Mbulelo Vizikhungo Mzamane was the first post-apartheid Vice

Chancellor and Rector at the University of Fort Hare. He has taught

English Studies, Comparative Literature, and African Studies at
universities in Southern Africa, West Africa, Europe, America and
Australia and is currently Project Leader and Editor of a National
Department of Arts and Culture initiative to produce an Encyclopedia
of South African Arts, Culture and Heritage (ESAACH).
His published works include Revisioning Africa: Human Righting
Apartheid (2010); Bernard Magubane: My Life and Times (2010), co-
authored with Bernard Magubane; Children of the Diaspora (1996);
Images of the Voiceless: Essays on Popular Culture and the Media (1988),
co-authored with J. Haynes and A. Bamikunle; Children of Soweto (1982);
Mzala (1980); and a children’s book, Race between the Turtles and the
Cheetahs (2004).
He has also edited and co-edited several collections, including
Words Gone Two Soon: A Tribute to Phaswane Mpe and K. Sello Duiker
(2006); Global Voices: Contemporary Literature from the Non-Western World
(1995); Hungry Flames and Other Black South African Stories (1986);
Selected Poems: Sipho Sydney Sepamla (1983); and Selected Poems: Mongane
Wally Serote (1982).
Mzamane was founder chairman of the Institute for the Advance-
ment of Journalism (affiliated to the University of Witwatersrand) and
chairman of the African Arts Fund (under the auspices of the UN
Centre against Apartheid).
He was appointed by President Nelson Mandela and President
Thabo Mbeki to serve on the SABC Board and the Heraldry Council.
He was also appointed by President Jacob Zuma to serve on the
Presidential Review Committee on State-Owned Enterprises.

i
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 Children of Paradise

Mbulelo Vizikhungo Mzamane

iii
Published in 2011 by University of KwaZulu-Natal Press
Private Bag X01
Scottsville 3209
South Africa
Email: books@ukzn.ac.za
Website: www.ukznpress.co.za

© Mbulelo Vizikhungo Mzamane 2011

ISBN: 978-1-86914-208-7

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or
any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from
University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

Editor: Elana Bregin

Proofreader: Juliet Haw
Typesetter: Patricia Comrie
Cover design: Abdul Amien
Front cover photograph: Gallo Images/Die Burger

Typeset in 11.5 pt Bembo Std

Printed and bound by Pinetown Printers

iv
 Contents

Dedication vii

1. Nkomo Street 1
2. The Park 14
3. Congress Matters 23
4. Azikwelwa! 45
5. School 60
6. Song of the Women 67
7. Potatoes 77
8. Children of Paradise 85
9. The Rainbow Children of God 104

Glossary 113

v
viii
 1

Nkomo Street

‘Gerty, I don’t know how many times I must tell you not to send the
child!’ my mother said.
‘Ngumntan’ otheni lo ongathunwya?’ 1 MaNgwanya asked.
‘I’m not saying that you can’t send the child, but not with money.
Don’t come to me when he loses it!’
But that never deterred MaNgwanya, who lived across the street
from us. Her name was Gerty. I don’t know how she got a name like
that one. But everybody called her by her clan name, MaNgwanya,
except my mother, whenever they had an argument.
When my mother was away at work she often left me in Ma-
Ngwanya’s care, especially when she was running late. That meant
I did pretty much as I pleased until my mother came back or
MaNgwanya sent me somewhere, which she frequently did.
MaNgwanya was the social live wire of Nkomo Street, Brakpan
Old Location’s busiest and longest street. She had no husband. My
mother, who liked to pepper her speech with English expressions I
did not always understand, called her a ‘window’ or something.
MaNgwanya didn’t have any visible source of income, either. She didn’t
sell, the way Aunt Violet did. Her place was more like a social club,
where everyone brought their own stuff. She played gramophone

