Sometimes There Is a Void (17 page)

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Authors: Zakes Mda

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The evenings were pretty much free. Ntlabathi and I spent most of them in the shebeens of Maseru drinking brandy. As far as my father was concerned, I was in Maseru to attend art classes at the British Council so he gave me some money for the fees that the white art instructor lady charged and for food. He did not know that I only went to art class once and was soon bored by the still lifes we had to draw. I used the money for brandy and cigarettes. When the money ran out I bought the brandy on credit. My partner in crime had long-standing credit of his own in a number of shebeens at the Location, at Sea Point and at Moshoeshoe II, three of the Maseru townships where we used to drink.
Shebeens were the sites of some of the most heated debates. Here we met some of the leading lights of Maseru, ranging from teachers to lawyers to senior civil servants to nondescript gangsters. Most of
the patrons in every shebeen were supporters of the BCP, which had narrowly lost the elections to Chief Leabua Jonathan's Basotho National Party. There was bitterness all round because Ntsu Mokhehle who had fought for freedom over the decades would not have the honour of becoming Lesotho's first prime minister. That honour was denied even Leabua himself because he lost in his constituency of Kolonyama, his home village. The BNP deputy leader, Chief Sekhonyana Maseribane, became the first prime minister of Lesotho. Leabua only took over as prime minister two months later after Mokone Mothepu resigned his safe BNP seat at his Mpharane constituency, making room for Leabua to win it back in a by-election. I had campaigned for the BCP in that by-election, which was in the Mohale's Hoek district.
There was a lot of anger among the elite of Lesotho because the peasants in the villages determined the future of the country by voting for an uneducated chief, and the BCP, a party of the towns and the more enlightened, took only second place with twenty-five parliamentary seats. The party of the country bumpkins ran to the winning post with thirty-one out of the contested sixty. Even if they went into alliance with the royalist Marematlou Freedom Party, which won the remaining four seats, they would not be in a position to form a government. Indeed, the Queen of England through her High Commissioner had called upon the BNP to form a government.
This anger played itself out in the shebeens we frequented. We cursed the apartheid government of South Africa for supporting Leabua Jonathan with maize that he distributed to the villages, as well as South African Afrikaner business tycoon Anton Rupert for pumping money into the BNP campaign. We consoled ourselves that Leabua was too stupid to run a country; soon his government would fall and the more intelligent and learned leader, Ntsu Mokhehle, would take over. As we sipped tots of brandy we laid bets on how long the government would last. I was of the opinion that it would not last longer than six months.
‘Who would allow a nincompoop like Leabua in the forums of the world?' I asked. ‘Do you think a man like him can be at home in the company of Kwame Nkrumah and Abdel Nasser?'
The shebeen denizens all laughed and nodded in agreement; there
was no way these great Pan Africanists whose names I had invoked would be seen dead with a lackey of the Boers like Leabua. I felt great that I was commanding the debate with these professional people when I was nothing but a seventeen-year-old high school dropout. It was never much of a debate, really, because everyone present was a BCP supporter. It was more like venting out after the defeat at the polls. If there was any disagreement at all it would be on the methods that should be used to overthrow the upstart from the seat he had usurped from
Moetapele
, Ntsu Mokhehle.
Ntlabathi and I always returned to the camp in the small hours of the morning in a sodden stupor. We staggered along the streets of Maseru singing Nana Mouskouri or Frank Sinatra or Edith Piaf at the top of our voices. These were Ntlabathi's favourite singers, in addition to Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis Junior. It was not unusual for us to stagger along the streets of Sea Point grating the midnight silence with our poor man's imitation of Dean Martin singing ‘Volare'.
Mongrels howled and yelped and growled and barked at our contorted Italian and slurred voices. We paid no attention to them. We were somewhere in Hollywood in the hell-raising company of the Rat Pack. Yes, the very Rat Pack whose barroom brawls and trysts with glamour girls Ntlabathi narrated with relish when he was not talking revolution.
We fell silent as soon as we entered the camp at Thakalekoala's sprawling property. We tittered as we tripped on logs scattered on the ground. We tiptoed into the room so as not to wake up the sleeping soldiers.
On one such occasion I could not even take off my clothes by myself. I was tottering all over the place, and almost fell on the men who were sleeping on mattresses on the floor. Ntlabathi asked one of the men who had raised his head warily to help me undress and prepare my bedding.
‘Help him, son of Africa, he is a stranger,' said Ntlabathi as he fumbled with his moccasins.
‘How can I be a stranger in Africa?' I asked.
The soldiers cheered. Those who were asleep opened their eyes and were updated by those who had heard my question.
‘What did he say?' asked one sleepyhead.
‘He said, “how can I be a stranger in Africa?”' answered another. And then they all broke out into fresh laughter.
‘He is a true Pan Africanist,' one said. ‘An African can never be a stranger anywhere on the African continent.'
Just that question was enough to gain me the men's respect. They were eager to take me under their wing. This made me feel like a real soldier of freedom, although I had some serious doubts about the nature of the war they were fighting.
The doubts had started the previous year, before PK – that's what we lovingly called Potlako Leballo, the secretary general and acting president of the PAC, because his other name was Kitchener – was kicked out of the country by the British authorities under the pressure of the South African government.
He had once sent Ntlabathi to call me to his office at Bonhomme House. I remember him sitting behind his desk puffing on his pipe, which was the trademark of all true African revolutionaries those days. Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, the jailed president of the PAC, smoked one too. As did a number of the leaders of the ANC. As smoke rings ascended above his head he had reminded me of the oath that I took when I joined the PAC in the presence of witnesses, particularly of John Pokela, who was my father's friend and protégé from the same village of Lower Telle, and of Ntlabathi.
‘Azania wants your service in the true spirit of our motto:
Service, Suffering, Sacrifice
,' he had said.
Pride had swelled in my chest. Azania needed me!
Perhaps he wanted me to go and interpret for Ntsu Mokhehle again among the stubborn Bathepu people in the southern district of Quthing. Of course Quthing was not Azania, the PAC name for South Africa. But anything to help Ntsu Mokhehle and his BCP win the elections was a step forward towards the liberation of South Africa. For one thing, if the BCP won, Lesotho would be a base for our Poqo forces to launch guerrilla attacks into South Africa. Yes, most likely PK wanted to send me to the village of Mjanyana in the Quthing district to work with the Mokhehle people in the enemy territory of the Bathepu. I
was looking forward to joining my old friends, especially Blaizer who continued to be Mokhehle's faithful driver. This time I was going to drink those wonderful guys under the table; the last time I was with them I was not yet an imbiber of the ‘waters of immortality' – as my Poqo comrades called brandy, quoting from a famous isiXhosa novel,
Umzali Wolahleko
by Guybon Sinxo.
But Leballo had soon shattered my daydream of debauchery among the red-ochre Bathepu maidens in the gullied valleys of Mjanyane when he said, ‘I want to send you to the Free State.'
I had not been to South Africa since I crossed the Telle River and was whisked into exile by Ntlabathi. Why would the leader want me to go back there?
‘You are going there to advance our cause,' he had answered the question I had only asked in my head. ‘I want you to get work as a labourer on one of the farms. Many Basotho boys your age cross the border illegally to work as casual labourers especially at harvest time. I want you to join those workers. There'll be others from our forces, but you'll only know them later.'
I remember being gripped by sudden panic as he outlined his cockamamie scheme: he was recruiting me to join his secret force that would kidnap Boer children from the Free State farms to the mountains of Lesotho where he would hold them as hostages for the liberation of South Africa.
I had known immediately that I would not be up to the task. I certainly would not have the heart to kidnap children. But they were enemy children, I had argued with myself as I walked out of Bonhomme House to sunny Kingsway with throngs going about their business. Those kids were going to grow up to be big Boers with hairy arms and FN rifles; they would be kicking down doors of township houses and arresting my people for the crime of being in an urban area without the appropriate papers that permitted them to be there
.
They would be shooting down peaceful demonstrators as they did in Sharpeville and Langa townships only four years before, on March 21, 1960. At least sixty-nine people were killed in Sharpeville and two in Langa. Our leader Sobukwe was languishing in Robben Island Maximum Security
Prison for leading those demonstrations, so I was still seething inside against the Boers for that and for all the injustices they had committed against my people over the decades. Hell, I was in exile, having left a wonderful life and the most beautiful girl who ever walked this earth in Sterkspruit because of the Boers, while they were having a great time with their children in the South Africa they were bent on denying me. So, why did I have to feel so bad about kidnapping a few Boer children for the liberation of the suffering millions?
I had concluded that perhaps I was a weakling and a sissy.
The more I thought of PK's assignment the more doubt and fear built up in my chest. I was the little twerp who had bungled a simple assassination back in Mohale's Hoek. Where on earth would I find the guts to kidnap innocent kids? Well, yes, they were going to be guilty sooner or later, armed to the teeth and kicking our collective black ass, but at that point in their lives they were innocent. You didn't punish people for a crime you thought they were going to commit in the future. Some of them might even turn out like Patrick Duncan, the white man who had recently joined the PAC, or any of the white people who were actively participating in our liberation struggle.
PK was expelled from Lesotho – which was rather strange to me because he was born there – before he could carry out his scheme, and I breathed a sigh of relief. After that I had doubts about the strategies of the Poqo forces in Lesotho, though I strongly believed in the armed struggle, as did my father as far back as the late 1940s when everyone else was still talking of passive resistance. But it was obvious that I didn't have the stomach to carry it out myself. I would fight in other ways, using my pen. And my paint brushes.
 
