The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena

by Elsa Joubert

  The Comrades went from door to door in the location and forced the children from all the houses to come to their meetings. We’ll burn down your pa’s house if you stay away, they threatened. When they heard of a mama whose children were on the land with their ouma, they’d say to her: See here, mama, when we come tomorrow, we want to see your children here, or the next day if they have to come far, we want them at our meetings. Our schools are burned down, we’re not writing exams, so no one else must write either, here or on the land, that’s why our children must come home.

  The Comrades stopped Poppie in the street: Where are your children?

  She showed Vukile and Kindjie: These are my children.

  The Comrades said: You’re an old mama to have such young children, hey, but they left her in peace.

  Poppie felt: Even the people whom I know, I distrust. I don’t know which one will say: That woman there has children on the land too. If I have to let my children come, why do you leave her alone? After Plank was beaten she did not trust Jakkie either.

  I have had my share of trouble, said Poppie, I am not bringing my children into this new trouble.

  73

  Jakkie was spending his time helping Johnnie Drop-Eye in his dairy. The nylon stopped in the street and two policemen, one black, one white, came to arrest Jakkie.

  Why do you cause so much trouble, why do you burn down the people’s houses? the policemen asked while they put on the bangles.

  Jakkie did not resist them. But he asked: Why is it me that you run in?

  It’s not only you, many others are being arrested as well.

  Mama wept once more, but Baby said: Mama, it’s nothing to be arrested. You get arrested if you sit and talk too.

  Mama rang Poppie: The schoolchildren burnt down a house in Nyanga East and Jakkie has been arrested. The owner of the house and your stepfather go to church together, but they had a quarrel and it’s out of spite that he told the police it was Jakkie who burnt the house down. He told them Jakkie is the leader.

  The night after Jakkie was arrested, the children held a meeting in the church. We want to talk to the parents, they said.

  Mosie and Rhoda and Annie, the pregnant woman who lived with them, went to the meeting.

  When we got there, Mosie told Poppie, they were chasing out someone with a tape-recorder. They said: You’re a traitor to us. That’s ‘cause why the children don’t trust the adults. They say they’re working for us too, for the future, that we’ve given in, we don’t do nothing. That’s why they’ve taken over. Now we mustn’t spoil their work.

  A parent asked: Where’s your chairman and your secretary?

  But they said: No, we don’t have such things. It’s such people that are the traitors, they give the government the list of names when they are caught.

  Then the children shouted: You fathers and mothers, you work for the white people, you make them rich, and now their children are shooting at your children.

  People became angry and a woman got up and screamed: It’s the truth they speak. We must join the children. We must march on the police station and demand our children that are locked up.

  My little sister, said Mosie, that’s where I didn’t like the idea any more. I knew Jakkie was sitting in the gaol, I wanted to go demand him back, but I didn’t like the idea of marching in the night. We can’t march in the night, I said to the people, they’ll shoot the lot of us.

  They didn’t have a chance to listen to me, ‘cause why a youngster had gone outside and said to the people crowding in the church: We’re marching on the police station. And when we got outside the people were on the move already.

  I tried to tell them: Go tomorrow, go demand the children in daylight, if you march on the police station at night, you ask the police: Shoot at me, ‘cause why they don’t know what’s coming.

  But there was no stopping them and I said to Rhoda and the pregnant woman: Look, the old people are marching too, and if the old ones go, how can I not go, we’d better go too.

  But, my sister, I was worried like about my wife and the pregnant woman, and I said to them, when we pass the turn off at the tennis court at NU 7, you must take the side road and go home.

  That’s when we saw the rockets shooting up in the sky, and the crowd wanted to turn but they couldn’t; some turned this way, some that, and then we heard the shooting, twiee-twiee over our heads and now if we wanted to we couldn’t go on; they all turned back, they pushed us from the front, we all went back, with the police vans coming on behind us. We got back safely, but some people were hurt, others were picked up by the police vans and arrested.

