by Zakes Mda
But now seeing her and Mdolomba in this dusty town of blanketed horsemen and donkeys laden with heavy sacks from the mill brought about a searing nostalgia for my disrupted life in Sterkspruit. I thought of my mother and how she was such a beautiful and gentle soul. And my siblings. But my mother most of all. Tears rolled down my cheeks. The grey boy gave me a long, wondering look. I didn’t care what he thought of me. I was the older one and I was bawling and I didn’t care. I wanted my mother.
It was a number of weeks later that she clandestinely crossed the Telle River to see her exiled men. When there were only the two of us in the room, as my father had gone to his office, I sang her my composition about Keneiloe. She, like the grey boy, thought it was brilliant. Alas, Keneiloe would never hear that cheesy song, or even know about it.
Actually, the main reason my mother had come was to make sure that I was well catered for since I was going to live with the Mafoso family in Mohale’s Hoek, a bigger town about forty kilometres to the north of Quthing. My father had got me a place at the Mohale’s Hoek Government Controlled Primary School, where I was going to repeat Standard Six, a prospect that didn’t sit well with me. Kids my age were already romping about at secondary schools.
OUR USUAL ROUTE FROM the Bee People in the Eastern Cape to Johannesburg is the least convenient one since it goes through another country, Lesotho, where we have to show our passports at two border posts. But it is a shorter route. One of its benefits is that it gives us the opportunity to spend time with my mother in Mafeteng, where she lives with my younger brother Zwelakhe, who is a lawyer in that Lesotho town. When the refugees returned to South Africa after our liberation in 1994 she decided she was too old to start a new life in South Africa. She had lived in exile for too many years and now exile had become home. Another benefit of this route is that we can stop in Mohale’s Hoek and visit Willie Mafoso and talk about the old times.
Willie runs a butchery business at the Mafoso estate. He inherited the business from his adoptive parents, Christina and William Mafoso, who died many years ago. One of his specialities is boerewors – Afrikaans for ‘farmer’s sausage’. He has become so adept in the manufacture of this very tasty and spicy delicacy that revellers flock to his shop to buy the sausages for their weekend braai or barbecue. He must have learnt the secret recipe from the Afrikaner farmers of Zastron in the Free State from whom he buys his beef cattle and mutton sheep. So, one more reason to stop at Willie’s is to buy plenty of his boerewors for my mother who is quite partial to it.
Willie is always excited to see me. He remembers the old carefree days when we used to get boisterously drunk on cheap wine or beer. Now in his maturity he drinks for only six months of the year and for the rest he takes a holiday from alcoholic beverages. If my visit coincides with his drinking period he invites me to his living room and offers me passion fruit with tonic water while he drinks twenty-year-old KWV brandy from his stock. That used to be my favourite brandy too before I gave up alcohol altogether; its smooth taste is as good as that of your best Cognac. That is why I find the vapour from his glass redolent and my voice becomes as raucous as if I was imbibing the very product that is distilled from the best white wine of the Cape.
We talk about my mother; how her varicose veins – the bane of many a nurse in her day – and arthritis and hypertension have finally confined her to a wheelchair. I tell him that she can’t get over the fact that the friends with whom she worked as a nurse for many years, Albertina Sisulu and Evelyn Mase – Nelson Mandela’s first wife – are still going strong on their legs, even though Albertina is older than she is.
Willie and I enjoy looking back in laughter. Sometimes we look back in utter amazement at the stupidity of our youth. We grew up together here in this house, like two brothers. Two doors from the living room where we sit was my bedroom – the first time I had a bedroom all to myself. Willie’s home had so many rooms that each one of the residents there – and there were twenty or so of them, including servants – had a space they could call their own.
