Sometimes There Is a Void (41 page)

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Authors: Zakes Mda

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Brutus agreed that we depended very much on the support of the liberals although at the same time we had contempt for them. But if Fugard got to know of our displeasure and saw the pickets outside his shows he might change his tune or at least shut up.
‘We are spread too thinly, Old Warrior, to be focusing on people like Fugard,' I said.
Although Brutus was not totally convinced by my argument, he gave up the idea of actively campaigning against Fugard because he realised that it was best to utilise our resources against the apartheid government and the American companies and universities that made it possible for that government to ride roughshod over the black population and to invade such weak neighbours as Lesotho. That was good enough for me. It was for that reason that I had opposed the picketing of
Umabatha
, the Zulu adaptation of Shakespeare's
Macbeth
by Welcome Msomi. The musical suffered greatly from the boycott both in London and in New York because my comrades felt that it and its creators shied away from politics and also played a public relations role for the apartheid state. Although I had not seen the play, I felt sorry for Msomi and didn't agree that South African works abroad should be condemned for lack of politically correct content. In my view, we were doing exactly what the apartheid government was doing to our own works in the country – banning them and jailing people for reading them, as they had done
with my anthology of plays. I felt that only those South African works that actively promoted apartheid should be targeted. We should not campaign against art by South Africans solely on the basis that it was silent on apartheid and merely addressed social and personal issues as did the earlier work of Gibson Kente. Dennis Brutus disagreed with me very strongly on this position. He was a by-any-means-necessary kind of guy when it came to the overthrow of the apartheid state.
In some respects, but to a lesser degree, I was like that too. I was once invited to make a speech at the College Green at Ohio University on Martin Luther King Day. It was at a time when we were still fighting for the day to be observed as a federal holiday. I upset the American liberals when I started outlining why in South Africa we had opted for an armed struggle instead of the non-violent path mapped out by Martin Luther King Junior and Mahatma Gandhi before him. It was the wrong occasion for such a speech and the more mature members of the audience – faculty, staff and townsfolk – were not impressed at all. Most of the students, however, thought it was quite a brave and revolutionary speech.
On the personal side, things were looking up. Keneiloe was admitted to the MA International Affairs Program and had resigned from the Johannesburg Child Welfare Society to join me in Athens. And for a while life was great. Her only disillusionment was that there was no rhythm-and-blues in Athens. Just as I had been the envy of my friends when I left Lesotho because I was going to the home of jazz and would therefore be in the company of some mean cats, she had boasted to her friends in Johannesburg that she would be attending live concerts by the likes of Teddy Pendergrass. Alas, there was no Teddy Pendergrass in Athens.
But her disillusionment was with more than Mr Pendergrass's absence. It was with me. And with the city of Athens and its student population. She had come from Johannesburg where she was a high profile social worker socialising with the black elite of South Africa. Your lawyers and your doctors and your businessmen. Here, she was confined to this small town where our only entertainment was to sit in my apartment and drink beer or visit her friend Baratang Mpotokwane
or my friends Macharia Munene or Mike Kirubi and drink ourselves silly. There were no nightclubs and no socialites in expensive Mercedes Benzes and BMWs. I didn't even have a car, whereas in Johannesburg she could get into her Volkswagen Golf and raid the Pelican Club or Kolokoti's tavern any time she felt like it. The only one of my friends here who had a car was Simphiwe, but even with his Volkswagen Beetle there was nowhere for a woman like Keneiloe to go. In Alexandra Township where she lived, and in Soweto where she was a regular, she could attend
stokvel
parties on Saturdays where she could eat her favourite fermented
ting
sorghum porridge with pulled beef. But in Athens she was a prisoner to our lack of imagination. She began to despise me for being satisfied with the life in Athens.
I would hear her phone her brother Tseko in South Africa, or one of her social worker friends, complaining that I was an absolute failure.
‘At least Tseko has a truck and is making money even though he has no education,' I once heard her say to a friend on the phone. ‘Zanemvula with all his education has nothing.'
There was the week she was invited to join South African students in Lansing, Michigan. When she came back she was even more dissatisfied with Athens. They had partied there in South African style, a thing that we didn't know how to do in Athens. She kept on boasting to me that in Lansing they knew how to live, whereas in Athens we were all dead alive.
Obviously my life in Athens, Ohio – particularly my poverty – did not meet her expectations of the hot-shot playwright she had been reading about in all the major newspapers in South Africa.
