Sometimes There Is a Void (37 page)

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Authors: Zakes Mda

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Another thing I observed was that the PAC promoted chauvinistic and patriarchal values in the name of Africanism. The movement had a very static view of what it meant to be African – an archival one that advocated for a return to some glorious pre-colonial past. Culture meant the way Africans used to live, rather than the way they live today.
What scared me most about my comrades was their social conservatism particularly on gay rights – ‘homosexuality is unAfrican' – on reproductive rights – ‘abortion is unAfrican' – and on the issue of the death penalty – ‘an eye for an eye'. These were positions they shared with the American right, the Catholic Church, fundamentalist Protestants and fundamentalist Muslims. It seemed to me that the PAC were birds of a feather with these intensely patriarchal, retrogressive and conservative organisations. But of course I continued to like what the PAC used to stand for: pan-Africanism (which the ANC appropriated so effectively), identification with the peasants and their struggles, and the concern for the return of the land to its rightful owners.
On the other hand, from my discussions with the likes of Jobs it became clear to me that the ANC was much more progressive on these issues and was more inclusive in its definition of both Africanness and of South Africanness. Thabo Mbeki's post-liberation ‘I am an African' speech is a product of that tradition of inclusiveness. I found the values enshrined in the Freedom Charter – the very document my Africanist comrades were derisive about – quite attractive. It was obvious to which camp I naturally belonged, although I would never officially join a political party again. I was too much of a free spirit to toe a party line.
‘Whatever happened to you, son of Africa?' Bra Saul would ask whenever I took Jobs' side in a debate on these issues. ‘Jobs has made you a Charterist.'
‘Don't blame Jobs,' I would reply. ‘Blame my sensibilities and sensitivities.'
The wonderful thing about the Lesotho exile was that we talked across party and ideological lines as we quaffed large quantities of alcohol. There were no recriminations.
For me, the swilling combined very well with what my friends cutely called womanising. I was renting what the Americans would call a mother-in-law apartment in a large and modern stone house belonging to the Lebotsa family. I was wifeless since parting ways with Mpho, though not divorced, and my three children were staying with my mother at Holy Cross Mission in southern Lesotho. I could go on the rampage as I pleased at 'Mamojela's, at the Lancer's Inn, at Clemoski's, at Bra Saul's. At my apartment the rampage included women. Motena
Mokoae, a daughter of a cabinet minister in Leabua Jonathan's government, was a very special girlfriend. But there were many others who came to my house, mostly the Soweto girls who were students at various schools in town. I have only a vague memory of most of them. I was almost always in an alcoholic and sexual daze.
But I do have a memory of Nono. She was a tall and slender Mosotho woman I met at the bar in Mafeteng. We soon hit it off even though she told me she was married to a white man. She used to drive to Maseru every week and we made furious love. She would phone me on a daily basis and tell me how much she missed our lovemaking. (Well, she didn't put it in those words, but, you know, I must go easy on any X-rated language; my kids will be reading this book as well.) Even when I was in Mafeteng visiting my father she would come and snatch me away, to my father's consternation, and would only bring me back in the morning. Obviously to Nono and the rest of the women I had become quite a stallion. They didn't know that it was because I was a late bloomer. I was still marvelling at the wonders of sex and at what I had been missing all the years I had been encumbered by Nontonje's enfeeblement.
One December morning Nono arrived unannounced and found me in bed with Motena. The room had the stench of the night and of beer. She just sat on a sofa next to the bed and engaged in some small talk as if nothing had happened. Then she said goodbye and left. She got into her brown Opel Kadett, drove away and never came back.
I missed Nono, but life had to go on. Plus Dizzy was in town. Not my Mr Dizzy who was a feature of Maseru, but Dizzy Gillespie. He came to headline a jazz festival at the Maseru Stadium. With him were the Jazz Professors from Rutgers University as his sidemen and Marc Crawford, who was a professor of creative writing at Rutgers. But he was more famous as a staff reporter for
Life
magazine who also dabbled in public relations for B B King and Johnny Mathis.
