Sometimes There Is a Void (15 page)

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Authors: Zakes Mda

BOOK: Sometimes There Is a Void
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Although the students called him Mothepu, Jama was quite a popular fellow. The pejorative sounded like a term of endearment when it referred to him. I suppose because of his popularity he thought he could defy Zwanya and Kittyman and give me the treatment. Our dormitories were built like a prison with narrow barred windows just below the high roof. The building formed a square with only one entrance with heavy iron-cast gates. Once those gates were locked there was no escape from the Square. It was at those gates that Jama confronted me and demanded that I sing the famous song about how new-comers were a menace who would end up in hell after death. I stood there and looked at him stubbornly.
‘Bina ntja tooe,'
he yelled. Sing, you dog.
People were beginning to gather and I was mortified. Here was a fellow South African and a fellow Xhosa calling me a dog in Sesotho. Worse still, I could see a glint of pleasure from some new-comers who had come to regard me with awe since I was the only new-comer who never got the treatment. I was going to lose whatever semblance of respect my immunity had afforded me among this miserable lot. This gave me the courage to speak out and be damned.
‘You come any closer,
u tla bona lipela lifalla
,' I said, using a Sesotho proverb that threatened one with a dangerous and unexpected encounter. The old-comers who had gathered were having a great time at the prospect of a fight and were chanting:
Bathepu ba batla ho loana. Malinyane a Nongqawuse a batla ho loana!
The Bathepu want to fight. Nongqawuse's offspring want to fight!
I think the fact that the old-comers were not taking his side but instead were looking forward to a fight between the foreigners brought Jama to his senses. He uttered an expletive, opened the gate and walked out of the Square. He turned and looked at me with eyes full of anger and said, ‘Beware the Ides of March!' Then he walked away.
A sigh of relief. I had never been a fighter in my life; if he had taken the challenge he surely would have wiped the floor with me.
That was the last time that anyone tried to give me the treatment. By the twelfth of March when hazing was scheduled officially to end, I was long integrated into the life of the high school and anyone would have thought I was an old-comer. I was already spending my free time with the older boys smoking hand-rolled cigarettes at the officially designated Smoking Spot behind the dormitories. Most of my popularity rested on my political experience, which none of my smoking companions could match even though they were much older than me. I was a purveyor of political knowledge, and even distributed the PAC organ,
The Africanist
, and other material. Most students were BCP members or sympathisers, and therefore were comrades-in-arms as fellow Pan Africanists. I was proud that some articles in the
The Africanist
were written by people who were friends of mine: Ntlabathi Mbuli and Sipho Shabalala. So you see, it was no longer because I was a sidekick of a Maseru gangster that I was spared the treatment. I was seen by my peers as a political sage who could, at the slightest provocation, expound on the evils of imperialism and on the goings-on in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the headquarters of the Organization of African Unity which had been founded only a year before.
The twelfth of March was an official holiday in honour of King Moshoeshoe I, the founder of the Basotho nation. At Peka High School it was referred to as the Ides of March. It was the day that the new-comers dreaded most because it brought about the end of hazing in a most savage manner. On this day old-comers strutted around threatening all the new-comers against whom they had a grudge, perhaps because they became defiant when they were being ordered around or they became tattletales to the prefects, that the day of reckoning had come.
‘Beware the Ides of March,' a boy would yell.
‘Yeah, they are come but not gone,' another would respond.
This sent a chill down my spine; I feared that all the old-comers who were not able to give me the treatment because I had gained too much respectability among the most revered seniors would take advantage of the darkness of the Ides of March. Stories were doing the rounds that old-comers would come for the new-comers in the middle of the
night dressed in sheets like the Ku Klux Klan and frogmarch them – especially the stubborn ones who, in the two months since the new year began, had become too big for their boots – to the Caledon River that separates Lesotho from South Africa where they would force them, fully dressed in their pyjamas, into the cold water while thrashing them with leather belts and spitting on them.
