Praise for Finding Mr Madini
Directed by Jonathan Morgan and the Great African Spider Writers First Published in 1999 by Ink, an imprint of David Philip Publishers
“An important and wonderful experiment where narratives contest one another. It provides a forum for marginalised street narratives to surface in print.”
– Antjie Krog, author of Country of my Skull
“A strange and oddly touching journey into the underbelly of a great African city.”
– Rian Malan, author of My Traitor’s Heart
“Kusinwa kudedelwana – dancers must make way for one another – and so must ideas, figures of speech and poetic expressions! Jonathan has gone and done it. The result is a book that will never fail to find a home in our heart. Yebo! It’s time, amalunda, to dance centre-stage.”
– Gcina Mhlope, author of Have You Seen Zandile?
“A raw and powerful book about Johannesburg, a work unlike anything ever written…”
– Andrew Donaldson, Sunday Times
“When he went searching for someone on whom to base a fictional homeless character, psychologist and aspiring novelist Jonathan Morgan got a lot more than he bargained for. The result is Finding Mr Madini… arguably the most important South African novel of the year.”
– Craig Canavan
“Finding Mr Madini is extraordinary. It is the flesh and the voice of a huge slice of humanity that has fallen through the cracks of a world we take for granted.”
– John Matshikiza, Mail & Guardian
White Paper White Ink
White Paper White Ink
Jonathan Morgan and Sipho Madini
First published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2014
10 Orange Street
Sunnyside
Auckland Park 2092
South Africa
+2711 628 3200
www.jacana.co.za
© Jonathan Morgan and Sipho Madini, 2014
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-4314-0863-4
Also available as an e-book:
978-1-4314-0864-1 d-PDF
978-1-4314-0865-8 ePUB
978-1-4314-0866-5 mobi
Cover design by publicide
Job no. 002199
See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za
To my younger sister, Judy Morgan, who reviewed this manuscript in its early draft form and without whose encouragement White Paper White Ink may never have seen the light of day. To my parents, Issy and Ora, who deserve as much nachas as anyone can possibly get. Also to Kyoko, Masego, Taiji, Barak and Ruth.
– Jonathan Morgan
This book is primarily dedicated to my grandmother, Elizabeth Mlambo, who raised me as her own son. Then I would like to say thank you to the National Arts Council who, in 2003, gave me R5000 to write a novel based on my experiences in prison. For ten years they may have been wondering what became of that money.
– Sipho Madini
Acknowledgements
The initial encouragement to write this book came from Jos Thorne. Thanks, Jos. The first ideas were then jotted down on the back of an SAA paper bag while sitting between my children Masego and Taiji on a plane to Johannesburg. Then of course there is my co-author Sipho Madini. Acknowledgements also go to Carol Broomhall, Maggie Davey and Bridget Impey of Jacana whose enthusiastic response to White Paper White Ink put wind in my sail and joy in my heart. Thank you, Maggie and Carol, for being so patient with me and with your careful readings of the manuscript and key editorial suggestions. And, of course, a huge thank you to Sean Fraser, my excellent editor. Also special thanks to Paul Zwi and Sandy Hoffman whose encouragement and critical feedback were highly valued, as well as to Peter Merrington, Clive Margolis, Silke Heiss, Paul Mason, Sizwe Abrams, Glyn Davies and Chris Giffard for their support and comments. Thank you also to Pieter and Dog (not their real names), my connections to the Number up the West Coast. Your insider knowledge of the Number and your tattoos were key to my research. Thanks also to David Miles and Sue Kaplan for all the work we did together on the illustrations. Thank you also to Jonny Steinberg, Heather Parker-Lewis, Araminta de Clermont, Michael Subotzky, Alf Wannenberg, Pippa Skotnes, Neil Bennun, Jackie Loos, Sol Plaatje, Scott Balson, Cloete Breytenbach, Rider Haggard, JB Peires, Linda Fortune, Allan Little, Don Pinnock, Laurie Levine, Charles van Onselen and DC Martin whose work I drew on and who are all formally acknowledged in the lists of references at the back of this book.
