Sometimes There Is a Void

by Zakes Mda

  Back in Sehonghong I yearned for Sebo’s stimulating company, but also for the camaraderie of the Lesiba Players. Even the Cave of Barwa was no longer a fulfilling experience by itself. I wished I could spelunk with Sebo.

  At about that time Professor Andrew Horn, who had been teaching drama and theatre at the National University of Lesotho, resigned to take up a professorship in the Fiji Islands. I had known and admired Andrew Horn for his theatre-for-development work for quite some time. He had invited me to Roma to observe some of the plays he created with his group of students. He also invited me to a big conference that he organised in Maseru in which theatre-for-development practitioners from Botswana, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi participated. This experience had introduced me not only to these practitioners and scholars, but also to the very concept of theatre-for-development which later became my specialisation as a practitioner and the subject of my doctoral research.

  I applied for Andrew Horn’s job at the university and got it, despite the opposition of an influential Catholic priest in the English Department, Father Dermot Tuohy. I think Catholics have long memories, especially if you have been their employee and then you started messing around with nuns and female colleagues.

  Finally, I came down from the Maluti Mountains to be an academic at the National University of Lesotho at Roma, following in the footsteps of my father who taught there in the late 1940s when the institution was still called Pius XII College.

  Finally, a promise of stability. Unless I botched things up again. I was determined not to.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WE ARE WITH THANDI this time. She is not only my daughter – you remember, Mpho’s second child? – but she is also our very close friend. Gugu’s and mine. Sometimes we take her along when we visit the Bee People so that on our way back she may see Makhulu, as she calls my mother. Thandi is a beautiful dark-complexioned thirty-something and we laugh a lot when we are together because she has a way of seeing the funny side of things even in serious situations. We like to tease her about her taste in fashion; often she looks like a gypsy queen in garish jewellery and studded shoes. But the joke is sometimes on us when the shoes we have been laughing at become the vogue two years later.

  As we drive into the town of Mafeteng Thandi mentions something about looking forward to the opening of her Uncle Zwi’s hotel when it finally happens.

  Zwi is Zwelakhe’s nickname.

  ‘Hotel?’ I ask. ‘What hotel?’

  She looks surprised that I don’t know my brother has a hotel. Gugu doesn’t know either. Thandi offers to take us to a township called Motse-Mocha on the outskirts of Mafeteng to show us the hotel. The dirt road has gullies and potholes full of muddy stagnant water. It is difficult for our Mercedes Benz sedan to negotiate its way but I drive on slowly until we stop next to a light green single-storey building roofed with tiles. There are chalet-like side-buildings with grass thatch roofs. The impressive structure looks out of place in this obviously low-income township.

  ‘That’s your brother’s hotel,’ Thandi says. ‘It’s called Roseville after Makhulu. It’s been standing here for two years, complete. I don’t know when Zwi intends to open it.’

  I wonder why he chose this type of location for what looks like a nice little holiday resort. When we were kids these were wheat fields. Low-income houses have since mushroomed in a haphazard way without any proper planning of the streets and without infrastructure. That is why the roads are better suited for a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Now here is this hotel standing like a shimmering brand new German sedan in a junkyard.

  A hotel is a big deal, and I know nothing about it. It’s been here for two years now and I have been coming to Mafeteng all that time and no one ever mentioned it to me. This tells you at once the kind of relationship I have with my brother, the last born of the family.

  He is the only one of my siblings who remained in Lesotho when we returned to South Africa after liberation. He is well established here as a respected lawyer; his colleagues regard him so highly that they elected him the president of the Law Society of Lesotho, a position he has held for many years. He is a genial fellow, well-beloved by the whole town of Mafeteng. One beautiful thing about him is that he interacts with everyone in the town without any discrimination or prejudice. He has no airs about his status as one of the leading advocates in southern Africa. His friends range from the top judges and political leaders of both the government and the opposition to the unemployed youths of Mafeteng. Yet there has been a chill in my relationship with him over the years, and for the life of me I can’t trace its source. There has been an occasional chill between him and my other siblings as well, but often it warms up and they become friends again, only for it to freeze up again over some minor issue. But between me and him the temperature has remained at a constant low.

  We are an estranged family. My favourite brother Monwabisi, or Thabiso, the one who is the Chief Magistrate of Kokstad, once said that we have developed into a dysfunctional family of high achievers. For instance, I know nothing of my siblings’ lives since we went our separate ways. We never share any news of our triumphs and defeats, our achievements and frustrations. We continue regardless, as if we all sprang from a stone and were not at one time occupants of the same womb, albeit at different times for some of us. Even Monwabisi who is much closer to me than the others leads a life that I know very little about. I remember being introduced to his new wife and child for the first time when I visited him in Kokstad. It was an awkward meeting for me because no one had told me that he had divorced the wife I knew, had remarried, was widowed and then remarried once more.

