Child of Africa

by T. M. Clark

  He watched his sleeping father, letting his head rest against the back of the chair. Lost in thought, remembering the past as if it were just yesterday.

  * * *

  ‘Woza! Woza!’ his mother shouted.

  ‘Coming,’ Bongani replied as he ran towards his mother’s ikhaya. ‘Come, Tito, supper time.’

  The tan puppy yipped as it pounced from the ground to his hand. Small ears forward, eagerly listening, its unclipped tail whipped around like a sjambok. Excitement pulsed through its little body.

  ‘Tshama,’ he instructed as he approached the door. ‘Metse!’

  The puppy looked at him with bright, trusting, amber eyes and sat on the reed mat that Bongani’s mother had made for him.

  ‘Stay.’ He patted Tito’s head and stroked the dog’s soft velvet ears for another moment, then entered the family’s ikhaya.

  ‘Don’t forget to wash,’ Sibusisiwe said.

  He smiled at his mother as he crossed to the basin in the corner. ‘You should see Tito track – already he can flush out a pheasant, and then return. He will be a good hunting dog.’ He dried his hands on a small towel.

  His father was a big man, almost six foot two, strong in his arms and big across his chest, and his legs bulged with muscles. But his real strength came from the inner power that radiated from him. He was known to rule his people fairly, and with firmness, never tolerating drinking or gambling within the boundaries of his lands. He kept an essential peace between all the displaced BaTonga people who had been settled in the area, ensuring they had a home now, where they could live and rebuild the shrines of their ancestors.

  ‘Progress,’ his father said. ‘It is important that you teach that dog early who is in charge, make sure that if a bush pig comes at you, that dog will want to put itself between its tusks and you. Save your life. Only then do you know that he is a good hunting dog. Did you finish your homework?’

  ‘Yes, Ndende, before I went hunting,’ Bongani said as he sat on the floor beside his mother, accepting his bowl of sadza and mfino. She placed a nice meaty chop on top.

  ‘You can give the bones to your dog when you are finished,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, Bama.’ He knew his pretty mother had a soft spot for his puppy too. It had been the runt of the litter from Bishu Village. His father had brought it home, a rope around its neck, saying he had taken it because if it remained there, it would be drowned.

  ‘I left a bowl of food near the fire too. Remember to feed him outside your sleeping ikhaya. I do not want ants in your blankets.’ Although the boys no longer slept in their parents’ ikhaya, his mother was still very much involved with what went on inside the one he shared with his half-brother.

  ‘Where are Tichawana and Tarisai?’ Chief Tigere asked.

  Sibusisiwe looked downwards. ‘Your second wife is feeling ill again. She is not eating with us tonight.’

  ‘Is the medicine making any difference?’ Chief Tigere asked.

  ‘Sometimes she is not in pain. Today she kept me company for much of the day, but then she was tired. She is very sick.’

  ‘I know. I will visit her later.’ He reached over and patted Sibusisiwe’s hand. ‘So, Bongani, what excuse do you think your useless mukulana will come up with today for being late?’

  ‘I do not know,’ Bongani said as he ate his sadza. ‘I last saw him at school after lunch.’ He shuddered, thinking about the look of hatred sent his way by his half-brother from his father’s second wife. Everyone knew that his father had taken a second wife to keep peace between two factions within the BaTonga tribe, but it was evident to all that his love was still for his first wife, whom he had chosen himself and paid a big lobola for, years before she finally got pregnant.

  One son, a child at last to bless a loving marriage.

  The second, the expected offspring from an orchestrated arrangement.

  Close in age, but only the oldest could be chief when he grew up. This was the main cause of the fierce rivalry between the two boys.

  Tichawana had been sitting on the low stone wall, smoking a cigarette that he had definitely stolen, when Bongani had walked past him on the way home from school. His brother did anything he could that was wrong, constantly pitting himself against their father, and always coming off second best.

  A yelp came from outside.

  Bongani stilled. Listening.

  ‘Leave that dog alone and get in here, Tichawana,’ Chief Tigere yelled. ‘You are already late.’

