My Children! My Africa! Page 5
ISABEL: Right, if that’s the way you want it . . . (From her notebook) Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen . . . who else?
THAMI: I’m sorry. I know you’re only trying to help but you’ve got to understand that it’s not just a personal issue between him and me. That would be easy. I don’t think I would care then. Just wait for the end of the year and then get out of that classroom and that school as fast as I can. But there is more to it than that. I’ve told you before: sitting in a classroom doesn’t mean the same thing to me that it does to you. That classroom is a political reality in my life—it’s a part of the whole political system we’re up against and Mr. M has chosen to identify himself with it.
ISABEL (Trying a new tack): All right. I believe you. I accept everything you said . . . about him, your relationship, the situation . . . no arguments. Okay? But doesn’t all of that only make it still more important that the two of you start talking to each other? I know he wants to, but he doesn’t know how to start. It’s so sad . . . because I can see him trying to reach out to you. Show him how it’s done. Make the first move. Oh Thami, don’t let it go wrong between the two of you. That’s just about the worst thing I could imagine. We all need each other.
THAMI: I don’t need him.
ISABEL: I think you do, just as much as he—
THAMI: Don’t tell me what I need, Isabel! And stop telling me what to do! You don’t know what my life is about, so keep your advice to yourself.
ISABEL: I’m sorry. I don’t mean to interfere. I thought we were a team and that what involved you two concerned me as well. I’ll mind my own business in future. (She is deeply hurt. She collects her things) Let’s leave it at that then. See you next week . . . I hope!
(Starts to leave, stops, returns and confronts him) You used the word friendship a few minutes ago. It’s a beautiful word and I’ll do anything to make it true for us. But don’t let’s cheat Thami. If we can’t be open and honest with each other and say what is in our hearts, we’ve got no right to use it. (She leaves)
SCENE 6
Thami alone.
THAMI (Singing):
Masiye Masiye Skolweni
Masiye Masiye Skolweni
Eskolweni Sasakhaya
Eskolweni Sasakhaya (Repeat)
Gongo Gongo
lyakhala Intsimbi
Gongo Gongo
lyakhala Intsimbi
(Translating)
Come, come, let’s go to school
Let’s go to our very own school
Gongo Gongo
The bell is ringing
Gongo Gongo
The bell is calling!
Singing that at the top of his voice and holding his slate under his arm, seven-year-old Thami Mbikwana marched proudly with the other children every morning into his classroom.
Gongo Gongo
The school bell is ringing!
And what a wonderful sound that was for me. Starting with the little farm school, I remember my school bells like beautiful voices calling to me all through my childhood . . . and I came running when they did. You should have seen me man. In junior school I was the first one at the gates every morning. I was waiting there when the caretaker came to unlock them. Oh yes! Young Thami was a very eager scholar. And what made it even better, he was also one of the clever ones. “A most particularly promising pupil” is how one of my school reports described me. My first real scholastic achievement was a composition I wrote about myself in Standard Two. Not only did it get me top marks in the class, the teacher was so proud of me, she made me read it out to the whole school at assembly.
(His composition) “The story of my life so far. By Thami Mbikwana. The story of my life so far is not yet finished because I am only ten years old and I am going to live a long long time. I come from Kingwilliamstown. My father is Amos Mbikwana and he works very hard for the baas on the railway. I am also going to work very hard and get good marks in all my classes and make my teacher very happy. The story of my life so far has also got a very happy ending because when I am big I am going tc be a doctor so that I can help my people. I will drive to the hospital every day in a big, white ambulance full of nurses. I will make black people better free of charge. The white people must pay me for my medicine because they have got lots of money. That way I will also get lots of money. My mother and my father will stop working and come and live with me in a big house. That is the story of my life up to where I am in Standard Two.”
I must bring my story up to date because there have been some changes and developments since little Thami wrote those hopeful words eight years ago. To start with I don’t think I want to be a doctor anymore. That praiseworthy ambition has unfortunately died in me. It still upsets me very much when I think about the pain and suffering of my people, but I realize now that what causes most of it is not an illness that can be cured by the pills and bottles of medicine they hand out at the clinic. I don’t need to go to university to learn what my people really need is a strong double-dose of that traditional old Xhosa remedy called “Inkululeko.” Freedom. So right now I’m not sure what I want to be anymore. It’s hard, you see, for us “bright young blacks” to dream about wonderful careers as doctors, or lawyers, when we keep waking up in a world which doesn’t allow the majority of our people any dreams at all. But to get back to my composition, I did try my best to keep that promise I made in it. For a long time—Standard Three, Standard Four, Standard Five—I did work very hard and I did get good marks in all my subjects. This “most particularly promising pupil” made a lot of teachers very happy.
I’m sorry to say but I can’t do it anymore. I have tried very hard, believe me, but it is not as simple and easy as it used to be to sit behind that desk and listen to the Teacher. That little world of the classroom where I used to be happy, where they used to pat me on the head and say: “Little Thami, you’ll go far!”—that little room of wonderful promises, where I used to feel so safe, has become a place I don’t trust anymore. Now I sit at my desk like an animal that has smelt danger, heard something moving in the bushes and knows it must be very, very careful.
