by Zakes Mda
‘Maybe they don’t work,’ whispered Sabata. ‘Maybe it’s just a scam.’
‘For sure they do,’ I said. ‘I have seen them work.’
‘You have actually seen these wonderful medicines with your own eyes?
‘I have actually touched them.’
This was not a lie. I knew of their efficacy from Sterkspruit; Cousin Mlungisi used to order them from Durban, and Cousin Mlungisi was very popular with girls. He used to get small parcels wrapped in brown paper from the post office and he would let me touch the potions as soon as he had unwrapped them. Some were in tiny bottles and smelled like some cheap perfume, others were foul-smelling ointments or herbs. He never shared any of these mixtures with me, though; he said the herbalists who sold them insisted that they worked only for the person who bought them. If he were to let someone else use them their power flew away and returned to the Indian Ocean whence it came.
Tholoana Moshoeshoe broke up our conspiratorial giggles. ‘You must be having fun there, boys,’ she said and smiled. She had never smiled at us before, so we fidgeted uneasily.
She stood up from the bed and walked to the table. This caught us by surprise and it was too late for us to hide the catalogue. But that was not what she was interested in; she didn’t even give it a second look. She wanted to talk to us about a very serious matter, she said.
‘Do you know anything about Marake Makhetha?’ she asked.
Of course we knew Marake Makhetha. He was like an older brother to us. He was our political mentor. He was the man who sang freedom songs with such a beautiful voice.
Tholoana Moshoeshoe told us Marake Makhetha was not the person we thought he was. He was in fact a spy of the Communist Party who had been planted in our midst to destroy the BCP. She had been sent by Ntsu Mokhehle himself to come to Mohale’s Hoek, observe Marake Makhetha closely and then eliminate him. That was her sole mission here, from Moetapele – the Leader – himself. It was therefore our patriotic duty to kill Marake Makhetha.
At first we thought she was joking, but she was in earnest. It had to be done that night. There was great urgency because he was planning something that very moment that would destroy the Leader and plunge the country into turmoil. We were the heroes who could save Lesotho. She asked us to select two guns from the trunk and she would help find suitable ammunition for them. Sabata picked a Browning pistol and I opted for a derringer with a white handle.
‘That’s a lady’s gun,’ said Tholoana Moshoeshoe, smiling. ‘But it will kill him just as well.’
She took our weapons and went into the gun room. We remained behind, debating if we really wanted to kill Marake Makhetha who never harmed us and treated us like his own little brothers. Sabata said that in a revolution one had to suppress all personal emotions about people and do what was right for the good of the country. I had never known Sabata to talk so much political sense before and I agreed with him totally. We were going to accomplish our mission; we were not going to let Moetapele down. After all, I knew Ntsu Mokhehle personally. I had toured the Quthing district with him trying to convince the Bathepu people to change from their reactionary ways. He was an avuncular guy with the unruly hair of a revolutionary and a broad dark face that was always ready with a smile. He was dedicated to the freedom of his people from the yoke of the British government and the Boers of South Africa. If Marake Makhetha wanted to harm him, then Marake Makhetha was our enemy. Marake Makhetha must die!
After a few minutes Tholoana Moshoeshoe came back with the bullets and showed us how to load them in the guns. I had touched these guns before, but I had never held in my hand a loaded gun. No one had ever taught us how to shoot. Of course we knew that any fool could aim and pull the trigger. We had seen it all in the movies. That was what we would do. That was all that was required of us. The only lesson she gave us was how to release the safety catch for Sabata’s handgun. Mine had an internal safety.
Marake Makhetha’s home was at Lithoteng, a township that was about four miles away from our camp. Sabata and I walked silently in the middle of the night to waylay him at a wide donga which he had to cross to get to his home. This was an ideal place because it had rocks and boulders and at that time there would be no witnesses. Before we took our positions behind two boulders Sabata said, ‘Maybe after this she will give us.’ Trust Sabata to think of carnal pleasures at a time like this. ‘Don’t you think?’ he asked desperately. I didn’t give a damn if she gave us or not. I just wanted this thing to be over with so that I could go back to my comfortable bed at Mafoso’s. The sooner Marake Makhetha appeared and we blasted his head off, saving Lesotho from calamity, the better. So, who the hell cared if Tholoana Moshoeshoe gave us or not?
