I WAS SIX YEARS OLD when I started school at Tshimologo Junior Primary in Meadowlands Zone 9. Back then, a law had been introduced that children younger than seven years old could not be in grade school but because of my inquisitiveness and unusual sharpness, I was allowed into the school. However, because of my age and the fact that I would be turning seven after June, I was placed in a grade 0 class that was mainly intended for six-year-olds who would turn seven before June. Tshepiso was placed in a grade 1 class.
By this time my mother was working full time as an admin assistant at the Research Triangle Institute, a North Carolinabased non-governmental organisation (NGO) that was subcontracted by the US Agency for International Development in Pretoria to implement a project dealing with human rights issues. My grandmother was still employed by Kagiso Trust as a cleaner and all my uncles were in high school. Because of this, there would have been no one at home to take care of us if we hadn’t been in school. Although my mother was making relatively good money at her job, most of it was spent on paying school fees for all of us and for her fees for the University of South Africa, where she was studying towards a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in Communications and Literature. As a result, there was no money to pay a babysitter. Tshepiso and I returned from school and Ndivuvho, whose father was our landlord, was tasked with opening for us and ensuring that we had lunch, after which we’d go out to play in the streets until late afternoon, when my uncles returned home from school to look after us.
The medium of instruction at Tshimologo Junior Primary School was Setswana, a language Tshepiso and I had learned to master because of the friends we played with. Dipuo, Ntswaki and Lala were from the same family and all spoke fluent Setswana. Another one of our friends, Nhlanhla, was Xitsonga-speaking but had also assimilated into speaking Setswana. The six of us were thick as thieves. Ntswaki, Tshepiso and I went to the same school, so every morning we would walk together to and from school. Dipuo, Nhlanhla and Lala attended schools that were located in the same vicinity and, like us, walked to and from school together in the mornings and afternoons.
One thing I distinctly remember about Soweto in the early 1990s is that the people were in a perpetual state of euphoria. There was always something to be excited about and it often had to do with your organisation. Every second person was talking about something good that the ANC had done. People were becoming unrealistically superstitious; everything that occurred would be linked to you in one way or another. If a student passed, you’d get the credit. If a person who was ill got better, it was said you had some influence in that. One particular incident stands out. It was a very cold evening. Tshepiso and I were drawing and colouring in our school books. I was around five at the time. We were still living in the one-roomed shack in Zone 8. There were two single beds at home. Tshepiso and I shared one of them and my mother slept in the other. My grandmother slept in the small space between the two beds. She always maintained this was the best spot in the entire shack, because, she claimed, it was insulated and warm. Thinking back, I suspect she was saying this to put us at ease. My uncles, Vina, Ali and Godfrey, slept on the floor in the part of the shack that we had divided into a kitchenette and a dining room.
While we were going about our colouring business, my uncles and their friends burst into the house screaming excitedly about something to do with Bafana Bafana. Tshepiso and I were instructed to dress warmly and told that my mother would be coming to pick us up shortly. Sure enough, a few minutes later she burst into the house with her friend, Sibongile, whose mother, Mawe, my family had lived with in the 1980s. They took us both outside, where the first things I heard were cars hooting and people singing loudly. My mother explained to us that the national soccer team had won the Africa Cup of Nations and had just been crowned champions. We were taken to Maseru Street, one of the busiest streets in Meadowlands, where a large crowd had gathered to celebrate the victory.
The entire community had come out onto the streets. Everywhere I looked there were people of all ages singing, dancing and hugging one another. Music was blaring from the many cars that lined the street. Some cars were playing songs by MaWillies, a popular kwaito artist who lived just a few streets from my home, while others were playing Brenda Fassie, whose songs were national anthems in the township. It was an electric atmosphere.
After what felt like hours of singing and dancing, the crowd dispersed. People began to walk to their homes with a sense of jubilation.
‘Bafana Bafana won because of the Madiba Magic,’ many claimed.
It was a very happy time. Apartheid was now finally over. You were now in power and the word on everyone’s lips was ‘Nelson Mandela’, who at that time was the president of the Republic of South Africa. It was not too unusual to hear young children singing on the streets:
Nelson Mandela! Nelson Mandela!
