Sometimes There Is a Void

by Zakes Mda

  I only apologised when we got to my house later that evening. But the incident haunted me for a long time. Just like the slap on Ruth’s beautiful face. It was a good lesson for me. Even today, I marvel at the arrogance of thinking I had the right to tell a woman she should look or dress or do her hair in a manner that met with my approval just because she happened to be my girlfriend or even wife. Today I am reluctant to give an opinion even when it is solicited. There is no question I dread more than ‘How do I look in this dress?’ All right, I am exaggerating; there are worse questions. But still I have feelings of trepidation about that one because it forces me to lie.

  Although I thought we had made our peace about that particular gaffe, our life was mired in conflict. For instance, when Sonwabo’s children came to visit me she became very jealous and would mope and not even talk to them for hours on end. I told you that my brother Sonwabo had gone to the United States to study for an MA degree in International Affairs and never returned. We heard from Ohio that he was no longer a student there. He left before completing the degree and no one seemed to know where he was. So, for these children – Limpho, Solomzi, Thembi and Mpumi – I was the only father they knew.

  One day they came to visit and we went for a walk around the suburb of Florida. When I came back Adele didn’t want to talk to me. I only realised then that maybe I should have invited her to join us on the walk. She felt left out when I was with these kids. But then I had thought she would understand that I saw these kids only once in a while and I needed to give them all my attention just for those few hours of their visit. It was essential for that time to be just with them.

  My own children were still in Mafeteng in the care of my mother. Occasionally they visited me in Florida, and if Adele happened to be there she would be unhappy about it. I hoped she would learn to love them, especially if she was going to be my wife.

  Sometimes I could not understand Adele’s logic. She still had her room at one of the residences at the university, although she visited and spent the night in Florida whenever we had made such an arrangement. One day my brother Monwabisi, who was practising as an attorney in Mafeteng, visited and we went out to my neighbourhood shebeens to drink ourselves silly as was our habit. When we returned at night Adele was waiting outside.

  Immediately she saw me she attacked with: ‘You locked me out of your house! You locked me out!’

  I would be angry too if someone had locked me out of the house, but I had not.

  ‘Did he know that you’d be coming?’ asked Monwabisi.

  ‘No, he did not,’ she said.

  ‘Then he didn’t lock you out of the house. He locked the house because that’s what you do when you leave a house unattended.’

  She had no answer for this, but she was still fuming.

  But there were also moments of pure joy, when she was such a sweet person that I would soon forget about the stormy moments. I would convince myself that the turbulent times were an aberration, and that when we were married things would settle because neither of us would have reason to feel insecure.

  In the meantime the university decided to promote me from lecturer to senior lecturer. I had not applied for this promotion. It just had not occurred to me that my work merited a promotion and I should take steps to bring it to the attention of the university senate. Positions did not mean anything to me; I was just happy teaching my students, writing plays and articles for journals and organising the work of the Marotholi Travelling Theatre.

  I also had outside interests that kept me busy when I got to Maseru. These included a company called the Screenwriters Institute which I had established at Mothamo House. I had bought cameras and editing suites and was producing videos on various social development subjects. Entities such as UNICEF, the Ministry of Health and the International Labour Organization engaged our services to produce VHS videos for their workshops. Some of these were dramas on such topics as HIV/ AIDS and TB. I employed the services of freelance camera people and editors each time I had a project. I remember one of them, Lineo, a petite and outspoken young lady, who would regale us with stories of her adventures as we travelled in a Land Rover to the mountain villages of Lesotho shooting footage for a UNICEF documentary. She had travelled with King Moshoeshoe II and Archbishop Morapeli of the Roman Catholic Church between Paris and New York in a Concorde, the British-French supersonic jet. The four of us in the Land Rover – our driver, ’Mamotsepe the UNICEF Representative, ’Mope our second cameraman and I – had never been in a Concorde so we listened with fascination as Lineo brought the experience to life for us. But what we found even more titillating was her detailed description of how she was planning to seduce the Archbishop whom she was eyeing all the time they were relaxing in the first class cabin of the supersonic flight. She outlined for us how she would strip off his robes one by one until she got to the undergarments and what she would do to him when she finally had him at her mercy, stark naked like the day he was born. She lamented that she had missed her opportunity on that journey to New York but vowed that she would still get her chance since when these big shots travelled they quite often engaged her services to record their expeditions on video for posterity.

