Under African Skies

by Charles Larson

  Before all this acclaim, Mattera’s life was radically different. In Sophiatown: Coming of Age in South Africa (1987), he described his ethnic origins: “According to the racial statistics of South Africa, I am a second-generation Coloured: the fruit of miscegenation and an in-between existence; the appendage of black and white. There are approximately four million other people like me—twilight children who live in political, social, and economic oblivion and who have been cut off from the mainstream of direct interaction with both black and white people.” While a teenager, he became the leader of a street gang called the Vultures, which terrorized Sophiatown for seven years. Those experiences as well as his sentencing for public violence politicized him, and he joined the Youth League of the African National Congress. His literary career began shortly thereafter.

  AFRIKA ROAD

  There are many roads and lanes and streets and byways in South Africa but none quite like me, Afrika Road.

  Each black township, no matter where it is situated, has an Afrika Road of its own. We are commonly known as the Tar Road, and those who create the townships and make the laws also conceive roads like us to facilitate the easy mobility of military and police vehicles. Usually there is a single road into and out of the townships. But the black people say they are not fools. They know the real motives of the rulers.

  I am long and black and beautiful like a flat piece of licorice. Some folks say that my beauty has been spoiled by the obstinate white line because it cuts into my melanic majesty. But the line, like the Law of the land, slithers defiantly from the sun’s bedroom in the west where I begin, to Masphala Hill in the east—a hot seat of conferred power which houses the Bantu Council Chambers and the police station.

  I, Afrika Road, know and have endured the weight and pressure of all sorts of moving objects: human, animal, and mechanical. I groaned under the grinding repression of many military convoys and police brass bands that led the mayoral processions to the Hill of power. I also witness weddings and childbirths, and hear the noise of speeding police cars and ambulances, as well as the plaintive burial dirges of people weeping mournfully as they go. I hear the cries of the lonely of heart and I am familiar with the bustling din of jubilant folk whose merriment and laughter permeate the ghetto.

  I am a mighty road.

  All the dusty and soil-eroded lanes and streets converge on my body, bringing throngs of panting people. And I hold them all on my sturdy lap, year in and year out, birth in and death out.

  There was a time when I was a teeming caldron of “people on the boil.” The flames of mob anger and violence had razed the homes and businesses of men and women who threw in their lot and collaborated with the rulers of the land, or so the people said. Policemen and suspected informers and agents were brutally attacked. Some were even put to the torch. Yet amid the fear and frenzy of the marching and shouting masses, I, Afrika Road, caught glimpses of genuine gaiety on the people’s faces. It was a welcome paradox, nonetheless. Humor and anger marching side by side.

  That day the marchers varied in shade between chocolate-brown and shining ebony and fair apricot-skinned activists—rich characteristics for the human centipede that took to the streets.

  It was one of many dates anywhere on the calendar of black resistance. The masses had heaved and swayed and breathed in the wild wind of their own passions. Occasionally the main body of the crowd opened up its floodgates and swallowed several hundreds of new protesters and their assortment of crude weaponry: sticks, stones, axes, homemade swords, knives, and dustbin lids. Four hundred people poured out of Mpanza Street; five hundred from Matambo and a half-drunk dozen from Sis Sonti’s shebeen. The call to arms had a magnetic pull even for the imbibers. A soldier was a soldier drunk or sober, or so the leaders said. What mattered most were numbers.

  Between Goba and Zamani streets, where the elite owner-built homes stand proud and indifferent, only three youngsters joined the swelling ranks. The Mkhuku Shanty Town dwellers mingled eagerly in their hundreds. The march gained momentum. Men, women, children, and the fire-eating T-shirted comrades—soldiers without uniforms or conventional armory—were carried along the hard journey of insurrection, aware that death waited for them on Masphala Hill.

  And they sang defiantly.

