‘I’m so sorry you have to hear such stories,’ Bukhosi said when I asked him about our father. ‘He wasn’t always a bad man! He could be very kind to us. I promise! How I wish it were you, Zamani, who is my father!’
If only he knew my joy! Not at this awkward projection of fatherhood, for I am only twenty-four and he had at that time just turned seventeen, but rather at his hero worship. I didn’t reply immediately, assessing him, trying to think of the best thing to say.
‘I’m here for you,’ I said, finally. ‘Anytime you need anything. And I know your father isn’t that bad. In fact, I think you should keep asking him about Gukurahundi. He wants to open up.’
‘But he keeps beating me!’
‘He just doesn’t know how to talk about it. And you, as his son, should help him do it. Trust me, he’ll thank you for it.’
Though I learned that my surrogate father had overcome his violent ways, it was plain to see that the boy and his constant probing about Gukurahundi was a trigger. I was truly pleased for Abednego for managing to quell his abusive tendencies. He reminded me of my Uncle Fani, without the tears, the sleepless nights and the drinking sprees. He rejuvenated my faith in the redeeming power of family, in the possibility of transcendence. At the same time, I couldn’t help but see, in his periodic outbursts with the boy over Gukurahundi, the glint of opportunity, and I admit I actively stoked those flames.
I began to spend more and more time with Bukhosi. I did enjoy our time together. He was sensitive and pliant, and looked up to me as no one else had. I could sense a similar disquiet in him, which I later attributed to our father’s determination that he be an engineer, for though he was over-passionate, making for a feverish Mthwakazi disciple, he was very weak in matters of rational and mathematical thinking, particularly where Newton and his theories were concerned. It was a mutual feeling of confusion and exclusion that attracted him to me, or I to him, what’s it matter, we were two elements with opposing charges brought together through a magnetism of vision and purpose. Both of us fumbling about in an unmoored present, untethered, without knowledge of a robust family hi-story in which to cultivate our roots.
But it’s not my fault that he went missing! It’s Dumo’s fault! His and the boy’s! I was never the instigator here, only the catalyst! And yet, every photo of the boy fills me with guilt. His pictures are plastered everywhere, on the walls of the High Tek Intanet Café by the shops, and also outside the Bakery and Spar Supermarket, and also the community hall down the road. Even in the city centre he’s there, on the streetlights, on the shop walls, on the City Council bins where he competes for attention with posters of the Reverend Pastor’s advertisement for his Christmas revival at Blessed Anointings. I can’t bear to look at those posters of Bukhosi! I can see his photo in my mind still. Black and white is that printed face, yes, just a picture, but his lips assault me with the memory of their nostalgic, fleshy plumpness, brown and moist like dewy soil. They hover in the air, suspended from the rest of the black and white printed image, and part to reveal two front teeth, the one on the left chipped. And now, they are guffawing, a voluble aaaha ha ha ha that tapers off into a tormenting chuckle, klklkl klklkl klklkl, spattering spit in its wake.
Help Me
The Reverend Pastor called around yesterday morning, as I knew he would have to, holding my laptop out like a holy relic. He made a show of handing my Mac back to me, patting me on the back and apologizing profusely – he had been wrong, he said, his IT guys hadn’t been able to find anything that could help them with the boy. On reflection, he believed that I, Zamani, had been right all along. I had only been trying to help the family.
It’s wonderful how the aims of blackmail never have to be stated; how those being blackmailed intuitively know what it is that the blackmailer wants. I didn’t have to go to the Reverend Pastor after catching him at his prayer session with Sister Gertrude, because I knew he would come to me. I didn’t have to tell him what I wanted from him, because I knew he would already know. I wonder if his IT guys really did fail to find out anything about Bukhosi’s Facebook messages? They did, after all, have a whole week to try, even without the boy’s messages. But who the hell cares? I can send that Reverend Nobody’s life crashing down with the click of a button, and it’s enough for now that he knows this.
Finally, I can breathe! Yoh.
Today, Mama Agnes invited me to have breakfast with her and my surrogate father, something she hasn’t done since the Reverend Pastor started making a noise about his IT guys. It felt so wonderful, to be able to bask in her presence once again! We sat out on the back stoep, her and I side by side, slurping our tea, which was creamy with Chimombe milk, and biting into chunks of warm, fresh Baker’s Inn bread layered with margarine, gifts from the Reverend Pastor. My surrogate father was hunched over on an upturned beer crate, opposite us, sitting right in the sun’s glare, nibbling at his bread and barely touching his tea. His skin was like paper – he’s almost become a ghost.
