Under African Skies (28 page)

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Authors: Charles Larson

BOOK: Under African Skies
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So, then, in a few hours we shall be called out. We shall clamber with others into the miserable lorry which they still call the Black Maria. Notice how everything miserable is associated with us. Black Sheep. Black Maria. Black Death. Black Leg. The Black Hole of Calcutta. The Black Maria will take us to the Beach or to the Stadium. I bet it will be the Stadium. I'd prefer the Beach. So at least to see the ocean once more. For I've still this fond regard for the sea which dates from my time in the Merchant Navy. I love its wide expanse, its anonymity, its strength, its unfathomable depth. And maybe after shooting us, they might decide to throw our bodies into the ocean. We'd then be eaten up by sharks which would in turn be caught
by Japanese and Russian fishermen, be refrigerated, packaged in cartons and sold to Indian merchants and then for a handsome profit to our people. That way, I'd have helped keep people alive a bit longer. But they won't do us that favor. I'm sure they'll take us to the Stadium. To provide a true spectacle for the fun-loving unemployed. To keep them out of trouble. To keep them from thinking. To keep them laughing. And dancing.
We'll be there in the dirty clothes which we now wear. We've not had any of our things washed this past month. They will tie us to the stakes, as though that were necessary. For even if we were minded to escape, where'd we run to? I expect they'll also want to blindfold us. Sazan and Jimba have said they'll not allow themselves to be blindfolded. I agree with them. I should want to see my executors, stare the nozzles of their guns bravely in the face, see the open sky, the sun, daylight. See and hear my countrymen as they cheer us to our death. To liberation and freedom.
The Stadium will fill to capacity. And many will not find a place. They will climb trees and hang about the balconies of surrounding houses to get a clear view of us. To enjoy the free show. Cool.
And then the priest will come to us, either to pray or to ask if we have any last wishes. Sazan says he will ask for a cigarette. I'm sure they'll give it to him. I can see him puffing hard at it before the bullets cut him down. He says he's going to enjoy that cigarette more than anything he's had in life. Jimba says he'll maintain a sullen silence as a mark of his contempt. I'm going to yell at the priest. I will say, “Go to hell, you hypocrite, fornicator and adulterer.” I will yell at the top of my voice in the hope that the spectators will hear me. How I wish there'd be a microphone that will reverberate through the Stadium, nay, through the country as a whole! Then the laugh would be on the priest and those who sent him!
The priest will pray for our souls. But it's not us he should be praying for. He should pray for the living, for those whose lives are a daily torment. Between his prayer and when the shots ring out, there will be dead silence. The silence of the graveyard. The transition between life and death. And it shall be seen that the distinction between them both is narrow as the neck of a calabash. The divide between us breathing like everyone else in the Stadium and us as meat for worms is, oh, so slim, it makes life a walking death! But I should be glad to be rid of the world, of a meaningless existence that grows more dreary by the day. I should miss Sazan and Jimba, though. It'll be a shame to see these elegant gentlemen cut down and destroyed.
And I'll miss you, too, my dear girl. But that will be of no consequence to the spectators.
They will troop out of the Stadium, clamber down the trees and the balconies of the houses, as though they'd just returned from another football match. They will march to their ratholes on empty stomachs, with tales enough to fill a Saturday evening. Miserable wretches!
The men who shall have eased us out of life will then untie our bodies and dump them into a lorry and thence to some open general grave. That must be a most distasteful task. I'd not do it for a million dollars. Yet some miserable fellows will do it for a miserable salary at the end of the month. A salary which will not feed them and their families till the next payday. A salary which they will have to augment with a bribe, if they are to keep body and soul together. I say, I do feel sorry for them. See?
The newspapers will faithfully record the fact of our shooting. If they have space, they'll probably carry a photograph of us to garnish your breakfasts.
