The Mandela Plot

by Kenneth Bonert

  Shaolin is leaning forward and I’m starting to worry because he’s talking louder too, and others are listening. I look down, away from his eyes, and he reaches across and pokes my knee. “See me, look here, look at me, I give you the truth. My father fell drunk in the street and a lorry killed him. Or maybe he didn’t fall. He was buried here, I can show to you—afterwards I looked through his things. There was the rubbish spike, lying there. The sack. I remembered everything what he said. Man, I wanted to take that spike straightaway to town and stab the first white man through the heart with it and go on stabbing all of them. I wanted to jump on that double-decker bus and go down the aisle and stab those eyes, who looked down at me. No, but I know what will happen. I can stab one, two. But I’m just a boy. Police will come, they will shoot me dead, or take me to John Vorster Square and throw me out of the tenth floor . . . So I went back to my work in the bioscope. I was down, in depression. Then, suddenly, I see it. No, it is me up there on that screen. They have stolen my land and killed my father. What I must do I must find a kung fu teacher for me, to give me the power. I was so young. I was looking for one actual chinaman. I know there was Chinese, some building for Chinese, some restaurant on Commissioner Street. I went looking in the windows, one day I see there some blue-and-white plates, fans, black furniture. I go inside the shop. I had it in my mouth to say hello in Chinese, which I learned some by watching when the dubbing was not good. So I said in Chinese hello but he was Indian, Mr. Prashad. He asked me what language and how did I learn. He called his wife. Prashad didn’t know any kung fu, he was small and thin like a bird.

  “But what is the power? One wise chinaman told us, said, Power it is the barrel of the gun. Yuh. But is it true? The gun is a metal tool which is made by what? The mind, the brain. Ahhh, the mind is the power behind everything, even every army, every police. Prashad, he taught me this. He had the Shaolin of the mind to teach to me. I was very lucky to find him. My life was coming true just like the film. I start to work for him. He would go in auctions and buy estates and put in his shop there on Market Street. And always he had books. Mr. Prashad and his wife, they lived upstairs. Now, these days, Group Areas, that law is not so strict in town, so it’s many black and Indian also living there, and in Hillbrow. But then in that time it was only whites and Prashad he was fighting in the courts. And the other ones around, they used to throw his shop with stones, put dirt in his letterbox. But, see, Prashad wasn’t like me, with rage, with hate. He was political. I didn’t even know what politics was. He tutored me first there is no help to get angry, you must be in the politics, to organise resistance up from the gruss roots. He explained me the philosophy of what is resistance. To have the patience and the politics, to organise the people. One drop of water is nothing but if millions of drops are moving together you have a sea, waves, that even can wash a mountain down. Prashad explained he was a member of the ANC. I never even knew what ANC stood for, I mean literally, or the PAC, the SACP, I wasn’t sure of it, the letters . . . For my work I was doing movings for the shop, there was a little place for me at the back. I didn’t have any papers, any pass. When it wasn’t busy, Prashad told me—those books, you go in and you read. I love to read before, younger, but he reminded me again of it, and gave to me the right books. He had banned books, he hid them in with the estate, in the boxes. If the police would raid and try to charge him, he can say, Your Worship it is not my fault, I bought it from that estate. Put the blame on some white man who died. Clever, see? Thinking, cautious. He taught me. And me, I was like someone thirsty finding water in the desert, you know. I started to understand my situation inside politics, what the political system is. The system of capitalist domination of the planet. Everything in the hands of a few rich and all the rest are just slevs to labour for them and steal for them the minerals of the lands. So I understand I am born in that class, also, it is my bad luck, it is not my fault. We are the majority, yuh, we exist for our blood to be used like petrol for those mines to get the gold out. The banks and the mines have everything and the people are dumb labour in their country. Yes we have a fence around us in Jules, why? Yes, because we are like the farm animals, the oxes and the cows. We must work the mines and be put back in the fence. No, they don’t want us to learn this, of course. They don’t want real education for us, only Bantu Education that is shit. To teach obedience and menial skills, to divide us the people by our vernacular languages. Because what will the farm animal do if they know they are going to be eaten? If they know they must only work to death. This is political awareness, step one. I would read and discuss with Mr. Prashad and Mrs. Prashad also. Prashad didn’t teach to me how to kick someone but he was still my Shaolin master. He gave to me questions to make me think. Colonialism. If a thief come with a gun and takes your clothings he must go to jail. But if the thief is the Queen of Engerland, then nothing must happen? Violence and colonialism. And then with the Prashads we talked about history. I learned all about synthesis and anti-thesis. The freedom struggle that took place in India, also. But always I wanted to read best about China. Chairman Mao. The Little Red Book. The anti-imperial struggle for the people. This was the real kung fu movie.