‘You horny bastard, are you doing this for sex or for your country?’ I said as I pushed him behind his boulder and took cover behind mine.
Sabata yelled back at me, ‘For both. Why can’t we do it for both?’
Tholoana Moshoeshoe was right. She knew exactly what time Marake Makhetha would be crossing the donga. We heard his voice from a distance singing his favourite freedom song: Boys of Africa rise and fight, girls of Africa rise and fight, in the name of great Africa we shall fight and conquer now. There is victory for us, there is victory for us. In the name of great Africa there is victory for us.
Damn that song!
As he got closer I drew my derringer and pointed it in his direction. I saw Sabata behind his boulder do the same. I was shaking and couldn’t remember how to cock it. My bladder was burning and I wanted to pee so badly.
When Marake Makhetha was about to pass the boulders we emerged from our hiding places and walked towards him at the same time as if we had planned it that way, our guns pointing to the ground.
‘Sons of Africa,’ he greeted us.
We broke down and confessed that Tholoana Moshoeshoe had sent us to assassinate him because he was a Communist spy.
He shook his head and said, ‘Go back to bed, sons of the soil.’ And then he continued with his song and walked home without ever looking back.
I DON’T THINK I ever told Gugu about this incident. But as we drive past Mohale’s Hoek I remember how it shook me back to my senses. Had we accomplished our mission we surely would have been arrested and spent the better part of our lives first at the Juvenile Detention Centre in Maseru and when we got older at the Mohale’s Hoek prison. I would never have known Gugu. My arrest for murder would have come as a shock to my father because he did not know of my political activities, not even of my going to Quthing with Potlako Leballo and Ntsu Mokhehle addressing meetings or my officially joining the PAC. He wouldn’t have approved. He wanted me to focus on my education, and indeed this narrow escape made me think twice about my priorities.
I never went back to Dlamini’s house again. I heard from Willie that Tholoana Moshoeshoe disappeared the next morning and no one could trace her. The BCP head office in Maseru had never heard of her. The story went round that she was an agent provocateur working for the Communist Party or the British or the Boers or all of the above. Those heady days one never knew who was in cahoots with whom and to what end.
I often meet Marake Makhetha when I visit Maseru. He is an old man now with grey hair. ‘I nearly killed you, son of Africa,’ I tease him, and we laugh about it.
In Mafeteng we go to my brother’s house to see my mother before we proceed to the border post in Wepener and then drive through the vast flat expanse of the Free State province to Johannesburg. These days she spends all her life sitting in the bedroom, either on the bed or in her wheelchair. She watches endless television programmes and talks of the characters she sees there as if they are real people she actually interacts with in her room. Early in the afternoon she is glued to American soap operas, The Bold and the Beautiful and Days of Our Lives. In the evenings it is time for the South African soapies, Isidingo, Backstage and Generations. It irks her no end that Backstage and Isidingo run at the same time at 6:30. Fortunately, both soaps are repeated on weekday morni
ngs and on Saturdays there is an omnibus where episodes for the whole week are played one after the other.
I give my mother some of the honey we purchased from the Bee People and she is happy to hear that the project is progressing well and the women now run it themselves without help from us. In the beginning we had to employ a white farmer from Lady Grey, Aubrey Fincham, to manage it for them while they were learning the ropes.
As we sit with her telling her about the people at Qoboshane and laughing at Cousin Bernard’s antics, people from the neighbourhood come to greet her. They sit on the chairs, the bed and even on the floor and gossip about what is happening in the town. They range in age from old men and women of her generation to teenagers. That is how popular she is in the neighbourhood. And they pay these visits every day.
That is proof enough that exile long became home for her. Not just exile. The community of Mafeteng in particular.
