The JRB presents an exclusive excerpt from The Rupture, a forthcoming novel by EAP member Mandla Langa.
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Since it was almost six decades ago, in autumn of 1966, I can be somewhat charitable and put Uncle Dalton’s drunkenness down to the result of the elections on 30 March, where the National Party had again triumphed, giving Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd another mandate to continue making our lives pure hell. Having once struggled with alcohol, though, I know lame excuses: you don’t need a particular reason to hit the bottle. When it all happened, I was seventeen years old, a wannabe James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart. I was a walking contradiction, at once heedless of dangers on the street and a quivering blob of jelly at hearing ghost stories.
The moment that stands out is of an unseasonably warm April evening. It was around eleven o’clock and Themba my younger brother and I lay unsleeping under the table in the kitchen, scaring each other half to death, when we heard the gate screeching open. This was followed by someone, my uncle, no doubt, cursing under his breath as he tried to put the key into the keyhole of the front door. Already familiar with his drunken habits, I quickly blew out the candle and shuffled deeper under the shared blanket. A mistake: Themba, skinny and wiry with an appetite of a horse, sneakily released a series of gases so vile they should have been bottled to smoke out rodents. But even this fumigation was more endurable than having to cater to Uncle Dalton’s drunken demands. For instance, he loved to get us to make him tea and I always wondered what kind of boozer was this who also liked tea, which I knew was shunned by most drinkers. Pumping the Primus stove late at night and making tea wasn’t, well, our cup of tea.
On this one occasion, however, I shouldn’t have worried. After entering, Uncle Dalton shuffled a bit at the entrance, muttered a swearword as, I presumed, a shin collided with unyielding furniture, and then padded into the kitchen on shoeless feet. He was breathing heavily as if he’d run a mile. I could feel the glow of his eyes as he surveyed the kitchen, his gaze lingering on the inert bundle formed by his unsleeping nephews under the blankets. The bedroom door squeaked open. I peeked out from under the blankets and saw a figure covered in a shawl. Carrying a paraffin lamp that created shadows under her eyes and cast big and wide ones across the wall, Ma stood facing her brother. She was a head shorter than Dalton, but her scornful gaze seemed to shrink him, cutting him down to size. ‘Dalton, kwenzenjani—what happened?’
‘Tsotsis. I was ambushed by tsotsis,’ Dalton answered, slurring. I wondered if the ambush had entailed a punch in the mouth. ‘They robbed me of everything, Sisi. My clothes. Shoes.’
‘The car? Where’s the car?’
‘I’d left the car at Thirty-Nine Steps. I walked.’
Thirty-Nine Steps was a shebeen run by Sis’ Frieda, just a few streets down towards the abandoned playground of broken swings and limping see-saws. The tsotsis that waylaid him must have been waiting in the clump of bushes bordering the stream that ran the length of one side of G Section in KwaMashu. What was he doing alone in that area? He was lucky they hadn’t stabbed him to death, as was the usual case. Now, here he was, standing, looking lost. The assailants had had the decency of leaving him wearing a singlet that matched his string vest, pouchy jockeys, and socks. There’s nothing as ridiculous as a man’s near-naked body seen from the ground up. The thin lower legs ending in stocking feet, the treelike stumps of his thighs, the dangly bits straining against the fabric of his trunks, the ample belly supporting arms folded in misery across the chest. At that moment I agreed with the notion that clothes hide a multitude of sins. Under the blankets next to me, Themba was shaking as he tried to stifle his laughter. He must have been tickled at his uncle’s diminishment from bully to baby brother. Or maybe it was the sight of him without the dignifying dark suit and tie he wore daily as he drove to school, clothes befitting his position as the vice-principal of Theron Bymode High School.
While his sister fixed him a quick snack, Dalton went to his bedroom and, after a few minutes, he came back in pyjamas. This time I heard rather than saw him settling down at table, eating with loud smacking sounds, gulping down his tea with his throat making wet, swallowing sounds. It was the glug-glug of a drain before it finally allows water to gush out. I was beginning to feel sorry for Uncle Dalton, choosing to ignore how he tormented us, singling us out for punishment at school to show he wasn’t playing any favourites. Then I remembered his cruelty towards Sis’ Nomusa, his wife, who’d ended up running away from the marriage, an occasion that resulted in their young daughter Tabitha coming to stay with us. My father, a minister of religion who placed great stock in the stability of family, and who had doted on his daughter-in-law, had simply turned his back on his brother-in-law. That’s why he hadn’t even bothered to leave his bed to check what was happening with Dalton.
