Zakes Mda: The Heart of Redness

“This is my seventh year waiting. My wife came here as a child. . she is many years younger than me. But she now gets nkamnkam. I am very very old, but the government refuses to give me my pension.”

Then he goes into a litany of the troubles he has gone through working for this country. He began to work half a century ago at a textile factory in East London, then at a dairy, then at a blanket factory, then. . He even worked at the docks in Cape Town for more than eight years.

He became permanently crippled — although it is impossible to see any sign of that now — when his sister pushed him down a donga, shouting, “When are you going to mourn for your father?” Since then he has never been able to work again.

Why won’t the government give him nkamnkam like all the old men and women of South Africa who are on old-age pensions today? Is it fair that now, even though ravines of maturity run wild on his face, he should still not receive any nkamnkam?

“Maybe it is not fair,” says Dalton. “But how are you going to pay me since you get no nkamnkam? Are you going to take your wife’s money to pay for your tobacco and luxury items like canned beef?”

“Did you not hear? My daughter is now the principal. I’ll pay you.”

It is late in the afternoon when Bhonco arrives home. NoPetticoat is busy cooking the evening umphokoqo —the maize porridge that is specially eaten with sour milk — on the Primus stove. When the white man has smiled — in other words, when NoPetticoat has been paid at the Blue Flamingo or has received her nkamnkam — she cooks on the Primus stove rather than outside with a three-legged pot.

“I didn’t know that the white man has smiled at you,” says Bhonco, as he puts the can of corned beef on the table. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have humiliated myself begging for ityala from that uppity Dalton.”

Before NoPetticoat can admonish him for piling debt on their shoulders, Xoliswa Ximiya walks in. She looks like the “mistress” she is — which is what pupils call unmarried female teachers — in a navy-blue two-piece costume with a white frilly blouse. She has her father’s bone structure, and is quite tall and well proportioned — which is good if you want to be a model in Johannesburg, but works against you in a village where men prefer their women plump and juicy. And indeed this is the language they use when they describe them, as if they are talking about a piece of meat. She has a charmingly triste face, and brown-dyed hair that she braids with extensions in Butterworth. But people never stop wondering how she is able to walk among the rocks and gorges of Qolorha-by-Sea in those high heels.

She has just come to see how her parents are doing. She takes it as an obligation to see them occasionally. Her parents — especially her mother — were not happy when she moved out a year ago to stay in a two-room staff house in the schoolyard. At first they insisted that no unmarried daughter of theirs would live alone in her own house. It was unheard of. They had to relent when she concocted something to the effect that as a senior teacher she had to live at school or lose her job. It really frustrates her that her parents insist on treating her like a child.

Bhonco and NoPetticoat are all over Xoliswa Ximiya, congratulating her on her promotion.

“You are going to be the best principal that school has ever had,” says her father proudly. “At least you’ll be better than that uncircumcised boy the community kicked out.”

Such talk makes Xoliswa Ximiya uncomfortable. But she ignores it and announces that although she appreciates the honor of being principal of her alma matter, she would very much like to work for the government.

“But you are working for the government now as a headmistress, are you not?” says Bhonco.

“As a teacher are you not being paid by the government?” echoes NoPetticoat.

“I want to be a civil servant. I want to work for the Ministry of Education in Pretoria, or at the very least in Bisho.”

“Bisho! Do you know where Bisho is from here? And Pretoria! Pretoria! No one in our family has ever been there,” cries Bhonco. He is choking with anger.

“You want to kill your father?” asks NoPetticoat.

“I know where Bisho is, father,” responds the daughter in a cold, sarcastic tone. “It is the capital town of our province. I have been there many times. And Pretoria is the capital city of our country. I have not been to Pretoria, but I have been much farther, father, where none of my family has ever been. I have been to America. . across the oceans.”

“You see, Bhonco, you should never have allowed this child to take that scholarship to America,” says NoPetticoat tiredly.

“So now it’s my fault, NoPetticoat?”

“If you like towns and cities so much, my child, we have never stopped you from visiting Centani or even Butterworth.” NoPetticoat tries to strike a compromise.

“I do not care for towns and cities, mother. Anyway, Centani is just a big village and Butterworth is a small town. Don’t you understand? People I have been to school with are earning a lot of money as directors of departments in the civil service. I am sitting here in this village, with all my education, earning peanuts as a schoolteacher. I am going. I must go from this stifling village. I have made applications. As soon as I get a job I am going,” says Xoliswa Ximiya with finality.

It is an ungrateful night, and sleep refuses to come to Bhonco. His eyelids are heavy, but sleep just won’t come. Oh, why do children ever grow up? How huggable they are when they are little boys and girls, when their parents’ word is still gospel, before the poison of the world contaminates their heads. He envies NoPetticoat, who can sleep and snore in the midst of such turbulence.

On nights like this his scars become itchy. He rubs them a bit. He cannot reach them properly, because they cover his back. And the person who usually helps him is fast asleep. Why he has to be burdened with the scars of history, he does not understand. Perhaps that’s what prompted him to bring the Cult of the Unbelievers back from the recesses of time.

Yes, Bhonco carries the scars that were inflicted on his great-grandfather, Twin-Twin, by men who flogged him after he had been identified as a wizard by Prophet Mlanjeni, the Man of the River. Every first boy-child in subsequent generations of Twin-Twin’s tree is born with the scars. Even those of the Middle Generations, their first males carried the scars.

You can give Twin-Twin any name. You can call him anything. But a wizard he was not. Bhonco is adamant about that. Twin-Twin was a naughty man. Even after he died he became a naughty ancestor. Often he showed himself naked to groups of women gathering wood on the hillside or washing clothes in a stream. He was like that in life too. He loved women. He had a generous heart for amabhinqa , the female ones. But Prophet Mlanjeni got it all wrong. Twin-Twin was not a wizard.

The ancestor’s name was Xikixa. A patriarch and a patrician of the Great Place of King Sarhili. He was the father of the twins, Twin and Twin-Twin. Twin-Twin was the first of the twins to be born, so according to custom he was the younger. The older twin is the one who is the last to kick the doors of the womb and to breathe the air that has already been breathed by the younger brother.

Twin and Twin-Twin were like one person. Even their voice was one. Mothers who eyed them for their daughters could not tell one from the other. And because they were close to each other, like saliva is to the tongue, they relished playing tricks on the maidens.

The patriarch lived his life with dignity, and brought up his children to fear and respect Qamata, or Mvelingqangi, the great god of all men and women, and to pay homage to those who are in the ground — the ancestors.