Ha hona ea tshoanang le ena!
We were all young and we all loved Mandela, the man who had liberated us from the clutches of apartheid brutality, the leader of the ANC, the party of black people, which all of us were expected to join when we grew older.
At school, we were taught only four things: religion, mathematics, reading and Mandela. Tshimologo Junior Primary School, like all other schools in the township, was very serious about biblical education. Every morning before we went to class, we were gathered at the quad for assembly, where Bible scriptures would be read out to us by different teachers before the principal made the announcements of the day. The first class of every morning was Bible class. We would sit on the floor around our teacher, Mistress K, and have Bible stories read to us. Sometimes she would delegate the task of reading to students, or rather, to me or my friend Boitumelo. Boitumelo and I were her favourites, primarily because we read very well.
I hated that class. For some reason, hard as I tried, I could not make myself like the Bible and its stories. Something about it all felt unrealistic, not so different from stories about Father Christmas and his reindeer bringing presents for little kids from some place far up in the sky. So, on days when I was instructed to read to my classmates, I’d read as quickly as I possibly could. This was made easier by the fact that I spoke very fast anyway. The only thing I looked forward to during these classes was the singing. I had always enjoyed Christian hymns. They were the sole reason for my going to church. Something about them moved me. One in particular, Haufi le Morena, touched the depths of my soul in ways that I still battle to comprehend. And so I’d rush through the New Testament so there’d be more time for singing.
I was a very inquisitive student, the complete opposite of my aunt, Tshepiso, who was a grade ahead of me. Teachers often compared me to my quieter relative, who had hardly any friends and only spoke when spoken to. I was especially interested in reading and history. I always read ahead of the class, so that by the time they were halfway through a prescribed reading book, I was starting another. History class, or what I call ‘Mandela lessons’, was one of my favourites. My teacher, Mistress M, was very passionate about teaching us about apartheid, mainly because this particular subject matter allowed her to speak about her favourite person on the planet, Mandela, and her favourite organisation, the ANC, endlessly. One morning, Mistress M came into class with a huge smile on her face. She explained to us something called Curriculum 2005. But, of course, none of us had a clue what that meant or even how relevant it was to us. This was around 2001. The year 2005 sounded like a lifetime away.
After her complex explanation of the Curriculum 2005 programme, Mistress M suddenly began to quiz the class about all sorts of things. But we knew most of the answers to her questions; we had listened attentively during her prior lessons.
‘Who is the premier of Gauteng?’ she asked.
‘Mbhazima Shilowa!’
‘Who is the premier of the Northern Province?’
‘Ngoako Ramatlhodi!’
‘Who is the premier of the Northern Cape?’
‘Manne Dipico!’
‘Who is the premier of North West?’
‘Popo Molefe!’
This went on for some minutes. Then she asked, expectantly, ‘Who is the Minister of Education?’
‘Kader Asmal!’
Mistress M’s mood changed immediately. She began barking at us, calling us all sorts of cruel names. I sat in my chair, frustrated. I knew we had been correct: Kader Asmal was the Minister of Education; we had been told that many times before. And as far as I knew, he had neither died nor been replaced by anyone else, for whatever reason. So why was Mistress so angry at us, claiming that our collective response was incorrect?
While I sat there trying to make sense of this, Mistress M started asking students one at a time what the correct answer to her question was. Student after student was being given two lashes with her wooden rod for giving an incorrect answer. Every ‘It is Kader Asmal, Mistress’, was followed with a hard thud as wood met flesh. I was petrified. She’d soon be standing before my desk and I too would give her the same answer that everyone else was giving her because I too knew the Minister of Education to be Kader Asmal. I knew I’d be the last student she’d ask. I always was. Teachers in my school believed that ‘clever’ students must be given the least attention. As such, my homework book was never checked and I was never asked questions because it was expected that my homework would be done and that I’d know the answer, so the others must first try to answer. Because of this, I’d never before been given a lashing. I’d been in Tshimologo Junior for almost four years by then but not once had I been a victim of corporal punishment. But I knew that day that I too was about to suffer the fate usually suffered by other students. I was terrified.