Uncle Dalton’s chair scraped on the floor and his now-sandaled feet encroached into the space of our makeshift bedding, so that we had to slide further down the kitchen floor, all the time being quiet because we knew he’d punish us if he suspected we’d witnessed his humiliation. He’d take it out on us for what the tsotsis had done to him. I hoped the people responsible weren’t my sometime-friends, Bridge and Ndodosi, with whom I played koppie-dice at the corner. Their sideline was petty crime, and I hoped they hadn’t graduated to serious robberies.
Days passed following the incident with Uncle Dalton showing few signs that anything was amiss. We all woke up in the morning, Ma and the sons being the first to get cracking on chores that included the morning tea, which was called the waking-up tea. I must have made thousands of gallons of tea, first, to welcome the family to a new morning, Lord be praised, followed by another pot for any of my father’s flock, even strays, who happened to drop in, with God-knows-what tale of woe. It was worse on weekends because there’d be a stream of visitors—and each visit meant a fresh pot of tea. At seventeen, I was at an age where I was tailor-made for being sent on errands. Themba, for some reason, always managed to be out of range when something needed to be done.
But still—on weekdays, my younger brother and I would run to beat the seven o’clock bell, which some zealous teacher’s pet would ring as if his life depended on it. On the April morning after Uncle Dalton’s incident—and many days thereafter—we made our way to school without ever—not once—attempting to get a ride with him in his blue Toyota Cressida, notwithstanding that we were the ones required to give it a weekly wash. Often, Themba and I entertained mutinous thoughts about Uncle Dalton, especially after occasions where he’d picked on us for some transgression. As vice-principal, he was in charge of discipline, and this extended to seeing that the boys’ uniforms conformed to high standards, whatever that meant, although I was soon to find out. Us seventeen-year-olds in standard 12 or form V, the final year of matriculation, wore white shirts, green-and-gold ties, grey flannels, and black shoes, sometimes, in winter or when there was a parade of sorts, green blazers with a motto on the breast pocket, mens sana in corpore sano. A sound mind in a sound body. The girls wore green tunics with yellow piping along the sides and on the collar, black shoes, and white socks. Not even the most rebellious among us dreamt of going against the dress code, but as happened, someone would slip up.
Towards the end of May, when the sunless days were accompanied by a biting wind, we were somewhat excited after the principal’s morning assembly announcement that the matric class would be writing their half-yearly exam in two weeks’ time. We marched to our class with new-found seriousness. We were stopped in our tracks by Uncle Dalton. He wanted to inspect our class for breaches of school uniform etiquette. We formed two lines along the corridor while he walked up and down with his hands clasped behind the back like a drill sergeant, head bent as he checked the students’ dress. Now and then he’d poke a boy with the end of his cane, stand up straight! Then he came to where I was standing and started tugging at the fabric of my trousers at the pockets picking at strands of frayed fibres with his thumb and forefinger. I heard him grunt.
‘This is not grey,’ he said. ‘Step aside.’
I was dumbfounded, feeling blood rush to my face. What’s the matter with him—is he blind? ‘I’m sorry sir,’ I said, ‘but this is a grey pair of trousers.’
‘Are you arguing with me?’ he asked, with pure malevolence. Looking around, he settled on the class prefect. ‘Steven? Does this look like grey to you?’
Technically, Uncle Dalton was correct that the colour of my trousers was no longer grey due to constant washing and ironing. The fabric along the area of the thighs and down to the knees was suffused with a tinge of lilac, but anyone could see that the discoloration was due to wear and tear. Anyone who’s ever had experience with the township iron knows its power to transform clothing. My flannels were washed out, simple. What angered and embarrassed me at the same time was Uncle Dalton’s act of pitting Steven—a model of decency and grooming—against me; when the two of us stood side by side, I’m sure I looked like a hobo.
‘Steven,’ he said, in his vice-principal’s voice, ‘why are you lax in supervising the uniform code?’ Before Steven could answer, Dalton the vice-principal, went on, ‘I want you to come up with punishment befitting this breach.’ He liked using words you’d later have to look up in the dictionary.