When my father first took me to live there in 1964 William Mafoso, the patriarch of the family, was already dead. His wife, Mother Christina, was running the businesses which included the butchery; a blacksmith rented out to a smithy, Ntate Moholoholo, whose income came mostly from shoeing horses of the Basutoland Mounted Police; and a bakery specialising in bread baked in dug-out clay ovens. The buses that ferried passengers between Mohale’s Hoek and Quthing were still there, as was the general dealer’s store and café across the street from the Mafoso residence and butchery. But these businesses were no longer owned by the Mafoso family because Mother Christina sold them to the Hlao family as soon as William died. When I first landed here I was fascinated by the extensiveness of the estate, the main house built of solid rock, the many rooms where I thought I would easily get lost, the adjoining houses and rondavel, also built of sandstone. Willie slept in the rondavel, which made him seem more grown-up and independent of the adults in the main house.
What I loved most about those years at the Mafosos was the freedom that I enjoyed for the first time in my life. I could come and go as I pleased. I didn’t have to be home by sunset, which had always been my parents’ rule. Oh, yes, if any one of us kids returned after sunset we were in for a tongue-lashing. But here at the Mafosos no one cared whether I was there for dinner or not. I would go gallivanting and still find my food in the oven when I returned in the middle of the night. These were indeed the happiest moments of my childhood. I immersed myself in the new life, new country, new language, and rarely thought of my siblings back in Sterkspruit, of my mother, of Keneiloe, and even less so of Cousin Mlungisi, Nikelo and Xolile.
Although I was the same age as Willie he was my new role model. If he had been a scoundrel I would say he was my new Cousin Mlungisi. But, no, he was quite a responsible and diligent bow-legged boy, the antithesis of my carefree irresponsible knock-kneed self. He performed various chores at home, went to assist with the slaughter of animals at the abattoir for the butchery, and helped Phashane – a sinewy young man who whistled incessantly in two-part harmony – knead bread for the clay ovens. On the other hand, no one in the household would let me touch anything by way of work. I only realise now that they regarded me as a boarder; my father paid the family for my upkeep. I therefore did not have any obligation to work. At the time I did feel some pangs of guilt when I saw Willie working so hard while I loitered about.
Willie and I formed a mutual admiration club quite early in our relationship. He admired the fact that I was Attorney Mda’s son, I could speak what he thought was impeccable English and could draw pictures that looked like real life; I admired his sophistication and his sense of style. He went out with the best girls in town, the most popular and desired, while I continued with my custom of being afraid of girls. It was enough for me to admire them from afar.
I wished I could be dapper like him, but I couldn’t afford it because my father never gave me any money for clothes when he visited. He would demand that I write a list of the items I needed which he would then buy at the local stores. Willie, on the other hand, could order some of the latest fashions from catalogues, particularly from Kays in Johannesburg. He therefore would don the latest Eyre’s eight-piece tweed cap, Levi’s jeans, Arrow shirts and Bostonian shoes with thick rubber soles – known in those days as ‘sticker soles’ because shoes were bought with normal soles, but we took them to shoemakers and cobblers to get them to ‘stick’ on the thick rubber soles. When Bally or the Crockett and Jones shoes came into fashion he was the first one to own them. I learnt from him the cardinal sartorial rule: never wear a black belt with brown shoes or vice versa.
While Willie was out dating girls I spent a lot of time hanging out at the butchery talking to Mapotsane, the striking girl who worked there. She looked out of place surrounded by carcasses of sheep and cattle, or cutting meat and weighing it on the scale for customers. The most attractive thing about Mapotsane, besides her petite figure
and her smooth yellowish complexion and white coat that made her look like a doctor, was that she was the only girl in that whole town, at least by my reckoning, who could speak isiXhosa. So we spoke the language that I was missing from home, although I was careful never to do that in the presence of other people. I was ashamed of my foreignness, especially when the neighbourhood kids took to calling me Mothepu, a derogatory name for any Nguni-speaking person. Although the name was originally a Sesotho translation for the abaThembu clan of the Eastern Cape, the ordinary Basotho people used it as an insult to anyone who spoke a Nguni language, be it isiXhosa, isiZulu, isiSwati or isiNdebele.
