Holding Up the Sky (29 page)

Being in the company of three other Australians at the beach, it was easy to forget where we were. But that bubble was burst when we were walking back towards the beach after having lunch at a local cafe. We passed a mother who was walking down to the shops with her young son who could not have been more than six years old. Teboho, Nat and I were walking three abreast, with Teboho walking closest to the kerb. As Teboho stepped aside to let the mother and son pass the small boy, his face screwed up with venom, looked up at him and said, ‘What are
you
doing here?' We three were so taken aback by the boy's comment that we stared blankly back, making no reply. His mother seemed to support his opinion but rather than engage with us, simply pulled her son by the arm to get him away from such an unpleasant sight. We stood there and watched as the pair stormed off down the street. Teboho and I set off walking again but Nat was so shocked by the exchange that she stood rooted to the ground, mouth open.

‘What was that?' she asked of Teboho and me.

‘It was a refection of the beliefs of the parents, not the child', Teboho replied.

‘But how could such a small child be so full of hate?'

‘They are surrounded by it from the day they are born.'

The following week we were preparing to run our fi.rst teachers' exchange program. Our friends at Smero High School had volunteered to host the white teachers and send a few of their own teachers into town. I have to admit this brought a smile to my face as Smero was arguably the poorest township school we dealt with, being simply a horseshoe of classrooms standing in the dust of a vacant patch of land. Maritzburg College, the white school that put its hand up to pilot the program, was the wealthiest state school in the district. Its facilities were so outstanding that it was often mistaken for a private school.

I was to accompany the College teachers to Smero and Robbie would take the Smero teachers to town. For our pilot, we had arranged to exchange five teachers from each school on the Thursday and Friday, followed on the Saturday by a workshop to discuss what they had learnt. The team was both excited and nervous as the day approached, knowing that this program would be either groundbreaking or a complete disaster.

Robbie and I went to Edendale first and waited at the central meeting point we had agreed with the Smero teachers the day before. They arrived one by one, looking particularly well dressed and buttoned up, ready for the day ahead. The kombi was soon full of nervous chatter as we drove through to town. Maritzburg College did in fact have one or two black students by this time but the only black adults on the property were groundskeepers and cleaners. We arrived just as the school bell rang. The Smero teachers stepped out of the kombi as hundreds of white teenage boys fled past on their way to assembly. Many eyed them with curiosity, having been told about the innovative program, and others simply stared, eyes hooded and reserved. My heart lurched in sympathy as I watched the teachers disappear into the bowels of the school.

I was led through to the staffroom where the College teachers were waiting. In sharp contrast, these teachers were relaxed and jovial. I did wonder how much of it was a cover as I suspected that many would not ever have had cause or opportunity to visit a township. I could only imagine the stories their friends and families must have told them in the lead-up to this day. Yet I knew each one had volunteered, wanting to be part of a different future. Robbie and I had briefed them a few days before but I ran through some of the main points again as we drove back to Edendale. Smero is located at the far end of the valley, accessible only by rough and twisted dirt roads once we'd left the tar of Edendale Road behind. The kombi became quiet as we neared the school, the teachers taking in the poverty of the area. The homes were made of the same kind of wattle and daub we had used to make the Sweetwaters creche. Few had electricity or running water. Animals and small children looked up as the kombi crawled past, surprised to see the white faces peering back. We pulled into the school grounds in silence.

Mr Khuzwayo, the school principal, was there to greet us. Despite the poor school facilities, Smero was blessed with the most talented principal in the township. He was well educated, intelligent and highly committed to his craft. During his time as headmaster, he had turned the school from a poor performer among its township peers to achieving the top results in Edendale, even beginning to compete with those of some of the schools in town. The College teachers were quick to see that he was a man with a mission, with his firm handshake and engaging stare. He led them around the school and briefed them on what they were trying to achieve here. What they saw was a school where all the students were in class, all the teachers actively teaching and, in the absence of the exchange teachers, some students were studying under the supervision of prefects. While this may have seemed an ordinary scene in any school in town, it was a rare sight in the township. Given the conditions and the difficulties with securing resources, many teachers and principals had simply given up. In many township schools students and teachers arrived and left when they wished, their presence in class only a pretence at learning since they knew that sitting for exams in competition with white students in town would surely lead to failure.