1. What’s with the child that he can’t run errands?

1
2 CHILDREN OF PARADISE

music – slow tunes like ‘Nomvula’ or ‘There’s No Disappointment in

Heaven’ and fast tracks like ‘Hamba Nontsokolo’ that brought everyone
to their feet. Nyawuza, Cuthbert, Playboy and their drinking mates
spent a lot of their time there. Most of them worked as commercial
travellers or sales representatives. Nyawuza delivered cigarettes –
President, Cavalla, Lexington and Gold Dollar – to shops in nearby
locations and then came back to spend the rest of the day at
MaNgwanya’s. He gave the free samples to MaNgwanya, who smoked
like her Dover stove that drove her guests outside whenever she made
fire in it. My mother said Cuthbert stood outside some shop in town
selling shoes but I couldn’t work out what kind of job that was. Playboy
didn’t seem to have anywhere else to go or anything to do. My mother
wouldn’t tell me what he played to get a name like that one. He always
arrived before the others at MaNgwanya’s.
I used to think they were all liquor salesmen, because they arrived
at MaNgwanya’s laden with drinks. My father told me there were no
African liquor salesmen, except in the location beer hall that sold KB.
He said that was short for ‘kaffir beer’. But since he was, himself, short
on explanation, I remained no wiser about how full-grown men with
jobs did nothing but drink and eat meat all day.
They must have been a net drain on the coffers of the companies
for which they worked. They were certainly a constant source of
aggravation to their long-suffering wives. Once, Aunt Priscilla, who
was a nurse at the Far East Rand Non-European Hospital, the same
hospital where my mother worked, came fuming to MaNgwanya’s
house and asked for Nyawuza. I saw him disappear into the toilet at
the corner of the yard. He saw I saw him and placed one finger against
his mouth.
‘I know he is hiding somewhere here!’ Aunt Priscilla told Ma-
Ngwanya. ‘He’s supposed to be doing country. He hasn’t been home
in three days. If people like you didn’t encourage our husbands . . .’
 NKOMO STREET 3

MaNgwanya cut her short: ‘Priscilla, I never once invited your

husband to my house!’
Aunt Priscilla turned to Cuthbert, Playboy and the others: ‘I know
he’s here. Where is he?’
You might have been forgiven for thinking that a terrible plague
– such as our Sunday-school teacher, Ma’am Walaza, told us the Lord
once visited upon the Egyptians when some mean guy called Pharaoh
wouldn’t let the little children of Israel go and play – had smitten them
all deaf and forgetful. Aunt Priscilla left the way she had come, alone
and angry.
No matter how many times their irate wives came to drag them
away from Gerty’s place, like devout churchgoers the libandla 2 (as
Nyawuza and his drinking pals liked to call themselves) always came
back. And then there would be much laughter and celebration.
But sometimes they ran out of drinks. Then MaNgwanya would
call me in from playing in her yard with my dog Mninawe that followed
me everywhere I went. She’d give me a paper bag and a coin wrapped
in paper, as if to keep it clean and send me to pick up some ‘parcel’
further down the street at Aunt Violet’s, who sold. Aunt Violet was
entrepreneurial in other ways as well. She handled the bets for fah-
fee.3 Another of my daily chores was taking MaNgwanya’s bets to Aunt
Violet’s in the morning and going back to check the winning number
in the afternoon. MaNgwanya had sworn me to secrecy and warned
me never to tell my mother. I didn’t; but she did – every time I dropped
her tickey 4 or zuka 5 on the way. Small coins were easy to lose and

2. Congregation
3. Betting on numbers
4. Three pence (pennies)
5. Sixpence
4 CHILDREN OF PARADISE

even when I placed the money carefully in my pocket, there was no

certainty that there wasn’t some small, treacherous hole in there.
MaNgwanya came storming into our yard: ‘He’s been gone for
almost an hour!’
‘Where did you send him?’ my mother asked.
‘I sent him down the road.’
‘Where?’
‘To pick up a parcel from Violet.’
‘Gerty, did you send the child to place your fah-fee bets again?’
‘That was in the morning and he came back.’
‘Did you send him to buy alcohol, then?’
‘Just a smehlane 6 of mahog,7 that’s all! It’s not as if it’s heavy for a
child to carry!’
‘And did you give him money?’
‘Violet doesn’t sell on credit!’
‘Do you ever listen to anything I tell you, kodwa?’8
‘I’ll be back for my parcel,’ MaNgwanya said and went back to her
house, walking like she was herding sheep that were trying to run this
way and that way. She was singing, in an awful falsetto, ‘Unzima
lomthwalo’.9 It was a popular Congress song.
My mother shook her head in despair. It was their regular argument
and varied little. On this occasion, I was listening from the sanctuary
of the fowl run in a corner of our backyard. I had lost the money
before I reached Aunt Violet’s. I’d retraced my steps to see if I’d dropped
it along the way.When I couldn’t find it, I sought refuge in the relative