When my story was finally published in Wamba – more than a year after I received the acceptance letter and a two rand note when I still lived in Sterkspruit – my mother sent me a copy of the magazine. I was very proud of this magazine which contained my first ever published work and I wanted everyone in my class at the Mohale’s Hoek Government Controlled Primary School to look at my name just below the title ‘Igqirha laseMvubase’. But no one shared my excitement. The story was in a strange language that no one could fathom. Also, my name was given as Zanemvula Mda, whereas since my arrival in Mohale’s Hoek I was going under the name of Motlalepula, a direct translation of my first name into Sesotho. With a Sesotho name I would not stand out as a foreigner, or so I thought.
At the butchery at least my story had an audience. Mapotsane. I read it to her whilst she cut the carcasses with a hand-operated fine-toothed saw or chopped the stubborn bony parts with an axe. After work I gave her the magazine so that she could read the story for herself at home. She asked me to walk her home, almost three miles away. Outside her home I said goodbye and left. But she called me back, gave me a quick peck on the lips and then ran into her yard.
That night I dreamt of Mapotsane. We were doing much more than just pecking. From then on she became the image behind all my night time self-gratification endeavours.
THE LACK OF PARENTAL supervision was bound to go to my head sooner or later. I never missed school though, because the principal, Mr Mohapi, knew my parents very well and he would not have hesitated to tell them if I played truant. He was once my mother’s patient at Empilisweni Hospital, where he was being treated for TB. I suspect that’s how I ended up at Mohale’s Hoek Government Controlled School instead of any other school in Lesotho. So I attended classes every day even though I was terribly unhappy there. Besides being constantly referred to as a Mothepu by the older boys, I was also called moketa. This is a Sesotho word that is used for a cow that is so emaciated that its ribs are showing. Well, I was quite thin, really, and my limbs looked as though they were going to break even as they engaged in the natural act of ambulation.
After school I began to hang out with a group of boys on the veranda of Mafoso’s General Dealer’s Store across the street from home. It was called that although the Mafoso family had sold the store to the Hlao family many years before. Two of the boys, Teacher and Reentseng Habi, played guitars and we sang and danced the afternoons and evenings away. This was the same Reentseng Habi who joined the army as soon as he completed Standard Six, and then many years later, in 1986 to be exact, became one of the coup leaders, together with the likes of General Metsing Lekhanya, who overthrew the civilian government which had itself been a product of another coup in 1970. As he strummed his guitar on the store veranda no one knew that one day he would be a military councillor and cabinet minister. He never showed any interest in politics in those days.
But that much could not be said about me; I was gradually being drawn deep into the politics of Lesotho. Sabata, one of the boys who sang and danced to the guitars on the veranda, became a very close friend and a fellow political activist. He was the guy who once invited me to have sex with his girlfriend after he had done the deed. I suspect he pitied me for my virginity and wanted to drag me out of that state, screaming and kicking. Fortunately his girlfriend saved me from the shame that would have followed me for the rest of my life by fighting back and telling him that since it was obvious he took her for a tiekieline – a cheap woman – he might as well fokof – which I suppose is Sesotho for fuck-off. We both did fuck-off and went back to the music of the guitars. He sang a song he claimed to have composed: Oh, my mother, oh, my father, I didn’t know that life would be so difficult. I don’t have money, I don’t have food, life is so difficult. Reentseng Habi and Teacher accompanied his sad voice with suitably sorrowful strains of strings.
Besides his eagerness to share his girlfriend with me, Sabata and I had a common passion for the Basutoland Congress Party – the BCP. Willie was also a member of that party, and this was the case with almost every youth in the town.