Mr Khuzwayo and I had slotted the College teachers into the Smero timetable a week before and now students were waiting to take them to class. They were shown through to classrooms that housed more than twice the number of students they were used to, some sitting two to a desk. The only teaching resource was chalk, which was not left at the blackboard but guarded by a student who handed it to the teachers when it was needed. The school had no electricity and therefore no photocopier, computer, printer nor even a telephone. Mr Khuzwayo made all his calls to the Department from home.

At break, I gathered with all the teachers in the staffroom which was merely an empty classroom at the end of the horseshoe of rooms. There, Mr Khuzwayo introduced the visitors and opened the floor as they passed their regards from their colleagues at Maritzburg College and thanked the school for hosting them for the two days. Smero had prepared a welcome morning tea to allow the teachers to mix. Water was boiled for tea on a small paraffin burner and cakes and biscuits had been baked and brought from home. I noticed that the College teachers had shed the air of confidence they had worn like coats that morning, their eyes now wide with each new reminder of the difference between this school and theirs, only fifteen minutes away.

After a few more classes, it was time for lunch. The Smero teachers took their new colleagues to the gate where four local women sold food to students and teachers alike each day. They explained that you could buy the fruits and sweets displayed or have a hot meal that was cooking on the pots behind them. The local favourites were pap and curried meat. I imagined I saw each one of the visiting teachers make a mental note to bring a packed lunch the following day.

After three more lessons, school was finished for the day. The teachers had taught a variety of subjects from maths and science, to English and Latin. The Latin teacher, Tansey, was later to become a friend. She never forgot the irony of that first day of attempting to teach Latin in a township school. That evening she decided to take a different tack and threw Latin out the window in favour of English the following day.

On the way home the kombi was abuzz with observations, most regarding the respect they had for the teachers who taught there day after day. The College teachers discussed what a different proposition it was to teach forty or fifty kids without a single teaching aid including, in many cases, a textbook. But to their credit, all of them were committed to returning the following morning, having first raided their own classrooms for supplies. I later heard that the school had decided to set up a partnership arrangement with Smero to support them with learning materials on a more regular basis.

Robbie and I had a chance to catch up and compare notes at the end of the day. The Smero teachers were as awestruck as those from College, but for completely different reasons. They were amazed at the endless facilities and the quality of teaching resources. They seemed almost to salivate when discussing what they could do if they had these tools at their disposal. The teachers also commented on how oblivious the students appeared to be to the opportunities the school provided, while their own students were exuberant when they had a textbook they didn't have to share. Robbie had also seen the nervousness of the morning dissipate over the course of the day, as the teachers were well received by students and faculty alike. I remember the triumph I felt when I heard that one student had commented that he wouldn't mind having a black teacher after all.

At the end of the three days, we felt that the program had been worthwhile, giving all the teachers a new perspective on the education system, helping them to think through what integration might mean and how they could be better prepared. The unintended consequence, and one we were never able to get around, was that once the black teachers had seen what it would be like to teach in a town school they made every effort over the next few years to leave the township education system behind.

I had similar concerns about all our dialogue programs. Were they of more benefit to the white participants than to the black? Did the black participants spend most of their time educating their new white friends about what South Africa was really like for the majority of her people? Sometimes I was afraid that all we were doing was fuelling the desire of black people to escape, to leave behind any reminder of the hardships of their childhood. My own experience of the township was that it provided me with a far richer experience of community living than my childhood had permitted. I felt that if living standards could be raised, the townships could become a vibrant alternative to suburbia. For many, however, the townships were to be left behind with as much speed as their salary would allow.

Ironically, I too was soon to leave the township behind for a time. Justin was looking to get a small house in the inner city, an area of 'Maritzburg that was referred to as ‘grey'–neither black nor white, but a place where all races lived in defiance of the Group Areas Act that prohibited such integration. As the year drew to a close–my third in this gypsy lifestyle–the idea of throwing down some roots was appealing. I also knew that in order to grow my relationship with Teboho I needed the space that Baba Skhosana would not allow. So, despite being very happy living in Caluza, I felt it was time to build a household of my own where I would be an adult member and not a child.

