Soweto, Under the Apricot Tree

by Niq Mhlongo

  As he entered the muddy road next to Mr Govender’s hardware store, he adjusted his nose and inhaled all the combinations of smells: the aromas of food, trees, braaiing meat and petrol. He picked his way slowly for fear of falling and getting stuck on the little mud islands that filled the dirty street. The path was furrowed where the mud had slid and settled back into the tyre tracks.

  Now and again a sickening stench of rotting garbage from the dump wafted his way on the breeze. Just before he turned into the pub, his feet sank into the rain-sodden dark earth at the gate. Stepping stones had been placed between the gate and entrance to the pub. Before he went inside, Oupa Eastwood dipped the soles of his shoes into the small puddles of water in an attempt to remove the mud that was stuck there. He had little success.

  The pub was still empty, as it was daytime. At the front, which was open to the street, Oupa Eastwood sat down at a table and bought a Black Label quart. The owner of the pub was a little coloured man with an unkempt moustache and watery eyes. He was leaning on the counter reading a newspaper. Oupa Eastwood removed the bottle cap with his teeth and sipped the beer delicately. He put the quart down on the table and ran his tongue over his lips. His thoughts and eyes were on the shack next door as he racked his brain about the rope and Kuda. Nothing was clicking into place.

  Suddenly, Tawanda came out of the shack and threw out some dirty water from a plastic bowl. Oupa raised his hand and greeted him.

  “Is my friend Kuda back?”

  “Not yet. I’m still waiting for him.” Tawanda smiled, and his teeth were very white against his scarred skin. “He was supposed to come back three days ago, but I think he was disturbed by the rains.”

  This was the first time that Oupa Eastwood noticed that Tawanda’s face, especially around the mouth and eyes, had suffered badly. When he looked at the man’s hands and forearms, he realised they were covered with wounds and scars. It was clear that he had been whipped. Some of the scars were clean, some smooth, others jagged and rough. Oupa stood up from his seat and approached Tawanda, who was standing by the washing line.

  “What happened to you, my friend?”

  “You mean this?” he said hesitantly, gesturing to the marks on his body. “Please come inside.”

  The one-room shack was damp and the ceiling very low. It smelt of hot and stuffy trapped air, probably because of the primus stove that was still burning on the floor. A steel kettle sat on the stove. In front of it was a green plastic chair. Tawanda sat on the single bed while Oupa sat on the chair. Tawanda was a thin man with hard eyes that seemed to be fully intent on whoever he listened to. He also had a full, drooping underlip.

  “Is my cousin Kuda your friend?” he asked Oupa.

  “Yes, we sometimes drink together.”

  “I’m worried he has not come back yet. This is very unusual for the zamazamas.”

  “What are zamazamas?”

  “Oh, maybe you white people call them illegal miners, but we call ourselves zamazamas because we struggle to support our families back home with the little that we get underground from mining gold dust. You see, as a breadwinner back home, it is obligatory to feed all my family members, house them, help them go to school and help them find jobs.”

  Oupa Eastwood was not surprised that Tawanda called him a white person. In fact he was pleased. Most black people in the settlement thought he was white anyway. Another illusion that excited him was that these blacks thought every white person had money. White people were only poor by choice, according to the mentality of the people in Harare settlement. If they wanted to be rich, they could be rich at any time. This was partly true, Oupa Eastwood thought, because most South African banks would lend money to white people very easily compared to blacks. Were banks not a white man’s creation anyway? According to most people in the settlement, banks spoke the white language, English or Afrikaans.

  “So, you want to tell me he is trapped underground?”

  “That’s what I think, because I heard some of the zamazamas he went underground with are back. Only he and three others have not returned. I need to find him. If I don’t, it will be a disgrace to our family and the wrath of the ancestors will descend on me, causing me bad luck.”

  “I’m not sure I’m following you.”

  “I need you to help me find him.”

  “How do I do that? I can’t go underground. I’m an old man.”

  “I want you to buy me a long rope that I can use to go underground.”