  “We would sit on the floor under the table after supper and listen quietly on that shortwave radio. Seven o’clock. This is Radio Freedom, from the ANC fighters over the border. You can get eight years in prison for listening to this. But yirrra! Starting with the sound of the machine gun tuh-tuh-tuh, and the warriors shouting amandla! ngawethu! The power. Is ours. I can never forget that, how it felt. I saw that everything I was learning is the truth. I was growing also, turning into a man. But not like my father. I said I must be disciplined to be strong. I started running. I must never drink or smoke. One day Prashad said, no, there is no future for you inside the regime. The state is too powerful, you can do nothing here, you need the trainings. He would help me to get out and find it, the ANC will provide. There is a way, if I can get to Swaziland, where my father’s people came from, from there is a way to go more north. We have bases. In Mozambique, in Zambia. But Angola specially—many bases. Yes, and I went. I have been. What you will never hear on your televisions or your radios here, they tell you we are nothing, but it’s not so. We have the bases. We have the fighters, the cadres, the infrastructures. We are engaging in border combat with the regime. I grew up in them, you see? That is why I am Comrade Shaolin and not the name I was born with. This is what the name Shaolin means. Do you understand, Martin?”

  I nod. I feel hot in here. His voice in the dim light is pulling me down, down, making me sleepy. I want it to stop.

  “Yes, what I always wanted was to go to China, of course, but I got my advance trainings in Germany and Ukraine instead. Is okay. Is good trainings. When I left it was Vorster was prime minister here, when I come back it is State President Botha. One Afrikaner regime and another one. One white man and another one. Nothing changed. This Botha is trying to throw down some crumbs for the farm animals to feed on. Some little bit parliament for Indians he gives, and now you won’t be put in jail for sex with another colour. Crumbs. Oh thank you, my baas, but, you understand Martin, he is only doing these because we are winning now. We have the youth uprising, the Comrades. We have the sanctions, the community actions, the armed resistance of the people’s war. The liberated zones in our townships. We are winning this war. Our strategies are succeeding. The movement of history is with us. They can send the army here, but this—this is not theirs, this is ours, here. Like I have say for you, Martin. I am the commander here. The good revolutionary must swim like a fish in the sea of the people. Mao taught it. Wise man Mao. We are the antithesis to the white imperial presence. Synthesis is coming—” He turns his head, someone is at his shoulder, leaning down and murmuring. Shaolin looks at me. “We can start.”

  17

  On the homemade stage, Shaolin lifts his fist and shouts amandla! and everyone else shouts back ngawethu! and he does that a few times while I think about the story he told wondering
how much is really true. After the amandla shouts get really loud, he switches to mayibuye! and everyone shouts back iAfrika!—bring back Africa! Then he goes through a whole lot of vivas in English. Like he says, “Viva freedom viva!” And everyone in the room shouts viva! He vivas Comrade this and Comrade that, vivas the revolution and the people and the Struggle and the African National Congress and uMkhonto we Sizwe, the Spear of the Nation. He vivas so many things I lose track of the number. Then they sing African songs with most everyone dancing on the spot, doing the toi-toi which is this knee-lifting hop that I’ve seen on the news like a million times, only this isn’t like TV. All those voices in that hot, dim place singing like mad and whistling and going hai-hai! together—man, I feel it deep in my guts and my skin gets goose prickles all over. Shaolin starts talking about missions that they have accomplished, he’s speaking mostly Zulu, it sounds like, but he switches to little bits of English, it’s a mishmash, even some Afrikaans. He asks different Comrades to step up and make reports. Everyone that gets up has to start with the same salute and amandla! and then a bunch of vivas and then maybe a song or two. I’m learning that these revolution types are into their speeches big time. If they have to do this like every week it must get lank boring. Like Assembly at school.

  Then Shaolin starts talking about “the American” and my ears prick up. Now I see someone coming across from the side, up onto that low stage made of crates and moving into the lantern light—it’s Annie. Next thing she is lifting her fist and shouting amandla! and they give the shout right back and she gives off a whole bunch of vivas and a whole lot of African words that I don’t know. No ways is she just some courier. She starts talking, thanking the people for having her here in Julius Caesar, which she calls “a stronghold of resistance, a legendary place,” and then she waits while Shaolin does some translating I spose for people whose English isn’t that good, and then people start whistling and cheering. She tells them they are an inspiration to everyone in the world who is fighting oppression. Even in America, she says, we know the name of Julius Caesar township and the heroic resistance that is taking place here and she wants them to know that Americans are also in solidarity with their struggle. She starts talking about the “directive from Comrade Tambo in exile” and I know she’s talking about Oliver Tambo who is the leader of the ANC, a terrorist that the government’s been after since forever, I think. Apparently the ANC has been ordered to “make the country ungovernable” as their top mission, which is news to me. Annie says the ANC leaders in exile in Lusaka, Zambia, and London, England, have been “making great efforts to support you, the people, to fulfill the mandate of the directive and to expand the people’s war. We need to work together to bring our struggle to the white areas also and ensure that South Africa as a whole is shut down! Shut down!” This leads to a minute or two of chanting and singing. Shut down, shut down. When the audience settles, Annie says, “Comrades, our leaders in exile have thought hard about how to bring the tools to your hands to win our people’s war.” She says there’s a new generation in the leadership, a young faction using technology—and they’re behind a mission code-named Operation Fireseed.

