I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD when the tragedy struck my family. I still remember the day as vividly as if it was yesterday.
Towards the end of 1998, my family moved out of the shack in Sekhwiri Street, a place we had called home for over a decade. We moved into a four-roomed house, just a stone’s throw from our former home, in Tlhomedi Street. For the first time in our lives we had our own house. A proper brick house! There were two bedrooms: one for the women and one for the men. My uncles slept in the smaller bedroom, which wasn’t small at all. The master bedroom had one queen-sized bed and one single bed. Tshepiso, my mother and I slept on the bigger bed while my grandmother slept on the small one. A humongous wooden table took up most of the space in the dining room. Eight black plastic chairs surrounded it. These were enough for all of us to eat supper together. This had never happened before because we’d lived in a shack so small that we hardly had any room to move. A television set completed the furnishing in the dining room. It too was a first. We’d never owned a television. My mother used to watch it at her friend Sibongile’s house and my uncles would watch it at the homes of their friends around the neighbourhood. The only time Tshepiso and I got to watch television was when we spent nights at our friends’ homes.
Moving to Tlhomedi Street is one of the happiest memories of my childhood. We were no longer living in a shack that was boiling hot during summer and freezing cold during winter. The days of using a bucket to relieve ourselves at night were also long gone. We now had our own toilet just outside the house and the bedroom in which we slept was big enough that having a bucket placed inside at night to prevent our having to walk in the dark was not as uncomfortable as it had been back in Sekhwiri Street, where we had to jump over the heads of those sleeping on the floor to be able to get to the bucket. The new house was also close enough to the old one that we could still keep the same friends we’d had throughout our childhood. Every morning, Tshepiso and I walked a block to Sekhwiri Street to fetch Ntswaki so that we could walk to school together. By this time, Dipuo had also started attending a school closer to our own, so she too walked with us in the mornings and waited for us in the afternoons.
They would arrive home and change while we waited for them and then walk with us to our new home, where we too would change into casual clothes and wash our socks and shirts. From then on, we would all eat either at my home or at theirs. We preferred eating at Tlhomedi, as we called my home. My grandmother often brought leftover food from her office whenever there were workshops or meetings, and my mother also bought nice food for us. Our fridge always had cheese and polony: the delicacy of the township.
Our house was always full of people: either our friends or my uncle’s friends, who also came to eat at our house after school. On weekends, my mother would sometimes host what she called a ‘kitchen party’ with her friends. They would bring salads and snacks, and sit in the garden the whole afternoon dancing and singing along to Brenda Fassie’s music.
When school closed, my mother, my grandmother, Tshepiso and I often went to visit our relatives in the Free State. My grandmother had since reconciled with her mother and the rest of her maternal family. So my family vacationed in Parys or in Kroonstad in the Free State, a place I continue to call home. My uncles were not particularly fond of the Free State; they argued that it was too rural. This attitude was typical of youngsters growing up in the township. Everything that was not similar to township life was either too rural or boring. Not that I particularly disagreed with them; Kroonstad and Parys were indeed very foreign to the life that we were used to in Soweto. We would be woken up very early in the morning to fetch water at a well almost an hour away from home. Upon returning, one of the older girls would prepare breakfast while the rest of us swept the yard and fed the chickens. One of the boys would start a fire and boil a lot of water, which was used for bathing and making tea. After eating breakfast, dishes would be washed and then we’d go out into the wild to play. At times while playing in the bushes, we’d find and kill small snakes and other animals. At times we’d go to the river to swim, without so much as swimming costumes. We would then head back home before sunset, when the older girls would prepare supper. After that, we would sit around a bonfire and listen to one of my great grandmothers, Motjholoko, tell us stories about the past. I enjoyed being in the Free State. The tranquillity of life in the rural areas resonated well with my spirit. I always looked forward to vacation time.
