Читать книгу Mamphela Ramphele: A Passion for Freedom - Mamphela Ramphele - Страница 7

THE NOTION OF HOME AS MORE THAN THE PHYSICAL structure one inhabits took on a special meaning for me as a little girl. Our new home was a mud-brick house with a mud floor which had to be smeared with cow dung at least once a fortnight by my mother. The floor itself had to be strengthened and smoothed over with specially prepared mud mixed with dung (go dila le go ritela) at least once a year. The house had three bedrooms, a kitchen, a pantry, and a living ­room which served both as a dining and a relaxation area. Children were explicitly discouraged from using the living-room. It was reserved for adult use, and had to be kept in good shape for the entertainment of visitors who dropped by quite often. There was a front stoep (veranda) and an enclosed mud-floored space (lapa) at the back of the house which was used most frequently by the family, particularly in the afternoons when the sun hid its hot rays behind the Soutpansberg. We often sat on floor mats made of goatskin and straw. The few chairs which we had were mainly used by visitors, and women and children deferred to men in this respect.

The house had a large garden with flowers in the front, and vegetables and fruit trees on the rest of the property. A pigsty and fowl run stood at the farthest end of our backyard next to a pit latrine. I can still remember the characteristic smells around our house – a mixture of fresh flowers, dry earth and a whiff of tobacco from my father’s pipe.

The village in which we lived was well planned with three main streets, Bloed, Mahomed and Church streets, as well as two semi-developed ones on the outskirts. Each street had an irrigation furrow which was used by residents to water their gardens in turn. There was one tap for the hundred or so households. Refuse removal was the responsibility of individual householders, as was the cleanliness of streets. Most households used the open veld on the other side of the gravel main road as a public toilet. This patch of veld (phomoshene, derived from the word ‘permission’) was polluted beyond description by human excreta, but it was strategically hidden away by thornbush.

Kranspoort was a tidy village. Villagers were proud owners of flower and vegetable gardens and numerous fruit trees. Great effort went into maintaining their houses. There were only two families other than the dominee’s with cement houses. One belonged to a well-to-do builder7 and the other to a teacher who headed a school in the Soekmekaar area. The teacher’s wife, Mrs Pauline Moshakga, was my mother’s great friend.

The laundry was done at the river every week. Huge bundles of laundry were carried on women’s heads to the river. Washing clothes provided an occasion for village women to meet and share the latest news and concerns. I picked up a lot from the unrestrained talk of the women, who treated us children as part of the open environment and spoke their minds quite frankly on many issues including troubled marriages, family feuds and general village politics.

I had hoped to start school in 1953, having turned five in December 1952. I found staying at home very boring. But I was given no choice by my parents, as I had to look after my younger brother, Phoshiwa, then seven months old. My great-grandmother was getting on in years and could not cope alone with a baby. I cried bitterly on the day school opened, but had to come to terms with the finality of the decision adults had made. I subsequently spent many happy days playing with my two baby brothers, Sethiba and Phoshiwa, in our house and yard, particularly among the fruit trees. I learnt to climb the orange trees which were closest to the house, but was discouraged from this activity by my great-­grandmother, who feared for my safety. She also said that it was inappropriate for a girl to be climbing trees. I was later to pay the price of this adventurousness with an injury to the back of my right thigh, which left a permanent linear scar.

Our household in Kranspoort was organised for maximum efficiency by my mother, who had to juggle her roles as wife, mother to seven children and schoolteacher without the benefit of domestic help. She was a tough marshal and expected every one of us to make a contribution to the smooth running of the house. We woke up at set times and had specific tasks allocated to each of us which had to be done before and after school. There was a division of labour between the boys and the girls, but it was not rigid. My brothers had to fetch water from the village tap just as we did, but they had the benefit of using a wheelbarrow, which could carry two twenty-litre containers. They also shared in the making of endless cups of tea for my mother and her occasional guests. They made their own beds, and later when both my sister and I were away at boarding school or working, the younger ones learned to cook, bake, iron and so on. My mother was a pragmatist. Traditional gender roles were cast aside to make room for survival.

My father was a great provider for his family. We were the best-fed children in the area. He often came home unexpectedly with a goat or sheep for slaughter. If none of my brothers were home at the time, he would encourage me to help him slaughter the beast. Those were the most tender of our moments together. He never referred to me by name, except in class where he was my teacher. He always called me Mommy, because I was named after his mother-in-law. We had great fun skinning the beast and opening it up, and finally eating the liver roasted on the coals as a reward.

My father was also a generous man. He believed in sharing with those less fortunate than us. We always had children from needy families in the district living with us, so that they could attend school. Such decisions he would make on the spur of the moment whenever he identified a needy child, much to my mother’s frustration. We were not wealthy, but by local standards we were well off. We slept on floor-beds until the 1960s when we began to share beds in the children’s rooms. To make our floor-beds we spread either straw mats or goatskins on the mud floor with a blanket placed on top. My mother made soft feather pillows (from carefully selected and preserved chicken feathers) for each of us, and we had enough warm blankets to cover ourselves even during the cold winter months.