Mistress M finally stood before my desk, her wooden stick lowered because of the expectation that she wouldn’t hit me. I could hear my classmates weeping all around me, their hands burning from being struck by the painful rod. She asked, with pride in her eyes as she looked at her shining star, who the Minister of Education was. I didn’t respond immediately. I was terrified of the consequences. After what felt like decades, I finally answered, ‘It is Mr Kader Asmal’. A few seconds after uttering that response, I knew I was about to be hit.
Mistress M lifted the wooden rod up and demanded that I stretch out my arm with my palm facing up. I complied. The pain that shot through my arm was like none I’d ever experienced. So severe was it that for a few seconds after I’d been struck, I was numb. My mind froze. I couldn’t move or even think. When I came to, Mistress M was screaming at us, telling us how disappointed she was at our collective stupidity, which, according to her, we had inherited from our parents, products of Bantu education. The correct answer, she told us, was not Kader Asmal or Mr Kader Asmal. The correct answer was Professor Kader Asmal. A professor, she explained, was not just an ordinary person. It was someone who had studied for a very long time and had obtained many degrees. That is who the Minister of Education was. She made it a point to emphasise that the reason why we had a professor as a Minister of Education was that the ANC took education seriously.
‘The ANC wants you to have education better than what we had during the dark days of apartheid,’ she informed us.
This became a daily narrative for students at Tshimologo Junior. Every day was dedicated to extending eternal gratitude to those who fought for the liberation of black people: you. We would be beaten if we forgot who the first president of the ANC had been or how many years Nelson Mandela had spent in prison. At times, as an adult, I find myself thinking that there must have been a moment during this period where the national anthem was almost altered to include Mandela’s name. I am almost certain that somewhere in the corridors of power, someone sat contemplating the possibility of dedicating the anthem to Mandela, as everything else was being dedicated to him. Maybe the national anthem would have gone like this:
Mandela sikelel’ iAfrica
Maluphakanyisw’ uphondo lwayo,
Yizwa imithandazo yethu,
Tata, sikelela,
Thina lusapho lwayo.
Madiba boloka setjhaba sa heso,
O fedise dintwa le matshwenyeho . . .
Indeed, the mid and late 1990s were an interesting period. Life in Meadowlands was exciting. The streets were bustling with children playing diketo and bathi, with no worries about tomorrow, for we knew without doubt that our future was secure. The ANC was in power and nothing could ever threaten or destabilise your hegemony. At home, things were also going very well. My uncles looked happier than they had ever been. Ali, the youngest of the three, had taken to playing dice on the streets but not for lack of resources. My mother ensured that everyone in the house was well clothed and well fed. By this time, both Ali and Vina were studying at Kelokitso Comprehensive Secondary School in Zone 9, hardly fifteen minutes from home. The days of walking to Zone 2 were long gone.
My grandmother was very happy at her place of employment. She’d been promoted from a cleaner to making photocopies and doing other minor administrative jobs around the office. This had done wonders for her self-esteem. She walked around the house with a spring in her step, a clear indication that she was content with the direction her life was taking.
At school, both Tshepiso and I were performing very well academically. Since the first lashing I had gotten from Mistress M, I had been hit a dozen more times for other minor misdemeanours. I was still a diligent student but no longer interested in being the teachers’ favourite. My fear of being punished had vanished on that morning when I’d received a cruel lashing for not having prefixed Kader Asmal’s name with ‘Professor’. From that day, I had begun to allow myself to be a normal kid, to cease striving to be the innocent one. This decision opened up a whole new world for me. For the first time in my life, I could actually say the ludicrous things that my peers were saying, as opposed to the clever things I had learned from my mother. Strangely, the teachers were not very displeased with my evolution. I continued to be their favourite, only this time they knew to check my homework book as they did every other student’s.
Unfortunately, during this epoch of euphoria and contentment, tragedy struck in my family. This incident would alter my thinking forever. Years later, I would begin to understand its relationship with the false idea of a ‘Rainbow Nation’.