Azanian Bridges

by Nick Wood

  I wonder if she notices me.

  Bongani stands up, pausing a bit for dramatic effect. His chest is puffed slightly, as if he is indeed confident he knows the answer.

  “South African history did not start in 1652,’ he says.

  “Yesss, exactly!” she taps the desk in front of her with the long white plastic pointer, then lays it on the desk and crosses her arms. “So which of you can tell me when South African history started?”

  There is silence.

  She moves to the front of her desk, almost standing amongst the front row. “No one?”

  There is a small drone near the back on the right – I turn to see a man at the back showing the girl next to him something on his phone.

  Dr. Wadwalla ignores them, although they are sitting right under a ‘Cells Off’ sign.

  “Well, I suppose it’s early days for you all yet. The answer is no one knows exactly, but archaeological evidence suggests Africans have been here for a lot longer than that – and Van Riebeeck was greeted and provisioned by some Khoi-San ‘strandlopers’, many of whom were later shot by the white settlers for their charity.”

  She picks up a small screen-sorter gadget from the desk and clicks – a drawn picture of a curly-haired coloured man appears on the screen.

  “The fruits of the arrival of Van Riebeeck, seasoned by a later dose of slave spice from the east and we have the so-called ‘coloured’ people, drawn in the book here as if they are a separate and set race.” She pauses: “Any so-called ‘coloureds’ here?”

  We crane our neck around the room, but no one puts their hands up.

  She smiles, looking a little sad while she does so: “Well, most of us may have some ‘coloured’ blood in us – anyone remember the history of World War Two?”

  A forest of arms goes up, including my own.

  This time she laughs: “Remember the villain of that war – he believed in racial purity didn’t he? And look where he ended up.”

  She clicks the screen off.

  “Your group-work for now? Get together in your tutorial groups and discuss how many things are wrong in the first chapter of your book. Choose a group-leader to feedback to us all in twenty minutes time.”

  “Miss!” A striking young woman with a cropped head in the front row is almost standing up in her eagerness to ask something, but Dr. Wadwalla seems to anticipate her question. (I do not know if correctly so.)

  “Why are we using this book? Because no other book has been allowed by the government. I’m hoping you lot will end up writing a newer and better one, one day, one day...” She claps her hands: “Right now, get into your groups”.

  I look across at the crop-haired woman, wishing she were nearby, so that she could join our group.

  The lights of the club strobe like rainbows across our faces, the digital beat of kwela-rap drowning our voices.

  So Bongani and I start to shout about our history class but I can tell Mandla is bored with that. (He’s short and skinny and is nothing like my brother, although his name still hurts a bit, a constant reminder of old memories of play-wrestling and brotherly jokes.)

  Mandla rolls his eyes at us: “Enough work, dull Jacks – how about some ntombis – there are a couple of pretty girls over there looking our way.”

  I follow where he points, but see the table across the way is frequented by two smart looking women – sporting sophisticated tattoos that shift across their face in day-glo orange and green, advertising Bafana Bafana and GoBeef. They must have paid a fortune for those moving tattoos, although maybe they’re pirated imitations. The women are engrossed in talk with two big men and neither of them glances our way, but I notice how well the women fill their jackets; particularly the nearest one, who looks vaguely familiar, although she has her back to us.

  “So, what say you all?”

  Bongani throws a beer mat at him: “Don’t be stupid – we didn’t come here for a fight.”

  Mandla swats it aside, gets up and suddenly swoops on Bongani from behind, putting him in a headlock. Bongani retaliates with a punch aimed behind his head, but Mandla dodges it. Old sparring partners it seems, although Bongani is gurgling with his windpipe cut off and his eyes are bulging. He picks up a knife from the table in front of him: “Stop – it – Mandla!”

  Mandla lets go with a laugh. “Hey, man, always serious, why don’t you just relax and have a bit of fun? It’s three against two with the table next door.”

  Bongani coughs over the table, massaging his throat.

  “Not really,” I say. “Have you seen the women’s jackets?”

