Soweto, Under the Apricot Tree

by Niq Mhlongo

  “Hector Pieterson, the youngest person to be shot dead during the Soweto uprising in 1976, is buried there. I was studying at Nghunghunyani High School then, doing form seven when it happened. That’s before I went into exile.” He paused, and then continued. “Over there is my leader, Tsietsi Mashinini, who died in exile in Guinea, Conakry. That’s why I will strangle every single person that calls people from other African countries ‘amakwe­re­kwere’. If it was not for them, I would be dead today. The ANC doesn’t even know where my leader’s remains are because he was not part of them in exile.”

  Everyone in Chi Town knew that Bra Makhenzo was a pompous guy. Many people didn’t like him because they thought he had an attitude of superiority all the time. But his flashy clothes, expensive car and money did impress some people in the township. KK has told me that these days he is drowning in debt. When his finances were still okay, he was known at the taverns. He was full of dirty jokes that offended the unemployed drinkers. I once went with him to a tavern with Phumeza and KK. The place was full of people. He gave each person at the corner table a hundred and fifty rand to vacate their seats and let us sit. He preferred that corner, but he also liked playing rich. He even paid their bill, which amounted to three hundred rand. He didn’t know those people, but wanted to impress the ladies.

  “The ANC are sell-outs, just like their Mandela sold out our land to the white people during Codesa with the sunset clause. When the EFF comes to power we will rename this place Tsietsi Mashinini Cemetery,” Makhenzo continued as we looked for a parking.

  We left the car a few metres away from where people stood around a heap of reddish soil and a coffin. Some guys were loitering among the rocks at the edge of the cemetery. Bra Makhenzo was concerned they might be car thieves waiting for an oppor­tun­ity to steal. This often happened at Avalon Cemetery. As we got out of the car, the pine trees along the railway line rustled in the wind. The wind also brought the good smell of the wet Avalon earth and the minty scent of the pine trees. Uncle Rich, KK and Phumeza walked ahead of us, leading the way to Mkhulu’s graveside. Up above, patches of blue sky appeared as the thin clouds were hurried away by the dying wind.

  “You know why Mashinini is not honoured with anything?” said Bra Makhenzo as he pressed the remote to lock the car. “Not even a single street or office is named after him because he was not an ANC member. Even in exile he refused to join these sell-outs because he remained a true revolutionary. That’s why these corrupt fuckers name everything after Mandela. They’re told by their white superiors that Mandela is their hero. Can’t you see? Mandela was buried exactly on the day of the anniversary of Sobukwe’s death, although he had already been dead for months.”

  We were falling further behind Phumeza and KK as Bra Ma­khenzo kept talking. Three ladies got out of a car close to us. They walked ahead of us with an effortless, unhurried sashay. Bra Makhenzo’s eyes were pinned to their behinds as the ladies wiggled their hips and hung back, as if waiting for us to catch up. The hair of the one on the left was sewn up into painfully tight rows close to her skin. She kept patting her head as if to alleviate the pain of the sewing. From a distance, we could hear the singing of a hymn:

  Nearer, my God to Thee, nearer to Thee!

  E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,

  Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God to Thee.

  Walking between the graves, a man put an arm around his lady’s waist. She allowed herself to be led. Another man, next to us, held his wife by the elbow.

  “Conspiracy! Illuminati! What they wanted was to blot Sobukwe out of the map of historical importance. They knew that the revolution was coming. The ANC plotted with the whites so that black people would forget about Sobukwe. They knew that we would start making demands that the day of Sobukwe’s death be made a holiday. So they ensured that Mandela would be buried on that day too.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Can’t you see? So that when we start demanding Sobukwe’s death date to be made a holiday, they will say, wait, but the father of the so-called Rainbow Nation of South Africa was buried on this day too. So you can’t have it. These are the mafia people, the Illuminati,” he said sharply, snatching his hand away.

