TSibosiso propped himself up in bed with a pillow and tried each second not to think about his misfortunes, especially his floundering relationship with Kovo, the girl who had promised to love him to the end. All his efforts failed. He stared into the street from the window of his dingy room on the second floor and took in its stretching emptiness. Not even the crows whose philological sessions he liked to indulge as he sat on this windowsill every morning were there. Tired of seeing nothing interesting in the street, he removed his sight and instead trained it on the pack of drugs on the table close to the toilet door, the horrible events of the past weeks playing in his head.

“The worst thing that can happen to a black man in this country is to lose his girlfriend to a white man. They have taken not only our lands and rights … it’s everything!” was what Alexis, his photojournalist friend, had told him a few days ago on his opening up in the hope of healing. It hurt him that he was the object of pity, but the recollection of all that had happened hurt him more than anything else. Why did he even bother to go to Sharpeville without first telling his girlfriend that he was coming? He had gone all the way from Pretoria to surprise her but got a rather hefty surprise in return. He paused at the door on hearing sounds suggestive of two adults in the middle of soulful coitus. When he knocked and said, “It is me, Kovo,” the sensual noises quieted, and hurried movements followed. He heard someone roll out of bed and try to put on clothes. When she finally opened the door by a crack and stood in his way, a film of sweat on her temples and between her clavicles and larynx, he knew she had made up her mind. He tried to look past her into the room to no avail. Luckily, at the moment he made to walk off, a white man appeared behind Kovo, towering over her. His eyes locked with those of his adversary. For a moment he thought of pouncing on him, depriving him of all his teeth, but he swallowed hard and left, giving up his three-year-old relationship.

In the PUTCO heading home, he put himself side by side with the white man he had seen in Kovo’s room. The man had nothing over him. Was it height? Strength? Handsomeness? Education? Then there was a prick in his brain and he remembered  that the man was indeed superior to him in one thing: race. He should have known that to be white was to be the numero uno. Perhaps the man was working in an elitist company and got dressed in European suits on workdays, not in a struggling news house like Afrika Magazine, where people like him wore creased baggy dresses and often missed a belt loop when they tucked in their cheap shirts.

He had wanted to work at Daily Mail or Drum, but the bureaucratic hurdles of the National Party had frustrated his efforts of getting a passbook in time, without which he could not be employed or allowed to move about or live in an urban area. After the frustrating queues and filling many-page forms, he was handed a stamped dompas. That night he and Kovo had made love nonstop and painted their forms with glorious streaks and in a future they both imagined. The job hunt lasted for months before Afrika Magazine gave him a chance. He moved from Sharpeville to Pretoria, leaving his former room for his live-in girlfriend. With Kovo working in an eatery and him in the news house, paltry as their take-home pay was, life was a bit rosy compared to their past. But soon Kovo began to fuss about everything. He no longer had enough time to visit her. And whenever he did, she complained he didn’t stay for long. There had to be something else than the work he said was putting him down, eating his time. One evening she said, “I will leave you one day for someone who doesn’t prioritise work over love,” and he’d laughed. Now he hated himself for laughing at such a thing. But how could she expect him not to prioritise a job that was sustaining them, paying their rent, and footing their daily bills? How could she even be swift in dumping him like it had been her long-term goal? His anger was, first, that he bought the bed onto which she allowed another man to hump her; second, that he was the one paying sixty percent of Kovo’s house rent, all from the money of the job she said was not healthy for their relationship. The thoughts infested his mind so much that he failed to realise he was in transit and ought to watch out for his stop. At the last bus stop, the driver asked him to alight. He set down and blended with the night. To take another PUTCO back home was as much the best option as it was the worst. Sleep would refuse to come and relieve him, and the puppies of anguish in his mind would bully him to the ends of the world. It was better he found a spot to drink, listen to good music, and forget about his sorrows. 

At Belele Bar, he mixed with different people who, like him, had issues but pretended to be happy, pretended that apartheid was not as fatal to them as it really was. The music was loud and appealing to his spirit until the police ruined everything at once when they stormed the place to remind the subdued majority finding solace in bottles of liquor that the freedom of merriment was not their prerogative. 

“Who is the owner of this place?” a white senior officer asked, striking his baton on one of the  tables.

“I am the one,” a tall man said, and turned off the music.

The other officers pushed him into the light, towards the centre of the bar.

“Do you have the licence to run this place?”

“I have,” he said.

“Bring it.”

He went behind the counter and returned with a thin sheet. The senior officer looked at it for a while before he said, “This has expired.”

“I have made payment for renewal, but it is not ready yet. It is not my fault. Some of your colleagues were here yesterday, and I told them the same thing. I even gave them money.”

“You bribed them,” the white senior officer said and smirked. “This is a shebeen. Your operation is against the laws of this country and must—”

“It is not his fault, please,” Sibosiso said from his corner table. “He has explained everything to you. How is that too hard for you to understand, officers?”

“Are you talking to me?” the senior officer asked, approaching Sibosiso.

Sibosiso struggled to his feet and tried to take a step. That was the biggest mistake of his life. He bumped into the table, and the bottles atop it crashed onto the floor, breaking into shreds. The other officers behind the senior officer misread the accident for an attempted assault on their superior and closed in on poor Sibosiso. The next day he awoke in a narrow, dark cell full of black people, the condemned tribe. There was a signature window, if it could be called that: a slit cut high into the wall, crossed with rusted bars. Light came through it without warmth. It was this light Sibosiso first saw when he regained consciousness. Later he would try to peep through the bars of the opening up in the wall to know the location of the cell. The floor was rough concrete that remained damp and cold even in the heat of the day. Rats knew the cell well. They scratched behind its damp walls and sometimes showed themselves, bold and quick, bodies sleek from feeding on scraps and traversing broken sewage pipes. Sound travelled in zany ways. A sorrowful cough from a neighbouring cell sounded so close to you. Footsteps in the long corridor, flanked by cells, grew heavy before they arrived. Keys announced themselves long before the guard appeared, and when the door opened or closed, it was never for anything good.

Their offences varied. There were those who were apprehended in shebeens. Some didn’t have a passbook but were found moving about. Others did nothing at all; for instance, an aged man named Siyabonga was captured right on his verandah, where he was sleeping, since the heat in the room was choking. The police had claimed to suspect he was targeting a suitable hour to go out and rob. A boy in the cell told Sibosiso that he was arrested for reporting his white employer who had tried to sodomise him. The police charged him with slandering a man of high estate. Sibosiso himself was charged with assaulting an officer on duty and attempting to obstruct the rule of law.

Day after day, the population in the cell reduced. People who bribed the officers to go into town and inform their relatives to come and bail them out were the early leavers. Sibosiso was unaware of this method, so he was in detention incommunicado for five days. On the morning of the sixth day, one of the officers in charge of the bucket toilet had pity on him.

“They will not allow you to use the telephone,” the officer told him. “But if you have anyone in town I could meet, tell me.”

Sibosiso almost started writing a letter to Kovo before the realisation hit his heart: they were no more. A year ago while he was still at the university, it was to her he had written when a bus knocked him down in the street. She had come to the hospital posthaste, with bloodshot eyes, feeling she was going to lose him to death. She spoon-fed him pap and massaged his aching heels and forehead. All that was in the past now. He wrote a note to his only family in Pretoria, Alexis, including Alexis’s home and office addresses. By evening, Alexis showed up. But the officer in charge said he was late. The next morning, Sibosiso was bailed out with plenty of shillings. He also signed an undertaking to be law abiding going forward. When he reported to work, his boss handed him a sack letter, accusing him of shirking his duties. The explanation he gave was slammed. Which serious sub-editor left his job to be drinking in shebeens? As far as the boss was concerned, Sibosiso had feigned incarceration and sought out a soft landing with his sentimental story. It pained Sibosiso that his truth was illegitimate. It reminded him of a similar verdict from a sadistic lecturer at Fort Hare, when he resumed school late because of the death of his parents and sister in an auto crash. 