  His twin brother, Sonwabo, or Thabo, also lives a mysterious life in Columbus, Ohio, and I have never been to his place though I live in Athens, Ohio, which is only eighty miles away. He does come to my house when I or Gugu invite him over. But for us his residence is out of bounds. We have no idea why. We don’t even know his address in a city we frequent almost on a weekly basis. We only contact him via email. He left his wife, Johanna, and four children in Lesotho more than twenty years ago and never returned from the USA. The children – Limpho, Solomzi, Thembi and Mpumi – are now adults making their mark in the world. The alienation continues even with my sister Thami, who has moved from Johannesburg to Mafeteng, where she is a fashion designer specialising in designing suits and gowns for the legal community in Lesotho.

  Uncle Owen calls what is happening between Zwelakhe and me sibling rivalry. Perhaps it is, except for the fact that I have no idea what the content of our rivalry is. He has nothing that I want and I don’t think I have anything that he envies. I keep my distance from the affairs of the family so as to minimise chances of conflict. Except when I am invited. As in one instance when I was summoned by him all the way from Johannesburg for a family meeting in Mafeteng – a six-hour drive. I thought something earth-shattering had happened so I went. When I found that he had also invited two of our cousins from Qoboshane I got worried that perhaps it was more than earth-shattering. It was universe-shattering.

  A family meeting was held in Zwelakhe’s living room to resolve a dispute between him and Monwabisi about my mother’s Special Pension. I didn’t know anything about this so I listened with interest. None of them had ever told me that my mother had received a Special Pension from the South African government or how much it was. So I just sat quietly at this meeting, and did not participate in the proceedings. My mother did not participate either. She just sat there with a pained look.

  After the meeting my mother sat in her bedroom and wept. I found her there when I went to say goodbye. ‘What will happen when I am dead?’ she asked me.

  I could not answer that question. I am the ultimate outsider even in the affairs of the Mda family.

  I recall this incident as we park in the street to admire Zwelakhe’s hotel.

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t know about his hotel,’ Thandi says.

  ‘You know mos Thandi that I’m in the dark about eve
rything that affects my siblings’ lives.’

  ‘What happened? How did it come to this? When I was a little girl I thought you were close to Uncle Zwi.’

  Everyone thought so, especially when I didn’t give my car to his older brothers, Sonwabo and Monwabisi, but to him when I went to the United States. It was a Fiat jalopy that I bought after winning the Amstel Playwright of the Year Award for The Hill. I don’t know what ultimately happened to it. Maybe he sold it for junk.

  I am unable to answer Thandi’s question because I don’t know the answer. I just know that there has been so much tension between us that once he banned me from coming to his house to see my mother. When I said I would not go into the yard but would stand outside the gate and ask my mother to come out, my sister-in-law Johanna warned me against that because she said it would be provocation. I suspected she was merely repeating what Zwelakhe said.

  ‘The first time I became aware of any tension was some years back when I had just joined the National University of Lesotho as a lecturer. He was already practising as a lawyer. He was also a playwright at the time, and had his own theatre company here in Mafeteng.’

  One day I was passing by the Thomas Mofolo Library at the university and saw posters for a play by Z Mda that was going to be performed at the Netherlands Hall.

  EARLY 1986. I WALKED into the BTM Lecture Theatre, National University of Lesotho, to teach an undergraduate African Poetry class. But before I began the lesson I told the students that the author of the play that was going to be performed that night was not me but my brother Zwelakhe Mda. One of my students, Ouma, who was known as an ANC activist asked why I felt it was necessary to tell them that.

  ‘Because the posters all over campus have the author and director as Z Mda. I just want to make it clear that it’s not me.’

  Ouma was the most argumentative student in my class. I had once met her husband, Ngoako Ramathlodi, when Sebo brought him and a few of his ANC comrades to my house in the Maseru suburb of Florida. At the time no one had any inkling that he would one day be the premier of the Northern Province after the liberation of South Africa, and Ouma would be the first lady.

  Ouma wouldn’t let the matter rest but pressed on, ‘Could it be that you don’t want to be implicated in case the play is embarrassing?’

  ‘Could it be that I want to take credit for my own work and tonight’s author should take credit for his own work? Some students this afternoon were telling me they were looking forward to seeing my play tonight. Admit it, you, too, Ouma thought it was my play.’

  She didn’t respond to that, but another student told me that indeed they had thought it was my play. Many people would be attending under the impression that it was a Zakes Mda play. ‘We have read so much about your work in the South African newspapers and now finally we’ll see one of your plays!’ an excited girl had told me earlier that day.

  ‘Why didn’t your brother use his full name? Could it be that’s the result he wanted?’ asked Zandile, who was also from South Africa.

  I couldn’t answer that one because I had no idea what my brother’s motive was. I hate to assign motives. But next time I met Zwelakhe I raised the matter. He told me that his name was Zwelakhe and Z was his legitimate initial which he would use any time he felt like it. That was the end of the discussion. I did not ask him why he felt it necessary to use only his initial in this case when in all other instances he used his full name. After all, it was his initial and he could use it whenever he felt like it. If it confused people that was their problem not his.

  That might have been the beginning of mistrust between us. Or even distrust because it seems to me we regard each other with suspicion.