  Mandla turns and is silent for a moment: “Oh,” he says, swivelling back to us,

  ‘Well they’re ugly bitches anyway.”

  The slogans are stitched in lurid green on the women’s black fake leather jackets – ukubuyisa isithunzi sobusuku, Safety at Night – an amaZulu Amazonian women’s group, feisty with their fists and feet. Even in the country, we’ve heard of them. In addition, the two big men look to have seriously soured our odds in a fight. Besides, Father always told me that knives and fists belonged to a bankrupt mind. He himself was always polite and careful with his words and the little money he had.

  Mandla reaches down to grab Bongani’s throat again, but he is too slow. Bongani thrusts an elbow behind him and Mandla doubles over; Bongani’s aim is true.

  The nearest woman comes over to us; her cropped head accentuates her plain but rippling face. Where have I seen her before?

  “He’s been an idiot, has he?” she dismisses the groaning Mandla, clutching his crotch. “If you boys fancy being men, how about coming to this? I’m Nombuso, by the way.”

  She slaps a leaflet down on the table and I recall where it is that I’ve seen her before – she’s the girl who was straining to ask a question at the end of class. Hayi, how night, clothes, and activated fluorescent mobile tattoos can change someone.

  She turns her back and struts back to her table, not waiting for a response.

  The leaflet is a call to attend a protest march. At the bottom of the list of sympathetic academics due to attend a name jumps out at me: Dr. Fariedah Wadwalla.

  Our history teacher.

  I catch Bongani’s eye. He shrugs: “Why the hell not?”

  Mandla has settled into a chair alongside us. He’s still wheezing and bent over the table, almost dropping his face into a glass of beer. “The boere will be there you know,” he says, “Bringing dogs and guns and pain.”

  Bongani shrugs, puffing himself up slightly: “We will show them who is boss.

  This is our land – we should not be bowing to them.”

  Mandla looks up and he has sweat on his face, which seems somehow paler in the club’s lights: “You don’t mess with the boere.”

  I am troubled. It is not like Mandla to be cautious.

  Bongani just laughs: “What has suddenly turned you into an old woman?”

  Mandla stands up and slugs the last of his beer: “My oldest brother died in detention... And my gogo is braver than any man alive.” He walks out of the club without looking back, leaving us in strained silence.

  Bongani forces a laugh: “Are you ready for another beer?”

  But I have no more appetite. I stand to leave too.

  “Where are you going?” asks Bongani.

  “To bed,” I pick up my coat, not looking back as I manoeuvre through the tables.

  There is one couple on the circular dance floor, cuddling to the techno-beat.

  I skirt past them to the door.

  The walk to our dormitory is not far. All I can do is think of my mother.

  She died too. No, the boere didn’t kill her. She got Aids from a rapist. We found the rapist and our local butcher castrated him.

  But my mother died slowly all the same.

  Bongani is alongside me as I open our dormitory door, knowing better than to say anything.

  Mandla is already in bed.

  In the end, all three of us decide to go: Mandla mut
ters he will make his gogo proud. (As for me, Dr. Wadwalla will be there too – and the cop’s face on the ride in to college still shouts inside my head! I need a way to silence him.)

  Mandla flashes a hand-sign to passing taxis and one screeches to a stop. The taxi is almost full as usual, four young men and two women with furled banners, an older woman with shopping. The van swerves around a few burning tyres as we near the settlement.

  One of the young women mumbles to her male neighbour they’d caught an informer last night and neck-laced them – I stop listening and turn to stare out of the window, rocking slightly and tightly between Mandla and Bongani.

  We skip past the silent array of new and few government box houses, designed to prove equality and to undermine resistance. We slow as we approach the informal settlement where most people live, shanty houses thrusting up defiantly from the dust.

  The crowd is already milling around the point where the muddy road peters out, leading nowhere but to that sprawling shantytown. There are several hundred shacks it seems, tilted and splayed thinly in corrugated sheets and chipboard against the summer storms, spread in a chaotic and smelly space. No running water, waste both of and from humans lies in a heaped pile under bushes to our right; the people have made an attempt to keep the place clean. No council collection comes through - the police and bulldozers are no doubt expected first.

