Sometimes There Is a Void

by Zakes Mda

  You may remember the IUEF as the organisation that was infiltrated by the South African master-spy Craig Williams in the 1980s – long after my association with them, I must add. He had inveigled the Swedish director Lars Eriksson into appointing him to the staff, and reached the high position of deputy director where he was able to gather information on the South African students whose scholarships were being sponsored by the organisation. He was also able to carry out a wide operation of bombings, kidnappings and assassinations of South African refugees and political activists in Europe from the offices of the IUEF. When he was exposed as a spy of the apartheid government, the IUEF had to close down. But that is another story, and if you want more of it visit the documents of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

  The Lesotho representative of the IUEF was a friend of my father’s, Abner Chele. He handled the funds and paid all the fees for South African refugee children who were attending the various high schools in Lesotho and the local university. He recommended that the IUEF in Geneva pay directly to the Swiss academy and I was able to study while I struggled to make a living. At least the IUEF purchased all the art materials for my school projects, but of course most of the materials were used for the paintings that I peddled to the tourists.

  On completing my studies, Sister Arnadene Bean, the principal of Mabathoana High School who hailed from Oregon in the USA, gave me a job as an assistant teacher of Literature in English. The salary was two hundred and forty rands a month, a far cry from the twenty-five rands a month I was earning from OK Mofolo. I had never had so much money in my life, and of course I immediately put it to good use drinking with the civil servants at Lancer’s Inn and at some of the more up-scale shebeens, rather than at the pineapple and hops home-brew joints I used to patronise with Mr Dizzy.

  In addition to Mr Dizzy and Clement Sima Kobo – the Lesotho High School teacher we called Clemoski – my circle of drinking buddies increased to include Thabo Sithathi, an aspiring lawyer who was reviled by everyone else as a South African spy while they continued to associate with him, Sol Manganye – Bra Sol – who taught commercial subjects at Lesotho High School and was also a PAC activist exiled from Lady Selbourne in Pretoria, and Mxolisi Ngoza, a thoroughly gay man who was my colleague at Mabathoana where he taught mathematics. These were my Maseru friends.

  Whenever I visited home in Mafeteng I continued my drunken association with Litsebe Leballo, Peter Masotsa and my mentor Ntlabathi Mbuli.

  The other two Mafeteng guys who had been promoted into my ever-widening circle were my brothers, the twins Monwabisi and Sonwabo. But Sonwabo, also called Thabo, was at the Lerotholi Technical College in Maseru studying technical drawing and Monwabisi, as I said, was in Edinburgh. My other siblings, my sister Thami and the last born in the family, Zwelakhe, were still living with our father in Mafeteng, but I did not socialise with them when I was there because there was quite a wide age-gap between us and we didn’t have much in common to talk about. In any event, I didn’t have a reason to go to Mafeteng that often, especially with my mother now living seventy kilometres away at Holy Cross; I had it made in Maseru in my new job and I wanted for nothing.

  The nuns gave me a fully furnished four-roomed house next to the junior block and opposite the convent of the Sisters of the Holy Names. I moved in with Mpho, our four-year-old son, Neo, our two-year-old daughter, Thandi, and our three-month-old son, Dini.

  A few weeks after we had taken occupation of the house my mother came in a van with her driver from Holy Cross to see the child. We could host her now that we had a decent house with an electric stove, a fridge, a bathroom with a geyser for hot water.

  I was having a beer with Thabo Sithathi in the living room when my mother and Mpho joined us. My mother took the baby in her arms and marvelled at how beautiful he was.

  ‘He doesn’t look like your other kids,’ she said.

  ‘Are you saying my other kids are not beautiful?’ I asked, laughing.

  ‘They are beautiful in their own way,’ she said. ‘This one has fluffy hair and is light in complexion like a Coloured.’

  ‘Maybe he takes after your people, mama,’ I said. ‘You are light in complexion because you are a descendant of the Khoikhoi people. We all know that we Mdas are not easy on the eye, but you and your people are very beautiful.’