‘Yes sir.’ Steven looked at me, hating me for the poverty that was likely to put him in trouble. ‘Come, Jameson.’
He was in a fix. We played well together on the soccer field but here he was now, forced into a situation. This wasn’t the first and certainly not the last time that my friends—schoolmates—were placed in predicament by their association with me in whatever form. It was when Steven was ordering me to hit the floor and give him a hundred push-ups and, thereafter, do three laps around the sportsground—exercises I would do without breaking a sweat under normal circumstances—that I decided that I’d had it with school. I found that I hated school, my uncle had seen to that. I picked up my satchel and flicked off some blades of glass that stuck to the bottom. Far off traffic roared mutely, a truck. The train pulled into Thembalihle Station. ‘I’m not doing it, Steve,’ I said. ‘You can do whatever you want with that.’
‘James,’ he said. No longer Jameson the football star. ‘Please, understand. You know what the VP will do, he’ll punish us both.’ Steven looked like he was about to cry. Seeing him through a film of angry tears, I realised how young he was, and innocent, just a big baby. I would miss the cheese and egg sandwiches which he gave me at lunchtime in exchange for my teaching him how to draw. His parents owned a successful butchery in E Section, and he was sick and tired of eating well. Well, I was always first in line to help him with that peculiar malady.
‘Just tell him I bolted. Ran away. You’re not held responsible if I do that.’
‘But still—‘
‘No.’
I loitered a bit, killing time. I joined some youngsters from C Section in a game of soccer on the sidewalk and drifted off when some kid kicked the ball into the bush. I had a moment of marvelling at how strange the day looked when out of school, the everyday sights seeming different, all these old people footing it to the station, shooting quick, nervous glances at you as if not believing that they were really seeing you. I was a living figment of their imagination. And the hours, time just stands still if you’re not in class, and you’re forever imagining what subject is being taught at that moment. The police cars passed, its occupants giving you a look, and you hurried on, making it seem like you were on some important errand, remembering how the police get their kicks, stopping and frisking young boys for knives or dagga—and fondling them.
Fortunately, nothing happened as I walked up Malandela Road, one of the longest streets of KwaMashu, and turned into Ndlondlo, past a row of poky two-roomed houses lining the street. The front and back doors were open and small children who didn’t seem to be under any supervision were splashing about noisily in an outsize bathtub standing on breeze blocks. It was in one of these houses, almost two years ago following our finishing writing the standard 9 or form III exams, that a Griqua childhood friend, Albert Tormen, was killed. One minute we were fooling around and singing and the next he was lying on the grass, dead. There wasn’t even a lot of blood, just a red stain on his shirt pocket, his heart punctured with an insthumetshu, the evil, awl-like weapon fashioned out of bicycle spokes, a favourite of the fellows from the hostel. He must have had a run-in with one of them, something fatal. I remembered us, a group of baffled schoolboys, pallbearers at the funeral in Red Hill. Later our photo appeared in the newspaper, Ilanga LaseNatal, our faces ugly with grief. The rest of the school didn’t know how to deal with us, Albert’s friends; even Uncle Dalton maintained a wary distance.
This morning, which was still chilly but getting warmer, nothing strange for the confused month of May, I walked, avoiding township dogs, until I saw the tops of the buildings housing the shops of G Section, the chimneys already shooting up smoke and fumes of stale cooking oil, where I was sure to find Ndodosi and Bridge. I thought to myself that since the two had started smoking dagga and I was destined to become an ulova, a school dropout, a loafer, I might as well start behaving like one. Slough off the schoolboy skin, smoke dagga, swear or whistle at women walking past, depending on their age, play koppie-dice or cards, continue carrying my knife, yep, and make sure to bully school-going mamparas and rob them of their pocket money. Eat the lunch of those like Steven. God didn’t my stomach rumble at the thought of those sandwiches!
The little daydream about sandwiches was borne of the fact that, unlike Themba who made his hunger known in no uncertain terms, I didn’t make a big fuss that we were poor in our family and food was short. I’d stopped taking lunch to school because it was embarrassing. Even the bullies that preyed on us, mounting ambushes from unexpected points on the journey to school, they too had stopped wrestling with me for what Ma had prepared as lunch food, which was mostly last night’s tripe that had congealed into a biological specimen in its tin container, and uphuthu, the powdery mielie-meal. I suppose the bullies also had standards to uphold.