A rat raced up in the ceiling, bringing Sibosiso back to his present. He stepped out of bed and headed to the bathroom. Today was his first day of work after his tentative reinstatement at work. His boss, after he caved in from the incessant pleadings of Alexis and other workers, promised to dismiss him permanently should he do wrong again. He now had the responsibility to protect his job and the confidence of the sureties, and he was ready to do that. Had life not been miserable for him in the past two weeks that he had been jobless? He almost slipped into the fjord of depression, since he always thought of Kovo and the humiliation her actions led him into. The worst was that he nearly got “endorsed out” by the authorities, after an officer searched him one evening and found neither work ID nor passbook on him. What saved him was the explanation that he had forgotten both items at work, when in fact the work ID had been confiscated by his employer and the passbook misplaced about his room.

He poured water on his head and, for a fleeting moment, he felt some peace.

---

On his way to work, Sibosiso noticed that something was amiss. There were plenty of buses and trucks heading towards Sharpeville. They were loaded with supporters of the Pan-Africanist Congress, all singing songs of freedom, shouting “Down with pass laws” and cursing the policies of the National Party. The convoy’s mouthpiece, speaking into a megaphone, was encouraging all Blacks to shun work and head to Sharpeville. He said, “It is a shame for a Black man to ignore this cause” often. Sibosiso had a foreknowledge of this demonstration: he had heard and seen PAC top members herald its notice from house to house in Sharpeville, Johannesburg, and even Pretoria. But he did not know it would be this serious.

He got to work and settled down at his desk to do whatever it was that would impress his boss. His colleagues who hadn’t gone out yet to cover the demonstrations welcomed him back with jokes about missing his pedantic editing, saying he was even more strict than the chief editor. At ten, there was news that someone had been shot at Sharpeville, and it was in connection with the PAC demonstration against the pass law, which the Black people considered the tool for the devaluation of their humanity. It was a good story to follow up on, especially now that he was not on good terms with his boss. But he hated the name Sharpeville. That place reminded him of the squeaking bed, the sweat on Kovo’s temples, and the hooked nose of the man who had snatched his lover because of his skin colour. How could he return to the place and remain in one piece?

Well, his boss thought differently. “Since there is nothing much at the office, Sibosiso and Alexis will rush down to Sharpeville and see things as they are. I do not think anything special will happen there, but staying off amounts to nothing either,” he said, and focused his eyes on Sibosiso. Sibosiso nodded and packed his bag. In a few minutes, they were out, driving down to Sharpeville. They did not talk much on the drive. Alexis handled the wheel, his eyes fixed ahead as though the road might shift if he looked away. Sibosiso sat beside him, one elbow on the door, fingers grazing his lips, watching the road stretch itself thin over the land. The road grew busier the closer they got. Buses. Trucks. People hung by the doors, clung to the rails, and sat on roofs like bundles tied for market. Everywhere, there were songs of freedom and redemption. At some point less than two kilometres away from Sharpeville, the police barricaded the road, stopping cars from entering into the township. The influx was getting out of hand, and public peace was at risk. Sibosiso took the wheel at this point so that Alexis could take sensitive pictures. Knowing the terrain well, he took a bush path and entered Sharpeville behind a grey police car and three Alvis Saracen vehicles. As they drove through the fringes of the township, many people shouted the Pan-Africanist slogan “Izwe Lethu” or gave the thumbs-up “freedom” salute and shouted “No dompas!” at the top of their lungs. The string of police cars ignored the duo, since they kept an amiable distance and appeared to be the harmless newshounds they were. There was no way they could hide their identity. The Afrika Magazine inscription on the sides of the Ford Consul was conspicuous. 

On arrival at the Sharpeville police station, Sibosiso thought it was a festival of the defeated majority. There was pressure, but nothing violent was happening. The protesters were singing and laughing and even exchanging trite jokes with some police officers. They drove and parked at a distance, easing into an open patch of ground on the side of the police station, away from the dense knot of bodies gathered at the front gate. The space there was bare and uneven, a stretch of compacted earth worn down by tyres and footsteps rather than purposefully marked for parking. It lay slightly off the main approach road, screened from the thickest part of the crowd but still within view of the compound’s fence. From that angle, the station appeared quieter, almost detached from the pressure building at the entrance. The main gate, where the protesters had gathered, was not directly in front of them. Instead, the side of the building showed its plain walls, the fence running its length, and the yard inside where officers formed small groups, brainstorming on how to handle the situation. The distance gave them a clearer line of sight, but also a sense of separation, as though they had arrived at the edge of something already in motion. 

Suddenly, the mood changed. More Saracens and truckloads of police officers arrived within a short time. Above the heads of protesters, planes hovered, low and high. Alexis grabbed his 35mm camera and started running towards the crowd to beat the other news agents, and avoid missing anything sensitive and important. Every now and then he slowed down to capture a moment. Soon, Sibosiso caught up with him.

“What’s going on?”

“A lot,” Alexis said, lifting the camera to his right eye and squinting the other eye.

Children and women were, in jolly manners, hurling pebbles and articles of clothing at the low-hanging planes. The people continued to chant against the pass laws, moving closer to the gate of the police station, where a local PAC leader was having a conversation with the senior officer. While the tension heightened, the senior police officer retracted and was seen conversing with other officers. Thereafter, the officers were seen loading their guns and mounting the Saracens in combat style and putting the tanks in the direction of the crowd.

Sibosiso excused himself to urinate. He had taken a diuretic antidepressant that morning before he hit the road to the office. He did it quickly, close to the spot their car was parked, and started to walk back towards the crowd. Some cops were now standing on top of their armoured cars, waving Sten guns, and when he was fifty yards away from where Alexis was standing, the police opened fire into the crowd. He could not say for sure that nobody lobbed a stone at the police or brandished a weapon, but he did not believe a threatening situation had built up in the time it took him to walk away and back. People started running in different directions. For a moment, he thought the officers were shooting blank rounds to disperse the crowd. But when he saw people fall and not stir, he ran back to the car and returned to the open field only when the shooting had stopped. There were over sixty corpses of children and adults strewn on the ground, most of them shot in the back. The injured were crying as they remained on the ground, crawling. Sibosiso sidestepped the corpse of a boy about the age of fifteen and reached for Alexis, shot in the left arm. They trudged to the car and drove off.

---

A day after the shooting at the police station, Sibosiso was at work, polishing an in-depth account of the ugly event. On the day of the shooting, he and his colleagues had put together a few features and a brief photo essay that upped the status of Afrika Magazine. A while later, Alexis, shot hand in a cast, walked in with a file full of printed photographs at the scene of the shooting. “I decided to print all of them,” he said, throwing them onto the desk. The file landed with a dull slap, its edges splayed from long-time usage. Sibosiso looked up, nodded once, then returned to the paragraph he was polishing. He worked through it for about an hour before he was satisfied. He set his pen down and drew the file closer. The first photograph showed a wide view of the crowd, faces turned in one direction, as though pulled by a single thread. The next showed a police officer on a Saracen behind a mounted gun, its muzzle pointed at the crowd. There was one taken from the angle they had parked their car. It showed the fenced compound of the police station underneath a clear sky. Such serenity had no need being part of the story of a massacre. The rest that followed held gory depictions. People running. Bloodied corpses on the ground. He dropped the last one before feeling like he had missed something. One of the corpses looked like someone he knew. It lay face down, but the angle of the face was enough for him to know who was there. He turned the photograph sideways. Then upright. The face did not change, no matter how the mind tried to refuse what the eyes had accepted. It was Kovo, shot in the back of her head, so that the bullet erupted at the centre of her forehead, or had been shot in her forehead and the bullet came out the other way. He dropped the photograph and reached for the car key on the key rack beside his desk.

---

The township of Sharpeville was quieter than it had the right to be. He drove down the main street and turned into the boulevard on which Kovo lived. A neighbour who survived the shooting, standing by a low fence, told him without ceremony that Kovo had been buried in a mass grave west of the township. She had not wanted to go out for the demonstration, but the PAC members had forced them out of their homes. He drove out there and stayed by the graveside for a long time, saying nothing. At sundown, he returned to his flat in Pretoria. He burnt his dompas in the sink and swallowed more antidepressants than he should have. Then he sat on the windowsill, staring into the gathering darkness, contemplating a free fall.

---

Ornguze Nashima Nathaniel is a Nigerian writer and editor. He is a major in mathematics and loves writing speculative fiction through “Acheyinka,” his coined literary style that blends the clarity of Achebe and Wole Soyinka’s lyrical, strange ways of depiction.

Cover credit: Ebumnobichukwu Agu.