  Songs that challenged and mocked the armed keepers of the Hill, that hated Hill which many blacks see as one of countless links in the chain of bondage and humiliation, or so the people said. Those who served in state-created institutions and sought and found sanctuary inside the high barbedwire walls of the Hill were branded puppets, sellouts, and mpimpi—the word used to describe informers and fifth-columnists. ,

  I, Afrika Road, bore that maddened crowd as it rambled and swayed in the fervor of revolt toward the Hill of confrontation where hundreds of heavily armed battalions of soldiers, policemen, and the local greenbean law enforcers kept vigil. Their automatic weapons caught flashes of the shimmering gold and orange sunrays that blistered from a cloudless sky. The singing reached fever pitch when a group of chanting, flag-carrying militant youth took the lead toward the waiting death machine.

  The songs spoke of imminent battle and vengeance, and of the people’s hunger for liberation. Songs which exhorted the Bothas to release Nelson Mandela and all the other political prisoners. There were martial strophes which alluded to the impending acquisition of AK-47s, Scorpion automatic pistols, and bazooka rocket launchers. Then came the electrifying toi-toi war dance, which appeared to penetrate and possess the very souls of the marchers. It seemed to me that the masses yearned to touch the faces of death or victory—whichever came first.

  The toi-toi is a ritual dance which people have come to fear and hate or love and revere depending on which side of the political trenches a person stood—with the masses or the “masters.”

  A truly awe-inspiring sight, thousands of angry and anxious feet in an exuberant display of bravado and daring. Up and down, back and forth; then forward and ever onward—spilling the froth and sweat of excitement on my black brow.

  And I, Afrika Road, saw schoolchildren in khaki uniforms raise their wooden guns at the law enforcers on the Hill. Bullets made of hot breath and noise and spit reverberated in the air. “We are going to kill them in the company of their children,” the khaki-clad warriors chanted. Death waited for them on the Hill as the crowd drew closer and closer. It would be the final confrontation: more than sixty thousand marchers heading for the showdown. Heading for freedom, or so they said.

  You see it in their youthful eyes: a readiness to feel the familiar thud on the chest, and to hear the cracking of bone and the ripping of lung as the firepower of the law enforcers makes its forced entry and exit through the dark dissident flesh.

  You see it in the flailing young arms of the children—always the children in the firing line—in tattered clothes or in school uniforms; T-shirted or naked chests; you see their hands fisted in the ardor of transient emotions; lives destined never to fully experience the essence of a natural childhood. You see them.

  And I, Afrika Road, have seen them rise and then run undaunted against the ill wind; falling but emerging anew through sheaves of resisting corn—giving the earth life that genuine life might be reborn—or so I have heard the people’s poets say during the many long marches.

  A late-model car zoomed out of a small, nondescript lane between Zwide and Zwane streets. The well-dressed, well-fed driver, a wealthy local businessman and Bantu councilor, was en route to his sanctuary on Masphala Hill. He swerved noisily onto me. People dived to safety as the expensive imported vehicle screeched, skidded, and smoked at the wheels, and burned me.

  Someone shouted, “Mpimpi!”

  The human telegraph wire relayed the hated word and echoed it against the blue sky. The leaders in front got the message, stopped, and gave their backs to the waiting militia, who instinctively raised their guns at the ready in anticipation of attack.

  The laminated windows of the car sagged under the weight of flying rock. So
me of the youngsters jumped on it and smashed the front windshield. The terror-stricken man sat openmouthed, immobilized by his fear of death.

  And I, Afrika Road, watched, knowing the fateful outcome. I have witnessed it too many times.

  “Mpimpi!”

  The chilling indictment rang out one final time.

  A huge stone crushed the driver’s skull. His eyes blinked and then went blank. Blood poured from his ears, nose, and mouth. They dragged him out. The back of his head cracked against me. I drank his blood just like I tasted the blood of many before him, and many more to come.

  It is the law and the legacy.