Justin soon found a place that was perfect, a white cottage in a quiet side street with matching cottages repeating down its length. The house was two rooms wide, with the front stoep nudging the pavement while the rest of the house fell in behind like a bridal train. We had a small, untidy garden that ran down one side and round the back of the house. Despite its external appearance, the house boasted four bedrooms and a small study at the back. Before we had even moved in, Teboho had compiled a list of potential boarders, black students who typically found it impossible to rent a room in town. Justin and I liked the idea–it would be our domestic community service–and so it was agreed that when the university opened, so would our home in Oxford Street. As it turned out, one of our new housemates would be Teboho's youngest brother, Willie. He had done extremely well in his matriculation exams at the school Teboho sent him to in Mafikeng and had won a scholarship to study science at the University of Natal. Willie would have some groundbreaking of his own to do in this bastion of white, male academia.

Nat was with me for the house hunting process, but left before we moved in. Her departure was the hardest I had faced. I had many friends who had become part of our community, part of my South African experience. But my relationship with Nat was the deepest and when she left I was reminded of what it cost me to live in South Africa. Friendships with people who have known you from your childhood and teen years are irreplaceable; they are a haven of forgiveness and acceptance forged by the perspective of time. They have a favour that friendships you make as an adult can never replicate.

When Nat left, I knew I was forgoing this depth of knowing and being known. There is a photo of Teboho and me on the steps of ETHOS just after having said goodbye to Nat. My face is tear-stained and drawn, as if after an illness. I tried to throw it away, not wishing to be reminded, but Teboho wouldn't let me, insisting my face was full of love.

I
WAS AWASH WITH MIXED EMOTIONS THAT DECEMBER—EXCITED TO BE MOVING INTO OXFORD STREET, SAD TO BE LEAVING THE SKHOSANAS, HOMESICK FOR MY FAMILY AS CHRISTMAS APPROACHED, AND NERVOUS AT THE THOUGHT OF MEETING TEBOHO'S FRIENDS AND FAMILY. I HAD AGREED TO SPEND THE HOLIDAYS WITH HIM IN MOHLAKENG.

Justin had moved into Oxford Street ahead of me and was working on a few renovations with Fred who was back in town on holidays. Justin was also busy decorating the house and getting the garden under control. By the time I moved in, it already felt like home. In fact, it was hard to leave Oxford Street a few weeks later when Sizwe closed for the year and I headed off to Jo'burg to be with Teboho. He had gone ahead of me at the end of November once his exams were over. It was agreed that I would catch the Greyhound bus and be met by Moss, who worked in the city. When I arrived, Moss was waiting with his small son, Boggie.

Moss, as I later learnt was his habit, was running late. We were not heading straight back to Mohlakeng, the township where both he and Teboho lived, but were going first to the Institute of Contextual Theology's Christmas party at the Carlton Hotel where his wife Khumo would be waiting. We were due there in half an hour but still had to drop Boggie to his aunt's home in Soweto before returning to the city. This entire arrangement was news to me but I resisted the urge to say that I felt tired and underdressed.

Surprises like this were part of the landscape; by the end of my four weeks I would become accustomed to continuous delays and changes in plans. It would be tempting to call this ‘African time' but it was something else altogether. This was about being a resourceful person in a resource-poor community. Moss, Khumo, Teboho and other well-known figures in the township were constantly called upon to attend this meeting or that, resolve a conflict, help this family, give that one a lift somewhere–the list was endless. As for me, I was committed to going with the flow, even on my first night in the city. So I buckled up and prepared for a whirlwind drive in peak hour Friday night traffic to Soweto and back. I then smiled my way through a few hours of a Christmas party where the distinguished Father Albert Nolan and the who's who of Johannesburg's Church activists were on the dance floor.

I spent the night with Moss and Khumo as their house was large enough to offer me a spare bedroom. The household consisted of Moss, Khumo, Boggie and Moss's father, Papi, who was to become one of my greatest fans. The next morning over breakfast, Teboho blew in and swept me off my feet. While I felt very comfortable with Moss and Khumo, it was still a relief to see his smiling face. He was staying with his eldest brother Caleb for the duration of the holidays, in a house on the other side of the township. He had come to pick me up to go to his sister's wedding in Itsoseng, where a branch of the family now lived. We would be going up with the church youth as they had planned a retreat in Kopela, an hour's drive past Itsoseng, for a few days after the wedding. I said a hasty farewell to Moss and Khumo, who would be joining us later, and rushed out the door, bag in hand.

Outside, the kombi was half full with young people from the local Ebenezer church where Moss was the minister. I had heard about many of them from stories Teboho told me and it was nice to put faces to names: Kgotla, Dumi, Ri, Dennis, Phillip and Nooi, Teboho's eldest niece. We spent the next hour driving from house to house filling the kombi to capacity before setting out for our destination.

