breadbox told him he had to go. A stone through the kitchen window told him he had to go. The bark of stray dogs as he lay awake at night told him he had to go. Somehow he had to find a life for them beyond this rat-riddled madness of starving and scavenging, of fearing and flinching.
Yet he was dead scared of heading south.
He’d heard of the crocodiles and the undertow in the Limpopo.
He’d heard of border soldiers on the far bank of the Limpopo who’d shoot you and hide your corpse rather than deal with the paperwork to deport you.
He’d heard of the gumagumas : roving, raping swindlers who lurk in the bundu and hoodwink your money out of you.
He’d heard of vigilante South African farmers who ride pickups through the borderlands and shoot at stray Zimbabweans. The farmers blame them for the looting and random murders. In the old days the border had been guarded by drafted white-boy soldiers. Now there is no draft in South Africa and the borders are riddled with holes.
He’s heard from the deported that in a border town called Musina a police captain has photos of dead refugees on file. This girl called Jendaya was raped and stabbed by the gumagumas . They found her with her panties on her head. This boy called Goodwill was robbed and stabbed by the gumagumas . In his pocket was a paper in the hand of his schoolteacher, pleading for pills to cure his mother of the blood in her spit.
He had no money for the malaishas , the human smugglers (half upfront, half on arrival). He had no friend in Cape Town to shack up with till he found his feet.
If he survived crocodiles and soldiers, gumagumas and vigilantes, and somehow got a ride to Cape Town, then he’d need to beg for asylum papers from Home Affairs. And until he had papers he’d have to dodge the Nigerians in this place and the Tanzanians in that place, the Gambians here and the Kenyans there. He’d have to skirt the townships where black South Africans blamed dirty Zimbabweans for pinching their jobs and their girls and for dabbling in witchcraft.
Yet he’s lucky he’s a man, for they may just give him asylum. They give no papers to boys and girls, so they have to survive in limbo. The boys camp under bridges, in roadside culverts and on outskirt dumps of junk and dirt. You see them (if you have eyes to look) in their ratty shorts and tacky flip-flops scavenging in bins, plucking at guitars conjured from paraffin tins, playing football with a dirty tennis ball, dodging motorcars to beg as the robots go from orange to red. Ether from a bottle of glue may send them on blurred, spinning trips. The girls you never see. They morph into maids, wives and whores. Never mermaids.
An aeroplane hums overhead. Jabulani detours from the path to shinny up an acacia tree.
His heart still beats hard long after the humming of the plane fades out.
Once dark falls he will head further south through this foreign veld pervaded by cackling calls, distant shots and jaggy-tooth things.
3
H ERMANUS. MIDAFTERNOON.
The town sulks under a smudged sky, caught between stoic mountains and a grey sea.
Zero spots a half-hidden white pickup up ahead and his foot rides light on the pedal.
– Pigs, Zero spits.
Zero has hated the police since they loaded up the alley-striped, jazz-pervaded world of his boyhood in District Six onto the flatbed of a truck and shifted his family to a matchbox house out on the windswept Cape Flats. He had seen his father go from finger-snapping, nipple-pinching, banjo-strumming charmer to a mumbling ghost within half a year of the bulldozers levelling the jumbled bars and haunts of a jaunty, jiving youth. His father died a muted, bitter death in a randomly wired-off zone out on the dusty Flats.
Me, I am free to come and go despite being half coloured. Yet I fear for this land where a blood-lusting tsotsi will stab an old man with a flick knife for the pittance in his pocket, where Mbeki (our tea-sipping chief) turns a blind eye to the loco antics of
Yet he was dead scared of heading south.
He’d heard of the crocodiles and the undertow in the Limpopo.
He’d heard of border soldiers on the far bank of the Limpopo who’d shoot you and hide your corpse rather than deal with the paperwork to deport you.
He’d heard of the gumagumas : roving, raping swindlers who lurk in the bundu and hoodwink your money out of you.
He’d heard of vigilante South African farmers who ride pickups through the borderlands and shoot at stray Zimbabweans. The farmers blame them for the looting and random murders. In the old days the border had been guarded by drafted white-boy soldiers. Now there is no draft in South Africa and the borders are riddled with holes.
He’s heard from the deported that in a border town called Musina a police captain has photos of dead refugees on file. This girl called Jendaya was raped and stabbed by the gumagumas . They found her with her panties on her head. This boy called Goodwill was robbed and stabbed by the gumagumas . In his pocket was a paper in the hand of his schoolteacher, pleading for pills to cure his mother of the blood in her spit.
He had no money for the malaishas , the human smugglers (half upfront, half on arrival). He had no friend in Cape Town to shack up with till he found his feet.
If he survived crocodiles and soldiers, gumagumas and vigilantes, and somehow got a ride to Cape Town, then he’d need to beg for asylum papers from Home Affairs. And until he had papers he’d have to dodge the Nigerians in this place and the Tanzanians in that place, the Gambians here and the Kenyans there. He’d have to skirt the townships where black South Africans blamed dirty Zimbabweans for pinching their jobs and their girls and for dabbling in witchcraft.
Yet he’s lucky he’s a man, for they may just give him asylum. They give no papers to boys and girls, so they have to survive in limbo. The boys camp under bridges, in roadside culverts and on outskirt dumps of junk and dirt. You see them (if you have eyes to look) in their ratty shorts and tacky flip-flops scavenging in bins, plucking at guitars conjured from paraffin tins, playing football with a dirty tennis ball, dodging motorcars to beg as the robots go from orange to red. Ether from a bottle of glue may send them on blurred, spinning trips. The girls you never see. They morph into maids, wives and whores. Never mermaids.
An aeroplane hums overhead. Jabulani detours from the path to shinny up an acacia tree.
His heart still beats hard long after the humming of the plane fades out.
Once dark falls he will head further south through this foreign veld pervaded by cackling calls, distant shots and jaggy-tooth things.
3
H ERMANUS. MIDAFTERNOON.
The town sulks under a smudged sky, caught between stoic mountains and a grey sea.
Zero spots a half-hidden white pickup up ahead and his foot rides light on the pedal.
– Pigs, Zero spits.
Zero has hated the police since they loaded up the alley-striped, jazz-pervaded world of his boyhood in District Six onto the flatbed of a truck and shifted his family to a matchbox house out on the windswept Cape Flats. He had seen his father go from finger-snapping, nipple-pinching, banjo-strumming charmer to a mumbling ghost within half a year of the bulldozers levelling the jumbled bars and haunts of a jaunty, jiving youth. His father died a muted, bitter death in a randomly wired-off zone out on the dusty Flats.
Me, I am free to come and go despite being half coloured. Yet I fear for this land where a blood-lusting tsotsi will stab an old man with a flick knife for the pittance in his pocket, where Mbeki (our tea-sipping chief) turns a blind eye to the loco antics of
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