– Jonathan Morgan
Contents
White Paper White Ink
Sources
References
About the Authors
Finding Mr Madini (page 17) – First time Jonathan meets Sipho, eight months before Finding Mr Madini is published
A Shangaan woman with unshaved armpits holding a barrel full of holes and red coals on her head forces me off the pavement. Black smoke clouds her head but it is me who coughs and can’t stop, even in the lift where I join a young man in a red-brown leather jacket. He presses the button, the doors begin to close, but they fail and he presses again, then looks at his feet. I stare at the flickering numbers above the door.
“I’m Jonathan,” I eventually say.
He looks up and smiles, “Sipho.”
“Are you Sipho Madini?” I ask.
“Yes,” he answers and we step out.
“You write that column in Homeless Talk called ‘Survival on the Street’, don’t you?”
He is younger than I expected, maybe eighteen? But there is something much older about him too. We walk down the passage and we try to open the heavy door to get into the Homeless Talk office. It doesn’t budge.
“Is Homeless Talk closing down?” I ask. “I read something like that in the paper.”
He shrugs. A few minutes later an older man steps out the lift. His shoes are heavily polished but have no tongues. His laces are pulled tight against his bare skin. For ten minutes we sit on the floor not saying much. Three is almost a group.
“Let’s see how many come next week and bring some writing with you, anything,” I say to Eddie and Sipho as I get up.
As I pass bunches of bananas on the pavement, I think maybe I should buy a whole lot of them before the workshop next week, or even a few loaves of bread and some peanut butter. Naaa, they’ll think I’m getting all soup kitcheny. I’m relieved that my car is where I parked it and that the baby seat is still there. As I dig into my pockets to get my keys I notice Sipho standing behind me. I smile and open the front door, prompting the leopard at the back to bob its neck. I bought the carving from a Zimbabwean where the freeway ends. The leopard is wood and the detachable head is weighted with a piece of steel.
“This is my chorrie,” I say, nodding at an old but well-preserved metallic-blue Mazda.
“She’s a beauty,” says Sipho, walking away backwards, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his red-brown leather jacket.
I had a dream
of love spreading in the world
Beating proudly in the chest of men
Held aloft like a triumphant banner
Wars crushed in its wake and the wells of tears ran dry
I dreamed of hands reaching out
Lifting hands, comforting hands
Brotherly hugs and sisterly kisses
Given without a second thought
Beggars, tears, anguish
Prisons, empty buildings
Rotting food in dirty dustbins
A thing of the past
Of flowers springing all about us
Singing birds
Smiling faces
Loving hearts
You might say it was a communist kind of dream
Others
might say it was a silly kind of dream
And I might just say…
… it was my kind of dream
– ‘Communist kind of dream’, Sipho Madini,
Homeless Talk, September 1999
Can you believe it? They treat my column, ‘Tips to Survive on the Street’, as a poem! Going rate R50 a pop. One would expect at least R100 for a column, right? Not to downgrade my own poems or poetry or anything, but this is a C-O-LU-M-N spells column, dammit! It’s something readers come back to month after month – it’s the reason many of them buy this sad paper! Anyway, I should at least be glad there’s a demand. In one fell swoop I just earned myself six times R50 equals R300. A small fortune. After dropping off the next six instalments of ‘Tips to Survive on the Street’ at the editor’s office and pocketing the cash, I spend a few hours in the No Name Tavern on Rissik Street waiting till 6.30 pm for the weekly Homeless Talk journalists’ meeting.
I do not feel good and I don’t really think I should have come in the first place. Jonathan’s the new white guy, clothes not torn, but crumpled, and poor colour coordination. Whoever heard of red-almost-pink trousers with a drawstring and a yellow T-shirt? And last week when asked if he could run the Creative Writing workshop, he said he couldn’t say for sure, that he’d have to ask his wife! A man should always wear the pants, dammit. What does this man want from us anyway?