My mother was a strict disciplinarian. She was intolerant of any naughtiness on our part, and also ruthless in punishing any misdeed. I received many beatings for breaking things, which made me even more nervous and thus led to further losses. I remember an occasion in 1959 when she had gone to a Mothers’ Union church conference in Meadowlands Township in Soweto, and we had been left in the care of my father. It was dusk, and I was wiping the glass cover of our paraffin lamp, from which we derived reflected prestige, when it fell from my hands. What a disaster! I put the pieces together and knelt down and prayed: ‘God, nothing is impossible for you. Please put together what has been broken and save me from the inevitable.’ Disappointment awaited me when I opened my eyes. I hid the lamp away and lit a candle. My father, who was lying on his bed reading, did not comment on the candle when he came out to have his supper, but after two days, he called me. I burst out crying, expecting the worst. He embraced me, wiped my tears and sent me off to the shop to buy another one. I could not believe his response. I still cherish that touch of softness.

We were nonetheless deeply appreciative of my mother’s domestic competence. We enjoyed treats which many children in the village had no idea about: freshly baked bread, dumplings, soup on cold days, pancakes, canned fruit, jam, cakes and puddings. Our greatest regret was that we could never have enough of the treats, particularly pancakes, which were my father’s favourite and of which he was given the lion’s share. I learnt to cook and bake quite early, because I enjoyed being near my mother and watching what she was doing. I promised myself that when I was old enough I would make myself a plateful of pancakes and eat them to my heart’s content – a promise I kept years later, in 1974, when I was expecting my first child.

My father stayed aloof from many family concerns. He kept to his room in his favourite position – horizontal – with a book in his hand. We longed to get to know him better, but were not rewarded much. We would delight in taking tea to him, and in doing whatever would give an opportunity for direct contact. When occasionally he came into the kitchen, where most of the family spent their time, it would be like Christmas! We would giggle at each one of his jokes and hang on to whatever he had to say. But these were brief and rare occasions.

When my father became angry or grumpy, we would be quite scared. When drinking, he would fly into a rage over a mistake one of us had made some days before, which we would have forgotten about by then. Perhaps one of my brothers had been careless with tools or livestock, or had not performed his domestic chores properly. On other occasions it would be complaints about the way my mother and we girls ran the household, which did not meet his high standards. Those were painful days, and unless Koko Tsheola intervened timeously, we would end up being beaten. I can only surmise that he bore grudges, and that he was inhibited by his shyness from expressing his feelings. Alcohol released him from these inhibitions.

His role as both father and teacher to his children was also not uncomplicated. So too his relationship with his wife, who had to negotiate the tensions of collegiality at work and a marriage partnership. He was always punctual and could not tolerate anything less from others. This was infuriating for my mother, who had to attend to his domestic needs and still be on time at school. He was a wonderful teacher who enthused his pupils with the joy of learning. Although he was supposed to teach us through the medium of Northern Sotho, as was required by Bantu Education at the time, he quietly insisted on teaching us in English during the course of the year, and would only drill us in Northern Sotho for examination purposes. I still remember some of the ridiculous words such as okosijeni (oxygen) which we had to learn in science. He also departed from the official syllabus, which had a heavy ideological content, though he would caution us to produce what was required for the external examination at the end of Standard 6.

I was a naughty pupil, easily bored in class, and rarely challenged intellectually. My father tried to keep me disciplined by seating me next to boys, in the vain hope that I would be shy and quieten down. I soon found a way of amusing myself, in most cases at the expense of the boy beside me. One such boy used to be so frightened when asked questions in class that he would wet himself as soon as his name was called out. I would draw the attention of the whole class to this poor boy’s pants by turning around to gaze at the wet patch.

I had problems reconciling my father’s role as my teacher and parent. He would appear to treat me so indifferently in class that I was saddened. Although I was his best student, few if any words of praise would come my way. He expected me to do well, and would show disappointment if I got anything wrong. He also seemed to be much stricter on me than on other children. Any mistake would unleash severe punishment. I had to be perfect.

My father had a sizeable library to feed his love of books. I had access to the full range of Shakespeare’s plays, the Encyclopaedia Britannica and many English novels and books of general interest to my father’s generation, which I read through as soon as I could. I remember many conversations between adults in my presence, to which I was not supposed to be privy, but which I perfectly understood.

My childhood social world was complex in its own way. Our neighbours across the street were the family of a widowed woman who worked as a domestic in Louis Trichardt, fifty kilometres away, leaving her children in the care of her kindly mother-in-law, Koko Sanie Seko. The second-oldest girl, Rebecca, was a very aggressive person, a street fighter known for her toughness. On the few occasions we played with them, we ended up with a disagreement or even a fight. We thus tended to play on our own and avoided the street.

These neighbours resented our position of relative comfort. My mother’s generosity in sharing leftover food with those less fortunate did not placate them. Their mother also became sulky and moody towards my mother on the few occasions she was home over weekends or on leave. It became so bad that we stopped having anything to do with them. The last straw was when one of my mother’s large black pigs, fattened for the next winter slaughter, was found dead. A postmortem revealed that someone had pierced it with a piece of wire, which was left in situ – ­a more agonising death the poor pig could not have experienced. The carcass, which had signs of sepsis, was not fit for human consumption and was used to make soap for the household. Rumours abounded about who could have been responsible, but we never got to know the truth.

