LIFE HISTORY OF ZABANGUNI KHUZWAYO

The sun was already up and I went to piss behind one of the huts. It was in a rural area. There were round huts with grass roofs everywhere. My mom was in the kitchen preparing the fire. The family house was built on a hill. There was a huge garden around the house. If you look downhill you see a river - a river with lots of fishes. Everybody used to go there to fetch water, to do the washing or to bath. The cows, goats, pigs, donkeys, even the birds in the sky, used to go there. It was one of my favourite places in the village. It was not only the river. There were hills, and trees, and a mountain called Inwabe.

My father lived far away in the township where he was working as a policeman. The people in the village respected him. He used to come home mostly at the end of every month. Sometimes he came on special occasions, bringing his mother a box of assorted cakes, sweets, fruits and a two liter bottle of squash. My father was very tall, dark, round and had a handsome face, but he was very fat and used to eat like a pig. He demanded food at any time. He had a black belt in karate and was driving a white car, an old Volvo Manual. I was very proud of him as my father.

My mother was very unhappy and always busy. The whole family called her Makoti.

My grandmother had a very big home. It was two round huts with grass rooftops, and a four-room building and a yard and there was a kraal and a place for chickens and pigs. My granny was very dark. She had very long gray hair. She was a very clean person and a good member of the Roman Catholic Church. The whole family went to church every Sunday. This was a very boring event for me, because we traveled a long way uphill on foot.

On the way we passed a river and drank some water. Then when we got to church we washed our feet, because of the dust or mud. But the worse part was when the church started. There was hardly ever a smile on the shrinking face of the old priest. He will make everybody pray on their knees for hours. I did not believe that the priest was holy, but I kept it all inside. He repeated the same things every Sunday. To me he didn’t look like a nice person. I used to think of him as a ghost that lived in the church.

After the church we went home and we had lunch. My mother always looked unhappy, except when she played with my sister and me. My sister was six years older than me. She was in school already. I was between four and five years of age and I couldn’t wait to go to school. The only time I used to see my mom very happy was when a short woman with a thin figure and a gravel face visited her. They used to talk about how their husbands beat them up, and how their in-laws who had no mercy towards them, treated them.

The whole Khuzwayo family was very proud, and the most educated in the village. The family consisted of my grandmother with three daughters and two sons. Her husband died. One of her sons was my father, the other son, the eldest, stayed across his mother’s house with his wife and four kids. Her two daughters were happily married with rich and educated husbands. One was studying at a college to be a teacher. My mother was not educated and her mother was a sangoma, a traditional doctor and a psychic.

My sister was already in primary school. I wish I was in school as well, but I was still too young. I was able to count up to ten, though, and could draw in the sand. Everybody that came to visit my family said I look like my father. This made me very proud, because my father was educated, and he had a house in the township, and everybody saluted him and called him sayitsheni (“sergeant”). I wanted to grow up and be like him. I wanted to live in the township and have my own car.

One morning as I entered my mother’s room she was crying. “Mommy, why are you crying and why are your eyes blue?”

“Zaza, you won’t understand.”

“Please, tell me.” I also wanted to cry.

She told of my father that was beating her. She accused him of seeing other women and not considering her as his own wife. She said she slept outside that night. Everything was too difficult for me to understand as a four-year old. When my sister came back from school, my mother told her she was leaving: “I’m sick and tired of this life.”

“Are you leaving us, mommy?” she asked.

“No, I will never leave you with these witches. I will come and fetch you.”

My sister started to cry and I cried too, but I thought my father was a good man. Why does my mother want to leave him? How was she going to look after us, as she didn’t have a job? My mother started to tell us stories about the past: “You know, Nomusa and Zaza, my first and second son both died at birth, because of this family and of your father beating me up all the time. He liked other women. The Khuzwayo family does not like me, because I’m not educated.”

“Mommy, why do the people say that my father deserted you?”

“He left me when I was six months pregnant. He said you were not his child and he went to Benoni. But then when you came out you were his picture and he came back when you were three years old. Zaza, I had to go out and work with you on my back, because your grandmother wouldn’t look after you and they accused me of not having a son that will keep your father’s name. They called me a witch. They also said I have no education and I know nothing about money. They also convinced your father to give all his money to his mother and not to me. His sisters they want him to have a second educated wife, and I must be silent while they treat me like nothing. He is always right and I am always wrong. His mother and his sisters and brothers they come first in his life. What about us, Nomusa? You are his daughters.”

While my mother was talking she was disturbed by our cousin’s sister who often came to visit my mother. She was a daughter of my father’s brother Khethonjani. She said: “Mamncane, I heard while my mother and Jive (my aunt that was not married) were talking about a son that your husband has from another women. They say he must marry this woman because she is educated. Don’t say that I told you. My mother will kill me.” There was silence in the room for a few minutes and I saw a lizard on the wall that was also staring at us and laughing at my mother’s eyes that were full of tears. “Did they say it’s a boy or girl and who is the mother?”

“It’s a boy named Andile but I forgot the name of the mother, but they say it must be a secret from you because you will kill the baby because both your boys died at birth and you can’t have any more sons.” My mother went into the kitchen to prepare lunch for the whole family. I could see the sorrow and pain in her eyes, although I still regarded my father as an honorable man in the village. I didn’t see anything wrong in what he did. He was doing what a man should do. I was too young to distinguish between what’s right and wrong. After lunch my mother left. She went to her family 40km away from my grandmother’s house. I was lying on my stomach next to the fire while my aunt was preparing the supper and everybody was in the kitchen. It was winter; the kitchen was a warm place as there was a fire in the middle.

My grandmother started talking. Makoti didn’t even ask for permission to sleep over at her house. “She must be missing her lovers,” my auntie answered. “She forgot that we paid eleven cows for her to respect her husband, the whole family and even the dog that bark on these premises. I can understand why Msawenkosi (my father’s name) always beat her up. She doesn’t listen.”

It was the next morning. The herd boy was leading the cows to the pastures and a cock was crowing very loud. I went to piss behind the house and at the same time I was looking uphill to see if my mom was not coming back.

boontoe

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