Thus did my family, alongside thousands of families from Blouvlei as well as other parts of Cape Town, find its lot far from improved in the wake of the government’s ‘Slum Clearance’ project. Were we not still living in shacks? Moreover, where before we had been members of solid, well-knit communities, now we were amongst strangers, people we did not know from a bar of soap.
However, in the eyes of the government the problem belonged squarely on the shoulders of the African. There were just too many Natives, said the government. How was that its fault?
To add to the hardship of living in shacks, a vicious, gale-force wind blew ceaselessly through the area. By day, it whipped sand till it bit into skin on face, arms and legs; got into hair, into eyes, into food, into the clothes on the line, into each and every nook in house or shack. By night, it howled and wailed and shrieked like the despairing voices of lost souls. In fact, some said what we heard of nights were the voices of Malay slaves lost in a ship wrecked hereabouts, when the area was still all sea.
Whatever it was, the relentless wind blew the sand everywhere. Day and night, it blew. We swept and swept and swept, but still the sand would not leave us alone. We shared our fragile homes with it. Every day. A reminder of how we had been swept into this howling place against our will. Yes . . . much against our will.
No sooner had we settled in, so to speak, than a new problem cropped up when schools reopened, late that September.
Blouvlei had boasted but one school. Guguletu had, at least, a dozen. In Blouvlei, registering a child for school had always only entailed taking that child by the hand to school, come opening day. Here, our inexperienced mothers assumed that their children would automatically go to whichever school the teachers from their old school had been assigned. And perhaps this should have been so, had the Department of Bantu Education, under which those teachers served, had a system. At the best of times that department was run in a chaotic manner and these were not the best of times. The influx of thousands of families into Guguletu would have been problematic to the most systematic of organizations. No one had ever accused the Department of Bantu Education of being that.
Pandemonium reigned on schools opening day. Blouvlei mothers flocked to Vuyani Higher Primary School and Songeze Lower Primary School. And that was because most of the teachers from Blouvlei had been assigned to those two schools.
When they were met with rejection, the teachers there saying they had already exceeded the number permissible under government regulation, the mothers were alarmed. They out and out panicked, when they were turned away by teachers they did not know, teachers with strange names from other parts of Cape Town. Blouvlei residents had assumed they would be able to keep their community, more or less, intact. It was a shock to them to find that, while it was true for most, not all their teachers were in these two schools, in their minds designated for Blouvlei children. Indeed, there were teachers from Blouvlei who had been taken to other schools, as the Department saw fit.
From school to school our parents went, roaming the streets of Guguletu, looking for schools on streets they’d never before set foot. From school to school, only to be given the same unwelcome news: kugcwele kwesi sikolo — It is full in this school.
Mercifully, because both Khaya and I were such good students, our teachers sneaked us in, trusting that, as things settled, some of those enrolled would fall away. Mama was greatly relieved at the turn of events and that my brother and I were able to be in the same school, and with our teachers, at Vuyani.
However, when I came to school the next day, a rude awakening awaited me. Very few of the children from Blouvlei were in my new school. None of them, in my class. As none of my friends lived anywhere near where we lived, I had lost all my friends. My new school, ten times bigger than the school in Blouvlei, had hundreds of children more, none of whom I knew. I was completely bewildered. Lost. In that sea of strange faces, I was alone. I did not belong. Hither and thither, a gale-force wind had strewn us, chaff at the hands of a mad winnower.
Mama did not want to hear any moaning about my not having friends at school.
‘Count your blessings,’ she said. ‘Do you know how many children would just love to change places with you?’
Change places with me? Change places with me? I’d have done anything to change places with them.
Mama’s lack of sympathy only added to my misery. I hated school and envied those children she pitied. What had they done to be that lucky? To me, the prospect of loafing the rest of the year away was quite appealing. What I didn’t know then, of course, was that some of those children would never go back to school again. Others who, like Khaya and me, were lucky enough to gain admission to a school, soon found the newness too much and played truant. From this group too, there were those who would gradually drift away from school . . . and eventually leave for good.