Growing up in the village of Ingwavuma in northeastern rural KwaZulu-Natal, on South Africa’s southeastern coast, there was never a shortage of stories about water divinities. Some of the folklore the elders told us weren’t merely for entertainment; there were some lessons and truths within. When we went to the beach, my grandfather, Mkhulu, would always give us silver coins to toss into the water and ask permission from Amakhosi Amanzi—the water gods—to enter the sea. He said the sea is a sacred space where the divine Inzuza, which is the highest amongst all spirits, dwells. It is a water spirit associated with cleanliness and righteousness. “We’re sinners, and when we enter their dominion, we contaminate their space; therefore, it is wise to be respectful,” Mkhulu warned. He further claimed that Omkhulu bomkhulu bethu, our ancestors, can be accessed through water as a medium because they are mediators of the Inzuza spirit. I believe many of the water myths in our Nguni-speaking communities are not unfounded; they emanate from a place of truth. Our uncertain relationships with water, in some way, has informed our characterisation of water divinities.

Seawater & Storms

There is a belief among Ingwavuma community residents that a home with seawater in the yard will be spared when a tornado strikes; Inkanyamba, a tornado spirit, will not blow away a house with seawater placed around the yard because it identifies it as home. 

I have a vivid memory of a violent storm that we experienced in Ingwavuma in 1998. The elders claimed that Inkanyamba was passing through. All I remember seeing was a huge dark cloud in the shape of a serpent flying over. The Inkanyamba left a messy trail where it passed—it blew people’s roofs off and sent our school’s 5000-litre rainwater tank into our yard.

Whenever someone he knew was going to the beach, my late uncle, Phungalenja, would give that person a 5-litre container to fetch seawater. He would either sprinkle the seawater around his yard or pour it into little transparent bottles that used to lie scattered across it. He told me that it prevented dogs from polluting his yard with poop. I only discovered years later that by ‘dogs’ he meant ‘witches’. The seawater cleansed the home and kept bad spirits away. If there were any evil activity within the house or around the yard, the bottled seawater would change colour, become darker, and finally die. When the water dies, it ceases to be living water and becomes useless. This is another crafty method by the community to detect witchcraft. 

Living Water

“When I look into my past, the river seems to meet my eyes, staring back, as if to ask, Do you recognise me, wherever you are?” – The Great Derangement: climate change and the unthinkable, Amitav Gosh.

One early morning in September 2019, I was jogging along the shoreline of Durban South Beach. I spotted black people, ankle-length, congregated in the water, praying. A spiritual diviner adorned in a brightly coloured gown embroidered with multiple crosses and the wording ‘Zion Pentecost Holy Messengers’ was leading the cleansing proceedings. Each of his subjects tossed silver coins into the water before they gracefully entered it, where he was waiting ahead.

A few days prior, I had witnessed an Indian family come to sprinkle the ashes of their cremated loved one into the same sea. They slowly filed toward the far end of the beach; one of them carried an urn while others held candles and a photo (probably of the deceased). They lit the candles and prayed briefly before scattering the ashes into the sweeping waves to carry back. I thought of my friend’s nephew, Thabiso, who had drowned at the same beach a year ago, and an intense wave of emotion watered down my adrenaline. Later, a colony of white surfers ran towards the ocean’s outstretched arms. I marvelled at their breezy performances. I realised the sea is many things to different people. It is for the living as it is for the dead, and it can be living as it can be dead.

I cannot distinctly tell living water from normal water, but Dothi River in Mombeni once displayed signs of living water, and this even extended to the forest in which the river was enclosed. Dothi River was both a stream and a deep pool that split off from the upper river. Further down the pool, a waterfall shot downward to the treetops below. Some nights I’d wake up drenched in sweat because I’d dreamt the waterfall was sweeping me down to this virgin lower land. The deep pool of Dothi River was self-cleansing, and it didn’t show that the entire village washed their laundry there. If you heard the villagers describing Dothi River, you’d think they were referring to a person if you didn’t know better. The respect that they accorded the river rendered it an elevated level of stature that preceded its already evident magnificence. 

I was six the first time I encountered the living water in Mombeni. Another uncle, Siyabonga, had taken me along on one of his ritualistic afternoon baths. The river was hidden in the woods located just below my grandfather’s cattle kraal. The very same forest I’d sometimes accompany my older sisters and cousins to gather firewood. I was familiar with Dothi River. We often descended to the river when my mother and aunts went to wash blankets and clothes. I sat on the rocks and busied myself with locating crabs. I herded them with my stick and directed them toward an imaginary kraal. 

Later, my uncle called for me to undress and get inside the pool. I was terrified and thrilled. I entered. He placed his firm hands on my shoulders and deliberately shoved me underwater for a few seconds. It felt like eternity. The pool’s depth caught me by surprise. My head was completely underwater, yet my feet didn’t touch the riverbed. This was a different realm altogether. I felt the weight of the entire river on my scrawny shoulders – my breath was replaced by a deep-lying shudder that stirred my gut peaceably before it extended up my shoulders, where it gained momentum. The convulsions persisted long after my uncle had ejected me from the water. It was as if the water hadn’t left me after I’d left it. 

At 21, I visited my grandparents’ home in Mombeni after being away for years. I was eager to take my little brother, Musa, to Dothi River I had experienced as a child. My grandmother warned me that the river was now dead, but I did not pay much attention to her. In my mind, I was taking Musa to the Mecca of all living organisms. We descended toward the site along the old footpath, once enveloped by a dense, burgeoning family of trees. There was now a heap of stones among the tall grass where Uncle Ma-Wat’s hut once was. The air was replaced by an intolerable mugginess. The surrounding ecosystem had been shaved off. New homes had miraculously sprung out from nowhere. I proceeded toward the river but with less conviction; my brother’s eyes widened with expectation, and mine, with horror. There was nothing I recognised about the place.

The vegetation around the river had been replaced by improvised, withering vegetable gardens that were merely there because of easy access to water. The rare birds of exotic feathers and melodious chirps had long migrated after being rendered homeless. I had been keen to show my little brother a waterfall, for him to hold a crab. The once-glistening rocks, where water would effortlessly glide, were now a depressing sight of elongated thirstiness. I returned home defeated. My heart wept for Dothi River. “The villagers decided to clear the woodland for their cattle to graze near water, where they could also keep an eye on them.” My grandmother’s explanation only aggravated me. It exposed our disregard for nature.

Religion of Water

I grew up in a Christian household in a predominantly traditionalist community. My grandparents seamlessly incorporated Christianity and Nguni traditions into their everyday lives. After our evening prayers, we’d flock into our great-grandmother’s hut, where we’d gather to listen to her stories. I observed the high regard both the religious and the traditionalist community members had for water. The Christians dismissed fellow Christians who hadn’t been baptised, just as the traditionalists distrusted diviner healers who weren’t initiated in the water. Water appeared to be a common feature across these two worlds, a mediator for the existing discordances between Christianity and African spirituality. In both baptism and initiation (ukuthwasa), the subject enters the water and exits it a different person; reborn. 

There is an ongoing tug-of-war between these two belief systems within me. I feel obligated to pick a side: my father is a traditionalist, and my mother is a Christian. When I stayed away from church, Mama asked, “Who will bury you if you don’t have a pastor?” And when I once questioned my father’s over-reliance on traditional medicine, he asked me to name the Nguni word for a tree (I told him it is umuthi, which also means medicine). However, my grandparents struck a reciprocal balance between Christianity and African spirituality, and they thrived in this equilibrium. They flowed like calm waters around rocks, adapting to life situations with flexibility. 

A Voice Inhabiting Water

Solitude 102

if I may say two words

River Congo, I won’t drink your water

as long as you keep the secret

as long as you don’t

spit out the bodies of my loved ones

at Brazza and Mbamu.

– The River in the Belly, Fiston Mujila.

Between the years 2016 – 2019, without fail, every September, a boy drowned in Phophopho Dam. The community of Ingwavuma were convinced that an evil creature,  a mystical snake called umnumzane, had been placed inside the dam, and it was feasting on human blood to sustain and prosper its owner. They threatened to burn to the ground whoever owned the umnumzane that inhabited the dam if found. According to the local inyanga, Mkhonyovu, “Once umnumzane calls you, you will go,” a notion I liken to a diviner-healer’s calling to underwater initiation. 