Itsoseng was a two-and-a-half-hour drive towards Botswana so we had plenty of time to get to know each other. We were also driving through the rural heartland of the Afrikaaners so we had no plans to stop. Teboho was driving, with Dennis and me on the seat next to him. Dennis was a young law student: intelligent, articulate and observant–a great travel companion. He too had lived with Teboho for a time while Teboho helped him get started with his university career. Over the weeks this became a familiar story. It seemed that most of the people I met had in some way or other been helped by Teboho through a difficult time, to raise money for their studies, find a place to live or simply to imagine a different future. I was deeply moved by the quiet contribution he had made in the lives of people in his community, and loved him more for it.

When we arrived at Itsoseng, Teboho's mother's house was surrounded by a crowd of some three or four hundred people. Mama lived in a four-roomed tin shack just around the corner from where the wedding reception was being held. It was actually China, Ma Ellen's youngest daughter, who was getting married but in the tradition of their extended and interchangeable family, the wedding was being hosted at Mama's house. We parked the kombi near the hall and made our way slowly through the crowd, greeting relatives and neighbours as each pressed in to see if the rumours were true. Finally we found ourselves inside Mama's house.

‘She will love you because she knows I do', Teboho whispered in my ear as we walked through the door.

He then began to call loudly:
‘Mama wa ka, o kae? Moratuwa' ka u teng',
Mama where are you? My beloved is here. Sesotho was about as different as you could get from the Zulu language but I understood the gist of what he said.

Out from one of the rooms emerged a woman weary from days of non-stop wedding preparations but with love etched across her face. She beamed at her son and reached up to embrace him. As she did so, he picked her up off her feet and, despite her protests, swung her around in the air. As he placed her down again, she peered around him to look at me, the warmth she felt for her son immediately radiating in my direction. Teboho spun around and made his introductions. Mama sighed and said, ‘Ah, so it is true! With Teboho you never know. You are welcome'.

I was to learn more about this remarkable woman in the months and years to come and for me she represents all the graciousness of Africa. Mama was born in 1937 and grew up in the Free State. The Orange Free State, as it was then called, was famous for a particular and obtuse apartheid law–no Indian person was allowed to set foot on its soil. Therefore, if anyone from the Indian community wished to pass through the Free State (which is in the centre of the country and forms a key route between Johannesburg in the north and Cape Town in the south) that person would have to drive straight through without stopping for food, petrol or even a bathroom break. Such was the conservative nature of the province.

Mama, who was born into the Southern Sotho tribe, one of the nine African tribes of South Africa, lived with her family until the age of eight or nine when she and her older sister were taken to work on a farm a few hours away. I'm unsure of what ‘taken' really means when Mama tells her story. I don't know if the white farmer wanted to ‘take' them so that they could work in return for food. Perhaps it was ‘taken' in the slavery sense. Mama doesn't really remember, just that she didn't want to go and that there were many members of the family she never saw again.

Being the younger of the two sisters, Mama was set to work not in the fields but in the house, taking care of the cooking and cleaning. She remembers the hours as long with little or no time off, week after week, month after month. She lived in servants quarters little better than a shed, behind the farmhouse. It was a very sad and lonely time for the first few years with no contact with her family at home.

It became a little easier for her when she was about eleven or twelve. A new baby was born, giving her someone to love and to hold. Mama tells me that she held that little blonde baby girl in her arms and prayed to God that he would give her a baby just like this one. At the time, she was too young to realise the biological impossibility of the request, but she believed that God would answer her prayers. It was not until she met me that she felt God had finally heard her. She says that I will always have a special place in her heart as I am the child she prayed for all those years ago.

Farm life was hard and monotonous for Mama and the divide between black and white was brutal. She tells a story from when she was a teenager: she picked up the farmer's favourite cup out of the garbage–he had chipped it and thrown it away. As she had no cup of her own, she rescued it and used it for herself. A few days later, he caught her drinking tea out of it and chased her with a gun, screaming that she had drunk out of the same cup as him. She managed to evade him but was left in no doubt as to how things were.

Not long after this incident, Mama decided to run away from the farm and move back closer to where she was born. It was then that she met and fell in love with Phuti, Teboho's father. He was a flamboyant character, charming, intelligent, articulate and a dreamer. Phuti was a young minister in the Zionist church; as a popular orator with a fair for the dramatic he was well suited to the role. He also supported his essentially voluntary position with a little diamond smuggling on the side. There were harsh penalties for those who were caught but Phuti was able to trade undetected for years.