To this day, there are not enough schools or teachers in Guguletu to accommodate all the children. You heard me talk about Operation Barcelona, just now. There never has been enough of anything in our schools. Therefore, many of the children, even today, do not go to school. There are not enough mothers during the day to force the children to go to school and stay there for the whole day. The mothers are at work. Or they are drunk. Defeated by life. Dead. We die young, these days. In the times of our grandmothers and their grandmothers before them, African people lived to see their great-great-grandchildren. Today, one is lucky to see a grandchild. Unless, of course, it is a grandchild whose arrival is an abomination — the children our children are getting before we even suspect they have come of child-bearing age.
Good things are scarce in Guguletu. The place boasts not tree, nor flower, nor animal — except the mangy, discarded and ownerless dogs that roam the length and breadth of the township by day and by night, upsetting refuse bins as they forage for scraps of food. But those too are hard to come by. There is no harder luck for a dog than to be a stray in a place of poor people. What is such a dog to benefit, when the people themselves gnaw and chew bones to powder, suck in the last bit of juice therefrom before spitting out the useless pulpy matter? What can its desperate scavenging ever yield the poor mutt?
I know that for years my heart yearned for Blouvlei. Mama Mandila’s vetkoek. The Storm Breakers, our rugby team, and the games Khaya took me to watch. Tata Mapheka’s isityhwentywe. My dear friends with whom I played ikula, jump rope, and pop-pie huis. For years, I mourned the loss of my friends and erstwhile playmates with whom I went swimming in the dam on hot summer days, and with whom I shared gossip in the shelter of the corners of our homes on frosty winter evenings. My heart bled for myself and what I’d lost, and for all those millions that had lost their homes. All those lives rudely disrupted, mercilessly plucked from hearth and the familiar. That sea of shacks forever silenced. To this day, I still remember how we laughed when the rumour of mass removals first circulated among us. The rumour that came softly, whispered with stark-naked disbelief, taken as the ravings of a man not altogether there, lightly dismissed.
Yet, even today we still laugh sad laughs, remembering our innocent incredulity. Our inability to imagine certain forms of evil, the scope and depth of some strains of ruthlessness. We laugh, to hide the gaping hole where our hearts used to be. Guguletu killed us . . . killed the thing that held us together . . . made us human. Yet, we still laugh.
We left Blouvlei in tears, forlorn and bereft in our loss. We were aggrieved anew when we came to Guguletu, for worse awaited us here. Blouvlei was an honest-to-goodness tin shacks place. No pretence. No fooling. Guguletu would have you think it is a housing development, civilized, better — because of being made of concrete, complete with glass windows. But we lived in Blouvlei because we wanted to live there. Those were shacks we had built ourselves, with our own hands . . . built them where we wanted them, with each put together according to the wishes, whims and means of its owner. The people there, a well-knit community. Knowing each other: knowing all the children, knowing whose wife a
woman was, knowing where each man worked, where he worshipped, what drink he preferred.
We came here and were confronted and confounded by all these terrible conditions: the loss of our friends, the distances our parents had to travel to and from work, the high fares we had to pay going to and from places with decent food shopping. And then there was the deadening uniformity of Guguletu houses. Had it not been for the strength of the human spirit, we would all have perished. The very houses — an unrelieved monotony of drabness; harsh and uncaring in the manner of allocation, administration and maintenance — could not but kill the soul of those who inhabited them. For some, though, the aridity was to be further aggravated: for some reason, the small, inadequate, ugly concrete houses seemed to loosen ties among those who dwelled in them.
‘Save your fighting strength for the township!’ An anonymous voice lacerates the silence in the bus. ‘There is real fighting there, today,’ it flings out.
‘Who’s fighting?’ asks another, also unknown and unknowable in that jungle of bodies. The exchange penetrates the fog. My ears antennae, I come up for air.
‘Appears there was a fight. The schoolchildren beat up the students from the university . . . this one of the boesmans, in Bellville.’ I cannot figure out what the man is telling me. Why would the schoolchildren fight with coloured university students? Where was the connection?
