Holding Up the Sky (27 page)

Eventually I became too choked up to think, and the tears began to flow. I sat curled up into a little ball, making myself small so that the danger would pass me by. I don't know how long I sat like this but when it was starting to get dark, the Skhosanas' eldest, Jabulani, appeared next to me. Having heard from Nonsi and Themba what had happened Mama Skhosana has sent him to come and find me. As I told him what the officer had said to me, he sat listening without saying a word. But soon the fear had closed my throat again and I began to sob. He put an arm around me and said, ‘You have to live your own life. If this is where you want to be, then be here. But you cannot live in fear'.

Then we sat together for a time in the gathering darkness and listened to the sounds of the township night before turning for home.

TEBOHO
CAME FROM A LARGE, WARM AND INCLUSIVE FAMILY BUT IT TOOK ME A LONG TIME TO UNDERSTAND ITS COMPLEXITY. MUCH OF HIS UNIQUENESS SEEMS TO HAVE SPRUNG FROM THE EXTRAORDINARY UPBRINGING HE HAD AND I WAS ALWAYS EAGER TO KNOW MORE. I THINK, IN MANY WAYS, IT WAS HIS REMARKABLE LIFE STORY THAT I FOUND AS MAGNETIC AS THE MAN.

Teboho was born in Mohlakeng township in 1963, the third son of Phuti and Manana. At the time of his birth, Phuti had three other children with Manana and two with his second wife Ma Ellen, with a third on the way. Ma Ellen also had a child from a previous relationship. The whole family lived in a tiny four-roomed house with concrete block walls and an asbestos roof, no running water and no electricity. While bigamous relationships were less and less common by this time, it was extremely rare that the wives shared the same home. But the family could not afford to run two households, despite both wives taking on domestic work when they could find it. Surprisingly, there was an abundance of laughter in this unusual home. All three adults were determined to create a family where all were welcome and no distinctions were made between their children in terms of parentage. All were loved. All were wanted. Teboho's name in Sesotho means ‘a gift from God'.

A year after Teboho's birth Phuti was killed, leaving his son with no memories, only stories of the enigmatic man he was. After a time, it became clear that the women could not support the family alone, so Ma Ellen agreed to marry one of her many suitors and took three of her children with her to Rustenburg, two hours to the northwest. She left her youngest daughter with Manana, as Silwane and Teboho had been raised like twins and would not be separated. Manana stayed on in Mohlakeng but was also under pressure to remarry.

Teboho remembers very little of the time before his mother's second marriage. His stepfather Bophundlovu worked as a first aid worker at a mine outside Krugersdorp on the far west reaches of Johannesburg. It was only fifteen minutes from the township of Mohlakeng where Manana had lived with Phuti and Ma Ellen. They moved into the mine's family accommodation which consisted of a long row of small rooms, two per family, with one acting as a bedroom and the other as a kitchen. Bophundlovu was afforded more privileges than the other black mine workers as his role was considered to be semi-skilled; hence his access to family accommodation as opposed to the hostel accommodation most black miners used.

Bophundlovu was not overly interested in Phuti's children and Teboho had to ensure that he was never a nuisance to the old man. From the age of six he ran errands for both parents, helped to cook and clean and with his sister, Ma Ellen's daughter Silwane, stayed away as much as possible. The two were always together, of a similar age and size and therefore assumed to be twins. When asked their names on the mine, they told everyone it was ‘Jelly and Custard'. And so Teboho's life seemed to have improved for a time, with enough money for food and school and his ‘twin sister' for company as they roamed the mine. Yet Bophundlovu's sternness could often suck the laughter out of their home–or at least it did when he returned from work.

However, Bophundlovu's demeanour changed with the birth of his first son. To everyone's surprise, including his own, he adored Doki and soon his world revolved around him. Perhaps he was the son he never thought he would have, perhaps it was that Doki was the mirror image of him. Whatever the reason, he was a doting father.