She asked me, Mama Agnes, if I had heard from the boy. I said I hadn’t, but that I was sure I would hear from him soon. My surrogate father began to say something, and then seemed to change his mind, shutting his mouth without making a sound.
Looking pointedly at him, I said I would write to the boy again.
‘Yes, we need to prepare for his coming,’ said Mama Agnes. ‘Christmas is just a few weeks away. Ask him when he’s arriving, hantsho?’
The problem is, I can’t keep the boy ‘away in South Africa’ forever. I don’t know if I should tell my surrogate family that’s he just not coming back. But that will force Mama Agnes to try and leave us, again. Perhaps I can offer to be the one to go to South Africa and look for the boy? I don’t really want to go. These past few days with the Mlambos have been my happiest in I don’t remember how long. I haven’t even felt compelled to pick up my Red Album. And when I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, I noticed the shadow of a paunch; under my Mama A’s care, I’m beginning to fill out.
In the end, I decided it’s better if the boy says he’s coming for Christmas. If he says he’s never coming back now, he’ll rob me of a happy holiday with my new family. Just like he robbed me of my filial relationship with Dumo.
I couldn’t stop grinning this afternoon when Mama Agnes kissed me on the cheek after I showed her the Facebook message from the boy saying he was coming home, he would arrive on Christmas Day. She did it like it was the most normal thing for her to do. I took the opportunity to cup her cheeks then, my Mama, and she let me, she didn’t pull away. My heart was loud in my ears. I took a moment to take in her face, up close, the December light enriching her walnut skin, softening the bruises where my surrogate father hit her. I dared to press my nose against hers, her petite nose with its concave, hyperbolic triangulation, flared with prosaic sensibilities. I trembled at the sight of her lips, their nostalgic, fleshy plumpness reminding me of Bukhosi. I pulled away then, the image of the boy spoiling the moment. When I looked up, she was smiling.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for bringing our Bukhosi back to us.’
I brought my palm to my face, to the place, still moist, where she had kissed my finely sloping cheek.
It was always me taking the boy places, him taking the places meant for me. I did take him to see Dumo. It was during the first of Dumo’s cell meetings, where the first of the future cell group leaders of the Mthwakazi Movement had been summoned. The meeting was held in a mottled house in Mzilikazi, that township named after King Lobengula’s father, the ferocious King Mzilikazi ka Khumalo, on a Sunday afternoon in mid-August, two months before the Mthwakazi rally where Bukhosi and Dumo disappeared. The house was situated right across from the Barbourfields Stadium, and as we walked up its crooked path, picking a delicate way across cracked tiles, weaving through an untidy queue that had coiled into itself on the street outside the house to fill empty containers at the mouth of the trickle where a pipe had burst, the cheers of the soccer spectators swelled over us lik
e revolutionary chants. Dumo stood stiffly by the entrance, dressed in a grey suit and a powder blue shirt. He hugged me and shook Bukhosi’s hand.
He had put up a life-size, black and white photo of Queen Lozikeyi on one of the walls. The Queen appraised us haughtily from her position on the ground in front of a beehive hut, her legs folded beneath her, her hands clasped on her lap, her small, pretty face angled, unsmiling, at the camera. The crown of her head was coiled in beads, and a pair of buckhorns dangled from a necklace. Her midriff was bare, and a cowskin kilt was secured around her waist. I bowed before her, making sure to avoid her bare midriff, lest my prying eyes be met with a disapproving queenly gaze, avoiding also her magnificent bosom that could no doubt feed a whole nation, and which Bukhosi, who was staring with open interest, if not a little insolence, for she was the Queen, I’m sure would have loved to suckle on, what with his perennial yearning for the motherly teat.
