Going to the Mountain

by Ndaba Mandela

  Standing in the hallway outside my mother’s hospital room, I asked the new doctor, “How long do you think it’ll take for her to get well?”

  “Get well?” The doctor looked at me with a quizzical expression. “Ndaba, did you know that your mother is HIV positive?”

  “No,” I said. That was suddenly the only word in my head. No. No. No.

  “Pneumocystis pneumonia is caused by a fungus,” she said. “It’s very common. Virtually everyone is exposed to it by the time they’re three or four. A person with a healthy immune system might never know they have it. But someone with your mother’s condition, a person with HIV…”

  She kept talking, but it was just a lot of noise and words and numbers and information on a chart, and I was concentrating on keeping my knees from buckling under me. At some point, I just turned and walked away. I broke down crying. I went back to my mother’s room and raged at her. “How could you not tell me this? Why didn’t you tell me?” She sat on the edge of her chair, staring at the floor. I could see the weight of abject shame and isolation like a physical burden on her narrow shoulders. It was one of the saddest moments of my life.

  My mom went back to Soweto, but she rapidly got sicker and sicker. I brought her back to the private hospital so she would be closer to home. Every day that I could be there, I went and sat with her, and every night I had to drink myself to sleep. I couldn’t smoke enough weed to dull this pain. We sat for long hours without speaking. There was nothing to say now. There was only however many days I could stay by her side and hold her hand in mine, and so I sat there, and the weeks went by, and my mother died on July 13, 2003. It’s very difficult for me to talk about it. I’d rather tell you the rest of the story about the Zulu Woman and the Accommodating River.

  Remember, the woman says, “River, give me back the child I lost long ago.” And the river says, “Cut out your heart and give it to me.” And she does. She casts her heart into the river, so the only way she can go on living is to go live in the river with her heart, leaving the baby boy with his aunties on the shore. Every night, while the river god is sleeping, the aunties wade into the water with the baby so his mother can nurse him and play with him, and when he grows up, he devises a plan to rescue her. The Zulu woman’s baby, who became a boy, who became a man, gets the people from the village to come with him to the river. He loops one end of a rope around a tree and ties the other end around his middle. He tells his friends, “Now, when I get my arms around my mother, you pull with all your strength.” But the river god overhears this, and he is a jealous god. Just as the young man gets his arms around his beautiful mother, she turns into a sleek silver trout and disappears into the endless stream.

  I was gutted by my mother’s death. The sadness was exhausting. And I was angry. I couldn’t even wrap my head around the fact that she’d chosen not to tell me something so important. Other people most certainly knew—the other doctors and nurses in Soweto, my aunts, her friends—and no one saw fit to tell me this? They all thought it was better for me to be blindsided? Or did they actually think I would never find out? HIV/AIDS was still something no one was willing to talk about. I stared at the newspaper reports about my mother’s death. The family’s official press release stated that she had died of pneumonia. A week later, Auntie Maki and I had a terrible falling out that started with her insisting on taking Mbuso and Andile to our granddad’s birthday party. I thought this was very wrong, and I told her so.

  “These two children lost their mother one week ago! You don’t take them to a party.”

  “Everyone else is going,” she said. “Who’s going to look after them?”

  She said it would be good for them. Robert De Niro was going to be there. Lots of press. People would wonder if they weren’t there for Madiba’s birthday celebration. It turned into a big tug of war, and I lost. She told Mbuso and Andile to get in the car, and they did as they were told. The whole thing made me even more heartsick and angry—at Auntie Maki, at the world, at life.

  “My mother died while I was in prison,” my granddad told me as I helped him out to sit in the yard. “I came in from the quarry one day. Someone handed me a telegram from your dad. My mother had died of a heart attack. Her burial was my responsibility. I was her only son. Her eldest child. I was not permitted, of course. It made me question this path I’d taken—the difficulty my choices had caused her.”