A few years later, Teboho's mother gave birth to her last-born, Willie, the apple of her eye, who slept in bed tucked under his mother's arm each night. By then, Mama and Bophundlovu had four children–Teboho, Silwane, Doki and Willie–living with them in the mine accommodation. Teboho's three eldest siblings had all moved on. Caleb, the eldest son, had found teaching work back in Mohlakeng; Tshidi, Teboho's eldest sister, had married Reggie and moved to Itsoseng in the west; and Ephraim now lived with Ma Ellen in Rustenburg.

Under apartheid laws, black adults were not permitted to live in South Africa if they were not working and actively contributing to the economy. They were only permitted to live in ‘homelands'– small pockets of land located in remote areas of the country that were considered to be separate and sovereign nations in which black people could pursue their own ‘separate development'. There was one homeland designated for each tribal or language group. Some homelands were located in a single block; others were scattered like confetti on a map. For the most part, they were also situated on land of little commercial value with poor soil quality or in dry arid areas– so the chances of separate development were slim at best.

When Bophundlovu retired he was no longer allowed to live on the mine nor, for that matter, in South Africa. The family was relocated to the homeland of Bophuthatswana, of which Itsoseng was a part, where Tshidi and Reggie lived with their baby son. They put a small amount of money down to purchase the tin shack next to Tshidi and Reggie's. However, the homeland of Bophuthatswana was a Tswana homeland and Mama and Bophundlovu were Sesotho speaking. As a result of this administrative error, neither Bophundlovu nor Manana was allowed to work in Bophuthatswana.

Mama found work back in South Africa, which was only a short distance away. She worked as a labourer on a nearby farm, walking the seven kilometres to work and back six days a week as the taxi fare would have cost more than her total wages. To support the family, Bophundlovu began roasting nuts in an old drum at the side of the house and selling them in the neighbourhood; when the officials found out they shut him down, as he lacked the proper work permits. So it was that the family survived on Mama's small income for a number of years. Caleb sent money when he could from his teaching job in Mohlakeng. However, he had also married and had a child of his own.

With the move to Itsoseng, Teboho's life was at a crossroads. He could choose to stay with his family but the high school opportunities in Itsoseng were virtually non-existent. The second and more difficult choice was to stay behind. He was twelve years old. He chose to stay. So as Manana and Bophundlovu shuffled the other children into the kombi that would take them to their new home, Teboho, small bag in hand, stepped into another kombi bound for Mohlakeng.

It broke Mama's heart that Teboho left her care so young, even though he was to live with Caleb. In an annual gesture of love, she gave him the equivalent of her monthly salary at the beginning of each year to help him buy school books. His family's poverty and his mother's sacrifices gave Teboho an entrepreneurial drive beyond his years. Every afternoon after school he would sell sweets on the streets of the township. Without ever eating a sweet himself, from his afternoon rounds he was able to raise enough money to purchase a simple camera. With this camera, a rare commodity in the township, he got into the more lucrative business of photography, taking photos on the streets and selling them individually once the film was developed. Through these two businesses he was able to support himself all the way through high school, as well as helping with Doki and Willie's education back in Itsoseng.

There was another driver for Teboho's financial independence: Caleb's wife was not willing to have another dependant drain his modest teacher's salary so she forbade Teboho eating with them or sleeping in their home. This was an incredible hardness of heart, so rare in the African communities that Teboho kept the situation from his mother who simply assumed her daughter-in-law would be taking care of her young son. Caleb, torn between pleasing his wife and caring for his brother, came up with an arrangement: Caleb would leave the door unlocked so that after his wife went to bed Teboho could enter the house, eat the leftovers Caleb had hidden for him and sleep on a bed of dirty clothes under the kitchen table. Teboho would be gone by dawn, making sure to leave no trace of his visit. Some days, weary of the deception, Teboho would simply choose to buy food for himself and sleep in the bush on the eastern edge of the township, near the high school.

Teboho's life continued in this way for a number of years. Not surprisingly he was struggling at school, having no time, place or energy to do homework. He also had a slight reading disability that went undiagnosed because he had developed a strategy of memorising all the work on the board in order to answer his teacher's questions and pass exams.

