Sometimes There Is a Void

by Zakes Mda

  When Gugu returned to Lesotho things cooled a bit between us. I think Josephine’s voice was still ringing in her ears. But as soon as the sound began to fade the old attraction returned and we began to see each other again. But this time we had to be careful lest Adele’s spies saw us. The best times to see her were during the rehearsals of my theatre group which took place at the Netherlands Hall at the university. As the group went through their paces Gugu and I got into my new white Toyota Cressida and drove about twenty kilometres from campus in the direction of Maseru. When we got to Masianokeng, instead of turning right towards Maseru we took a left turn and drove on past Mazenod in the Mafeteng direction until we got to the church which we named Jerusalema. We parked outside the yard under the tree and just sat in the car and talked the kind of nonsense that lovers talk and sang to Queen’s ‘Radio Gaga’. The members of the congregation walked in and out of Jerusalema in their blue and white uniforms wondering what Sodom and Gomorrah was happening under their sacred tree.

  WE LOOK AT THE ruins of Jerusalema and we giggle. Thandi wants to know what is so funny about a withered tree and a heap of bricks and mud. If only that tree could talk. If only she could see what I see – ghosts in white and faded blue walking in and out of the building, stopping from time to time to stare at the car under the tree, faces scowling. Our Jerusalema.

  THE SECRET OF JERUSALEMA could not last forever, but Gugu was an opiate I could not give up. I did not know where this would lead, but Adele was still very much in my life. She had graduated from the university and was a civil servant in Maseru. She lived with me at my university house in Florida. At this time my daughter Thandi, who was a student at St Mary’s High School at Roma, was staying with me. She commuted in a minibus taxi that transported students to and fro between Maseru and Roma, a distance of about eighty kilometres.

  The two women did not get along at all. Every day I would be fielding complaints from Adele about Thandi: one day it would be about Adele’s perfume which Thandi allegedly used even though Thandi denied it; the next day it would be about Thandi who had allegedly gossiped about her to her friends … and so it would go on and on like that.

  I decided to take Adele with me to Cape Town when I went to consult with Mavis Taylor about my PhD thesis so that I could buy her a graduation dress at one of the exclusive boutiques in the city.

  The day I took her to the underground Golden Acre Mall she quarrelled with me because as we were walking I would stop to look at something attractive in a window display. I would point it out to her, only to find that she had walked on. On realising that I was no longer by her side, she would stop and look back at me quite furiously, arms akimbo. I would have to gather speed towards her to save myself from the embarrassment of being yelled at. After buying the dress she liked we returned to our accommodation at Serengeti self-catering apartments in Mowbray.

  I don’t know what was on Adele’s mind, but as soon as we entered the living room she put the shopping bag on the carpet and sat down on the glass coffee table. Maybe she was tired or just too furious to realise what she was doing. The glass cracked. I was horrified, but she looked unperturbed.

  ‘We’ll tell them we found it like this,’ she said.

  ‘They know we didn’t find it like this. They were here just this morning to clean,’ I said.

  ‘Precisely. The cleaners must have done it. They have no evidence that it’s us.’

  I didn’t want to argue, though I knew that I could not go along with her plan. The cleaning woman might be fired for something she had not done.

  ‘They can’t prove it’s us. We’ll deny it,’ she repeated to make it clear that she would tolerate no dissent. I said nothing. I didn’t want her to think I was a traitor or to start another quarrel.

  While she was freshening up I went to the manager’s office and told her that I had inadvertently broken the coffee table and would like to pay for it. She added the cost to my accommodation bill and Adele never got to know that I squealed. To this day she thinks she got away with breaking the Serengeti coffee table. This episode worried me. I was seeing a side of her that I had not known before. And it scared me.

