The JRB presents an excerpt from a new edition of Lauretta Ngcobo’s seminal novel Cross of Gold.
Cross of Gold
Lauretta Ngcobo
Staging Post, 2024
~~~
The Rending of the Veil
Sindisiwe Zikode lay behind the huge boulder in the silence of the night among the straggly bushes of the barren land. She listened and strained for any sound that would make her feel she had some company, that she was not so utterly alone, but all she could hear was the loud thud of her heart—a heart that reminded her of all her fears, her grievances, the treacherous hopes and the clotted emotions that filled it. In that darkness without breeze or insects or crickets that cheer the night with their hum and song in South Africa, she prayed for one thing only—and she told God that it was the last great request she would ever make to him. She gave promises and turned that sheltering rock into an altar for her penitence. She thought of the past and the future in wide sweeping circles that whirled in her mind till they were spirals that lifted her in supplication to God.
But this great prayer, unlike all her former prayers before her doubts had arisen about God, kept running aground upon her sorrow and wishes. She was waiting there for her sons, Mandla and Temba. They were just beyond the border, a few hours away from her. Those few strands of barbed wire fence stood between her and her children, her home, her husband and her country. Her thoughts about all these dear things raced and chased each other in a circle that came to no end. If only she could be stronger to bear the disappointment, if it came. Would they come that night? Would they be safe? Could they cross silently, undetected, alone, without being accompanied? Would they be able to spot the exact place of ‘the big boulder’, would the driver see the boulder at night, would the guards go away to their sleep after midnight? Of late they were more alert than usual; they took turns to guard the fence, but the fence was long. God’s hand would guide the Boer police away from her children.
Sindisiwe had suffered much in the past few months and told herself she could still suffer more if called upon to do so. But again, almost shamefully, she admitted to herself that the courage and defiance that her political training had given her were wearing thin; how else could she account for her frequent relapses into prayer in those last few months? In that formless mute darkness, she tried again to merge her belief in God and her belief in herself. She drilled her conscience again into believing that violence is morally better than passive submission; and that acquiescence is evil. She told herself over and over again that it was right that her children should join her in this monastery of her refuge and learn all its disciplines.
The hours crawled by, and her thoughts outpaced the hours. This no longer frustrated her. It was one discipline she had acquired in this lonely exile, where she feared to confide even in those nearest to her. She could now contain most of her restless thoughts. But tonight, her thoughts were sterile, they gave her no emotional stability. She was restless, with clammy hands and a head that swirled. They were woolly thoughts that turned and lashed like a multitude of snakes.
At first, soon after midnight, she thought it was the extension of her cowardly heart that fluttered and thudded, so that the whole place filled with a soft hum. Another moment told her it was the car. It must be the car, the car that was bringing her children. Almost beside herself she moved and stood up to peer through the dark. She tried to listen if there was anyone else around, but the sound of her heart, even more than that of the car, drowned any other sound. She heard the car stop at a distance. She at last had come to the endless end. She knew he had stopped a long way away, but she admitted to herself that the driver could not drive any further without risking being found out. She debated whether to go over the fence and meet them or to wait. Her eyes, accustomed to the darkness, could see the little ribbon of a footpath that local people used without fear of consequence during the day. She would not follow that path. It was a day path for guiltless people whose lives harboured no conspiracies. Her whole body was flushed in a flood of warm motherly love that she had denied herself for so long. The very thought that her two children were a matter of yards from her stirred her into hot tears.
She sniffed and crouched under the fence and crossed to meet them. She could not let them face the danger of that border alone; besides, something seemed to have taken complete possession of all her physical body; she could not hold back her feet, even if she had tried. Soon the formless darkness shaped itself into a moving shape. She could not hear any sounds, not even of her own fleeting steps. A few whispers of gratitude and the man turned on his way back, happy in the knowledge that one more ‘mission’ had been accomplished.
Sindisiwe gathered her sons into the warmth of her arms and love in that speechless darkness. She felt their rigid bodies melt in fearlessness. She smeared them with the tears of her joy but the children were dry in their bewilderment. The last few days had tossed them through strange situations, alone, without the certainty of life as they had known it with their grandparents. Avoiding the path again, she softly tripped through the grass.
Then, right there before them, next to the fence rose a form. She whispered dryly, ‘Cushani [crawl through]!’, and her sons scattered to cross like lonesome sheep. The boys were accustomed to fast movements across fences in the freedom of their life in the country, but Sindisiwe was not; she carried their suitcase, she knew the danger and her knees wobbled when she heard the first shot. The darkness screamed with the sound of the gun; she heard another one and thought she felt something on her thigh, but she told herself it was the wire that had scratched her. Once on the other side of the fence she felt the heaviness of her leg and could no longer doubt that she had been wounded. ‘Yet, I can walk; maybe I’m not wounded.’
Her concern in any case was not for her leg but for her children. She knew they must have crossed and, because they were faster, must be ahead of her. A quarter of a mile down, with the suitcase on her head, she felt the hot pain and some faintness. She decided to sit down and call her sons. Mandla was near but they could not find Temba; he had run even further. Sindisiwe, not wishing to alarm her son, did not disclose her injury but told him to go and look for Temba. Naturally, Mandla was reluctant, but his mother assured him that they were safe where they were; they were in Botswana, and nothing could harm them anymore. More out of concern for his beloved brother than from lack of fear, Mandla went on stepping silently.
He dared not shout, but Temba, who was straining for any sounds of his mother and brother, gave a slight cough. Sindisiwe persuaded her children to spend the night with her outside on that cold autumn dark night. Unseen, she tied a stocking on the wound that was bleeding freely and would make her very weak. ‘It can’t be a serious injury or how can I walk?’ They sat there, unable to sleep for they were cold and heavy with the misfortunes of the dark night. And for Sindisiwe there was the added burden of a hidden, unknown injury. The weight of it, the fear of its possibilities, lay there and stiffened her thoughts. ‘It is best to reveal wounds in the light of day—daylight takes away their mystery.’