  I cursed myself for agreeing to come in his car, because he was talking a lot. I didn’t want to talk politics by Mkhulu’s graveside, but was afraid of saying so. As Bra Makhenzo talked, his eyes searched the crowded burial scene a few metres ahead as if hunting for familiar faces.

  “You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m joking, neh. This country is run by the mafia and Illuminati like Zuma. But what I’m happy about is that the followers can’t see that Zuma is the Illuminati’s man who was planted long ago to kill the ANC. After the next election, the ANC will not be in power. Mark my words, it will be a coalition government.”

  “You wish. That’s in your dreams. The ANC will rule until Jesus comes.”

  “Jesus is just a figment of imagination. He never existed. The picture of Jesus as we know him comes from what Michelangelo imagined when he was commissioned to paint Jesus. If one of these ANC idiots was commissioned to paint the picture of the Saviour today, obviously they would paint Mandela, just like the African Americans would paint Obama and Martin Luther King. So don’t blame Michelangelo for drawing the picture of his beloved brother and calling him Jesus.”

  There were lots of people at the funeral. We stood a few metres from the pastor and the unmarked grave. The only things that made us realise we were standing by a grave were a rusty green bowl and plate, and an old glass that linked the deceased to his living relatives. All of a sudden, a fierce wind lashed the pine trees. A few mourners were already leaning against tombstones, while others climbed on a gravestone where there was tall grass. Some graves had sunk down and people were standing on them. I saw the old man shaking his head again. I guess this was a definite no-no. My grandfather used to tell me that if you stand on top of a grave, wittingly or unwittingly, your legs will rot while you’re alive. They will grow cracks that no one can heal.

  Male and female voices sang “Ha’yo Mathata” with passion. In the middle of the song one woman’s voice went up in a wailing cry. It was a wild, fierce voice, like that of a wounded dog. A deeper male voice rose up beside it, a mournful voice. I’ve witnessed this many times here in Avalon. Once you’re made to change your address from the living to the dead, custom and the elders require that dances and mournful songs accompany your forced voyage. Most of the hymns, sung like this one, carry an air of finality as if to warn the living of the unavoidable place of no return. The two voices travelled up the scale like a dog’s howl:

  Modimo ha a le teng

  Ha’yo mathata

  Ha’yo mathata

  Modimo ha a le teng

  We were standing near a headstone that bore these words:

  Neo Mosia: Visited this world on the 25 of February 1955 and left on the 16 June 1976 because of apartheid police brutality.

  Rest in Power: Never Died! Viva Azania.

  There were a few outstretched arms and a blur of faces searching for signs of grief. The song did not stop Bra Makhenzo from whispering his political beliefs into my ear.

  “You know what, ntwana? History can be easily distorted, ignored and blotted out. Just like the ANC has blotted out the fact the PAC was central to the 1976 student uprising. Do you remember the Bethal trial? Who was the accused number one?” He was looking straight into my face for a reaction. “It was the Lion of the North, Uncle Zeph Mothopeng. Why was he accused number one, and why was he detained for seventeen years in solitary confinement after the uprising? He was the president of the Pan Africanist Congress, ntwana, the same party of Sobukwe.”

  There was a lady standing in front of us wearing a weave. With a subtle twitch of the eye, Bra Makhenzo winked at her when Phumeza and KK were not looking. He then communicated with her in the silent language of his winking eyes and beckoning fingers. Only the hunch of her shoulders caught
my attention, and Bra Makhenzo dropped the conversation but continued smiling at the lady. He had a carefully cultivated smile that showed his big, gleaming teeth. That smile was his devastating weapon against township women.

  “As I was saying, Uncle Zeph was accused for inspiring students to revolt. But does he even get mentioned when the ANC celebrates the 16th of June? Never! Does Tsietsi Mashinini get mentioned? Never! That’s because they didn’t belong to the ANC. They were the central figures in that student revolution. There’s not even a single street or building named after them. But Mandela’s name is even engraved on the Aids patient’s chamberpot at the Bara Hospital. It’s about power, ntwana. Wait until the ANC loses power and see how the decolonisation will happen, starting with Joe Slovo being removed from here in Avalon.”

