Sometimes There Is a Void (60 page)
Read Sometimes There Is a Void Online
Authors: Zakes Mda
But I was telling you about Mpumi. He went on to become an actor. He was part of a team that made a television documentary on pre-colonial homosexuality in South Africa. Most people learnt for the first time of women who married other women in some of our ancient kingdoms and of institutionalised homosexuality in some of the
sangoma
traditions among our spiritual healers and diviners.
sangoma
traditions among our spiritual healers and diviners.
I mourned Mpumi for a long time after he died of AIDS.
Another significant event in my association with the Market Theatre was the creation of the play
Broken Dreams
whose performances continue to this day. It has been seen by millions of students in the Gauteng Province, but also in many other provinces of South Africa.
Broken Dreams
whose performances continue to this day. It has been seen by millions of students in the Gauteng Province, but also in many other provinces of South Africa.
The play came about as a result of the concerns of a pharmaceutical company called Glaxo that their drugs for the treatment of TB were no longer effective in South Africa because of HIV and AIDS. They financed the Market Theatre Laboratory to create a play that would mobilise people against both TB and HIV/AIDS. A nurse who was employed by Glaxo â shamefully, I forget her name now, and none of the people I worked with can remember it â identified child sexual abuse as one of the major problems in South Africa, cutting across all races and all social classes. It was one of the causes of the spread of AIDS among children. She wanted the play to link the three subjects: TB, HIV/AIDS and child sexual abuse.
I put together a team of actors which included Keke Semoko, who had been my student at the Wits University School of Dramatic Art and has since become one of the leading actresses in South Africa and who has appeared in many international movies; Kefuoe Molapo, Clemoski's son who you are beginning to meet quite often in this story; Sello Motloung, another actor who has since done well for himself and has been seen in international movies; and a woman called Rosetta who would have gone far if she had pursued her acting career as rigorously as the others did.
I sent the actors out to the townships and suburbs of Johannesburg to find out about child sexual abuse. They interviewed children, teachers, social workers and parents. They came back from these expeditions and told harrowing stories of young lives destroyed mostly by men â and an occasional woman here and there â who preyed on them. And in most cases these predators were in the family â fathers, brothers, uncles â or neighbours.
As we sat there in the rehearsal room creating a play from these stories we related our own experiences of abuse. Rosetta, for instance, had her own disturbing stories from her childhood. I had mine too. I told them about Nontonje, the red woman who abused me sexually
when I was a small child. It was the first time I had talked about this. Even when I was healed through my relationship with Tholane when I was at 'Mabathoana High School, I had never told her about it because I had not associated my sexual problems with it. I had never told anyone until that day when I sat with my actors and we wept at some of the stories we heard. I realised for the first time how that sexual abuse at KwaGcina â that I had even forgotten about until then â had had such a great impact on my life and how it had resulted in my dysfunction as a man, husband, father and human being. I had not realised this because I never had flashbacks about it, I never had nightmares. Right from the beginning I had dismissed it as water under the bridge. Yet subconsciously it took its toll on me.
when I was a small child. It was the first time I had talked about this. Even when I was healed through my relationship with Tholane when I was at 'Mabathoana High School, I had never told her about it because I had not associated my sexual problems with it. I had never told anyone until that day when I sat with my actors and we wept at some of the stories we heard. I realised for the first time how that sexual abuse at KwaGcina â that I had even forgotten about until then â had had such a great impact on my life and how it had resulted in my dysfunction as a man, husband, father and human being. I had not realised this because I never had flashbacks about it, I never had nightmares. Right from the beginning I had dismissed it as water under the bridge. Yet subconsciously it took its toll on me.
Here was theatre acting as psychotherapy in a very practical sense.
After every hectic day I went home to my four children in Westdene. I didn't tell you that Dini had returned from the United States and was staying with me too, in addition to Zukile, Thandi and Neo. I was living a fulfilling celibate life. Occasionally I thought about Gugu. I wondered where she was and what she was doing. One day I decided to write to her. I addressed the letter to the old address that I used to know. If she had moved they would forward it to her. I told her about my life with Adele, and that I was planning to consult lawyers about a divorce. I would wait until she returned from the United States though, so that I did not burden her with extra worries while she was busy studying for her MEd degree.