When I walk into the room in the Longsbank building, this dilapidated half-mast skyscraper in Jo’burg’s city centre and home of the Homeless Talk newspaper, Jonathan has begun the lessons. He turns from the flipchart. His face lights up, “Hi, Sipho.”
I smile back. The rest of the group nods a welcome. I go and sit in the furthest corner where I can see them all but they can’t see me. Got an awful hangover – I don’t want him to notice that I am not my usual self. Why let down the black race and the homeless community in one go?
This is our writers’ workshop held every Monday evening at these offices. Here us Homeless Talk journalists share ideas about the stories we are working on, get feedback and suggestions, including what stories we might chase for the upcoming edition.
This Jonathan guy told us last week that homelessness is a state of mind – that you can stay in a double-storey house and still feel homeless. Easy for him to say.
After the workshop I try to slip out but he asks me to wait for him. Outside the street is still bright and vibrant under the street lights. Lots of people on the pavement. Vendors still selling their goods. “Howzit going, Sipho?” he asks once he comes out the building.
“Just fine, Jonathan, just fine.” I smile bitterly, thinking about the guys who tried to rob me last night, thinking about people in general – people who make your life a misery, when you are already as down and out as can be.
He climbs into his car and rolls down the window. “You sure?” he asks again. It’s funny that howzit thing, that South African greeting. Do people really want to know? He does it seems, and he also seems to want to convince me to the contrary about my fine-ness.
“Like I said, I’m F-I-N-E,” I say with a big F to get him out my face. He straightens in his seat.
“Okay, see you then,” he shrugs as he rolls the Mazda into the mostly mini-bus-taxi-evening-traffic of Bree Street.
It is nearly 8 o’clock. If I hurry I may be in time for Universal, the church that is giving out food today. After that I can go to the tavern there in Hillbrow with the big TV. My favourite team Orlando Pirates is playing Kaiser Chiefs, and I might just pick myself up a scoop (a babe, not a story).
To the front, the University of the Witwatersrand, tall and erect, the institute of learning. To the left, Saffas, the funeral parlour. And every day as I wake and creep out of my gutter, eyes blinking, I see long, black polished hearses and a kaleidoscope of flashily dressed kids getting out of VW Beetles and GTIs. My drain is just a stone’s throw from the glass doors through which thousands of students come and go every day. But it is hidden by a waist-high cement wall and, anyway, I enter it long after most students have gone home and I leave in the mornings long before they arrive for their studies. To the side of the drain is a flowerbed with leafy plants maintained by the university and also nearby is a tall palm tree and a street light as well as a ‘No Parking’ sign. You guessed it, pigeons love this place. University of the Witwatersrand. Translated, Wit equals White, Water equals H20 (read, running water) and Rand equals SA money. All of which are in short supply in my life.
I sweep a glance around although I know that I won’t be bothered. Maybe because it’s in such a public place, but we street kids and homeless can drop out of the landscape, just like that. And, anyway, we are invisible to most of the students. To the staff of the funeral parlour, we are not worth burying. Even the university security guards have little idea we are here. It’s outside their beat.
I lower myself into the drain and throw down my bedding. On top of the stormwater drain is a grille we have covered with boxes, plastic, mats and whatever to keep the rain out. And inside, five of us are sleeping head to toe in the narrow interior.
Foster is an overzealous tall, young boy, probably seventeen years old, whose parents are originally from Angola. He speaks Portuguese, English, Zulu and Afrikaans, all without a flaw. Then there is Bradley, a coloured from Pietermaritzburg. And Rasta – ‘Yoh mohn’. He says he’s from Zambia. And then Themba – real men don’t speak much – from the Eastern Cape.