One thing that troubled her most – and understandably so for a woman who had been independent all her life – was the fact that she had no income of her own when she was here. As a professional woman who always had her own money, the dependency bugged her no end and she then took it out on me. At the time I couldn't understand what the farce was about since we wanted for nothing and I had even made her a joint-signatory to my bank account, but now I do. She never touched my account even though she had access to it. We tried to get her a scholarship and by the time she got it from the United Nations it was
too late. She had already left for South Africa after her father, Teboho, died. I knew she wasn't coming back and that would be the end of my lifelong dream to marry my childhood sweetheart.
The disillusionment with Athens was not peculiar to Keneiloe. I saw it many times with some of the South Africans who came here. For instance there was Danisa Baloyi and Tselane – I don't recall her last name – who came to Ohio University on scholarships and were so disgusted with the place that after only a few months Tselane gave up her studies and returned to South Africa. Danisa was too smart to do that. Instead, she got a transfer to Columbia University in New York where she completed her degrees. I bet she was more at home in New York. Today she is one of the new Black Economic Empowerment millionaires in Johannesburg. I never heard of Tselane again.
But there were other South Africans who made the best of their stay in Athens. Simphiwe was one of them. After his PhD at Ohio University he became a professor somewhere in Pennsylvania. Then there were Audrey Molise and Zanele Mfono. Both stayed in Athens without any fuss, with Audrey returning for the second time to complete another degree. Zanele did not even have a scholarship. She had to work at all sorts of menial jobs to pay for her education. I admired her because she was quite different from your spoilt black South African student who had it all made thanks to anti-apartheid donor funding. Today Audrey is another leading Black Economic Empowerment business woman in Johannesburg, while Zanele is a leading academic at Fort Hare University.
After Keneiloe left I was crushed for a while. But life had to go on. My poverty was relieved by a Fulbright award. I was invited to Ronald Reagan's White House and to the Capitol with a group of other southern African Fulbright scholars where we were given tours and listened to talks on how the American government functioned.
My life changed when a new group of students from Botswana arrived to do their master's degrees at the Ohio University School of Education which had established ties with the University of Botswana. It was like being back in Lesotho again because culturally there are many similarities between Basotho and Batswana. Once more, in the
company of Ruth Monau, Itah Kandji and Sis' Dudu, I gradually forgot about my doomed love for Keneiloe.
On the rebound, I fell in love with Ruth Monau.
She was a true lady, Ruth. A no-nonsense slender woman who was not only a teacher but looked like one. It didn't take long for us to move in together in the basement apartment I had shared with Keneiloe on East Carpenter Street. We had a wonderful time together and I thought I had undoubtedly found my mate for life. Only a few months into our relationship I asked her to marry me and she said she would, provided my parents went to Botswana and asked for her hand in the traditional manner. I knew my father would never do that. Not only was he a refugee in Lesotho, but he was disgusted with my promiscuous ways and with, especially, my separation from Mpho. He would not even entertain the idea of sending relatives to Botswana after what I had put the family through. It would be like encouraging my wayward behaviour. And I told Ruth this, but she insisted that she would never be able to live with herself if we didn't go through the cultural route.
‘We are both adults,' I said. ‘And both of us have been married before. Surely we can marry right here in Athens and inform our parents later.'
She had told me about her previous marriage, and I had seen photographs of her beautiful children, a boy and a girl. I had shown her photographs of my three beautiful children too.
‘I'm a Motswana girl,' she said. ‘My parents would never forgive me if I did that.'
What stays in my mind about Ruth is something that I am so very ashamed to narrate. Although we lived a life full of love and fulfilling intimacy, sometimes we quarrelled about extremely petty things. In most cases, it was my own childish irritability coming to the fore. One day we quarrelled over an iron. I wanted to use it first but she was holding on to it because she wanted to use it too. As we struggled over it the ironing board fell and hit my toe. I lost my cool and slapped her. Yes, me who was once jailed for beating up a man who had slapped a girl! Immediately, I knew it was something that would haunt me forever. Even though she forgave me and that very evening we were in each
other's arms, I knew I was stained forever; from then on I could never truthfully say, ‘I have never raised my hand to a woman.'
I lived happily with Ruth until I completed my MFA in Theater, with the focus on playwriting, and then went on to do a second MA with the School of Telecommunications, focusing on radio and television, with special emphasis on scriptwriting for film and television.
