Mother to Mother

My son killed your daughter. People look at me as though I did it. The generous ones as though I made him do it, as though I could make this child do anything. Starting from when he was less than six years old, even before he lost his first tooth or went to school. Starting, if truth be known, from before he was conceived; when he, with total lack of consideration if not downright malice, seeded himself inside my womb. But now, people look at me as if I’m the one who woke up one shushu day and said, Boyboy, run out and see whether, somewhere out there, you can find a white girl with nothing better to do than run around Guguletu, where she does not belong.

White people live in their own areas and mind their own business — period. We live here, fight and kill each other. That is our business. You don’t see big words on every page of the newspapers because one of us kills somebody, here in the townships. But with this case of Boyboy’s even the white woman I work for showed me. The story was all over the place. Pictures too.

[…]

Why is it that the government now pays for his food, his clothes, the roof over his head? Where was the government the day my son stole my neighbour's hen; wrung its neck and cooked it — feathers and all, because there was no food in the house and I was away, minding the children of the white family I worked for? […] Why now, when he’s an outcast, does my son have a better roof over his head than ever before in his life? Living a better life, if chained? I do not understand why it is that the government is giving him so much now when it has given him nothing at all, all his life.

As I step out of the door minutes later, I hastily throw out a couple of reminders: what they’re supposed to do for me that day around the house, what food they’re not to touch. “And remember, I want you all in when I come back!” Not that I think this makes any difference to what will actually happen. But, as a mother, I’m supposed to have authority over my children, over the running of my house. Never mind that I’m never there. Monday to Saturday, I go to work in the kitchen of my mlungu woman, Mrs Nelson; leaving the house before the children go to school and coming back long after the sun has gone to sleep. I am not home when they come back from school. Things were much better in the days when I only had Mxolisi. […] To remind them of my rules therefore, each morning I give these elaborate, empty instructions regarding their behaviour while I am away. A mere formality, a charade, something nobody ever heeds. The children do pretty much as they please. And get away with it too. Who can always remember what was forbidden and what was permitted? By the time I get back in the evening, I am too tired to remember all that. I have a hard time remembering my name, most of the time, as it is. But, we have to work. We work, to stay alive.

Wednesday is a school day. However, not one of my children will go to school. This burdensome knowledge I carry with me as a tortoise carries her shell. But, it weighs my spirit down. Two days ago, the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) ordered the school children to join Operation Barcelona, a campaign they say is in support of their teachers who are on strike. Students were urged to stay away from school, to burn cars and to drive reactionary elements out of the townships. Flint to tinder. The students fell over each other to answer the call. Now, anyone who disagrees with them, the students label “reactionary.” This has struck stark fear in many a brave heart. One student leader has publicly announced, “We wish to make it clear to the government that we are tired of sitting without teachers in our classes.” These big-mouthed children don’t know anything. They have no idea how hard life is; and if they’re not careful, they’ll end up in the kitchens and gardens of white homes ... just like us, their mothers and fathers. See how they’ll like it then.

“What is the matter with our people? Don’t they know the police will pull this township apart? Is it not enough we kill each other as though the other is an animal and one is preparing a feast? Is that not evil enough? A white woman? Are people mad? Have they lost their minds?” My voice was shrill to my own ears and I saw that my hands shook. Indeed, my whole body was trembling.

“It’s schoolchildren who did that,” said my neighbour.

I gasped, memories of the debate on the bus returning to haunt me. Words I’d taken not quite seriously, now wore a ghastly sinister shade of meaning.

“Who else would do such a mad thing?”

I thought I detected a note of gloating in her voice. Skonana has no children and somehow manages to make that seem such a virtue. “I have no children and no worries,” is her favourite saying, whenever any one of us complains of some misdeed one of our offspring has sprung on us. Skonana seems to equate child with problem. Mind you, looking at what scraps our children do get into these days, she could have a point. But I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her that.

With the passage of time, our schools only grew worse. In 1976, students rose in revolt and, before long, Bantu Education had completely collapsed. It had become education in name only.

My son, Mxolisi, is twenty. Yet he is still in Standard 6. Standard 6! As though he were twelve or thirteen years old. But then, he is not alone, neither is he the oldest student in his class. Twenty. And still in Standard 6. And I am not saying he is the brightest pupil in his class either.

Boycotts, strikes and indifference have plagued the schools in the last two decades. Our children have paid the price.

Once more, it was brought home to me what turmoil the coming of this child had brought to my life. Were it not for him, of course, I would still be in school. Instead, I was forced into being a wife, forever abandoning my dreams, hopes, aspirations. For ever.

“For shoulders so tender, so far from fully formed, great is the weight you bear. You hold yourself and you are held ...” — she paused before saying the word ... “responsible.” She said the word with a sigh, as though she were a judge sending a young person, a first offender, to the gallows. Sending him there because of some terrible and overwhelming evidence she dared disregard only at her own peril.

[…]

“Mama,” she said, her voice once more her own. “You must free this your son.”

I said I didn’t understand.

“You know what I’m talking about. Go home. Think about your child. Children are very sensitive. They know when we hate them.” After a small pause she shook her head. “Perhaps, I use a word too strong ... but, resentment can be worse than hate.”

It was my turn to gasp. My whole being turned to ice. Tears pricked my eyes. I felt my father-in-law’s eyes on me and turned mine his way. His brow was gathered, his eyes wide with unasked questions. But the sangoma wasn’t done.

“But to come back to why you have come to see me,” she broke our locked eyes, “this child has seen great evil in his short little life. He needs all the love and understanding he can get.”

Were he to leave school before finishing high school, he would be sorry for the rest of his life. He would be part of the thousands upon thousands of young people who roam the township streets aimlessly day and night. That is how Mxolisi stayed long enough in school to become a high school student.