A few weeks later I received Gugu's response. She was still in Swaziland and was happily married with a beautiful daughter called Nonkululeko â Mother of Freedom. She advised me very strongly not to divorce Adele. It was the easy way out. I should remember that we had a child and we should try to work out our problems for the sake of Zukile. In any marriage there were bound to be problems, she went on to say, but running away from them was not the solution.
There was a lot of sense in what she was saying. Divorce was the coward's way.
THE TWO RESEARCHERS ARRIVE
at Gugu's apartment at the Twin Oaks townhouse complex in Randpark Ridge, Johannesburg. Bob Edgar is a professor at Howard University in Washington, DC, but spends a lot of time in South Africa because that's his area of scholarship. He even has property in Cape Town. He is usually pushing his handicapped son Leteane in a wheelchair. He adopted him in Lesotho when he taught at the university there as a Fulbright Scholar many years ago, which was where I first met him. But Leteane is not with him today. Bob is an authority on my father; he and Luyanda ka Msumza, my father's former protégé, are compiling and editing a book of my father's writings.
at Gugu's apartment at the Twin Oaks townhouse complex in Randpark Ridge, Johannesburg. Bob Edgar is a professor at Howard University in Washington, DC, but spends a lot of time in South Africa because that's his area of scholarship. He even has property in Cape Town. He is usually pushing his handicapped son Leteane in a wheelchair. He adopted him in Lesotho when he taught at the university there as a Fulbright Scholar many years ago, which was where I first met him. But Leteane is not with him today. Bob is an authority on my father; he and Luyanda ka Msumza, my father's former protégé, are compiling and editing a book of my father's writings.
The second researcher is Dorothy Steele, a sweet elderly lady from Cape Town who is writing my literary biography for a master's degree she is doing with the University of South Africa. I have known her for a number of years now and she has become close not only to my immediate family but to my distant relatives as well. She has been to the Bee Place and spent some time with the Bee People, has been to KwaGcina where I was violated and she has spoken to Reuben Mkhwentla, one of the elders who knew my father well. She has gone to Kokstad to speak to my brother Monwabisi, and my cousin Nondyebo, who lives with my brother. She has also spoken to my ex-wife Mpho and to all our children, and has even attended some of the workshops I conduct for playwrights at the Market Theatre. She is quite thorough in her research, and is a beautiful kind soul to boot.
Today Gugu and I are taking these scholars to Orlando West, Soweto, to visit my Aunt Ella. She is my father's younger sister and was a PAC leader in Soweto in her own right. I love visiting her because she reminds me of my father; she resembles him so much you'd have thought they were identical twins. Bob wants to interview her about her memories of growing up at Goodwell at my grandfather's estate â the present-day Bee Place.
Aunt Ella's house is only three streets away from Armitage Street where Gugu grew up, and two blocks from Vilakazi Street, where Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu had their homes. When we arrive we are welcomed by two of her daughters who are just as robustly built as she is. They tread on the floor with gravitas as they usher us into the living room. My aunt joins us and does not reprimand me for bringing visitors without warning. That's how things are done among our people; you don't call before, you just visit. If people happen not to be there it doesn't matter, you'll come unannounced another day.
Bob wants to know about my grandfather and how life used to be those days on Dyarhom Mountain, which today I call the pink mountain. But my aunt is more interested in talking about the great work that Robert Mugabe is doing in Zimbabwe redistributing farms to the previously dispossessed and how South Africa will undergo an uprising if the ANC does not follow Mugabe's example and reallocate
the land to the masses. She says that Nelson Mandela sold out the African people. That is why he is the darling of the West. He has always been a sell-out from the days she knew him as a young man and neighbour. That was why he took the side of the Communists against the African Nationalists in the 1950s. Now he and the ANC are selling out the African people to corporate interests.
the land to the masses. She says that Nelson Mandela sold out the African people. That is why he is the darling of the West. He has always been a sell-out from the days she knew him as a young man and neighbour. That was why he took the side of the Communists against the African Nationalists in the 1950s. Now he and the ANC are selling out the African people to corporate interests.
