It is Saturday afternoon and we are driving to Katlehong’s Ncala Section. I follow behind Tsu’s black Golf. Both cars are packed for the short journey. Maja puts a Peter Tosh CD in the stereo and turns the volume high.
We park and greet those sitting in the street outside 44 Mabizela Street. Among them is Mbali, though only later do I know her name. With over-confidence courtesy of Brutal Fruit coolers, she enthusiastically beckons me over. Mbali stands short; her ample body resembles a pile of beach balls that roll comfortably together. Atop the pile there is glossy red lipstick and sparking eyes. Despite her attempt to engage me, I follow my jimbos into the house. We are hungry.
It is a 7-colour lunch: chicken, stamp, beetroot, chakalaka, pumpkin, mashed potato, and green beans mixed with more potato. We eat sitting on plastic chairs in the small front yard, leave our empty plates, and take our chairs to join those chilling in the street. Tsu opens the hatchback of his Golf. It is loaded with outsized speakers that pump Kwaito music. The beat fills the street and merges with the amplified sound from meketi, mesebetsi, car wash hangouts, and otherwise plain Saturday-afternoon township yards. The township hums. The township jives.
More cars park up. Camp chairs and cooler bags. We are at a mosebetsi and there is mqombothi. We drink the creamy brew supplemented with cold beer from cooler bags and a nearby tavern. A straight of spirits is being talked about. What was perhaps a dozen is now some two score and ten, though nobody is counting. The mosebetsi becomes a street party. The kasi lives for the day. Day and night, but without fail on weekends.
Blood Lines
We settle. Relax. Rea iketla. And we joust. So it is with men. We test each other. One man spars with another. It is a game, though one with rough edges. (I hear women do it too.) But it is Zulu men who play this game as though it is their religion. They face off like bulls. They paw the ground. If you are a man, you must play. Zulu or not.
Themba joins me. He has come to talk, but also to challenge. It is not long before the bull paws the ground. I am in Themba’s hood. He tells me I have never been here before. He has never seen me. I am visiting. So, I must accommodate them, not the other way around. ‘Daiza! You must talk Zulu!’
I speak barely a word of Zulu. I raise my voice to match Themba’s and answer in Sesotho. I tell him that I do not speak Zulu. Ha ke bue Sezulu! I stand my ground and Themba circles to charge again. Now he demands, but this time in Kasi isiZulu, that I speak in Zulu. Daiza! Ringa isiZulu! He, I say in formal Sesotho, must speak in Sesotho! Ntate! O tswanetse ho bua ka Sesotho! Themba bursts out laughing. The bulls are testing each other.
He gives up his linguistic assault, pauses, and then returns to challenge again. ‘Daiza! What are you drinking?’ He knows very well what I am drinking. I am drinking Dragon energy drink. He can see the black and red can. I am the only person in the street drinking Dragon. I am the only person not drinking alcohol. He thinks he will push me over.
But he will not. ‘What am I drinking?’ I retort and without flinching lift the red and black can high so that he cannot but acknowledge what he already knows. ‘I am drinking Dragon!’ Themba snorts in response, readying for another charge. ‘You must drink beer!’ And he thrusts his quart bottle of beer towards my face; ‘Drink! You must drink beer!’ I counter charge, thrusting the red and black can into his face. ‘Then wena you must drink Dragon!’ The bulls have met. We disentangle our locked horns and again he laughs.
Themba pauses before opening a third round of testosterone-soaked banter. He asks me what sport I follow. He has run out of ideas with which to attack me, and now fishes for weakness. He will find something to taunt me with whatever I say. But I make it easy for him. I tell him that I gym. He is scornful. ‘You gym?’
He’s fallen for the bait. Sebata se bona mmahe and I spring the trap, ‘Do you gym?’ He tries to keep matters focused on me. But I refused. I tell him that, ‘ke bua ka wena!’ Given his conspicuous mokgaba, which shows the world that he is no sportsman, he realises he cannot win this one either.
This is how I learn Zulu. Not the language, but the culture of Zulu men in township streets. Themba, knowing it or not, teaches me to behave as a Zulu man. I learn that a man does not retreat nor run. A man fights back. A man stands his ground.
Themba concludes that I have passed his test. He tells me he likes my style. I’m OK. I am welcome. We bump hands. We become sentimental. We are brothers. We are together. He has hold of my hand, holding it palm up. He asks me what is inside my open hand. ‘What’s beneath the skin?’ He wants to know. ‘What runs in your veins?’
I tell him it is blood.
‘What colour is your blood?
‘It is red.’
‘You see,’ he says, ‘if we bleed we are the same.’ There is no difference. We are one blood. Inside we are one colour.
I do not differ.
I am not being asked to differ. Themba is telling me.
A Woman’s Touch
My testing is not yet over. Mbali has me in her sights. She is playing musical chairs and I am the prize. The circle of plastic chairs on the pavement is constantly transforming, re-configuring as people party, but Mbali’s trajectory is constant. I am her loadstar.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her in one seat, when I look again she is a seat closer. She might be on her fourth, fifth or further bottle of Brutal Fruit, but when a seat to her left is vacated she moves over without hesitation. She is popular and progress around the amoebic circle of chairs is held up as men make moves. I hope one will win her over and arrest her progress. She gladly banters with the would-be suitors, but when a space on the left opens she hops across without pause or apology.