  “So you will go underground by yourself?”

  “Yes, that’s not a problem. There’s a big community living underground and there are shops and prostitutes operating there. You might have seen a blue Ford bakkie belonging to a white man bringing groceries here?”

  Oupa Eastwood sat up straight in the chair. “I thought that was Kuda’s friend.”

  “In fact, Kuda runs a booming supermarket, a pub and brothel underground. He runs them on behalf of Mr Visser, the owner of the blue Ford. That man is making a killing. You see a six-pack of Black Label dumpies that you buy at less than sixty rand here? It costs one thousand five hundred rand down there. Sex with a prostitute costs two thousand five hundred. A mere roll of toilet paper that you buy for three rand in the spaza shop goes for three hundred rand down there. A lighter is a hundred and twenty rand and a two-litre Coke is a hundred and fifty rand.”

  All of this sounded like a dream to Oupa Eastwood. All along he had been suspicious of black people’s spiritual world, but this was a different kind of secret life he could not comprehend. He acknowledged that black people had an entirely different spirit world than white people. But what was Tawanda telling him now? Was it true, or was he making things up? The flies settling on Tawanda’s wounds brought Oupa Eastwood back to reality.

  “You see, if you and I can raise some money we can also open a shop down there and make lots of money. A full cooked chicken goes for five hundred and fifty. And now that South Africa is facing an economic recession the prices will go up. Imagine that. A loaf of white bread costs a hundred and fifty now and a loose cigarette is sixty rand. There are opportunities down there.”

  Tawanda’s teeth were so white, one would think he never ate with them. Merely by looking at him, Oupa Eastwood wanted to believe everything he was saying. He also had a winsome voice like a well-tuned gospel singer.

  “You are from Zimbabwe, what do you know about the mining community underground?”

  “South Africa has long been importing cheap mining labour from neighbouring African countries. Mining is a very rich business. Normally, these rich people would go to the border and buy illegal immigrants from the human traffickers. They prefer illegal immigrants with no documentation because mining is dangerous.”

  “Oh, I see. Is it so that when they die underground they don’t have to be accountable?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly the case. It’s like slavery, but in this case it’s voluntary slavery. So the rich would buy the poor illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe, for example, at two thousand five hundred. They prefer us Zimbabweans because they know there is lots of illegal mining in our country. This makes us skilled miners, according to them.”

  “So they take advantage of the fallen economy as well?”

  “Yes, so immediately after being bought, a zamazama would be given money, maybe around fifteen to twenty thousand, to take underground. That money is for you to live down there for a month or two, sometimes as long as six months. But this depends on the money you get from the person you work for. You use the money to buy food because there is a community and shops down there.”

  “Now, tell me again what happened to you?”

  “I was beaten with a sjambok by the white man who drives that blue Ford, Mr Visser. He believes I know where Kuda is, as he didn’t come back from underground to give him the profit from the spaza down there. He thinks Kuda took the money and went back to Zimbabwe. He believes Kuda was lucky enough to have found gold dust down there and then ran away.”
/>   “Do you think he ran away?”

  Tawanda shook his head. “I don’t think so. Kuda would have told me so. As I told you earlier, being a zamazama is a very dangerous profession. There are thugs who specialise in robbing people down there. Once they know that your boss has given you money to go down, they follow you and rob you at gunpoint. I think the thugs may have followed and robbed him. Maybe they injured him and he needs my help. That’s why I want to go down there, as soon as I’m properly healed, and look for him.”

  It was beginning to drizzle when Oupa Eastwood came out of Tawanda’s shack. Two men were entering the pub, and their wet shirts and trousers clung to their bodies. Oupa Eastwood was satisfied that the mystery of the rope was at last solved.

  As he ordered a Black Label quart from the barman, his thoughts were still on the fenced area around the big hole, a few metres from his home. One day, in the 1960s, he and his childhood friends had gone to play there, out of curiosity. Pieter, one of his friends, had disappeared into the hole and never came back. He was about seven years old at the time. Since then, Oupa Eastwood had never been near the hole. In fact, he had forgotten about it, especially after the fencing of the area following the accident.