  I didn’t have an answer to that. Frankly, none of that was helpful. I wished we could just sit quietly. It didn’t occur to me then that he might have been trying to tell me that he understood this feeling of powerlessness that overwhelmed me because the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS was as unyielding as stone walls and iron bars. My mother passed away in 2003, twenty years after the human immunodeficiency virus was identified, and we—as a family, as a nation, as a global community—were still utterly unable to have an honest conversation about it. The stigma overpowered common sense, overpowered common decency, overpowered love. And I had just witnessed up close how that stigma could kill a person as effectively as the disease itself.

  “When a man’s mother passes away, this causes him to reevaluate his life,” said the Old Man.

  He was right about that, I realized. Not in that moment, maybe, but over the following year. You see, somewhere in all that mess, I relocated my Legend. The pieces were coming together—that moment in Disneyworld, that eye-opening time spent with my father, everything I’d seen and heard in my life with my granddad—it was still there. Kweku and I started talking about a concrete structure for the organization that would become Africa Rising, imagining a vehicle for the next generation to build on the cultural and sociopolitical progress Madiba and his generation had set in motion.

  “We want to address the stature of Africa on the world stage,” I told my granddad. “And we have to address AIDS. We have to go there.”

  “It’s a difficult problem,” he said. “We’re faced with a conservative community. You remember the lady in KwaZulu-Natal just a few years ago—murdered—stoned to death by her own neighbors when she confessed to being HIV positive.”

  “I know. I remember. And that’s not an isolated case. I understand why people are afraid to talk about it. That’s the first thing that has to change.”

  “Ndaba, I have tried. All the way back in 1991, I went to Mpumalanga and spoke to the people. I said to the parents, ‘We are facing an epidemic. You must teach your children about safe sex. You must talk about contraception.’ I told them their government and their community must work together for the good of their children. I could see in their faces, they were revolted by what I was saying. They were angry. ‘How can you talk like this! You’re encouraging prostitution among our children!’ In Bloemfontein, the principal of the school—a woman with a university degree—she said, ‘Madiba, you mustn’t say these things. You’ll lose the election.’ I knew that she was correct. And I was not keen to lose that election. I had to abandon it, Ndaba. But in 1999, in my last media address as president, I did tell them that initiatives must be advanced. Educating the public, making AZT more affordable—these are expensive programs. You can’t expect it to happen all at once.”

  I understood what my grandfather was saying, and I knew that he had done more than anyone else ever did before him, but it wasn’t enough.

  “Nothing will ever change if we can’t talk about it, Granddad. If a woman can’t tell her neighbors without fearing for her life—if a mother can’t tell her son—nothing changes. I can’t accept that.”

  He listened and nodded.

  I continued my studies, focused on getting my degree. I knew that was the first step to whatever came next. I also knew that the Old Man was committed to changing the culture of silence and stigma that provided such fertile ground for HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

  The summer after my mother passed away, something huge happened. Just a few months before she died, The Clash front man Joe Strummer passed away suddenly, and one of his last projects was a collaborat
ion with U2’s Bono on the song “46664 (Long Walk to Freedom)”—a tribute to my granddad and the centerpiece of an epic “46664” concert series to raise funds and awareness for HIV/AIDS worldwide. This identifying number was assigned to the Old Man when he was taken to Robben Island, the 466th prisoner in 1964. They gave him that number, thinking they had power over him, and he reclaimed it in 2003, wanting to remind people that the real power is in their hands.

  Rolling out the concert plans, he said, “I cannot rest until I am certain that the global response is sufficient to turn the tide of the epidemic.”

  The first “46664” concert was set to happen in Cape Town on November 29, 2003—a week before my twenty-first birthday. I was getting more and more excited as the summer went by and the lineup got more and more mind-blowing. Peter Gabriel, Robert Plant, Beyoncé, Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen, Angelique Kidjo, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, The Who, Yvonne Chaka Chaka—even the Soweto Gospel Choir was in there for Mama Xoli. But let’s be real. Beyoncé, man. I was going to meet Beyoncé.