  Tichawana dragged himself through the door, his feet shuffling, scratching deeply into the mud and cow dung flooring. He leant heavily on his brother’s shoulder as he sat down. At almost sixteen, he was just taller than Bongani, and endlessly testing his strength against him.

  Bongani shrugged him off. Although smaller in stature, Bongani was still no lightweight. He was seventeen and just over six foot, and while not as broad across his chest as his father yet, he was still muscular, his body already used to the hard labour required to live on the land.

  ‘Go get cleaned up,’ Chief Tigere said. ‘What is that blood on your hands?’

  Tichawana scowled at his father. ‘I chopped down a mukwa tree. It is the sap from that.’

  ‘Sibusisiwe has cooked you a meal; the least you can do is get here on time and clean up to eat it when she calls, or you will go without.’

  ‘I will go without,’ Tichawana said as he rose.

  Chief Tigere got up too, still taller than his lanky second son. ‘Take one more step, and it will be your last for a while. Do not show such disrespect to your family.’

  The man and his son glared at each other.

  Tichawana broke eye contact first. ‘I can get my own food. I do not need yours any more. I can go to the training camps in Zambia and I can get money and food and clothes and fight like a man.’

  ‘You will not leave. You are the second son of the chief. You are needed here to help the BaTonga people. We have spoken of this before. My mind has not changed on you going across the border to fight. The answer is still no. You are too young to die in a guerrilla war where nobody will ever be a winner.’

  ‘That is Bongani’s pissy job, he is the first born,’ Tichawana said. ‘He inherits your title, and your new place within these white man’s borders of this Tribal Trust Land, not me.’

  Chief Tigere shook his head. ‘You need to be here too, to help your brother, help the people. It is your duty. You are not going to war against your own country. Your own people. This white government is changing – they will sort things out. We cannot become a communist state. Things will change for us as black people under the rule of Ian Smith. It will not be like a British colony any more.’ ‘I want to be a freedom fighter. To have my own gun, be a free man—’

  ‘This is not a discussion. You live under my rule, and the answer is still no.’

  As Bongani listened to his father speak to his brother, he kept an ear out for any sound from outside. He inched towards the door, sliding quietly away from the eating circle.

  ‘Bongani, go check on your puppy; it is too quiet out there,’ Chief Tigere said, noticing him.

  Bongani got up, not taking his eyes off his unpredictable brother until he was well away from him, then stepped outside.

  ‘No!’ he screamed. Running back inside, he knocked Tichawana to the floor. He beat him, smashing his fists into his face over and over, rage driving each blow. A strength he didn’t know he possessed welled up inside him as he fought with his bully brother. Blood sprayed from Tichawana’s nose.

  ‘You killed him. You killed Tito. I will kill you! I’ll kill you!’ Bongani screamed.

  Chief Tigere dragged Bongani off his brother, barely able to restrain the young man.

  ‘That was no sap on his hands, it was blood. My Tito is dead—’

  The chief walked to the door, taking Bongani with him. ‘Show me.’

  Bongani knelt on the mat where the limp body lay, its throat cut from ear to ear. ‘Tito never did anythi
ng to him, and yet he killed my dog on his way in to dinner. Why?’

  ‘Stay here,’ Chief Tigere said.

  Sibusisiwe came out a moment later, her expression one of anguish. ‘Your father is trying to sort out his second son,’ she said as she wrung her hands in her apron. ‘I wish his mother was not so sick, she could talk to him. Get him to listen. But she lives in a different world. Soon she will leave this one, the sleeping sickness will take her to the other side. I do not know what we will do with that boy then.’

  For three months, his mother had been saying that Tarisai would die soon, yet she had clung to life. Sibusisiwe bathed, dressed and fed her each day, and ensured that she took the medicines from the doctors and the N’Goma’s brew, but nothing helped. Tarisai, his second mother, was still dying.

  They could hear quiet talking within the ikhaya, and then the sick sound of flesh being beaten. Tichawana came rolling out the door, skidding to a stop on his back. He lifted himself up and dusted down his clothes, then used the back of his hand to wipe the blood from his nose and mouth. ‘I hate dogs,’ he said. ‘Just as well he never gave me one too, because I would have drowned it on the same day.’ He stalked away.