  Alas, one day we had to part ways with Lineo as she went to seek better opportunities in South Africa. The last time I heard of her she was directing the soap opera Generations which was screened every weekday on SABC 1. And then she died. I don’t know what killed Lineo, but I hope she got her heart’s desire before she died.

  I continued my work for UNICEF and other agencies with other freelancers. There was only a short lull in our activities when the government of Chief Leabua Jonathan was overthrown by the paramilitary on January 24, 1986. I was at my house with Patrick Nkunda when we first heard of the coup. We walked to the streets to witness what was happening and saw convoys of soldiers driving up and down the streets of Maseru and thousands of people dancing in the street waving branches of trees. Cars were blowing their horns and there was jubilation all around. We heard that General Metsing Lekhanya had taken over the reins of government. Without wasting any time, he had set up a Military Council that would manage the affairs of the state. He was the Chairman. One of the members of the Military Council was the fellow to whose guitar playing we used to dance in Mohale’s Hoek, Reentseng Habi. Now he was one of the most feared people in the country.

  Patrick Nkunda had seen some coups in his life, particularly the one that removed Milton Obote and put Idi Amin in power. Blood did flow in the streets of Kampala and Entebbe, and indeed Mr Amin’s regime was a bloodthirsty one.

  ‘The Basotho people never cease to amaze me,’ said Nkunda as we walked back home. ‘The King has no special title; he is just called Ntate, same as the labourer who digs the road. A cabinet minister can be seen standing in the queue at the bank just like everyone else. And here now is a coup where no one is killed or arrested and people just sing and dance.’

  Well, no one was killed, but he spoke too soon about arrests because although Leabua Jonathan and his cabinet were never arrested, some military officers who opposed the coup were locked up by General Lekhanya.

  Although we had not expected this coup, it was a culmination of strange events that had been happening during the past few weeks. It started with harsh words being exchanged between Chief Leabua Jonathan and the South African government. The main issue was the strong Communist presence in Lesotho, as represented by the North Koreans. Chief Leabua had also kicked out South Africa’s allies, the Taiwanese embassy, and had established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. Another sore point with the South African government was the strong presence of the ANC in the country.

  Clearly, according to the apartheid government, Chief Leabua was becoming too big for his boots. He was their creation and now he was turning against his creators. They pounced on him with a vengeance. First there was a general blockade and no food or fuel was allowed into the country. You will remember that Lesotho is completely sur
rounded by South Africa and a blockade like that could cripple the country since it was dependent on South Africa for all its supplies. Local newspapers had observed that before the blockade petrol tankers had been parked at the American Embassy, which meant that the Americans knew there was going to be a blockade. Without oil and gas most of the country was at a standstill.

  And then the coup. And then the sadness when, a few weeks later, General Lekhanya and his government deported most of the ANC refugees and some PAC ones as well from Lesotho. Many of these were my students at the National University of Lesotho. Fortunately Lekhanya did not hand them over to South Africa but made transit arrangements with his new friends in Pretoria, and many of them landed in Zambia where the ANC was headquartered. My friend Jobs was one of those who were deported, leaving his law practice to a local partner.

  I despised Lekhanya for this.