Phophopho Dam was every village boy’s dream – one could fish and swim there. My friends would always rave about the dam’s depths and mighty wall. They would return with baby sardines, and they promised to make a serious catch the following weekend. Still, I was not sold. I feared the confluence between the river flowing within my body and the dam’s waters would be turbulent. The dam had a reputation for calling its victims. A non-swimmer who has never been to Phophopho Dam will suddenly get the urge to visit it and swim. 

The fishing and swimming craze of the Phophopho Dam came to a halt in the wake of a bizarre drowning that occurred in 2003. Sonke, a classmate from primary school whom we all knew could not swim, decided to jump into the dam when his cousin, Mabheshu, a seasoned swimmer, appeared to be struggling to stay afloat. “I will not watch my cousin drown!” were Sonke’s final words as narrated by my cousin, Mpendulo, who was an eyewitness. Both boys drowned.

In 2017, a mutual friend, Ye, introduced me to Masiya at a drinking spot, and we instantly connected. Masiya was bursting with excitement as he’d just returned from what seemed to have been a successful trip to Sodwana Bay. I didn’t know much about his background, and I never got to ask him about his family because the life we were leading was just too fast. He stayed with us from the night we met up until the day we had a fight three weeks later. He had developed a crush on our landlord’s daughter, Thandi. One drunken night, he went to the main house, shouting for Thandi. The following day, the landlord gave my brother and me an ultimatum: either Masiya leaves, or we all leave. He left on a Wednesday. On Friday of the same week, Masiya drowned at Phophopho Dam. It didn’t make sense at all. He was too old to be swimming at the dam; guys his age had long graduated to swimming in liquor instead. Among the boys he had gone swimming with, he was the oldest. The boys said that he just “vanished” from their eyes.

When hours passed without Masiya resurfacing, the people began to assume that the boys were lying about his drowning. The local emergency department couldn’t do anything but wait. Eventually, divers were called from Richards Bay, a 4-hour drive to Ingwavuma, to retrieve the body. The divers failed. After two days, Masiya’s body resurfaced, but his skull was an empty shell according to the pathologists. His brain had been sucked out. By whom or what remains a mystery still. 

Masiya had a lean frame, yet his coffin was so heavy that I couldn’t take more than four strides while holding it. It was as if water filled the coffin. At his funeral, his coffin wasn’t brought through the family home’s gate to get to the yard. The nature of his death had to be blocked so that it didn’t occur again. 

Baptism & Healing

“We have come to be baptized here. We have come to stir the other world here. We have come to cleanse ourselves here. We have come to connect our living to the dead here.” – Water, Koleka Putuma.

In July 2023, I met Mkhulu Xulu, a middle-aged diviner-healer from Pantus Hill in Durban. I first came across his post on Facebook and had only intended for him to cleanse me of sexual ties and any baggage I might have been carrying from my previous encounters. As I was well on my celibacy journey, I figured spiritual cleansing was necessary. He’d made mention of seawater and prayer as the chief ingredients of his healing practices. I was intrigued by this strange combination.

Mkhulu Xulu’s healing methods are almost identical to those of Mama Mbongwa, an umthandazi—a syncretic healer who combines prayer and water—from eMachobeni, a village in Ingwavuma. Water seems to be her main ingredient, though. Mama Mbongwa breathes life into ordinary water by praying over it, transforming it into living water that can give life. When patients come to her home for consultations, they must bring 2-litre plastic bottles of water from their homes, regardless of their ailment or issue. She strikes a match and inserts the matchstick into the bottle of water before praying over it. She does not have a fixed price for her services; she accepts whatever her patients offer. Patients are required to mix the living water with their bathing water. They can also sprinkle the water around their house and yard. 

After I’d made contact with Mkhulu Xulu, he asked me to bring a white chicken for my cleansing ceremony. He slaughtered it in my presence and mixed some of its innards with the muthi he had also brewed in my presence. Since we were supposed to go to the beach very early in the morning, I slept at his place. He said I had a good foot because that evening was going to be a prayer night. I was tired from my six-hour trip from Ingwavuma to Durban, but I had to join the lively singing and dancing amid vigorous drumbeating. It lasted for about four hours. The cleansing would be two-fold, he told me. The first segment occurred in a dream; I had an extraordinary dream that morning, and immediately after it ended, I woke up, startled. Mkhulu Xulu calmly told me that his ancestors had cleansed me spiritually, and all that was left was for me to cleanse with seawater, where I’d discard the unwanted dirt I was carrying. It was as if he’d been observing the dream I’d had. When we went to the beach for the second and final segment of the cleansing, he told me to wear clothes that I’d have to discard afterwards. Some of his deputies were accompanying us, and they were carrying buckets of the muthi he’d concocted the previous night and other cleansing essentials.

We arrived at the beach at 04:30 AM while it was still quiet. Mkhulu Xulu gave me silver coins and instructed me to go forward, toss them into the water, and ask Amakhosi Amanzi, the guardians of the sea, for permission to enter the water. He instructed me to kneel further up into the water, and he prayed for me while his deputies sang. He smeared me with the muthi, and the rushing waves washed it away from my body. Afterwards, he told me to bury the clothes I was wearing in the sand. He poured the remaining muthi into a 5-litre plastic bottle bought from the opportunistic hobos hovering about the beach. He then filled the plastic bottle with seawater and advised me to blend it into my washbasin for my ablutions.

I remember Mkhulu Xulu telling me that most people do not know that water is a realm, and not a vacuum. He said that water has its own ecosystem and hierarchy, and that the water divinities that inhabit the sea work in conjunction with one’s ancestors, and that the ancestors work with the Supreme Being as our intermediaries. 

---

Mthobisi Myeni is an emerging writer who hails from a small rural town of Ingwavuma in KZN, South Africa. He is currently reading for his Master’s Degree in Creative Writing at Rhodes University. His short story, The Denizens, appears in the Power: Stories that Light the Dark anthology by Short.Sharp.Stories. Mthobisi’s writing is informed and inspired by his immediate surroundings, with his storytelling embedded in Nguni culture and traditions. He considers his writing to represent the ordinary people whose voices are somehow dormant.

Cover credit: Victor Ola-Matthew.

NOTHING DISTURBED THE ritual. 

Joyce awoke at four AM, the morning sun timidly creeping through the curtains of her little bedroom, gently illuminating her weathered face. She slowly opened her weary eyes and reluctantly welcomed another day of solitude, every wrinkle on her face etched with a memory of these quiet mornings. As she sat up on the edge of her bed, wrapped in the silence that filled her empty home, the weight of her loneliness pressed down on her fragile shoulders.

She bathed with a bucket of cold water, then sat at the edge of the bed facing the mirror of the vanity dressing table her late husband bought her twenty years prior at Pelhams Furniture. No credit or lay-bye. Baba did not do credit, especially on his ‘going away gift’, as he’d called it.

She bobbed the bottle of Lanolin Milk lotion up and down, gently moisturising the stomach skin, slacked from forgetting mealtimes. She would smooth lemon-scented vanishing cream across her face, then go around the lips with Bint el Sudan petroleum jelly. The jar of camphor cream for the skin under her feet—unmedicated, never herbal—would be open. If the eczema behind her knees flared, she would slather it with aqueous cream. It had been a while since that happened. Eczema respected her old age. It revered her aged skin enough to know that after sixty, the scars might not fade.

She’d pull a brassiere on, lift the shrivelled areola, add some lotion around the down-turned nipples that had once nourished her three children, fit the clasp, then turn it around her belly, pulling each strap slowly, carefully, coaxing them over her delicately crepey shoulders. The pain of the right one would go off if she moved too quickly. Then she’d pull on her nylon slip or a petticoat with lace trim and get on her knees. She’d pray for her grandsons, Liam and Lance Jr, then for her daughters. Not that Fiona believed in God, but Maureen did. Sometimes, she acted like God herself. Joyce never prayed for herself, for that would be vain. She’d pray for her younger brother and his family, who’d never come home from the UK. She’d pray for Norbert, her son in Durban, who’d not returned in twenty years. Then, she’d send up a prayer for the country. Finally, she’d whisper to Baba, “Please look out for me.”