  Someone rolled a tire. Someone lifted a petrol can. Someone struck a match on Afrika Road …

  —1991

  Yvonne Vera

  (BORN 1964) ZIMBABWE

  Since the early 1990s, Yvonne Vera has been widely identified as one of southern Africa’s major women writers. She began her writing career with the publication of a novel, Without a Name (1991), short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers Award (Africa Region). That work was followed by a collection of short stories, Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals (1992), and two novels, Nehanda (1993) and Milk and Moon (1996). Her fiction has been praised for its haunting portraits of women who must come to grips with the disturbing realities of their pasts.

  Vera was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. After attending local schools, she continued her work at the University of York, in Toronto, Canada. In her short story “Crossing Boundaries,” she passionately describes the inner conflict of many internationals today, though the following statement also applies to the peripatetic contemporary writer: “The exiled soul insists on finding a connection between moments and histories, on securing a promise from the future that there shall be compensation. The banished wanderer insists on narrating, and on situating solutions that have been evaded by the past. Caught between memory and dreaming, the hopeful exile weaves a comforting performance out of a tale of agony.”

  Yvonne Vera has completed a doctorate at York University.

  WHY DON’T YOU CARVE OTHER ANIMALS

  He sits outside the gates of the Africans-Only hospital, making models out of wood. The finished products are on old newspapers on the ground around him. A painter sits to his right, his finished work leaning against the hospital fence behind them. In the dense township, cars screech, crowds flow by, voices rise, and ambulances speed into the emergency unit of the hospital, their flashing orange light giving fair warning to oncoming traffic. Through the elephants he carves, and also the giraffes, with oddly slanting necks, the sculptor brings the jungle to the city. His animals walk on the printed newspaper sheets, but he mourns that they have no life in them. Sometimes in a fit of anger he collects his animals and throws them frenziedly into his cardboard box, desiring not to see their lifeless forms against the chaotic movement of traffic which flows through the hospital gates.

  “Do you want that crocodile? It’s a good crocodile. Do you want it?” A mother coaxes a little boy who has been crying after his hospital visit. A white bandage is wrapped tight around his right arm. The boy holds his arm with his other hand, aware of the mother’s attention, which makes him draw attention to his temporary deformity. She kneels beside him and looks into his eyes, pleading.

  “He had an injection. You know how the children fear the needle,” the mother informs the man. She buys the crocodile, and hands it to the boy. The man watches one of his animals go, carried between the little boy’s tiny fingers. His animals have no life in them, and the man is tempted to put them back in the box. He wonders if the child will ever see a moving crocodile, surrounded as he is by the barren city, where the only rivers are the tarred roads.

  A man in a white coat stands looking at the elephants, and at the man who continues carving. He picks a red elephant, whose tusk is carved along its body, so that it cannot raise it. A red elephant? The stranger is perplexed, and amused, and decides to buy the elephant, though it is poorly carved and cannot lift its tusk. He will place it beside the window in his office, where it can look out at the patients in line. Why are there no eyes carved on the elephant? Perhaps the paint has covered them up.

  The carver suddenly curses.

  “What is wrong?” the painter asks.

  “Look at the neck of this giraffe.”

  The painter looks at the giraffe, and the two men explode into uneasy laughter. It is not easy to laugh when one sits so close to the sick.

  The carver wonders if he has not carved some image of himself, or of some afflicted person who stopped and looked at his breathless animals. He looks at the cardboard box beside him and decides to place it in the shade, away from view.

  “Why don’t you carve other animals? Like lions and chimpanzees?” the painter asks. “You are always carving giraffes and your only crocodile has been bought!” The painter has had some influence on the work of the carver, lending him the paints to color his animals. The red elephant was his idea.

  “The elephant has ruled the forest for a long time, he is older than the forest, but the giraffe extends his neck and struts above the trees, as though the forest belonged to him. He eats the topmost leaves, while the elephant spends the day rolling in the mud. Do you not find it interesting? This struggle between the elephant and the giraffe, to eat the topmost leaves in the forest?” The ambulances whiz past, into the emergency unit of the Africans-Only hospital.