  That same year of the coup the arrival of the Gonzalez family injected new energy into the cultural life of Maseru – just as the June 16 youths had done a decade earlier. Albio Gonzalez, his wife, Teresa Devant, and their two kids, Adrian and Sara, came from a soj ourn in Botswana where they had been cultural activists. Albio was born in Cuba. He and his family had lived in Sweden for many years. He worked for the Swedish International Development Agency which sent him first to Botswana as a town planner and then to Lesotho in the same position. In Botswana both Teresa and Albio were highly involved in the activities of Medu Art Ensemble which was founded by the South African poet in exile in that country, Mongane Wally Serote. Some Medu members were leading South African exiles, such as the musicians Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa, novelist Mandla Langa, poets Willy and Baleka Kgositsile, puppeteer Adrian Kohler and artist Thami Myele. You may know the last as the artist killed along with other ANC refugees in a cross-border raid into Botswana by the South African army in 1985.

  Teresa was a theatre director and Albio was an artist and designer. They had worked with Medu creating theatre and organising art exhibitions and poster-making workshops. When they arrived in Maseru and didn’t find much happening along those lines – Lesiba Players had gone defunct long before and Marotholi Travelling Theatre was confined to theatre-for-development work in rural Lesotho – they decided to establish their own theatre company, Meso Theatre Group. Two of its members who became my close and lifelong friends, besides the Gonzalez family, were Kefuoe Molapo and ’Maseabata Ramoeletsi. Kefuoe was the son of Clemoski, my late and lamented friend, although I didn’t know that at the time. It was only after we had known each other for some time that we both realised that we had a bond that went deeper than the theatre that had brought us together. ’Maseabata, on the other hand, was a Mosotho woman who would have been called Coloured in South Africa because she was the product of a white father and a black mother. Her day job was that of a pharmacist at Queen Elizabeth II Hospital, but she loved the theatre so much and was such a wonderful actress you would have thought that was her full-time occupation.

  Meso Theatre Group specialised in producing my plays. Their first production was And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses, a two-hander about corruption in the food aid programmes. It also looked at the oppression of women both by the political system in Lesotho and South Africa and by cultural patriarchy. The play was so successful in Maseru that it went to the Edinburgh Festival and then went on a tour of Spain. It was the first play from Lesotho to be performed abroad. Although the two actresses who performed in it didn’t have any formal training in theatre – Tokoloho Khutsoane was a journalist and Gertrude Mothibe a pharmacist – they acquitted themselves well and received wonderful reviews both in the United Kingdom and in Spain. The following year Meso produced another of my plays about the liberation struggle in South Africa, Joys of War, which they performed in Maseru and in various cities in Botswana and Zimbabwe.

  After the performance of And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses I was astounded when I was confronted by a woman in the street who accused me of writing about her sister. Mpho Mofolo was a local lawyer and the daughter of OK Mofolo, for whom I worked when I was studying to be a lawyer. She claimed that the prostitute character in the play, who falls in love with an Italian chef while she was at university and then leaves for Cape Town with him, was based on her sister. I was quite amazed because I knew nothing about her sister. In fact, I didn’t even know she had a sister at all. My character was not based on anyone I knew, and I told her that. But she wouldn’t listen. Instead she threatened, ‘I’m going to sue your pants off.’ I had no idea why her lawsuit would involve my pants, but I was quite satisfied that I had created characters from my imagination who were so believable that intelligent lawyers saw their relatives in them and were prepared to take me to court about them.

  ‘Once again, Mpho, I have no idea who your sister is or what she did,’ I said, walking away from her increasing fury. She repeated her threat of a lawsuit. Some inquisitive middle-aged women who had stood close by hoping for a shouting match were disappointed. I knew the type; they were junior civil servants – secretaries and receptionists – who should be at work serving taxpayers. But they were out scouring the street for morsels of gossip. I heard one who had joined them late ask what the problem was. Another one explained that I had written dirty things about OK Mofolo’s children.

  I had to stop and listen to this while Mpho Mofolo walked away, still fuming.