Those were the heady days of Lesotho politics. The country – officially called the British Protectorate of Basutoland – was on the verge of getting its independence from the United Kingdom and political parties were busy campaigning for the elections scheduled for the following year. Besides the BCP, the other parties that would be vying for power were the Marematlou Freedom Party, which was royalist and enjoyed the support of King Moshoeshoe II; the Basotho National Party, or BNP, which was a threat to the BCP since it enjoyed the support of the Roman Catholic Church in a country with a Catholic majority; and the Communist Party of Lesotho which was the smallest of the parties but had plenty of resources due to the support it received from the Soviet Union. It was natural for me to support the BCP since it was a Pan Africanist party and was in alliance with the PAC in South Africa. PAC refugees generally found a home in the ranks of the BCP. Even the leader of the PAC, Potlako Leballo, actively campaigned for the BCP despite the strict decrees of the British High Commissioner that as refugees we were not supposed to be involved in the politics of the host country.
Lesotho was of strategic importance in that region because it was completely surrounded by apartheid South Africa. That was one of its claims to fame: the only country in the world to be completely surrounded by another country. The second claim to fame was the fact that it is a very mountainous country, hence the sobriquet the Kingdom in the Sky, and also the Switzerland of Africa. Brochures never forget to remind prospective tourists that the kingdom has the highest lowest point of any country in the world. Its position in relation to South Africa was of great concern to the Afrikaners because it was harbouring ‘terrorists’, namely me, my father and hundreds of other South African refugees from the Pan Africanist Congress, the African National Congress, and even the Trotskyites of the Non-European Unity Movement. The PAC had by far the largest presence, especially after the uprisings in the Western Cape and Pondoland regions of South Africa led by Poqo in the early 1960s.
The South African government was determined to do everything it could to stop the BCP from taking power in Lesotho; otherwise the country would surely serve as a base for further attacks by Poqo insurgents. Earlier in the year the South African prime minister, Dr Hendrik F Verwoerd, had announced that the three British protectorates in southern Africa, namely Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland, would be better off being ruled by South Africa as Bantustans. That was what he was negotiating with Britain, and the British would have acquiesced to that had there been no resistance from the people of the Protectorates. In Lesotho, that resistance was led by the BCP.
I was so enthusiastic about the political situation in Lesotho because I saw it as an extension of the political struggle of black South Africans against the apartheid regime.
My political activism started with my helping in the printing and distribution of Seboholi, the party organ published by the Mohale’s Hoek branch of the BCP. After school Willie, Sabata and I would go to the party offices where some young women typed articles on stencils. These were written by the branch leaders of the party, such as Pelesa Mofelehetsi who was one of my teachers at the Government Controlled Primary School, and Marake Makhetha, a party activist who was one of the numerous sons of the Reverend Makhetha, the local minister of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society. Where
as the BNP had the unwavering support of the Roman Catholic Church, the BCP was much favoured by the Protestants, and the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, later dubbed the Church of Lesotho, was the premier Protestant denomination in the country.
After the articles had been typed by the women and edited by Marake Makhetha, it was my task to operate the Gestetner cyclostyle machine and print many copies; Sabata and Willie collated and stapled them. The papers were then sold in the streets by a group of younger boys.
On Sundays, while Willie went to the Anglican Church where he was an altar boy, I sat in my room and drew cartoons that featured on the last page of Seboholi. I aspired to be another Bob Connolly, the South African cartoonist whose masterpieces appeared in the Rand Daily Mail. But my immediate role model was Mohau Meshu Mokitimi, a famous artist who drew cartoons for the BCP national organ, Makatolle. It was my dream that one day my cartoons would feature in Makatolle. My famous cartoon that caught national attention was that of Dr Verwoerd as a fisherman who catches a big fish, Chief Leabua Jonathan, the leader of the BNP, with a cob of maize as bait. Verwoerd pulls the line across the Caledon River.
The story behind this cartoon was that the South African government had just donated more than sixty bags of maize to the BNP to buy the votes of impoverished people in the villages of Lesotho. Leabua Jonathan’s campaign was focused in the rural areas where he was garnering a lot of support from the peasants who were then being rewarded with rations of maize.