  The wind picked up hats, dry leaves and even small clods of earth as it sailed across the graveyard. A woman in a white shirt, black skirt, stockings and black shoes broke into a hymn:

  Modimo o refile

  Sebakanyana se

  Le motsotsonyana o

  As I looked at the singing mourners and silent souls by the grave, I pondered that, as people, our gods are not the same. Even the gods of the political parties are not the same. The god of the SACP is different from that of the ANC. But these were my people here in Avalon. As black people, we live in contradictory worlds. We have the world of the living and the world of the dead. We believe in immortality. We don’t die that easily as Africans; we are stubborn people who refuse to die. There is only one way of dying, and that’s witchcraft. In the world of the living, a person doesn’t just die; they are always bewitched and killed by the jealous neighbours and enemies. Even when we see a person being hit by a car, or suffering from chronic disease, when death happens we deny it. That death is said to be caused prematurely by witchcraft. Somebody is shot point-blank by a robber, or drinks and drives recklessly before hitting a tree, and we attribute it to witchcraft. A person cannot just die. There’s no natural death in my home, even if I can walk straight into the zoo to the lion’s cage and get myself mauled, or take a long rope and hang myself from the apricot tree.

  The thing is, we don’t believe in death.

  We’re supposed to populate the earth and not the graves. People will even spend money consulting sangomas to find out who is responsible for the death of some hundred-year-old grand­father. They will then avenge the death. Even when I’m dead, my living relatives are indebted to me. I can’t just leave them to explore life on their own. Wherever I’m buried must become their ancestral ground. I’m their ancestor, end of story. They have to worship the place, make a shrine. They have to kill beasts, and make umqombothi for me to feast and drink. That is because they believe I’m not dead. I’m watching over them. I will give them decent jobs, houses, families, even if I died poor and without these luxuries. They believe I’m capable of getting these for them in my world, the spirit world. This is our idea of heaven. And if you don’t respect the dead, you know what will befall you and your family.

  Our dead are not dead. The dead never completely die, and the living never die. They just visit the world for a short while longer and then leave. And when they leave, they haunt the hell out of the living. This is why the living live in fear.

  Ancestor belief is the belief in predestination and fate. It’s like putting your life in an invisible entity’s hands and expecting it to take care of you instead of you taking care of your life. I don’t believe in predestination, fate, chance or luck. I believe in a combination of free will and random chaos. We control our destinations to the best of our ability. I must be ready to exercise my free will amid an increasingly chaotic and dangerous environment.

  The silence at the end of the hymn brought me back to the present. It was time to pray. The pastor who prayed for us was a tall, thin man, with a slight crest of silver hair on his balding head. Beads of sweat covered his forehead, and he wore a heart with a cross around his neck. After the prayer, the coffin was lowered into the belly of the earth, accompanied by the wailing of the deceased’s relatives. One after another, they took a pinch of earth and sprinkled it at the head of the coffin. Some melancholy hymn was hummed during the process. The shovels were waiting on the earth, and after the undertaker removed the props the men started to seal the grave. Bra Makhenzo and I didn’t join the other men in doing this. Talking politics and women were Makhenzo’s principal interests in life, so he went on drilling his politics into me.

  “That is why when the word ‘Soweto’ is mentioned, no one ever mentions Mpanza, the founder of Soweto. The first land revolutionary,” he said, with a trace of pride in his voice. “They only mention Mandela, even though he was a plaasjapie van Transkei af. Yes, history will be rewritten when the ANC loses power in the next election. People will know on that day that Mandela was not the longest-serving political prisoner on Robben Island. It was Jafta Kgalabi Masemola of the PAC, who spent twenty-eight years there, while Mandela served only eighteen years before he was transferred to a five-star hotel. People will know that the first organisation to burn apartheid passes was not the ANC but the PAC under Sobukwe. People will know about the Sobukwe clause of 1963, which is not spoken about.”

