by Z. P. Dala
It was a night in winter when Gladys came to our room, sniffing and holding a thick shawl around her. She was not well, I could see it. She had been spending hours away from us women, and away from the lecture halls and wards of the hospital. I knew where she spent most of her time. It was with him, Steve Biko, the leader of the South African Students Organization, a man schooling himself in Black Consciousness from the literature he voraciously read and disseminated from the great philosophers like Marx and the great American activists of the Black Panthers.
Gladys flopped down on the thin mattress next to me. She glared at me with large, unreadable eyes.
“Sylvie, do you know who this singer called Donny Hathaway is?” she suddenly asked.
“Of course. I love Donny Hathaway. He is a jazz and blues singer from Chicago.”
“Oh. Shee-car-goh,” Gladys exaggerated the name of the city, almost as if she were mocking the way I had said it.
“What’s the matter, Gladys?” I asked, seeing something lurking in her eyes that I could barely recognize. She seemed febrile and on the edge.
“Yah, what do us black women know about famous jazz singers from America, huh? We only know our township music.”
“Gladys, Donny Hathaway is famous for singing many songs that mean a great deal to the struggle for Black Consciousness,” I told her.
Gladys rolled her eyes. “Of course you would know that, hey? Well then, he wasn’t wrong about you after all, Sylvie.”
“Who? What are you talking about, Gladys?”
She rolled over onto her stomach, cradling her chin in her hands, her eyes straying to the dark tiny window above us.
“Get some clothes on Sylvie. Steve wants to meet you. Now.”
I jumped up, scattering the book and papers that were in my lap, explaining the convoluted physiological processes of tuberculosis.
“What? Me . . . now?” I gushed like a little girl about to meet a hero.
“Yah, now. He read all that stuff you write about in that journal of yours. I gave it to him.”
“What?” I shouted and began to scramble around in my tin trunk near my bed for my journal. It was not there.
“How could you, Gladys? That is my private property. I write so much of my personal things in that journal. It is private!”
She smirked and stood up. She swayed slightly, probably the effects of her terrible cold and fatigue.
“Ey, don’t act like you didn’t want this. I know you. Secretly, you have been dying to meet Comrade Biko for a long time. Don’t think I haven’t heard the longing in your voice when I talk about him. Anyway, I did you a favor by showing him that book.”
“What do you mean . . . favor?” I asked and this time I did not hide my anger from a woman who I frequently was in awe of. Her strength and singleminded sense of purpose impressed me, made me want to be brave like her.
“Well, you know so many things. You and Steve, you both read the same books, both have the same ideas. Why would he not want to meet you? It was bound to happen.”
“So, you don’t have the same thoughts as him, then?”
“Agh Sylvie . . . don’t start that on me. I listen to Comrade Steve and his theories on psychological emancipation of the black man before we can achieve physical emancipation. Although he makes sense, I think our struggle needs more force. We can’t be spending time giving books and pamphlets filled with song words by American jazz singers to mothers whose sons are being murdered.”
“Gladys, I know the people are suffering. Believe me, I see it in the wards everyday. But I think Comrade Biko is right. Unless we can look at ourselves with pride and know that we deserve basic human rights, how can we expect the white man to take us seriously?”
Gladys stared at me for a while, and then threw a shawl at me. “See, you even talk just like him. Put that on. He is waiting.”
He stood next to a dirty window, and I immediately knew that the window was deliberate in its filth. It made things murky, it lent secrecy to its occupant. No one would care to look at him hiding there, because they’d believe that nothing important could come from such filth. But in the gloom, he glowed. He glowed like a man possessed with the knowledge that he could change the world in which he had been thrown. I loved him from the second he called my name and asked me to enter his world, filled with the hidden texts of noughts and dashes hidden inside books of human anatomy and words of disease.
In the dirty room, in his hand, he held my journal. “We have been looking for you,” he said, and I ran with abandon into the open arms of his movement. Black Consciousness.
“I have been looking for you,” I replied.
And slowly they all filed into the room. Midnight, a time for lovers. They arrived to welcome me into this world, and my free fall into it was the most beautiful and the most heard I have ever felt. My father would have been proud.
Gladys and I were the ones he guarded most closely. He realized that within the masculine fight, a feminine idea could tip the scales. The women, he always said, are the ones who would do the most fighting in this ugly war. His every sinew spoke of seduction, and Gladys and I, who had been starved of belonging in a world of men, we welcomed his seduction like true concubines.
In this era, in the stronghold of apartheid, we were not allowed to mix. Indian and black and white were forced into a separation that was clever. Some were given more, and some were given nothing. We were not allowed to hold gatherings, so we snuck into the murky room like rats, holding medical textbooks as if they were armored shields. Within them we held our plans and dreams for the future. The traditional and orthodox women of my family knew, but they could not stop the tide on which I was being carried. They wrung their washerwoman hands. But their daughter belonged to the struggle now. She did not exist any longer.