  I never saw the play, but was told by a colleague who was sitting next to me in the university bus in which we travelled between Maseru and Roma that she and her friends who saw the performance were grateful that it was not my play. I didn’t want her to elaborate further so I quickly changed the subject to the inconveniences of our daily commute.

  There was no reason for me to complain about the commute. It was my choice to live in Maseru, forty kilometres away from the campus. The university had houses on campus at Roma and indeed I had been allocated one of them when I joined the university a few months back. But I couldn’t last there. Life was too quiet on campus. There were bars, yes, such as the Staff Club, open only to those who worked at the university and their guests, and Mzalas, which was a student bar. But the problem was that one socialised only with one’s colleagues there, and you know how boring academics can be. So I asked to be transferred to Maseru where the university had a number of houses in different suburbs. I was allocated a house in Florida which became the headquarters of some first class hedonism.

  Through the university car scheme I bought a brown Toyota Corolla which I used to travel between Roma and Maseru and at weekends between Maseru and Mafeteng. But it was cheaper to take the university bus sometimes; especially because one was required to go to the campus every weekday even when one didn’t have a class.

  Besides my bosom friend in Maseru, Sebo, I had a new girlfriend. Her name was Bolele and she was a trainee nurse at Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Maseru. I heard that this relationship irked quite a few girls who were students at Roma. Zandile from my impudent African Poetry class once asked me, ‘We hear you’re going out with a student nurse. What is wrong with us?’

  ‘And why should my going out with a student nurse be an indication that there is something wrong with you?’ I asked.

  ‘Are you intimidated by Roma girls?’ she said.

  Now, don’t be surprised by such a question from a student. It was the norm at that university for students to have affairs with lecturers. I am not talking of clandestine relationships here. They were public and accepted by everyone as normal and respectable. Indeed, quite a number of lecturers, both male and female, had spouses who were once students there, sometimes who were even in their classes. In Sesotho they had an idiom for the practice: u ja mohlapeng. You eat from the flock. The university didn’t take issue with any of these relationships because in their view both the students and the lecturers were consenting adults. No one came up with any argument on power relations that favoured the lecturer over the students in such romances, or possible abuse of power to gain sexual favours.

  At first I did not engage in such relationships because I thought I would find them uncomfortable. For the first two years or so teaching at Roma my world revolved around Sebo and Bolele and I shunned any social life at the university. I was busy enough in Maseru, mostly with my Ugandan friends Patrick Nkunda and John Zimbe rather than with Mr Dizzy or the jazz crowd. I was not seeing much of Mr Dizzy because he had gone back to his old ways of spending his life in skanky shebeens. He had even lost his illustrator job at the Lesotho Distance Teaching Centre. Occasionally I would find Mr Dizzy at the Lesotho Sun Hotel or Maseru Cabanas where he would take over the piano without the permission of the management and play the blues à la Champion Jack Dupree before the security guards kicked him out. Quite often they came after he had earned a few banknotes as tips from appreciative guests.

  Every weekend the Ugandans were at my house with their girlfriends from the Nurses’ Home drinking beer and roasting meat. They referred to my three-bedroom university house as ‘the stadium’. It was at these binges that I introduced Nkunda to Palesa Thoahlane, a trainee nurse who was Bolele’s friend. They later married and emigrated to Canada where Nkunda is a successful immigration lawyer and Palesa is a registered nurse. Zimbe emigrated to Canada too, but I never heard from him after that.

  Nkunda and Zimbe both had nice staff quarters at Lesotho High School. You know already that Lesotho High School was my playground, from the days of the late Clemoski and then of Bra Saul and of Mxolisi Ngoza. Now with Nkunda and Zimbe, particularly with Nkunda who was much closer to me, I had even more reason to hang out there.

  One day I was at Nkunda’s place drinking Castle Lager. There were quite a few of us
in the small living room. Pressed next to me was a striking young lady who knew who I was though I didn’t think I had met her before. But what impressed me about her was her vulgarity. She uttered earthy expletives at the slightest provocation, which made her very desirable. Before I knew it we were covertly fondling each other and giggling.

  I learnt that her name was Nzwakazi and that even though she had an isiXhosa name she was originally from Mohale’s Hoek. She taught Sesotho at the high school, hence the ripeness of her language.

  That evening we staggered to her house where I spent the night. I left my car parked outside Nkunda’s house. We did that a few more times. Sometimes she would pay a quick visit to my Florida house. It was a clandestine romance because she had a fiancé who was studying in Australia and didn’t want to keep rumour-mongers busy. The nocturnal visits did ultimately cease.

  My life also revolved around my children and my doctoral studies. I often drove to Mafeteng to see them where they continued to live with my parents. My mother had given up her job at the Holy Cross Clinic and was running two small cafés in Mafeteng. Neo was thirteen and had started at Masentle High School. Thandi was eleven and Dini was eight. Both were at St Gerard Primary School. I was grateful that my parents continued to look after them. In fact, my mother would not part with them even though I wanted them to stay with me in Maseru since I now had a stable job and a big house. She didn’t even want to hear of that.