The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena

by Elsa Joubert

  Look at the windows, the bus inspectors told the passengers, see how the children smashed them up. So now we don’t go any further than this. It’s too rough in the location.

  So she had to walk the rest of the way, past the old St Joseph’s home, skirting Guguletu; then on to Cross Roads, past the Snakepark squatters camp, past the shops beyond the crossing to Nyanga East, turning off at the Old Location. She walked for more than half an hour. Taxis passed, packed with people picked up at the bus stop. But she kept on walking. The Old Location showed the most damage: burnt-down buildings, blackened walls, roofs fallen in, burnt-out cars, laundry vans, bakery vans, even a big removal van smashed up, set on fire and then overturned, left lying at the side of the road. As she passed a burnt-out bar the sour smell of spilt liquor came to her nostrils. She saw movement amongst the rubble, a number of men were gathered together, bending forward as if watching someone who was digging. Then they grasped at the bottles they had unearthed, covering them hastily with their jackets for fear of being seen. She was afraid that they would know she had seen them. She hurried on, not feeling at ease until she had left them far behind her.

  The smells of the location were strong, when the wind moved it brought the stink of unemptied rubbish tins. People seemed to be afraid. Even those she knew did not speak to her in passing, scarcely greeting her. Children walking along the street disappeared down the sanitary lanes when the nylons came past.

  Nearing Zwelitsha Drive she saw the burnt-out centre and the post office. She trudged up the last steepness to mama’s house. As she pushed open the gate, she felt exhausted.

  The younger children were at home, as mama didn’t allow them on the streets. Poppie sat down at the table, pulled off her shoes and stockings and soaked her feet in a plastic basin. Mama added hot water as it cooled. Pains of weariness shot up her legs.

  I had to ride in a smashed-up bus with broken windows, she complained to mama.

  All the buses are smashed up.

  Now but why do they do it?

  You could have come by car. I thought the taxis are waiting for passengers at the Manenburg bus stop?

  I paid my money for the bus fare. From where must the money come for the taxi? Poppie was tired and dissatisfied. She had been working hard all week. Why must she have problems with transport home? Her legs ached. She watched her mother who kept silent.

  One doesn’t know how to talk to the location people, she thought, not even to your mother. Even after these few days. We who work sleep-in in the city, we don’t know what happened here.

  What is going on, mama? Poppie asked. What do the children want when they start smashing up everything?

  We don’t know, said mama.

  Mama started weeping: Your troubles aren’t the heaviest, not having your children with you. Pieta was stabbed dead, I only have Jakkie left at home as boy child. And Jakkie is part of this smashing-up business.

  Poppie wanted to comfort her ma, but mama shook off her hand. She dried her tears. This is the burden parents must bear, she said. The parents want their children to stop this business, no one wants to lose his child. But the children keep silent. They come home at night and they don’t speak a word to us.

  We wait for them all day, Poppie, we are tired too, said mama. When they leave in the morning we don’t know if we’ll see them alive again.

  Baby got a fright at the post office and stays at home, but Jakkie is the big worry to me.

  When it was dark Jakkie came home to eat, but did not say much to Poppie, only: Sisi, we’re not doing bad things.

  Poppie couldn’t accept this. The buses are smashed up and the schools are burnt down and the children are drunk on the streets and you say it’s nothing bad?

  But Jakkie wouldn’t speak. After his meal, he left.

  You see, mama said, that’s how it is with Jakkie. Mama started crying again. And the children say he’s their leader.

  Later that night when he came to make sure his mama had not come to harm, Mosie stood outside the house with Poppie. He looked at the deserted streets, at the rows of houses, where the lights had been dimmed. He had left his motor car at home for fear of the stoning, he had far to walk to get back to Rhoda. But he didn’t want to leave Poppie. He stood on the cement path leading to his mama’s door and looked up at the sky which was black, for there were no clouds, just here and there the small light of a star.