Just before the darkness broke, she heard the rhythmic breathing of her sons—they were asleep at last; they were tired. As she got another chance to relax her steeled nerves, she melted into another hot flood of tears. But soon she told herself she had to be strong; for their sake she could not afford the luxury of self-pity. She had to bear even the pain with a serene face. She began to worry whether her leg would allow her to walk the next ten miles back to Gaborone. She was apprehensive, and again she turned to God. This time she almost laughed at the game she played with her God. He no longer seemed God the creator, but the God that she had created herself for her manifold needs. A few hours earlier she had entreated him for her last request, but now she had yet another; her trust in his infinite goodness waxed stronger. She prayed now, not for one specific request, but simply laid her life at his feet for his use in his infinite wisdom. She did not know what to pray for because she truly did not know what to do, though she knew she desperately needed some assistance. Who would take an injured woman with children? Up to now she had shared one hut with six other women, four of them with babies and three of them with husbands who lived and slept in another hut two miles away; refugees like her. She had saved her last bit of money in the hope that when her children came, she could persuade one of the other villagers around to accept the money in exchange for the use of one of their huts. But she had put off finding the hut until her children came. How could she have told people that she was expecting her children, even before they came? People’s movements had become such very personal matters. Whom could she have trusted with such a secret? The South African spies were everywhere; nobody was close enough to be trusted. And now she was wounded. How would she explain her injury to the villagers, any villagers? Besides, they had all been warned against South Africans ‘who crossed the borders to cause trouble in their own land’.
When the boys woke up, they realised with horror their mother’s helplessness. They were perplexed; it all seemed a nightmare. She sent them for their breakfast supplies from a little store further down along the border. They moved in fear, whispering to each other all the way, even though the brilliant sun shone on the dry land that opened its arms in welcome. They could not reconcile the violence of the night with the peace of day. As the sun rose in that treeless stretch, they saw the pain in their mother’s eyes and the helplessness she could not hide. She could not walk, for the whole leg was swollen as it lay on the dry clotted blood. Mandla thought of medical supplies, but the inside of the store had shown him it could offer nothing in that line. Finally, he asked hesitatingly where they could find a hospital or clinic. There wasn’t one for ten miles.
Towards sunset Sindisiwe was beginning to feel very feverish and she began to fear that the simple wound could turn septic. So she sent her sons to look for assistance. She dared ask for assistance, though she knew all the people around feared for their own safety. The villages were not very far away, but the boys received no more than a cold stare as they tried to explain their trouble. They encountered a new unexpected problem. These people spoke Tswana and because they had spent most of their time in Natal, they spoke only Zulu. Beyond the language gulf, they saw fear in the cold stares.
After passing through several huts, when the sun was red on the distant mountains, the boys came at last to the home of one woman who broke into a flood of Zulu. In spite of their sorrow, they smiled and explained their plight. The language barrier had been breached, and by the time they broke the tragic news of their mother, the woman could no longer recoil completely. She was a Motswana who had lived in Johannesburg for some years and had learned not only Zulu but suffering and fearlessness of strangers. Her name was Makeletso and she had kept the secret of a husband on Robben Island very successfully. So she told the boys of the dangers surrounding their request; though a political activist herself, she wished to shy away from any further involvement now that she was back home. The neighbours would know she was harbouring a wounded strange woman and sons; obviously these would be South African troublemakers. The news would reach the chief before the following sunset and from there who knew what might happen. Indeed, nobody knew what could happen; but if the Botswana Government did not act, then the South Africans at the border in their own right would be very unkind to the villagers who wanted to cross over to the other side. There were bigger shops across the border and besides, many of their own friends and relatives lived just across the border. These borders were white men’s borders. They cut through tribes and divided villages and relatives. She would bring sorrow to the whole village.
Nevertheless, Makeletso consented to return with the boys when it was dark, with food, hot porridge and some medicines. She had learned to live here in this ‘wilderness’ as she called it, with some supplies of her own, her Dettol, bandages, ointment and aspirins. The boys were tired, but this gave them hope. They began to hope again, as though she had promised them her whole life. After all what do boys of twelve and fourteen, who have grown up in the country, know about the complications of bullet wounds? To them it was the wound; they had hardly given a thought to the bullet that nestled deep in the muscle, close to the bone.
~~~
Publisher information
Cross of Gold is an expansive, heartrending, anger-inducing portrayal of Black life in South Africa after the Sharpeville massacre of 1960. Through the experiences of a range of characters, chiefly Mandla Zikode and his mother, Sindisiwe, the novel portrays Sharpeville and its brutal aftermath, the hardship of exile and the brutal impact of the apartheid regime on Black lives and personhood. It depicts apartheid’s legion of crimes against humanity including incarceration, the dehumanising labour farms where Black men were practically enslaved and often beaten to death, infant mortality due to malnutrition, and the grievous impact of the Pass Laws and land dispossession on Black life.
Ngcobo chillingly animates what she calls in the novel ‘The Black Cross’; life under the perpetual brutality of apartheid, which dehumanised, brutalised, maimed and murdered with impunity. Originally publishing the novel in 1981, Ngcobo, a mother of four and wife, was placed on the literary world stage. Though it was banned in South Africa and never circulated here, it opened for the writer new worlds of travel, invited lectures, conferencing, media interviews and kinship with other African writers.
This reprint aims to give a voice to those previously silenced under the apartheid laws, it brings into question the representation of place as there are various spatial representations such as exile, home, imprisonment, and rural and urban spaces.