I chuckle at the irony of a Communist selling out to capitalist interests. Then I remember that this is South Africa; some of our biggest black capitalists profess socialism and some of the leading members of the Communist Party are involved in the rampant accumulation of personal wealth. It was the same in Zimbabwe; Mugabe and his cronies were big on socialist rhetoric while they distributed hotels, farms and factories among themselves, without ever addressing the land question among the poor for all those years. It was only when there was a threat of real opposition that they started rendering their country ungovernable and throwing due process out of the window in a wholesale land grab, not only from the white settler community, but from those black Zimbabweans who did not support the ruling party. My son-in-law, Limpho's husband, worked hard at McDonald's in South Africa until he attained a management position.
He bought his parents a farm in Zimbabwe which was duly confiscated by Mugabe's âwar veterans'. And, guess what, my son-in-law was not a white settler but a black Zimbabwean.
Anyway, let me leave Mugabe and Zimbabwe alone and listen to Aunt Ella and her guests. I am aware of her sentiments because she has expressed them to me before. Although I don't agree with her, especially when she praises Mugabe and condemns Mandela's reconciliation efforts as a Western plot to deny the African people justice, I never argue with her. I become an unresponsive sounding board. I understand her anger and pain; one of her sons, Cousin Mzwandile, was a casualty of the liberation struggle. So were many others â friends, neighbours and relatives. And now she and her people have nothing to show for it. Instead, they are faced with escalating costs of utilities, discontinued water and electricity services, and chronic unemployment, while a minority of politically well-connected black fat cats is riding on what
in South Africa is referred to as the gravy train â if you don't mind our mixed metaphors. She reflects the anger that we often hear among our black people in the townships and in the rural areas where I work with the poor.
in South Africa is referred to as the gravy train â if you don't mind our mixed metaphors. She reflects the anger that we often hear among our black people in the townships and in the rural areas where I work with the poor.
I ask that Gugu and I be excused from the meeting. While they continue with their interview, we take a sentimental tour of the township. We go to the nearby Hector Peterson Museum and talk to the vendors of arts and crafts, and to a PAC stalwart called Ali Hlongwane who runs the museum. We drive past Gugu's former home at Armitage Street and wonder who owns it now. Her parents sold it some years back. Gugu's friends and playmates of old still live next door, but unfortunately they are not home today. We decide to buy
spykos
â or junk food â of fried dough cakes known as
amagwinya
and the pickled mango called
atchaar
. I never leave Soweto without tasting the
spykos
. This one is particularly meaningful because we buy it from the same little café which we used to patronise when we were kids â albeit in different years. Those days we would also have added fish crumbs and battered fishbone. But now, of course, we wouldn't buy that even if they still sold such fare.
spykos
â or junk food â of fried dough cakes known as
amagwinya
and the pickled mango called
atchaar
. I never leave Soweto without tasting the
spykos
. This one is particularly meaningful because we buy it from the same little café which we used to patronise when we were kids â albeit in different years. Those days we would also have added fish crumbs and battered fishbone. But now, of course, we wouldn't buy that even if they still sold such fare.
We always find Soweto â particularly Orlando West and Orlando East, and for me Dobsonville â very inspiring. It takes us back to our childhood. This is the area and the youth that I captured for posterity in my novel
Black Diamond
. These were also my father's stomping grounds during his ANC Youth League days. The Mda Street that we drive through is named after him.
Black Diamond
. These were also my father's stomping grounds during his ANC Youth League days. The Mda Street that we drive through is named after him.
After about two hours we go back to pick up Bob and Dorothy. I don't know if their trip has been fruitful. For me and Gugu, just breathing the air of this part of Soweto is satisfying enough.