  But I didn’t have time to dwell on this. I had come to Cape Town primarily to attend to my thesis. At the university my supervisor was having problems finding someone with the right credentials to co-supervise my doctorate with her. My research was on how theatre could be used effectively as a medium for development communication. Mavis was a professor of theatre who specialised in training students in voice, movement and directing. She had no knowledge of theatre-for-development, which was my specialisation. But that could easily be remedied because she was well read in theatre-in-education and with all the books I had brought with me from the United States she could read up on theatre-for-development. The problem was the communication side of things. The University of Cape Town did not offer any field of communication studies and therefore there was no one appropriate who could supervise my work which was interdisciplinary, encompassing theatre, interpersonal communication and what was known in those days as mass communication. There was, however, what was referred to as the Professional Communications Unit that was headed by Mr M L Fielding. I didn’t know what exactly the Professional Communications Unit did, but it did not offer any courses. Although Mr Fielding only had an MA degree he was appointed as one of my supervisors. I later discovered that he was studying for his own PhD at Rhodes University at the very time he was supervising my PhD. He enriched my thesis by advising me to ground it on mass communications and interpersonal theories, beyond just my Marxist approach to communication-for-development. However, it seemed to me that every time he learned something new from his professors at Rhodes he wanted to impose it on my thesis. In most cases these would be outdated communication theories that had no relevance to my work. We argued a lot about this and on many occasions Mavis Taylor had to intervene. Mavis, on the other hand, was fine because she was willing to learn and I spent many evenings at her house discussing the work of Augusto Boal on the theatre of the oppressed, Keir Elam on the semiotics of theatre, Penina Mlama, Chris Kamlongera and David Kerr on theatre-for-development in Africa. Even though I would have liked to discuss communications theorists – especially development communications theorists – with Mr Fielding, he didn’t think it was necessary and never availed himself of the opportunity. I was fighting these battles at the university and would then return to fight other battles with a morose Adele.

  My stay with Adele in Cape Town, however, was not only confined to the petty battles in my life. There were other bigger battles of national proportions. It was 1989 and the struggle was at a turning point in South Africa. We attended some of the rallies that were organised by the United Democratic Front in Cape Town. At one of these demonstrations we managed to march up to Greenmarket Square but the police sprayed the protesters with purple dye, giving birth to the slogan The Purple Shall Govern, a play on the words of the better known slogan The People Shall Govern. The intention of the police, of course, was to identify all the people who were stained purple as the culprits marching against the state and demanding the release of Nelson Mandela and other political leaders.

  We were part of the thirty thousand plus who marched into Cape Town – the very first successful march into a major city by demonstrators. I could see the glint of pleasure in Adele’s eyes as we sang and danced and marched in Adderley Street – the main street in Cape Town – as Desmond Tutu, Allan Boesak and Gordon Oliver led us to St George’s Cathedral. Gordon Oliver was the liberal white mayor of Cape Town who had convinced the police to allow the march, hence our continuing right up to the Cathedral without being sprayed with purple rain.

  We went back to Lesotho for Adele to attend her graduation ceremony and take up a new teaching job at a middle school in Thaba Nchu in the ‘homeland’ of Bophuthatswana – one of the reservations designated by the apartheid government as the natural home of black people where they could exercise their political ri
ghts. I had to return to Cape Town for an extended stay to complete the thesis, bind it and then submit it. Because I was going to be there for a few months it would have been too expensive for me to stay at the Serengeti apartments. My Afrikaner friend Ali Semmelink, who I had first met in Leribe, Lesotho, and had continued my friendship with him when he moved to Roma to teach at Christ the King High School, had now returned to Cape Town which was where he originally came from. He told me that his sister-in-law, Elsa Semmelink, who happened to be the daughter of arch-conservative white supremacist leader Andries Treurnicht, would help me find accommodation. Elsa, obviously a rebel who didn’t share her father’s political views, knew which hotels in the city would give accommodation to a black person. She located a nice hotel within walking distance of the Hiddingh Campus, the site of the Drama Department. This was rather expensive accommodation for me, as you can imagine, but fortunately Mavis Taylor came up with some money to assist me. She said it was from an anonymous donor who liked my work, but I suspected that it was really from her. I played along and asked her to thank the donor for me. Actually, I kissed the dear heart and asked her to transfer that kiss to the donor.

