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“That girl is just too clever for her own good; I see her a lot, walking by here as if she owns the world.”

The community defended the good teacher.

People took a step back and Little Bonolo found herself alone, fighting her own community. The few who were still interested in her were boys and they were all coming for a feast. They are like bees – if one stings you, they will all attack. In her case they told her: “Despite everything you have been through you are still beautiful to us.” They kissed her, held her very tight and told her “I love you ...” as they undressed her. “I love you ...” they lied again, after doing what they did, holding her naked body very tightly in their manly arms. It made her feel good, wanted, appreciated, and they kept coming back for more ... But to me it all remains rape. By Letshele. By the justice system. By her boyfriends. Whatever anyone says, she is still only fifteen today.

One must acknowledge that I live in a poor community. Here the average family has no stable income, they are living day to day, hand to mouth. From this develops the idea that because we are poor, young girls target well-off men, disregarding the fact that they have wives and families. Though this looks like the way it is at first glance, this is not the truth. The reality is that men are aware of the problems we face and use money as bait.

Little Bonolo is from a poor family, she has only her aunt and her father's family, and so, of course, this thing was said about her too. The community believed that she had sex with Letshele just so she could extort money from him and that she only reported him because he didn't want to pay. “Ke go lapa, otlo maaka bjang?” That was one old man justifying Little Bonolo's behaviour:
She is hungry, what can she do?
Even if this was true – I know things happen when one is destitute and starving; the mind stops working – Little Bonolo was eleven at the time. Letshele, on the other hand, is not only a senior teacher but also a married man with six children, all of them older than Little Bonolo.

The truth is that Little Bonolo was raped; I know it because I nearly walked the same path.

People like Letshele and Shatale use money as bait. Neo told me that he saw Shatale do it right in front of him. Neo had just passed his matric with flying colours and was trying to raise funds to go to a tertiary institution. Who better to start with than the man who had taught him? He put his case to Shatale but they were disturbed by one of Neo's former classmates. She showed Shatale her results and, as Neo watched, he took out his wallet, pulled something out of it that looked to be a note, put it on the statement of results and gave it back to her.

“Heh! Pa, I am listening to you,” Shatale said as soon as Neo's former classmate had left them.

By this time Neo was thinking that he was off to a good start.

“Heh! Pa, I am listening to you. What you are doing is courageous and I admire you but you are talking to the wrong people. You are not going to get anywhere because we don't have money.”

In the end, Shatale gave Neo ten rand. He knew that Neo's mother was the woman who sells from a table at the school gate, and although I agree that this is not Shatale's problem, he had some paper money to give to the girl ... And I know that he gave Lebo a hundred rand one afternoon. The whole class knew that Shatale gave Lebo a hundred rand note before it even got all used up. It was bait. And it worked because we all started thinking that if he could just give Lebo a hundred rand for nothing, then he must have more to give.

Little Bonolo, may you find happiness. If I were as strong as you are I wouldn't be this scared and sometimes I think that if I were ever to switch positions with you, you would be a much better Mokgethi than I have made this Mokgethi. I, in your position, would have died, hanged myself because I would have gone crazy. Though nobody appreciates and recognise the difficulties you have been through – not that there is reason to celebrate your struggle – I understand and to me you are an amazing human being.

How many violations have we seen? In this community we have even celebrated a union that began with a rape. Thapelo raped MmaSetshaba at knife point. She reported the violation but while he was spending a few days in the police cells a delegation from Thapelo's family, led by his father, went to her family and apologised:

“Rape.” Thapelo's father paused. “Women have been raped since the beginning of time. Our children are raped every day. It is a fact. A very sad fact. We are here now because our son, my son, raped your daughter, disgraced her. We are here to ask her to forgive him and that your family forgive my family and we all continue to live in peace. We are here to pay damages for what my son did to your daughter and to your family, its name and reputation.”

This was the human thing to do and because of Thapelo's father's words the victim's family became human too and three cows were requested as payment and, like they say: “molato wa tswa ka kgoro”.