Towards the end of Teboho's high school years, Caleb's marriage began to break down. Caleb had been warned by a neighbour that his wife was trying to bewitch him. There were also questions as to his wife's fidelity. Caleb's concerns of foul play escalated when he found a small parcel wrapped in animal skin hidden in his cupboard amongst his clothes. He took the parcel to a
sangoma
, or witch doctor, who examined it and then asked him to look into a bowl of liquid: it would act as a window and show him who had hidden the
muti
, or charm, in his house and why. As Caleb stared into the bowl, he saw an image of his wife opening his cupboard as he slept and hiding the
muti
inside. The
sangoma
explained that the wife was trying to bewitch him so as to control the money he earnt. As a teacher, he was more highly paid than the vast majority of his community and lived in a four-room brick house on a paved street, as opposed to the tin shacks that many in Mohlakeng were forced to call home.

On the strength of this information and worn down by years of her harsh attitudes towards his family, Caleb asked his wife to leave. She informed him that she was pregnant again, yet Caleb doubted that this child was his and insisted that she go. The two other children, Nooi and Dosi, remained behind with Caleb as he was keen to keep a strong relationship with them as well as caring for them financially. Teboho moved in shortly thereafter, finally recreating the close-knit family unit they had known years before.

Teboho's time on the streets had given him a strong empathy for those without homes or simply doing it tough. Soon Caleb's house became a way station for young boys who needed a place to call home for a time. Both Caleb and Teboho were community activists by this time, with affiliation to teachers' unions, community leadership structures, the ANC youth league and their local church group. There was a catch phrase at the time, ‘the personal is the political', and for the two brothers it was their daily experience. There was no need to campaign, no university politics through which to recruit. The daily experience of black people was enough to push even the most docile into some form of protest or activism. For Teboho, whose life had been so punishing, to whom so much damage had been done, activism was the only response.

After Teboho finished high school, Caleb bought a larger home in another part of the township and left the four-roomed house to Teboho and his ‘lost boys'. It was the first home Teboho had ever had and he would always love his brother for his generosity. By this time, Teboho had found work in a factory that made sanitary ware– bathtubs, toilets, basins. He had always wanted to go to university but neither his finances nor the apartheid policies were opening doors at that time.

While Teboho was working in the factory he was able to support the family, both biological and adopted. He purchased furniture and clothes, paid for books and transport, sent money to Mama for school fees for Doki and Willie. In fact, through Teboho's support, Willie was able to go to the International School in Mafikeng, which was one of the first integrated schools serving not only black and white South African children but also the children of those who had come to work in Mafikeng from other countries. The apartheid government had put lucrative tax breaks in place for homeland industry in order to attract both foreign investors and foreign skills into the country. As a result the private schools there were afforded privileges that were yet to be granted in South Africa itself.

This was a time in Teboho's life when he felt he was able to make a contribution to the lives of others–and it felt good. His philanthropy eventually extended to the workplace and he began to organise a union there to better represent the rights of the workers whom he believed were being abused because of their low education levels. Not long after the union was established and came to the attention of management, he lost his job.

At about the same time, Teboho was dealt another blow that would wound him for a very long time. He missed a payment on the house and as he was trying to make alternative arrangements with the council, explaining that he had just lost his job, they informed him that they had sold the house to recoup the money. It was very close to Christmas by this time and on Christmas Eve, he and his friends were evicted. In many ways, he has never recovered from this event. A darkness descends each Christmas Eve that he still finds hard to shake. To add salt to the wound, it appeared that the people who bought the house paid next to nothing for it: they were family of the councillor who had made the decision to repossess. Many years later, Teboho took me to that house to show me where we should have lived.

So in 1986, Teboho moved back in with his brother and began to look for work. The next job he found was to change the course of his life.

A good friend, Khumo, put him in touch with the organisation she had been working for. It was called SUCA (Student Union for Christian Action) and worked on university campuses to organise the churchgoing students to take action against the political situation in the country. It combined a number of the things Teboho was passionate about so when Khumo was looking to replace herself as she moved on in the organisation, he was the perfect choice.

The job at SUCA opened up many avenues for Teboho. He travelled all over the country, often with Khumo, and met like-minded people, black and white, with whom he was able to build long-term friendships. Not only was it an avenue for his political commitments, it reignited his interest in tertiary study. At the time, the historically white universities were starting to loosen their entry requirements and opportunities were being snapped up by bright, ambitious young black people.