Guguletu Term Analysis

My son killed your daughter. People look at me as though I did it. The generous ones as though I made him do it, as though I could make this child do anything. Starting from when he was less than six years old, even before he lost his first tooth or went to school. Starting, if truth be known, from before he was conceived; when he, with total lack of consideration if not downright malice, seeded himself inside my womb. But now, people look at me as if I’m the one who woke up one shushu day and said, Boyboy, run out and see whether, somewhere out there, you can find a white girl with nothing better to do than run around Guguletu, where she does not belong.

White people live in their own areas and mind their own business — period. We live here, fight and kill each other. That is our business. You don’t see big words on every page of the newspapers because one of us kills somebody, here in the townships. But with this case of Boyboy’s even the white woman I work for showed me. The story was all over the place. Pictures too.

[…]

Why is it that the government now pays for his food, his clothes, the roof over his head? Where was the government the day my son stole my neighbour's hen; wrung its neck and cooked it — feathers and all, because there was no food in the house and I was away, minding the children of the white family I worked for? […] Why now, when he’s an outcast, does my son have a better roof over his head than ever before in his life? Living a better life, if chained? I do not understand why it is that the government is giving him so much now when it has given him nothing at all, all his life.

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.

With the passage of time, our schools only grew worse. In 1976, students rose in revolt and, before long, Bantu Education had completely collapsed. It had become education in name only.

My son, Mxolisi, is twenty. Yet he is still in Standard 6. Standard 6! As though he were twelve or thirteen years old. But then, he is not alone, neither is he the oldest student in his class. Twenty. And still in Standard 6. And I am not saying he is the brightest pupil in his class either.

Boycotts, strikes and indifference have plagued the schools in the last two decades. Our children have paid the price.

“I am going to boarding school the following year,” he said, his voice flat, with neither gladness nor sorrow in it. With no trace of sadness or regret.

[…]

“The teachers have helped me get a scholarship. They think I am bright, I deserve to get a higher education. And Father has been wonderfully cooperative ... I have his complete support.”

I could not believe his insensitivity. Did China really think I had wanted to leave school, have a baby, become his wife ... or anybody’s wife, for that matter? Did he think I had not had plans for continuing with my education?

I stood there, my feet weighed a ton. I stood there, and a heavy stone came and lodged itself inside my heart. While he was busy explaining his plans and his difficulties, I saw another side to the boy I had so adored and not that long ago. China was vain. Self-centered. And weak. He was a low-down heartless cur.

“Mmelwane,” Skonana quickly jumped in. “We have come to cry with you ... as is our custom, to grieve with those who grieve.”

I didn’t know what to say or feel. I had not summoned my neighbours. Usually, the keening of mourners calls neighbours to the house that death has visited. I had not called my neighbours — I had not announced the death. Yes, there has been a death. But is it I who may keen? Is it I whom people should help grieve?

“We have come to be with you in this time,” Yolisa’s voice said.

And we talked, my neighbours and I. It was like the opening of a boil. Thereafter, I was not so afraid of my neighbours’ eyes. I did not immediately see condemnation in the eyes that beheld mine. When some stay away, I do not tell myself they are embarrassed or avoiding me. And even if they do, I know there are some among my friends and neighbours who feel for me — who understand my pain.

It is people such as these who give me strength. And hope. I hear there are churches and other groups working with young people and grownups. Helping. So that violence may stop, Or at least be less than it is right now. That is a good thing. We need to help each other ... all of us, but especially the children. Otherwise they grow up to be a problem for everyone. And then everybody suffers. I pray there may be help even for young people like Mxolisi. That they may change and come back better people.