For some reason I never understood, we didn’t go to the Free State during the March holidays of 1999. We remained in Meadowlands with our friends, who hardly ever went anywhere for vacation. The month passed without incident. Life in the township was normal. Vina and Ali were always out on the streets with friends. Ali was still playing dice and sometimes when he won a lot of money he’d give Tshepiso and me a rand each. A rand was a lot of money at that time. It could buy a packet of sweets, biscuits and sweetened ice, which sold for ten cents for one. Godfrey was hardly ever home but when he was the house would be filled with laughter and joy. He had long since dropped out of school and we were never told where he was staying or what work he was doing to survive. But whenever he came back, he’d bring all of us lots of gifts: clothes, jewellery, electrical appliances and food that we’d only ever seen on television. And every time, just before he left once again, he’d promise to take Tshepiso and me to ‘Never-never’, a place with golden streets and furniture made of different kinds of chocolate.
A few months before March 1999 something strange happened. It was an unusually chilly night in late January and we had all gone to sleep early because of the piercing cold. As usual I was nestled between my mother and Tshepiso. Some time in the middle of the night there was a banging sound at the gate of our house. My grandmother woke up and, with Vina walking closely beside her, went to open the gate. It was the police. My mother, who had also heard the commotion, woke Tshepiso and me immediately and told us to pretend to be sleeping until the police woke us up. When they did, she said, if they pointed at Godfrey, who had been sleeping at home that week, and asked who he was, we should say ‘ab’ti Thabiso’. We did as instructed: tucked ourselves back into the warm blankets and tried with all our might to pretend to be asleep. We could hear voices in the kitchen, which slowly moved through the rooms, stopping first at Ali and Godfrey’s room and interrogating them. The next thing I knew, there was loud banging on our door and a torch was being shone around the room. Someone must have located the light switch in the dark because a few seconds later the light came on. The three bulky, angry-looking police officers yanked the blankets off our tiny bodies. We sat up with a mixture of terror and anticipation. Rubbing the sleep from our eyes, we stood beside our family members and awaited the imminent interrogation. The officers asked us to identify our family members by name. They pointed to my grandmother first, and we responded with ‘Mama’. Next, they pointed at my mother, to which we responded ‘Puo’, which is what we called her. They went on, pointing at Vina and Ali, and our responses were simultaneous. The last person they pointed to was Godfrey, who had a slight look of fear in his almond-shaped eyes. But we knew what we had to say and were determined to say it convincingly. ‘Ab’ti Thabiso,’ we stated matter-of-factly.
The look of confusion was evident on the officers’ faces. We were children and they couldn’t interrogate us further, and it must have seemed ludicrous that we could have been involved in a cover-up. In his usual disarming voice, Godfrey asked the officers who they were looking for at such an ungodly hour, and why. An officer responded that they were looking for a young man named Godfrey, wanted in connection with a murdered police officer and a stolen vehicle. They’d received an anonymous tip that he lived in this house and were there to arrest him. Godfrey calmly assured them that no such person lived at our house and, followed closely by my grandmother in her blue blanket and slippers, escorted the frustrated police officers out.
After the police officers left, none of us could get back to sleep. The tension in the house was as thick as a blanket. I was confused by the incident, battling to comprehend what the police officers had given as reasons for their manhunt of Godfrey. My grandmother looked as though she’d aged ten years within the few minutes of the incident. Tshepiso and I were instructed to return to sleep while my mother and grandmother held a brief meeting with Godfrey. The very next day, we woke up to find Godfrey packing the little that there was of his clothes and luggage. He kissed us goodbye and promised he’d come back and take us to Never-never.
On 30 March 1999, I was visiting my paternal grandmother in Meadowlands Zone 1 when my mother came with her partner, abuti Bathandwa, to pick me up and take me back to Zone 8. I was asked to wait in my father’s room while the elders had a discussion that, judging by their body language and facial expressions, looked very serious. I don’t recall how long I waited but at some point I went out and met him as he was heading towards the room. All he said to me was, ‘Godfrey o shwele. Ba mo thuntse a nkela maponesa dithunya.’