  I completed the PhD at the end of that year. I was used to the American system where candidates had to defend their dissertations and was surprised to discover that there was no defence at all. I heard that Mr Fielding had not been happy with my final work because I had not used some of the theories he had suggested. But if the defence system had been applied I felt that I would have been able to argue my case quite effectively. However other committee members, those from the Drama Department, prevailed and on June 29, 1990, I walked on to the stage at Jameson Hall to be capped by Chancellor Oppenheimer. My mother was in the audience. So were my brother Zwelakhe, my sister Thami and my girlfriend Adele. Even from the stage I could see my mother’s eyes gleaming with tears of pride. When the choir broke into Gaudeamus Igitur and the whole hall thundered into the commercium hymn that celebrates the bacchanalian mayhem of academic life, I knew I had arrived. Everyone in my party was visibly moved.

  In the evening we went to Langa Township where one of my cousins, Zanemali Mtshula, had organised a very big party to celebrate my graduation. People from the township gathered in his small house and garden and speeches were made about how I was an inspiration to the youth to work hard and reach for the sky. It was wonderful to be among my mother’s people and to meet a number of her relatives I knew nothing about. She sat there between Thami and Adele beaming with pride. My mother’s people fell in love with Adele immediately. She was pleasant and beautiful and dutiful. They said: this is the right makoti for us; we look forward to the day you marry.

  A few days later we drove back to Lesotho. The fourteen-hour road trip was just as enjoyable, with Zwelakhe having us in stitches with his humour.

  But of course the fun had to end when we got back to Lesotho. It was back to the grind: me to the teaching job at the university, Adele to her teaching job in Thaba Nchu, Zwelakhe to his legal practice, Thami to her fashion designing and seamstress job, and my mother to her cafés in Mafeteng. We all went back to being ourselves.

  A few months later I received a letter from the Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Lesotho, Professor Adamu Baikie. I had been promoted to a full professorship, even though I had not applied for the promotion. I was told that Baikie had argued at a Senate promotions meeting, and then at a Council meeting, that with all my publications and my performance as a teacher I should have been made professor a long time ago.

  When the university did not renew Tom Lynn’s contract for reasons that I never understood – Tom was one of the most valuable teachers I had ever known and he had also created an effective communications skills programme for first-year students – I was appointed head of the English Department. This was a position I had not asked for and did not relish. It made me an insider despite myself. It also interfered with my off-campus work with the Marotholi Travelling Theatre and the Screenwriters Institute. Before this promotion I had spent a lot of time in Germany, Spain, Denmark, France and the United Kingdom giving talks at universities and holding theatre workshops and seminars. Now all that would have to change. I would have to spend my life sitting in a gloomy office doing boring administrative work.

  However, I still continued my work with UNICEF. For instance, I attended one memorable event in Bamako, Mali, where African intellectuals and artists gathered to discuss child survival and development. In many ways it was reminiscent of the Harare Symposium that I have told you about, but with less star-power. What made it memorable for me was the round-table we had with Julius Nyerere who had just stepped down as president of Tanzania. When my turn came to give a talk and ask questions I commended Nyerere first for his literary work in translating some of Shakespeare’s plays into Kiswahili, and secondly for his political work in supporting our liberation struggle in South Africa and for peacefully stepping down from power to let others take over the leadership in Tanzania. Then I asked him if he had any thoughts as to why his fellow heads of state in Africa were allergic to democracy, why they wanted to stay in power forever, and why there were so many coups where democratically elected governments were overthrown. Everybody around the table froze. This question obviously embarrassed Nyerere especially because at that moment he was sitting next to Moussa Traore, the president of Mali who had attained that position through a bloody coup. The Zimbabwean woman who was chairing the round-table unceremoniously moved to the next speaker.