At the beginning of this year the Inspector of Bantu Schools in the Cape Midlands Region, Mr. Dawid Grobbelaar—he makes us call him Oom Dawie—came to give us Standard Tens his usual pep talk. He does it every year. We know Oom Dawie well. He’s been coming to Zolile for a long time. When he walked into our classroom we all jumped up as usual but he didn’t want any of that. “Sit, sit. I’m not a bloody sergeant major.” Oom Dawie believes he knows how to talk to us. He loosened his tie, took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. It was a very hot day.
“Dis better. Nou kan ons lekker gesels. Boys and girls or maybe I should say ‘young men’ and ‘young women’ now, because you are coming to the end of your time behind those desks . . . you are special! You are the elite! We have educated you because we want you to be major shareholders in the future of this wonderful Republic of ours. In fact, we want all the peoples of South Africa to share in that future . . . black, white, brown, yellow, and if there are some green ones out there, then them as well.” Ho! Ho! Ho!
I don’t remember much about what he said after that because my head was trying to deal with that one word: the Future! He kept using it . . . “our future,” “the country’s future,” “a wonderful future of peace and prosperity.” What does he really mean, I kept asking myself. Why does my heart go hard and tight as a stone when he says it? I look around me in the location at the men and women who went out into that “wonderful future” before me. What do I see? Happy and contented shareholders in this exciting enterprise called the Republic of South Africa? No. I see a generation of tired, defeated men and women crawling back to their miserable little pondoks at the end of a day’s work for the white baas or madam. And those are the lucky ones. They’ve at least got work. Most of them are just sitting around wasting away their lives while they wait helplessly for a miracle to feed their families, a miracle that never comes.
Do you understand me, good people? Do you understand now why it is not as easy as it used to be to sit behind that desk and learn only what Oom Dawie has decided I must know? My head is rebellious. It refuses now to remember when the Dutch landed, and the Huguenots landed, and the British landed. It has already forgotten when the Old Union became the proud young Republic. But it does know what happened in Kliptown in 1955, in Sharpeville on twenty-first March i960 and in Soweto on the sixteenth of June 1976. Do you? Better find out because those are dates your children will have to learn one day. We don’t need Zolile classrooms anymore. We know now what they really are—traps which have been carefully set to catch our minds, our souls. No, good people. We have woken up at last. We have found another school—the streets, the little rooms, the funeral parlors of the location—anywhere the people meet and whisper names we have been told to forget, the dates of events they try to tell us never happened, and the speeches they try to say were never made.
Those are the lessons we are eager and proud to learn, because they are lessons about our history, about our heroes. But the time for whispering them is past. Tomorrow we start shouting.
AMANDLA!
ACT
TWO
SCENE 1
Isabel and Thami. Isabel has books and papers. From behind a relaxed and easy manner, she watches Thami carefully.
ISABEL: What I’ve done is write out a sort of condensed biography of all of them . . . you know, the usual stuff . . . date of birth, where they were born, where they died, who they married . . . et cetera, et cetera. My dad made copies for you and Mr. M. Sit. (Hands over a set of papers to Thami) You okay?
THAMI: Ja, ja.
ISABEL: For example . . . (Reading) Bronte sisters . . . I lumped them all together . . . Charlotte 1816–1855; Emily 1818–1848; Anne 1820–1849. . . . Can you believe that? Not one of them reached the age of forty. Anne died when she was twenty-nine, Emily when she was thirty, and Charlotte reached the ripe old age of thirty-nine! Family home: Haworth, Yorkshire. First publication a joint volume of verse . . . Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. All novels published under these nom de plumes. Charlotte the most prolific . . . (Abandoning the notes) Why am I doing this? You’re not listening to me.
THAMI: Sorry.
ISABEL (She waits for more, but that is all she gets): So? Should I carry on wasting my breath or do you want to say something?
THAMI: No, I must talk.
ISABEL: Good. I’m ready to listen.
THAMI: I don’t know where to begin.
ISABEL: The deep end. Take my advice, go to the deep end and just jump right in. That’s how I learnt to swim.
THAMI: NO. I want to speak carefully because I don’t want you to get the wrong ideas about what’s happening and what I’m going to say. It’s not like it’s your fault, that it’s because of anything you said or did . . . you know what I mean?
ISABEL: You don’t want me to take personally whatever it is you are finding so hard to tell me.
THAMI: That’s right. It’s not about you and me personally. I’ve had a good time with you Isabel.
ISABEL: And I’ve had an important one with you.
THAMI: If it was just you and me, there wouldn’t be a problem.
ISABEL: We’ve got a problem have we?
THAMI: I have.
ISABEL (Losing patience): Oh for God’s sake Thami. Stop trying to spare my feelings and just say it. If you are trying to tell me that I’ve been wasting my breath for a lot longer than just this afternoon . . . just go ahead and say it! I’m not a child. I can take it. Because that is what you are trying to tell me isn’t it? That it’s all off.