  Annie waits for Shaolin to translate, then she touches her chest and says, “Comrades, I come to you from overseas with the mission of educating you about Operation Fireseed. How we can all play our parts to carry it out here in Julius Caesar and throughout our entire sector.” Her arms sweep out while Shaolin translates. Then she tells the people that there are a dozen couriers like her that have been sent into the country from overseas, each one carrying this—she holds up the tape, my tape—and each one responsible for its dissemination. “The leadership,” she says, “they know they can’t give the people enough weapons or trained soldiers to defend themselves from the regime. But they can provide these instead.” She licks her lips, tosses her thick hair. “When Comrade Winnie Mandela says we have no guns, we only have matches and stones, she is not exactly right. This video will show you that we have more than we think.” She says the tapes were made with the help of our friends in other liberation movements as well as former members of the regime, ex–South African military and police who have come over from the dark side.

  She repeats that our first objective in Operation Fireseed is the wide distribution of these tapes—“these seeds of fire”—to every corner of this country. Meantime some others have carried a desk with a TV onto the stage, plus a video machine wired to car batteries. Annie taps the machine and says, “These are everywhere now. Even though more than twenty million people have no electricity in this country, there are millions of televisions everywhere, even in villages, even in places like this one.” She flicks her fingers at the car batteries and the audience whistles and stomps. “It is estimated there are at least one quarter of a million VCRs, video machines you call em, that are in African hands, and that number is mushrooming fast.” She puts her hands on her hips while Shaolin translates, and then she goes on. “Technology changes things, I mean totally. At one time there was no such thing as books, right? In those days the church controlled everything. Then the printing press came and people started to read for themselves and what happened? There was a revolution. This thing here—this is the real amandla ngawethu, the real power to the people.” She’s lifting up the tape, shaking it overhead as Shaolin speaks, his voice getting fast and excited. Annie shouts, “Viva victory viva!”

  “Vee-va!”

  “Viva revolution viva!”

  “Vee-va!”

  “Viva uprising viva!”

  “Viva!”

  “Viva Nelson Mandela viva!”

  “Viva!”

  “Victory or death!”

  “We shall win!”

  “Victory or death!”

  “Matla ke a rona!”

  Annie switches on the TV, showing a snow pattern as the car batteries hum. She sticks the tape in and the screen goes blue. Shaolin’s right there and I’ll bet he always knew it was no bomb—he was just being cruel to me up on that hill. Those burnt bodies don’t have tongues but they can speak without making a sound and they say a truth in me that’s louder than any of these fancy speeches. There are white lines on the screen now and then a picture, bulging and shrinking before it becomes a room with dirty wallpaper. A table in front has nothing on it. From the left, a guy walks in, wearing dark glasses plus an Arab kefiya but wound round his face to make himself an invisible man. He holds up a box and pulls out a pair of rubber gloves like doctors use, snaps them on. Then he takes the gloves off and shakes his head and makes a sign like no no no. Then he puts the gloves back on and gives a thumbs up. The sign language makes me understand this is not meant to have a soundtrack. This other guy comes in. This one’s got on a black ski mask and he also puts on rubber gloves and shows it’s wrong not to. He starts laying out stuff on the table, one thing at a time. It’s like ingredients, like a cooking show—cooking for deaf people. There’s this bag of Wonderwerk fertiliser and a pack of Blitz fire starters. There’s a yellow ten-pack of Lion matches, a sixty-watt light bulb, a bottle of paraffin. Things from ordinary shops that you can get anywhere. Kefiya takes out a razor blade and a pin, plus a strip of sandpaper and some wires and pliers and a frying pan. They start cooking, they go slowly, repeating their steps. They use big, obvious hand signals to show us when to give extra-special attention to something—the little details that must be important. I watch them treating the fertiliser with paraffin, watch them grating the Blitz as they include it in the process. At times Ski Mask holds up his wrist with the watch and points to it and then shows with fingers how long to wait for that part of the recipe. Kefiya fetches a little blackboard and draws a mushroom cloud and puts it on the untreated fertiliser, then he takes another board and draws a mushroom cloud that’s much bigger and puts it by the cooked stuff and writes down 3X next to the cloud. He points from the one to the other—

  Annie moves across and hits pause. “You-all get that?” she asks us. “Get what he’s showing? Th
e application of the flammable agents, it increases explosive power by a factor of three.” People shout back yes, they understand, they want more. Annie says that the Fireseed idea is to make it simple to understand so that anyone can put it into practice, a kid or an adult, no language required. All they have to do is watch and copy. Comrades, you will study the tape lessons and then take copies to the people all across the sector. Then they can set up workshops and start to produce “effective arms” that can be stockpiled or “put into immediate action.” She says, “Your uprising here, your Mzabalazo, has made a zone of freedom in Jules and there are many others like it across the country. But in the next stage of the people’s war we must take our fight from the free zones into white South Africa. We must break down its power structures just as you have done here.” There’s a translation and huge cheers and some more singing and dancing. Then she says that you the Comrades can use your “people’s courts” and your “street committees” to require that every citizen of Julius Caesar township must study the tapes and must use what they learn to produce their quota of weaponry. “We must mobilise the people to this task,” she says, “and in this way the free zones will become the people’s arms factories!”