I was with her when I was inducted into the International Understanding Honor Society with Charles Ping, who was the president of Ohio University.
I was also with her when I got the news that my play
The Road
had won the Christina Crawford Award of the American Theater Association.
The award was established by Christina Crawford, the actress who wrote
Mommie Dearest
in which she portrayed her mother, actress Joan Crawford, as an overbearing and cruel alcoholic who abused both Christina and her brother. In 1981, the year of my arrival in the USA, the book was made into a movie starring Faye Dunaway. With some of the royalties Christina Crawford set up the award and there I was winning it in 1984. Unfortunately, Ruth couldn't come with me when the play received a staged reading at the San Francisco Hilton during the annual conference of the American Theater Association because Professor Christian Moe who was running the competition could only pay for one ticket. I enjoyed the experience nevertheless, especially interacting with all those hundreds of American theatre practitioners. Crawford was there in person to give me the award which was a five hundred dollar cheque and a handwritten letter congratulating me.
Every time I hear of the movie
Mommie Dearest
my eyes get moist with gratitude; I gained materially from its success.
After the summer of 1984 it was time for me to return to Lesotho. After teaching playwriting at the School of Theater for one quarter, I mailed my books through the post office – they still had surface mail then – packed my bags and left my close friends Simphiwe and Hatar who were continuing with their PhD studies. I suspected Simphiwe would not be returning to South Africa even after graduating. He had married Sandy, a lovely lady from Guyana, at the Galbreath Chapel and
they planned to make their lives in America. Munene and Kirubi had long since departed for Kenya where they were academics.
I also left Ruth with the promise that I would see her when she got back to Botswana and we would take up the issue of marriage then.
Back in Lesotho my father was beaming with pride, telling everyone that I had returned with a double-master's. He rented the hall at Bereng High School and organised a big party to which friends and relatives from all over Lesotho and the Eastern Cape were invited. I made a speech wearing my academic regalia and thanked everyone, ranging from the people of Mafeteng to Desmond Sixishe, the cabinet minister who had made it possible for me to get the air ticket to America. But I forgot to thank my father. And even my mother, of all people. My father had spent so much money on this feast and he didn't get a single mention. Did I perhaps take for granted these wonderful parents without whose guidance I would be nothing?
Shame dogged me long after the feast.
UNCLE OWEN HAS MARRIED
one of the Bee People and his daughter Nobantu is not amused. I am told she came all the way from Soweto to express her rage, not towards her father but towards the woman. She stood outside the new couple's house and shouted for the entire village to hear that the woman was a shameless gold digger who was young enough to be Nobantu's daughter. The elders of the village came to calm her down. They took her to Uncle Press's general dealer's store, known as eRestu by the villagers because – just to remind you – it's both a restaurant and a tavern, so that she could get some comfort and sympathy from her own relatives.
I am not aware of this marriage and its repercussions when I drive into the village. Uncle Owen never warned me about it. In fact, I was not even aware that there was something going on between him and any woman since his misadventure when he was still in exile in Mafeteng: his house was once invaded by the brothers of a young woman with whom he had made a baby. They beat him up and confiscated the baby who had been in his custody for months. I wouldn't have imagined that at his mature age his friskiness continued unabated.
I have merely come to see the Bee People as I often do when I need a break from my writing. I innocently call at Uncle Owen's house as I usually do when I am in the village. I notice that he has added another room to the house and there are construction materials in the garden – tools, bricks, sand, and bags of cement. I find the village madman, my Cousin Bernard, pacing the ground in front of the house mumbling something to the effect that Uncle Owen now thinks he is better than everyone else since he has suddenly become rich.
‘Where is Uncle Owen?' I ask.
‘He's gone to Sterkspruit with that whore he calls his wife,' says Cousin Bernard.
‘His wife? He has a wife?'
‘They've gone to eat his money. And he can't even give me ten rands. You know Nobantu was here? He didn't even give her a cent. His own daughter coming all the way from Johannesburg for nothing. And here he is, an old man of eighty-one, five months and three days, spending his money on
idikazi
who is young enough to be his great-granddaughter.'
He carries on in this vein and doesn't even notice when I walk away, get into my car and drive to eRestu. I don't know why Cousin Bernard is taking Uncle Owen's behaviour with the woman he calls
idikazi
, or whore, so personally. And what are these riches that he is talking about? The last time I was with Uncle Owen his sole means of survival was the meagre old-age monthly pension that he received from the government – which couldn't have been more than six hundred rands a month at the time.
