Sometimes There Is a Void (12 page)

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Authors: Zakes Mda

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Lesotho was of strategic importance in that region because it was completely surrounded by apartheid South Africa. That was one of its claims to fame: the only country in the world to be completely surrounded by another country. The second claim to fame was the fact that it is a very mountainous country, hence the sobriquet the Kingdom in the Sky, and also the Switzerland of Africa. Brochures never forget to remind prospective tourists that the kingdom has the highest lowest point of any country in the world. Its position in relation to South Africa was of great concern to the Afrikaners because it was harbouring ‘terrorists', namely me, my father and hundreds of other South African refugees from the Pan Africanist Congress, the African National Congress, and even the Trotskyites of the Non-European Unity Movement. The PAC had by far the largest presence, especially after the uprisings in the Western Cape and Pondoland regions of South Africa led by Poqo in the early 1960s.
The South African government was determined to do everything it could to stop the BCP from taking power in Lesotho; otherwise the country would surely serve as a base for further attacks by Poqo insurgents. Earlier in the year the South African prime minister, Dr Hendrik F Verwoerd, had announced that the three British protectorates in southern Africa, namely Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland, would be better off being ruled by South Africa as Bantustans.
That was what he was negotiating with Britain, and the British would have acquiesced to that had there been no resistance from the people of the Protectorates. In Lesotho, that resistance was led by the BCP.
I was so enthusiastic about the political situation in Lesotho because I saw it as an extension of the political struggle of black South Africans against the apartheid regime.
My political activism started with my helping in the printing and distribution of
Seboholi
, the party organ published by the Mohale's Hoek branch of the BCP. After school Willie, Sabata and I would go to the party offices where some young women typed articles on stencils. These were written by the branch leaders of the party, such as Pelesa Mofelehetsi who was one of my teachers at the Government Controlled Primary School, and Marake Makhetha, a party activist who was one of the numerous sons of the Reverend Makhetha, the local minister of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society. Whereas the BNP had the unwavering support of the Roman Catholic Church, the BCP was much favoured by the Protestants, and the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, later dubbed the Church of Lesotho, was the premier Protestant denomination in the country.
After the articles had been typed by the women and edited by Marake Makhetha, it was my task to operate the Gestetner cyclostyle machine and print many copies; Sabata and Willie collated and stapled them. The papers were then sold in the streets by a group of younger boys.
On Sundays, while Willie went to the Anglican Church where he was an altar boy, I sat in my room and drew cartoons that featured on the last page of
Seboholi
. I aspired to be another Bob Connolly, the South African cartoonist whose masterpieces appeared in the
Rand Daily Mail
. But my immediate role model was Mohau Meshu Mokitimi, a famous artist who drew cartoons for the BCP national organ,
Makatolle
. It was my dream that one day my cartoons would feature in
Makatolle.
My famous cartoon that caught national attention was that of Dr Verwoerd as a fisherman who catches a big fish, Chief Leabua Jonathan, the leader of the BNP, with a cob of maize as bait. Verwoerd pulls the line across the Caledon River.
The story behind this cartoon was that the South African government
had just donated more than sixty bags of maize to the BNP to buy the votes of impoverished people in the villages of Lesotho. Leabua Jonathan's campaign was focused in the rural areas where he was garnering a lot of support from the peasants who were then being rewarded with rations of maize.
Another of my cartoons that had people talking was titled ‘Strange Bedfellows'. It illustrated the King of Lesotho wearing his big crown in bed with a man wearing pyjamas with the hammer and sickle symbol of the Communists, and another man with a stethoscope representing Seth Makotoko, a medical doctor who was also the leader of the Marematlou Freedom Party – the MFP. Here I was playing on the cliché that politics made for strange bedfellows. The MFP, which had been established to protect the interests of the chiefs against the commoners and was supported by the King, was in alliance with the Communist Party of Lesotho. I heard that people in taxis and in shebeens were remarking at my brilliant observation that the Communists were so unscrupulous that to advance their interests they were prepared to work hand in glove with monarchists. The BCP, on the other hand, was against the monarchy and would have preferred a republic, if they could have had their way. They shouted slogans and sang songs that
marena ke linoa-mali, marena ke Marashia
– royals are bloodsuckers, chiefs are Russian thugs.
Marake Makhetha took a shine to me and I was quite often seen in his company. This, of course, increased my stature in the eyes of the other youths for I was much closer to the branch leadership. I was well versed in issues, thanks to my father's round-table family conferences of yore and to my voracious reading of newspapers. I could engage in lengthy debates on Pan Africanism and why it was in the interests of Western powers to keep Africa from uniting.
‘You are right, son of Africa,' Marake Makhetha would say. ‘The usual divide and rule tactics.'
‘But as Osagyefo says, the United States of Africa is inevitable,' I said. ‘As peoples of the African continent we share a common history, a common interest and a common destiny.'
We had taken to calling President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana
Osagyefo, which means ‘Redeemer' in his Twi language. He was the leading light of Pan Africanism and ardently supported the liberation of South Africa because, according to him, no African country would ever be truly free until every square inch of Africa was free.
‘Yes, son of Africa,' said Marake Makhetha. ‘The CIA can kill Patrice Lumumba and any of our leaders, but in the end we'll triumph.'
Then he broke into a song:
Mali a Lumumba rea a batla
– We demand that the murderers of Lumumba pay for his blood. We all joined in the song whose melody was based on a popular Protestant hymn about Jesus' blood, while we churned out the party organ from the Gestetner. These were the most exciting moments in my life; politics was giving me some validation of my worth. Older men like Marake Makhetha were taking my views seriously and engaging with me as an equal. People in the district were reading my cartoons and laughing at the folly of such politicians as Leabua Jonathan, Hendrik Verwoerd, Seth Makotoko, Mmaphosholi Molapo, John Vorster, Harold Wilson and many others whose shenanigans my pen was exposing to the world.
Occasionally I thought of Keneiloe. If only she could see me now. This yearning for her presence, particularly for the purpose of witnessing my greatness, became even more searing when Ntsu Mokhehle, the president of the BCP, drove down from Maseru in one of the thirteen Land Rovers donated by Mao Tse-tung of the People's Republic of China to hold a series of meetings in the southern districts. He was accompanied by Potlako Leballo, the secretary general and acting president of the PAC – the president, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, was at that time serving an indefinite term of imprisonment on Robben Island under a special law enacted by the apartheid parliament called the Sobukwe Clause. Leballo introduced me to Mokhehle, and from then on I accompanied the two leaders when they went to campaign in the Quthing district. Mokhehle's driver, Blaizer, became my hero because he was always with the leaders and knew their secrets. He even knew their girlfriends in every port of call because he drove these venerable leaders to their trysts.
The only reason
Moetapele
– the Leader, as Mokhehle was called – needed me in Quthing was to interpret for him when he addressed the isiXhosa-speaking Bathepu (plural of Mothepu) people who lived
in that district and who stubbornly supported Chief Leabua Jonathan. Although Mokhehle was popular in the urban areas and his rallies were attended by thousands, in the villages of Quthing only small pockets came to listen to him, and for most it was out of curiosity to see the man who had called their honoured chiefs bloodsuckers and was described by the Catholic Church as the devil incarnate. In a village like Mjanyane there were more people who came from Maseru with
Moetapele
in other Land Rovers, including his bodyguards, than there were supporters of the BCP. Even if there were only forty or so people Mokhehle would make a fiery speech, which I would duly interpret with just as much fire. I often added my own sentiments that the Bathepu's support of Leabua Jonathan was tantamount to treason because he was bent on selling Lesotho to the Boers. Some of them would yell back that Leabua gave them maize. ‘What can your leader give us?'
‘
Moetapele
will certainly not give you any maize because he is not buying your votes. But if you vote for him he will give you a better life,' I said. ‘Popompo (we called Leabua Jonathan ‘Popompo' because he was fat) will make you slaves of the Boers. Why do you think he is against our fight for the return of the lands of Lesotho that were conquered by the Boers? Do you know that the whole of the Free State belonged to Lesotho once? That is the Conquered Territory we are talking about. After independence next year, provided you vote for Ntsu Mokhehle, we'll get our Conquered Territory back and your husbands and sons will not have to cross the border to work in the gold mines of the Free State. Those mines will be in Lesotho. They belong to Lesotho.
Ea lla koto!
'
One or two people whose hearts had been won over would cheer, but the rest would jeer and boo. They were Leabua's people and nothing could change that. Their chiefs had commanded them to vote for the BNP and the word of the chief was sacred. That was why we mockingly called them the people of
Inkosi Ithethile
– the Chief has Spoken. Their ignorance embarrassed me because at the end of the day they were my people.
Potlako Leballo, who understood isiXhosa very well, was impressed with my performance. He kept whispering to Mokhehle what I was
saying. These meetings had an informal air about them, unlike the rallies of tens of thousands that Mokhehle addressed at the Pitso Ground in Maseru.
After the meeting, while Mokhehle and Leballo conferred with a gentleman who was their point man in Mjanyane, an old woman in the red-ochre skirts and black
iqhiya
turban of the Xhosa people came to me and in very serious tones said, ‘Your voice tells me that you are a Xhosa like us, my child. So, what are you doing with these Communists?'
‘These are freedom fighters, mother,' I said. ‘They are the people who are fighting for our independence from the British without selling us to the Boers.'
‘If you say you want independence from the British, where are we going to get sugar? Where are we going to get paraffin? These people you are following like a blind bat are the children of Mao Tse-tung. Do you know that?'
Blaizer, who had been standing next to me, guffawed and said, ‘There is no point of arguing with the Bathepu.'
‘What do you know of Mao Tse-tung, mother?' I asked.
‘Oh, she is a bad woman. Leabua was here last week and he told us all about her. She's the kind of woman who would eat her own children. In her country she has enslaved everyone. If your Mokhehle wins the elections Mao will come here and enslave all of us. It is better to be under the Boers than to be under Mao.'
Mao Tse-tung a woman? I joined Blaizer in his guffaws when I realised that of course to these peasants Mao would be a woman. Mao is Sesotho for ‘your mother'.
 