  Then he said: My little sister, I don’t like these riots. You and I are of the Lord’s people, his church-people. I don’t like it that the children tease the government and get hurt, or that they stop my car with stones and shout: Donate! Donate! till I get out and tap off petrol for their petrol bombs. But little sister, I cannot help it, deep down in my heart I hear: At last! I suppress this thought ‘cause why, this violence is not the way of the Lord. But then again I hear deep down: At last!

  At work Poppie listened to the wireless for news of East London. Sunday the children of Wongalethu High School in Mdantsane marched. The police dispersed them, some were beaten up, but, thank the Lord, there was no shooting.

  After that a few days of quiet in East London.

  Later in the week she heard that the Higher Primary School had been closed until after the weekend. It was Fezi’s school. Dear Lord, there has been no shooting.

  I went by train from Cape Town to Heideveld station to get the bus for Section 3 on my off day, Poppie tells. As the train pulled in at Langa station I saw children crowding the platform. Some got into our coach. We were curious to talk to them, because a Standard Seven schoolboy, Xolile Musa, had been shot when they attacked the Langa police station and we guessed they had just been to his funeral. But when we asked them questions they hung their heads and spat on the floor.

  Don’t ask us, mama, they said, the police kept us from the grave.

  Auk, the mamas said. Now for what did they do that? And you are all looking so nice in your school uniforms.

  They robbed us of the funeral, said a schoolboy. The whole morning we practised our songs at the Langa High School, special songs that we made up for Xolile’s grave, then we sang and marched down the street to his house. But his father came out and told us: Go home, see, the police jeeps are around us.

  We don’t mind the police jeeps, we said, but the boy’s father kept on: The funeral is over. You’re too late. Now this morning the police came: We bring you the child from the morgue, they said, he’s outside in the van. Let us go bury him, quick. We don’t want no trouble.

  So we’ll go sing at the grave, even if he’s finished buried, we told his pa, but he said: Rather go home, you, the police chased the children from the grave with tear-gas, they’ll chase you too.

  We’re not scared of tear-gas, we said. We bring bottles of water with us to wash the gas from our faces.

  But the road to the grave was closed, we couldn’t get near.

  Johnnie Drop-Eye was at Mosie’s house when Poppie got there. They wanted to hear what she had to tell. Nobody had news, everyone heard something different. But Johnnie at his milk dairy heard many stories. God man, one thing is true, he said. It was a black policeman who shot the child, they’re too rough, man. The people were mad. So the next day, the people tell me, he was sent to another town, him and his wife and children, for the kinsmen of the child not to kill him.

  You say the coffin was brought home in a police van, sisi? said Mosie. Now the kinsmen of the child will be insulted. Is it then something shameful, this child’s funeral? they will say. For that is the way my heart will speak if it is my child.

  And now this, she turned on Mosie, are you then on the side of the children?

  I’m not on the side of the police, Mosie said.

  But Poppie had no heart for what was happening in the location. It seemed to her that Mosie and Johnnie and Jakkie and everybody else was stirring up a trouble that would get too big for them to control. And God knows, more trouble she did not want.

  Now you fight. Why didn’t you fight for me when
I was made to suffer so?

  Jakkie was at Mosie’s house that evening too. For the first time he spoke: I am fighting for you and your children, sisi. It’s for you that I fight. When I throw stones it is not at the nylons that I throw but at the law.

  Ten days later Mrs Swanepoel told Poppie: The trouble is close by. Hundreds of children are marching in the city and the police are chasing them with tear-gas.

  And mama rang her: Jakkie has been caught. Yesterday he marched in the city. The police picked him out because they say he’s grown up, what business has he got with the children, he must be a leader.

  But many of the children were in their twenties, those that had gone back to school, and were the leaders. They kept Jakkie in gaol one night and let him go. He told the police: Ag, I just saw them marching and I went along. But they did not believe him.