  However, one night when he was drunk, he had seen strange lights next to the trees near the big hole. He had heard strange noises and seen glimpses of shadowy figures. He had shivered, fearing Pieter’s ghost, and hurried away.

  On many occasions, he has also seen a rope dangling by the tree. But he has never walked close to the area because he grew up knowing it was dangerous. His father told him that there were sewage pipes underneath. His deceased wife was certain that the electricity cables to Johannesburg passed through there. Whichever way, he was sure that if he happened to walk closer he might fall into deep shit, or be electrocuted.

  He contemplated the cost of purchasing a rope long enough for Tawanda to go down and look for Kuda. Then Oupa Eastwood gestured to the barman that he would like to buy another beer.

  AVALON

  Mkhulu Kau was buried on 6 January – the twenty-second anniversary of Joe Slovo’s death. His burial was to be at Avalon Cemetery, in Soweto, where Slovo was being honoured as the beloved former general secretary of the South African Communist Party. Every year, members of the SACP come in huge numbers to Avalon to immortalise Slovo and his great contribution to the struggle against apartheid. Slovo and Helen Suzman are the only two white people buried there.

  As usual with funerals, we were driving to the Avalon Cemetery in a convoy. We were not related to Mkhulu Kau, but we had lived on the same street. Township custom required that we attend each other’s funerals. The hazard lights were flashing from every car.

  Overnight, the street leading to Avalon had become a marketplace. Red was the popular colour that Friday, as it was the colour of communism. People had camped along the street to sell SACP, Cosatu and ANC merchandise. There was everything from cowboy hats, overalls and umbrellas to T-shirts bearing images of President Jacob Zuma or Slovo.

  Expensive cars – Bentleys, Masera­tis, the latest Mercedes and Porsches, and top-of-the-range BMWs – were parked in and around the enormous cemetery. There were also loudspeakers broadcasting music, and one could have mistaken the occasion for a music festival. A few police cars could be spotted near the cemetery.

  Comrades were dressed in expensive clothes and gatskop kick-and-bhoboza shoes, while talking on the latest touchscreen cellphones. I witnessed all this from inside Bra Makhenzo’s silver BMW 5 Series. In the back seat was his girlfriend, Phumeza, her uncle Rich and my girlfriend, Kemelo, who was Phumeza’s sister.

  “These are sell-outs! Political hypocrites,” said Makhenzo of the comrades we saw as we headed towards the Avalon entrance. He had just switched allegiance from the ANC to the EFF. “You see, ntwana,” he said as we crossed the railway bridge that separated the coloured area of Klipspruit West from the black neighbourhood of Chi Town in Soweto. Bra Makhenzo was in his early fifties and liked calling me “ntwana” because I was much younger than him. “When the EFF takes over from the ANC,” he continued, “we will reclaim our land and burial sites. The white people like Joe Slovo and Helen Suzman have colonised even our cemetery, the only land that black people own here in Johannesburg. When we take over the government, Slovo and Suzman will be removed. That’s non-negotiable, ntwana. Their bodies must be exhumed and sent to the white burial sites.” He pointed his hand randomly towards the cemetery. “Look, ntwana, there’s no more space here. Now we have to bury two people in one grave because people like Slovo and Suzman have colonised our graveyards. We must decolonise Avalon and South Africa.” Mkhulu Kau was to be buried on top of a relative who had passed away in 1976. This was purely because of the lack of burial space in Avalon, but I’m sure the ancestors understood such an emergency.

  Makhenzo engaged first gear as we slowly approached the Avalon entrance. We were flanked on either side by cars, and there were people walking about or selling wreaths, water, cool drinks and iced guava-juice sachets. One hawker carrying a water bottle put his hand in his pocket and rattled his coins when he saw us coming. He wanted us to buy ice-cold water from his blue cooler bag. We drove in, turned right and passed the spot where most victims from the 1976 Soweto student uprising are buried. A train from Kliptown stopped at Chiawelo station. Another one coming from Midway had stopped halfway to Chiawelo, by the maize fields.