Baba was not her father but her late husband. She’d never called him by his name since they married at twenty—only Baba or Shewe. She’d put on her ring and look at their faded sepia wedding photo. She’d pull on a dress or a skirt and blouse. She’d walk to the sitting room in the front of her two-bedroomed core house and pull the faux leather door stopper from the foot of the entrance, go out and open the gate for Mai Muto, the stern cleaning lady that Maureen paid for. Joyce still swept the front yard herself, for she was an African woman and had been taught that she needed to sweep away the footprints of those who walked in the night from her home.

She’d have her tea after while looking at the hills that surrounded Mutare. Oh, how she loved that view. It reminded her of the hills she’d seen in Louis Trichardt as a child on a trip to Maruleng with her grandfather, who’d emigrated to Zimbabwe during apartheid.

Sometimes, she’d turn on the little silver Panasonic TV and the free-to-air Philibao decoder and watch the morning bulletin from across the border. Lately, the news was abuzz with images of looters with arms and vehicles piled high with goods. She was interested in the news from across the border, where her son lived. She prayed for him a lot, but especially now with the riots. She always lit a candle for him, especially knowing how his brash personality enjoyed chaos. He’d called before, after running from a mob chasing foreigners, saying he was done looking for gold in South Africa and was on his way home, but he never returned. He called and texted often, at least every Sunday evening.

---

SHE WOULD CROSS out the date on her calendar—not that there was anything to count down to. If it were a Tuesday, she’d walk to church three blocks away. The women’s guild met to clean the church pews, sweep the floors and practice hymns. It was mostly the older women—the widows like herself who prayed and gardened as the world turned around them.

The routine would not break. It was safe. Until her heel broke.

It was not a high heel but a modest, stable two-inch heel. A nun’s shoe, as Liam called it. Shangu dze ma sister. She wore them for comfort, the orthopaedics. As she trotted back from St Luke’s United Methodist Church, the heel snapped to the side. Disappointment came as a wave. She didn’t understand why it made her so dejected. They were just shoes.

She pulled the iron gate back and cursed to herself when she snapped up, knowing Mai Muto was watching. Joyce raised the shoe in Mai Muto’s direction.

“That’s a small issue, mhai. You know Banda?” she asked her frazzled employer.

Joyce shook her head as she walked up the path. Mai Muto shaded her eyes from the late August sun.

“The cobbler? He sometimes sits outside with the gate open. At number six. He’s very cheap. I’ll take them for you on the way home.”

On Friday, Mai Muto sent her daughter with a note saying that she couldn’t come in. Joyce needed her shoes to attend choir practice on Saturday morning, so she put her knitting away and headed to the house at the end of the cul-de-sac to collect them at noon.

The sign obscured by vines read “KGB. Cobbler, Carpenter, Bicycle Repair.” A tall man in a tweed paddy cap crouched near the house’s glass front door and spun the wheel of an overturned bicycle.

“Muriwadi?” She greeted with her soft voice and raised the other undamaged shoe of the pair. He turned to her with a surly look.

“I have $10 for the cream sandal with the broken heel. Mai Muto, who works at number ten, brought them.” His face softened as he waved her in. He quickly pulled off the cap, revealing a grey head of hair.

“Yes, ok, the glue should be dry now. Makadii mai?” He asked for her name as he ruffled through a pile of unpaired shoes.

“Mai Chikukwa. Joyce Chikukwa. Um, you’re Banda?”

“The one and only.”

He pulled out a backless chair for her and placed a newspaper for her to place her stockinged feet.

“No, please, isn’t that today’s paper?”

“Well, the news is only good once. It’s noon now. Once you read it, it’s old. Ma clean stockings angasviba.”

She appreciated him looking out for her stockinged feet.

“Chik—Chikukwa? Wait, Mr. Chikukwa. Was he head at Manica Secondary? He was my son’s headmaster. They were terrified of him!”

She laughed. “Yes, well, he was a disciplinarian.”

“What a beautiful laugh.”

Joyce felt the flush of heat rise in her cheeks until his next sentence brought her back to reality.

“So, Mai Chikukwa. Here is your shoe.”

She tried to hand him the crisp ten-dollar note, but he gestured it away.

“It only needed three stitches and some glue.”

Joyce received the shoe and stood. “Thank you.”

“What about tea? I just took mabura off the stove.”

She could never refuse a cup of tea. Or the sweet potatoes he’d mentioned.

She sat back down, her slender frame and perfect posture perched on the unstable chair. As he hobbled back inside, Joyce noted his work suit had a crisp line from being ironed. It was odd to see such smartness because the yard around told a different tale—it was filled with odds and ends—rubber sole cutouts, bits of twine, pieces of foam rubber and all sizes of bicycle spokes.

He came back out with a small table first, then returned with a tray with two cups, a sugar basin and a small stainless steel teapot, which he laid on the ground. On his next return, he brought out a spread of a basin of roast ox liver, roast peanuts and powdery scones in colourful basins with flowery designs.

“If the scones are dry, I’m sorry. I forgot them for ten minutes in the oven.”

She was not expecting such portions. Or that a gruff sort like him would bake. She clapped her hands in gratitude as he set everything down.

“So Chikukwa. Robert, yes?”

“No, Lance. Robert was the Maths teacher at Manica, but we weren’t related.”

He nodded, setting himself on a piece of cardboard on the ground beside her. She studied his face, barely visible cloudy eyes under bushy brows.

“Yes. I think he trained with Phyllis. Phyllis, my wife. She was a history teacher when we first got married. Then we had the children, and she stayed home.”

Joyce bit into a scone and covered her mouth. It was delightful. She let out a muffled “How many?”

“Four,” he replied, raising his fingers. “Nikita, Nicholas, Josef and Lenin.”

She smiled in recognition of the name theme.

“They called me KGB during the war. Kumbirai Gilbert Banda is the name. Made sense during the war. Then Phyllis taught History, so the Soviet names just came naturally.”

They spoke easily about their children, how they met their spouses, and their past lives as working members of society. He told her about working at the Bata Shoe Factory for thirty years, and she shared how she’d been a mortgage clerk at Beverly Building Society. She noticed the teeth on both ends of his mouth that rode on others, how they were still bright—a boyish smile on an old man. She found him funny.

He explained how his wonky small finger got that way when her gaze lingered at the copper elephant hair bangle on his slim wrist. Banda explained how his cobbler’s needle hooked into him, and he had to smear betadine on it for months. 

When the teapot was empty, he got up and brewed another. No one had ever made her tea. At least, none this good. Her daughters, begrudgingly. Baba was to be served always. She’d never bother the domestic helper with such a fickle request. She must have poured four cups of the sugary beverage as they spoke.

“What do you think of Gutu? The local MP. People think he can make changes, but he can’t even pay for shoe repair. Do you think he’s worth a vote?”

Joyce had never been asked about politics.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure he’s a nice man,” she replied, taking another sip of delicious tea.

He was amused.

“Well, likely, there’s a lot of red tape that an independent candidate is up against. He needs to meet with the community and then raise funds. Or drop flyers in our letter-boxes so we at least know what he stands for.”

 He shifted his hat at her insightful answer.

“One wonders if the post still works! I haven’t received bills in months. I might just send a letter to see.”

“I’m sure it does.”

Joyce glanced at her watch, aware that she’d been chatting with the stranger for over an hour. He noticed but pressed on.

“You said you had sons and daughters?”

“Yes. Norbert in S.A., and Martin. I had Martin. He drove himself drunk into a tree a week after getting his licence.”

Joyce’s slender fingers curled tightly on the speckled cup. 

“That’s very sad. I’m sorry, nematambudziko. I think he played soccer with my Josef in high school.”

He steered the conversation, so they touched on sport. “It’s been nice to talk to someone about real things. To not be arguing over soccer betting. I always lose anyway.”

“I never followed football much. I mostly watch gospel shows, and I spend most of my time with the widows’ group and the burial society. We cook and sing.”

“Are they your friends?” he asked.

“I would say so.”

But she didn’t think so. The guild were women whom one couldn’t trust with actual information. The one time she’d tried to raise the topic of physical needs after Baba died, they’d prayed for her demons and suggested she go for counselling with a stoic Catholic nun, Sr. Something or other, who told her to splash her face with cold water, chew on ice and pray. A life of service and exercise was the remedy to any hormonal stirring. That was that.