The news of my dramatic departure from Theron Bymode High School preceded me to my home, there being a trusted carrier of bad tidings in the form of one Themba Baloyi, my younger brother. He must have added some colour to the story, doing his bit towards casting Uncle Dalton in even more unflattering light. Ma, the only one willing to challenge Dalton, was hurt that her son had been so badly treated, in full view of the whole school for that matter, what kind of Malume is this Dalton?
Uncle Dalton’s return couldn’t have made matters worse, for everyone. The evening meal was a grim affair, father munching distractedly, his face closed. Although it wasn’t the end of the month, and meals on days leading to month-end were a dreary wrestling match between my parents and poverty—boiled cabbage and stodgy mielie-pap or its crumblier variety—today, there was some meat, gravy and potatoes on the menu. I suppose Ma had performed one of her miracles, procuring all this, possibly getting the meat on tick from Mr Khathi’s butchery. I felt sad at the thought of her going to all that trouble to create an impression of normality in her household. But I didn’t have an appetite. I couldn’t get anything down, not with Dalton present.
Themba on the other hand was making the best of it, loading his plate so high you could only see him from the neck up. As he ate, I looked at him, wondering what would help him gain weight, because food wasn’t the answer. He ate quickly, like I’d seen children from big families wolfing down their portions, lest a bigger sibling snatched the plate from you. My father, the founder and sole pastor of the Christian Church of the Holy Resurrection, cleared his throat—a sure sign he was either going to start one of his night-time hymns to begin evening prayer or launch into a long sermon, a veritable harangue. Both options were bad for me. I wanted to leave the table and plan my next moves in my new chosen career as ulova.
Also at table, gulping everything with greedy eyes, was eight-year-old Bongi. Although she couldn’t have known the full story, I suspect she had a fair idea that something was cooking—and must have wondered if the drama being played out could have any impact on her, children being wired from birth to sense trouble coming their way. I liked her because she looked more like her mother than her father, loose, almost languid in her bearing, with big eyes and a mischievous laugh. She’d call me bab’omncane, small father, bobbing her head and doing a jig during our Sunday ritual of listening to the Top 20. Tabi, as we called her, was a joy. I wondered whether Ma, who also doted on her, would have the heart to chase her away from the table when the speech came—for, by now, all of us knew that’s what it was: a speech on Father’s lips.
‘Dalton,’ my father started, no preliminaries, ‘Dalton, we know you take your responsibilities as a teacher, a vice principal, no less, you take them seriously. But I’m sure you know you shouldn’t have humiliated James like that. You’ve heard that even the Lord takes a dim view of people who…’
‘… Reverend,’ Dalton said, cutting in, ‘James knows the rules …’
‘… wound others …’
‘… and just goes out of his way …’
‘In fact, it is written: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Do you want to be drowned in the depth of the sea, Dalton?’
Dalton looked at his brother-in-law and I could hear the gears clashing in his head. Are you serious? He must have been asking inwardly. But then he came up with his own counter. ‘Reverend?’ he said, ‘The Holy Book might have a lesson for you, too.’ Adopting a grave tone and raising a finger to show he was citing holy writ, he continued: “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.” Can you believe, Reverend, that we were reading this very verse at assembly today? And, for the record, I haven’t laid a finger on him. You can even ask him.’
Dalton had perfected the art of annoying my father. He had spent a few months in detention during the swoop on the black power people, and the only reading matter allowed in the cells was the Gideon Bible, which detainees read from cover to cover. It gave Dalton a special kind of pleasure to demonstrate his familiarity with the Word. He’d even offered to deliver a sermon to my father’s congregation, but my father had refused. Can’t trust what can come out of your brother’s mouth, he’d told Ma. Today, father was going to stamp his authority if it meant exchanging blows with Dalton.
‘I will not have your impertinence,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Have you no shame scoring points at the expense of your nephew. You know that he’s bought the uniform himself using the money from doing casual labour, ebamba itorho?’
‘There’s nothing dramatic about doing casual labour. Lots of boys do it and they have something to show for that, real school uniforms.’ There was something studied in Dalton’s carelessness. Looking round, he caught my eye. ‘And when he goes back to school, he’s in for a high jump. He absconded.’
‘I’m not going back to school,’ I said.
