7 Bona fides Julie Barker

BONA FIDES

Julie Barker

I live in Alex. We call it Gomorrah. It’s a place that never sleeps. Cops, nurses, and lovers live here, amakwerekwere, and the unemployed brothers of mothers. Me, I’m a bona fide resident, born and bred. The only other place I could live – is space.

Gomorrah used to be a dark city. No lights and no law. I was a kid then. Too young to remember the hostels burning and the men with pangas slashing cops. Now we’re fancy; with our RDP houses and the Gautrain. It’s gold and silver. Every 20 minutes it pulls into Marlboro Station, just across the highway from my house in Extension 8.

My mother, Mbali, wakes up every morning and waters her vegetable patch. It’s not so cool, your mother ploughing land right there in front of your house. Even worse, she sings while she’s doing it. I swear she makes me feel rural all over again (not that I ever was).

While I eat my Weet-bix I hear Mrs Malinga shouting from inside her toilet while she looks at us through her window. “Mbali, you bring the rats, man. That red lettuce thingy stuff is no good.”

My mother shouts back, “You have no respect, you old goat. I’m feeding the starving. Saving the dispossessed.”

S’bu pitches up. We walk to the taxi rank every morning to go to our school near Sandton. S’bu is skinny, so skinny that when he stands sideways in a crowd you could miss him. S’bu shows me his new telescope. He’s taking it to school today to show kids how to use it. It’s an Orion Space-Probe, electric blue.

“Dude, I saw Saturn’s rings last night.”

“No way.”

S’bu nudges me. “Any time you want to come round. Any time, chommie.” He’s a real friend.

We get to school on time. Just.

S’bu’s packing his telescope away when Alison rocks up, her ponytail swinging from side to side. “Look, the darkies didn’t ‘miss the bus’ today. Run out of relatives who’ve died?”

“At least we have relatives,” I snap.

Alison curls her lip. “Smart, cappuccino. Must be your white genes talking.”

S’bu scowls.

Mrs Liebenberg walks down the corridor before I can say another word. Alison smiles at me, and walks off. One day I’m going to rip that ponytail off her head, I warn S’bu. He laughs, uneasily.

We have Science first period. S’bu talks about his telescope. Not everyone thinks it’s as cool as I do. They have no idea. After Science, school moves from one 30-minute period of boredom to the next.

S’bu and I are walking home from the taxi rank, when it all starts going wrong. We’re walking past the Kings movies when suddenly Beno appears, big, mean and flashy.

“Eita, squeeza,” Beno sneers.

I’m scared, like deep down. S’bu is just scared up front.

“Please, Beno, man … We’re just walking home.”

Beno smiles, like a snake opening its mouth. It looks pink and pretty inside. But you can see the venom sacs are full. He puts a heavy arm on my shoulder. “Ebony and Ivory, you want to go out with me sometime?”

Then he pulls me right up against him, I can smell his breath. It’s not pretty. S’bu panics.

“Please.”

Beno smiles right against my face. “Any donations welcome.”

S’bu begins to quiver. “But Beno, me an Dudu, we got no money.”

I feel the ground hit my back. S’bu helps me up while Beno grabs S’bu’s bag. Some of Beno’s guys have arrived. They’ve had one too many quarts. They mutter and swear. Who even knows what they’re saying. Then S’bu’s world almost ends. Beno finds his telescope.

“How much at the pawn shop, gents?” He waves it around. The sun bounces off the electric blue, making it sparkle. S’bu looks like he’s going to grab it any minute.

“What’s this?” Beno’s guys don’t know what it is so they don’t know how much they’ll get for it. S’bu tries to grab it but misses and falls. Now both of us look like moegoes. I’m not having a good day. I get up.

“Let him have it,” I tell S’bu. But it’s the wrong thing to tell the guy who wants to be the world’s second most renowned African astronomer.

“Give it back now,” S’bu shouts. “You stupid illiterate.”

Beno chucks the telescope on the ground. He grabs S’bu and throws him on the ground too. He slams his foot on S’bu’s face. “You soeking with the wrong man …”

“Leave him alone,” I shout.