I was certain that I was one of the uppity ones who was going to get the treatment. And I wouldn't know who was responsible because the culprits would all be in ghostly white. When evening came and there were wolf-like howls all around the Square – ‘Beware the Ides of March!' – I was shaking in my Florsheim shoes that I had pinched from my rich Mohale's Hoek friend, Gift Mpho Hlao. I tried to make light of the matter by asking the seniors at the Smoking Spot, ‘Shouldn't the Ides of March be on the fifteenth?'
‘In
Julius Caesar
maybe,' said Hodges Maqina as he rolled a cigarette of Best Blend Tobacco in a piece of brown paper, ‘but for us here it is the twelfth because it's a holiday.'
Although Hodges Maqina was of Xhosa descent he had spent all his life in Lesotho. He was one of the seniors with whom I hit it off immediately because I could hold my own in any political discussion. He was respected by everyone because of his muscular body and the fact that he was a prefect. So, hanging out with him at the Smoking Spot while I was a mere new-comer was something that raised my prestige, for which I was going to pay dearly on this day, the Ides of March. He was well-beloved by all the new-comers because he exuded an air of maturity and authority, and he never got involved in the savage practice of hazing. But of course he wouldn't have been able to save all of us from the Ides of March, even if he had been so inclined.
The spirit of the thug who became my guardian angel by sheer chance at the Maseru bus stop prevailed, and once more Zwanya and Kittyman came to my rescue. I had not asked them for help because I didn't want to impose; they had been a bit distant lately. Perhaps because I had taken to socialising with intellectuals like Hodges Maqina, Phanuel Ramorobi and Kingston Mohapeloa. The last was a particular hero of mine because he was an artist. But none of these sophisticates offered
me succour. It was the old stalwarts in shabby coats and unkempt hair who remembered the assignment they were given by a gangster. They smuggled me out of my dormitory and arranged with the Health Prefect to hide me in a small room that served as a dispensary.
Deep in the night I could hear the howls and the wails and the screams. I knew that boys who looked very much like Klansmen were waking their victims up and marching them to the river. ‘Where is that Mothepu?' I heard someone ask. ‘Damn that Kittyman! Damn that Zwanya! What have they done with that Mothepu?'
When the sun rose I walked out of the dispensary a liberated man. We had all been delivered after the Ides of March. When next I met Jama Mbeki we laughed about our encounter and became friends. Those days the road ahead was still very bleak, and none of us could have suspected that one day South Africa would be free and Jama's brother Thabo would be the president.
After the Ides of March we were all equal.
I could then immerse myself in boarding school life without any reservations. This included bloviating on current events at the Smoking Spot, particularly on the battle for supremacy between the Basutoland Congress Party and the Basotho National Party and participating in the school's official debating society. I soon established myself as an astute debater who converted even the most innocuous of subjects into a political one. Once I was on the affirmative on the topic ‘Honesty is the Best Policy' and I started speaking about such freedom fighters as Oginga Odinga who fought for the freedom of Kenya and were honest to their cause despite being jailed at one time, or being promised riches by the British if they gave up the struggle at another time. I won that debate. Dugmore Hlalele, a senior who was on the negative side, claimed that I had invented the story about Oginga Odinga and that in fact there was never such a person. This tended to devalue my great win in the eyes of my peers. Pity the Internet had not yet been invented otherwise I would have ‘Googled' the name to prove Oginga Odinga's existence. I had to wait for weeks until his name featured in a newspaper article and I ran triumphantly to the Smoking Spot to show Dugmore that Oginga Odinga was not a figment of my imagination.