  The children were now satisfied. They said: Mothers and fathers, you can go home now. This meeting was due to us not knowing where you stood. Now we know you are standing with us. Now you can go home to sleep.

  Every day for a week mama went to the police station to ask for Jakkie. After a week they took his fine and sent him home with mama.

  Mama wept: Did they beat you up? Tell your mama, did the policemen hit you?

  Jakkie did not answer mama. He took his path away from her. Two nights later he came home for the first time.

  Mama talked to Mosie about Jakkie. She knew about the meeting and Mosie marching to demand Jakkie at the police station.

  Jakkie won’t speak to me, Mosie, she said.

  They’re scared of traitors, mama. The children speak to no one. They say: I speak to my buti or my mama, then he talks to the neighbour and the neighbour is an informer and before we know, we are picked up. That’s why they don’t tell us what they think or what they plan.

  But Poppie asked Jakkie when she got home on Sunday: Was it then you that burned down that house, Jakkie? Jakkie had got thin in the cells, but his eyes still shone. His hands were never still, his fingers kept twisting into each other. But Jakkie was still playful. He joked with her: No, sisi, I have a girl friend staying in that man’s house, not his daughter, his brother’s daughter. They are jealous that she goes out with me. So he gave the police my name when his house burned down.

  You see, mama, said Poppie, that’s what he’s like. The children have no more respect for us. They mock us. They don’t go to school, they hang around the streets. What about all the money we paid for their schooling?

  We now have better things to do than go to school, mama, said Jakkie.

  Going to gaol, yes, said mama.

  Going to gaol, yes, till the police stations are so full that they must turn the whole location into a gaol. Then we’ll all be in gaol together, mama, he teased her.

  ‘Cause why, said Jakkie to mama, we’re waiting to die.

  74

  So the children wrote big notices, says Baby, and stuck them up at the bus stops for the migrant workers who wouldn’t stop selling wine. When the migrant workers didn’t listen to the children, the children got mad and went to the special quarters and broke the windows and smashed the bottles they found. It was rough in the location that weekend.

  Then: the riot squads came and threw tear-gas to force the children to break up their groups. The children didn’t run away, they carried bottles of water and washed the tear-gas off their faces. The police started shooting with pellets to stop the smashing up, white and black police and soldiers in camouflage clothes, the pyjama boys. So the children ran away back to the location but many were hurt and one died. The police took him to Groote Schuur hospital but he died there.

  Sunday the migrant workers started fighting back at the city-borners, they killed two. One was still a schoolboy and the other, Mr Bisa, was beaten to death in his own house, then the migrants burned down the house.

  So again the children came back, together with their fathers, to attack the special quarters where the migrants lived, burning their houses until the police with the riot squad came to stop the fighting.

  The city-borners said: We are now fighting on the side of our children against the migrant workers from the tribal lands.

  It worried mama, that firs
t time the children attacked the special quarters. The children can’t fight with kieries, mama said, and all the men who come from the country are trained to fight with kieries. The city-borners are stupid. Jakkie can carry a kierie in his hand, but if he fights a man of his own age from the Transkei, that man will knock him flat, because he is stupid about this kierie-fighting.

  That’s why the kids know karate and knifing, said Baby.

  But mama didn’t stop worrying. A man coming with a fist or a knife can’t fight a countryman trained to use his kierie.

  The migrants only think as far as their liquor, said mama. And the police tell the migrants: You fuck up the children for us too.

  For the migrant workers say: We won’t leave off the wine. We won’t be ruled by the amathole bonomokhwe, which means the children of whores.

  When the migrant workers said these things the location born people they got as mad as hell.

  Do the folk who come from the Transkei or the Ciskei think they are better people than those who are born here in the city? Mamdungwana’s husband asked Poppie when she came home on Saturday.