I completed my internship at the largest hospital in Durban. The one that overlooked the mighty Indian Ocean. Right on the sea-sand doorstep. Here, I was given the work that no one wanted. The professors, the surgeons, and the physicians did not hide their disdain that they were forced to allow an Indian girl into their wards. I treated tuberculosis and the worst forms of cancers. I forced my gloved hands onto white bodies who would rather have died than take pills from me into their mouths. The wives of white white-collar men, who came writhing in labor pains, would scream out their vexation—they would rather be torn in half than allow the coolie to pull their babies out of their wombs. They sometimes insisted the pills be washed before they took them into their mouths; the water melted the powdery tablets into a bitter mush, but they preferred that to my hands.
I continued my work with the Black Consciousness Movement, and soon we had organized ourselves enough to join with the early members of the United Democratic Front. Slowly, from within a tiny apartment on Victoria Street, we began planning a series of marches and speeches that would begin to spread the word—Resistance was coming, and coming fast. I took on the task of writing. I had a gift for it, and I didn’t hold back. I spent my nights writing frantically, powerful words about Black Consciousness, quoting famous freedom fighters from Gandhi to Martin Luther King, Jr. I used simple, yet strong language about how we had to elevate our education and consciousness first before we even dreamed of advancing on the apartheid government. In the apartment, we had an archaic typesetting machine, which any one or the other of us would painstakingly use to set my words into thick inky blocks. And when the room filled up with stacks and stacks of yellow pamphlets filled with quoted speeches and dates for meetings, a few of the members would take them—hidden inside black garbage bags—to the tops of buildings in universities, colleges, factories, and even in the heart of the city itself. Here they would throw sheaves of paper wildly out to the wind. The pamphlet bomb. Do it fast enough to get as many pages out as the wind could carry, and then run as fast as you could as the Special Branch chased your heels.
Many in our group began to get impatient. They could not quell their angry blood and took to the streets at nig
ht, spraying walls in the elite white part of the city center with graffiti. “Free Mandela,” the black ugly graffiti blared out. Everywhere, those words scrawled across shop fronts and office buildings.
I was alone in the apartment one morning, just arriving from a night shift in the emergency room when I heard hushed voices from the stairwell. Too exhausted to care, I glared at the stacks of papers near the typesetter, waiting for me to begin the ardous task of printing. The voices became louder, and when I heard shouting and a scuffle, I threw open the door to find two of our men throwing wild punches at each other on the stair landing. Ben and Sizwe. They had recently begun coming over to the apartment to join in any discussions, or to assist in any way. I had regarded them with suspicion, wondering if they were perhaps informants to the Special Branch, but my Comrades convinced me that they were serious members from Johannesburg, who had recognized that Durban was now becoming the hub of activity in the struggle.
Ben had Sizwe pinned against the wall, holding him by the neck. Sizwe clutched a brown package close to his chest, gripping it so tightly that he would not even let it go to protect himself from Ben’s tight grip.
“Give it to me or I swear I will kill you right here,” Ben shouted.
Both hadn’t noticed me at the open door, and I was thankful that most of the tenants on our floor were out at work.
“Ay wena, you don’t know me, Ben. I will kill you first. Let me go,” Sizwe said through gritted teeth. I could see the dark intent in his bulging eyes.
“Fokoff you, Sizwe. Give it to me. We had a plan.”
“You changed our plans, you coward,” Sizwe spluttered. The pressure of Ben’s hands at his throat made him wheeze with forced-out words.
Ben released his grip on Sizwe’s throat, perhaps afraid he could actually suffocate the friend who had been close to him for years. But he had released his grip just so that he could lunge for the package, wrapped in brown paper that Sizwe held tight to.
“I’m no coward, you hear? It’s the wrong time,” Ben said and pulled the parcel forcefully.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Stupid. This has explosives, you fool,” Sizwe said, and hearing this, I gasped loudly, suddenly realizing what the brown paper package really was. A parcel bomb.
I had been hearing some talk among some of the more militant men about taking the struggle beyond just words into action. I had dismissed it as simply the bravado talk of desperate men aching for our activities to move to a new level. Many felt that violence and rage was our only way forward. They balked at our pamphlets and poetry, calling those efforts mild and cowardly.
My loud gasp startled both men, and they stopped scuffling. They saw me standing at the door with my hands to my mouth in shock.
“You, woman . . . shut that door and get away from here. Men are talking,” Sizwe said menacingly. My feet were rooted to the spot. Something terrible was going to happen, and I knew I was the only one there to stop these two men from either harming each other in the stairwell, or harming innocent people with that bomb.
“Stop it. Both of you. What the heck do you think you’re doing?” I shoutd down to them.
“My sister, get the fuck out of here. This is men’s business,” Ben said, forgetting his fight with Sizwe and turning on me.
“Bullshit. Men’s business? You hotheads don’t you realize this is all of our business. That’s a bloody bomb, for hell’s sake. It could go off right there and blow us all to pieces, not forgetting the innocent people on this block.”
Something about what I said seemed to create a small window of reprieve, and both men visibly relaxed their tense bodies.
“Listen, Sizwe, this is crazy. I told you. Now is not the time. The time will come. So just give it to me, you hear?” Ben said, his voice calming and placating.
The slight release in Ben’s grip was all Sizwe needed. He glared first at me, then at his friend, and faster than we both could react, he dashed down the stairs, zipping the parcel bomb in his jacket.
