Zakes Mda - Ways of Dying

‘I am not working for them, but for my people.’

‘I don’t read newspapers, so I do not know how your son died. But I am prepared to fight with you, Noria.’

Vutha’s second death. It all started with the last massacre experienced by the residents of the settlement. Perhaps we should say that it actually began with his involvement in what we call the struggle. At the age of five, Vutha was already a veteran of many political demonstrations. He was an expert at dancing the freedom dance, and at chanting the names of the leaders who must be revered, and of the sell-outs who must be destroyed. He could recite the Liberation Code and the Declaration of the People’s Rights. Of course, he did not understand a single word, since it was all in English. He mispronounced most of the words, too. He also knew all the songs. Even when he was playing with mud in the streets, or with wire cars with the other children, he could be heard singing about freedom, and about the heroic deeds of the armed wing of the people’s movement. He, of course, was not displaying any particular precociousness in this regard. All the children of the settlement, even those younger than Vutha, were (and still are) well-versed in these matters.

Noria was very proud of her son’s political involvement. She also was very active in demonstrations. She and her friend, ’Malehlohonolo, never missed a single demonstration. Even though ’Malehlohonolo was a washerwoman in the city, she would arrange her schedule around demonstrations and other political activities in the settlement. For her, the struggle came first.

When ’Malehlohonolo went to work in the city, she left her four-year-old daughter, Danisa, with Noria. Danisa played together with Vutha in the mud. They built mud houses, in which they baked mud pies.

They sang freedom songs, and danced the freedom dance. Sometimes Vutha, who was a year older than Danisa, would bully and slap her. She would cry and go to report to Auntie Noria. Auntie Noria would be angry with Vutha, and she would spank him.

‘Vutha, you don’t know how to play with other children. I’ll beat you until your buttocks are sour.’

After the spanking, Vutha would run away crying. He would then throw stones at the shack, while singing a freedom song with the message that his mother was a sell-out who should be destroyed along with the tribal chief. Noria would then chase after him. He knew from experience that he could not outrun his mother. She would catch him and spank him again. At first he would fight back, and bite his mother, while yelling for the whole world to hear that his mother was killing him. But when Noria did not stop, he would beg for forgiveness, and promise that he would never do it again, that he would be a good boy. Danisa would also be screaming at the same time, ‘Auntie Noria! Please forgive The Second, I know he won’t beat me up again’. She would try to bite Noria’s hand in order to save Vutha.

‘The Second is my brother! Please don’t kill him, Auntie Noria!’

After a few minutes they would all forget about the incident, and would be happily singing again. Noria would give them the sugared soft porridge that ’Malehlohonolo left for them in the morning when she went to work.

Although Noria was proud that her son was a political activist, she worried whenever there were demonstrations. Vutha was always in the forefront of the stone throwers. Soldiers and police sometimes came in armoured vehicles to confront the demonstrators. Vutha and his comrades would throw stones at the armoured vehicles. The soldiers, challenged by the full might of deadly five-year-olds armed with arsenals of stones, would open fire. In many cases, children died in these clashes. Noria always warned her son about fighting wars with the soldiers. It was one thing to demonstrate and sing freedom songs and dance the freedom dance. But to face soldiers who were armed with machine guns was much too dangerous. She didn’t want to lose her son for the second time, and she told him so.

‘But mama, I am a cadre. I am a freedom fighter.’

‘It is a good thing to be a cadre, my child. But when the soldiers come, you must not be in the front. Let the older boys, the Young Tigers, be in the frontline.’

‘I am not a coward, mama. I am a Young Tiger too.’

The Young Tigers form the youth wing of the political movement. The core group is usually made up of youths, both male and female, in their late teens and early twenties. However, there are some peripheral members who are much older, sometimes even in their thirties. Younger activists of Vutha’s age generally regard themselves as Young Tigers too.

The Young Tigers always praised Vutha for the strength of his throw. They said that if a stone from his hand hit a policeman, or a soldier, or a hostel vigilante on the head, he would surely fall down. Vutha was proud of this praise that came from older and battle-scarred cadres. It established him as a hero among his peers. Sometimes it went to his head, hence his practising his stone-throwing skills at Noria’s shack whenever she punished him for being a bad boy.

Often the Young Tigers gave the children political education. They taught them about the nature of oppression, the history of the movement, why it became necessary to wage an armed struggle, why it was recently suspended, why the tribal chief was doing such dirty things to the people, and how the government had been forced to unban the political movement of the people and to negotiate with its leaders. Much of this information floated above the heads of the children. This did not bother the Young Tigers. They knew that whatever little information the children grasped, it would make them committed freedom fighters, and upright leaders of tomorrow.

One night, when the settlement was deep in sleep, Battalion 77, supported by migrants from a nearby hostel, invaded. They attacked at random, burning the shacks. When the residents ran out, sometimes naked, the hostel inmates, uttering their famous war-cry, chopped them down with their pangas and stabbed them with their spears. The soldiers of Battalion 77 opened fire. They entered some shacks, and raped the women. They cut the men down after forcing them to watch their wives and daughters being raped. In one shack, a woman who was nine months pregnant was stabbed with a spear. As she lay there dying, she went into labour. Only the head of the baby had appeared, when it was hacked off with a panga by yet another warrior.

The whole exercise took less than thirty minutes, and in no time the invaders had disappeared into thin air. Those who had survived went to report to the police, who only came to investigate three hours after the bloody event.

The next morning, the entire settlement was dotted with smouldering ruins. Fifty-two people were dead, and more than a hundred others were in hospital with serious injuries.

Statements of accusation and denial were flying through the air. The residents and the political movement were pointing a finger at the hostel migrants and Battalion 77. The government was denying that Battalion 77 was involved, and the tribal chief was denying that his followers had anything to do with it. It was a terrible thing that had happened, he said, but anyone who wanted to blame his followers had to come up with evidence. It was not enough to say that someone saw the invaders coming from the direction of the hostels, and that they spoke the language of the tribal chief’s ethnic group. People had the right to speak any language they liked, and this could not, by any stretch of imagination, make them killers. Moreover, the tribal chief added, the residents of the settlement liked to attack the hostel inmates whenever they got the opportunity. Many of his followers had been killed and no one was saying a word about it.