THAMI: Yes.
ISABEL: The great literary quiz team is no more. You are pulling out of the competition.
THAMI: Yes.
ISABEL: You shouldn’t have made it so hard for yourself
Thami. It doesn’t come as all that big a surprise. I’ve had a feeling that something was going to go wrong somewhere.
Been a strange time these past few weeks hasn’t it? At home, at school, in the shop . . . everywhere! Things I’ve been seeing and doing my whole life, just don’t feel right anymore. Like my Saturday chats with Samuel—I told you about him remember, he delivers for my dad—well you should have heard the last one. It was excruciating. It felt so false, and forced, and when I listened to what I was saying and how I was saying it . . . oh my God! Sounded as if I thought I was talking to a ten-year-old. Halfway through our misery my dad barged in and told me not to waste Samuel’s time because he had work to do which of course led to a flaming row between me and my dad. . . . Am I changing Thami? My dad says I am.
THAMI: In what way?
ISABEL: Forget it. The only thing I do know at this moment is that I don’t very much like the way anything feels right now, starting with myself. So have you told Mr. M yet?
THAMI: No.
ISABEL: Good luck. I don’t envy you that little conversation. If I’m finding the news a bit hard to digest, I don’t know what he is going to do with it. I’ve just got to accept it. I doubt very much if he will.
THAMI: He’s got no choice Isabel. I’ve decided and that’s the end of it.
ISABEL: So do you think we can at least talk about it? Help me to understand? Because to be absolutely honest with you Thami I don’t think I do. You’re not the only one with a problem. What Mr. M had to say about the team and the whole idea made a hell of a lot of sense to me. You owe it to me Thami. A lot more than just my spare time is involved.
THAMI: Talk about what? Don’t you know what is going on?
ISABEL: Don’t be stupid Thami! Of course I do! You’d have to be pretty dumb not to know that the dreaded “unrest” has finally reached us as well.
THAMI: We don’t call it that. Our word for it is “Isiqalo” . . . The Beginning.
ISABEL: All right then, “The Beginning.” I don’t care what it’s called. All I’m asking you to do is explain to me how the two of us learning some poetry, cramming in potted bios . . . interferes with all of that.
THAMI: Please just calm down and listen to me! I know you’re angry and I don’t blame you. I would be as well. But you must understand that pulling out of this competition is just a small side issue. There was a meeting in the location last night. It was decided to call for a general stay-at-home. We start boycotting classes tomorrow as part of that campaign.
ISABEL: Does Mr. M know about all of this?
THAMI: I think he does now.
ISABEL: Wasn’t he at that meeting?
THAMI: The meeting was organized by the Comrades. He
wasn’t welcome.
ISABEL: Because his ideas are old-fashioned.
THAMI: Yes.
ISABEL: School boycott! Comrades! So our safe, contented little Camdeboo is really going to find out what it’s all about. How long do you think it will last?
THAMI: I don’t know. It’s hard to say.
ISABEL: A week.
THAMI: No. It will be longer.
ISABEL: A month? Two months?
THAMI: We’ll go back to school when the authorities scrap
Bantu Education and recognize and negotiate with Stude
nt Committees. That was the resolution last night.
ISABEL: But when the boycott and . . . you know . . . everything is all over could we carry on then, if there was still time?
THAMI: I haven’t thought about that.
ISABEL: So think about it. Please.
THAMI (Nervous about a commitment): It’s hard to say Isabel . . . but ja . . . maybe we could . . .I’m not sure.
ISABEL: Not much enthusiasm there, Mr. Mbikwana! You’re right. Why worry about a stupid competition. It will most probably be too late anyway. So that’s it then. Let’s just say we gave ourselves a crash course in English literature.
Could have done a lot worse with our spare time, couldn’t we? I enjoyed myself. I read a lot of beautiful poetry I might never have got around to. (Uncertain of herself) It doesn’t mean the end of everything though does it? I mean, we can go on meeting, just as friends?
THAMI (Warily): When?
ISABEL: Oh . . . I mean, you know, like anytime. Next week! (Pause) I’m not talking about the competition Thami. I accept that it’s dead. I think it’s a pity . . . but so what. I’m talking now about you and me just as friends.
(She waits. She realizes. She collects herself) So our friendship is an old-fashioned idea after all. Well don’t waste your time here. You better get going and look after . . . whatever it is that’s beginning. And good luck!
Thami starts to go.
No! Thami come back here!! (Struggling ineffectually to control her anger and pain) There is something very stupid somewhere and it’s most probably me but I can’t help it . . . it just doesn’t make sense! I know it does to you and I’m sure it’s just my white selfishness and ignorance that is stopping me from understanding but it still doesn’t make sense. Why can’t we go on seeing each other and meeting as friends? Tell me what is wrong with our friendship?
THAMI: You’re putting words in my mouth Isabel. I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it. But others won’t see it the way we do.
ISABEL: Who? Your Comrades?