The fire before freedom

In 1993, Mummy and Baba move back to South Africa. They are based in Natal, in the economic hub of Durban. Like many of the other exiles, they head to the cities closest to where they left, where family is. Within a few short years, they will move again – following the money and the elite opportunities available in Pretoria and Johannesburg. In 1993, though, everyone is scattered across Port Elizabeth and Umtata and Durban and Cape Town.

In the early 1990s, there are murders every week in Natal. The IFP and the ANC are involved in a proxy war. It is evident that, although De Klerk professes to be on a path to peace and a negotiated settlement, there is a dirty-tricks campaign designed to derail the process. It seems the news is never good. Mandela is beginning to look old and his comrade and lifelong friend, Walter Sisulu, is too.

Still, there are others who can lead us. Among them is Chris Hani. He is fiery and radical and all the things that the white people fear. He is immensely popular.

Mummy and Hani’s wife Limpho studied together at school in Lusaka, and Baba knows Hani from his MK days, and so whenever I read his name I automatically put ‘Uncle’ in front of it. Baba and Uncle Chris were together in the camps. Where Baba and Mummy chose us over the revolution, the Hanis chose the struggle. They paid a very heavy price for their commitment. Like us, they moved from country to country. But unlike us, their father was a specific target – one of the highest-priority targets of the apartheid regime. They understood mortal danger in a way my sisters and I had never had to imagine.

Uncle Chris has this incredible capacity to both stir the pot and calm emotions. He is deeply suspicious of white South Africans, yet he is totally committed to the notion of non-racialism. He is the first person I come across who can articulate this so precisely without looking hypocritical. Chris Hani has survived assassination attempt after assassination attempt. He has every reason to mistrust the white minority regime. Yet he has also waged long and hard battles within and outside the ANC – to make the party fairer, to make justice part of the core values of the communist party of which he is the leader. His Marxist analysis makes it impossible for him to privilege race over class. So he doesn’t – he refuses to make a false choice, but he does not use this as a crutch. He does not hide behind nice words about whites simply because some of his comrades in the ANC and SACP are white.

Uncle Chris is a key voice in calling for cautious optimism. He is not convinced that the whites are ready to relinquish power but he is convinced the path of negotiations is important for the moment.

By the winter of 1993, there is talk about who will succeed Mandela. But we do not have freedom yet. I wonder, all the way from Minnesota, whether we celebrated too soon – whether Mummy and Baba should have gone back. Perhaps we got caught up in the frenzy, in the excitement of picket signs and pop songs and tight-lipped UN officials and Scandinavian prime ministers and the referendum. We should have known that white people would never give up power so easily.

* * *

In spite of my worries about what is happening at home, I settle in on campus. Winter break comes and I go to DC to see Gogo Lindi. Lindi – my big-sister idol from childhood – is there and Mandi comes too and for Christmas we are joined by a host of others – South African students from up and down the East Coast, as well as a few strays from the rest of the region.

Gogo is thrilled to have us all around to take care of her and to dote on her two small grandchildren. I am doing well at school and adjusting to life in America, but I miss the variability of life at home. I miss interacting with children and old people. Everyone on campus is the same age and, maybe because I never went to boarding school, the environment feels manufactured sometimes.

We talk a lot about South Africa and what is going to happen next. The negotiations between the white minority regime and the ANC have fallen apart. A new process is slated to start in the coming months. The atmosphere is tense at home. In Washington I regale everyone with stories of what we are going to do with whites when we take over. ‘Teach them how to wash their own dishes!’ ‘Hand over all their diamond rings and use the proceeds to educate black children!’ Gogo delights in my playful radicalism.

In February, as the semester begins, I am excited to be back on campus. LaKeesha and I hug and catch up and I fill her in on the time in DC and she – as usual – is full of tight anger, worried about her brother and her mother and her sister. A looming sense of disaster always hangs over our conversations about her family, something brooding and explosive about the community where she was raised. I, on the other hand, am upbeat after the trip. In spite of my scepticism, and everything my black analysis tells me about the bleakness of prospects for genuine change where white people are concerned, I can’t help believing that South Africa will soon be free.

* * *

Then, the unspeakable happens. On the morning of 10 April 1993, Uncle Chris is gunned down in his driveway. He lies in the driveway, dying. His thirteen-year-old daughter Khwezi runs out. It is too late. Chris Hani, the people’s hero, is dead.

It is hard to express how painful this is. I want to go home, but it is expensive. Mummy asks what good it will do to fly into the storm. I don’t argue. My whole life has been spent in the calm, avoiding the storms in South Africa. Circumstance seems always to conspire to keep me away, safe and far and disconnected.

In the days that follow nine people are killed. None of them are white because black people in South Africa have internalised self-hate to the point where we can only contemplate hurting ourselves. Still, there is something about black anger – even when it is self-­directed – that frightens whites.

Mandela knows that the youth, the ones who adored this great man who had the heart of a lion, may very well say they have no faith in whites, or in the peace process, that they only have faith in fire and violence and an immediate end to apartheid without the niceties of negotiation.

So, he gives a speech, an important and powerful statement full of rage and moral authority. He goes on television and cements his place as a peacemaker. He says:

Chris Hani is irreplaceable in the heart of our nation and people. When he first returned to South Africa after three decades in exile, he said: ‘I have lived with death most of my life. I want to live in a free South Africa even if I have to lay down my life for it’. The body of Chris Hani will lie in state at the FNB Stadium, Soweto, from 12 noon on Sunday 18 April until the start of the vigil at 6pm. The funeral service will commence at 9am on Monday, 19th April. The cortege will leave for Boksburg Cemetery, where the burial is scheduled for 1pm. The funeral service and rallies must be conducted with dignity.

With this, Mandela becomes the de facto president of South Africa. He takes the hard road and we follow him. Whites – who once feared him – can’t help respecting him. Blacks – who have always admired him – recognise the depth of his leadership. It seems the old man was worth waiting for.

Two men – a black man named Cyril Ramaphosa and a white one named Roelf Meyer – step out into the middle of the battlefield. They touch hands, reaching across a distance that once seemed too great to bridge. They are vulnerable – all eyes are on them – but it is clear in the wake of the assassination that something has to give.

They clasp hands and don’t let go. An election date is set. Uncle Chris’s death turns into a watershed moment. The ANC averts a war and Meyer and Ramaphosa and those chosen to negotiate a compromise begin again – this time in earnest.

The country lurches forward. The provisional Constitution – guaranteeing one person one vote – is soon agreed. The violence abates then spikes then abates again. We breathe. Again, we begin to think that those slogans about freedom in our lifetime were true.

Freedom is on its way but there is no changing the facts of history. Chris Hani is dead, killed by hateful white men. The days of the dead are not yet behind us.

* * *

After Uncle Chris’s death, my anger boils over. At school things are falling apart. Keesh has decided to transfer – to leave Macalester. She needs to be on a bigger campus, at a school where she doesn’t feel so under siege. Having grown up in Gary, in a black city, she has felt the absence of black people keenly in the last few years of living in Minnesota. I feel it too but it is different. I didn’t grow up in America, under the shadow of neglect masquerading as autonomy. I understand her decision, but it is devastating. Navigating my anger alone is one thing; surviving on a campus where we have alienated so many people because our sisterhood has sustained us both is another thing altogether.

In May, at the end of the semester, we say goodbye. I sense that everything will be different. The momentum of our shared anger, our reading and writing sessions, the poetry performances – all these were spurred on by Keesh and by who she inspires me to be. Without her, I am not sure what I will do.

* * *

I head home for the summer holidays. I am looking forward to seeing everyone – especially Mandla and Zeng. But I am also anxious about how I will manage my emotions. America has emboldened me and quickened my temper. I have no time for racists – indeed, my identity now hinges on this impatience. Before everything else, I am black and I have little energy for those who don’t understand or respect that. Over the course of the past semester I have done a lot of soul searching. I love my parents but I am convinced they simply don’t understand race and racism. They continue to be naive, to have hope in people and systems that have never been concerned about the well-being of black people. I anticipate the trip will be frustrating in many ways.

Mandla has started her studies at Cornell University in New York state and we talk on the phone every week. Mummy and Baba and Zeng are living in La Lucia. Their neighbours are all white. Their house has a tiny sliver of a view to the ocean. Mummy is working and so is Baba and Zeng is enrolled in a prestigious girls’ school in the city, where her uniform includes a bonnet. The bonnet – indeed, the entire uniform – is ridiculous and colonial and emblematic of the enduring character of the strange new society into which we have just been transplanted.

I am unbearable.

I brandish my new radical politics like a sword. I am impatient with Mummy and Baba, and I have absolutely no time for whites. Mummy takes deep breaths and tries to ignore me. My sisters treat me with a combination of awe and amusement. I am both hilarious and utterly mad.

In the aftermath of Uncle Chris’s death a timetable has been put in place for the transition to be finalised. Elections have been scheduled. So, here we are, together for the first time in a while, in South Africa, on the eve of liberation.

Mummy and Baba want us to understand the history and geography of our new country and to understand the clashes between the British, the Boers and the Zulus in particular. They want us to be familiar with the Battle of Isandlwana and the Battle of Blood River and to have an image in our minds of how they played out on the landscape itself. For us to face the future, they want us to know our history.

So Mummy plans a family holiday in the Drakensberg. We load into the car. The three of us are in the back seat, crammed in. I am in a mood. I get why they want us to do this, but I am not so convinced of the modus operandi.

I ask Mummy what we will do if the white owners of the guesthouses she has booked don’t let us sleep on their sheets and in their beds. Mummy is irritated.

She takes the bait. ‘Stop it Sonke. This attitude is too much now. This racism thing is an obsession. We didn’t send you to America to develop an attitude problem.’

I am in no mood to be lectured about racism.

‘It’s not an attitude Mummy, it’s just the facts. We can’t wish racism away, and we can’t pretend these people are just going to change overnight, so I’m just saying if we are going to be sleeping in their houses we should be aware they might not want us there.’

Mummy has created a file with brochures and details about the trip. At the top, there is a flyer for the first place we will stay, a farmhouse called Penny Farthing. I flick through it, looking for more ammunition. ‘So we’re staying at Penny Farthing. What does “penny farthing” mean anyway?’ I ask. Scorn drips from my mouth. ‘It sounds extremely colonial.’

Baba explains that a farthing is a British coin from a long time ago.

‘Classic,’ I retort. ‘This is going to be interesting.’

I read the brochure aloud, informing the family in my best David Attenborough voice that the farm is ‘three thousand hectares, strategically placed near the KwaZulu-Natal battlefields – near Rorke’s Drift, Isandlwana and Blood River.’ Hmmn. ‘The owners have been on the property since 1847,’ I add with a flourish.

I am disgusted. ‘White people steal our land and decimate our people and we go and sleep in their houses?’

‘Decimate’ is a word I use often.

Baba is slightly amused by my disgust. ‘The Zulu were never decimated,’ he says. ‘They routed us, but “decimated” would imply we were virtually extinguished. That was certainly the experience of the San but it wasn’t the case with the Zulu nation. If you are going to be angry, that is one thing, but do so on the basis of facts,’ he says.

Mandla and Zeng are tense, sensing a serious confrontation looming.

This is a mere technicality but I bite my tongue. I judge Baba silently, but I am still African child enough to hold my fire when it comes to my father.

We pull up to the house after the long drive from Durban and the old woman who comes out to greet us seems both pleased to see us and slightly bewildered. She is faced with an African family of five. Three tall teenage girls, a short mother and an imposing father.

Immediately, Mummy charms the old lady with some little chatter about the drive. Baba impresses her with his knowledge of the region. The three of us are gangly and quiet – but we greet her politely and in impeccable English so she seems pleased. She walks us into the house and shows us around wearing an air of indulgent befuddlement.

We settle into our rooms and rest a bit before dinner. Over dinner I am surly and I excuse myself early. I tell Mummy and Baba I am not feeling well but the truth is my rage will not allow me to sit at the table with the other guests and pretend this house isn’t haunted by the ghosts of colonialists.

In the morning I am ravenous so there is no avoiding breakfast. We sit at the table and the smell of mdogo wafts through the house. My favourite – sour porridge. I dig in. ‘You are enjoying your porridge young lady?’ says our host. ‘I am,’ I say.

‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it? My Zulu made it.’

I am stunned. Mummy and Baba are stunned. Mandla and Zeng are stunned. I put my spoon down.

‘Who made it?’ I ask, giving her a chance to self-correct.

‘My Zulu made it,’ she says oblivious to her racism.

‘Is she yours?’ I begin to ask. ‘Like, as in, you own—’

Mummy cuts me off. ‘Sonke . . .’ she warns.

I look from her face to Baba’s. He looks amused – as if he is prepared to let the chips fall where they may.

I decide to go for it. Mummy’s warning lingers in the air, though; it has succeeded in slowing me down.

‘I am just wondering,’ I continue, ‘whether she has a name. The person who makes the porridge. Because she isn’t your Zulu. She is a person.’

I am angry that I have not been direct enough. If I were at school, in Minnesota with my friends, cloaked in the anonymity of not having Mummy and Baba around, I would simply say, ‘This is racist bullshit.’

But I am not in Minnesota. I am in South Africa and my parents are watching me so I go easy on the old lady and berate myself internally for it.

She does not see it the same way.

‘Yes I know she has a name but there is nothing wrong with me calling her my Zulu. That is what we do here and nobody minds.’

‘How do you know?’

I am seething now.

‘No one has ever said a word about it,’ she continues blithely.

‘Well that’s that then,’ I say evenly. I look at her with contempt. She looks slightly scared, though she isn’t sure why she is scared.

The table is silent for a long uncomfortable moment.

No one chews or swallows. We do not touch our food.

Mummy breaks the silence.

‘Well, I think it’s time for us to start our day,’ she says in an upbeat and cheery way. ‘We have a lot of walking to do today.’

The old lady’s Zulu bustles in the background, collecting plates and washing dishes.

We gather our things from the bedrooms. We load them into the car in silence. We get in the car and Baba drives. We sit in silence.

Finally Baba says, ‘We shall have to make sure there is a Zulu to cook us some porridge at the next place we stay, guys.’

We burst into laughter – relieved and angry all at once.

‘Wowowowowow,’ says Mandla deadpan but with characteristic wryness.

‘Wow,’ agrees Mummy – also deadpan.

‘Wow,’ says Zeng.

‘Wow,’ I add.

‘What a wow,’ says Baba.

We drive to the battlefield of Rorke’s Drift, to hear about how our people fought bravely but were defeated.

* * *

Years later, I discover a penny-farthing is an odd-shaped bike – the ones with an enormous front wheel and a tiny rear one. I Google it and Wikipedia throws me a gem: ‘An attribute of the penny-farthing is that the rider sits high and nearly over the front axle. When the wheel strikes rocks and ruts, or under hard braking, the rider can be pitched forward off the bicycle head-first. Headers were relatively common and a significant, sometimes fatal, hazard.’

I wish I had known then – I would have had even more biting fodder for Mummy. With the passage of time and everything I now know about what South Africa has become, it seems apt that our attempt to get to know our history better was launched in a farmhouse named after an obsolete British invention.

I imagine the old lady as she was twenty years ago. In my daydream, instead of riding in a bakkie in keeping with her local circumstances, she is sitting atop a high-wheeler bicycle. She is bumping along, propelling herself towards a future in which she no longer understands the landscape. She rides over the fields where Zulu fought Brit and lost. Suddenly she looks down and realises she is riding over the bones of the dead. She loses control. The penny-farthing begins a slow sideways fall. In the process she is hurled off it and into the air. I see her frail frame suspended mid-flight – a grey blot in a blue Midlands sky. Can you see her? She is up in the air like so many of her time and her generation. If you listen closely, you may just hear her calling out for her Zulu.