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ONE THING I REGRETTED
about leaving the Wits University School of Dramatic Art was that I would not be able to continue my visits to Soweto with my students. As part of our Theatre in Education course, which I subverted by adding elements of Theatre for Development to
it, I had started a programme where once a week I took the students to Dobsonville to work with township kids who were members of the Dobsonville Arts Association, which was led by its founder, Maswabi Legwale. At first my students, who were mostly white and had never been in a black township before, were apprehensive about venturing into a foreign world that conjured only images of crime in their collective imagination. But soon they were enjoying it and were looking forward to the visits, first in Legwale's own backyard and later at a cultural centre called Kopanong. Though I would no longer be going with my students, I hoped to keep my connections with the group.
about leaving the Wits University School of Dramatic Art was that I would not be able to continue my visits to Soweto with my students. As part of our Theatre in Education course, which I subverted by adding elements of Theatre for Development to
it, I had started a programme where once a week I took the students to Dobsonville to work with township kids who were members of the Dobsonville Arts Association, which was led by its founder, Maswabi Legwale. At first my students, who were mostly white and had never been in a black township before, were apprehensive about venturing into a foreign world that conjured only images of crime in their collective imagination. But soon they were enjoying it and were looking forward to the visits, first in Legwale's own backyard and later at a cultural centre called Kopanong. Though I would no longer be going with my students, I hoped to keep my connections with the group.
I couldn't keep to that undertaking on a regular basis because my time was swallowed by efforts to make a livelihood as a full-time writer. Not only was I reviewing and editing manuscripts for Albert Nemukula's Vivlia Publishers, but occasionally I undertook some writing projects for television. I also continued to express my views in the columns of newspapers.
The
Sunday Times
engaged my services to write a weekly column called âOn the Small Screen' reviewing programmes on South African television. Since I travelled abroad extensively I also commented on overseas programming in comparison with South African television. My columns did not only confine themselves to television, but I used them as a springboard to comment on social and political issues affecting broader society. For instance, President Nelson Mandela was shown on television lamenting the death of Sani Abacha of Nigeria. He said his death was a great loss to Africa. I wrote a scathing column attacking Mandela for being âeconomical with the truth'. He was being âan African statesman' in a situation that demanded honesty and not glib diplomacy, I wrote. Africa would not miss Sani Abacha one bit because he was a dictator, a murderer and a thief. I think I was even more biting in my article because two and a half years before this same Sani Abacha killed a dear friend of mine, Ken Saro Wiwa. Ken was a Nigerian writer, television producer, environmentalist and political activist who I had met on a few occasions in Europe. South African poet Don Mattera and I had spent wonderful moments with Ken in Bayreuth, Germany. We admired him for his relentless struggle against
the oppression and exploitation of his Ogoni people in particular and of Nigerians in general.
Sunday Times
engaged my services to write a weekly column called âOn the Small Screen' reviewing programmes on South African television. Since I travelled abroad extensively I also commented on overseas programming in comparison with South African television. My columns did not only confine themselves to television, but I used them as a springboard to comment on social and political issues affecting broader society. For instance, President Nelson Mandela was shown on television lamenting the death of Sani Abacha of Nigeria. He said his death was a great loss to Africa. I wrote a scathing column attacking Mandela for being âeconomical with the truth'. He was being âan African statesman' in a situation that demanded honesty and not glib diplomacy, I wrote. Africa would not miss Sani Abacha one bit because he was a dictator, a murderer and a thief. I think I was even more biting in my article because two and a half years before this same Sani Abacha killed a dear friend of mine, Ken Saro Wiwa. Ken was a Nigerian writer, television producer, environmentalist and political activist who I had met on a few occasions in Europe. South African poet Don Mattera and I had spent wonderful moments with Ken in Bayreuth, Germany. We admired him for his relentless struggle against
the oppression and exploitation of his Ogoni people in particular and of Nigerians in general.
Many people commented on what they regarded as my âattack' on Nelson Mandela. Some noted that this was not the first time I had been critical of the great leader. When the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Baleka Mbethe, a woman I admired very much for her poetry and her leadership in the liberation struggle, was accused of obtaining a driver's licence through fraudulent means in the corrupt Mpumalanga Province, Mandela had come to her defence even before he knew the facts of the case, calling her a woman of integrity. I criticised him for his blind loyalty to his comrades, which led to the condonation of corruption.