  We all laughed about it, including Mpho. But Thabo Sithathi didn’t think it was a laughing matter. He looked at us pityingly and said, ‘My friend has been cuckolded and you people think it is a joke?’

  I was surprised that Thabo Sithathi should make such a statement because I had never discussed anything of the sort with him. I also felt deeply offended that he should be so brazen as to mention something that Mpho and I never talked about. We had gone on with our lives as if nothing had happened. We glared at Thabo Sithathi in unison, and then turned our attention to the baby and talked baby language with him, extolling his beauty.

  I wasn’t about to make a song and dance about anything.

  I THINK I UNDERSTAND why Press is a bit shy about his new calling. He sees me as his brother’s son (I am actually his first cousin’s son in the strict Western sense) who has accumulated so much knowledge from the land of the white man and would therefore be ashamed to be associated with a relative who is a servant of the divine ancestral spirits. He does not express anything of the sort, but I know him so well I am certain I am correct. I try to make him perish the thought by congratulating him once more for responding so positively to the call.

  ‘It’s an honour to have an uncle who is igqirha,’ I tell him. ‘When I am ill or have evil spirits that bother me I’ll know where to go.’

  ‘Khawundenz’ umntu, mntak’a Bhut’Solomzi,’ a grating voice startles me. Make me into a person, son of Solomzi. You may remember that Solomzi is my father’s name, and therefore these words are addressed to me. I know immediately that the ragged old lady uttering these words is asking me for a favour. It is how words are used by my people. When someone needs help from you she is in fact asking you to make her into a person. We are not people, my grandmother used to instil in us, until somebody makes us into people by being generous towards us. When we are born we are animals. We are no different from the rock rabbits that urinate on the cliffs and boulders of Dyarhom Mountain, making them slippery. Until someone makes us people by showering us with acts of kindness. The more acts of generosity and compassion we receive from others, the more human we become. In return, we become generous and compassionate to others, making them human as well. When we do that, our own humanity is enhanced. When you make others human, you enrich your own humanity as well. Thus goes the cycle of humanity and humaneness. Thus it expands as we make one another human. It is for that reason that the forebears composed the saying: umntu ngumntu ngabantu. A person is a person through other people.

  When a whole gang of us grandchildren lived with my grandmother and the resources were scarce, it was difficult sometimes to be kind towards others and to share whatever little we had. The first instinct was to hog and hoard for even harder times. Whenever my grandmother discovered such selfishness she would shout at the culprit, ‘Awungomntu!’ You are not a person! Why? Because only those who are generous and compassionate have reached the state of personhood. That was what ubuntu as practised by the villagers was all about.

  ‘When you say I must make you a person, grandma, are you not yet a person?’ I ask the old lady.

  Press sneaks away. He has no patience with fellow-villagers who beg.

  ‘Sukundigezela,’ the old lady says. Don’t ask me a silly question. ‘How can I be a person when you have not made me a person?’

  ‘You are old,’ says my aunt behind the cash register. ‘How many people have been making you into a person all these years?’

  What she means is that the old lady has been a beneficiary of the kindness of others for such a long time that by now she should long have attained the state of personhood.

  ‘You are the last person to say
that,’ says the old lady mournfully. ‘You know the problems of this village.’ Then she turns to me and says: ‘The problems of poverty, my child … they have stripped people like us of all personhood. Your aunt is a person because she is married to your uncle who is rich. Now she does not want us to be people too.’

  ‘So how do I make you into a person today, grandma?’ I ask her.

  It is very simple. All she wants is a quart of beer. Normally I don’t indulge people who ask me for beer, a request one gets a lot when one walks into a bar here and in Lesotho. I always tell them that I cannot spend my hard-earned cash subsidising their drinking habit when I myself gave up drinking many years ago. But I make an exception with this grandma. She is old and she might as well have a blast in the few moments that she has left. The irony is not lost on me that I am making her into a person by helping her get drunk.