Mama, still not much more than a teenager, adored him and soon they were married. Caleb and then Tshidi were born soon after. However, around this time, Mama became aware that Phuti also had a relationship with another woman–a woman who, ironically, was a childhood friend of hers. She recalls carrying Ellen on her back when she was a toddler as their families had been neighbours and friends. While the affair with Ellen broke Mama's heart, especially when she learnt that there was a child, she went to Phuti with a suggestion. As they had no money and could not afford for Phuti to be supporting a second household, she suggested that Phuti take Ellen as his second wife and she come to live with them in their small shack. Mama describes this as the hardest moment of her life. Despite the affair, she still loved him and having to share him, even with a dear friend, was a daily devastation.

When I asked Mama how this arrangement worked, given they initially lived in a four-room shack with four children and three adults, she just laughed and said they did what they had to do to get by–but it was difficult. As hard as it must have been, she still had her beloved Phuti. But when Phuti was killed several years later, it felt like the final blow for Mama. He had simply stepped off a kerb without looking, probably calling out to a friend in greeting, when a passing bus ran him down.

She grieved for a long time. The two women stayed together for as long as they could, struggling to support their now nine children. However, Ellen eventually moved away to Rustenburg some two hours to the northwest and married there. Mama remained in Mohlakeng until Phuti's family came to visit. They told her that, as is tradition, she must now remarry and a husband would be chosen for her from one of the men in the family. In African culture, the children belong to the man and his family and if Mama married again, the children would pass on to another man. As this was an unacceptable situation, Mama was pressured to marry back into the same family. She resisted this pressure for as long as she could, but ultimately her concern for the children's welfare wore her down. Bophundlovu, Phuti's first cousin, was fifteen years Mama's senior, in his mid-forties. He was an unusually tall and very sober man. He had a short fuse and was quite particular about how he wanted things to be done. He had not married until now for that reason. While it was an arranged marriage and Mama did not love him, she tried to make the best of their life together.

When Bophundlovu reached retirement age and Mama once again became the primary breadwinner the only work available to her was labouring. Mama was paid the equivalent of four Australian dollars a month to walk behind the combine harvester with a handful of other women, picking up any useful remnants of the crop that the huge machine left behind. While money was always scarce and the life in Itsoseng dry and barren, Mama enjoyed being with her children and grandchildren, as she and her husband lived in the shack next to Tshidi's. Tshidi went on to have seven children, six of whom survived. A two-year-old daughter was allegedly lost to witchcraft, a cruel but common occurrence in Africa.

After Bophundlovu's death, Mama continued to live in Itsoseng, raising Doki and Willie and lending a hand with Tshidi's children. Tshidi and Reggie's two-room tin shack was like a sauna in the hot summer months and a fridge in winter. Itsoseng suffered from extreme temperatures, being located in a semidesert area of the North West Province. Mama's house was slightly larger than Tshidi's, with two bedrooms, a lounge room and a kitchen. Both homes were made of tin, walls and roofs alike, with no insulation and no electricity, running water or sanitation inside. Water was fetched from a tap in the dusty yard and the toilet was a pit latrine dug out the back. There were one or two trees in each yard that the family gathered under in the summer heat. Mama attempted to grow a small vegetable garden with corn (known locally as mealies), spinach and tomatoes. As Tshidi's family grew, the older children moved across to Mama's house where there was more room.

Mama eventually left her farm labouring job when she found domestic work in Itsoseng. Her black employer worked in a government department in the homeland structure and wanted someone to clean house and look after her two small children. Mama worked for her six days a week, up to twelve hours a day, until her retirement. Thankfully, her employer treated her with respect and would often help out with clothes and food for the children still in Mama's care. Mama also had the house to continue to pay off, in small monthly instalments. Around the time Mama became a domestic worker again, Reggie had an accident at work, losing his sight in one eye. He never received compensation nor was he able to keep his job. This left Mama as the sole breadwinner for both families. So life continued as it always had, with lots of love and little else.

This was where Mama was when we first met. What surprised me was her continued graciousness despite the hardship in her life. She still believes in a loving God who blesses her life with many gifts and so she holds her life, and its many griefs, lightly and has no bitterness for anyone, black or white. She and women like her, as they say in Africa, hold up the sky.