I learn only later when I meet some of the Bee People at the gate of eRestu how Uncle Owen suddenly got rich. He received a lump
sum of money from the government for being a veteran of the cadres who fought for the liberation of South Africa. Although Uncle Owen was a PAC activist and was exiled in Lesotho, I never knew him to belong to any guerrilla army. But he qualified for the pension because the Special Pensions Act of 1996 states that any South African citizen who made sacrifices for the liberation of the country, thus making the establishment of a non-racial democratic constitutional order possible, is entitled to a means-tested grant. The recipient, the law states, should have been active for at least five years on a full-time basis in the service of a banned political organisation or should have been forced to leave the country, banned or banished, imprisoned or detained, for a minimum of five years. Dependants of those who died in the political struggle also qualified. The law emphasises that this is reparation and not welfare. Uncle Owen obviously met some of these requirements to receive the pension.
I myself meet all the criteria for this Special Pension, as do my siblings. But we never applied for it. I have the means to make my own livelihood and don't think it would be ethical to exploit my involvement in the liberation struggle for personal gain. This does not mean I do not support the establishment of this Special Pension for those who are more deserving of it than I am. I know, for instance, that my mother did apply for it and she does deserve it.
I don't know exactly how much Uncle Owen has received but I think it is not less than two hundred thousand rands, judging from what other people have been getting. I remember he has been going to Johannesburg a lot lately, staying at Nobantu's house in Chiawelo, one of the townships of Soweto, and she took him to Pretoria to fight for the pension. It is good that he finally got it, but sad that it has caused a rift between him and his beloved daughter who assisted him in getting it in the first place.
The Bee People tell me that Uncle Owen has bought a big-screen television with a satellite dish, a set of sofas, a dining room table and six chairs, and a gas stove with a big oven. He has even added an extra bedroom to his house. He really means to spend his remaining time on earth in comfort.
As soon as I walk into eRestu my aunt, Press's wife, says, ‘I am glad you are here, Cesane. One of your Bee People has caused a scandal in the village.'
Cesane is one of our clan names – we of the Majola branch of the amaMpondomise clan.
I look at Uncle Press sitting next to his wife by the till, hoping he will elaborate. But he just sits there staring into empty space.
‘Which one of them?' I ask.
‘The one called Weli,' she says.
The name doesn't register because I only know those Bee People who are on the committee as I meet them on a regular basis whenever I visit their project.
‘What scandal did she cause?'
‘She married your Uncle Owen.'
I burst out laughing. She didn't see anything funny.
‘Why would it be a scandal to marry a nice gentleman like my Uncle Owen?'
‘Because she is a child. Your Uncle Owen is an old man of more than eighty and she is only a baby in her early twenties.'
‘But why is it her scandal and not his?'
‘There is more than fifty-five years difference between them.'
That doesn't tell me why
she
is to blame for this relationship and not him. But then among my people it's always the woman's fault.
Press just sits there silently. He is a brooder ever since he became a traditional healer. Sometimes his head moves rhythmically up and down as if it is responding to the drums of the ancestors that are throbbing in it. He adds nothing to the discussion so I don't know if he views the marriage as scandalous or not.
As for me, I don't see any scandal and I tell my aunt and the Bee People so. If the two people are in love and don't give a damn about their age difference then it is their business. They are adults and their marriage is lawful. They don't need anyone's permission, and none of us can force them to divorce. My aunt is adamant that this has nothing to do with love. Weli is only interested in Uncle Owen's filthy lucre.
‘Even if that is the case it has nothing to do with us,' I tell her. ‘It
has nothing to do with Nobantu either. Her father has all his mental faculties intact. If he is stupid enough to spend his money on a gold digger, as you call her, then that's his own lookout.'
Everybody is disappointed at my reaction. They had thought that I would bring some sanity into this matter, and perhaps even tell Weli where to get off. Part of me can sympathise with Nobantu's concerns. Her father has a history with young women. The only marriage of his that was deemed respectable and was recognised by his people was with Nobantu's mother in the late 1940s. His wife, a nursing sister, died while giving birth to Nobantu in the early 1950s, leaving Uncle Owen with two older boys and the newborn. His life of instability began soon after that. He married and divorced many times, and had numerous girlfriends with whom he made children. He has no idea where some of his children are.