  When will this trouble come to an end? Poppie said to Mosie. She held Vukile on her lap. The crèches were shut, the clinics were shut. Vukile had been getting on well, but now he was ill again. If the clinic could give him injections he would throw off this sickness, but the cough kept on, he cried and was listless like he was in East London. Rhoda was good to him, but couldn’t do much and it was hard for mama to look after him. Kindjie was nearly seven. It seemed to Poppie that she walked permanently askew, from carrying the child on the hip. Vukile was nearly three but wouldn’t walk alone, it was easier to pick him up and carry him around.

  Mosie too kept his daughter at home, she was losing her school year.

  It won’t easily come to an end, sisi, he said. It’s not only this Afrikaans education thing, that’s an excuse. As we say: Bendifunanje inyathele ekonsini: I wanted you to tread on my corn. ‘Cause why? If you tread on my com I can hit you, not only for the corn pain but for all the other grievances as well. I think this is what has happened. The school was just the excuse and when they were beaten up, they got angry.

  The children didn’t want advice. They didn’t talk things over with us, says Poppie. Their parents tried to stop them, but it was no use. The older people were afraid of the children and no one knew what they wanted.

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  The children didn’t stop with burning down schools and administration buildings and beer halls. They got bolder. The older ones called themselves the Comrades and told the adults: Your time is past: When we speak, you must listen. For what do we bum down the beer halls if the bars and the shebeens still sell liquor in the private houses?

  I was walking home with a woman, says Poppie, and I saw children digging in her backyard. I didn’t know what was going on, but I heard them shout and then they started to smash up wine bottles they had dug up with their spades. So I knew the woman was a shebeen queen and she’d buried the wine in her backyard.

  For my part, says Johnnie Drop-Eye, it was a good thing what the children did, I saw too many people killed by drink, and houses broken up and children outcasts.

  And the children shouted at the people: For what we burn down bars if you sell drink in private houses? So they made war on the private houses.

  Baby brought home notice papers that the children sent to people to tell them to stop buying and selling wine. Some will stop, mama, others won’t stop, said the children.

  The children stopped people on the streets and if they smelt of liquor, they would beat them up with sticks from the Port Jackson trees on the dunes. When the old drunks came out on the street, they ran from the groups of children, because the children wanted to know: Where did you buy the wine? Who sold it to you? The old men were scared to say we got it at such and such a house, because they knew they’d send trouble to that house. But they would be beaten till they told and then the children would go to the shebeen house and burn it down.

  The children carried pails of water and chicken feathers.

  They’d make a drunk man drink the water, then push the feather down his throat till he threw up. Then they’d say: Old man, your insides are now clean, you must never drink wine again. Then they’d let him go home.

  They caught buti Plank that way when he was staggering home, dead drunk.

  That Saturday when I got to the location, I saw broken bottles everywhere, said Poppie.

  The children were stopping people at the bus terminus and at the stations because people from outside were bringing in liquor, the women in their shopping bags and the men in their brief-cases. They stopped every man and woman getting down from the train.

  Saturday afternoon they met every train at the Claremont station. They blocked the way, saying: Open your bags, mama. I carried a Checkers shopping bag and I opened it, I took out my stuff. They shook out my clothes, felt with their hands between the groceries I’d brought to my ma.

  O.K. there’s nothing here, you can go, mama.

  I saw them searching another woman’s bag, she had a bottle of whisky with her and they took it and threw it to the ground. The skollies joined up with the children, took wine from people, and drank it themselves.

  They took chances, ja.

  A skollie stopped me, but I said: I won’t open my bag for you, you’re not a schoolchild, you’re an old man, I won’t be searched by you. He was drunk, and his friends stopped him. I said: And from where do you get your wine? They must search you, not me.

  But if he had been a schoolchild I would have given up what I had ..

  The schoolchildren went from door to door, searching for liquor and where they found liquor they threw it out, and they smashed up the house, broke the windows and chucked things about as a warning.

