3 – Plans never bore fruit
And another
interesting story (Vuyo went on) is that my father’s sister, who worked for the
university, I thought that she was my
mother. Even during the death of my
father, I thought that she was my mother; I only knew that she was not my mum
in 1988. Because she don’t have
kids. So during the end of the month,
she will buy some clothes for me, buy some nice stuff, because when you are a
kid, you like to eat, so she would buy some nice stuff for me. My mum is still kicking. Since she came here to town, she worked as a
domestic worker, even now she is working for the family of O., next to the
College; she worked there way back and is still working for them now. The other interesting thing, is that family
of O., they are speaking Xhosa early
now, because my mum taught them. So now
I was there a few weeks, back, and I found that, what I noticed was that there
is that friendship now; so for instance, if there is something wrong, where I
reside, that family will want to know exactly what is going on.
Another thing that makes me to
believe that my father was nice; my father will never have chosen a militant
wife. So I confirm that my father was nice, because of the behaviour I saw from
my mum; my mum is such a nice person; she will gather with those who are quiet
and nice, like him.
So after the death of my father,
also going back to 1984, my aunt, the one I thought is my mum, she played such
a role. We didn’t notice even that we
don’t have a father, because she decided to play the role of my father; and she
left her house, and stayed with us. And
in 1997, she suggested that, No Enough is enough, you don’t have to stay here
now, you don’t have to rent; I’ll buy a house for you. So she bought a house for R53 000 for
us. Three years after, she died. And we
thank her for the role she played. So my
younger brother, A., he took the responsibility of paying for the house after
the death of my aunt, so we still remember her for what she did for us.
My mother also is from Middledrift,
but their surname is Klaas-Tshuni; so they played such a role for us; they
became the family members as well.
Another reason they call themselves Klaas-Tshuni; during the era of
apartheid, it was very wise. It was like, for instance your surname is
Mthimkulu, ‘big tree’, then you must change it and say Grootboom, so that the
past regime would recognise you, or recommend you; so you change the surname. During the traditional ceremony, is where you
reveal the truth; but after that occasion your surname is Grootboom again. You
will notice that a certain Klaas-Tshuni; on my mother’s side the surname is
Tyume; but since they spent years and years using the surname Klaas they are
using both now – Klaas-Tyume. The side of my mum, my grandparents on the
side of my mum, I don’t have that much history, because my mum’s parents died
when I was so young.
Before
my mum take any step she will pray and pray and pray, and she will say, What I
want to happen, will happen: ndifunga amaqocwa.
She is a church person; now she is attending a church there at Umzi Wase
Ethiopia. During 1992-3, there was a
split, there was that contradiction, that a male is the only people who is
supposed to do this and this and this at the church, so Dr K. M. he opposed
that, and other church members, so there was a split in the church, so my mum
decided to follow the side of Umzi Wase Ethiopia, a traditional church. Another interesting thing is that my mum is
still dancing, traditional dance competitions.
And she is leading Umzi Wase Ethiopia
۞
Unemployed almost
all the time I knew him, Vuyo did manage to pick up what is known as “work” now
and then, in the so-called “formal sector” of poorly-paid exploitation. I wrote recommendations for him on
departmental letterheads, which doubtless helped, but he never stayed in the
jobs for long. He dangled for months on
the prospect of a job in the municipality; he had some contact person there,
but nothing ever transpired. He worked
for a couple of years in a chain supermarket as a “merchandiser” – or so he put
on his CV, though this probably meant just packing
other people’s luxuries on shelves. And
he worked in more menial capacities at a couple of service stations. One of them he left, he informed me, because
he had a dispute with the owner-manager, a lean, aloof white man whom I’d seen myself
berate his employees in public view. In
Vuyo he encountered someone who had worked with MK and the Communist Party, a
respected political mentor in his own community, and who was almost certainly
better-read and deeper-thinking than himself.
Vuyo was an individual, in short, who was, in the “new dispensation”,
simply not going to put up with any such unreconstructed racist shit.
۞
In between those
occasional jobs, Vuyo was forever airing schemes for bettering his
community. He wanted to promote reading,
and do something with the local libraries.
He had a scheme to clean up the plastic debris that perpetually littered
his neighbourhood and blew all over the countryside to hang raggedly off fences
and end up in the guts of cattle. He was
going to embark on a chicken-rearing scheme in collaboration with a local
farmer and some ex-APLA cadres, and was negotiating a patch of land on the edge
of the Common. “We wrote several
letters to the municipality,” he related.
