Sometimes There Is a Void (46 page)

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Authors: Zakes Mda

BOOK: Sometimes There Is a Void
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Every weekend the Ugandans were at my house with their girlfriends from the Nurses' Home drinking beer and roasting meat. They referred to my three-bedroom university house as ‘the stadium'. It was at these binges that I introduced Nkunda to Palesa Thoahlane, a trainee nurse who was Bolele's friend. They later married and emigrated to Canada where Nkunda is a successful immigration lawyer and Palesa is a registered nurse. Zimbe emigrated to Canada too, but I never heard from him after that.
Nkunda and Zimbe both had nice staff quarters at Lesotho High School. You know already that Lesotho High School was my playground, from the days of the late Clemoski and then of Bra Saul and of Mxolisi Ngoza. Now with Nkunda and Zimbe, particularly with Nkunda who was much closer to me, I had even more reason to hang out there.
One day I was at Nkunda's place drinking Castle Lager. There were quite a few of us in the small living room. Pressed next to me was a striking young lady who knew who I was though I didn't think I had met her before. But what impressed me about her was her vulgarity. She uttered earthy expletives at the slightest provocation, which made her very desirable. Before I knew it we were covertly fondling each other and giggling.
I learnt that her name was Nzwakazi and that even though she had an isiXhosa name she was originally from Mohale's Hoek. She taught Sesotho at the high school, hence the ripeness of her language.
That evening we staggered to her house where I spent the night. I left my car parked outside Nkunda's house. We did that a few more times. Sometimes she would pay a quick visit to my Florida house. It was a clandestine romance because she had a fiancé who was studying in
Australia and didn't want to keep rumour-mongers busy. The nocturnal visits did ultimately cease.
My life also revolved around my children and my doctoral studies. I often drove to Mafeteng to see them where they continued to live with my parents. My mother had given up her job at the Holy Cross Clinic and was running two small cafés in Mafeteng. Neo was thirteen and had started at Masentle High School. Thandi was eleven and Dini was eight. Both were at St Gerard Primary School. I was grateful that my parents continued to look after them. In fact, my mother would not part with them even though I wanted them to stay with me in Maseru since I now had a stable job and a big house. She didn't even want to hear of that.
As for my research, I was able to do most of it at Roma because my case studies were mostly my own theatre work. I had taken the job of Professor Andrew Horn who had established a theatre-for-development project at the university. With his group of students who were doing a Practical Theatre course he created plays on social issues and had them performed in the villages around the Roma campus. I took over teaching that course and continued with the theatre work he had started. This grew into a permanent theatre company that continued the work beyond the scope of the course – the Marotholi Travelling Theatre.
Marotholi-a-pula
means ‘raindrops' and I got the name in Francistown that time I visited Ruth in Botswana. She had taken me on a tour in the northern part of the country where I was impressed by an arts and crafts and textile manufacturing establishment called Marothodi – the Setswana spelling of Marotholi. It was the name itself that I loved rather than the store, and I was glad to find so apt a use for it.
After establishing the travelling theatre company I raised funds from donors in Europe and Canada and bought a brand new Volkswagen Kombi that the troupe used to travel far beyond the Roma Valley, to other districts throughout the country. We experimented with various modes of theatre, ranging from Brechtian epic theatre to agit-prop to Augusto Boal's theatre-of-the-oppressed to other models that evolved in the course of our performances in some of the most inaccessible villages in the country. Sometimes we had to leave our vehicle miles away and
travel on foot and on horseback to performance venues. My doctoral thesis, therefore, would examine the efficacy of the various modes of theatre and hopefully emerge with a theoretical framework for the analysis of such work. Although I was doing most of my research and writing in Lesotho I had to go to the University of Cape Town occasionally to meet the university's residential requirements and also to consult with my supervisors.
The first time I went to Cape Town it was by bus that took me through the Transkei. That was the occasion I took the train to Botswana to see Ruth. Now that I had my Toyota Corolla I drove to Cape Town. I went with Sebo who helped with the driving and navigation since she was a more seasoned traveller than I was. I wouldn't have managed to drive all twelve hundred kilometres by myself that first occasion, but later on I made that trip many times on my own.
We were booked at Serengeti self-catering apartments in Mowbray, one of the suburbs of Cape Town within walking distance of the main campus in Rondebosch. However my campus, the Hiddingh Campus, where the departments of fine arts and of drama were located, was in the city. I had to negotiate my way in the busy multi-lane traffic of Cape Town to get there. It was at that campus that Sebo introduced me to Richard Esterhuysen who was a student in the drama department. He is the fellow who later became a famous British actor under the name Richard E Grant. Sebo was at school with him at Waterford Kamhlaba College in Swaziland where Richard was born of South African Afrikaner parents. On the main campus Sebo also introduced me to Zindzi Mandela, Nelson and Winnie Mandela's daughter, who was a student there. I had only read about her and her older sister Zenani because when I stayed at Nelson Mandela's house Zindzi was not yet born – and her father was still married to Evelyn. We spent a lot of time hanging out at the home of Herbert Vilakazi who was a sociology lecturer. Both Zindzi and Herbert provided stimulating company, Herbert making intellectual observations about life in Cape Town and Zindzi offering a street-smart perspective of the same. All this to the smooth flow of Boschendal Chardonnay and the philosophical
Whispers in the Deep
by Ray Phiri and his band Stimela.
Even though we were sharing a one-bedroom apartment my relationship with Sebo remained platonic. Of course I cannot pretend I didn't have ungodly thoughts. What warm-blooded man wouldn't with a woman like Sebo?
After consulting with my supervisor, Professor Mavis Taylor, and making arrangements for a much longer stay next time, Sebo and I drove back to Lesotho.
I continued to go to Cape Town every few months.
One day Chris Hani paid me an unexpected visit. He was with his two little daughters, as if it was a social call. He told me that my father had mentioned that I would be going to Cape Town that week. He asked if I could carry a small package for him to Cape Town. I had done something like that once before for Wonga Matanda of the Non-European Unity Movement, an organisation I didn't give a hoot about. I was just doing Wonga a favour. I was quite happy to do the same for Hani, a man who was not only a family friend but a representative of an organisation whose principles I supported. My Toyota Corolla was parked outside, so I gave him the key and asked him to hide the package in the car. I did not want to know what was in the package or where it was hidden. This was important, because if I was searched by the Boers at the border post or anywhere else in South Africa I would truly not know what they were searching for or where it was hidden.
I gave him the address where I would be staying in Mowbray and he told me someone would come for the parcel.
The trip to Cape Town was a thirteen-hour drive and since I was driving alone without Sebo I was quite exhausted on arrival. I parked the car in the underground parking garage and went straight to bed in my apartment. In the morning I waited for a while but when Hani's contact didn't arrive I went about my business at the university. This time I had brought some books for Mavis Taylor. I had mailed her my reading list so that she could catch up on the scholarship of what I was working on, but unfortunately she couldn't get most of the books. I had them all because I had brought them from the United States for this very purpose. I had suspected that most of them would not be available in South Africa.
In the evening I was having dinner by myself when there was a knock at the door. I opened it to a bald-headed Coloured man who was well dressed with a whiff of Aramis about him. I knew that scent because it was the cologne I had used at some stage. He told me his first name and showed me his ID document. I didn't bother to look at it because it didn't mean anything to me.
‘You have something for me from Maseru,' he said.
‘I don't know what you are talking about,' I said.
I put the car keys on the table in front of him.
‘Brown Toyota Corolla with Lesotho number plates,' I said as he took the keys.
‘I know,' he said and left.
A few minutes later he came back holding a foolscap-size jiffy bag. He put the keys back on the table.
‘Tell them in Lesotho that we're still alive,' he said as he walked out of the door.
I drove the car a few times in the city before the long journey back to Lesotho. For a while I hoped the car would not explode while I was driving it. You never knew with the Boers. What if they had intercepted Hani's communication with his contact person and the Coloured man was not Hani's contact but a member of the notorious South African Bureau of State Security? When nothing happened after driving a few times between Mowbray and the campus in the city I soon relaxed and forgot all about my role as courier.
 