  My aunt gives her Black Label and I pay for it. She walks to some corner where no one will bother her asking for a sip, and enjoys her process of becoming human in a spirited manner. Press returns, perhaps because it is safe to do so now.

  ‘I tell you all the time that you are spoiling these people,’ he admonishes. ‘We work hard for our money and we cannot be dishing it out to people like these who do not want to work.’

  I don’t respond to this. It is futile to argue with Press about such matters. He is living proof that the rich among us are more often than not the first to dismiss ubuntu as a touchy-feely philosophy of losers that has no place in our ruthlessly acquisitive and competitive South Africa. On a broader national level, crony capitalism rules supreme, killing whatever had stayed with us of the values of ubuntu instilled in us by our grandmothers.

  On the other hand, the oppressed cling to ubuntu because for them it is the only way to move from victim to survivor. The perpetrators have no need for that.

  Ubuntu was displayed by the people of Lesotho when they welcomed a flood of new South African refugees into their country. In Sesotho culture the philosophy exists as botho, which means the same thing.

  IT BEGAN A MONTH or so before I joined Mabathoana High. I was having fun with the two beautiful women who worked at Badul’s office. Badul was a lawyer from Durban who had recently opened a practice in Maseru. Thabo Sithathi, the aspiring lawyer who often pretended to be a real one to those who did not know, had introduced me to him and we spent a lot of time just hanging out at his office. Obviously, my heart was still in the legal field.

  Badul had two secretaries, even though there wasn’t much business since he was new in town and prospective clients did not know of him yet.

  So there I was, horsing around with these lovely women when one of them received a telephone call from Soweto where she originally came from. All of a sudden I heard her scream: ‘They are killing our children in Soweto!’

  It was June 16, 1976, and police had responded to the students demonstrating in Soweto with bullets, killing some of them. At the time we did not know the extent of the uprising that later engulfed most of the country. Later, we heard of young leaders like Tsietsi Mashinini and Khotso Seatlholo and other members of the Soweto Students Representative Council who were leading the resistance, first against the forced introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction for black students and, at a broader level, against apartheid and all its race-based institutions. We also lamented the death of Hector Peterson whose young body in school uniform in the arms of Mbuyisa Makhubo flashed across the newspapers of the world, courtesy of a photograph by Sam Nzima.

  The developments in South Africa had given us exiles a lot of hope in recent years with the advent of the Black Consciousness movement. The philosophy had captured our collective imagination. This political reawakening happened after an internal political lull since the Sharpeville massacre and the incarceration of such leaders as Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe; and then later the Rivonia Trial that resulted in life sentences on Robben Island for the likes of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Jama’s father, and others of their revolutionary colleagues. It was during that lull that some of us began to forget about these leaders while they worked in the quarries of Robben Island, though my mother never forgot to mourn Bhut’ Walter, as she called Walter Sisulu, even though he was not dead. Hope bloomed in us once more when we heard of what the fearless young leaders who were emerging out of the universities were doing through the South African Students Organisation and, of course, the mass organisation, the Black People’s Convention, one of whose leaders was Albertina Sisulu, Bhut’ Walter’s wife.

  June 16 brought a new flood of refugees into Lesotho. Some of them became my students at Mabathoana High School and spent a lot of time at my house. I was both their bigger brother and their political mentor. I remember particularly three of them who became close to my family: Buti Moleko, Nelson Mogudi and Steve Tau. Steve got into a very serious relationship with my younger sister Thami, to the extent that we were certain they would marry.

  Buti wrote plays and composed music. He invigorated the theatre scene in Maseru by establishing a theatre group along the lines of Gibson Kente’s touring companies. Thami got her first taste of acting in Life Is Like a Wheel by Buti. Like Kente’s, Buti’s plays were naïve – not intentionally so – both in form and content, and were replete with dance and songs he himself had composed. It was not the most brilliant theatre, but the important thing was that people were watching plays and young Basotho actors who hitherto had no opportunities to express themselves artistically were becoming ardent thespians.