  For a long time, Bongani sat with his dog, his mother standing proudly next to him. He watched his brother fetch something from their sleeping ikhaya, then go into the village. Tichawana walked tall, one who was defiant despite the hiding he had just received from his father.

  Bongani knew that another beating would do nothing to stop Tichawana’s behaviour. His brother seemed immune to feelings, to emotions, and had no empathy to anything. He was a domba. It seemed to Bongani that anything he had, Tichawana would attempt to destroy. Tito was not the first pet Tichawana had killed. Yet their father failed to see the danger.

  Bongani hated to be beaten, and would do anything to avoid it. The last time, he had been about twelve. The humiliation had nearly killed his pride. To have a switch lashed across his legs, where people would see the welts made by the thin wood, and have to walk around bearing those marks, had made him do everything he could do to avoid punishment ever again. He now did everything he could to please his father, to not attract his disapproval. But Tichawana would provoke their father into beating him, as if it was the only way he could gain his attention. Tichawana didn’t care when he was beaten, he wore his stripes and bruises with pride, bragging to the younger kids about how much he could ‘take’. Collecting the number of lashes as a sick kind of trophy.

  Their father failed to see the pattern he had created with his second son, and he refused to adapt his punishments.

  Bongani sat on the mat, stroking his puppy’s soft ears. Its blood dried and cracked on his hand, and a fly buzzed around him.

  His brother had once again taken what was his.

  The only consolation was that the severity of the beating his brother had taken meant perhaps his father was at last beginning to see what a sadistic bastard Tichawana was.

  * * *

  The sound of people shouting at the top of their voices woke Bongani from his troubled sleep. The flashes from the torches and the smell of burnt paraffin from the lanterns was strong as he got out of his blankets and looked through the crack in the door.

  His father was outside his ikhaya, his chest glistening in the orange light. Although he had no shirt on, he had pulled on some shorts. His mother stood next to him in a long white nightdress, holding a paraffin lantern.

  At their feet lay Tichawana, held in place with his arm twisted behind his back. As he attempted to rise, his father forced him down again, pressing his weight into his arm, pushing him face first into the dirt.

  Bongani’s blood ran cold. Never before had he seen the villagers so angry and riled up, so vocal against his father. He could smell the fear from the sweat that glistened on their bodies as he listened to the adults shouting.

  ‘My son is damaged. Muzi will never talk properly again. His jaw is broken, and he has ribs sticking out of his chest from your son beating him. There is much blood lost from the cutting,’ one of the villagers said.

  ‘Good, hope he dies, the thieving cunt,’ Tichawana shouted, and received another kick from his father.

  ‘Shut up. Let the man speak,’ the chief said.

  ‘The boys were gambling, and Tichawana lost to Muzi. He attacked him for his good fortune. Now he is probably a cripple for life. My son will not be able to work in the field and grow food, help his father to provide for our family. He will be a burden. This is the last time one of our children suffer because of your son. What are you going to do?’

  Chief Tigere looked at his son in stony silence.

  ‘It is not right. If my son dies, I will tell the Native Commissioner that you cannot control your own child, that you are not ruling in the interest of the people. That you are only looking after your own family.’

  ‘That is not true, you know that. Use my bakkie to take him to St Patrick’s Mission Hospital in Hwange. They have a doctor there.’

  ‘Your son is always hurting people in this village. We cannot wait until he kills someone before we see you take action,’ the father of the injured boy said.

  ‘I will deal with my son tonight. He will no longer be a burden on this village,’ Chief Tigere said.

  The father nodded, then turned away as Sibusisiwe handed him the keys to the bakkie. Chief Tigere dragged his second son into his ikhaya as the crowd dispersed into the night.

  Bongani crept closer to listen, but the voices were muffled. He knew that his father was beyond angry then; when the shouting stopped and the quietness began, you knew to run away, fast as you can. That was the scary father. The one who would calculate how many seconds to wait between strikes with a cane so your skin stopped stinging, and when the next lash would land on the already burning flesh.