I remember that my mother used to tell us – me and my siblings – that she hoped none of us would ever make Uncle Owen our role model. ‘I hope you'll marry and have stable families as your father and I have tried to have,' she used to say.
But that stability has eluded me and my siblings.
 
 
 
AFTER MY RETURN FROM
the United States I hoped to bring back stability in my life by marrying Ruth. That was why I was on a train from Cape Town to Kimberley. I was returning from a successful visit to the Drama Department of the University of Cape Town where I registered for a PhD degree. I had also met Professor Mavis Taylor who was going to be my supervisor. UCT was the oldest university in South Africa, having been founded in 1829. It was also the highest ranked university in Africa. The Drama Department was established in the 1940s and yet I was going to be its very first PhD candidate. Until I came along it had only offered certificates, postgraduate diplomas, bachelor's and master's degrees.
I have always loved train journeys, since the days I used to travel with my siblings and our mother from Zastron to Johannesburg via
Bloemfontein where we changed trains. The grinding rhythm of the wheels on the rails never fails to lull me into a blissful sleep. On this particular journey the experience was enhanced by high expectations. I was going to see Ruth. It was almost two years since we parted at Ohio University. She had completed her Master of Education degree and had returned to the University of Botswana where she was teaching in their Primary Education Department.
When I left her in Ohio I returned to Lesotho, although initially Lesotho had not been my preferred destination. I had hoped to work for the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation instead. I was an admirer of Robert Mugabe and his progressive policies and thought working for his government would advance the liberation struggle in southern Africa. He had only been in power for four years then, and I had no way of knowing that he would turn out to be one of the most despicable and corrupt dictators in Africa.
Another thing that made Zimbabwe very attractive to me was the fact that a number of Zimbabweans who had lived in Lesotho over the years and worked at the university at Roma had gone back home to build the country soon after Mugabe took over. I knew and admired some of them, such as Stan Mudenge whose beautiful and highly refined wife was Kgokgo Mamashela. I knew Kgokgo very well because she organised a few conferences for Lesotho writers. She was also Lesiba Mamashela's sister. You may remember Lesiba as Khomo Mohapeloa's bandleader during my Peka High School days. So, it would have been wonderful to be with those guys in a new Zimbabwe. The country was just teeming with joyful and productive activity, and it beckoned those of us who hoped South Africa would follow its path after attaining liberation.
I was looking at my old files the other day and I chuckled to myself when I read a copy of my application to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Information, copied to the Chairman of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. After outlining my qualifications I went on to say:
My guiding philosophy on radio and television in the Third World is that these media should not only serve to inform and entertain,
but should be used to attain nation building and other national objectives … Broadcasters in Africa usually claim that it is cheaper to do mass importation of American and British programs than to produce their own. That may have a lot of truth to a great extent. However I can prove that local programs can be produced very cheaply, and more so they will be more entertaining and relevant to local tastes, they will be contributing to the cultural upliftment of the nation, and to achieving political, social, economic and cultural national objectives as laid down by the government.
I was indeed a true ideologue. I instinctively cringed when I got to the as-laid-down-by-the-government part. I was actually applying to be Robert Mugabe's propagandist.
Who could argue against lessening dependency on foreign programmes and meeting the needs of local tastes? As an advocate of the New International Information Order, I thought a progressive Zimbabwe under pan-Africanist Mugabe was the right place to put into practice some of the theories that were designed to counter Western cultural imperialism.
But I am eternally grateful that the Zimbabweans ignored my application. I would have been part of the ‘nation building' that later smothered all opposition and killed thousands of the Ndebele people as part of the ‘national objectives' for ‘unity' and ‘social cohesion' that were ‘laid down by the government'.
Having been snubbed by my Zimbabwean heroes I had no choice but to return to Lesotho and work for Chief Leabua Jonathan's government. Though he was still a dictator who brooked no opposition, he was no longer the enemy he used to be because he was now on the side of South Africa's liberation struggle and had built a strong alliance with the ANC. This was the year Chief Leabua declared that Lesotho was at war with South Africa, condemned apartheid at the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity, and gave succour to Umkhonto weSizwe combatants. It would not be a bad idea to work for a man like this.
His government paid for my passage from America. And I was able
to ship to Lesotho hundreds of books that would become useful in my research for the PhD.

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