I had also featured on a BBC radio programme where I expressed fears about the deification of Nelson Mandela. I commended him in that programme because he did not go along with that, and in fact opposed any notions that he was a saint. I went on to say that most of the problems that we had in Africa began with the deification of our political leaders. They had fought for our liberation and as soon as they took over government we gave them such titles as the Messiah and the Redeemer. Why would they not have a Jesus complex? Megalomania developed, cultivated in them by us. We the intellectuals became useful idiots in the service of the petty dictators. When they began to loot the coffers of the state we turned a blind eye. They deserved a little reward for the decades they suffered on our behalf, some spending years in colonial prisons and in exile. Soon they thought they could do no wrong. They became all-powerful and all-knowing without becoming all-loving. No one could touch them. They inspired nothing but fear and became even worse than the colonial masters they replaced. They jailed and murdered even the mildest of opposition. They became agents of neo-colonialism, selling the riches of their countries to the West for their own self-aggrandisement.
I went on to say South Africa showed promise of going against that trend. We resisted the deification of the leaders. Staunch members of the ruling party were the first to go out in the streets to demonstrate against their own comrades in the government when they did not make the right decisions or did not perform to their satisfaction. We had a
very strong civil society and a robustly free press which was always vigilant. Hopefully, things would stay like that and the gains we had made would be safeguarded.
very strong civil society and a robustly free press which was always vigilant. Hopefully, things would stay like that and the gains we had made would be safeguarded.
My column in the
Sunday Times
became very popular. The English Academy of Southern Africa awarded it the Thomas Pringle Prize for 1998. I had to give up the column, however, because I was becoming increasingly involved in producing television programmes. I could not be a referee and a player at the same time. Also, it was becoming very difficult for me to hurt other people's feelings, especially the young producers and directors and even actors, who were doing their best and were wary of this mean person with a powerful pen who was always ready to pan their efforts. Another thing was that I was tired of fighting battles with the sub-editors of the
Sunday Times
who were ready to mess up my copy with their bad English and ignorance of historical and political facts.
Sunday Times
became very popular. The English Academy of Southern Africa awarded it the Thomas Pringle Prize for 1998. I had to give up the column, however, because I was becoming increasingly involved in producing television programmes. I could not be a referee and a player at the same time. Also, it was becoming very difficult for me to hurt other people's feelings, especially the young producers and directors and even actors, who were doing their best and were wary of this mean person with a powerful pen who was always ready to pan their efforts. Another thing was that I was tired of fighting battles with the sub-editors of the
Sunday Times
who were ready to mess up my copy with their bad English and ignorance of historical and political facts.
At this time my novels and plays were also garnering some awards in South Africa.
Ways of Dying
received the M-Net Award,
She Plays with the Darkness
was awarded the Olive Schreiner Prize for Fiction and
The Nun's Romantic Story
won the Olive Schreiner Prize for Drama.
Ways of Dying
also got a Noma Award Honourable Mention. This in itself would not be worth mentioning, except for the fact that the judge was none other than the publisher who had turned the novel down as âfeminist diatribe'.
Ways of Dying
received the M-Net Award,
She Plays with the Darkness
was awarded the Olive Schreiner Prize for Fiction and
The Nun's Romantic Story
won the Olive Schreiner Prize for Drama.
Ways of Dying
also got a Noma Award Honourable Mention. This in itself would not be worth mentioning, except for the fact that the judge was none other than the publisher who had turned the novel down as âfeminist diatribe'.
I was quite happy with my writing life, and with the fact that I had reconnected with my friend Sebolelo Mokhobo, or Sebo. She and her husband now lived in Johannesburg where she worked for a government department in the education sector. I occasionally met her for a drink at one of the pubs in Randburg, and she was surprised that I had become a teetotaller. She was still on to her beer, and I remembered fondly the old days when we used to pub-crawl in Maseru. I still had a very soft spot for her and I was sad when she told me how unhappy she was even though she had an important government job. I convinced my publisher Albert Nemukula that he should commission her to write the study notes for my novella for youth,
Melville 67
. The cover of the book was a painting by my son Neo, as was the case with the cover of
She Plays with the Darkness
.
Melville 67
. The cover of the book was a painting by my son Neo, as was the case with the cover of
She Plays with the Darkness
.
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