A heated debate follows, people apportioning blame as presents from loving grandparents.
‘It’s not like that at all,’ shrilled one voice. A young man this time, from the sound of it.
‘What’s not like that?’ asks a woman’s voice. Gravelly. She must be the mother of many children, I tell myself. Whole day long, she has to scold them and now her voice has grown like that. Like the sound of the words her mouth must throw out many, many times each day. ‘Are you telling us the driver’s lying? He’s just come from Guguletu, why should he lie to us?’ Gravel-voice has gone shrill as though she were excited or angry or both.
‘I’m not saying he’s lying,’ the young man replied. ‘But I was there . . . I saw what happened.’
The whole bus stopped breathing. Heads turned. Hands holding on to the supporting rods fell or were replaced as people readjusted their bodies the better to see the source of the knowledgeable voice.
‘Khawutsho! We are all ears,’ several voices said at once. Then another silence fell. A hush.
‘The trouble is in Section 3,’ ventured the young man. ‘A car carrying UWC students was stoned, overturned and set alight.’
‘Who did the stoning?’ Gravel-voice was back.
‘I didn’t take down their names,’ the youth threw back.
‘Awu!’ the woman ejaculated. ‘Today’s children have no respect at all for their elders,’ she said, clearly fishing for sympathy from the other passengers, where adults were the vast majority. ‘Such insolence!’ she finished, to accompanying communal clucking of tongues and sucking of teeth. But that was as much support as she got.
‘Where, in Section 3?’ an old man’s slow, high-pitched voice asks. Good question. My breath held back, I listen. My ears were burning. Rivulets ran in the palms of my hands. Section 3. That’s the part of Guguletu in which I live.
‘Right by the garage near the bridge going out of the township,’ replied the young man. Instead of easing my anxiety, the answer plunged me deeper into the hell of uncertainty. The description fitted two bridges. Did he know what he was talking about? Which of the two? Which bridge? Which? My mind turns to my children. Did they go to school, today? No. Were they home? All three? I was particularly worried about the boys, especially Mxolisi. He is the one who seems always to forget to get back from his wanderings before their father returns from work. What does he want, roaming the streets of Guguletu by day and by night? This is what Dwadwa often asks me. Asks me, as though I go around Guguletu with the boy. But then, I know that is his way of telling me I spoil him. Don’t ask me where everybody gets that idea from.
We round a bend.
A building, granite-grey and forbidding, looks back unblinkingly. Stern. Silent. To the front, several sinister-looking vehicles stand. They remind one of some of the frightening movies we used to see when we were children. Grotesque. Humongous. Reminiscent of a cross between a farm-fattened pig and a bed bug — if such a thing existed. Only huge . . . a thousand times larger than any hog could ever hope to be. Enormous. Appearing without legs, wheels, or other means of locomotion. Saracens. Deadly, bullet-spitting contraptions. The menacing building before which the Saracens stand is the Guguletu Police Station.
Dear God, I pray, let my children be safe. Keep them safe, all of them . . . but especially Mxolisi. Immediately the thought leaves my control, as soon as it manifests itself, I catch my breath. No, I love them all . . . all three of them. My children. A niggling doubt persists till I ask myself whether, indeed, I loved him more or whether I was paying, compensating for the earlier rejection. But, quickly, I ask myself, Is that what that was? Rejection? My heart hastens to say NO. Bewilderment. Anger. Resentment even . . . But not rejection. Never any bad feeling towards him, directly. No.
‘Last stop!’ bellowed the driver.
At that, a muffled grumble rises from the passengers. ‘What about refunding our fare?’
‘Refunding? What refunding?’ answers the driver crossly. ‘I bring you here all the way from Claremont and now you want your money back?’
‘Well, we still have to walk the rest of the way, past the train station, some of us. I live in NY 132, that’s a long walk from here and I’ll have to take a taxi.’