“Well, we fellowship together. When ill, we visit one another.”

“Sounds nice enough. The church group my wife was in said she didn’t pray enough when she got ill, so I stopped going altogether.” 

“We do what we need to do to find comfort. It’s so strange to say these things out loud, especially to strangers.”

“Are we not friends yet?”

She felt a flutter in her belly. Three hours was certainly a long time to chat so intimately with a stranger.

“Well, no—but, well, I don’t mean to offend you, Va Banda, but—”

“It’s okay, Mai Chikukwa. Let me get a plastic bag for your shoe.” He stood and brushed his hands on his trousers and took in the tray with the empty crockery.

When he came back, he was stoic.

“I just watched a woman in Durban throw her baby out of a window of a burning building. The rioters set the shop they were looting alight.”

“Oh, no!”

“The crowd caught him and rescued her, I think, but still. I don’t understand it. How does destroying property make your candidate look good? At least my son came home. Home is best.”

Joyce chewed the last morsels in her mouth slowly. She was alarmed—still thinking about the baby thrown out of a window.

He shifted again.

“Your son in SA. How is he living there? They don’t want us. I can only imagine what it’s like. Is he safe?”

She stirred. “I hope so.”

The mood shifted. Joyce rose. She felt unsure of herself as he walked her back up the cul-de-sac to her house at the corner. They mutually wished each other a good day.

---

THREE DAYS LATER, Mai Muto trudged into the house, back in full health.

Joyce was having her tea and watching the stolen news channel streaming on her little television. She was both numb and fascinated by the images of people blocking roads, jumping on trucks and running off with goods, in awe of the masked stick-wielding protesters marching and dancing and singing, all for their former leader. She couldn’t understand it. She’d never felt strongly enough about a politician to risk her life. Norbert said he was fine, but how long could he escape the violence? With every flashing image, she prayed she wouldn’t catch her son’s face, detained by police or, worse, disfigured by protestors.

Joyce welcomed the distraction of the loud housekeeper and switched off the TV.

“Tsamba, mhai,” Mai Muto said and handed Joyce the blue airmail par avion envelope that she’d retrieved from the mailbox at the gate.

Joyce put down her teacup, cracked out the single folded lined sheet, and felt immediate warmth seeing the shaky cursive in black ink.

‘Dear Joyce. 

If you get this, then Zimpost works. The stamp was so cheap it felt like it wouldn’t be delivered. They said local takes two days. Thank you for your warmth and for listening to me. I enjoyed our talk. I’m sorry if I worried you talking about that baby in the Zuma riots. I saw you on Sunday. You look very smart in your church uniform. Which Methodist is it? I think the church split reminds me of Manchester United (the ones who wear red) versus Man City (blue and white uniforms). You’ll let me know which yours is. That’s our first soccer lesson. I would formally like to ask for your friendship. If you need anything, I’m here. 

Yours. KGB.’

Her grandfather’s words rang through her head as she put the newsprint sheath down, “Joyi, A man knows immediately, and he will tell you and make plans to have you with him. That’s not a decision we think about. It’s either a yes or a no.”

Baba Maureen told her his intentions on their first meeting on a train ride. And here was this man asking for her friendship after one conversation. Butterflies fluttered in her belly, and an excited hope stirred in her dormant heart.

Mai Muto stood for a while behind Joyce’s seat, spied the initials, and then let out a gasp.

Joyce hurriedly folded the paper.

“Mhai?” Mai Muto asked as she pulled out a seat and sat down.

“Yes?” Joyce’s stomach coiled, waiting to be admonished.

“I’m sorry for having big eyes, but if he’s writing you letters, that’s exciting. Banda is a good man. He’s lonely, like you. It’s good to have friends, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Mai Muto, wait, I—”

Mai Muto put her pudgy hand over her boss’ fair hand. 

“Mhai, I’ll keep your secret if you keep it to yourself. I work here, and I don’t want to be involved in any scandal. So, here—”

Mai Muto pushed out of her seat, went into the main bedroom, and brought out a single-heeled shoe in a plastic bag, “At least look the part if you go back.”

Joyce smiled as Mai Muto instructed, “Write a response, and I’ll take it to number six when I’m done today.”

She winked, then went outside to water the mustard greens in the garden.

Reinvigorated, Joyce went into her room and pulled out her notebook. She wrote her request and an invitation and put it in the same envelope she’d received Banda’s letter. She felt crazy—fearful but excited as she left the missive on the table next to Mai Muto’s daily payment. She went back into her room and locked the door.

---

MONDAY CAME AROUND. Joyce did her morning ritual, but instead of her usual body creams, she dug around in the toiletry bag of cosmetics from Boots that she’d never used. Serums, face masks, body oils—fancy UK toiletries that Maureen sent. Inspired, she picked a pretty white summer dress with a red flame lily pattern Fiona had sent from Australia. It was sleeveless and hung to her mid-calf, which she felt was a little revealing. But it fit so well, and she loved that when she twirled, it flared. Plus, it had pockets.

Joyce set the table, first putting the mats opposite each other. She looked for a moment, then switched his plate to the head of the table where Shewe had sat many years before. She froze for a moment, remembering his slow descent into illness two decades prior.

How lucky she’d been to meet the confident, stocky Lancelot Chikukwa at the train station in Plumtree. Set in his ways but an excellent father, he was stoic when the prostate cancer struck. How many men his age heard the same diagnosis and shrugged it off? 

“If it’s there, then what can we do about it? God says you go, then you go.”

She’d remembered the last time he’d held her. They were alone in their house on the sofa as the rain drummed on the asbestos roof. She remembered because her son had told her he was going to S.A. because he couldn’t watch his old man die.

“Mai Maureen. This really hurts,” Baba had said, all hope abandoning his frail body. Then they’d wept. And she’d rubbed his bald dome, and that was the last coherent conversation they’d had. 

And yet here was a man who called her by her name with as much tenderness, and yet the only person she wanted to tell was her husband. Maybe just like the citizens she saw fighting and screaming for their former leader recently on the news, she couldn’t let go.

The tang of a stone rapping on the metal gate pulled her back from her sad thoughts. She hadn’t looked forward to a conversation in a very long time.

The butterflies in her stomach fluttered again wildly as she went to the gate. He was dressed in a blue formal shirt and blue jeans with tan farmer shoes.

They shook hands. A part of her wished they’d at least give each other a church hug angled to the side. She held that hope to herself.

He carried the boiled chicken wrapped in newspaper and a bottle of Amarula Cream Liqueur, as she’d requested. Joyce had the cream liqueur at her ten-year marriage anniversary. The fruit of the marriage tree made an amazing, sweet drink, and the intoxicating memory had never left her.

“Fresh from the market,” he said, handing her the oily meat package.

She thanked him and ushered him inside.

He entered, guarded. She could sense his discomfort until she directed him to the mountains of food on the table. He clapped his hands before cupping them above a plastic dish. She poured warm, soapy water for him to wash his hands.

“I’m not used to all this. I just usually boil and fry things twice a week and survive on that.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t remarry so you could enjoy this cooking all the time,” she said, placing the dish down.

Banda shrugged. “You and my brothers. I guess it’s expected.”

“Well,” she said, “only widows mourn. Widowers replace.”

“Unlike others, I couldn’t replace her. A few tried. I don’t know if you can strike gold twice, but who knows.”

Their eyes met for a moment. He pointed at the picture of Baba above the clock. The disapproving stare in the graduation photo made him shift gear.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what happened to the old man?”

She told him. He listened intently, warm, cloudy eyes not moving from her face as she spoke. He was more matter-of-fact when he shared his own story.

“Cancer. What an enemy to fight. Ours was ovarian. Or uterine. Something deep inside. Does it matter in the end? We used herbs. They said she had one year, but we had three. And at that time, treatment prices changed every day.”

Joyce had only had six months with Baba from diagnosis, which passed in a blur. They spoke about the big economic changes that had upended their lives.

“Where were you in 2008?” Joyce asked.

“In South Africa with my youngest. With the Zuma riots, Lenin is back now, but he has his own home. You?”

“UK with my eldest. She’s the one that’s here, running my life. Sorry, that was rude.” She looked down, embarrassed.

“Not really. When you have kids, they run your life. Did you like it? The UK?”