“You shuddap, half-breed,” snarls Beno.

I grab the telescope, “Let’s go, S’bu.”

S’bu struggles to break free from Beno’s super-shiny pointy shoe. Beno’s guys laugh. I hear something weird in the distance. People singing. It gets louder. I stand there. Beno looks past me and S’bu rolls from underneath his foot. As S’bu scrambles for his bag, the crowd gets close. They’re singing:

“Give us houses now. Give us houses now, like Madiba promised.”

I know some of them. They live in the prefab houses just past Fourth Street, waiting for their new ones to be built. Some of them have been waiting for five years. S’bu and I start to run. But the crowd is all around us now. We’re swept up with them. We can’t break free. I don’t mind. Anything for a party. S’bu holds his telescope tight and begins to toyi-toyi too.

Then I hear a terrible sound. My mother’s voice shouting above the crowd. “Dudu, S’bu, come here.”

I pretend I don’t hear her, pretend I don’t see her. It’s been a bad day, and I don’t want it getting any worse. We move further down Fourth Street, getting closer to Stjwetla, the shacks on the edge of the Jukskei. My mother is lost in the crowd when Beno is thrown closer to me again.

Beno takes over the chanting:

Fix housing delivery now.

Corrupt officials out now.

All bona fides deserve houses.

Beno’s into it now, toyi-toying like a veteran.

No homes for amakwerekwere.

Kill amakwerekwere.

Kill, kill, kill …

It’s then that Beno grabs me. He drags me into the crowd. People press against me. Some grab at me. Some push me. Some people shout at Beno to leave me alone.

Then I hear my mother scream my name like a funeral prayer.

Suddenly the crowd separates and I’m thrown into an empty circle. I hit the ground hard, for the second time in one day. I curse Beno. I sit up. There is a weird and sudden silence. The crowd breathes like a single person. My skin begins to crawl. I stand up.

“Hey, Beno, you moegoe. Why you throw me around like that?”

“You see this girl? You see this pale-face girl with a German father? How come this girl lives in Extension 8 in her smart new house?”

The crowd begins to rumble.

“Leave her alone, Beno,” says a man.

“No, let Beno speak,” says another woman.

“It’s not her fault,” says the same man.

“No, it’s her mother’s fault,” says another man.

“I deserve to live there. My mother’s lived here her whole life,” my voice is shaky and weak.

“Why don’t you voetsak back to Germany?” snarls Beno.

“Voetsak, German. We don’t want Nazis here.”

You can call me anything. I’ve been called names my whole life. I’m used to it. For some I’m not black enough. For others not white enough. I’m a split personality. So what? Who cares? I will be whoever you want me to be. But I’m not a Nazi. Rage doesn’t come often to me. But when it does …

“I’m not a Nazi, you stupid mampara,” it bursts out of me. “Why you think you deserve a house? You don’t!”

Frenzy rises in the crowd. Beno points a finger at me. “No house for me. But a house and a garden for her.”

My mother has finally struggled to the edge of the crowd. “Child, please,” she whispers.

I walk away.

Beno grabs me back. The crowd edges closer. I begin to shake. I know something bad is going to happen. I feel something hard slam on my cheekbone. Hot blood runs down my cheek. I begin to cry. I am confused. How can this be happening to me? I struggle out of Beno’s grip. I stumble and fall. The crowd is shouting. Beno is shouting, “Bring me a tyre.”

I look up. I see S’bu clutching his telescope. His face is full of fear. “S’bu, please …” I reach out my hand to him. He turns away. My mother starts yelling at anyone who’ll listen.

“You should be ashamed of yourselves. Can’t you see this is only a tsotsi having fun with you?”

Beno laughs. “How did you get your house so soon, old woman? How? You paid good money? You opened your legs?”

The crowd’s anger spills over. They swamp my mother. I can see nothing. Blood, snot and tears smear my eyes.

“No!” I hear my mother screaming.

I fight through the crowd to get to her. Sirens scream in the distance.