  The painter thinks briefly, while he puts the final touches on an image of the Victoria Falls which he paints from a memory gathered from newspapers and magazines. He has never seen the Falls. The water must be blue, to give emotion to the picture, he thinks. He has been told that when the water is shown on a map, it has to be blue, and that indeed when there is a lot of it, as in the sea, the water looks like the sky. So he is generous in his depiction, and shocking blue waves cascade unnaturally over the rocky precipice.

  “The giraffe walks proudly, majestically, because of the beautiful tapestry that he carries on his back. That is what the struggle is about. Otherwise, they are equals. The elephant has his long tusk to reach the leaves and the giraffe has his long neck.”

  He inserts two lovers at the corner of the picture, their arms around each other as they stare their love into the blue water. He wants to make the water sing to them. So he paints a bird at the top of the painting, hovering over the falls, its beak open in song. He wishes he had painted a dove, instead of this black bird which looks like a crow.

  The carver borrows some paint and puts yellow and black spots on the giraffe with the short neck. He has long accepted that he cannot carve perfect animals, but will not throw them away. Maybe someone, walking out of the Africans-Only hospital, will seek some cheer in his piece. But when he has finished applying the dots, the paint runs down the sides of the animal, and it looks a little like a zebra.

  “Why do you never carve a dog or a cat? Something that city people have seen. Even a rat would be good, there are lots of rats in the township!” There is much laughter. The painter realizes that a lot of spray from the falls must be reaching the lovers, so he paints off their heads with a red umbrella. He notices suddenly that something is missing in the picture, so he extends the lovers’ free hands, and gives them some yellow ice cream. The picture is now full of life.

  “What is the point of carving a dog? Why do you not paint dogs and cats and mice?” The carver has never seen the elephant or the giraffe that he carves so ardently. He picks up a piece of unformed wood.

  Will it be a giraffe or an elephant? His carving is also his dreaming.

  —1992

  Véronique Tadjo

  (BORN 1955) IVORY COAST

  In her critical study, Francophone African Women Writers: Destroying the Emptiness of Silence (1994), Irene Assiba d’Almeida claims that Véronique Tadjo’s groundbreaking first novel, Au Vol d’oiseau (As the Crow Flies), is “one of the , most original pieces of Francophone writing, and one that defies easy classification. It is surely a ‘t
ext’ in the primary meaning of the word, that is, ‘something woven.’ Tadjo’s cloth is patterned from ninety-two independent yet related pieces, most accurately described as vignettes, that can stand on their own or be put together to form an immense appliqué representing an African social reality. The vignettes are written mainly in prose, but Tadjo’s language is never far from poetry, and here it shows her ability to use very simple words to create a superb poetic prose.”

  Véronique Tadjo was born in Paris in 1955, and she grew up in Abidjan, in the Ivory Coast, where she attended local schools. She earned a B.A. in English from the University of Abidjan, followed by a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris, also in English. In 1983, she attended Howard University, in Washington, D.C., on a Fulbright research scholarship. She taught at the University of Abidjan during the early 1980s, and in 1994 moved to Nairobi with her husband, a journalist.

  Tadjo’s initial publications were poems, collected in the volume Latérite in 1984. In addition to several children’s books, she has had two collections of short fiction published: La Chanson de la Vie (1989) and Le Royaume Aveugle (1990). “The Magician and the Gir!”—translated by the author—is from Au Vol d’oiseau, published in Paris in 1992.

  Asked to comment on her writing, Tadjo responded: “I write because I want to understand the world I am living in, and because I want to communicate with others my experience of what it is to be living in Africa today. I use my eyes like a camera, trying to record everything, from the most personal emotions to the major crises like wars, death, and AIDS. When asked what my novels are about, I usually sigh heavily and say, ‘About life,’ because I cannot explain it in any other way. I am interested in life in its entirety, and this is why I have an aversion to giving names to my characters. I want the readers to see them as human beings first of all. And these human beings are faced with challenges and struggles they must overcome if they want to retain their humanity in the unfavourable context of an African society in crisis.”