I froze in my tracks. What my father had just said made very little sense to me. ‘Godfrey is dead. He was shot while trying to disarm police officers.’ This was impossible. My favourite uncle could not possibly be dead. The last time I’d seen him had been the day after being woken up by the police in the middle of a cold night. As far as I knew, he had gone to rural Free State to stay with our family, away from the probing eyes of the police. So why was he killed? Where?
That night, I sat on my mother’s lap as abuti Bathandwa drove us back home. My mother was trying very hard to be strong for me but I could tell that a tsunami of tears was threatening to pour out of her red, swollen eyes. The tenminute drive from Zone 1 to Zone 8 felt like a lifetime. The car was eerily silent, save for the sound of screeching tyres against tar. I was still battling to comprehend how it was possible that Godfrey could be dead. He had promised to take us to Never-never. He had no right to just die without fulfilling his promise.
I knew immediately when we arrived home that the horrible news I’d heard about Godfrey was true. The house was bustling with activity. My uncles’ friends, my mother’s friends and neighbours were all there, looking shell-shocked and heartbroken. I can’t remember where Tshepiso was but I hadn’t seen her when I arrived home. Or perhaps I did but I hadn’t realise it was her because of the hazy fog that was permeating my head.
That week flew by quickly. I remember very little about it. I made a conscious decision to block it from my memory because it hurt too much to remember. But the story is that my uncle and his best friend, a young man from Zone 9, known only as ‘Voetpaitjie’, had gone to the Dobsonville Shopping Complex not too far from Meadowlands, armed. Their mission was to disarm the security guards who stood outside the banks, and use their weapons in a heist that they were planning. Unfortunately, the guards had retaliated when Godfrey pointed a pistol at them. Realising they were outnumbered, Voetpaitjie and Godfrey had tried to run away from the complex but were pursued by the armed security guards. The guards had opened fire on the fleeing suspects, wounding both of them. Voetpaitjie had been shot in the foot. My uncle, on the other hand, suffered more severe injuries. Two bullets had lodged themselves in his spinal cord and one in his head. The two were rushed to hospital immediately. Voetpaitjie was arrested as soon as he’d received medical attention. But Godfrey had gone into a coma and never woke up from it.
I didn’t cry at all during the week of preparations for my uncle’s funeral. I was the only one in the family who didn’t cry during that dreadful week. I could not bring myself to mourn even though I knew that it was important for my own healing. But a week later, I locked myself in the toilet outside the house, buried my head between my thighs, and cried my eyes out. I cried for my uncle and the cruelty of his death. I cried for my grandmother, who had lost yet another child. I cried for my family, for the hardness with which Godfrey’s death had struck all of us. I cried for Never-never, the magical place I would never see. But above all, I cried for South Africa, because it had lost one of its most amazing sons. That was the first and the last time I ever cried for a dead person. After Godfrey’s death, my eyes went dry. I could no longer cry for dead people, no matter how close to me they may have been.
Later, I would understand that there are many Godfreys in this country: young men who have given up on the Rainbow Nation and resorted to a life of crime. We are often made to believe that crime is committed by bad people who have no regard for human life or for peace. This is not true. I don’t mean to defend my uncle’s actions but crime in the new South Africa is often committed by young men and women who see it as the only ticket out of a life of cruel suffering. When a black child does his best to make an honest living but doors of learning are shut in his face or he is subjected to the cruellest exploitation in the workplace, very little options are left for him. In the 2008 movie Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema, one of the characters, Mbolelo Nazareth, an MK veteran who returns to the country and becomes a criminal mastermind, captures it most aptly when he says, ‘Crime is the fastest growing industry in South Africa’.
And this rampant crime is going to claim the lives of more Godfreys and Voetpaitjies: young men who had the misfortune of being born into the black condition.