  The day of the event, the Old Man took the stage at Green Point Stadium in front of 18,000 concertgoers and millions more watching on TV around the world. He said, “When the history of our time is written, will we be remembered as the generation who turned our backs in the moment of a global crisis, or will it be recorded that we did the right thing? We have to rise above our differences and combine our efforts to save our people.”

  It was a great moment. Beyoncé was there. I wasn’t.

  See, just a few weeks earlier, because we were approaching my twenty-first birthday, my father again raised the subject of my going to the mountain.

  This time, the Old Man said, “Yes. He’s ready.” So I went.

  9

  Ukwaluka.

  “Going to the Mountain”

  Qunu sits about an hour from the coast in the Eastern Cape province. This was the place Madiba loved best, the home of his happiest childhood memories. We always went there in December, to the house that was a replica of the prison warden’s house, so over the years, I grew to love it there too. The rolling hills were brilliant green in the spring and faded to rich amber and brown during the hottest part of the summer. On the horizon, between the village and the distant mountains, rocky outcroppings, boulders, and scarps jut into the landscape. The village itself is a picturesque collection of little brick houses and rondavels, hyperefficient circular cottages and outbuildings with thatched or tin roofs. (I’m looking forward to the rondavel fad, which is sure to replace the current “tiny home” fad soon.) At the edge of the town is the cemetery where my great-grandparents and other family members are buried.

  As we made the long, scenic drive, Granddad pointed out his favorite landmarks. “See the flat rocks over there? We used to slide down those smooth rocks when I was a boy. Slide down again and again until our backsides were too sore to slide any more. And this over here—all of this was farmland then.” Over here was the field where a donkey threw him in a thorn bush. Over there was the stream where he and his friends swam and caught fish. It’s a rural area with farms and dairies scattered hither and yon, so every once in a while, we’d have to stop and allow for cows crossing the road, and this was the Old Man’s cue to tell us about drinking warm milk straight from the udder and about the deeply significant connection between the Xhosa and the cattle that, for many generations, kept them well fed and provided a solid source of wealth. He took his role in tending the family’s cattle and sheep very seriously when he was a boy, but like the shepherd Santiago in The Alchemist, he knew he would have to leave them someday.

  In Qunu, they still love to tell a story about a white chap whose motorbike broke down as he was riding by the village on his way across the vast rolling hills. This was quite an exciting event, so the village children all ran out to spectate.

  One kid steps up and says, “May I be of help?”

  “You speak English!” The cyclist is surprised but glad to have a hand at fixing the motorbike, which is soon good to go. The cyclist thanks the kid and hands him three pennies.

  “Thank you,” says the little dude. “One for each of my sisters and one for my school fees.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Nelson.”

  To keep it simple, he gave the cyclist the name he’d been given in school, but the kid’s birth name was Rolihlahla, which basically means “troublemaker” and translates literally to “the one who tugs the branches of a tree.” I love that name, because it so perfectly suits my granddad, but so does his manhood name, Dalibhunga (“convener of the dialogue”), which he was given at the time of his circumcision.

  I looked forward to receiving my manhood name, mostly because that would mean the ordeal was almost over. I was gratified to hear Madiba say he believed I was finally ready to go to the mountain, but I have to admit, I was starting to get nervous on the way there. The Ukwaluka is a hardcore test of courage and the source of a lot of controversy. Every year we hear about incidents in which initiates have been disfigured or suffered the loss of their genitals or even died of complications and infections. There was a period when the government tried to regulate how the circumcisions were being done and provided stipends to people who were supposedly qualified to do the procedure, but that opened the door for a bad element—people who were in no way qualified but obtained the government certification, doing it for the money with no reverence for the tradition—and the result was a terrible spate of botched circumcisions. Hundreds of initiates died. Others were left disfigured in a way that prompted them to take their own lives.