The family received four cows. The fourth cow was a pula molomo. Its function is to summon the family of a girl, to open their mouths so that the two families can talk about a marriage.

“Seeing that our son, my son, has disgraced your daughter, we would ask very shamefully to take your daughter in marriage so that the shame that was cast upon your family is our shame too. ”

That was it – five more cows were added and their wedding followed. A marriage that began as a violation; two families united in the aftermath of rape. Friends, foes and the community at large came and toasted the union with sweet wine. We all sang the wedding songs and danced, ate the good food and drank the soft drinks, celebrating something that had started with a rape. I was left wondering to myself what she – MmaSetshaba – felt about all of this. Was she happy? How could she be happy? But when I looked over at her she was smiling, dancing to the music with her husband.

There is a phrase that I hear all the time in the community: “Young girls grow up fast these days!” I get scared when I hear this phrase. Aren't we still young girls even if we look like we are women? Aren't our minds still young?

 

Shatale

The community builder, a high school principal, a husband and a father of four children. Before he became principal, Shatale came across to me as an individual interested solely in the development of this community's youth and at one point the community at large trusted him completely – every mother wanted her child to be involved in whatever scheme he was busy with.

He was running a community theatre, a dance school, was involved in sport in the community and was the driving force behind the local youth club. I was introduced to him by my Aunt Sarah while she was registering me to be part of his dance school and it was Shatale who taught me to dance, back when I was doing Grade Three.

Shatale was a professional ballroom dancer back in the day and he has trophies from national dance competitions. The dance school was his most successful and profitable project; back then, more than a hundred learners were paying to learn to dance at any one time.

If we were American, Shatale would be on death row for multiple statutory rapes. He is a paedophile. He came to this school after Mr Malele passed away in a car accident and our biggest misfortune was when Shatale was transferred from another high school, where he was only a teacher, to take his place.

Mr Malele was an upright man; he was from the era when corporal punishment was the backbone of education. The principals of yesterday were feared and respected by staff members, pupils and the community alike. I remember at the funeral of the former principal, a man who said he was a doctor took the stand and told the assembled mourners that he had hated the man who lay in his coffin before us all his life. He realised, he said, that he had never really spoken to anyone about the deceased but he knew that without him he wouldn't have become a doctor. He said that after graduating, he wrote letters of thanks to all his teachers and delivered them in person but he never thanked the person who had pushed him and every pupil as hard as he could. Mr Malele, he said, was responsible for them achieving their dreams and he wished at that moment that he could just shake his hand.

He made me wish that Mr Malele had been my principal, that I had seen him standing in front of the staffroom when lunch break was up, as the doctor had described, with everybody running to take their rightful positions. With Shatale, we just walk and talk with him because he has become part of our generation; he is a player, playing with us.

I never had a general talk with the headmaster at the private school that I used to go to, not because he was white but because talking to him was like talking to a king – you had to know your mind very well before you approached him. The funny thing was that despite this he knew my name just as he knew the names of all the pupils at the school. He was not a monster; I just avoided him because I was scared of saying the wrong thing to him.

Shatale is a softly spoken man – it is as if the words are too heavy for him to say out loud. Tall and not that thin, though he has no belly, he has a baby face – no beard, no moustache – and comes across as the embodiment of trust. People trust him on sight and when he starts talking they completely believe whatever he says.

People say many things about Shatale, accuse him of many things. What is true that he has a twenty-year-old daughter from a failed marriage. He has three other children with young girls that I know of – all three of the girls are older than I am, though still under twenty, and their children are all under two years old.

The most puzzling thing is that Shatale does not drink alcohol – he dislikes it. And he is always at work on time. Some people say that he is always high on weed. I have no proof of this but I believe it could be true. What other logical explanation could there be for why a man like him wants to get naked in front of a fourteen-year-old girl not once but continually.

His present wife is a schoolteacher. They have two children together, both of them under ten, and they live in a fairly big house. They have two beautiful cars and a small bakkie. I don't think that they are happy. I have never seen them together, doing their husband and wife thing. In fact, I have never even seen them in the same car. They are always apart.