Back at Roma, I was walking one day from the Oppenheimer Building, where my office was located, to the BTM Lecture Theatre. Suddenly a woman running towards the building that housed the offices of the Dean of Humanities caught my attention. Perhaps she was late for something because she looked quite flustered. I was struck by her dark complexion and her features which looked more like those of West African beauties. I have always been partial to dark beauties. The second thing that struck me about her was the hairdo. The hair had not been treated with chemicals or straightened in any way. It was a natural finely combed afro. She reminded me of the Angela Davis of the 1960s. A darker-complexioned
Angela Davis. The hair spoke of progressive political consciousness. I detested the fashion of frying the hair with chemicals in order to straighten it because I thought it smacked of self-hate. In my view, it ranked with skin-lightening creams in the black people's quest for whiteness. So, to see a woman with an afro or dreads or braids in the midst of all the straightened hair on campus was an inspiring sight.
I said to myself:
That woman is going to be my wife
.
I didn't know who the woman was. I had never seen her before, and had no idea I would ever see her again. But I somehow knew she was going to be my wife. She went her way and I went to class to teach African Drama.
I didn't give the woman another thought until one day, two weeks later, she walked into my office. She told me that her friend Phaee Monaheng was a member of my travelling theatre troupe and she was wondering if there might be a vacancy for her. Unfortunately, there was no place because I only took those students who had done my Practical Theatre course. But of course I couldn't let her go without finding out who she was and if there was any chance of seeing her again.
She told me she was Adele Mafoso. That surname in that form, a Sesotho corruption of the Nguni Mavuso, was not common in Lesotho. Surely she would know Willie Mafoso, who had been more like a brother to me when I lived at his home in Mohale's Hoek in my early years in Lesotho.
‘Yes, Willie is my brother,' she told me.
‘Willie is my brother too, sort of,' I said. ‘We grew up together in Mohale's Hoek. We did many naughty things together.'
I thought she would at least chuckle at my lame joke; she didn't find any humour in it and just looked stern.
In Western culture, Adele would be referred to as Willie's first cousin; their fathers were brothers. But in the Basotho culture he is her brother. When I lived at Willie's she was one or two years old and lived with her parents in a village in the northern district of Leribe. That was why I did not know her.
Soon Adele and I began to see each other quite frequently. She had a boyfriend, a young man from the blue blood House of Molapo. This
was the family of the ruling classes of Lesotho. One of its leading lights was the prime minister Chief Leabua Jonathan. But she began to see less of the Molapo boyfriend and more of me, until he faded out of the picture.
Some days she drove with me in my car to spend the night at my house in Florida. I was taken by the very idea of dating Willie's sister. I regarded him as a brother even though we were not related at all. But here was the opportunity to strengthen our ties and become relatives; we would be brothers-in-law if I married his sister. I know that is a stupid reason to marry anyone but, hey, I am quite prone to stupidity sometimes. I didn't believe that I would be marrying her just for that reason. Actually, at the time I didn't think Willie had anything to do with it at all. After all, I had decided she was going to be my wife long before I knew who she was. It was only on looking back and trying to analyse what contributed to my rash decision that it became clear to me that Willie had been a factor. At the time I believed there was genuine love between us. Indeed, quite early on in our relationship we began talking of marriage.

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