Dizzy Gillespie and the Jazz Professors held jazz clinics for us and Marc Crawford conducted a creative writing workshop at the Maseru Holiday Inn. I had never been in a creative writing workshop before and didn't even know that writing could actually be taught. Crawford
made us gaze into each others' eyes for a minute or so and then furiously write anything that came to our mind. After that we read to the rest of the workshop participants what we had written and giggled at the silliness of it all. I don't know if we gained anything from the workshop, but I for one was quite satisfied with the fact that Crawford read my poems and told everyone that they were great. He even read one of the poems to the group.
I don't think we benefited that much from the jazz clinics either. Well, maybe the Lebentlele brothers who were advanced players did. It was just great that we got to hang out with Dizzy Gillespie, the Jazz Professors and Marc Crawford. Dizzy Gillespie talked a lot about a prophet called Bahaullah from whom he drew his strength and hope for humanity. I had not known that he was of the Baha'i faith. He told us that one could not play great jazz if one was not spiritual, whatever form or religion that spirituality took. For him jazz was an expression of spirituality.
You may wonder how I found time to write with all these goings-on, particularly the unbridled promiscuity. But I did. I had started writing a play about migrant workers titled
The Hill
when I was still at Mabathoana High. I had gone to stay on the hill opposite the high school where men from all over Lesotho spent their nights in the Caves of Mpokho waiting for contracts to go to the mines of South Africa. I had also read a pamphlet titled
Another Blanket
written by an ecumenical organisation that investigated the problems of these migrant workers from the time they left their villages, the humiliation they suffered at the recruitment centres where labour recruiters demanded bribes before they would sign the men on, the months they spent in Maseru scrounging a living doing ‘piece jobs' and raiding the dustbins of wealthy Maseru West, right up to the degradation they suffered in the mines. My play was largely based on my experiences interacting with these men.
It won the Amstel Playwright of the Year Award in 1979. André Brink and Barry Ronge were the judges. The Lesotho government granted me citizenship so that I could qualify for a passport and go to accept the award in person. My father was concerned that if I returned to South Africa I would be arrested; I had left the country
illegally and I had been involved in politics in Lesotho, and of course the Boers had eyes everywhere and knew exactly what I had been up to. But the deputy prime minister and minister of the interior, Chief Sekhonyana 'Maseribane, who had been urging my father for years to take up Lesotho citizenship, assured him that nothing would happen to me because with Lesotho citizenship I was under the protection of the Lesotho government.
‘Your son has brought pride and honour to Lesotho,' 'Maseribane, who I regarded as an odious character because it turned out he was the first member of Leabua's government to join Fred Roach in instigating the savage coup of 1970, told my father. ‘He must go accept his prize as a Mosotho. Have no fear of
Maburu
.'
I believed him. His government was in bed with the Boers – or
Maburu
as he called them in Sesotho – and the apartheid government would not want to upset an ally by bothering with small fry like me. After all, I was not involved in any direct guerrilla action as other exiles like Chris Hani were. I was a mere talker and writer.
My father reminded me that the apartheid government had banned my book, which meant that they had a file on me.
‘Those fellows have a long memory,' he said. ‘'Maseribane must give us some guarantee that nothing will happen to you.'
I was prepared to take the risk, but dared not defy my father and go to South Africa without his blessing. Chief 'Maseribane kept his word and contacted my father with a message that he had it in writing: the
Maburu
had given me temporary indemnity, so I must go there and represent Lesotho and continue to put it on the map.