  The gathering crowd itself looks close to a thousand, although I am not a good estimator of numbers, coming as I do from a small village near the Underberg. Still, there are more than I expected. I crane my neck to gaze through the crowd, but do not see Dr. Wadwalla.

  Banners are being unrolled and I hear the snap of a few illegal cam-phones, providing photos of resistance for downloading and spitting through State firewalls.

  There are a few rough table stalls with drink and food – some water, beer, and even a few crates of Croke that may have accidentally slipped off a lorry. The food looks like beef meat and samp – appetizing, but expensive at twenty rands a plate. (It looks like the women and the sharply dressed man in a cream suit are not catering for locals or students – or perhaps they are just optimistically testing the waters, as the day is young.)

  I scan the banners – ubiquitous ANC flags of course, but a few PAC and even one or two Inkatha, from their split-off revolutionary wing that defies Buthelezi and a Bantustan state. There is a scuffle as someone hoists a banner unfamiliar to me – Mandla points it out and explains patiently to me, the country plaasjapie. Black power, one settler, one bullet and a new state to be called Azania, heralded in by The Azanian Peoples’ Organisation.

  We jostle for space as time passes, the crowd appears to be loosely milling around a central platform of raised wooden pallets and they’ve even been able to rig up a microphone on a stand, attached to a mobile generator running off petrol, the smell of fuel cuts across the stink of shit.

  Bongani kicks at a stray dog smelling his shoe and I glare at him. We look for a closer space amongst the mess of people, some talking, others arguing loudly.

  Bongani pushes a route through to the platform, but we get held up by a large group of Inkatha Revolutionary men, who have linked arms and turn to glower at us.

  We hang back – I feel young, a wafting boy.

  Bongani glances at his cell: “They’re twenty minutes late.”

  Mandla laughs dryly: “Haven’t you heard the term Africa time? These things are always late.”

  Bongani curses as he lifts his right shoe, wiping at it with a scrap of newspaper he’s picked up. The stench of shit hits my nose even harder.

  I look forward though; the men ahead of us are stirring. Someone has stepped up onto the wooden platform. We turn to stare over bobbing heads, some people already starting to chant Struggle slogans.

  I am grateful for my six foot plus – I have a good view of ... her.

  It is the young woman, Nombuso, from last night. She cannot be more than a few months older than me, but she stares across this crowd so coolly, as if she were forty years old.

  ‘Amandla!’ she shouts, fisting the air.

  There’s a ragged roar of ‘Awethu’ in response, but I see a few competing banners jostling for space on the edge of the crowd. As for us, only about midway in as befits late arrivals, I am glad for the space to retreat if necessary.

  There is a sharp whine from the mike – feedback – and the young student covers it with her hand. As the mike quietens, Nombuso opens her mouth to speak, but all that is heard are... sirens.

  People shout; movement causes us to turn towards the road behind us.

  Convoys of mellow yellow police vehicles arrive. Some of them have netted grilles with attached dog boxes. The sirens cut through the shouts and screams, the vans fanning out into a semi-circle, churning to a halt in the mud.

  Our route is cut off – the only way out is backwards, through the shacks.

  Policemen leap out, automatic rifles in hand, taking cover aggressively behind their vehicles.

  A fizz near me; a man lighting a bottle: a Molotov Cocktail? I’ve heard of these, but never actually seen one. I stare. It is burning too quickly and the man drops it with a curse, stamps it out.

  Dogs bark in front of us – Dobermans and Alsatians on leads scrabbling in front of the dog-handlers, like bulls eager to gore us. Behind us, a few pitiful yammerings of township dogs, but none of them come forward to pick up the challenge from the beefy boere dogs.

  A fat boer steps forward holding a loud-hailer, shiny metal pins on his blue uniform. He has a thick handlebar moustache framing his shaking jowls. His voice is strangely high pitched and crackles through the loud hailer. “This is an illegal gathering. You have five minutes to peacefully dis-perrrse!”