This brought me closer to another group of friends, that of Dugs, as we called Dugmore Hlalele, and my erstwhile enemy, Jama Mbeki. Dugs was a good person to know. He was originally from Welkom and his brother-in-law, Jefty Smith, owned 60 Minutes Dry Cleaners in Maseru. Because of Jefty's connections to the underworld of South Africa, during holidays Dugs socialised with the kind of characters we only read about in newspapers – the likes of soccer elites Eric Scara Sono and Chincha Guluva Motaung. He came back after June or December holidays with stories of
braais
– barbecue parties – he had attended in Welkom and Soweto, and of beauty queens he had actually spoken to. For us, me and Jama, it was like Dugs was talking of a different planet; we were exiled in Lesotho and the glamorous world he was talking about was far removed from our experience. The more immediate world was that of politics, particularly of BCP politics. And here, of course, I was the voice they took seriously.
At first I had been reluctant to discuss politics with Jama because I thought we belonged in opposite camps – he being the son of ANC leaders and all – and didn't want to upset the apple cart of our budding friendship. But I discovered that he was as sympathetic to the BCP as Dugs was. I was not surprised though, because Peka High was a BCP breeding ground, and most of our teachers, such as Tseliso Makhakhe and Selometsi Baholo, were BCP leaders. Why, even Jama's uncle, Michael Mosoeu Moerane, talked openly about his support for the BCP. I knew one of Jama's uncles in Maseru, Mofelehetsi Moerane, from the days I campaigned for the BCP in the rural Quthing district. He and the artist Meshu Mokitimi organised the youth wing of the BCP. That's why it would not have been inconceivable for Jama Mbeki's sympathies to lie with the BCP, an ally of the PAC, and not with the Marematlou Freedom Party which was at the time in alliance with the ANC.
My immersion into boarding school life did not only confine itself to academically enriching activities. On some weekends I sneaked out of school bounds in the company of my older friends and protectors, Zwanya and Kittyman, to drink Sesotho beer in the village. I found the beer brewed from sorghum unpalatable with rough malt corroding my mouth, so I only pretended to drink. I was just happy to be in the
company of these wise men who were also proud to be with their
laaitie
who was a sidekick of a Maseru gangster. I had to live up to my image.
One day we went to a shebeen at what would pass as the town of Peka – where there were two stores, a café, the post office and one or two other small businesses – about six miles from the school. There were quite a number of us, not just Kittyman and Zwanya. The big boys drank until the early hours of the morning. When we left the shebeen we were all jolly and singing dirty songs. Even though I was the soberest of the lot, the drunkards had infected me with their good spirits. Moss, an older boy from Soweto whose father was a rich businessman there, was a few steps behind us with a drunken village woman he had picked up at the shebeen. Both were singing boisterously and the woman was leading in some of the songs. From time to time they stopped and kissed passionately.
After a while I realised that Moss and the woman were no longer singing. When I looked back I saw that they were having sex on the side of the road. Moss hollered to the boys to join him and soon there was a line waiting to gang-rape the woman. I was horrified, but didn't know what to do. I couldn't stand up for her for fear of being ostracised by the group. I was the youngest and was honoured to have been accepted as a member of this group of popular boys. I didn't think they would beat me up or anything, because of my alleged gangster connections in Maseru. It was being ostracised that I feared most. I decided to walk on. But Moss called me back while Kittyman was busy on top of the woman, who didn't seem to resist but lay there lifelessly.
‘Come on,' said Moss, ‘it's going to be your turn after everyone has had a taste of her. We are initiating you into manhood.'
When it finally got to be my turn I pretended I was getting on top of her and whispered in her ear: ‘Push me off and run for your life.'
She just lay there motionless.
‘These guys will kill you,' I said. I was getting frustrated and had to lie. ‘I know them. They are my brothers. They have killed before. Just push me and run, I'll keep them at bay.'
That seemed to animate her a bit. But still she didn't have the strength to do what I was asking her. I rolled on the ground, pretending
that she had pushed me away. She feebly stood up and staggered away. When the boys tried to stop her I screamed: ‘Let her go, please, Bra Kittyman
…
Zwanya
…
Moss, she's not worth the trouble.'
The boys let her stumble away. After all, they had had their fill.

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