Something happens. The crowd begins to move. I hear someone groaning. I know it’s my mother. I fight to get to the sound. When I get there it’s someone I don’t know, who’s been hurt.

The sirens get louder. People scatter.

Sand has been kicked up from the road. It fills the air like smoke. It’s blowing in the autumn wind. I see the Gautrain pull into Marlboro across the Jukskei. Then I see a crumpled body lying in the dirt. I run towards it. My mother is bloody, and still.

The few remaining people avoid my eyes, as my head falls back and everything goes dark.

I don’t remember how we got to Bara. I wake up in a bed and my head throbs. At first I don’t know who I am or where I am. The nurse tells me the ambulance brought me in yesterday, with my mother. My mother! Is she alive? The nurse helps me out of bed and takes me to see her.

I want to cry. Her eyes are swollen shut. There are bruises and cuts on her face, neck and arms. The nurse tells me her collarbone is broken. I sit next to her bed and slide my hand underneath hers. It doesn’t move. “Ma?” The nurse whispers that Mbali has not woken up since they brought her in.

I am frightened. Where will I go if she dies? Who will look after me? My mother is all I have. Her family didn’t like her German boyfriend all those years ago. They thought Mbali was trying to be too good for them. I know I have a Gogo somewhere in KZN. I’ve never met her. I’ve never met my father either. I’ve only seen him smiling down at my baby face in a photo. He used to write to me. Then one day he stopped. I don’t know where he is, or how I would find him.

I clutch my mother’s hand, tight. I watch her sleep and listen to her breathing. I haven’t ever watched her sleep before. She always wakes up before me and goes to sleep after me. If this is what being sucked into a wormhole feels like, then that’s where I am. Sucked into infinite darkness. Space trash. I lean my head against my mother’s thigh. I hear someone move behind me. I jump up.

It’s S’bu. “Get out!” I shout at him.

“Dudu …”

S’bu’s mother appears behind him with a bowl of stew. “Hello, my dear. I heard about your mother. I thought you could do with some food.”

Fury chokes in my throat. I take the bowl and mumble something. She pats me on the shoulder. She looks at my mother and then back at me. “Don’t be too long, S’bu. I have to go back to work.”

She leaves. I turn away from him. “It was my idea, to bring the food. We went to your house first, but Mrs Malinga said you hadn’t come home. We heard about your mother …”

“Get out.”

“Dudu, please … I’m sorry. I should have done something, I know. It’s just … I only got the space-probe like two days ago …”

I turn on him. “Why you friends with me, S’bu? Hey, why? At least Alison’s honest when she trashes me. You pretend to be my friend. Then you protect your telescope more than a human being.”

He looks like he’s about to cry. Well, he doesn’t deserve to. So I grab his mother’s bowl of food and I throw it at him. It hits the side of a trolley and stew flies everywhere. Some falls on his cheek. It makes me happy.

S’bu is stunned.

“You’re no better than Beno, or any of them.”

“I’m not a tsotsi.”

“No, you’re a coward. That’s even worse.”

S’bu wipes the meat off his face. “My mother cooked this for you, out of kindness.”

“I don’t need a coward’s kindness.”

S’bu turns and leaves.

I want to cry.

“Dudu?”

I turn. My mother is reaching out her hand to me.

~•~

After a few days I help my mother get into a taxi outside Bara. She’s still sore. We drive to Alex and she is very scared. I am too.

We get out of the taxi. We walk all the way down Fourth Street. People come out of their houses to stare at us and whisper. We walk through Stjwetla. People come out of those shacks and watch us too. They are the foreigners who can’t find anywhere else to live. Now they run for their lives when the Jukskei swells and bursts its banks some summers. They are the people who the bona fides in Alex look down on, forgetting that they once lived there too, as shack dwellers.

My mother is weak. She sleeps a lot. Her boss gives her a week off but there is not much money for food. I walk to the shops and once I see Beno. He avoids me. I feel like a dying star. The flames on the surface of my sun burn softer and softer until all the light goes out. A dead star collapses from the inside. I stir the soup for my mother and I feel like I’ve collapsed inside.