  We location people, we are lawfully married, we don’t have any whore children, Mamdungwana said, very cross. And many of those who live over there-she pointed to the opposite side of Zwelitsha Drive, on the other side of the trees to the rows of red brick houses where the migrant workers lived – many of them will leave whore children in the location when they go back to the land.

  How many of the migrants know who their fathers are? Mamdungwana’s husband asked. He was a heavy-set man with a beard; he worked in a car factory where they made spare parts; he came from Queenstown in the Ciskei, but he had been living in Cape Town since before ‘forty.

  Their mothers worked in Johannesburg and Durban and when they got whore children they sent the little ones back to the kraal for the grandmothers to raise; that is where they come from. They are the whores’ children, not our children.

  Poppie’s thinking was going backwards and forwards about this matter, just like a swinging clock.

  They are our people, she wanted to tell Mamdungwana; tata-ka-Bonsile lived with the migrants in those red brick houses when I was sent away. If Bonsile stayed behind, he would also have lived there. They marry our girls, there are location women and their children who lived with them in the special quarters. Why must we turn against each other?

  There is going to be a lot of trouble between the city-borners and the homelanders, Mosie told his boss, Mr Green. If not now, in the time to come. The homelanders are the majority, and what they decide they are going to do, that is what they think I must do as well. Now our people won’t stand for that. Sooner or later I will have to fight them. If the homelander votes, his voice also talks for me, and I don’t like that, no.

  I know I am an Afrikaner, I am here in South Africa, but tomorrow morning I can be told to go to the Transkei or to another country, and that is what I don’t like. I will go to the Ciskei or the Transkei if I want something there, if I decide to go and live with my sister, but I don’t like to be pushed around. No, man, no.

  75

  The children say this Christmas is a time for mourning, Poppie, mama told Poppie over the phone. No trimmings, no parties. No Christmas clothes must be bought. No sheep which the people are used to buying at Christmas time. They must only buy the meat at the butchers that they usually buy. Ordinary food. People must mourn those that are dead. No clothes, not even a shoe, nothing new.

  Poppie was dissatisfied. Why was mama talking like this about the children?

  Must we be frightened of the children, mama?

  It is coming from Jakkie, mama answered. If the children say something, we must listen, he says.

  Jakkie fought against the migrants, mama said. He has an arm that is all swollen; Mosie had to bandage it.

  Mama, you must talk to Jakkie, Poppie said; he is wasting his life with the Comrades.

  But when she was back at mama’s on Friday he was there as usual, her little brother again. He came out in the street to meet her, took her carrier-bag with his healthy arm and, standing next to her at the table, rummaged through it with Kindjie, while Vukile tried to stand upright against the chair. He dug some sweets out from beneath the food parcels, opened the wrapping and gave them to Kindjie and Vukile who sat on the floor.

  How was your journey, sisi? Jakkie asked. Y

  our arm, it’s very swollen, Poppie answered.

  Ag, it’s nothing.

  I had a good journey.

  She felt dusty, dirty, wind-swept. The children weren’t looking for trouble at the buses. They waited at the bus stops and shouted: Here comes another TV. That is what they called the buses with broken windows. People streamed into the location, most of them carrying parcels of food. But they walked scared like, only using old carrier-bags so that everything should look worn.

  But I’m covered in dust, I walked a long way, Poppie said. She was glad to find Jakkie at home with the children. It was his arm that kept him there. It is a good thing that you came tonight, sisi, he said. Things are going to be disturbed in the location, restless like. It seems to me the people want to fight. The city-bomers and the amagoduka.

  The amagoduka is the Xhosa name for the migrants that come to the cities for work and then return to the land.

  The amagoduka are stupid for not wanting to help us.

  Poppie had no presents for the children, no new clothing, only food. Here’s meat, mama. She unpacked the bags and the children were all around her. It is only my sisi who brings me sweets, said Jakkie. When he said things like this she softened towards him and laughed, saying: What is all this, you making as if you are small? If I talk to you about going to school you have nothing to say.