We first settled in Mafeteng in 1966 when my father moved his headquarters from Quthing and rented a house from the Thatho family. A few months earlier my mother and my siblings had come to join us in exile and were staying at Mme Mmatladi Maphathe’s house, a friend of my mother’s who was divorced from the local medical doctor. At the time I was already a student at Peka High School in the northern Lesotho district of Leribe. For a year or so I had continued to spend my holidays at the Mafoso household in Mohale’s Hoek, but later we all moved to the green-roofed stone house on the Thatho estate. My siblings were enrolled at local primary schools and once more we lived as a family.
I missed my Mohale’s Hoek freedom where I could come and go as I pleased. But the compensation was that I was now with my mother and of course with my brothers and sister. I had to relearn to live with my father’s discipline and stand to attention when he spoke and respond ewe tata at regular intervals to show that I was paying attention to his elaborate lectures. He now had offices in Quthing, Mohale’s Hoek and Mafeteng, and also appeared before the High Court in Maseru. Since he didn’t have a car he travelled by bus and spent some nights away in these towns. Those were the days that we really enjoyed Mafeteng. Whenever we came back home from hanging out with friends and found that he had returned from a long trip our hearts sank.
One thing I loved about Mafeteng was that there was a big South African refugee community there and we all lived together as a family, irrespective of political affiliation. Ours was a PAC-aligned family, yet our closest friends were the Mafikeng and Hani families who were staunch ANC members. In fact when my father wanted to escape from clients who bothered him at home he went to work at a café owned by the partnership of Elizabeth Mafikeng, a trade unionist from Cape Town, and Ntate Hani, Chris Hani’s father. Chris Hani himself, known to us only as Bhut’ Thembi, was a leader of the South African Communist Party and a guerrilla commander of Umkhonto weSizwe – the Spear of the Nation – the military wing of the ANC. Yet we all exchanged visits, dined and celebrated family occasions together.
All these families returned to South Africa after our liberation in 1994. Only Zwelakhe, the youngest of my brothers, and my mother remained. But there are other Mdas who live in Lesotho and sometimes visit my brother’s house to remind us of our origins. They first came here in 1880 as refugees after our revered ancestor killed the British magistrate Hamilton Hope. They were first given succour by King Moorosi of the Baphuthi clan in Quthing, but soon spread to Mantsonyane, a village high up in the Maluti mountain range of Lesotho where they keep goats and sheep. But others live at Taung only a few miles from Mafeteng. Their leader is Bles Mda who once came to pay homage to my father with a large group of his Bathepu people in red ochre skirts and blankets and gigantic turbans soon after we had settled in Mafeteng in 1966. They sat on our green stoep puffing on their long pipes. I remember how we kids were embarrassed by them because we viewed them as uncivilised. Also, they exposed our foreignness to our Basotho friends. I had worked so hard to try to blend into the Basotho culture, to the extent that I had taken the Sesotho name of Motlalepula and had given my twin brothers, Sonwabo and Monwabisi, the Sesotho names of Thabo and Thabiso. And now here were the red-blanketed Mdas sprawled on my stoep with all the passers-by gawking at them.
Occasionally Bles Mda came to visit on his brown and white stallion. He felt very sorry that I, his cousin’s son, could not ride a horse and tried to teach me. I was dead scared of the horse and almost peed in my pants when it galloped away with me on its back.
All these are things we talk about when we visit my mother. She thrives on nostalgia ever since sickness confined her to the bedroom.
We also thrive on laughter at the folly of our youth.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHAT I DREAD MOST about driving through Lesotho on my way from the Bee People to Johannesburg are police roadblocks. You are likely to come across one at least three times before you reach the next border post. This would be a good thing if their objective was to catch wrongdoers. The constant police presence would also make you feel safe and protected. But no, they are not there for that. Their main business is to extort bribes from motorists.