6. Shebeen alcohol measurement; the smallest bottle

7. Mahogany – the colour of brandy
8. Colloquial speech mannerism; literally, ‘but’
9. This burden is so heavy
 NKOMO STREET 5

safety of the fowl run, my dog Mninawe beside me for company and
comfort.
Since I couldn’t very well sleep in the fowl run and I was dying of
hunger, I had no alternative but to come out of hiding eventually.
‘Where have you been unuka okwenkukhu nje?’10 my mother asked
me, as soon as I set foot on her red and shiny stoep.
‘MaNgwanya sent me,’ I said, afraid to raise my voice.
‘Well, she was here looking for you,’ my mother said. ‘That must
be her, staggering into the yard now.’
My timing was rotten. MaNgwanya walked into the house, huffing
and puffing ferociously like a khuchukhuchu11 engine. Even by the dim
candlelight you could see her grey and cracked legs that she never
oiled.
‘Is he back?’ she asked, as if I wasn’t standing right in front of her.
‘He’s here alright,’ my mother said.
‘Did you bring my parcel?’ MaNgwanya asked me.
I looked at the floor.
‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Will you answer me?’
‘I lost the money on the way,’ I said, so softly I could hardly hear
myself.
‘You lost my whole five shillings and sixpence?’
‘Didn’t I tell you not to give him money?’ my mother said.
‘Who is going to refund me?’ MaNgwanya asked.
‘How many times must I tell you not to send the child with
money?’
Whenever the argument reached that point I knew it was mostly
over, like a Highveld storm that had run its course.

10. Smelling like a chicken

11. Coal engine
6 CHILDREN OF PARADISE

‘Someone is going to pay for this or my name isn’t Gerty!’

MaNgwanya said, fuming out of the house and nearly tripping at the
gate as she zigzagged her way back across the street.
‘Serves you right!’ my mother shouted after her. ‘Maybe next time
you’ll show better sense than to send the child with money!’
The next day MaNgwanya again called me from my play in
the backyard with Mninawe. My mother was away at work and
MaNgwanya was entertaining the usual crowd: Nyawuza, Cuthbert,
Playboy and the rest of the libandla.
She sat me down next to her gramophone with instructions to
rewind it each time it showed signs of slowing down. It was an
impressive His Master’s Voice make, with a winding horn and a picture
of a barking dog like Mninawe. I was also charged with changing the
needle when necessary, replaying the number, or changing the record.
‘Nomvula’, one of the slow numbers, was a new release and a big hit
with location audiences. I played the 78rpm repeatedly to shouts of
‘Awuphinde, mzala!’12
Nyawuza kept the beat by tapping his bad foot from an injury
sustained when he was a herdboy at eKomani. Playboy stood up and
danced with an imaginary partner, singing along:
Nomvula ngiyakuthanda
Ngizokutshela Nomvul’ ungowam’
Ngizokucela ngizokufela
Ngithanda wena Nomvula 13
That went on until the needles were all used up and, to my relief,
MaNgwanya ran out of replacements. She complained that I must have
dropped some of the unused ones from the box but I didn’t hear any

12. Again please, cousin

13. Nomvula, I love you/I’m telling you, Nomvula, you’re mine/I beg you, I’ll die for
you/I love you, Nomvula
 NKOMO STREET 7

of them drop. You could only buy them in town and I was too small
to be sent that far.
I was ready to sprint outside but MaNgwanya had other plans for
me.
‘Go and buy some boerewors from Zulu’s butchery,’ she told me,
before I could so much as take the first step.
Then she spat on the floor, as was her custom when she sent me
somewhere. ‘And you must be back before this dries up!’
She was about to hand me money but thought better of it.
Grabbing hold of me, she put the coin, wrapped in paper, into my
trouser pocket instead. ‘Don’t go yet!’ she yelled, seeing me about to
dash out. She fetched a safety pin and fastened the pocket of my khaki
shorts: ‘Now you can go.’
I bolted out like a racehorse from the stocks.
‘There’s one shilling and sixpence in your pocket,’ she shouted
after me. ‘Don’t you go and lose it!’
The shops were on Mogotsi Street. I went up Nkomo, down
Mbambo and across to Mogotsi. I didn’t notice my dog Mninawe
following me until I was on my way back again.
On Mbambo Street a football match was starting. They were setting
up goalposts. I stopped to play.
A funeral procession went past. We all sat down as it wound its
way slowly up Mbambo and into Magagula, on the way to All Saints
Anglican Church.
I had shoes on because my parents never allowed me to walk
barefoot when I left home. But no one in their right senses played
football with a tennis ball while wearing shoes. The shoes came in
handy, though, in marking out goalposts. We put one shoe on each
side and the goalkeeper stood between them. To score, you had to
kick the ball past the goalkeeper and between the shoes. Since we had
no referee, judging whether the ball had gone between the shoes or
8 CHILDREN OF PARADISE