‘Ask these children of yours who have nothing better to do than start trouble to give you your money back,’ the driver retorts. ‘Now, go on! Get a move on and get off my bus! I have work to do.’ From the roar of the engine, the driver has plastered his foot firmly on the accelerator, virtually flattening the latter to the floor.
Not a cloud in sight. The tight-stretched blue dome above looks down pityingly as the sun boasts, ‘Buy me if you can!’ — knowing full well that not all the gold that has yet to be mined in the world can do that. Low down in the far west, where the sky reaches down to kiss the earth, furious reds and golden yellows mingle and marry and striate the horizon, eye-blinding spectacle. The breath of approaching evening brushes softly against my cheek as I step off the bus. However, as soon as my feet hit the ground, it is as though I have walked into a cave or a gigantic pot. The crowd engulfs and swallows me whole. I can hardly breathe. But I am nearly there, I console myself . . . I am nearly home.
Poor people. My house is a stone’s throw away from the police station so I am not unduly worried. However, a few steps after I get off the bus, I find I cannot take one step without putting my foot on a policeman. They are like ants on a saucer of raspberry jam.
In that jungle, careless and uncaring bodies milling around, pushing and shoving, my thoughts did a three-hundred-and-sixty degrees turn-around. I froze. The proximity of my house, a source of delight a minute before, had become a curse, cause for great concern. With the swiftness of laser, fear zapped the anticipated pleasure of not having much distance to walk. In place of that consoling thought, now cold and naked fear coiled, gnawing at the very strings of my heart. Where was my daughter? In the midst of all this havoc, this bedlam, where was Siziwe?
The safety of girl children has become a burning issue in Guguletu and all places like Guguletu. Every day, one hears of rapes. Rapes, not a rape. Rapes. Which means that, each day, more than one woman or girl or child is accosted. Each day. In this place. Surely, the crowd, if anything, heightened the chances that such an evil thing could happen. Happen for that reason. The mere gathering of so many people at the same time a
nd place can precipitate inexplicable evil . . . unleash latent demons. That could happen. Happen right here, where so many mindless people thronged. Crowds are mindless. Walking heads where all thought is suspended. They are to be feared.
My mouth, bone dry; heart pounding, the folds beneath my arms crawl with ants. Tiny, tiny ants. Lord, up above — I found myself doing something I had not known I still remembered. Please, Good Lord, keep her safe. Protect my baby and keep her safe!
Then swiftly, to more practical, more feasible sources of help my mind turned, dumping the celestial. Oh, I only hope her brothers are home with her. Preferably both. But if I had to choose between the two, I’d go with Mxolisi. Lunga is a bit on the soft side. Gentle. Although, when provoked, he can be just as efficient in a fight as his older brother. But for the job of scaring the unsavoury off, I’d pick Mxolisi. Any day of the week. He is a pit bull where Lunga is a dalmatian.
A thin, hard and very sharp elbow dug into the soft unboned part of my side between the rib cage and hip bone. Hot flashes erupted and rapidly radiated in a jumble of tiny, wrinkly, wavy lines of fire. I tripped on a body prone on the ground. Dead? I didn’t wait to see. I couldn’t look down as, even as I stumbled, my leg buckling on hitting the unexpected obstacle, the wave of harried humanity behind me pushed. Then suddenly, concrete. Hard on naked foot. Hard, grazing the now-naked sole. Cold. Shocked, my mind takes in the fact that my left foot is bare. How had I lost the shoe? There was no time to ponder the mystery. Can’t look for the shoe right now. Can’t. Didn’t remember it saying goodbye. I pushed. I shoved. Stupid rabble. More of them should be on the ground to allow me passage to my home. So near. So near, without their blocking my way I would have been home by now. Oh, I hated each and every person in that crowd. Right then, I loathed the stupid, mindless hodge-podge of unthinking, unfeeling, stupid riffraff with all my might. Hated them. Bitterly. ‘Move!’ I screamed. At the top of whatever remained of my lungs. My lungs, bursting as though I were in a furnace, forced to breath in and out although I knew perfectly well that the air had been oven baked. But push I did. I had to get out before I was trampled to my death by the brainless throng.