“Oh, bloody hell. Now look what you’ve done, woman,” Ben said and ran down the stairs.
I panicked.
Where was Sizwe planning to detonate that bomb? I knew that most parcel bombs were homemade, filled with fine-pounded commonly used chemicals in an amalgam that would detonate with a depressed switch that would be released once the package was opened. Clearly, this bomb that Sizwe was carrying was intended to harm someone; it was not just meant to blow up an empty building or even a postal box. Someone had to open it to detonate it. Someone, maybe many people, would be hurt.
I ran after Ben, shouting after him, “Tell me where? Tell me.”
I was frantic, wildly chasing Ben down the lane, knowing I had to inform someone in our leadership immediately.
Ben turned around, and hesitated for just a fraction of a second. He knew it was too far gone now.
“Beachfront,” he shouted to me, and sped away.
My heart racing, I rushed back to the apartment, wondering who I could contact and how. Nothing could be done fast enough. The Durban beachfront was a lavish, sprawling esplanade where only white people were allowed to frequent the beautiful open-air restaurants and bars. I couldn’t think why, on a weekday morning, Sizwe would want to detonate a bomb, when most of the places would be almost deserted.
And then it dawned on me.
I had read in the newspaper a few days ago that the mayor of the city was planning a special birthday breakfast for his wife at one of the best restaurants on the beachfront. Sizwe was heading there. And the distance from our street to the beachfront would not take him long. What might delay him would be that people of color could not simply walk along the promenade near the restaurants. Many of our people had been arrested for simply standing nearby to look at the sea or the carnival rides with their little children. No one dared walk openly there. Sizwe would have to skulk behind alleys and the back of the restaurants, hiding behind the many decorative palm groves that lined the seafront. As I bolted, panting into the apartment, I prayed that Ben had gotten to him in time. Of course I knew the seriousness and desperation of the comrades in our struggle. We had been achieving nothing real by passively disseminating literature and giving heated speeches. But I still clung to the ideology that Steve taught me, and to the passive resistance words of Mahatma Gandhi. We did not have to take this struggle to violence. We could win with our sheer numbers, and our elevated consciousness, using intellect and not force to gain equality. Perhaps I was naive. Perhaps I was.
When I barged into the apartment, I almost collapsed with relief to see that two of the men who also held firm to the idea of nonviolence had also returned from their jobs, to grab a bite to eat from a pot on the stove that we women ensured was always full.
Panting and barely able to get my words out, I doubled over breathlessly, the words coming out in staccato bits and pieces. All they heard was “letter bomb” and “beachfront,” and both were out the door.
I collapsed on the floor. There was nothing further I could do now. If Sizwe planned to deliver the parcel disguised as a birthday gift for the mayor’s wife, in whichever way he had planned, it was probably too late.
But it was not too late. Sizwe had been delayed from entering the esplanade by a strong and increased police presence. In his volatile rage, he hadn’t thought clearly. He only wanted bloodshed; he wanted the attention of the press and the authorities so much that he had been blinded by his hatred.
I remained seated on the floor simply staring into space, my ears cocked for any sound, anything that would give me a clue to what was happening. A few people filed into the apartment, probably to get a decent meal before they went off to their jobs or their tiny, shared homes. My apartment was noted for being the one place people could come to for food and comfort, or even to bed down if they were stranded. I said nothing.
A few of the women who regularly stayed the night with me if they passed the curfew time, when people of color were not allowed to walk on the stre
ets, came in and saw me in my state, numbly staring without my usual smiles and greetings. Most of them assumed I had seen some terrible cases at the hospital and asked no questions. And I was glad for it.
Finally, after what seemed like hours but probably was just barely even one hour, Ben came back with the other two men. Sizwe was nowhere to be seen. The men walked in with defeated, hunched shoulders.
“Sister.” Ben shook me out of my daze and crouched down next to me, his hand on my shoulder.
“Sizwe . . . the bomb . . . what . . . ?” I murmured.
“They got him, Sylvie.”
I slumped forward, knowing that we would never see Sizwe again. He was probably dead already. Dead and thrown into an overcrowded morgue, where no one would bother to ask questions about cause of death. He would just disappear and remain yet another nameless casualty of our frustrating struggle. If there ever was a time when I wanted to lose all my composure and scream to the wind, it was that day.
I held onto Ben, sobbing. “Stupid man. Stupid, stupid man.”
“Agh, Sylvie, you know that they grabbed Sizwe’s nephew a week ago? He was a good boy, just walking home from work, maybe a little after curfew. They grabbed him, and now he is dead. They tell the family he fell and hit his head. Fell from what? He was walking on the bloody street for fuck’s sake . . . fell from what? Sizwe went crazy after that, Sylvie. He couldn’t leave it. He had to go and make this bomb. He found out that the mayor was having this birthday breakfast at that restaurant, and he convinced one of the waiters to deliver the parcel to him. I tried to stop him . . . I tried to . . .”
Ben collapsed in a fit of rare tears and cried in my arms.
I felt so tired. Defeated, angry, sad. But mostly, I was tired.