where everyone has begun to congregate in the year since the family has ‘returned’ to Durban.

  Finally Baba is on the line. I clutch the telephone receiver as though by force of will it might transport me to Durban. ‘So, you are in Chicago?’ he asks. ‘Yes, Baba,’ I respond, trying to pretend that I am not overwhelmed by the sound of his distant voice. ‘Well that’s good,’ he says, ‘I am glad you made it.’ We are quiet for a while, suddenly unsure what to say. Then he says what I have been waiting for him to say. ‘Here we are, Sonke-girls.’ He uses his affectionate name for me.

  He laughs and then says awkwardly, almost in a whisper, as though he can’t believe it himself, ‘We did it. We are free.’

  That X marked in a voting booth in Chicago marks my spot in history. It marks my place in a new nation at the start of a new era.

  Jason

  With LaKeesha gone there is more space in my life for my other relationships. My friend Genevieve moves in with Simone and me. We live off campus in a dingy dive of a place. There are two bedrooms and the landlord tells us a third bedroom can be fashioned out of an ‘alcove’. We wedge a bed in there and this becomes Gen’s room. Except it is too small and she ends up never using it. She moves into my room where we keep the heat on at full blast and barely ever make it to class on cold days. We are like sisters too – but without the politics. Gen is easy. We talk about boys and I go home with her to Boston over school holidays and there is never a need to preach or read anything aloud. Simone has her own room and she is mending a broken heart so she stays out of our way and we leave her alone. When she breaks from one of her moods and wants to smile we are there with food in the kitchen, or under blankets in front of the TV.

  Winter wears us all down. The monotony of school is compounded by the weather. Stiff fingers on the steering wheel in the car. Numb toes at the bus stop. Teary eyes in the wind whipped up between buildings on the way to class.

  In the midst of this greyness, Jason appears. We meet at Stairstep, where Simone works. Simone graduated in May and is now working full time, while I still have a year to go. Every morning I drive her to work and most afternoons I pick her up. It’s a long drive – a good thirty minutes on the highway from St Paul to North Minneapolis. But we bought the car together. We put in $300 each. She was in good condition when we bought her from a friend who was heading off to Nicaragua to join the Peace Corps. She’s a VW Fox so naturally we call her Foxy. Even though Simone is the co-owner, she doesn’t have a driver’s licence. She keeps failing the test. So I drop her off at work and, on especially cold and miserable days, I pick her up because the wait for the bus is like death.

  Stairstep is a church-based initiative in North Minneapolis. It is run by an African-American couple called the Johnsons. They are a fine husband-and-wife team – both tall and willowy and put together in a no-nonsense sort of way. Whenever she is around I feel as though I have to sit up and smooth my dreadlocks. She is that type of woman: always freshly lipsticked yet without ever seeming to be concerned about the freshness of her lipstick. He is about a decade older than her. He doesn’t make me as viscerally nervous because he has an easy laugh, but he brooks no nonsense so I am never fully comfortable around him. Their toughness seems to have been forced on them by circumstance. It’s not inauthentic, though, just a reflection of the guarded approach they have had to adopt to make it in life.

  As it has been for many professional black people of their generation, their middle-class status has been hard won. They are steeped in the respectability of people of faith. They carry the burden of people who have always had to do better and more than their white counterparts, so they have learnt to be conscious of rules and demeanour. Yet they also possess a certain radical agency. They remind me of the ‘firsts’ who surrounded us in Lusaka. Like ours had been, theirs is a community fired in the hearth of ambition. They, too, are focused on the survival of their people. They have an air of prideful woundedness yet they are generous, in spite of their guardedness.

  Stairstep is located in a converted house. It is done up tastefully and is never full of people or noisy or anything like what you would expect a black community institution to be like. Neither of the Johnsons would have liked that. The office is for arranging events and planning community activities, but it is not for lounging around and making noise.

  If I get to the office early, I sit on the couch reading or studying. Mrs Johnson doesn’t mind this because it’s an activity she feels belongs in the category of constructive behaviour. Still, I have a strange sense that if I put one foot wrong she will have no problem
asking me not to return.

  One afternoon, I arrive as usual to pick Simone up and there is a guy sprawled out on the couch, where I normally camp with my books. He looks just a bit older than me but strangely he does not seem worried in any way about Mrs Johnson. I am immediately nervous. I want him to sit up, to exercise some decorum in this quiet, respectable room. He is long and lean and has an angular shaven head and a thick broody brow and it is impossible not to notice he is exceptionally handsome. He is the colour of a cougar. I say hi, quietly – because I always speak quietly when I am at Stairstep, as everyone else does, and also because he is very handsome and I do not want him to think I am being friendly just because he is handsome. His eyes flicker with recognition, as though he knows me. His smile is a drawl; it unfurls itself in a slow curl. He is unabashedly interested.

  ‘He-eey . . .’ he says slowly. ‘Who are you?’

  There is something charming about the fact that he is asking who I am and not what my name is. I fumble around in my head, trying to think of a witty retort. I can’t think of anything so instead I flick my head in Simone’s direction and say, ‘I’m her roommate.’

  He nods and says, completely deadpan, ‘Oh, you live with Miss Stuck Up here?’

  I want to laugh because it’s a perfect description of Simone. She is snooty. She carries her disdain for the world on her face. Anyone who spends any time with her knows, though, that under her furrowed and disapproving brow she is protecting her heart from disappointment.

  I don’t laugh because Simone’s wrath is real. She rolls her eyes and huffs, ignoring him. I can see the enmity already, and wonder what happened before I arrived. I wonder how long he has been sprawled on the couch and whether Mrs Johnson is going to walk in any minute and dress him down – telling him to sit up and put his bags away.

  I am at the height of my Erykah Badu phase so I’ve got a large piece of fabric wrapped around my dreadlocks. I am also petrified of the cold and so, as usual, I’m wrapped in a sweater from The Limited. I’ve got leggings on underneath a pair of baggy jeans and, on top of all of this, I’m wearing a mountain of a coat I bought at the Goodwill store.