“We raised funds, let's say I asked R20 from you, ask R50 from
there. Then we sent this guy to
Pretoria, to Agriculture. There's no answer. They refer you here, they refer you
here. You go to Mr Blablabla, to Mrs
Blablabla. Mrs Blablabla sends you back
to Mr Blablabla. And then we show some
examples of other good municipalities who supported their youth. But here in this town they are politicising
everything.”
At another point he and his mates were cooking up a scheme to prevent
public phones from being vandalised, a combination of education and
guarding. But somehow these plans never
bore fruit: the land could not after all be provided, some exorbitant bribe was
being demanded, or sheer practicalities intervened. Innumerable promises of institutional support
evaporated. I remember saying to him
that communities now had to think of achieving their betterment despite government, not through
government support, not waiting for them to come up with ideas or
resources. He agreed; and easy enough
for me to say.
I kept printing out new copies of his CV for him, wincing as he folded
each one roughly into a back pocket.
Then I quietly provided plastic covers for them, thinking they would
last longer and that employers would value a pristine document. But perhaps the crumpling didn’t matter that
much; what is it with our culture’s fetish for the flatness of paper,
anyway? I paid to put him through a
basic computer literacy course, which he did, and passed, and showed me with a
kind of offhand, coy pride his blue certificate. But it never did provide direct fruit.
Instead, he did some house-painting and other odd-jobs for university
colleagues of mine, Doctor Such-such and Professor So-so. Vuyo enthused about his conversations with
them: highly politically aware and compassionate people. But when I asked them for news or memories of
Vuyo, they said they hardly knew him, or couldn’t remember him at all.
۞
It was 1975
when I was born on the 18th April. According to my mum, it was hot
on that day, and she delivered just five minutes after 6 o’clock early in the
morning, and it was hot, on that day, and she was so glad because – there are things that I might not say, but
she is the best person to say, because during her pregnancy she thought there
are twins. And after she delivered she was surprised that this guy was single;
but she said to me the reason why she thought we are twins was because I had a
big head, so she thought that we are two.
What is interesting about my day is that I was not born in
hospital. According to our culture,
during those early days when you are born, when it is your mum’s delivery day,
your mum, or one of the closer members of the family is supposed to call other
relatives and neighbours, and old mamas who know a lot about the African
teachings. So I was born next to
Egugcwini, the place of fire, where we store our wood, so we call it Egugcwini. So everything was done there
successfully. So when their job was done
and finished, they refer my mum and me to hospital so that the professionals
can do their job as well. Because, by using that system, they are not saying
they are against the professionalism, of the hospital and that stuff, but they
are supposed to start up with their culture and what they know; and by doing
that you are blessing the kid, to grow well and grow strong. There was that belief that if you are born in
hospital you are not as strong as someone born at Egugcwini. Even the behaviour, they believe that your
behaviour will be quite different, from the one born in hospital; although
there is nothing wrong with that; but according to their culture, they believe
that you ought to start there.
I
grew up during the hard times, my family; in 1975 my father was working but was
feeling pains here and there, until 1981, where those pains became the murderer
of my father. So I grew up during those
hard times, within the family. The
person who followed after I was born was Aya, my younger brother, in 1978, and Noba,
my younger sister in 1981. My first
friend is Viyolo, now working for the
South African National Defence Force, and another Viyani, for a timber company, at
George. Both of them, it is difficult to
know who is my best friend between them; but the person who introduced Viyolo,
was me, so we became the Tripartite Alliance.
There is one thing is also like about our friendship, we never had a
conflict; although we were young, although there were many things that would
result us to have a conflict; but we respect each other. If you are wrong, we are wrong. You ought to
accept that. So those were the things I
learnt from them. More especially from
Viyolo, he was not someone from a family with money or something to eat, so we
used to help each other; during the breakfast, exactly that we are going to
have a breakfast where I reside to my mum’s place, dinner at the place of
Vuyani, so there was that kind of a system we were using during those days. I remember the registration date, in 1981,
when I was going to school for the first time.
It was me and Vuyani; unfortunately Viyolo he was residing at Tyantyi
Location, he was far from us; whereas we were in Fingo Village Primary School ; she was short,
white in colour, and she liked kids, that’s what we noticed also. But the hard
time was after the registration, when our parents said, Okay Vuyo and Vuyani,
Goodbye, No, we are panicking, and we cried, up until our teacher gave our
parents a mandate to go and come tomorrow; so Mrs M asked our parents to make
such a nice lunch for us; and we must add, they must to try to spoil us so we
know the meaning of the culture of education.
۞
Text and images © Dan Wylie
"Township: Shanty edge"
Grahamstown 2016
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