‘What?’ Both Papa and Dalton asked.
‘You can forget about seeing me back there,’ I told Dalton.
‘Well,’ Dalton drawled, ‘don’t forget you’ve still got to write the half-year exams. The marks count towards your final matric results.’
‘And,’ Papa said, suddenly an expert in Bantu Education, ‘matric is the gateway to the future.’
‘Don’t you all worry about my future,’ I said. ‘For your information, I’ve been thinking of becoming a seaman, travel the world, say bye-bye to this burning house of a country.’
‘You’re going back to school,’ my father said. ‘I’m not entertaining any debate.’
‘I’m not going.’
‘You’re going.’
‘I’m not—’
Whap! I’d forgotten that my father had once upon a time been a miner in Doornfontein Gold Mine with its legendary violence, where he’d mastered the delivery of a powerful slap, a necessity for survival in the tough world of the compound. My face stinging, I took two steps backwards and stood with my back against the door jamb. In that moment, with my ears ringing, I intercepted the look that passed between Ma and Uncle Dalton, Ma’s face a mixture of pain and alarm that contrasted with the smile of triumph dancing at the corners of her brother’s lips. I knew, feeling depthless rage welling up in me, that I’d do everything in my power to wipe that smile off Dalton’s face.
I wanted to tell my father that Dalton was taking advantage of us because he knew that our big brothers were not around. The first-born of our family, Ezekiel Baloyi (funny, I couldn’t think of him without a name and surname), had disappeared a few years ago after the introduction of Bantu Education in 1953. Like other teachers, he had lingered a few years before leaving in protest. The rumour was that he’d gone into exile. On a few occasions, the security police, the Special Branch, came calling at our house. Then they stopped, and Ezekiel Baloyi came back, an unexplained reappearance. I remember him as someone whose visits to the family home were rare, a stranger, really, who never missed an opportunity to make his appearances a treat. Big, graceful, like the ballroom dancing champion he was, he’d turn up with a woman companion, someone as glamorous as the beauty queens gracing the covers of Drum or Bona. The second brother, Isaiah, was happily and quietly married at Camperdown where he was a magistrate, wanting no truck with anything that reeked of politics, not even his family. An admirer of Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, the chief executive councillor of the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly, he fought a lot with his younger sibling, Absalom, warning him against the radical politics of the African National Congress and the budding Black Consciousness Movement. ‘Why don’t you get your degree first?’ was his common lament, ‘and then you can stand on your head and shout against the government of the day to your heart’s content.’ He was studying law with a correspondence school and had ambitions to become a lawyer. The third brother, the recipient of unsolicited advice, Absalom Johnson, had been detained under security legislation and we hadn’t seen him in two years. Whenever my parents tried to visit him, their attempts were thwarted by the Special Branch on Fisher Street, Durban. In the privacy of our hearts, which we couldn’t express, we wondered if he had been killed in detention, something that was happening with alarming regularity, but we couldn’t get clarity. Even as I thought about my brothers, I felt this distance from them, from their spirits; they were abstract beings, as remote as characters in a dream. I sometimes wondered whether they weren’t a figment of my imagination, the way some children conjure up absent friends or companions, their safety blankets. Real or imagined, they could have helped deal with Dalton’s bullying. He acted with impunity because there was this vacuum in our family. My father was already sixty years old.
The old man had reacted to Dalton’s taunt by proving he’d apply the rod even though it was in the form of a resounding blow across my face. Strangely, though, I didn’t feel any anger or resentment towards him; he was doing what he had to do. But, looking at him looking lost—because what do you do after you’ve hit someone?—and the pants of his suit seemed baggier than usual, the collarless priest’s shirt open at the neck to show burr-like knots of grey hair, he looked like someone defeated. I was saddened by the knowledge that I had contributed, perhaps by withholding love as only a child can, to his sense of loss.
© Mandla Langa
Yaounde, December 2024
- Mandla Langa was born in Durban, grew up in KwaMashu, and holds an MA in Creative Writing from Wits University. In 1991 he was awarded the Arts Council of Great Britain Bursary for creative writing, the first for a South African. Langa’s published works include the award-winning The Lost Colours of the Chameleon (2008), The Texture of Shadows (2014) and The Lost Language of the Soul (2021), which won the UJ Main Prize and an HSS Award.