  As she was talking she thought: Long ago he sat on my lap, as Vukile is doing now. I brought him up for mama.

  I promised Mamdungwana I would go to her on Christmas day, but tonight I’m sleeping with you.

  That is all right.

  Now it was mama and the stepfather and Baby in the bedroom, Poppie and the children in the living room and Katie, who had come from the work, and Jakkie and buti Plank sleeping on the floor of the kitchen.

  I saw Hoedjie during the week, mama said, but Muis is too ill to come here. It is too far for her to walk from Cross Roads to here.

  They all sang together before they went to bed. Mama said a prayer, but all of them felt uneasy.

  The next morning, while Poppie was dressing the children, mama asked: Are you going to church?

  I might as well. Is mama not dressing for church?

  The old man says we must stay. There is going to be trouble.

  No, mama, I might as well go.

  The stepfather is showing his bloody two-face, Poppie thought. Did he get his information from informers? It strengthened her will to go to church.

  They won’t come into the church to make disturbance, mama.

  In church, which was usually crowded at Christmas time, there were few people. They all had to move forward to sit together, to make more people, a small crowd. It was not a church meeting which gave pleasure. The children wore no new clothes. Other Christmas times the church was bright with the new frocks and new shirts the children wore – yellow and pink and blue. Now everything was old and drab. Kindjie knelt on the bench to look around; Poppie dragged her down to sit properly. She had Vukile on her lap and quietly soothed him with a bobbing knee. The children were restless because of the empty church and because they weren’t wearing new clothes and because there was no special food at home waiting. If they heard voices outside in the street they looked round while singing or peered with bent heads during prayers.

  The minister shortened the service and Poppie left with Mamdungwana.

  At about three, after the meal and washing up and the table clearing, they heard noises of the disturbance in the location coming through the windows and the open door. The small children were playing outside and they saw the men congregating in t
he street.

  It is a kind of to and fro troublemaking, Mamdungwana’s husband said. We do not know which way this thing is going to turn to; I don’t like it, no, not at all.

  And while he was saying this they saw the jeeps of the riot squad coming down the sandy road at the corner near to where the post office was burnt down. They called in the small children from outside and closed the door. Now it was quiet, for a little while. The jeep had gone down the street and was standing at the comer. Then another one joined it, and still another. It looked as if there was going to be a big fight at the bottom end of the street. They heard people talking very loudly and shouting.

  Behind the houses they could see smoke going up into the heaven. Another house burning. It is not very far from mama’s house, Poppie told Mamdungwana.

  They pulled at Poppie. Come inside, you can’t go there. You can see the riot squad going in that direction.

  They sat in the house listening. They heard people running, then a few shots. Then they heard the quiet again. The children at the window suddenly cried: Come look, a house at the back of us is burning. They pulled open the back door and saw people rushing with pails of water. Boys climbed on to the roof and tried to put out the flames; the smoke went straight and black upwards.

  It was a petrol bomb, a neighbour cried, but no one saw it coming.

  The afternoon lengthened itself into lateness.

  Mamdungwana’s husband again came in from outside and reported: I heard that two men at the special quarters are dead. But the house wasn’t burning in your mama’s street; there it is quiet.

  He brought another child to spend the night with them.

  Now there were three adults and seven children in the house. Mamdungwana’s last-born, Nofyn – Poppie had given her this name because she was so small and fine at birth and the name had stuck – she was thirteen years old, and Nomawetu and Fanie, a son and daughter of another working woman, were twelve and five years old, and Nomamasa, a crippled daughter of Mamdungwana’s sister-in-law, was eight, and then there was the little brother of two who had just been brought along, and Poppie’s Kindjie and Vukile who were seven and two. That was without Mamdungwana’s two youngest boys, Tera and Langa, who at thirteen and seventeen were both working. She had not seen them all the week. The elders cooked the food and made beds for the children.