I remember once long ago reading in a newspaper of a man whose one request to the priest was that he be buried along with his walking stick—his faithful companion over the years. He was pictured slumping in death, devotedly clutching his beloved walking stick. True friendship, that. Well, Zole, if ever you see such a photograph of me, make a cutting. Give it to a sculptor and ask him to make a stone sculpture of me as I appear in the photograph. He must make as faithful a representation of me as possible. I must be hard of feature and relentless in aspect. I have a small sum of money in the bank and have already instructed the bank to pay it to you for the purpose of the sculpture I have spoken about …
Time is running out, Zole. Sazan and Jimba are awake now. And they're surprised I haven't slept all night. Sazan says I ought at least to have done myself the favor of sound sleep on my last night on earth. I ask him if I'm not going to sleep soundly, eternally, in a few hours? This, I argue, should be our most wakeful night. Sazan doesn't appreciate that. Nor does Jimba. They stand up, yawn, stretch and rub their eyes. Then they sit down, crowding round me. They ask me to read out to them what I've written. I can't do that, I tell them. It's a love letter. And they burst out laughing. A love letter! And at the point of death! Sazan says I'm gone crazy. Jimba says he's sure I'm afraid of death and looks hard and long at me to justify his suspicion. I say I'm neither crazy nor afraid of death. I'm just telling my childhood
girlfriend how I feel this special night. And sending her on an important errand. Jimba says I never told them I had a girlfriend. I reply that she was not important before this moment.
I haven't even seen her in ten years, I repeat. The really compelling need to write her is that on this very special night I have felt a need to be close to a living being, someone who can relate to others why we did what we did in and out of court.
Sazan says he agrees completely with me. He says he too would like to write his thoughts down. Do I have some paper to lend him? I say no. Besides, time is up. Day has dawned and I haven't even finished my letter. Do they mind leaving me to myself for a few minutes? I'd very much like to end the letter, envelope it and pass it on to the prison guard before he rouses himself fully from sleep and remembers to assume his official, harsh role.
They're nice chaps, are Jimba and Sazan. Sazan says to tell my girl not to bear any children because it's pointless bringing new life into the harsh life of her world. Jimba says to ask my girl to shed him a tear if she can so honor a complete stranger. They both chuckle and withdraw to a corner of the cell and I'm left alone to end my letter.
Now, I was telling you about my statue. My corpse will not be available to you. You will make a grave for me, nonetheless. And place the statue on the gravestone. And now I come to what I consider the most important part of this letter. My epitaph.
I have thought a lot about it, you know. Really. What do you say about a robber shot in a stadium before a cheering crowd? That he was a good man who strayed? That he deserved his end? That he was a scallywag? A ragamuffin? A murderer whose punishment was not heavy enough? “Here lies X, who was shot in public by firing squad for robbing a van and shooting the guards in broad daylight. He serves as an example to all thieves and would-be thieves!”
Who'd care for such an epitaph? They'd probably think it was a joke. No. That wouldn't carry. I'll settle for something different. Something plain and commonsensical. Or something truly cryptic and worthy of a man shot by choice in public by firing squad.
Not that I care. To die the way I'm going to die in the next hour or two is really nothing to worry about. I'm in excellent company. I should find myself recorded in the annals of our history. A history of violence, of murder, of disregard for life. Pleasure in inflicting pain—sadism. Is that the
word for it? It's a world I should be pleased to leave. But not without an epitaph.
I recall, many years ago as a young child, reading in a newspaper of an African leader who stood on the grave of a dead lieutenant and through his tears said: “Africa kills her sons.” I don't know what he meant by that, and though I've thought about it long enough, I've not been able to unravel the full mystery of those words. Now, today, this moment, they come flooding back to me. And I want to borrow from him. I'd like you to put this on my gravestone, as my epitaph: “Africa Kills Her Sun.” A good epitaph, eh? Cryptic. Definite. A stroke of genius, I should say. I'm sure you'll agree with me. “Africa Kills Her Sun!” That's why she's been described as the Dark Continent? Yes?
So, now, dear girl, I'm done. My heart is light as the daylight which seeps stealthily into our dark cell. I hear the prison guard jangle his keys, put them into the keyhole. Soon he'll turn it and call us out. Our time is up. My time here expires and I must send you all my love. Goodbye.
 