over one shoe could be cause for lively dispute. But love for the
beautiful game usually prevailed to ensure that we reached compromise
solutions that even the great King Solomon, had he been referee, could
never have devised. Ma’am Walaza taught us all about King Solomon,
and how he tried to cut babies in half. I really felt for the children of
Israel.
I put the meat parcel under one of my shoes and under the other,
Toko placed his prized shirt that his mother had brought him from
her European employers. That way, the goalposts became more visible.
I could not tear myself away from the game, which went on
interminably, until the other boys started to go home one by one.
When there was no one left, I went to pick up my shoes and left for
home. At the corner of Nkomo and Mbambo, just near the single
men’s quarters we called emaSingilini, I remembered the meat parcel
and went back to fetch it. But it wasn’t there any more.
Toko, who had left his shirt behind, came by.
‘Did you see the meat I put here?’ I asked him.
‘Wrapped in brown paper?’
‘Yes. Did you see it?’
‘That’s the brown paper your dog was playing with,’ he said.
Ooh, boy! The fowl run was beckoning. My shoes under my
armpits, I went home by a roundabout route that took me down
Kgoadi Street. I sneaked into our backyard across the fence between
our house and Sipho’s, and headed for the fowl run.
My mother was back from work. I could hear the usual argument
going on in the living room.
‘Isn’t he back yet?’ MaNgwanya kept asking.
‘Gerty, where did you send the child this time?’
‘I sent him to the shops,’ MaNgwanya said.
‘And you gave him money again?’
‘I don’t buy on credit!’
 NKOMO STREET 9

‘You gave him money!’

‘Why do you keep repeating that?’
‘Because you’re stubborn as a she-goat and deaf as a stone!’
‘Can you give me another aspirin?’
‘Why do drinking people have such little sense? Gerty, do you
know what they say about people who carry water on their heads in
leaking buckets?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You shouldn’t be surprised when your backside gets wet.’
Since they were so busy arguing I felt it was safe to enter. I sneaked
in through the back door and tip-toed to my bedroom. Mninawe
joined me and snuggled most contentedly beside me. I removed a
sticking piece of brown paper from his mouth and we napped.
It was difficult not to get into trouble with MaNgwanya, no matter
how hard I tried. Only once did I manage to escape her wrath. That
was the time Toko came to my rescue; but then he had caused the
trouble in the first place.
It was a day when MaNgwanya was busy entertaining as usual. I
was feeling out of sorts because it was mid-morning already and after
placing her bet at Aunt Violet’s I’d wanted to be out playing instead of
stuck inside operating the gramophone. Nyawuza, Cuthbert, Playboy
and their friends had brought meat but MaNgwanya had run out of
coal. In the morning, she’d missed the coal vendor, Sibanyoni, whose
horse-drawn cart wouldn’t hit the streets again until late afternoon. I
watched her take out her primus stove and shake it; there was no
paraffin, either.
‘Thixo onofefe!’14 she swore out loud, in a way my parents would
have disapproved of.

14. Gracious Lord!

10 CHILDREN OF PARADISE

She grabbed me before I could escape, wrapped a sixpence coin

in paper and put it in my pocket, which she tied with the usual safety
pin. She gave me an empty paraffin bottle, spat on the floor, and sent
me off to the shops.
‘But that dog stays behind,’ she said, shutting a visibly upset
Mninawe in the house. ‘And don’t lose my money!’
Why wouldn’t she allow my dog to go with me? Dogs didn’t drink
paraffin! I was smarting from the separation.
I didn’t notice Toko until I nearly bumped right into him at the
corner of Nkomo and Mbambo streets.
‘What’s that you’re carrying?’ he asked me.
‘Paraffin bottle,’ I told him.
‘What’s it for?’
‘Paraffin,’ I said, a little annoyed.
Sometimes Toko acted like he was related to Wys Hom.15 That was
the mental guy in the location who had been a soldier in the war.
He’d suffered head injuries in battle and they put a zinc plate in his
head. In all weather he wore an old military overcoat and did military
drills up and down Nkomo Street. Approaching cars slowed as he
pointed his marching stick at each one, stuttering like a machine gun,
while a cheering crowd of children shouted ‘wys hom’ – his favourite
expression when he was showing off things he’d learnt as a soldier.
Toko offered to come with me to the shops.
‘Did you bring your marbles?’ he asked me.
I took them out of my other pocket, the one that MaNgwanya
hadn’t tied. Toko brought out his, too and we played until he’d won
all my marbles. Then we left for the shops.
‘How much paraffin did she send you to buy?’ he asked, when we
reached Zulu’s shop.