She enjoyed how he didn’t shame her for her candour but carried on, grabbing another slice of the chimodho corn bread she’d baked.

“Not at all. She took me on a tour at a care home where she worked, but that’s not for me.”

“I get you. I worked for my house. I’ll die in it if I must.”

How easy it was for them to talk about death. 

They continued and spoke about how they both still loved radio, Classic FM, to be specific. He offered to fix her cassette player. She stood and turned the old stereo on, sitting on the arm of her sofa just in time to catch the news headline in a showery wave of static:

“…And now, from beyond our borders, the N3 highway linking Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal has been blocked, with delivery trucks set alight…”

Va Banda saw her body tense up and cut the reader’s nasal announcement short with a suggestion.

“We don’t have to listen, dear. Turn it off. I can look at the antenna and reception, too. I much prefer vinyl albums to the news, you know?”

He placed a rugged hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. Her unease melted away almost immediately.

Joyce lifted her doe eyes towards his milky pair. She was about to ask for his favourite old record when Maureen burst through the door with an authoritative swish.

“Mummy.”

Joyce bolted up. Banda turned.

“We were just having tea, and—” Maureen didn’t give her a chance to respond.

“Sir, please go.”

“He’s still having his tea—”

Maureen didn’t acknowledge her mother’s quivering voice but instead moved out of the doorway and pointed to the door.

“Budai, Va Banda”

He did as he was told, thanked Joyce with a nod, and slunk out with his cap curled in his hand. 

Maureen slammed the door as soon as he left. “In my father’s chair, mummy! In my father’s house?”

Joyce tried to pick up the plates, but Maureen pushed her aside lightly.

“I’ll take care of this before the boys come. Go and lie down, mummy. I think you’re not well.”

Maureen had inherited the mole above her left eyelid, her curious light brown eyes, and her small top lip. Despite those dainty features, she’d taken her father’s build. She was frightening when angry, which had been her capital trait since birth four decades before. She would have been fine in the Zuma riots, not her sweet Norbert. Maureen had always been a bully. Joyce pulled all her strength to shout her daughter’s name to ward her off.

“Maureen, stop!”

“Mbuya wa Lance! Behave!”

The well-thought-out label landed as insultingly as intended. Lance’s grandmother was silenced and heartbroken.

The message came through loud and clear. She was Lance’s grandmother. Just Gogo, who baked scones and babysat. Only Gogo, whose nonenal made her grandson say she ‘smelled stale’. A sixty-something-year-old relic that bothered no one but everyone was bothered by. The recipient of annoyed pity, not of affection. She was now her daughter’s child, who was told when she was cold and when to wear cardigans. She had to report when she’d go out to visit friends without supervision. She was not Joyce, who spritzed Boots perfume in sleeveless short dresses, sipping Amarula with a man she looked forward to seeing. It was insane to have this much hope for a friendship—more than a friendship—to bloom. There was to be no more romance. There was to be no more love.

Joyce ran defeated into her bedroom and locked the door behind her. She threw herself onto the bed and cried silently into the pillow.

---

AN HOUR LATER, Maureen knocked on the open window. She poked her head through the window. Maureen spoke softly, unable to hide the quiver in her voice.

“Mummy, please, just listen. It’s not that I don’t want you to have friends or acquaintances, but if people see some man coming here who’s not Ba Lance, how will it look? It’s not that I don’t want you to be happy, but mummy, you can find happiness in, I don’t know, baking? Or your knitting. You haven’t made anything for me in years. Where do you think this will end, mummy? You have your grandkids here, and we haven’t been home in so long that—Well, mummy, we’re here, and we’re family, and we can do things together. You know, respectable family fun.”

Joyce hardly stirred and held back a sniff. Maureen continued.

“How will the boys—Mummy, they are so impressionable. It’s already hard enough that they see the news with violence where their uncle is. They can’t deal with this. You will not see him! Not in my father’s house!”

Joyce sat up and faced her firstborn squarely. She was determined not to let her happiness dim.

“He’s my friend! KGB is not a bad man. He’s—” Joyce stopped short, unsure how to continue with her daughter’s accusatory gaze bearing down on her.

“KGB. KGB? Mum, that’s Baba Banda. Va Banda, who was married to a lady from our church! Mummy, please. Think about it. If you die, God forbid, who will you be with in heaven? Why spoil your chances at eternal happiness?”

Joyce turned away. There was no winning.

“Just put on a jacket, and let’s eat. I made the scallion potatoes you like. Please, don’t, mummy, don’t be moody. Let’s not disturb the boys with things they will question. They will be here with their father soon. Please get up. Put on something warm. And shut the windows; mosquitoes will get in.”

Maureen left in a huff.

Despite the surrounding stillness, Joyce’s mind buzzed with the echoes of her late husband’s laughter and the warmth of his touch. God. How long had it been? Twenty-two years since he’d passed and fifteen since the widow’s fire had burned itself out.

Now, here was this man whose arm veins made her wonder a little. She was hopeful. She couldn’t help herself. For shame. Sixty years old, and thinking about that—Wondering what it would feel like to be held again. For a fleeting moment, she assumed that she might find the joy of being desired and admired again.

Since those coupled nights, the only times she’d had company in her bed were the episodes of being kicked by her grandsons when they were younger and sharing with her daughters, who hogged the blankets and had acrylic nails on cold feet that scratched her relentlessly. Joyce got up, caught her puffy face briefly in the vanity mirror, and shut the windows as she was told.

---

TUESDAY CAME AROUND, and the family walked quietly from the church after doing cleaning duties together. Lance and Liam walked ahead of the two women, annoyed that they’d had to help. The Manica Post newspaper headline holder at the tuckshop screamed, “300 Dead In SA Riot Death Toll!” Three men stood at the tuckshop, hunched over a single newspaper. Joyce spotted him carrying a rubber bicycle tyre. Her heart jumped. He caught her eye, too. Maureen shifted and moved ahead, her full height casting a shadow on her much shorter mother. 

His excited smile faded to a curt nod of knowing as they walked past. Joyce’s stomach dropped.

She looked at the back of Maureen’s head—she had her father’s head. Maureen was the apple of everyone’s eye. Did she know what it felt like to crave conversation or to ache for a hug? Not the big boisterous hugs from the grandsons, but to feel the warmth of clasped hands in a genuine embrace. She missed even the mundane conversations about school fees and house repairs. She looked back for a moment, hoping she could at least wave or mouth a date to meet, but he was gone.

They got home, and Joyce headed straight to the kitchen for water to quench her parched throat.

“Mummy?” 

Joyce dropped the glass she held.

“Mom, you’re shaking. Are you cold? Liam, get Gogo’s jumper, please.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, mummy. We’re seeing Dr Badza tomorrow. I hope it’s not Parkinson’s. That might be hereditary, so maybe the boys need to get checked.”

Maureen was like her father. Oblivious, always chatting away to themselves after making decisions for everyone around them.

Joyce sat as her daughter rambled on, and Liam jumped right next to her. He’d never known how to read anyone’s desire for space. Bless him.

Joyce stared at the local soap opera flickering on the TV screen and zoned out as her grandson rambled about a video game or some internet thing. She didn’t follow. She didn’t have the desire to mentally translate.

“Liam. Let’s speak in Shona. If we can do that, I’ll bake for you!”

“Um, gogo, can you also give me ten dollars?”

“Liam!”

“I’m only joking, gogo!” He wasn’t and winked conspiratorially at his grandma. Joyce didn’t mind. She seldom used all the pounds sent to her. What did money mean anyway? What was it all worth?

Mbuya wa Lance dutifully went through the rest of the evening, coddling her grandsons and staying out of her daughter’s path. She was secretly elated when Maureen took her family to her husband’s family home on the other side of Mutare. 

When she retired to bed, Joyce let the television play softly in the background, numb to the images of bandaged men screaming about jobs and crime in the neighbouring country. She closed her eyes and cried, for unlike them, her wounds couldn’t be seen, and no bandage could contain the misery of her broken heart.

---

JOYCE WOKE UP to the usual glint of sunlight slicing through the gap in the curtains. With a sigh, she sat up in her bed and surveyed her grey world. She was back to her lonely mornings and eternal mourning. She braced herself, the quiet click of her kneecaps shifting into place as she stooped behind at first, then straightened up slowly. She got up with a low groan on the second attempt. 