Yours forever,
 
Bana
 
—1989
(BORN 1935) SOUTH AFRICA
Don Mattera's several incarnations as a writer include poet, playwright, fabulist, and respected journalist, especially in the last capacity for Johannesburg's highly influential newspaper, the
Sowetan
. His other writing lives have further kept him occupied as a short story writer for children, as well as a recorder of his own life—in his autobiography,
Memory Is the Weapon
(1983). One of his plays,
One Time Brother
, was banned in 1984; others were widely performed in South Africa without encountering similar difficulty. All these talents have led Bernard Magubane to identify Mattera as “the bard of the people's liberation struggle.”
A gentle, almost shy, and withdrawn man, Mattera startled readers with the publication of
The Storyteller
(1991). Besides his harsh “Afrika Road,” included here, the stories in this collection scream out in the darkness against the horrors of life in South Africa under apartheid. “Execution” begins with a fragment of poetry:
I have no name.
I am every man.
I live everywhere.
I die every day.
—and subsequently reiterates the line: “A Man can die only once.” “The Uniform” begins quietly with three sentences of stark realism: “The security
key slid silently into the safety lock. It turned thrice until it clicked. One has to be extra-careful these days, especially with the escalation of violence and terrorism.” A third story, “Die Bushie Is Dood … ,” opens with the unforgettable image: “Johnny Jacobs lay bleeding in the road, his chesnutbrown eyes widened in disbelief.”
Mattera, who might be called a writer's writer, has been internationally praised as a humanist. In 1980, he was awarded the Kwanzaa Award Africa (USA); in 1986, the Steve Biko Prize (Sweden) and the Kurt Tuchosky Award (World PEN Association); in 1990, the NAFCOC Service to Humanity Award, the SOUTHCOC Service to the Community, and the Indicator Human Rights Award (all South Africa); in 1993, the Noma Award: Honorable Mention (Japan).
Before all this acclaim, Mattera's life was radically different. In
Sophiatown: Coming of Age in South Africa
(1987), he described his ethnic origins: “According to the racial statistics of South Africa, I am a second-generation Coloured: the fruit of miscegenation and an in-between existence; the appendage of black and white. There are approximately four million other people like me—twilight children who live in political, social, and economic oblivion and who have been cut off from the mainstream of direct interaction with both black and white people.” While a teenager, he became the leader of a street gang called the Vultures, which terrorized Sophiatown for seven years. Those experiences as well as his sentencing for public violence politicized him, and he joined the Youth League of the African National Congress. His literary career began shortly thereafter.
There are many roads and lanes and streets and byways in South Africa but none quite like me, Afrika Road.
Each black township, no matter where it is situated, has an Afrika Road of its own. We are commonly known as the Tar Road, and those who create the townships and make the laws also conceive roads like us to facilitate the easy mobility of military and police vehicles. Usually there is a single road into and out of the townships. But the black people say they are not fools. They know the real motives of the rulers.
I am long and black and beautiful like a flat piece of licorice. Some folks say that my beauty has been spoiled by the obstinate white line because it cuts into my melanic majesty. But the line, like the Law of the land, slithers defiantly from the sun's bedroom in the west where I begin, to Masphala Hill in the east—a hot seat of conferred power which houses the Bantu Council Chambers and the police station.
I, Afrika Road, know and have endured the weight and pressure of all sorts of moving objects: human, animal, and mechanical. I groaned under the grinding repression of many military convoys and police brass bands that led the mayoral processions to the Hill of power. I also witness weddings and childbirths, and hear the noise of speeding police cars and ambulances, as well as the plaintive burial dirges of people weeping mournfully as they go. I hear the cries of the lonely of heart and I am familiar with the bustling din of jubilant folk whose merriment and laughter permeate the ghetto.
I am a mighty road.
All the dusty and soil-eroded lanes and streets converge on my body, bringing throngs of panting people. And I hold them all on my sturdy lap, year in and year out, birth in and death out.
There was a time when I was a teeming caldron of “people on the boil.” The flames of mob anger and violence had razed the homes and businesses of men and women who threw in their lot and collaborated with the rulers of the land, or so the people said. Policemen and suspected informers and agents were brutally attacked. Some were even put to the torch. Yet amid the fear and frenzy of the marching and shouting masses, I, Afrika Road, caught glimpses of genuine gaiety on the people's faces. It was a welcome paradox, nonetheless. Humor and anger marching side by side.
That day the marchers varied in shade between chocolate-brown and shining ebony and fair apricot-skinned activists—rich characteristics for the human centipede that took to the streets.