In November 1979, after fifteen years as an exile, I went back to South Africa as a Lesotho citizen to accept my award. I thought returning to South Africa after all those years would be a big deal, but I was preoccupied with the award I was going to receive rather than the fact that I was back on South African soil. Perhaps if I had returned by road, crossed the border post in Maseru and rode in a taxi or bus through the Free State I would have had time to ruminate and interact emotionally with the land and the people. But I took a plane from Maseru to Jan Smuts International Airport, which was just a one-hour flight. Once
my passport was stamped and I walked out of the terminal building I found Nicholas Ellenbogen and a bunch of journalists waiting for me. They interviewed me as we drove in a Kombi to the five-star Hotel Braamfontein in the city, and once again I had no time to take in the fact that I was actually in a South Africa I had left all those years ago because of apartheid, and that I was now back but apartheid was still in place. I was only able to stay at this hotel in the city because it had been granted ‘international status' by the government and therefore ‘foreign' blacks like me could be accommodated and served there.
I knew nothing much had changed in South Africa since my family left. Therefore nothing surprised me about that first visit. I interacted with South Africans all the time in Lesotho, those who were in exile themselves and those who came as visitors and returned home. I had been interacting with South African culture, not only through the visitors, but also through music, art, newspapers, the radio and other media, since my arrival in Lesotho. My return, therefore, did not present me with any culture shock. In any event, I was returning as a ‘celebrity' who was surrounded by theatre people and journalists – both black and white – in an artificial non-racial bubble that was far removed from the realities of the Soweto of my youth which was still the Soweto of the day. Only now there was more resistance, more deaths from police bullets and, as the Black Consciousness artists – Matsemela Manaka, Maishe Maponya and Ingoapele Madingoane – who came to see me at the hotel and at the awards ceremony emphasised, more poetry and theatre and art in the bloody streets that both rallied the people to more action and gave them hope that a new day was bound to dawn soon.
The day after the ceremony the headlines in
The Star
screamed:
Lesotho teacher wins play award
. The newspaper wrote of the play as a ‘poignant, witty observation of the South African migrant worker situation'.
The play was first produced at the people's Space Theatre in Cape Town to rave reviews. It was directed by Rob Amato and featured Nomhle Nkonyeni (now regarded as the doyenne of the South African stage), Sylvia Mdunyelwa (now an acclaimed jazz singer) and Natie Rula (who later became an enduring actress of soap operas). When the
play went to the Market Theatre in Johannesburg it was greeted by the
Sunday Times
headlines:
The mountain comes to the Market – Award winner ‘The Hill' is in town
. Another newspaper in the same stable, the
Sunday Times Extra
, had the headline:
‘The Hill': best since ‘Sizwe' and ‘Island'.
This was a reference to the plays created by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona –
Sizwe Banzi Is Dead
and
The Island
. Rob Amato made a point of seeing that the play came to Lesotho and it was performed at the Hilton Hotel and at the National University of Lesotho.
Now that I had a passport and could go to South Africa I was able to reconnect with Keneiloe Mohafa, my childhood sweetheart from Sterkspruit. This, in fact, is what helped to rein in my rampant behaviour. She was the woman I had been yearning for all those years. I had continued to write poetry about her, even as her memory was fading in my mind. Now there she was, as beautiful as ever with her big round eyes, though now she was quite overweight and very much concerned about it. She was now a social worker, having qualified with a bachelor's degree in the field from the University of the North in Turfloop some years before, and was working for the Johannesburg Child Welfare Society. She was renting a back room in Alexandra Township.
She drove all the way from Johannesburg in her Volkswagen Golf to visit me in Maseru, and I took a plane from Maseru to Johannesburg to visit her in Alexandra Township. I could afford to do that because I had by then secured employment with the American Cultural Center on Kingsway as a Cultural Affairs Specialist. The Center was part of the United States Information Agency and ran a library and resource centre.
Keneiloe, quite a heavy drinker in her own right, used to take me to some of the famous night spots for black people in Johannesburg. I got to know of Ha Kolokoti, a famous shebeen in Orlando, through her. She also took me to a nightclub that was always in the papers because it was patronised by the black elite, the Pelican, and introduced me to Kelly Michaels who owned and operated the place. Gugu tells me that she was one of the kids I saw peeping through the fence gawking at the celebrities who patronised the Pelican. I didn't know then that one of those urchins would one day be my wife.

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