  When Poppie got to Mosie’s house he said: They searched my house too. They held a meeting and told us why they are fighting liquor. They hate it. One said: My pa drinks, and he robbed me of my education through drink. And another: My pa and ma don’t go home on Friday nights, they drink at the shebeens. Or: When my pa pitches up, he’s drunk and his wages are robbed. If he didn’t drink, he would have money to give us. A drunk man gets hurt, gets mugged on a Friday night.

  Rhoda sided with the children. They have experience of drunk people, she said. They have suffered in their homes because of drink. Look at the way you suffered with buti Hoedjie and buti Plank.

  Rhoda was always against buti Plank and buti Hoedjie. She can’t stand the drunken brothers of her husband, she thinks she is better than us, Poppie said to herself. Although Rhoda was good to her children, Poppie couldn’t bear it when she spoke against her brothers-in-law.

  You can talk easily, she told Rhoda. Your children are still small. If they were on the streets now, burning houses and hitting older people, you wouldn’t have liked it either.

  And then one day Plank came home drunk again. Liquor was getting scarce in Zwelitsha and people went to buy liquor in Cross Roads. So Plank was on the way back from Cross Roads and the children were watching him. They pretended to be playing ball in the street, but they watched him. They followed him, kicking their ball this way, that way, but they watched him.

  An auntie with a paper bag came along: Auntie, open your bag, we must see what you’ve got. But then they went on kicking their ball and watching.

  They were following buti Plank and he didn’t know he was being watched. They dragged him from mama’s house where he lay on her settee asleep, they dragged him through the kitchen, to the backyard to the fowl-run. Some held him, others beat him with the sticks from the Port Jackson trees. They tore his shirt off his back and beat him till the strength had left their arms, and buti Plank did not make a move to start them off again.

  Jakkie held down his buti Plank. Jakkie did not beat him, but Jakkie let the children into the house.

  Mama had screamed at him: You bloody shit, leave your buti be! But Jakkie held fast to his struggling buti and laughed: Mama, we’re helping my buti. Liquor has kept him asleep all his life. We are waking him up. It’s our duty. We must liberate him.

  Don’t take it so much to heart, Poppie, Mosie said when he told her about it. Don’t let it make you cry. Don’t blame Jakkie for it.


  When the children had done with beating buti Plank, mama went out to him and helped him back to the house and rubbed his back with ointment and let him sleep on the settee. He had a helluva fright, said Mosie. And he’s stopped drinking. Poppie walked to Mamdungwana’s house. She met other church-women who had gathered there. They said: At last God has heard the prayers of the parents. The Lord is speaking through the children. The Lord is telling us: Liquor has ruined you, leave it be.

  Mamdungwana comforted Poppie. Many parents know that their children drink, they’re alcoholics, they’re gaol birds. They are grateful that the Comrades have taken a stand against liquor.

  My children don’t drink yet, Poppie thought, but how do I know that they will not one day do like the other children do. I must join with the women in their gladness that the children have turned against liquor.

  But she could not forgive them for what they did to buti Plank: first the white police beat him up in the chicken-run, and now it’s his own little brother that did the same thing.

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  Why should it upset me? she thought, when she heard that more schools had been burned down, more children hurt.

  This trouble is not mine, mine is behind me, I must forget it. It’s not to say my children would not have a grievance if they were here. My daughters suffer because they have to live on the land, away from their mama, and their brothers must stay by themselves in Mdantsane. Perhaps their hearts are eating into them, perhaps in their hearts they also throw stones. I must be honest. I have my grievances too. If I had the strength I would try to do something to change matters but now I don’t have the strength, I must now let matters rest as they are. I am tired. I want peace now. And I want my children out of it, so that they can have peace too.

  But she knew Jakkie thought differently: I am not tired yet, sisi. And we don’t want peace to come. It’s only you that are tired, sisi, it’s only you that want peace. We are not tired, sisi, and it is for you and your children that we are fighting.