It was one of many dates anywhere on the calendar of black resistance. The masses had heaved and swayed and breathed in the wild wind of their own passions. Occasionally the main body of the crowd opened up its floodgates and swallowed several hundreds of new protesters and their assortment of crude weaponry: sticks, stones, axes, homemade swords, knives, and dustbin lids. Four hundred people poured out of Mpanza Street; five hundred from Matambo and a half-drunk dozen from Sis Sonti's
shebeen
. The call to arms had a magnetic pull even for the imbibers. A soldier was a soldier drunk or sober, or so the leaders said. What mattered most were numbers.
Between Goba and Zamani streets, where the elite owner-built homes stand proud and indifferent, only three youngsters joined the swelling ranks. The Mkhuku Shanty Town dwellers mingled eagerly in their hundreds. The march gained momentum. Men, women, children, and the fire-eating T-shirted comrades—soldiers without uniforms or conventional armory—were carried along the hard journey of insurrection, aware that death waited for them on Masphala Hill.
And they sang defiantly.
Songs that challenged and mocked the armed keepers of the Hill, that hated Hill which many blacks see as one of countless links in the chain of bondage and humiliation, or so the people said. Those who served in state-created institutions and sought and found sanctuary inside the high barbedwire walls of the Hill were branded puppets, sellouts, and
mpimpi
—the word used to describe informers and fifth-columnists. ,
I, Afrika Road, bore that maddened crowd as it rambled and swayed in the fervor of revolt toward the Hill of confrontation where hundreds of heavily armed battalions of soldiers, policemen, and the local greenbean law enforcers kept vigil. Their automatic weapons caught flashes of the shimmering gold and orange sunrays that blistered from a cloudless sky. The singing reached fever pitch when a group of chanting, flag-carrying militant youth took the lead toward the waiting death machine.
The songs spoke of imminent battle and vengeance, and of the people's hunger for liberation. Songs which exhorted the Bothas to release Nelson Mandela and all the other political prisoners. There were martial strophes which alluded to the impending acquisition of AK-
47s,
Scorpion automatic pistols, and bazooka rocket launchers. Then came the electrifying
toi-toi
war dance, which appeared to penetrate and possess the very souls of the marchers. It seemed to me that the masses yearned to touch the faces of death or victory—whichever came first.
The
toi-toi
is a ritual dance which people have come to fear and hate or love and revere depending on which side of the political trenches a person stood—with the masses or the “masters.”
A truly awe-inspiring sight, thousands of angry and anxious feet in an exuberant display of bravado and daring. Up and down, back and forth; then forward and ever onward—spilling the froth and sweat of excitement on my black brow.
And I, Afrika Road, saw schoolchildren in khaki uniforms raise their wooden guns at the law enforcers on the Hill. Bullets made of hot breath and noise and spit reverberated in the air. “We are going to kill them in the company of their children,” the khaki-clad warriors chanted. Death waited for them on the Hill as the crowd drew closer and closer. It would be the final confrontation: more than sixty thousand marchers heading for the showdown. Heading for freedom, or so they said.
You see it in their youthful eyes: a readiness to feel the familiar thud on the chest, and to hear the cracking of bone and the ripping of lung as the firepower of the law enforcers makes its forced entry and exit through the dark dissident flesh.
You see it in the flailing young arms of the children—always the children in the firing line—in tattered clothes or in school uniforms; T-shirted or naked chests; you see their hands fisted in the ardor of transient emotions; lives destined never to fully experience the essence of a natural childhood. You see them.
And I, Afrika Road, have seen them rise and then run undaunted against the ill wind; falling but emerging anew through sheaves of resisting corn—giving the earth life that genuine life might be reborn—or so I have heard the people's poets say during the many long marches.
A late-model car zoomed out of a small, nondescript lane between Zwide and Zwane streets. The well-dressed, well-fed driver, a wealthy local businessman and Bantu councilor, was en route to his sanctuary on Masphala Hill. He swerved noisily onto me. People dived to safety as the expensive imported vehicle screeched, skidded, and smoked at the wheels, and burned me.
Someone shouted, “
Mpimpi
!”
The human telegraph wire relayed the hated word and echoed it against the blue sky. The leaders in front got the message, stopped, and gave their backs to the waiting militia, who instinctively raised their guns at the ready in anticipation of attack.
The laminated windows of the car sagged under the weight of flying rock. Some of the youngsters jumped on it and smashed the front windshield. The terror-stricken man sat openmouthed, immobilized by his fear of death.
And I, Afrika Road, watched, knowing the fateful outcome. I have witnessed it too many times.
“
Mpimpi!
”
The chilling indictment rang out one final time.
A huge stone crushed the driver's skull. His eyes blinked and then went blank. Blood poured from his ears, nose, and mouth. They dragged him out. The back of his head cracked against me. I drank his blood just like I tasted the blood of many before him, and many more to come.
It is the law and the legacy.
Someone rolled a tire. Someone lifted a petrol can. Someone struck a match on Afrika Road …
 
—1991

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