15. Show him

 NKOMO STREET 11

I untied the safety pin from my pocket and unfolded the sixpence.
‘Let me buy it for you,’ Toko offered.
I handed him the money. But Toko bought paraffin worth a tickey
only. When I complained he told me not to worry, he’d show me
how to top up the bottle. With the change he bought two fat cakes
and mangola.16 We walked out and feasted happily on the way home.
At the communal water tap near to his house,Toko stopped to top
up the paraffin.
‘It’s the same thing,’ he told me.
I had my doubts. But Toko was worldly-wise beyond his years and
inspired confidence even in the most hopeless situations.
‘Aren’t you coming?’ I asked him as he gave me back the paraffin
bottle.
He shook his head. ‘I’ll wait for you at home,’ he said, jumping the
fence as usual instead of going in by the gate.
I got back without mishap and handed MaNgwanya the paraffin
bottle. I watched her pour the liquid into the primus stove and waited
to see what would happen. Nothing did. She struck match after match
but the primus stove wouldn’t light. She emptied the entire match
box, cursing all the while in a way that made my mother clap me on
the head whenever I pretended I was MaNgwanya and spoke like
that.
‘Where did you buy this paraffin?’ MaNgwanya asked me.
I told her.
‘They’re such bloody cheats these days, they’ll sell you water. Thixo
wa MaNgwanya!’17 I held my breath, lest I betray anything. But without

16. Cheap sausage made from discarded pieces of meat

17. God of the Ngwanya clan
12 CHILDREN OF PARADISE

so much as a glance in my direction, she reached for another empty

bottle. ‘Go and ask Violet for some paraffin.’
Aunt Violet poured her half a bottle from a gallon tin.
I carried it back. Then dashed out again to find Toko.
He seemed surprised to see me, eyeing me as if I had just jumped
out of an aeroplane, like the soldiers we sometimes watched on the
stretch of open veld outside the location, astonished that they didn’t
break their necks upon landing.
‘Utheni?’18 he asked me, and looked disappointed when I only
shrugged.
We played for a while and I tried to win back the marbles I had
lost earlier, but without success.
We took little notice of the sun as it went to sleep. Darkness was
fast approaching when I finally went back to MaNgwanya’s house.
My mother was back from work and had gone over to Ma-
Ngwanya’s to fetch me. I could hear them shouting at each other when
I was still some distance away.
‘Where is he?’ MaNgwanya was saying.
‘What do you mean where is he? I left him in your care!’
‘He was here only a moment ago!’
‘Gerty, did you send him somewhere?’
‘Me? Where would I send the child at this time of the day?’
Neither of them saw me coming until Mninawe jumped up at my
mother.
‘Oh, there he is,’ MaNgwanya said. ‘I knew he was round here
somewhere!’
My mother took hold of my arm and we walked out of Ma-
Ngwanya’s yard.

18. What did she say?

 NKOMO STREET 13

At the communal water tap near MaNgwanya’s house, a crowd of

women and children had gathered to fetch water. MaKhumalo, our
next-door neighbour, was among them, the latest baby strapped to
her back and several of her other small children around her feet. Some
were very light-skinned, like their mother, others very dark, like their
father, with an interesting variety of shades between.
Some of the older women were throwing words of advice at
MaKhumalo as we walked past.
‘I smear paraffin on the heads of mine; no lice can withstand
paraffin,’ one of them was saying.
‘And for iintshuluba,19 nothing can beat castor oil,’ said another.
Spotting my mother, she called to her: ‘Na ka20 Baba Boy, what
do you give for izintshangube?’21
‘I give Calamine lotion,’ my mother answered.
We crossed the street to our house.

19. Tapeworm
20. Mother of
21. Round worm