Unfortunately, it is in that high school that serious problems started. Mxolisi got himself involved in politics. Boycotts and strikes and stay-aways and what have you? Soon, he was a leader in students’ politics and many who didn’t know his face knew his name.

These children went around the township screaming at the top of their voices: LIBERATION NOW, EDUCATION LATER! and ONE SETTLER, ONE BULLET! And the more involved in politics he got, the less we saw him here at home.

“Mmelwane,” Skonana quickly jumped in. “We have come to cry with you ... as is our custom, to grieve with those who grieve.”

I didn’t know what to say or feel. I had not summoned my neighbours. Usually, the keening of mourners calls neighbours to the house that death has visited. I had not called my neighbours — I had not announced the death. Yes, there has been a death. But is it I who may keen? Is it I whom people should help grieve?

“We have come to be with you in this time,” Yolisa’s voice said.

And we talked, my neighbours and I. It was like the opening of a boil. Thereafter, I was not so afraid of my neighbours’ eyes. I did not immediately see condemnation in the eyes that beheld mine. When some stay away, I do not tell myself they are embarrassed or avoiding me. And even if they do, I know there are some among my friends and neighbours who feel for me — who understand my pain.

It is people such as these who give me strength. And hope. I hear there are churches and other groups working with young people and grownups. Helping. So that violence may stop, Or at least be less than it is right now. That is a good thing. We need to help each other ... all of us, but especially the children. Otherwise they grow up to be a problem for everyone. And then everybody suffers. I pray there may be help even for young people like Mxolisi. That they may change and come back better people.

My Sister-Mother, we are bound in this sorrow. You, as I, have not chosen this coat that you wear. It is heavy on our shoulders, I should know. It is heavy, only God knows how. We were not asked whether we wanted it or not. We did not choose, we are the chosen.

But you, remember this, let it console you some, you never have to ask yourself: What did I not do for this child? You can carry your head sky high. You have no shame, no reason for shame. Only the loss. Irretrievable loss. Be consoled, however. Be consoled, for with your loss comes no shame. No deep sense of personal failure. Only glory. Unwanted and unasked for, I know. But let this be your source of strength, your fountain of hope, the light that illumines the depth of your despair.

And my son? What had he to live for?

My son. His tomorrows were his yesterday. Nothing. Stretching long, lean, mean, and empty. A glaring void. Nothing would come of the morrow. For him. Nothing at all. Long before the ground split when he pee’d on it, that knowledge was firmly planted in his soul ... it was intimately his.

He had already seen his tomorrows; in the defeated stoop of his father’s shoulders. In the tired eyes of that father’s friends. In the huddled, ragged men who daily wait for chance at some job whose whereabouts they do not know ... wait at the corners of roads leading nowhere ... wait for a van to draw up, a shout, a beckoning hand that could mean a day’s job for an hour’s wage, if that. He had seen his tomorrows — in the hungry, gnarled hands outstretched toward the long-dead brazier, bodies shivering in the unsmiling, setting sun of a winter’s day. Long have the men been waiting: all day. But chance has not come that way today. Chance rarely came that way. Any day. Chance has been busy in that other world ... the white world. Where it dwelt, at home among those other beings, who might or might not come with offers of a day’s employ. Where it made its abode — in posh suburbs and beautiful homes and thriving businesses ... forever forsaking the men looking for a day’s work that might give them an hour’s wage. The men from the dry, dusty, wind-flattened, withering shacks they call home. Would always, always call home. No escape.

Such stark sign-posts to his tomorrow. Hope still-born in his heart. As in the hearts of all like him. The million-million lumpen, the lost generation. My son. My son!

That unforgiving moment. My son. Blood pounding in his ears. King! If for a day. If for a paltry five minutes ... a miserable but searing second.

AMANDLA! NGAWETHU! POWER! IT 1S OURS!

AMANDLA! NGAWETHU! POWER! IT IS OURS!

[…] Transported, the crowd responded; not dwelling on the significance of the word, deaf and blind to the seeds from which it sprang, the pitiful powerlessness that had brewed this very moment

And the song in my son’s ears. A song he had heard since he could walk. Even before he could walk. Song of hate, of despair, of rage. Song of impotent loathing.

AMABHULU, AZIZINJA!

AMABHULU, AZIZINJA!

BOERS, THEY ARE DOGS!

BOERS, THEY ARE DOGS!

[…] The crowd cheers my son on. One settler! One bullet! We had been cheering him on since the day he was born. Before he was born. Long before.

Nongqawuse saw it in that long, long-ago dream: A great raging whirlwind would come. It would drive abelungu to the sea. Nongqawuse had but voiced the unconscious collective wish of the nation: rid ourselves of the scourge.

She was not robbed. She was not raped. There was no quarrel. Only the eruption of a slow, simmering, seething rage. Bitterness burst and spilled her tender blood on the green autumn grass of a far-away land. Irredeemable blood. Irretrievable loss.

One boy. Lost. Hopelessly lost.

One girl, far away from home.

The enactment of the deep, dark, private yearnings of a subjugated race. The consummation of inevitable senseless catastrophe.

[…] My son was only an agent, executing the long-simmering dark desires of his race. Burning hatred for the oppressor possessed his being. It saw through his eyes; walked with his feet and wielded the knife that tore mercilessly into her flesh. The resentment of three hundred years plugged his ears; deaf to her pitiful entreaties.

My son, the blind but sharpened arrow of the wrath of his race.

Your daughter, the sacrifice of hers. Blindly chosen. Flung towards her sad fate by fortune’s cruellest slings.

But for the chance of a day, the difference of one sun’s rise, she would be alive today. My son, perhaps not a murderer. Perhaps, not yet.