Mama Character Analysis

Mama did not want to hear any moaning about my not having friends at school.

“Count your blessings,” she said. “Do you know how many children would just love to change places with you?”

Change places with me? Change places with me? I’d have done anything to change places with them.

Mama’s lack of sympathy only added to my misery. I hated school and envied those children she pitied. What had they done to be that lucky? To me, the prospect of loafing the rest of the year away was quite appealing. What I didn’t know then, of course, was that some of those children would never go back to school again. Others who, like Khaya and me, were lucky enough to gain admission to a school, soon found the newness too much and played truant. From this group too, there were those who would gradually drift away from school ... and eventually leave for good.

To this day, there are not enough schools or teachers in Guguletu to accommodate all the children. You heard me talk about Operation Barcelona, just now. There never has been enough of anything in our schools. Therefore, many of the children, even today, do not go to school. There are not enough mothers during the day to force the children to go to school and stay there for the whole day. The mothers are at work. Or they are drunk. Defeated by life. Dead. We die young, these days. In the times of our grandmothers and their grandmothers before them, African people lived to see their great-great-grandchildren. Today, one is lucky to see a grandchild. Unless, of course, it is a grandchild whose arrival is an abomination — the children our children are getting before we even suspect they have come of child-bearing age.

The sea of tin shacks lying lazily in the flats, surrounded by gentle white hills, sandy hills dotted with scrub, gave us (all of us, parents and children alike) such a fantastic sense of security we could not conceive of its ever ceasing to exist. Thus, convinced of the inviolability offered by our tremendous numbers, the size of our settlement, the belief that our dwelling places, our homes, and our burial places were sacred, we laughed at the absurdity of the rumour.

“The afterbirths of our children are deep in this ground. So are the foreskins of our boys and the bleached bones of our long dead,” Grandfather Mxube, the location elder, told Mama one day, when they were discussing, once again, this very same question of forced removals. Blouvlei was going nowhere, he said. “Going nowhere,” he reiterated, right fist beating hard against palm of the other hand.

Standard Six and, come year’s end, would sit for external examinations. A not insignificant step, as Mama reminded me daily: Gone is the time for playing.

Mama had high hopes for me ... for both of us, my brother and me. Our parents believed that education would free us from the slavery that was their lot as uneducated labourers.

Yes, we had our plans. But the year had its plans too; unbeknown to us, of course.

But that was not her way of doing things. Not as far as my being in danger was concerned. She seemed to think each time I left the house, I could only return with a stomach. To the disgrace of the entire Chizama clan; not just our family. Besides, she was a secretary of the Mothers’ Union at our church. With such high office, she didn’t want anyone to say she had raised a rotten potato. By all means, Mama made sure her potato stayed unspoilt.

[…]

That was the beginning of many a trial, for me. Mama’s making sure I remained “whole” or ‘unspoilt” as she said.

“God put mothers on earth, to ensure the health of their daughters,” I heard often, whenever I attempted to resist the practice. Each time she looked, she’d wash her hands thereafter. But I was the one who felt dirty.

Then, the flood came. A torrent of tears gushing unchecked down her cheeks. Then followed the wailing. Mama keened as though announcing the death of a beloved, honoured relative.

“What will the church people say?” Mama wailed. “What are they to think of me?” The shame to the family would surely kill her, she said.

Auntie Funiwe reminded her that this was a sad accident and that the family had nothing to be ashamed of. “This child has not disgraced the name of the family.”

“Oh, you don’t know anything,” Mama continued her wailing. “My enemies are going to rejoice. They’re going to laugh at me now.”

“What do you care for such small-minded, mean people?” Auntie asked. “Let them laugh, their turn’ll come,” she said. “Ours now is to look after this child,” she nodded my way. “We must support and protect her now. How do you think she must be feeling?”

Feeling? I was numb, beyond feeling. Mama’s coming, her reaction, had drained the last ounce of feeling from me. Fear. Shame. Anger. All these and more mingled together to form one strong thinning liquid that replaced my blood.

There is knowledge with which I was born — or which I acquired at such an early age it is as though it was there the moment I came to know myself ... to know that I was. We sucked it from our mothers’ breasts, at the very least; inhaled it from the very air, for most.

Long before I went to school I knew when Tata had had a hard day at work. He would grumble, “Those dogs I work for!” and fuss about, and take long swigs from the bottle.

Mama’s own quarrel with bosses often came on the day when Tata got paid. For some reason, her dissatisfaction with Tata’s conditions of employment seemed to deepen on Fridays.

I remember when, one Friday, she exploded:

“Sesilamba nje, beb’ umhlaba wethu abelungu! We have come thus to hunger, for white people stole our land.” […] Later, I was to hear those words with growing frequency. “White people stole our land. They stole our herds. We have no cattle today, and the people who came here without any have worlds of farms, overflowing with fattest cattle”

Mama did not want to hear any moaning about my not having friends at school.