I go to school, but I wait until S’bu gets on to the taxi. Then I catch the next one. Alison laughs at my bruises at first. I tell her I was in a fight. She may not say so, but I reckon that impresses her.

When I arrive home one day, I walk through my mother’s spinach and her weird red lettuce and I see her green beans are growing. My mother is so excited that they’re growing. I have to help her outside so she can look at them. She makes me take the hose and I have to water them. Mrs Malinga stares at us from her toilet window. I wait for her to say something. Then I’ll have an excuse to turn the hose on her. But she doesn’t say a word.

Now I go to school, do the shopping and water the garden. I pick the spinach and the red lettuce and the beans and we eat a good meal. I tell my mother she’s the only person in Alex that grows red lettuce. She tells me my father used to eat it.

There’s a knock on the door. It’s S’bu with some meat from his mother. Mbali asks me if I want to speak to him, but I say no. S’bu gives my mother a pamphlet and leaves.

“Dudu, you can’t be angry with that boy forever.”

“Why not?”

“He made a mistake.”

“He made a choice, Ma. And it was the wrong one.”

She hands me the pamphlet. “Get ready, we’re going.”

I read it. I begin to feel cold inside. “No, Ma. No!”

“Yes, Dudu. That calls for all residents of Alex to gather together. We are bona fides. We belong in Alex. We have every right to be here.”

I refuse. We fight. I begin to cry. My mother grabs me and takes me to the veg garden. “Look at that red lettuce. Why’s it different?”

“It’s red.”

“It’s a plant. It tastes like spinach. It grows in soil. It needs water. Just because it’s red doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a right to be in the soil. Now put on your jacket.”

“Tonight we die, Ma. Serious. If we go there we die.”

My mother smiles like a warrior.

The meeting is in the library. We arrive late. Everyone stares at us when we walk in and look for seats. My quiet, domestic worker mother, tells a taxi owner to move his feet so we can get past him.

We sit down. The pastor starts speaking. “Brothers and Sisters. When we marched for better housing we did not think that people would die. But they did.”

I turn to my mother. Her bruises have faded, but her arm is still in a sling. It will be until her collarbone heals. She stares at the pastor.

“The only people who died were amakwerekwere,” someone shouts.

“Is this right? Are they not people too?”

A man stands up. “Pastor, of course amakwerekwere are people too. But they come here with all their money and pay people and get houses. While us, I have been waiting five years. Baba, where is my house? My mother will die and she has never had a house to live in.”

People agree. People get angry and some people start shouting. I begin to get scared. My mother still stares at the pastor, saying nothing. S’bu enters with his mother. He stares at me and I turn away.

“We want no amakwerekwere here.”

My mother stands up. The library falls silent. “Me, I am a bona fide resident. How many of you know this? How many?”

Some people mumble.

“So I had a German boyfriend, in 1996. Hey, I was celebrating democracy.”

I close my eyes, it’s an old joke. “So the German boyfriend goes back to Germany. Now I have a daughter, stand up.”

“What?”

“Now! Get up.”

I stand up. My mother pokes me in the face.

“Cappuccino, coffee brown, coloured, mixed race. Call her what you like. She’s the new generation.”

“Now she’s just red,” someone shouts. My mother ignores the laughter.

“Must my child go back to Germany because she’s half Zulu, half German? Why must the Setswana stay here then? They must go back to Botswana? Why must the Northern Sotho stay here? They too must go home.”

People are beginning to get angry. The pastor smiles at my mother. “Mbali, my sister, you have gone through a lot of pain …”

“I almost died. Beaten and left for dead by my own people because my daughter is only half Zulu. I have a right to live here, so does Dudu. She can go to school where she likes and I will grow red, pink and orange lettuce if I want to.”

People begin to laugh. My ears burn.

Mrs Malinga stands up. “That red lettuce attracts the rats.”

My mother laughs. No one else does. Mrs Malinga stands there looking like she’s going to burst. My mother laughs very loudly until the pastor tells my mother she needs to calm down.

Eish! Mothers!

My mother turns to Mrs Malinga. “Rats can’t see red.” She’s right. How did she know that? Maybe she learnt a thing or two about surfing the net on her phone after all. Mrs Malinga sits down.

S’bu’s mother stands up. “Let’s apologise to Mbali and Dudu. They did not deserve this. Come on.”

My mother drags me up to stand next to her, as people mumble that they’re sorry. The meeting continues. I don’t hear a thing. I never thought I’d feel this much pride in my mother.

S’bu sends me a text.

Eclipse 2nit. Shld I cum rnd?

I ignore him. I look across the room and I see Beno, who’s slipped into the back of the library, staring at me.

~•~

At dawn my mother waters her garden. Mrs Malinga stops complaining about the crop growth. My mother has planted red cabbage as well now. It runs the length of Mrs Malinga’s fence. It’s going to be bright in the winter.

Beno follows me to the taxi rank. The first time it happened I freaked. When I got into the taxi, the driver told him to voetsak. Beno did. He says nothing, he just watches me walk to the rank.

One day I get into the taxi and S’bu gets in next to me. We sit together. We say nothing. When we arrive at school I hear Alison coming down the corridor. She’s laughing. “Hey, it’s Coffee Anon, get it? Coffee An–”

“Shuttap,” interrupts S’bu. I didn’t see him behind me.

“Whoa, the stick insect speaks,” laughs Alison.

And stick insect says, “You start with Dudu again and I’ll take action.” Alison smirks.

S’bu smiles. “I know you cheat. I saw you cheating in your Science exam in April.”

Alison pales, “Rubbish.”

S’bu smiles widely. “You wrote stuff on the hem of your skirt.” S’bu reaches to grab her skirt. She steps backwards.

“You, you … gangster.” Splitting on cheats is more like a hero thing to do than a gangsta thing. But, hey, what’s in a title? Alison hurries off.

I can’t help it. I begin to laugh. S’bu turns to me. He isn’t laughing at all. “Dudu, from now on, I’ve got your back.” I want to cry. I frown instead. S’bu hugs me. It feels good.

S’bu walks home with me and I tell him about Beno. S’bu tells me he’ll walk with me to school and back. If things get bad, we’ll make a plan. After what he did today, I know that somehow we will. My mother is pleased S’bu and me are hanging out together again.

At supper I ask my mother if my father will ever write to me again. Mbali is sad. She hopes so. He is a nice man, funny too. Michael Bosch, the aid worker from Frankfurt. I want to go to Germany one day. I want to do so many things.

I take my mother outside and show her the Southern Cross. I tell her the Southern Cross is called the Crux. The brightest star in Crux is the Acrux. It’s two stars going around each other, but they are so far away that they look like one star. Maybe, if you look at South Africa from space, Sandton and Alex look like one place.

My mother stares at me. “What?” She smiles. “All this talk of stars and space. It’s not only because you’ve got a white father and a Zulu mother. You’re different in here.” She puts her hand across my heart.

“It’s tough, Ma.”

She laughs. “Being different when you’re young is hard, I know. But being different when you’re an adult is going to make you succeed in life because there are not as many of you as there are of others. I know that too.”

My mother and I go inside. I position my bed so that when I lie on it the last thing I see before I go to sleep is the moon and the stars.

Discussion questions

• Would you like to have Dudu as a friend? Why/why not?

• Why do you think some people are so threatened by people different from them?

About the author

Julie Barker lives in Jo’burg and has written for television series such as Tsha Tsha, Isidingo and The Wild. She was head writer for Izozo Connexion and Scandal. Julie is at present writing a novel as part of her MA in Creative Writing at Wits.

Advice for young writers

The thing that separates a writer from anyone else is that they have their own unique way of seeing the world. Develop that in yourself: ask yourself what you really think about … everything. Answer those questions for yourself. You don’t have to know all the answers to life, as long as you’re asking questions, then you’re on your way to becoming a writer.