I shiver. My clothes are all wet. These summer thunderstorms so easily catch me unprepared. This has been my sleeping place for more than a year. I arrange my cardboard, good thick stuff that once packaged someone’s fridge. It is now my mattress. Using a stiff election poster that came off a lamppost, I bend down to sweep an area of about a square metre. Insects that look like cockroaches creep out of the dark, their armour glistening from the reflection of the light above, harassed by my sweeping. The grrrrr of cardboard on cement draws stares from the bugs, as if I am a landgrader coming to plough them away. I am not making sense, tired… very sleepy.
I finish making the bed in the corner, with the large plastic on top. I pop my head out the drain, look across the road over the empty parking lot and into the dark that lies beyond the last street light. I wonder if I can see Jacob. Will he again sit-sleep the whole night in the little space behind me where the rain can’t reach, dreaming the whole night of his uncle’s cattle? More likely he’s at a 24-hour tavern where he will drink himself to a stupor till the morning to avoid sleeping in the rain in a flooding drain. Themba is also not here, probably at a shelter in the city spending his last cent for a dry bed.
I take off my shoes and roll them in my jacket. If you don’t ventilate your soles and toes now and again you get feet problems, fungal problems, like those old-man street madalas who look like they are walking on eggs. I check that my meagre possessions, my leather jacket, my small collection of books, my dictionary and my writing pad are out of sight. Then I creep into my bed with my hands entwined behind my head. Even in the drain, looking up at an angle, I can see the ten-storey concrete tower of the university called Senate House where the bigwigs have their offices.
I think about the white man. Should I return to his writing group or concentrate on my well-worn routine? Zzzzz. Go back to the writing group? Zzzzz. I shrug and descend deeper into my bed, put cheek to still-wet clothes, and feel the plastic crackle and move as I toss and turn, my mind chewing on this returning question till sleep comes. Zzzzzzz.
Monday, Jozi City, collecting beer bottles to make enough to buy a half-loaf. Tuesday, trampling aluminium cans for resale. Wednesday, sitting in the taverns like a jackal, waiting for the next person to half-finish his food. Thursday and Friday, following soup kitchens and feeding-scheme queues at churches in Doornfontein and then Bertrams and then the city centre, a tri-weekly injection of cooked grub.
That guy Jonathan, I feel he’s okay, but is he trying to use us? Does he purposefully dress to look homeless? This fellow is up to some
thing, and I don’t know if I care enough to find out what it is. But his cellphone number keeps coming back to me like a litany. 083 256 2221. Why the hell have I even remembered it?
Tomorrow is Friday, so I have a day to decide before the group on Saturday. Nah, even a homeless guy has to observe the Sabbath and rest. If there is nothing better to do I might drop in, discover what he is really up to, and if I don’t like it I’ll give the group an eternal miss.
Chicken King, a cavernous tavern frequented by a mixture of the most down-and-outs and those clinging tenaciously to normal. It’s a run-down but lively place despite the stench of piss. Filled with scavengers who sit and watch, gulping down their saliva, while those with coins and notes nurse or gulp their drinks.
It’s Friday morning. Last night, once I exited the Chicken King, I got me a fresh urgent reason to go weapon shopping. A reason and a message on top of several recent other reasons and messages. The first time was when I was less than a week in the city. Once, when I slept at the steps behind the Market Theatre close to the unused railway tracks, I opened my eyes in the middle of the night and eleven hyena boys were on me. They were after my shoes and trousers, which were still kind of respectable, me not having been on the streets long enough. The head boy, Sibusiso Khumalo – one of the most brutal and notorious street kids in the city – screamed, “Mbulale! Mbulale! Kill him. Kill him,” as he led the storm on my sleeping place. I watched as first the teeth from the top row of gums, then from the bottom rolled along the street. As I run my tongue over those gaps even now, I remember Sibusiso’s bloodshot eyes and rugged face. I cannot forget. I even remember drawing him one of those days when writer’s block gripped me like a fist holding a fire-heated five-rand coin on a freezing night. I thought maybe I should draw some cartoons for Homeless Talk, widen my repertoire from just poems and stories. I even got a few drawings accepted, although poetry is really my thing.
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