She shuffled towards the window, her steps slow and deliberate. Looking out at the world outside, she wondered how to accept that the world had forgotten her heart’s existence. She would have to forget the genuine connection. She could never have that feeling again. It had to be possible! She spied the dejected bottle of Amarula leaning against the wall next to the black trash bag. She would not sweep the yard for once. Let the witches have their way. She turned back and sat on her marital bed, fingered her wedding photo and longed for the hills of Maruleng before she knew what love ever was.

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Emelda Nyaradzai Gwitimah is from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and currently resides in Canada. She holds an MFA in Writing and Publishing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A finalist for the African Writers Awards for Poetry, her work has been published in Aké Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Bambazonke, The Willowherb Review, The Post Online Journal, Ipikai Poetry Journal, the Our Stories Redefined African Poetry Anthology, and twice in the Intwasa Festival Short Story Anthology. You can follow her on X @bellaemelda.

IT WAS THE skeleton he’d been known for and which was her earliest memory, though she’d heard and read so much about it and seen it so often over the years that it was hard to be certain what belonged to that first memory and what had been added with time. Even now, she still found herself going to the history section in second-hand bookshops, picking out books on South African history, and searching through the index for his name. She gained comfort in the sight of it and that grainy old black and white photo of him that she still sometimes found in earlier editions, a young man in his suit and tie standing beside the skeleton, where it lay curled up in the same position in which he said he had found it. The smell of his little museum came to her, dust and old things, displayed in two large rooms he had built on to the side of the house, with all sorts of bones, stones and shells that he had collected, and the donations from the people of the bay town where he lived; old toys and clothes, sailing boats, photos, dishes and kitchen gadgets, fishing nets, and tools with which to repair them. Open to the public six days a week, her grandmother sat there, knitting and crocheting in the room, damp and cold as it was in the winter so that, at last, she had put her foot down and said she would no longer do this, sitting there day after day, going mad with boredom and cold, and for what? Often there was not even a visitor for more than a fortnight. After that, the museum was open only three days a week or at request. 

They would visit her grandparents during the holidays, driving half a day with her brother, sister, and herself in the backseat, talking about the skeleton all the way, telling stories about it, and saying how they had seen its ghost. One year, she had an oral to prepare for after the Easter holidays. It had to be on something interesting, anything, as long as it was interesting, and she had asked her grandpa if she could do it on him and his skeleton. She had already told everyone at school about it, but they hadn’t believed her, and Grandpa said of course and took her on a private tour, just the two of them. He took a small bone from the display, put it in her hand, and told her she could borrow it and show it to her friends but to be careful and bring it back. 

Standing in front of the class and making a big deal about it because they had learnt about Bartholomew Dias in History the term before, about his journeys to try to get round the Cape, and what their teacher hadn’t told them, she said, was that he’d taken on board four slave women from the coast of Guinea, and then loaded them up with gold, silver, copper and stuff and then dropped them off at various points along the African coastline to show the local tribes the kinds of things the Portuguese wanted. He told the women he’d come back for them so that they could say to him what they had learnt about the lands, the people and gold and stuff, but he never did, leaving them behind for good, all of them except the third one because she had already died somewhere along the way and been thrown overboard. She explained how her grandfather had found the fourth woman. He was an amateur archaeologist, which meant he dug up old things and found her sticking out of a sand dune. He saw by her bones that she could not be one of the local people because she was too strong and big to be one of them. He realised, because he knew a lot about the history and the place and he did all sorts of tests and things, that she must have been Dias’s slave woman. He could also tell from the skeleton that she had had two children. 

“Bones are like books,” she said, “you can read the stories in them.” She handed the little bone to a girl in the front row, letting her pass it to the rest of the class. Then she said the bit that her mother had made her add: “Think of this poor woman who was taken from her home and thrown into a wilderness and told she’d be fetched, but when and how could that happen with no way of communicating? That poor woman, think of her, alone, afraid and far from home.” Her mother always said things like that when they went into the museum or spoke of the skeleton. 

And her grandfather would say, “Well, Dias didn’t find her, but I did, and she’s safe now.” Though,  she wasn’t all that safe. She was displayed on an open table in the centre of the first room; anyone could reach out and put their hands on her despite the PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH sign. Several bones went missing over the years.

When her grandfather died, her grandmother confessed to being sick of that bloody museum, the bane of her existence for all those decades, and she hated it, hated it, and wanted to be rid of it. The house was sold, along with the museum, and her uncle donated the contents to other small museums, though the skeleton went to the University of Cape Town—that Cape which Dias had rounded and where he went missing in a storm in 1500. Little notice was taken of the museum’s closing. The country was busy with its first democratic elections at the time, and too much was going on in the present for anyone to be reporting about that kind of distant past. 

---

SOME YEARS LATER, she went on to study art at the university, and though she looked, she had not been able to find the skeleton; not knowing how to go about it, asking lecturers in departments with which she had no other contact, science and biology and medicine, trying to search in the library system, checking with her uncle for a name or number, anything to go by, but he couldn’t remember. She had left it then, had her own things to deal with, changing degrees from art to literature, and then the confusion of falling in and out of love, then in love again, this time with Lisa, later having to come out to her family, and their difficult response. Still, she got on with life, graduating with a teaching certificate, starting her first job, buying a flat, marrying Lisa, adopting, showing the children photos of their great-grandfather, and telling them of the skeleton and its ghosts. 

When her uncle died, his children and grandchildren were living overseas. It was left to her to drive to the bay, where he had continued to live all these years, clear out his house, and prepare it for sale. Though she and her family had visited regularly, it was only now that she realised his house had a second garage round the back of the property. It was here that she found the old, faded sign of the museum and a couple of hundred boxes in which, mouldering, were the items her uncle claimed to have donated to other museums decades before, along with their typewritten labels done by her grandmother at her grandfather’s instruction, some of them disintegrating now as she pulled them out. Most of them were so faded that they were hard to read, and it was no longer possible to pair them with the items to which they belonged. There were also boxes of files with scribbled notes and records, receipts, and letters. Another was filled with newspaper clippings of the discovery and visits to the museum by influential people. A framed photo of her grandfather greeting the young queen, another of him shaking hands with the president.  

She found the skeleton in one of the last boxes, knowing the woman at once by the feel of the bones as she pulled them from the box. She unwrapped them from their cottonwool and held them up towards the dimming light coming through the garage’s small window. Those bones she had stroked and passed around; bones that had belonged to her grandfather and so to her. 

She had almost missed the report at the bottom of the box. The pages had been torn into quarters, wadded together like box-fillers rather than anything important. She was going to toss them onto the waste pile when a few words caught her eye, so she pulled the quarters apart and flattened them out with an open hand, working out which bits went where. The first page was a letter from her uncle, dated 1987, about the 400th anniversary of Dias’s rounding of the Cape. As a gift to his father and the nation, he wanted this story of the skeleton and the slave woman confirmed. There followed the report, which she read with confusion, the numbers and words difficult to follow, but then coming to the end of a paragraph and seeing what they meant: A carbon dating showed the woman to have died 200 to 250 years before Dias’s journey. As for her grandfather’s other assertions, he was incorrect about her being too robust to be from anywhere other than Guinea. Though he had been certain she could not have come from a local indigenous tribe, there was no doubt that that was indeed her heritage. Moreover, the woman he had considered to be fecund could never have had a child, let alone two, most especially because she was a man. A fifty-year-old man, to be precise, riddled with arthritis and disease. A man who walked with pain, who lived with pain, and who had most likely died from two arrow wounds in his skull, possibly inflicted during a raid or a battle. 

She returned to the piles of cotton wool and looked through them for the little bone her grandfather had allowed her to borrow. She would take it home and show it to Lisa, the children, and their boyfriends and girlfriends. She would tell them the story, the one they already knew, the one she would keep telling, passing the bone amongst them and letting them touch it, feeling her grandfather in it too, him and her childhood, and her parents and siblings, all her family and all her life in that little bone.

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Karen Jennings is a South African author whose novel An Island was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Her most recent novel, Crooked Seeds, came out in 2024. She is currently writer-in-residence as a post-doctoral fellow at the Laboratory for the Economics of Africa’s Past (LEAP), Stellenbosch University, where she explores history through fiction. Karen is also co-founder of The Island Prize for Debut African Novels.