 
 
I HAD HEARD OF
Maseru, the capital of Lesotho, from Ntlabathi Mbuli, the Poqo cadre who helped me cross the river and was my father's office clerk. He had moved to Maseru to work at the PAC headquarters where he edited
The Africanist
, the party organ. So, I was quite excited when I went there for the first time.
The bus from Mohale's Hoek took almost the whole day to get
to Maseru – only a hundred and twelve kilometres away – because it moved very slowly on the dirt road and stopped every few minutes to drop or pick up passengers. Halfway through the journey, at Mafeteng, it stopped for a very long time while passengers bought fat cakes and fried fish from the vendors who all surged to the windows as soon as the bus stopped. I didn't know at the time that this dusty miserable-looking town would one day be my home.
Having lived in Johannesburg once, Maseru didn't quite impress me. The only tarred road was Kingsway, the main street. The tallest office building was Bonhomme House, which was only four storeys high. But opposite it was what could be the tallest building in the country: the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Victories, built of solid rock on sprawling grounds with paved pathways and numerous semicircular steps leading to its wide ornate wooden doors. Now, that was an impressive building with its steeples and spires that reached to the heavens. If God lived anywhere at all, it had to be in that cathedral.
Potlako Leballo welcomed me at the PAC headquarters on the fourth floor of Bonhomme House. My friend Ntlabathi Mbuli was present, so were John Nyathi Pokela who later served some years at the Robben Island prison and on his release returned to exile where he became the president of the PAC. Also present was Sipho Shabalala, a highly intellectual cadre who later survived a bomb explosion that had been planted under his car in an assassination attempt.

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