“Count your blessings,” she said. “Do you know how many children would just love to change places with you?”

Change places with me? Change places with me? I’d have done anything to change places with them.

Mama’s lack of sympathy only added to my misery. I hated school and envied those children she pitied. What had they done to be that lucky? To me, the prospect of loafing the rest of the year away was quite appealing. What I didn’t know then, of course, was that some of those children would never go back to school again. Others who, like Khaya and me, were lucky enough to gain admission to a school, soon found the newness too much and played truant. From this group too, there were those who would gradually drift away from school ... and eventually leave for good.

To this day, there are not enough schools or teachers in Guguletu to accommodate all the children. You heard me talk about Operation Barcelona, just now. There never has been enough of anything in our schools. Therefore, many of the children, even today, do not go to school. There are not enough mothers during the day to force the children to go to school and stay there for the whole day. The mothers are at work. Or they are drunk. Defeated by life. Dead. We die young, these days. In the times of our grandmothers and their grandmothers before them, African people lived to see their great-great-grandchildren. Today, one is lucky to see a grandchild. Unless, of course, it is a grandchild whose arrival is an abomination — the children our children are getting before we even suspect they have come of child-bearing age.

The sea of tin shacks lying lazily in the flats, surrounded by gentle white hills, sandy hills dotted with scrub, gave us (all of us, parents and children alike) such a fantastic sense of security we could not conceive of its ever ceasing to exist. Thus, convinced of the inviolability offered by our tremendous numbers, the size of our settlement, the belief that our dwelling places, our homes, and our burial places were sacred, we laughed at the absurdity of the rumour.

“The afterbirths of our children are deep in this ground. So are the foreskins of our boys and the bleached bones of our long dead,” Grandfather Mxube, the location elder, told Mama one day, when they were discussing, once again, this very same question of forced removals. Blouvlei was going nowhere, he said. “Going nowhere,” he reiterated, right fist beating hard against palm of the other hand.

Standard Six and, come year’s end, would sit for external examinations. A not insignificant step, as Mama reminded me daily: Gone is the time for playing.

Mama had high hopes for me ... for both of us, my brother and me. Our parents believed that education would free us from the slavery that was their lot as uneducated labourers.

Yes, we had our plans. But the year had its plans too; unbeknown to us, of course.

But that was not her way of doing things. Not as far as my being in danger was concerned. She seemed to think each time I left the house, I could only return with a stomach. To the disgrace of the entire Chizama clan; not just our family. Besides, she was a secretary of the Mothers’ Union at our church. With such high office, she didn’t want anyone to say she had raised a rotten potato. By all means, Mama made sure her potato stayed unspoilt.

[…]

That was the beginning of many a trial, for me. Mama’s making sure I remained “whole” or ‘unspoilt” as she said.

“God put mothers on earth, to ensure the health of their daughters,” I heard often, whenever I attempted to resist the practice. Each time she looked, she’d wash her hands thereafter. But I was the one who felt dirty.

Then, the flood came. A torrent of tears gushing unchecked down her cheeks. Then followed the wailing. Mama keened as though announcing the death of a beloved, honoured relative.

“What will the church people say?” Mama wailed. “What are they to think of me?” The shame to the family would surely kill her, she said.

Auntie Funiwe reminded her that this was a sad accident and that the family had nothing to be ashamed of. “This child has not disgraced the name of the family.”

“Oh, you don’t know anything,” Mama continued her wailing. “My enemies are going to rejoice. They’re going to laugh at me now.”

“What do you care for such small-minded, mean people?” Auntie asked. “Let them laugh, their turn’ll come,” she said. “Ours now is to look after this child,” she nodded my way. “We must support and protect her now. How do you think she must be feeling?”

Feeling? I was numb, beyond feeling. Mama’s coming, her reaction, had drained the last ounce of feeling from me. Fear. Shame. Anger. All these and more mingled together to form one strong thinning liquid that replaced my blood.

There is knowledge with which I was born — or which I acquired at such an early age it is as though it was there the moment I came to know myself ... to know that I was. We sucked it from our mothers’ breasts, at the very least; inhaled it from the very air, for most.

Long before I went to school I knew when Tata had had a hard day at work. He would grumble, “Those dogs I work for!” and fuss about, and take long swigs from the bottle.

Mama’s own quarrel with bosses often came on the day when Tata got paid. For some reason, her dissatisfaction with Tata’s conditions of employment seemed to deepen on Fridays.

I remember when, one Friday, she exploded:

“Sesilamba nje, beb’ umhlaba wethu abelungu! We have come thus to hunger, for white people stole our land.” […] Later, I was to hear those words with growing frequency. “White people stole our land. They stole our herds. We have no cattle today, and the people who came here without any have worlds of farms, overflowing with fattest cattle”