Her progress is relentless. She closes in, chair by chair, till she reaches my side. And it is not long before her arm is draped over me and she squeezes my shoulder while opening up small talk. But that is not all. She drops her hand down my back, out of sight, where it is busy telling me how much she likes me. Too much. Too fast. Not wanted.
A Man’s Response
Themba is on my left. On his left is Maja, my motswalle wa hloho ya kgomo, my big chum. It was Maja who turned up the volume on Stepping Razor as we drove to Mabitzela Street:
I’m like a stepping razor
Don’t you watch my size
I’m dangerous
Dangerous
In the township Maja is my home boy. I can rely on him. I lean across Themba, my back still under love-assault from Mbali, and tell Maja, with words hidden beneath the Kwaito lyrics, that I am not interested in Mbali but do not want to offend. Maja is a Mosotho. His advice is what I what to hear. We should swop seats. I can escape my embarrassment and he is more than happy to take my place, it gives him a chance to win Mbali’s beach ball boobs and bum.
We rise to exchange seats, but Themba, who has overheard our conversation, shouts, ‘Stop! Daiza, stop!’ He karate chops the space between Maja and me. He cleaves the air. We freeze, half standing, about to move. We wait to hear what this Zulu man, Themba, has to say. He lowers his voice and I must lean in to hear. He explains in staccato sentences. ‘You can’t run away! A man does not run! A man never runs. Not from a woman!’
I must deal with Mbali’s advances. I ask for further advice, but Themba is mute. He has said what is needed. Maja must step in and explain what I should have worked out myself. ‘Tell her she is beautiful, but that you have a girlfriend. Your girlfriend is special, and you want to keep her special.’
Tears of Blood
I have to repeat the message. But when it sinks in Mbali sobers. She says she is sorry for feeling me up. I say,’ that’s OK.’ The small talk turns to real talk. She wants to know what it feels like to be a white man in the township.
How do I answer such a question? Where do I begin 1652? 1779? 1820? 1913? 1948? I can only start in January 1994 when I arrived at what was then Jan Smuts airport. I had a year’s teaching contract at Wits University. Though, really it was a year of adventure. I came to witness the birth of a new nation. I lectured economics, helped monitor the chaotically jubilant April elections, joined the euphoric crowd at Mandela’s inauguration at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, and visited townships. When I stepped into townships, I entered a parallel world, sometimes with fear in my heart. But, to cut a long story short, I stayed in the country, one foot in white, English-speaking suburbia, the other in the kasi.
But if my story is short, the history of whites in South Africa is long. It is painful. It is a thing of shame. Shame so deep that even though I am not South African by birth or blood I carry this history with me into the township. It clings to my skin. It is my skin.
My skin says one thing, my blood, I am told, tells another.
All this flashes through my mind as I think how best I can satisfy Mbali’s curiosity. I tell her I love being in the township. That I would not stay in South Africa if I could not be in the township. What point would there be to living here if I did not venture beyond suburbia? If I did not see the other side? I might as well have stayed on the soil of my birth. Mbali laughs. I tell her that I am serious. She asked me if I think black people are loud. She has a colleague at work who says white people think Africans speak too loudly. She wants to know if it is true. It is my turn to laugh. It saves me an answer.
Now she wants to know how old I am. My cap has kept my grey hair out of sight and my reading glasses are in my pocket. She is shocked when I tell her how many years have passed since my mother brought me into the world. I am flattered. Of course. I tell her I gym. She says she does not and claps her hands, laughing at her own joke. Though, she adds more seriously that she wants to start gyming. She mimics pumping iron, both arms griping an imaginary pec deck. I say, ‘Why not?’ She tells me she is 24. She asks if I have children.
These rounds with Mbali are easier than those with Themba. My body does not flood with testosterone. But they are also harder. They are deeper. They are about who I am, not a street tournament about men’s pecking order.
I tell her I have no children. She is not expecting that. But since this is a standard question in the township, I am ready for the follow up that inevitably comes. ‘Do you not want children?’ I tell her ‘no,’ But then clarify, ‘I don’t have children, but it’s not something that bothers me.’
Now Mbali is really shocked. As far as she is concerned, everybody wants children. What I am saying is heresy in the township, though she is enthralled by the deviance. I tell her that you do not need children to be part of the future. There are a myriad ways in which we can change what is to come, whether for better or worse. I have said this many times in the township when asked how many children I have. Each time this is met with polite disbelief and sympathy. But when I tell Mbali, her sparkling eyes fill with tears.
She also is childless. She miscarried a few months ago. It was her sixth miscarriage. Every pregnancy ends before it is finished. Nobody had been able to help. She is desperate. Her mother wants grandchildren so badly. She feels guilty. She is incomplete without children. To have children is important, children of your own, children of your family, children of your blood.
Do I really mean that it does not worry me that I am childless? Without lineage? Without descendants? Who will call to me when I have crossed into the spirit world? Mbali does not ask all these things, nor in this way, but what she asks is a composite of this concern. ‘Really, honestly, and truly?’ she asks to confirm my stance on children. Still, I do not waver.
Mbali ponders my obstinacy. She is thinking about what I have said, that a person’s genetic dead end does not conclude their life or a future beyond life. Then she suggests, more to herself than to me, that she can end her endless cycle of hope and disappointment. Maybe she does not have to begin life only to lose it in her womb, to please her mother, to please the world. She says that she is glad we have met. She was tired, tired beyond measure, of the pregnancies that ended only with the blood that ran between her legs.