One morning, after a particularly hectic night in the shebeens of Maseru, I was walking down Kingsway to Kingsway Café to buy some fish and chips and fat cakes when I heard a shrill voice call me: ‘Hey,
wena
Mda!'
A short fat woman was waddling towards me. I knew exactly what she wanted. My first instinct was to run away. But there were too many people in the street. Maybe some of them knew me. She was going to
yell and holler and embarrass me for the entire world to see and laugh. Some might even chase me down the street thinking I was a thief.
‘When are you going to pay for that nip of Martell that you owe me?' Martell was the brand name of our favourite brandy.
‘Calm down,
Mmamosadi
,' I said with a broad smile. ‘I will pay you at the end of the month.'
Mmamosadi
was the name by which denizens of shebeens called every shebeen queen. It translates as ‘mother-in-law'.
‘Do you think I am stupid?' asked the shebeen queen at the top of her voice. ‘You have been owing me for more than two months now.'
Passers-by are always starving for a spectacle. They stood and watched. She grabbed my arm. ‘I am taking your watch,' she said. ‘You'll get it back when you have paid for my nip.'
It was a Rotary watch that I had got as a present from my father. Everyone who had seen it envied me for it because it was as flat as a twenty-five cent piece. I let her take it without any resistance. I didn't want to give the gawkers more entertainment than they deserved. I was going to retrieve my watch somehow.
I forgot all about fish and chips and rushed back to the camp.
Ntlabathi was sitting next to a mountain of coal in front of one of the rows of houses that accommodated the Poqo freedom fighters, playing draughts with two other men. Some of the Poqo fighters were wood and coal merchants; that's how they earned some money to send home to their families in the Eastern Cape. As soon as he saw me he left the game and came to meet me.
‘Hey, where is the fish and chips?' he asked when he realised that my hands were not carrying a greasy paper bag.

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