  As soon as I walked out of the room I was confronted, not by Traore’s soldiers, but by journalists from Mali and other African countries who accused me of showing disrespect towards both Nyerere and Traore by asking Nyerere an embarrassing question. After that I was shunned by the delegates. No one wanted to talk to me, not even at a goat barbecue in a remote village where we had been taken to witness some wonderful traditional performances. Instead, they abandoned me in that village while I was talking to some kids. Fortunately I got a ride from a Frenchman who was passing through. The next day when they saw me at the hotel they pointed fingers at me.

  ‘That’s him,’ I heard a journalist say. ‘That’s the guy who asked our Mwalimu rude questions.’

  ‘Didn’t you say you left him behind at the village last night? How did he get here?’ asked his friend.

  ‘I don’t know. But he deserved worse for insulting President Traore like that.’

  Right there and then I knew why Africa was in such deep trouble.

  On my return to Lesotho I went straight to Mafeteng because I wanted to share my Malian experience with my father. I found that he was busy with a visitor I had not met before, but I had heard that he often infiltrated the country from his headquarters in Tanzania to consult with my father. He was Sabelo Pama, the commander of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army – which you may remember as the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress. I knew that he was trying to lure my father into relocating to Tanzania to deal with the crises in the PAC leadership and perhaps take over as president, which would certainly have been welcomed by all the members of that organisation. I also knew that Sabelo Pama would fail because my father had made up his mind a long time ago that he would rather be the ‘back-room boy’ of the political struggle, by which he meant the thinker who gave those in the forefront ideological direction.

  People were always trying to lure my father into taking more prominent positions than his humility allowed him. I knew, for instance, that for many years successive Lesotho governments had been knocking at his door trying to persuade him to become the Chief Justice of Lesotho. He always politely turned down such requests.

  When Sabelo Pama stayed at my home in Mafeteng he was treated just like us kids. He performed chores like all of us and was yelled at by my father as if he was his own kid. I, on the other hand, was in awe of this young man who had so much power that he sent men and women to kill and be killed. He held meetings with my father into the night on military strategies,
but during the day he was just like one of us kids. When my father went to hide himself from his clients at Ntate Hani’s restaurant Sabelo carried his bag for him. He sat there and had food and cold drink while my father attended to his chamber work. I wondered what would happen if Chris Hani came in and found Sabelo Pama sitting there in his father’s restaurant. What would these guerrilla leaders of rival forces talk about?

  I was able to talk briefly with my father to tell him about Mali. He thought my sentiments were correct but that I was tactless in expressing them. You don’t tell a dictator to his face in his own country, where he has the power of life and death over you, that he was allergic to democracy, especially when you are a stranger in that country. But he commended me for taking a position fearlessly. I thought he was contradicting himself but I said nothing about it.

  He congratulated me on my latest book, The Plays of Zakes Mda, published by Ravan Press, but did not mince his words about the Introduction by Professor Andrew Horn. You may remember Horn as the academic whose place I took at the National University of Lesotho who had also founded the theatre-for-development project there. Horn wrote that my work questioned the basic tenets of the PAC as represented by my father who had ‘joined Anton Muziwakhe Lembede in resisting the dominant ANC trend towards a class analysis of South African society, and promoted a rather narrower race-based pan-Africanism, much influenced by Marcus Garvey, within the ANC Youth League’.

  This, of course, did not accurately represent my father’s politics and I could understand his anger. My father believed that in a free and democratic South Africa there would be only one race, the human race. He spoke of non-racialism as opposed to multi-racialism long before it became the trend in South Africa and wrote against ‘narrow nationalism’. Race as defined by the social engineers of the apartheid state came into play when he discussed the intersections of class and race. Even ardent Communist leaders like John Motloheloa came to him for his class analysis of the South African situation. Although I am not an authority on my father’s writings, as people like Robert Edgar and Luyanda ka Msumza are, I’ll be so bold as to say Marcus Garvey never featured in any of them. Well, in all our meetings I had never heard him mention Garvey even once. To make sure I was not wrong about this I asked Luyanda ka Msumza, one of the young leaders who used to be mentored by my father and was with him a lot of the time, who angrily shot back in an email: