Women are singing, while they slice loaves of bread on a long makeshift table. Others cut cabbage. Their song is about the freedom that is surely coming tomorrow. They also sing about the enemy that will be defeated, and about the tribal chief who will die like a dog one day. Sometimes they sing about sad things that have happened to their people. Yet their jubilation belies the sadness of their message. It is like those political funerals where the Young Tigers dance to a call-and-response chant. Someone who does not understand the meaning in these chants might be amazed or even shocked at how these youths can be so happy at a funeral. Perhaps the jubilation is due to the fact that part of the message of the songs is that the people shall be victorious in the end.
The women are excited when Noria arrives with Toloki.
‘Hey Noria, you have come with your mate.’
‘Yes, so that he should see the work that we do.’
‘That is very good, Noria. Our men must see what we are doing, so that when we come home late they cannot complain.’
‘He is not my man. He is my homeboy.’
The women laugh, and say that it is good that homeboys these days move in with their homegirls. They go on teasing about how people from the same village must look after one another, and satisfy each other’s needs. Noria ignores the remarks, and joins the women in cutting the cabbage. She already knows how naughty her friends can be. Toloki, on the other hand, is embarrassed. He is the only man among all these chattering females.
He recognises the stout ’Malehlohonolo, and shyly smiles at her. She returns the smile.
‘Hello, I saw you this morning when you were washing yourself.’
‘Yes, I remember you. I heard Noria say that you were going to do washing in the city.’
‘Some of us have to work. We don’t all live on the Holy Spirit like your woman.’
‘She is not my woman. She is my homegirl.’
The women burst out laughing again. Toloki wonders what is funny about being Noria’s homeboy.
He learns that the women are preparing food for a community meeting that will take place later that afternoon. Some of the leaders of the political movement will be coming to discuss the problems of the residents. One major problem is that of security. From time to time, the settlement has been invaded by the migrants from the hostels, and by soldiers from Battalion 77, who are specially recruited and trained in dirty tricks. This battalion, which includes foreign mercenaries from a destabilised neighbouring country, is particularly vicious, and slaughters mercilessly because it is composed of foreign mercenaries.
The women prepare to put the cabbage in a big three-legged pot. Noria asks Toloki to help with the water. He is shown three plastic containers and a wheelbarrow. He pushes the whole load to a communal tap a few streets away. He stands patiently in a long queue of children and women who have also come to draw water. When his turn comes, he fills the containers with water, loads them on the wheelbarrow, and pushes it back to the school. Although he is still embarrassed at being the only man working with women, he feels happy knowing that he has been of assistance to Noria. He is doing all this for Noria, and not for anyone else, nor for anything else.
Noria pours the water into the pot, under which a wood fire is already burning. Then she puts the finely cut cabbage, together with a lot of beef stock and curry powder, into the pot. She uses very little salt, since beef stock already has salt in it. As the cabbage boils, some young men and women bring chairs and a small table from different neighbouring shacks. All the time they continue to sing songs of freedom, as they arrange the chairs for the meeting. More people gather. Most of them are women, but there are also a few men. Toloki feels more comfortable when the men arrive.
After an hour or so, a big black Mercedes Benz followed by several other smaller cars drives into the school yard. Women ululate and men shout slogans. The Young Tigers form a guard of honour, as the leaders walk from their cars, and are seated on the chairs. Noria whispers to Toloki that the man who arrived in the big black car and his wife are both members of the national executive of the political movement. The others are various branch and local committee members.
The meeting begins. The leaders listen to the grievances of the people, and long debates ensue. There is a squabble among some members of the street committee, and the leaders are asked to solve it. Not knowing the internal politics of the settlement, Toloki cannot make sense of what the argument is about. It sounds quite petty to him – something about committee members who have usurped the powers of others, and about misuse of funds. Toloki notices that the people who are most active in the affairs of the settlement are the women. Not only do they do all the work, but they play leadership roles. At this meeting, they present the most practical ideas to solve the various problems. The few male residents who are present relish making high-flown speeches that display eloquence, but are short on practical solutions.
After the street committee squabble has been solved the next item on the agenda is the preparations for a big demonstration that will take place in the city next week. There is going to be a stayaway from work for the whole of that week. The people are beginning the new year with a strong statement to the government that it is high time that they took the negotiations for freedom seriously. The position of the people is stated clearly by ’Malehlohonolo when she addresses the meeting.
‘While our leaders are talking with the government to put things right, the government is busy killing us with its Battalion 77, and its vigilantes. What kind of negotiations are these where on one hand they talk of peace and freedom, and on the other, they kill us dead?’
After each speech, the Young Tigers lead the people in song and dance. They chant praises of the political leaders who have suffered years of imprisonment and exile, fighting for the freedom of their people. They also chant strong condemnation of those they refer to as sell-outs.
‘Death to the sell-outs! Down with the sell-outs!’
Other speakers address the problem of the tribal chief and his followers from the hostels. They say that the tribal chief has delusions that he can destroy the common goal of the people. But the people are united, and shall fight to the bitter end for their liberation.
After these stirring speeches, a committee of five is elected to organise the stayaway in the settlement. Noria is one of those who are elected. They will go from house to house, explaining to people why they should not go to work.
After the meeting, food is served on paper plates. The leaders are served on enamel plates. During the meal, they call Noria to join them at their table, as they want to speak with her privately. Noria, however, is in awe of these great people, and does not sit down. She stands respectfully in front of the high-powered couple. They express their heartfelt sorrow at the death of her son. They say it was a regrettable mistake. But they warn Noria very strongly that she must not speak to anyone about it, especially the newspaper people, because this would take the struggle for freedom a step backwards. She must remember that her son was not completely innocent in this whole matter.
‘We are very happy that you have been elected onto the stay-away committee. This shows that we, as a movement, have nothing against you personally. We love you as one of our own. Whoever burnt down your shack did a very cruel thing. We don’t agree with it at all. We absolutely condemn it, in fact.’
The bejewelled woman smiles benevolently at her. Noria listens silently, and then walks away without saying a word. She feels that there is nothing she can say, because the leaders are talking at her, and are not actually discussing the death of her son with her at all. Their apology is made privately, and not at the public meeting, as the local street committee had promised, and is accompanied by a rider about her son’s guilt. This fills her with anger.
Everyone is happy that the meeting has been such a great success. Everyone except Noria, who feels betrayed. However, she joins in the song and dance that follows the meal, and no one knows of the heavy sadness that occupies her heart.
The leaders drive away, and the men remain behind to blame the women for disgracing the whole settlement community in front of the honourable leadership of the movement. As the women clear the tables, the men reprove them in utter disgust.
‘How can you serve bread and cabbage to our important leaders?’
‘What did you want us to serve them?’
‘Proper food that befits our leaders. Were you too lazy to cook meat, and potatoes, and rice, and to make salads?’
‘We are poor people. We can only give them what we ourselves eat. They must see our poverty. We cannot pretend to them that we are meat and rice people, when in fact our daily supper is pap and water. As a matter of fact, we gave them a treat. We don’t normally eat bread.’
‘You talk just like women. Our disgrace will be told in all the communities around the country. We will never live down this shame.’
‘Perhaps if you were here, you could have given us money, and also helped us cook your meat and potatoes.’
As Toloki and Noria walk back to their home, they call at each shack along the way, and Noria tells those who live there about the stayaway. Most people agree that it is a necessary step, and say that they will observe it. Some shacks are empty because the owners are still singing and dancing in the school yard. One or two others ask her if the movement will feed their children when they lose their jobs. Noria patiently explains that if people all act together, they will not lose their jobs. The employers cannot sack every worker in the land.
Toloki notices that in every shack they visit, the women are never still. They are always doing something with their hands. They are cooking. They are sewing. They are outside scolding the children. They are at the tap drawing water. They are washing clothes. They are sweeping the floor in their shacks, and the ground outside. They are closing holes in the shacks with cardboard and plastic. They are loudly joking with their neighbours while they hang washing on the line. Or they are fighting with the neighbours about children who have beaten up their own children. They are preparing to go to the taxi rank to catch taxis to the city, where they will work in the kitchens of their madams. They are always on the move. They are always on the go.
Men, on the other hand, tend to cloud their heads with pettiness and vain pride. They sit all day and dispense wide-ranging philosophies on how things should be. With great authority in their voices, they come up with wise theories on how to put the world right. Then at night they demand to be given food, as if the food just walked into the house on its own. When they believe all the children are asleep, they want to be pleasured. The next day they wake up and continue with their empty theories.
Toloki hesitantly mentions these observations to Noria. He attributes his keen sense of observation to the fact that he has not lived with other human beings for many years. He therefore sees things with a fresh eye. Some of the things he sees are things he would otherwise have taken for granted, if he had been part of the community in which they happened. Like other men he would assume that it was normal for things to be like this, for surely this is how they were meant to be from day one of creation. Noria listens to these ideas with astonishment.
Toloki wonders further why it is that the people who do all the work at the settlement are women, yet all the national and regional leaders he saw at the meeting were men – except, of course, for the bejewelled wife of the Mercedes Benz leader, who is also an elected leader in her own right.
‘You are right, Toloki. And I hear that it is not only here where the situation is as you describe. All over the country, in what the politicians call grassroot communities, women take the lead. But very few women ever reach the executive level. Or even the regional or branch committee levels. I don’t know why it is like this, Toloki.’
‘You know what I think, Noria? From what I have seen today, I believe the salvation of the settlement lies in the hands of women.’
‘You amaze me every day, Toloki. You come with things I don’t expect. Yes, when we were growing up, women had no names. They were called Mother of Toloki or Mother of Noria. But here women are leaders of the people.’
Again they find themselves holding hands as they walk towards their shack. But now they are not embarrassed, and they do not pull away. They make a strikingly lovely picture against the sunset: she of the poppy-seed beauty, and he of the complexion that is yellow like the ochre of the village. She of the willowy stature in a red and white polka-dot dress, he of the squat and stocky body in khaki pants and shirt. Their grotesquely tall shadows accentuate the disparity in their heights. They trudge the ground with their cracked feet in the same tired rhythm. Toloki decided that since Noria had no shoes, he was not going to wear any shoes either.
They walk into the shack.
‘Did you have enough to eat at the meeting?’
‘I am fine, Noria. The way you women cooked that cabbage, it tasted just like meat.’
‘Perhaps we should take a walk in the garden before we sleep. It is beautiful to walk among the flowers with you, Toloki.’
‘Yes, let us walk in the garden.’
However, they do not walk in the garden. They stare at the pictures on the wall, but are unable to evoke the enchantment. They concentrate very hard, without success. Noria bursts out crying, and apologises to Toloki. She says it is all her fault. Her mind is full of too many things that are not pleasant. Toloki is certain that these are the first real tears he has seen from Noria. At the funeral on Christmas Day she did break down into sobs, but he did not see her tears. There were too many people around her. But now, with his own hands, he is wiping her tears away. He is overwhelmed by sadness, and his own eyes fill with tears as well.
‘Don’t worry, Noria. We’ll surely walk in the garden tomorrow.’
‘It is not that, Toloki. I know that as long as you are here, you will transport us to the garden, and we shall be happy again. It is just that I feel so betrayed!’
She tells him that the local street committee had promised her that the leaders would publicly make a statement at the meeting, apologising for the death of her son, and reprimanding those who were responsible for it. Instead, they called her privately, and added insult to injury by saying that her child, who was only five years old, was not completely blameless.
‘Who killed your son, Noria?’
‘The Young Tigers.’
‘And they burnt down your shack?’
‘No one knows who burnt my shack down. It must be the same people who killed my son. Maybe to intimidate me . . . to keep me quiet . . . or to silence me forever.’
‘Keep you quiet? Is it a secret then, that the Young Tigers are responsible? Don’t the people know?’
Noria explains that the people know very well. The whole country knows. At least, those people who read newspapers since the story was featured prominently, with all the gory pictures. The kind of silence that everyone is demanding from her is that she should not condemn the perpetrators in any public forum, as this would give ammunition to the enemy. Now she sees that what they really want is that she, like the rest of the community, should accept her child’s guilt, and take it that he received what he deserved. If she keeps quiet, the whole scandal will quietly die, and no one will point fingers and say, ‘You see, they say they are fighting for freedom, yet they are no different from the tribal chief and his followers. They commit atrocities as well.’
Noria, however, refuses to be silenced, and tells Toloki that she will fight to the end to see that justice is done. She has kept quiet all these days because she believed that when the national leaders came, they would address the matter openly and with fairness, instead of sweeping it under the carpet.
‘They have treated you like this, yet you continue to work for them.’
‘I am not working for them, but for my people.’
‘I don’t read newspapers, so I do not know how your son died. But I am prepared to fight with you, Noria.’
Vutha’s second death. It all started with the last massacre experienced by the residents of the settlement. Perhaps we should say that it actually began with his involvement in what we call the struggle. At the age of five, Vutha was already a veteran of many political demonstrations. He was an expert at dancing the freedom dance, and at chanting the names of the leaders who must be revered, and of the sell-outs who must be destroyed. He could recite the Liberation Code and the Declaration of the People’s Rights. Of course, he did not understand a single word, since it was all in English. He mispronounced most of the words, too. He also knew all the songs. Even when he was playing with mud in the streets, or with wire cars with the other children, he could be heard singing about freedom, and about the heroic deeds of the armed wing of the people’s movement. He, of course, was not displaying any particular precociousness in this regard. All the children of the settlement, even those younger than Vutha, were (and still are) well-versed in these matters.
Noria was very proud of her son’s political involvement. She also was very active in demonstrations. She and her friend, ’Malehlohonolo, never missed a single demonstration. Even though ’Malehlohonolo was a washerwoman in the city, she would arrange her schedule around demonstrations and other political activities in the settlement. For her, the struggle came first.
When ’Malehlohonolo went to work in the city, she left her four-year-old daughter, Danisa, with Noria. Danisa played together with Vutha in the mud. They built mud houses, in which they baked mud pies.
They sang freedom songs, and danced the freedom dance. Sometimes Vutha, who was a year older than Danisa, would bully and slap her. She would cry and go to report to Auntie Noria. Auntie Noria would be angry with Vutha, and she would spank him.
‘Vutha, you don’t know how to play with other children. I’ll beat you until your buttocks are sour.’
After the spanking, Vutha would run away crying. He would then throw stones at the shack, while singing a freedom song with the message that his mother was a sell-out who should be destroyed along with the tribal chief. Noria would then chase after him. He knew from experience that he could not outrun his mother. She would catch him and spank him again. At first he would fight back, and bite his mother, while yelling for the whole world to hear that his mother was killing him. But when Noria did not stop, he would beg for forgiveness, and promise that he would never do it again, that he would be a good boy. Danisa would also be screaming at the same time, ‘Auntie Noria! Please forgive The Second, I know he won’t beat me up again’. She would try to bite Noria’s hand in order to save Vutha.
‘The Second is my brother! Please don’t kill him, Auntie Noria!’
After a few minutes they would all forget about the incident, and would be happily singing again. Noria would give them the sugared soft porridge that ’Malehlohonolo left for them in the morning when she went to work.
Although Noria was proud that her son was a political activist, she worried whenever there were demonstrations. Vutha was always in the forefront of the stone throwers. Soldiers and police sometimes came in armoured vehicles to confront the demonstrators. Vutha and his comrades would throw stones at the armoured vehicles. The soldiers, challenged by the full might of deadly five-year-olds armed with arsenals of stones, would open fire. In many cases, children died in these clashes. Noria always warned her son about fighting wars with the soldiers. It was one thing to demonstrate and sing freedom songs and dance the freedom dance. But to face soldiers who were armed with machine guns was much too dangerous. She didn’t want to lose her son for the second time, and she told him so.
‘But mama, I am a cadre. I am a freedom fighter.’
‘It is a good thing to be a cadre, my child. But when the soldiers come, you must not be in the front. Let the older boys, the Young Tigers, be in the frontline.’
‘I am not a coward, mama. I am a Young Tiger too.’
The Young Tigers form the youth wing of the political movement. The core group is usually made up of youths, both male and female, in their late teens and early twenties. However, there are some peripheral members who are much older, sometimes even in their thirties. Younger activists of Vutha’s age generally regard themselves as Young Tigers too.
The Young Tigers always praised Vutha for the strength of his throw. They said that if a stone from his hand hit a policeman, or a soldier, or a hostel vigilante on the head, he would surely fall down. Vutha was proud of this praise that came from older and battle-scarred cadres. It established him as a hero among his peers. Sometimes it went to his head, hence his practising his stone-throwing skills at Noria’s shack whenever she punished him for being a bad boy.
Often the Young Tigers gave the children political education. They taught them about the nature of oppression, the history of the movement, why it became necessary to wage an armed struggle, why it was recently suspended, why the tribal chief was doing such dirty things to the people, and how the government had been forced to unban the political movement of the people and to negotiate with its leaders. Much of this information floated above the heads of the children. This did not bother the Young Tigers. They knew that whatever little information the children grasped, it would make them committed freedom fighters, and upright leaders of tomorrow.
One night, when the settlement was deep in sleep, Battalion 77, supported by migrants from a nearby hostel, invaded. They attacked at random, burning the shacks. When the residents ran out, sometimes naked, the hostel inmates, uttering their famous war-cry, chopped them down with their pangas and stabbed them with their spears. The soldiers of Battalion 77 opened fire. They entered some shacks, and raped the women. They cut the men down after forcing them to watch their wives and daughters being raped. In one shack, a woman who was nine months pregnant was stabbed with a spear. As she lay there dying, she went into labour. Only the head of the baby had appeared, when it was hacked off with a panga by yet another warrior.
The whole exercise took less than thirty minutes, and in no time the invaders had disappeared into thin air. Those who had survived went to report to the police, who only came to investigate three hours after the bloody event.
The next morning, the entire settlement was dotted with smouldering ruins. Fifty-two people were dead, and more than a hundred others were in hospital with serious injuries.
Statements of accusation and denial were flying through the air. The residents and the political movement were pointing a finger at the hostel migrants and Battalion 77. The government was denying that Battalion 77 was involved, and the tribal chief was denying that his followers had anything to do with it. It was a terrible thing that had happened, he said, but anyone who wanted to blame his followers had to come up with evidence. It was not enough to say that someone saw the invaders coming from the direction of the hostels, and that they spoke the language of the tribal chief’s ethnic group. People had the right to speak any language they liked, and this could not, by any stretch of imagination, make them killers. Moreover, the tribal chief added, the residents of the settlement liked to attack the hostel inmates whenever they got the opportunity. Many of his followers had been killed and no one was saying a word about it.
Noria was fortunate in that her shack was untouched. So was ’Malehlohonolo’s. They went to help the unluckier families. In many cases, there was nothing they could do. The whole family had been wiped out. In other cases, there were survivors. They took new orphans to the dumping ground, where they were welcomed with open arms by Madimbhaza.
For many days that followed, a dark cloud hovered over the settlement. There was anger mingled with bitterness. People had lost friends and relatives. Husbands had lost wives, and wives had lost husbands. Children had lost parents, and siblings.
The funeral was the biggest that had ever been seen in those parts. The president of the political movement was there in person, together with the rest of his national executive. He, the consummate statesman as always, made a conciliatory speech, in which he called upon the people to lay down their arms and work towards building a new future of peace and freedom. He called those who had died martyrs whose blood would, in the standard metaphor for all those who had fallen in the liberation struggle, water the tree of freedom. He called upon the government to stop its double agenda of negotiating for a new order with the leaders of the political movement, while destabilizing the communities by killing their residents, and by assassinating political leaders. He further called upon the tribal chief to stop his gory activities, and to walk the democratic path.
The national president of the Young Tigers, however, was on the war-path. In his fiery speech he called upon his followers to avenge the deaths of their fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters.
‘We cannot just sit and fold our arms while they continue to kill us. The people must now defend themselves. Those who were in the armed wing of the political movement, who came back home when amnesty was declared and the armed struggle was suspended, must help our communities to form defence units. Our people shall not die in vain. Every death shall be avenged!’
After the prayers and the speeches, fifty-two coffins of varying size were lowered into the fifty-two graves. Fifty-two mounds of fresh soil were shaped with shovels and spades, and wreaths were laid. Some of the messages that were read came from presidents and prime ministers from all over the world. Ambassadors representing foreign countries were among the dignitaries who were at the funeral. There was no one who was not disgusted with the senseless killing. Indeed, the residents of the settlement saw that they were not alone in their hour of bereavement.
After the funeral, the task of rebuilding began in earnest. The people were determined to show the tribal chief, and the dirty tricks department of the government, that they would not be destroyed. Their will to survive, and to live to see the freedom that was surely coming soon, was too strong to be destroyed by any massacre.
There was a flurry of activity in the settlement. Street committees met, and planned strategies on how to defend the community. The Young Tigers formed neighbourhood patrols, and interrogated every stranger they saw loitering around the settlement. They stopped cars and demanded identification from the drivers and the passengers. A few stubborn drivers who did not want to co-operate were beaten up. Sometimes their money and watches were confiscated as well, although the leaders of the Young Tigers strenuously denied that they were responsible for such actions. They said it was not the policy of the organization to rob innocent motorists. The agents of the state were responsible for these nefarious activities, in order to sully the name of the Young Tigers.
Each afternoon, the local leadership of the Young Tigers called a meeting in which strategies were discussed. Vutha, Danisa, and other children of their age who had already established their reputations as political activists, always attended these meetings. They might not have understood everything that was happening there, but everyone took their presence quite seriously, as they were the leaders of tomorrow.
After school, the children of the settlement used to play in the marshlands that divided the settlement and a township where some of the hostels were located. In fact, the hostels were on the edge of the township, and faced directly over the marshlands. Vutha, and some of the children of his age who were waiting to be seven so that they could go to school, sometimes played there during school hours. They improvised fishing lines and caught frogs and old shoes in the mosquito-infested ponds.
Noria did not like the children to play in the marshlands because she said it was too dangerous. When it had rained heavily in the past, children had drowned in those marshlands, since the ponds turned into small lakes. She preferred to keep an eye on Vutha and Danisa at all times. They accompanied her to the dumping ground whenever she felt Madimbhaza needed her help. When she drew water for the shebeen queens the children tagged along to the communal tap, and to the shebeens as well.
One day a shebeen queen came to ask Noria to draw water for her. She needed many buckets of water because she was going to brew a lot of beer for the weekend. Noria called Vutha to follow her to the tap. Danisa was at home, since ’Malehlohonolo had not gone to do washing that day. She walked a few steps and turned, only to find that Vutha was not there. He had remained behind.
‘Hey wena Vutha! Didn’t I say you must follow me?’
‘I am coming, mama. I’ll find you at the tap.’
But Vutha didn’t come. Instead he went to the marshlands to catch frogs and punish them for being frogs by punching holes in their bodies with a safety pin. There he found a friend from the neighbourhood, an eight-year-old boy who did not like going to school. He had left home pretending he was going to school, but had gone to fish in the marshlands instead.
While they were playing together, three men approached them. They tried to run away, but the men were too fast. They caught them, and asked them who they were. They wanted to know the names of their parents, and where they lived. The children knew immediately that these men were hostel dwellers. They screamed and begged for mercy.
‘Don’t cry, my children. We are not going to do anything to you. Come with us.’
They dragged them screaming and kicking their legs across the marshlands to the hostels. Here they took them into one of the hostel dormitories, where there were men sitting on cement beds. Some were joking and laughing, while others were playing their guitars, singing of faraway valleys and beautiful maidens, and cattle that were dying because of drought. Others were cooking on primus stoves, and the smell of meat filled the room. The men took the children to their own corner of the dormitory. There they fed them quantities of meat and steamed bread. They gave them the fermented maize drink known as mageu to wash down the food. The children had never feasted so much in their lives. After a banquet fit for a king, the men told them to go home.
‘You see, we are not as bad as you squatters make us out to be. You can come for more meat tomorrow. You’ll find us here. But don’t tell your parents about this. They won’t allow you to come if they know.’
The children went back to the settlement with their secret. The older boy did not trust Vutha. He thought that he would burst out and boast to his friends about his illicit adventure. The friends would in turn tell their parents, and that would be the end of their feasting on meat.
‘Hey wena The Second, if ever you tell anyone about this, I will beat you up, and cut off your ears, and feed them to my dog.’
When Vutha got home, Noria was very angry. She demanded to know where he had gone when he had promised to follow her to the tap.
‘I went to play in the marshlands, mama.’
Noria threatened to give him a thorough hiding. He cried and asked for mercy. Noria decided not to punish him. At least he had not gone there with Danisa. She did not want to answer to ’Malehlohonolo if the children drowned, or if anything terrible happened to them. Things of that nature spoilt friendships.
That afternoon, Vutha went to the usual political meetings. His marshlands friend was there. So was Danisa. After the lessons, the children participated in the usual democratic forum where the older Young Tigers discussed strategies for self-defence. There was going to be a rally of the followers of the tribal chief at the big central stadium the following Saturday afternoon. Buses were going to transport his followers there from all over the country, since it was essential that the rally should be a very big one. This would show the hostile media that the tribal chief had a lot of support. The Young Tigers’ plan was to ambush one of the buses from the hostel at a particular spot on its way to the rally, and to mow down all the passengers with semi-automatic rifles. This would be a fitting vengeance for the massacre.
The next day ’Malehlohonolo brought Danisa to Noria’s shack, and left for the city. Noria carried on with her chores while the children played their usual games. They tagged along when she went to the dumping ground, and to draw water for the brewers, But after some time Noria noticed that only Danisa was tagging along. Vutha was not there.
‘What happened to Vutha, Danisa?’
‘A big boy came and took him away. I think they went to the marshlands.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Danisa?’
‘The Second said he was going to beat me up if I told.’
Vutha and his friend had meanwhile gone to their hostel friends, who gave them plenty of meat and pap. They also stuffed their pockets with sweets. Then they asked them about the meetings. They wanted to know what the Young Tigers were planning. At first the children were reluctant to talk. But the men assured them that no one would ever know that they had divulged any information to them.
‘And we are going to give you some more meat, and sweets too.’
The older boy started blurting out the information about the planned ambush. He was vague about the details, since strategies of warfare are not easy for children to grasp. However, the information was enough to give the hostel dwellers an indication that something was being planned by the Young Tigers, and roughly what form it would take. They sent the children home with promises of more sweets and meat if they continued to visit them, and brought them any more information that they might have at their disposal.
Unfortunately when they left the hostel, school was out, and a lot of the settlement children were already playing in the marshlands. They were seen and questioned about what they were doing at the hostel. At first, they denied that they were ever there, but the older boys pressed them, and said that they were going to tell when they got back home. Vutha and his friend shared their sweets with them, in a futile attempt to buy their silence. When these children got home, they told their parents that Vutha and his friend had been at the hostel, and were given sweets by the hostel inmates. Some of the older residents said that maybe the hostel dwellers were trying to sue for peace with the settlement by bribing their children with sweets.
The Young Tigers, however, took a different view. They questioned the children sternly about their activities at the hostel.
‘The hostel dwellers are not your uncles. They cannot just give you sweets for nothing. What did you promise them? What did you tell them?’
The children had to confess that they told the hostel inmates about the planned ambush. The leaders of the Young Tigers were very angry. They called all the children to come and see what happened to sell-outs. They put a tyre around Vutha’s small neck, and around his friend’s. They filled both tyres with petrol. Then they gave boxes of matches to Danisa and to a boy of roughly the same age.
‘Please forgive us! We’ll never do it again. We are very sorry for what we did.’
‘Oh, mother! Where is my mother!’
‘Shut up, you sell-outs! Now, all of you children who have gathered here, watch and see what happens to sell-outs. Know that if you ever become a sell-out, this is what will happen to you as well. Now you two, light the matches, and throw them at the tyres.’
Danisa and the child who had been given the honour of carrying out the execution struck their matches, and threw them at the tyres. Danisa’s match fell into Vutha’s tyre. It suddenly burst into flames. His screams were swallowed by the raging flames, the crackle of burning flesh, and the blowing wind. He tried to run, but the weight of the tyre pulled him to the ground, and he fell down. The eight-year-old was able to stagger for some distance, but he also fell down in a ball of fire that rolled for a while and then stopped. Soon the air was filled with the stench of burning flesh. The children watched for a while, then ran away to their mothers.
Danisa also ran to her home. ’Malehlohonolo was not back from the city yet. So she ran to Noria’s.
‘Auntie Noria, I burnt The Second because he is a sell-out.’
Noria could not understand what the excited little girl was talking about. But she followed Danisa, who promised that she would lead her to where she had burnt the boy. By the time they arrived there, many people had already gathered. They had also heard from their children how sell-outs were set on fire on the instructions of the Young Tigers. The tyres were still smouldering, but the remains of the two boys were charred and shrivelled. Noria threw herself on the ground and wailed.
‘Oh, Vutha my child, you can’t die again!’
Noria was transformed into a madwoman. Throughout that night, she roamed around the settlement shouting that she wanted the bastards who had killed her son. She was prepared to kill them with her own bare hands, she said.
‘Where are you, you cowards? Why don’t you come out and face me? I will not rest until I expose you! Until I make you taste the same death!’
Towards dawn, her voice became hoarse. Although she was not yet tired of going from street to street, she could not yell her challenge to the killers anymore. She went back to her shack, only to find it a sheet of flame. She fled to Madimbhaza’s dumping ground.
The whole community was numbed by what had happened. Different views were proffered. Some felt that the Young Tigers had gone too far in their protection of the settlement. Others reserved their opinions. But one strange thing was that none of the children could say who was actually responsible for the atrocity. They just said it was the Young Tigers. Who in particular? Just the Young Tigers. Who had given the instructions to Danisa and the other child to light the tyres? The Young Tigers. Who among the Young Tigers? Just the Young Tigers.
‘Do you understand how I feel, Toloki, to be told that my child deserved to die like that, after I carried him in my womb for thirty months?’
‘Thirty months, Noria?’
‘I am not making a mistake, Toloki. The first time I carried him for fifteen months, which is a long time for any woman to carry a baby. He was born, and Napu fed him to the dogs. I carried him again for another fifteen months. He died for the second time when the Young Tigers set him on fire.’
Toloki wants to know if no one was arrested for this atrocity. Noria says that the police are still investigating. They have had great difficulty in finding witnesses, so they are unable to say who gave the order to have the boys set alight. They cannot arrest Danisa and the other child, since they are babies.
‘Up to this day I do not want to see Danisa. Not because I blame her, you understand? But because she reminds me so much of my child. And the poor girl is going to have to live with this for the rest of her life. At first ’Malehlohonolo was afraid to face me. But I assured her that she should not blame herself. If anyone is to blame, it is myself. Both children were under my care when it happened.’
‘You are not to blame either, Noria.’
They fall into their by now customary moments of silence, when each one is lost in his or her thoughts. Tears roll down Toloki’s cheeks. He is ashamed to be seen crying like this. After all he is a man, is he not? Noria smiles reassuringly at him, and wipes his tears with the back of her hand. She suggests that they both take a bath, as this will make them feel better. Although he does not understand how a bath will make them feel better, he agrees. He is willing to learn new ways of living. After all, Noria herself was quite willing to learn how to walk in the garden with him, to the extent that she is now a garden enthusiast in her own right.
She lights the primus stove and warms some water in a big tin. She pours the water into a washing basin, and mixes it with the juice of aloes. She asks Toloki to take his clothes off. Toloki is taken aback. He thought that each one of them was going to bathe outside the shack in turn, as they had done in the morning. She meanwhile takes off all her clothes, unveiling her womanhood to him. She stands there completely naked, as if lost in a reverie. Toloki follows like a sheep to slaughter. He also takes off his clothes and unveils his maleness. They both kneel over the basin, and with their washing rags, bathe each other with the aloed water. They dazedly rub each other’s backs, and slowly move down to other parts of their bodies. It is as though they are responding to rhythms that are silent for the rest of the world, and can only be heard or felt by them. They take turns to stand in the basin, and splash water on each other’s bodies. All this they do in absolute silence, and their movements are slow and deliberate. They are in a dream-like state, their thoughts concentrated only on what they are doing to each other. Nothing else matters. Nothing else exists.
After drying each other with their cloths, Noria opens the door and throws the remaining water outside. Most of it has spattered on the floor. Toloki takes his perfume from his trolley, and gives it to her. She splashes some of it on his body. He does likewise to her body.
Without saying a word to each other, they spread their blankets on the floor, and doss down – in their separate kingdoms.