  Sibusisiwe came out of the ikhaya. She held a lantern in front of her to light the path.

  ‘Bama, what is happening?’ Bongani asked.

  She wiped her face with her nightdress. ‘Your ndende is a good man. He is a fair chief. But this time Tichawana has gone too far. There is nothing I can say to your father to save your brother tonight. First the dog, and now a person. Your brother’s cruelty has to be stopped, and if your father cannot beat it out of him, then he needs to get Tichawana out of the village before he murders someone.’

  The door of the ikhaya opened. ‘Get out!’ Chief Tigere said loudly so that everyone could hear. ‘Leave this village and leave my land. You are no son of mine. You are banished. You are touched by the tokoloshe.’

  Tichawana laughed and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. ‘This is what you want, Ndende? You always said I was to stay and be Bongani’s pet. But see how I have made you do this? Made you throw your own son out? I could have left if you would have let me, but instead you needed to control me. You will never control me. Never. For so long I have been the second best to your precious Bongani. Now you show just how easily you are manipulated by your people. You are no leader, not like King Mzilikazi or King Lobengula. They would have killed me rather than let me leave this place. You are weak. You let the white man dictate how you rule.’

  ‘My laws are this country’s laws, the same laws that govern you too. And the fact that you know that your behaviour has left me no choice sickens me to my stomach. Your attitude towards the pain you have inflicted on others is disgusting. You are sick in the head and the heart. Do not darken my door ever again. Because if you do come home, even in a few years’ time, you are not welcome. If that boy dies because of you ... Do you understand the cost of a life?’

  ‘Cheap. A few cattle and some goats. He deserved every cut and every broken bone I gave him,’ Tichawana said. Then he lifted himself up to his full height. ‘Have it your way. I will leave, and I will cross the border and train to kill people like you. Perhaps I will see you when this country is brought to its knees and is begging for mercy.’

  ‘Do not hold your breath,’ Chief Tigere said. ‘Never return, b
ecause I will call on the old customs and kill you myself if you do.’

  Tichawana faltered, then turned away, but as he did so, he saw Bongani standing with Sibusisiwe.

  ‘Just wait, my mukulana, just wait. One day he will turn on you too, and toss you from your home, just because he is the chief. Your turn is coming.’

  ‘Go. Now,’ Chief Tigere said.

  Tichawana crunched his fists together and slowly snapped each knuckle one by one. ‘I am leaving. But one day I am coming back to take what belongs to me,’ he said as he spat on the ground. ‘I am coming back and when I do, there will be nothing that you can do about it.’

  ‘How can you do this to us?’ Sibusisiwe sobbed. ‘How can you do this to your sick mother? This is going to kill her for sure. Drive her to the other side. How can you kill mercilessly, and disfigure that boy? Even if he lives, every day he will remember what you did to him, when he looks at the scars ... This is not the way of the BaTonga people. It is our way to show kindness. This is not how your mother and I brought you up. You are not the child I held to my breast, you have become a domba—’

  Tichawana shook his head. ‘All you ever showed me was pity that I was born second, the son who might inherit it all if something happened to Father then Bongani, your own son. I do not want to stay here waiting for something to happen. I already told you I want freedom – from this government, from these people, from living in this ikhaya like a child. I want a big house, on a farm with workers. I want everything that every white man has, and lots of money too. To be better than Father ever was. When I come back a rich, famous freedom fighter, you will beg me to stay. To be your son again, and I will laugh at you. When you die, I will dance on your grave, because you did not protect me from my father. From that man who just threw me out of the house. Out of the village. You failed at your only duty as a chief’s wife, of bringing up children to serve. I am leaving. Bongani will never be strong enough to rule as a chief, he is pathetic.’

  ‘No,’ Sibusisiwe said. ‘The chief is right. You have shown great disrespect for your father, your brother, for your own mother, for me, and also for the people in this village. You must go. I will come with you to make sure you say goodbye to your sick mother. I cannot chance that you might try to kill her too. But know this: I agree with the chief. Leave. Never come back.’ She turned and walked to the hut where Tarisai lay.