It was on that day that Dumo taught the boy how to recite the Queen’s totems. He had tried to teach me too, impressing upon me their ceremonial importance, how they kept the past alive and relevant to the future by officiating the present. There was immense power in ceremonies, he had said to me, they helped build community and fostered among a people a sense of purpose. Still, it took me a while to learn the Queen’s totems, and at times I still forgot one or two – because I wasn’t a rigorous enough revolutionaire, Dumo always chastised. Perhaps that’s why he expressed such excessive joy when the boy, hearing him say the totems only once, began to recite them, leaping from side to side, his hand curled around an imaginary spear which he raised solemnly to the Queen:
‘Queen Lozikeyi, daughter of the Dlodlo clan. Mother of mothers, your copper skin is an aesthete’s dream! Materfamilias! Mpangazitha! How do I tell of the mocha of your eyes? Mbanjwa! How do I trace the crescent of your cheeks? Mabango! Mtingi! How to fill the generosity of your nostrils? Bangile! Bringer of Rain! How to taste the sassy plumpness of your lips? Mthiyane! Mathabela!’
He recited the Queen’s totems over and over, even going down, at one point, on bended knee before the glossy life-size photo. Dumo raised his eyebrows at me. I admit, I was pleased with the boy then, quite naïve to the fact that he had already begun to usurp from me Dumo’s affections.
The meeting proper started soon afterwards. And there, crammed in the sitting room with the furniture, were eleven occupants, four men, including myself and Bukhosi, and seven women, some of whom could well pass for men, our shoulders hunched like thieves on the prowl – for what else was this talk of secession, if not, like government ministers at the country’s coffers, an impolite way of stealing pieces of a nation? We were huddled like a soccer team, ready to wage war over our little turf. And as the roars of the regiments in the Barbourfields Stadium peaked, Dumo, who kept pat-patting his ’fro, and whose Mandela parting glistened with Vaseline, like a slice of sun shining upon the long walk to freedom, cleared his throat and began:
‘Em, first I must begin with, what is uMthwakazi? What is it that we stand for?’ And here he shook a fist. ‘We are peacefully but firmly advocating for the emancipation of the Mthwakazians from the oppression and the colonial rule of the Republic of Zimbabwe!’
‘Amandla!’ we boomed.
‘To create a democratic state of uMthwakazi, with the capital uMhlahlandlela, where our people will live in peace and harmony with all tribes!’
‘Power to the People!’
‘The rewriting of our Mthwakazian history and the restoration of Mthwakazi pride!’
‘Amandla bo!’
‘Power to the People!’
Spurred on by the chants of the gathering, Dumo’s voice became a current of smouldering lava. ‘The Mthwakazian state shall be based on internationally recognized democratic principles, and shall be a beacon and source of pride for Africa. We shall adopt the precepts as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Convention against Torture, the principles of the Rome Statute, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief.’
‘Hawu hawu!’
‘We are saying that we are against the shutting up of what happened to us via that Unity Accord Agreement of ’87. What was that? We are not even allowed, after Gukurahundi, to acknowledge our dead, to build shrines in their honour, to search for their bones in the mass graves. How do we bring peace to our dead, how do we restore our self-confidence as a people? Nonsense, boMtshana, nonsense! These colonial borders are artificial. The white man didn’t understand what he was doing. They should have grouped us with South Africa, at least. Not this nonsense. Now, we want the land Mzilikazi occupied here. We want self-determination!’
‘Amandla!’
‘We are vehemently asking and peacefully demanding for a secession from the Republic of Zimbabwe, to form a peaceful Mthwakazian Republic, where our people can thrive in peace.’
Somebody in the group laughed. ‘Aliphuphi nje. Are you stupid or-o what? We all know that will never happen. They will never give you a piece of Zimbabwe.’
The chorus ebbed, and ten pairs of eyes turned towards the chap who had spoken. He was tall, and incredibly dark, with a wide face and a flat nose. His Ndebele was hesitant, with inflections in all the wrong places.
‘And why not?’ said Dumo. ‘South Sudan is busy trying to break away from the rest of Sudan. Eritrea managed it in 1993. Heh? You’ve got to wake up, boMtshana, ah ah! We’ve got to think. Already, we have offices in the UK. And we are planning on opening something in South Africa.’
‘UK? Are you drunk? You mean to tell me you’re heading a movement from the UK?’
‘It’s not safe here, Mtshana, ah ah. You know how it is. Unlike the Opposition Party, we don’t have the backing of the West, don’t have friends in high places. Everything is grassroots, uyabo. But come with me two months from now, we’re organizing a meeting at Stanley Hall, the first Sunday of October. Come, I’ll introduce you to some interesting people. The revolution is real, Mtshana! The revolution will be televised!’