  The new arrivals revitalised exile and all of a sudden there was a lot of cultural and political activity. These young men and women had been nurtured by the Black Consciousness Movement which had reintroduced the view held by my father when he was president of the ANC Youth League that politics and economics were not the only important sites of the struggle; culture had a crucial role to play as well. That was why my father mooted the establishment of the African Academy of Arts which, unfortunately, never took off.

  Poetry readings were organised at such venues as the British Council Hall and at a restaurant called Fat Alice. I remember a drunken and rowdy Mandla Langa singing the praises of Joe Slovo at one such affair at the British Council and threatening that he would vala le zozo – bring the house down and close the whole event – if people continued to read reactionary poetry that ignored the heroes of the struggle. Mandla, of course, has since become one of our leading novelists in South Africa. After being forced off the stage by some of his ANC comrades he sat down and cried. He used to cry a lot when he was drunk, and that endeared him to me because it told me that he was a sensitive young man.

  What was wonderful about these events was that they availed me the opportunity to read some of my poetry, which I had been writing and then storing away since I didn’t have any outlet for it. At Fat Alice I read my poems to the sounds of jazz – guitar, double-bass and saxophone – played by the Lebentlele brothers and other Maseru musicians.

  The poetry scene was set ablaze when Duma ka Ndlovu came into exile, which was months after others had been there already. He had gained a reputation as a journalist on The World newspaper but, more importantly, he was a founding member of Medupe, a group that was famous for its poetry performances. Duma came into exile after Medupe, The World and many other organisations were banned and after he had been detained and then later released by the apartheid government.

  Before Duma came our poetry readings were sleepy affairs. He brought much flair and pizzazz. His booming voice filled the venues as he recited: Re ta bagunda, re ta bagunda, re ba bolaya. We’ll hit them hard, we’ll defeat them, and we’ll kill them. This was highly charged poetry that gave us goosebumps and assured us that we were marching towards victory in South Africa. He was an imposing figure in his dashiki robe as he moved among the electrified audience to the stage where he performed to the rhythm of the drums. Duma became an inspiration to us all. Not only him, but other fiery poets from Soweto who were not in exile per se, but were able to sm
uggle themselves across the border to add more fire in our bellies: Ingoapele Madingoane of Africa my beginning, Africa my ending fame, Mapalakanye Maropodi, Matsemela Manaka and Jaki Seroke. They came to perform their poetry, but most importantly to give us information of what was happening in the struggle back home and to get material, mostly books that were banned in South Africa. Franz Fanon’s work was at a premium and we couldn’t get enough of his books for the demand back home.

  It was wonderful to be alive those days. For once, the void was filled.

  To cap it all, Sister Arnadene Bean and her fellow Sisters of the Holy Names promoted me to deputy headmaster after the incumbent, Ezra November, a PAC exile formerly from my ancestral village of Qoboshane, went to further his studies at the University at Roma. At the same time, Sister Arnadene resigned and went back to the United States. She was replaced by a Canadian nun from Manitoba, Sister Yvonne Maes – she of the triste eyes.

  I was acting headmaster for some time while we were waiting for Sister Yvonne. When she came into the office for the first time I was sitting at the principal’s desk doing some paperwork and a beautiful petite woman called Tholane, a colleague who taught biology and general science, was bending over getting some coffee and creamer from a low cupboard. She was wearing the tiniest tennis skirt imaginable and frilly white panties. Her tennis racquet was on the floor. She had been on her way to the tennis courts when she had decided to come to my office to treat us both to a cup of coffee. I saw this young white woman in brown tunic and white veil standing at the door. She had a horrified look on her face. I tried to signal to Tholane to stand up and look decent, but she didn’t notice. Instead she uttered a mild expletive because she couldn’t find the coffee and the water was boiling.

  I stood up quickly to greet the nun.

  ‘I’m Yvonne Maes, the new principal,’ she said.

  Tholane was blasé, while I was embarrassed that the new principal had seen her in the principal’s office bending over in my direction. She most likely thought there were worse things that I did in that office.