  Even when every precaution is taken, things can go badly, and the initiates are way out in the countryside, far from medical help. One of the initiates in Mbuso’s group went into some kind of respiratory distress days after the circumcision. I had a car, so they asked me to rush the guy to the hospital, and I drove all the way at top speed, but it was too late. By the time I got to the clinic in Idutwya, he had passed away in the backseat of my car. I felt such sorrow for his family. The incident shook me to the core. In that moment, I realized that my grandfather didn’t hold me back as a punishment; it was for my own safety. This is not something one dares to approach in a reckless or casual manner. It’s imperative that the initiate be ready for what he is about to endure and that he goes into it with his khanki—advocates who’ll stand by him the whole time. Throughout the month-long ritual, the initiates—the Abakhwetha—are tested to physical and psychological extremes.

  At the end of November, I finished writing my exams, and then my dad and Mandla drove me to the site about 30 km from our house in Qunu, just outside of Idutwya. I was accompanied by Dad, Mandla, and my granddad’s cousin Zuko Dani, because you need an elderly man who’s familiar with the details of tradition and can talk you through each step. Madiba provided the ceremonial blanket, two bottles of brandy, and payment for the ingcibi, the gentleman who does the cutting. I had already seen a doctor, who inspected my organ and provided a notice that said I was in good health and okay to go to the mountain. It’s not a literal mountain, by the way. That’s a figure of speech. My group, which included twenty or so initiates, gathered in a secluded village on a hillside. I was glad to have two of my cousins with me. If you’re born to a royal house, the tradition is to go in accompanied by cousins, young men close to your age whom you can depend on for comradeship, courage, strength and support.

  So here we are. Crack of dawn. We leave Qunu and go to the place where we’re going to be circumcised and stay for three weeks before we return to the village as men. We arrive and walk to the kraal where we meet the ingcibi who will perform the ritual, and I know shit is about to get real.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  Okay. We do that, like snakes shedding our skin, transforming into something elemental and raw. I am told to sit on a rock while the holy man who’ll be with us throughout the whole ordeal explains everything that’s about to happen and everything that’s expected of us in the
process. He directs us to enter the kraal, which is where the animals usually stay at night. I walk barefoot across the dirt and cow dung floor and sit on the rock, willing myself to remain perfectly still, listening as the ingcibi progresses down the row toward me with an assistant carrying his assegai—the sharp spears that will be used. He has more than one, because each initiate requires a fresh blade. My heart is pounding in my chest. I force myself to breathe slow, regulated breaths, just as the Old Man instructed me, knees separated, locked at a ninety-degree angle.

  Now the ingcibi steps into position.

  “Look to the East!”

  I turn my face to the East. I feel the searing stroke of the blade. A sickening shiver shoots down my spine, followed by a shockwave of agony and adrenaline. Involuntarily, I cough twice, and then I turn my face to the West and bellow.

  “Ndiyindoda! Ndiyindoda! Ndiyindoda!”

  The ingcibi moves on to the next chap, leaving me suspended in a blinding aura of pain unlike anything I’ve ever experienced or could have been remotely prepared for.

  I am a man.

  Despite the intense heat in the kraal, gut-deep trembling overtakes me. The body’s natural shock response.

  I am a man.

  I’m like a tightrope walker. I dare not look down. I have to look down. I see blood dripping from my manhood.

  I am a man.

  After he finishes with the last guy, the ingcibi washes his hands. He comes to me with a plant and a goatskin strap. He ties my piece with it, sort of like a bandage. Someone places a blanket around my shoulders. A domed hut called an iboma has been built by the villagers to accommodate the initiates during the rest of the ritual. Thorny branches are laid out on the ground all around it, leaving a narrow path to the single doorway. Someone leads me to the iboma, and I gingerly sit down, trying to breathe. Other than the bandage-like thing and a strap around my waist, I am naked. During this transition period, I am neither boy nor man; I am an animal. We are all animals. God is an animal.