  Next to a big headstone I spotted someone talking on a phone while holding a green beer bottle. He took a long swig and then threw the bottle into the tall grass next to the headstone. It made a loud noise as it broke against a stone. Bra Makhenzo lit a cigarette.

  “These ANC people are hypocrites. Do you think they even know where Hector Pieterson, Tsietsi Mashinini and Hastings Ndlovu are buried?” he asked, his left eye almost closed because of the cigarette smoke. “I doubt it. This cemetery is supposed to be the receptor of bones and memories of our people. But because of the ANC we only talk of the memory of one white person here – Joe Slovo. All they know is the grave of their white master because they worship whites even when they’re dead. They have been captured and colonised by white people. Anyway, if Joe Slovo were still alive I don’t think he would approve of this kind of lavish celebration.”

  He slowed the car down to allow a person in a red T-shirt to cross the road. Not far from the road was a grave with an empty carton of sorghum beer and a tall glass on top of it. A woman was removing weeds near the tall black headstone, decorated with a large cross. Another woman was brushing the leaves off a grave and tracing the edge of a headstone with her outstretched fingers. Bra Makhenzo threw his cigarette stub out the window. He flicked invisible specks of dust from the broad lapels of his blue suit, as if he relished the smooth feel of the material. I looked at Kemelo – we called her KK – in the rear-view mirror. She was shaking her head. She had the habit of sticking her bottom lip out to show disapproval.

  “You can easily tell that the person buried there was a sorghum beer drinker,” she said, exchanging looks with her sister.

  “I guess he was useless to his relatives’ lives,” said Phumeza. “He was not a loved one.”

  “Look, he died very young too, at the age of thirty-seven. I guess he was a burden to the family, drinking sorghum beer at an early age.”

  “Why would someone waste money and put a wreath on this useless person’s grave? Look! They even used a steel cup.”

  The two burst out laughing. It was one of those laughs that carried so much disdain that you knew nothing you could say would make any difference to them. In the mirror I could see that their words did not sit well with the old man sharing the back seat with them. He shook his head but didn’t say anything. He had just landed from Bode village in Giyani and didn’t come to Johannesburg often. Having lived in a village for a few years myself, I knew the superstitions about graveyards that rural people have. For example, people in villages are afraid to point their finger at a grave. If you do, we were tol
d as children, your hand would be mysteriously cut off by the powers of the ancestors. That is why these people use their heads and eyes to point at a grave. Here in the city, the traditional rules of engagement are under siege.

  KK and her sister ignored the old man and continued to talk.

  “Look at that one over there. They put a big gravestone on that one, and that means the deceased was at least useful,” said KK.

  “No, baby,” I said jokingly, turning around in my seat. I thought her sarcasm was unnecessary, especially in front of the old man. “They say we must not say bad things about the dead because they are now our ancestors.”

  I smiled at the old man, hoping to win a smile or nod back from him. He remained straight-faced and just stared at KK.

  “Bullshit,” said Bra Makhenzo. “If someone died a useless person like that one, there’s nothing we can do about it. Even as an ancestor he is still useless.”

  “But those are the old customs of burial,” I said.

  “Tell him, Bhuti Makhenzo,” said KK, looking at me. “You, Senzo, must stop taking life more seriously than Mother Teresa. This culture needs to be questioned sometimes. If you’re afraid of what might happen to you in the future you will never enjoy life. This culture thing places an unnecessary burden on our shoulders.”

  The old man remained quiet. There was no sign of disgust or surprise in his eyes. But his thick black eyebrows rose, so that his face seemed surprised and a little frightened. This is Johannesburg, I reminded myself. The majority of people here know little about customs. It’s not that we hold customs in contempt, but we have lived in the city for a long time. And this city has different cultures. I turned and faced ahead again as Bra Makhenzo pointed at a maroon gravestone on the right.