Their modus operandi is a simple one: they place a stop sign on the line in the centre of the road and small groups of police officers stand about fifty yards on either side of the sign. They let all Lesotho cars whiz by and stop all those with South African number plates. They ask the motorist to produce a driver’s licence and then proceed to inspect the discs on the windscreen, indicators, hooter, and brake lights. If they don’t find anything wrong they are bound to manufacture something, as they did once in my case. They inspected the windscreen disc and claimed that it did not state that there could be passengers in the car. It was therefore illegal for me to be with my wife and two minor children in her Toyota Tazz sedan. This, of course, was a cockamamie charge concocted merely to shake down people they deemed to be strangers in the country. When I stubbornly stood my ground and insisted that we had committed no offence and would not pay any fine, they took us to the police station and left us there for the whole day. It was only when another shift came in the evening that we were released. No explanation, no apology. I was proud that I had steadfastly refused to pay a bribe, albeit at great inconvenience to my family. And I was angry that a whole day was wasted and I had missed my appointment with women in the Mjanyane village of Quthing who were interested in starting a beekeeping project similar to the one across the river, the Lower Telle Beekeepers Collective. A whole rural development project which already had prospective donors was destroyed by police corruption. I certainly was not going to subject myself to such treatment every time I had to visit the project, so I called it quits.
I am thinking of this experience when I approach another roadblock of this kind near a village called Peka in the Leribe district. I am still high on my banter with my mother on the high jinks of the various members of the Mda family and am determined that the cops will not spoil my day. But they do. As soon as I get to the first group of officers I stop, but an officer from the second group beckons me. I slow down as I approach the stop sign in readiness to stop, but the officer continues to beckon me. I pass the stop sign and stop next to him.
‘You didn’t stop at that stop sign,’ he says.
‘Yeah, because you kept on beckoning me to you,’ I say.
‘You’re supposed to stop at the stop sign,’ he says.
‘I was following your orders,’ I say.
He denies that he gave me any orders. He is going to give me a ticket, he threatens.
‘Yes. Go ahead and give me a ticket,’ I say.
He asks for my licence, and then checks the discs on the windscreen. Everything is in order. This infuriates him. Also the fact that I don’t seem to be prepared to negotiate but instead I demand to be given a ticket that I will defend in court.
‘I cannot give you a ticket,’ he says. ‘You’re from South Africa. How do I know you’ll pay it?’
‘Of course I won’t pay it. I’ll go to court.’
‘How d
o I know you’ll come for the case? I have no way of getting you when you leave this country.’
He looks at me expectantly. He obviously thinks he has a trump card and I am bound to negotiate.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I am impounding your car unless you pay.’
He gives me directions to the charge office and asks me to drive there and wait for him. As soon as I enter the police station I announce quite loudly to the sergeant at the desk, ‘A police officer at the roadblock asked me to come here because I refused to pay tjotjo.’
The policemen are embarrassed at my blatant use of the Sesotho word for bribery. I tell the sergeant what happened and demand that I be charged even if it means impounding my car. I guess they have never met such a customer before, and the sergeant says he will let me go with a warning.
‘I don’t want you to let me go with a warning,’ I say. ‘You can’t warn me for doing nothing wrong.’
‘Just go, man,’ says the sergeant.
‘This country depends on tourism,’ I say just before I walk out. ‘It spends millions advertising in the South African media for tourists to come and enjoy your friendly country. And when they come you treat them like this?’
Back on the road I see the police officer who gave me problems walking back to the police station with two fellow officers. I blow my horn very hard and wave at him. I am fuming inside. I vow never to come back to this country after my mother departs this world. She is the only reason I return here. When she is gone the only thing that will bring me back are weddings, graduations and funerals of my many relatives who still live here. Not just to visit, as I do now. Not just to use the route through Lesotho as a short cut between Johannesburg and the Bee People in the Eastern Cape.
I am sorry that I have to come to this decision because I love this country. I regard it as my home. Which is what I once told King Letsie III, the monarch of Lesotho. He was having dinner with two of his cousins at the Maseru Sun Cabanas one evening when a waitress ushered Gugu and me to a table next to his. The King and I had not seen each other for many years, since I left exile to return to South Africa, and so he was quite happy to see me. What impressed Gugu, on the other hand, was that the King in Lesotho is just like any other guy. There he was having dinner with us commoners in a hotel restaurant without an entourage or even a single bodyguard.