Mrs Shatale won't keep holding on that much longer because it hurts to know that you are being cheated on, especially when your husband is cheating on you with a fourteen-year-old. What is a woman to think when she finds out about this? What is she to think of her husband? I think that she must have a good heart, to take so much shit and still smile like nothing has happened. But sooner or later her good, shit-bearing heart will explode, and when it finally does it will be like a bomb going off and whoever is in the way will be forever sorry.

I feel nothing but pity for Mrs Shatale. Lebo told me that she is a very fashionable woman, friendly and caring – she and Lebo go to the same church – but I pass by their house nearly every day and though it is fairly big the outside is neglected. In fact, if you didn't know you might think that no one lived there because it looks deserted. Sometimes when you pass a house that looks deserted the windows will be open and maybe music will be playing or something will be cooking that smells good or children will be playing outside, but not at the Shatales. The only thing that shows there is life inside are the cars in the driveway. I am sure that divorce papers will be issued soon.

Ngwarele is one of the teachers on Shatale's staff. He was married once but his wife didn't have a heart big enough to take all his shit so they divorced. He has a degree from the university, a liquor business and a couple of minibuses. These are the things that we can see from the outside but he excels only at things that do not have anything to do with human relationships. He does not have any friends; he is a true loner. He doesn't have a cellphone or a car, he uses the taxi, and they say that he drinks privately. When one is talking to him socially he becomes very unsure of himself and doesn't say his words loudly enough to be heard, but find him in the classroom teaching biology or English and he is a different person altogether.

Mme is his long-term girlfriend. She is twenty-three but their relationship began when she was sixteen. She left high school and went to a technical college. Two years later she came back to high school because she didn't have the brains for technical college. Sorry, but the truth is that she is one of the oldest pupils in our school. She is a veteran of this school.

One day Ngwarele disappeared for an hour or so with my classmate Joy. She was not there in class and she only returned during lunch break. Somehow Mme saw something or heard something, confronted Joy and they started to fight. As Joy is bigger and stronger than Mme, she trashed her bad and there was blood all over. And because the fight occurred during our lunch hour, the whole school came to see the show.

Although they were both interrogated afterwards, nothing ever happened to either of them. Shatale decided on silent diplomacy and Joy's father took her out of Teyageneng High School. I thought he would do something about what had happened, being a university lecturer, but he decided to rather take his child out of the school. Even he did not confront the problem but tried to outrun it.

I do not know what Shatale should have done about Ngwarele but he should have done something. However, he could not do anything because he was on the stand with Ngwarele – all this happened after the Lebo and Mokgethi case. How could he pass judgement on Ngwarele's actions?

I am not a man so I will never know why it is that all men are so perverted. James told me that it has something to do with their hormones. He told me that baby boys get aroused just after birth. I didn't believe him but after seeing it with my own eyes I know it to be true.

James says that everything in life has to do with sex. He said:

“One can be a doctor but being a doctor dies with one, the doctorate only helps to earn one money to buy food to nourish the body, but if you have a son or a daughter, nobody can take that away from you. Even long after you are dead, a part of you will still be alive. And that is why life is about sex, sex and more sex! If I was man enough I would be survived by twenty children. It is just unfortunate that I am having sex with condoms.”

We were all laughing as he made the last part sound very sad for him indeed.

“How would you maintain them?”

“With welfare.”

“That is very irresponsible, James.”

“I knew you were going to say that, but to me – and all those intelligent enough to know what we are living for – this is the ultimate male achievement. Isn't it the purpose that God charged all human beings with?”

I looked at him, feeling sorry for the unborn children that he wants to have.

“Am I scaring you now?”

That is how men think. You don't have to go far back in history and you will observe that all women had more than eight children. My paternal grandmother had nine children and most of the women of long ago were the same – they had many children – and the men mostly had two or three wives.

“Your problem is that you want a man to work hard for two children when he can work hard for ten and enjoy them growing up,” James said. “I think I will enjoy each of my children more than a brand-new car.”