  When he spoke those words, his voice was full of conviction. I just nodded. My mind was no longer on his political teaching. I was scrutinising an elderly lady who was wearing a skirt and blouse and nothing on her head. Even though the singing had stopped, she continued humming softly to herself, as if being in the cemetery gave her a sense of peace. She stopped humming and took out a small quantity of snuff from a black-and-yellow container. With her thumb and forefinger, she sniffed it up her nose, going hlwi, hlwi. Fake hair was glued on her head, and it looked like it was coming loose. It made her head look like an ostrich egg. She turned to blow her nose before rubbing slimy fingers on her skirt. The man next to her looked at her briefly but continued smoking his cigarette down to his fingertips.

  “But don’t worry. A new organisation will be born out of the ashes of this political mess. That is the organisation that will cater for you and me. The generation that is voting for the ANC at the moment is the dying breed. These are the people who think they owe Mandela their vote. Now that Mandela is dead, young black South Africans are free. They are free to vote for any political party of their choice instead of being emotionally blackmailed.”

  The pastor started to pray again, his head down, once the men abandoned the shovels. Uncle Rich raised his dusty eyes and looked at the pastor with the Bible under his arm. The pastor ended his prayer by asking people to come to his church on Sunday morning to shift their burden onto the broader shoulders of Jesus. After that, an elderly man made a short speech on behalf of the bereaved family to thank the mourners. He had big hanging lips and drooping ears that were too big for him. He asked everyone to go back to the house of the deceased to wash their hands and eat.

  The speaker was not done yet. He went on: “People no longer respect their dead and their ancestors nowadays. No wonder city people are dying like flies.” He paused and looked up, as if he was inhaling and exhaling those invisible connections between the cemetery and the ancestors. “I’m talking especially to young men and women who prefer to drown when they can swim nowadays.”

  He spoke like a person with psychic abilities, who sees dreams and visions, and has the ability to communicate with the spirit world. But no one seemed to be taking him seriously. Perhaps because we city people have been desensitised when it comes to death. It happens every weekend, and we no longer feel it. Cemeteries like Avalon are just another convenient place to meet old friends and show off your new car and designer clothes. It’s the best place to tell people how much you have achieved in life. It’s the place where one can be congratulated, or get a new wife, girlfriend or boyfriend. Cemeteries have become locations of township gossip about who is HIV-positive and how long they have been using ARVs. It’s the place to announce your divorce and intentions to marry. By rocking up in your expe
nsive new car, you can exact revenge against all those people who thought you’d never amount to anything when you failed high school. Multimillion-rand tender deals are being signed at the cemeteries these days.

  “You see, ntwana, white people don’t waste money like us black people when it comes to death and burial,” said Bra Makhenzo, squeezing a big pimple on his chin. “When one of them dies today, they bury or burn you tomorrow. We black people celebrate and mourn death at the same time for a week or so, and it is expensive. We borrow money from the white banks and wait a week before we bury the deceased, while feeding the hungry mourners with the borrowed money. When someone dies in the family, you must know it’s time to inherit debts. We even celebrate long after a person is buried with each anniversary of the death. With whites, it’s only a small function for the immediate family members.”

  “But we’re not white,” I said, a bit irritated. “In our culture when a person is said to have died, he or she is not actually dead. They are merely transformed, the breath of life having left its covering of flesh and migrated to another land. They go to a land that shines more gloriously than the sun. They go and live there exactly as they have done before.”

  “That’s the same problem I’m talking about. We tend to justify things in the name of our culture. It is one of the greatest traps that our society has used for millennia to keep us slaves of the dead. I think as Africans we care more for the dead than we do for the living. Look around us, ntwana, we spend more burying a person than we do saving their life. When this old man we are burying today was sick, none of us visited him. But after people heard of his death, they travelled from even as far as Giyani to come and bury him.” He paused and then continued, “People will rarely respect you while you’re alive, but will want to pay their last respects to your coffin. What do you call that, ntwana?”