‘You delusional fool,’ the man said, this time in English. ‘You are all fools, all of you. Fools!’
Dumo seemed to contemplate the fellow for a minute. ‘And who are you, Doubting Thomas?’ he said, finally. ‘Why did you come here? I don’t seem to remember seeing you in these parts before. We have not shared a drink, you and I, like brothers.’
The man started. The crowd had formed a fist around him.
Dumo began to spit compulsively. ‘I said, who are you?’
I grabbed the chap by the scruff of his collar.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘Who are you?’ chorused the crowd.
Who are you? Bukhosi echoed.
‘Are you a Mthwakazian?’
‘Are you a Mthwakazian?’
Are you a Mthwakazian?
‘Speak up!’
‘Who are you?’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Look at his ID, he’s a Shona! Spy!’
‘Spy!’
‘Spy!’
Spy!
I thrust the first kick. Boots, sandals, sneakers, mocs, bucks, captoes, plimsolls and loafers in various stages of ageing rammed into the stranger. Outside, the uproar at the Barbourfields Stadium swelled, momentarily drowning the fracas in the house.
‘Help me,’ croaked the stranger.
I stopped, breathless. There had been something exhilarating in throwing the first punch, in kicking the first kick. Too exhilarating. I had not, before this, considered myself a man of action, a man of violence. I had also never seen Dumo so worked up before.
The boy was staring, open-mouthed. I yanked at his arm, dragging him through t
he scrum, away from the stranger. Together, we slipped out.
I took long, rapid steps, so that the boy was obliged to stumble after me, struggling to control his irregular breathing. I felt afraid.
What kind of country would our Mthwakazi be? Would we continue the legacy of violence? Could we imagine into being the country as a Manifestation of Love? What kind of country would that be? It was at this point, as I walked and thought the thoughts I thought, Bukhosi wheezing beside me, that I wondered what my own contribution to our hi-story had been, would be, could be. That struggle between the fallible ambition of man to lean towards immortality and the fleshly evidence of his certain mortality; that tormenting battle with his consciousness, which is able to live vicariously at any point in time, which dreams, loves, hopes, and aspires to the immortal, but is always brought down to earth by his flesh, this container in which he has been contained, and which will inevitably return to the earth to rot. Too much dreaming, and he begins to forget his fallibility and, believing himself to be infallible, he commits horrendous acts of ambition which amount to crimes against humanity; too much dying, and he begins to forget the sacredness of life, the beauty of dreaming, to live in fear and be paralysed by this fear.
What had we become, Dumo and I?
The following morning, Bukhosi confessed to me that he had slept fitfully, his slumber punctured by dreams of a pair of bloodied lips that kept croaking, Help me.
I, too, began to have dreams that unsettled my sleep; visions I called them, so vivid were they, of mortified morticians beholding in their morgues corpses in various states of anime; from bellied men with orgasmic grins to emaciated women wearing varied synonyms of mirth, to malnutritioned children blissed with laughter, their distended tummies swollen evidence of death’s irony.
There cropped up in my dream those killed by the puzzling infinitude of arithmetic, so that it seemed no matter how much it ballooned, there was to be no end to our over-hyperinflation, to the electricity and telephone bills that came with more and more zeros added each time, inciting a tubby Reserve Bank Governor to enter the stage of my dream with a flourish, wearing a red cape and a top hat and, while tapping his short, fat fingers against his huge belly, lambast those demonic Western Powers who were to blame for each and every one of the nation’s calamities. Behind this invective, the Governor slash-slashed the imperialist zeros from the national currency. So that, instead of carrying one hundred quintillion dollars, the people of the House of Stone emerged from boa constrictor bank queues fingering flimsy blue notes bearing the tender of only one hundred trillion Zimbabwe dollars. But this was of little comfort; what was the arithmetic limit, they asked themselves? None, apparently, came the whispers. They were yet to surpass the nonillions, the octodecillions and the novemvigintillions. Such looming mathematical torture proved too much – the prospect of standing at shop tills trying to work out quindecillion change from quattuorvigintillion bank notes was more than the spirit could bear – and some dropped dead right then and there, on the pavements outside the banks. (What kind of Einstein offspring was the Frank-Einstein nation trying to birth? Children who could differentiate a quintillion from a trillion before they had even turned three?)
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