  ‘I know him,’ said the woman. ‘He’s the son of Ntate Mda who is a lawyer in Mafeteng. His brothers are lawyers too. It is part of the wars of lawyers. I think his family is jealous of the Mofolo family because they are making more money and are wealthier.’

  That was Maseru for you. Everyone thought he or she knew everyone else’s business. When they didn’t have the facts they made them up. I continued with my interrupted saunter to the post office on Kingsway.

  ‘You think you can just ruin other people’s lives?’ one of the women called after me. ‘You think just because your brothers are lawyers you can write dirty things about other people’s children?’

  I was not going to waste my breath on the busybodies. If only they knew that if there was any lawsuit at all my brothers would be the last people I would resort to for help.

  FROM MY BROTHER’S HOTEL we drive to his house to see my mother. I am not going to ask him anything about the hotel. If he wanted to tell me he would have done so already, especially because I hear it has been standing there for years now. Is he fighting battles about getting a licence perhaps? I don’t think I’ll ever know.

  My mother is in her bedroom as usual. But this time in addition to the neighbourhood people who like to hang out with her in her bedroom there is a young man, perhaps in his twenties, who is holding a big Bible. He is in the middle of prayer, and we stand quietly until he completes it. My mother introduces him to us as the pastor of the Universal Church.

  ‘Oh, so it’s true that you now belong to the Universal Church?’ I ask her while the pastor massages her legs because the Good Lord has vested him with hands that heal.

  Yes, she says, she was introduced to the Universal Church by a neighbourhood woman who used to be my father’s secretary and typist, Cousin ’Maletsatsi. She thinks that the prayers are doing wonders for her arthritis and hypertension and varicose veins. So does the blessed physiotherapy. Since she can’t walk to the church the pastors come here to hold a service for her, a thing which the Roman Catholic Church cannot do. I am quite surprised to hear her praise another denomination like this because she used to be a committed Catholic. When I was a kid I remember her pride in her black skirt and purple blouse and cape which were the uniform of the Legion of Saint Anna and Saint Cecilia. Now she has joined the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, a Pentecostal denomination founded only three decades ago in Brazil and which has taken Lesotho by storm. I never thought she would leave the Catholic Church for any other church in the world.

  I tell Thandi that’s what people said about me too: we never thought this devoted altar boy would leave
the Catholic Church for anything. I was a third generation Catholic. Before that my people were Anglicans, as were most people in the village of Qoboshane. My grandfather converted to Catholicism because the best schools in the region were owned and operated by the Catholics and he wanted my father and his siblings to get places at those schools. But he was drawn to the liturgy and became a firm believer. My grandmother remained in the Anglican Church, so they went to separate churches on Sundays. I admired this because it showed how open-minded my grandfather was. Remember, that was in the early thirties and women were by law minors since males were recognised as the sole heads of the family. They laid down the law and one would have expected that my grandfather would insist that his wife should follow him to his new church, especially because his new church did not tolerate the kind of arrangement he had in his family where he and his children were the only Catholics and the wife belonged to some renegade church born of a King’s adultery. Either my grandfather was open-minded or my grandmother was strong-willed and independent.

  When I was a kid I visited my grandmother’s church on one or two occasions. I thought my grandfather had made a smart choice because the rituals of his church had more colour and pizzazz. But I have since changed my mind.

  Before the Universal Church pastor leaves he shakes my hand and says, ‘I hope we’ll see you in our church soon.’

  I don’t tell him that he’ll have a long time to wait. After his departure I tell Thandi that if I were to be a Christian again and wanted to be part of organised religion I would join my grandmother’s Anglican Church instead of the Catholics or any of your right-wing charismatic churches. The Anglicans are the most progressive of the mainstream denominations; they have produced such fearless champions of human rights and justice as Desmond Tutu, Njongonkulu Ndungane and Trevor Huddleston. But most importantly, they have female and gay clergy – both priests and bishops – despite the protestations of the conservative African segment of the church.