  “Amandla!” the word cracks across the place, with an electronic force. It is Nombuso, mike in hand, standing in defiance, legs starting to pump the slow rhythm of the toyi-toyi, “Oessss, oesss, oesss, oesss…”

  The crowd starts to respond, although a few at the back are running into the shacks, as if knowing what is to come.

  I catch the chant ‘umshini wami’, a few women are ululating a Thandiswa chorus, but I don’t see any guns in the crowd.

  I am being pushed forward towards the front, but there is nowhere to go.

  The shouts rise, the crowd seemingly solidifying around Nombuso on the platform, who is ululating into the mike, right fist raised, shaking.

  I crouch down, wishing my father were with me. Mandla, though, reaches for mud, sifting it in search of a stone or brick. Bongani has gone, threading backwards through the crowd.

  I crouch, too scared to move.

  A harsh line of white men in blue in front of me – they have guns – every single one of them. Their vicious dogs paw the air eagerly.

  We are not given anywhere near three minutes.

  A ‘woosh’ and a spray of objects flies amongst us from mobile launchers hidden behind the vans. A bang hurts my ears and clouds of stinging smoke swirl around us – some people have already wrapped scarves around their faces and are moving forwards, sticks and stones in hand. Me, I kneel in the mud choking on the teargas, eyes burning, seeing little.

  A rattle of gunshots and they are upon us – dogs with huge dripping teeth and men slashing with whips, truncheons, sjamboks. God, some even have the latest electro-hammers, frizzing as they hit. I scramble to my feet; a nearby explosion knocks me back into the mud and I curl up, arms wrapped around my sticky head. A woman wails as she dashes by, another trips over me and falls with a scream, scrabbling to get away.

  Off to one side, out of the corner of my eye, a spray cannon spurts purple dye onto people.

  It’s over within four minutes, but they seem like years. I check my blurred watch and look around, eyes still seeping.

  Smoke is settling into the ground.

  The police are loading a group of men and women into their vans, but I – and a few others – am left alone to grovel on the ground. I stay down, not wanting to be noticed
, but my head is aching and sore.

  It is then that I see him, lying on his back, sprawled only a few paces from me. I notice with horror his mouth is open, unmoving. Mandla! I cradle his head, but see his left eye is missing, just a bloody volcano in his weirdly distorted face. I shake him, but his mouth flops, with no breath. I see bloody grey goo on my trousers. The back of Mandla’s head is oozing.

  I clutch him and scream. The fuckers used live rounds!

  A man touches my shoulder. He still looks neatly dressed, but with traces of mud and blood on his cream jacket sleeve.

  “Come, brother, have something to eat,” he holds a sagging plate of beef and samp, but all I can do is gag.

  “Sibusiso, is Mandla...?” I see Bongani’s feet, but do not look up.

  “Yes,” I say.

  Mandla is dead.

  I do not return to class.

  When Mandla is buried, I do not go either, guilty though I feel. Twelve others are buried with him and there is much shouting and singing, but the police let them alone this time.

  Or so Bongani tells me; standing beside my bunk, he pokes me with his ruler and tells me to stop being so lazy and get up.

  It hurts me, although I mask my face. My father has always taught us to work hard. So I try to pull books into bed with me, but the words just blur in front of me and I shut them before the print runs.

  I scrub myself in the shower twenty three times over the week and still I feel Mandla’s blood and brains on my legs, although when I look hard, it is just my own raw skin, so I climb back into bed with waves of tiredness I cannot resist.

  Bongani brings me food but I am too tired to eat, so I just sleep, dreaming little.

  I lose count of days and faces before me, but there is something about this knock at the door I cannot ignore.

  The knock is short, sharp and persistent; pulling me from my sleep like a sangoma pulls spirits from the shadows. I surface to the sound; the ‘tah-tah-tahing’ pulling my soul into my body. It is hard, but I drag myself up and stagger towards the door.

  I know that knock.

  I pull the door open, hearing a familiar shuffling step on the other side. For the first time since Mandla died, my blood burns in my body.