There were other neighbours who were part of my childhood world. Koko Mma-Abinere Tau (Mother of Abner) was a large woman whose property adjoined the back of ours. She liked sitting on the veranda of her house and surveying all passers-by. She got the latest news from casual conversations with those who cared to stop for a chat across the fence. Her house was dark, poorly ventilated and untidy. She also liked eating meat that was off, which she claimed was tastier than fresh meat. Her house had an unpleasant odour. She came in handy whenever my mother needed to dispose of unwanted meat which had gone off. She was a stingy woman, known as the Jew, because people in this village perceived Jews as particularly stingy. A story was often told of her putting a steaming hot teapot between her legs to conceal it from passers-­by who she feared would be tempted to drop in for a cup of tea – a not unfounded fear, given the practice of the time. She demanded being greeted by children passing by and would clear her throat audibly to attract attention. If this failed, she would resort to scolding those she labelled as disrespectful.

Showing respect for adults was an important attribute sought and nurtured in children. I remember being reduced to tears by a cruel comment from a woman, known as Setlotlo, who lived in our street. I had greeted her and her guests in the customary way, Realotšha! (Greetings!), but she was engaged in a conversation with other adults on her veranda and did not hear me. Those who heard me responded in a loving way, but she turned and scolded me fiercely for being disrespectful and not greeting. I was rescued from this verbal abuse by the others, but even then she did not apologise. Children’s feelings were frequently hurt in this manner.

Koko Mma-Abinere had redeeming features too. She had a beautiful soprano voice, which she put to good use as a church choir member and Sunday school teacher. She also had a good sense of humour and an ability to laugh at herself. Her husband had deserted her and was rumoured to be having an affair with Setlotlo, who had at one stage burned her severely by pouring boiling water with caustic soda over her back. She spent many months at Elim Hospital. She often joked about the fact that her beauty transcended the scars occasioned by that traumatic experience.

Kranspoort had a friendly village atmosphere where personal safety was not at risk. We grew up with a deep sense of physical security. There were tight social networks in this closely knit community. The residents felt bound together by the common identity of being believers (Christians) in contrast to ‘the heathens’ (non-believers), also referred to as ba gaLosta (lost ones), who lived on surrounding farms and who were regarded as inferior. The term ‘heathen’ was used quite unconsciously in conversations and was also a rebuke for residents failing to behave ‘properly’. It was partly this ‘insider’ versus ‘outsider’ approach which led to the break-up of the mission station in 1956 over a dispute to bury an ‘outsider’, the mother of one of the residents, as I shall detail later.

Social networks revolved around kith and kin. Many households had extended family members living in different parts of the village and, because of its small size, most kept in almost daily contact with one another. There were also close friendships which involved parents and children from particular households. These friendships evolved into reciprocal relationships which approximated kinships. It was the custom in this village to address others respectfully using the same terms normally reserved for relatives, such as ‘uncle’, ‘aunt’, ‘sister’, ‘brother’, ‘granny’ and so on. It was thus sometimes difficult to distinguish between kinships and friendships, unless one knew the family histories of those involved.

Support flowed along the contours of social networks. Those well connected were protected from the harsh realities of poverty and the disruptive effects of migrant labour, which were a common experience of most households. Households shared and borrowed necessities from one another as part of life. Food was the most common item of such exchanges, though the natural fertility of the area and the bountiful fruit and vegetables also ensured that few people ever went hungry.

Emotional and other forms of social support were also an important aspect of village life. Many women had to raise their children alone because their men were migrant workers. Most of the affected households functioned reasonably well, aided by regular remittances and annual visits from the migrants. That the experience of absent husbands was common reduced the pain of separation. Similarly affected women rallied together for mutual support.

There were also a few women migrants, such as our neighbour who I have referred to, who were single parents or widows and had to leave their children in the care of others while they sought employment to support their households. Some children ended up living at home without any adult present, but relying on neighbours for adult support in times of need.

I developed some understanding of the remittance patterns of several households because my father handled the village mail as one of his responsibilities as school principal. The mail arrived twice a week on the railway bus, which passed through Kranspoort on its way to and from Alldays, farther west along the foot of the Soutpansberg. The mailbag had to be fetched at about 10.30 a.m. by one of the schoolboys and brought to the school for sorting. The post was then distributed at the end of the school assembly when names of recipients of letters were called out, and their children or neighbours’ children collected and delivered them. Registered letters were treated differently. Once notified, children were asked to alert their parents or neighbours, who had to come personally and sign for their registered items. The same applied to parcels. It was clearly a system based on trust, but sensibly tempered with safeguards.

We often had people come to our home after school to collect their registered mail which my father kept for them. Some came to enquire about possible parcels even if they had not received notification. These were the desperate women whose men were not regular remitters. My mother often gave them food on the quiet as they left our house.

Households which lived on the margins of supportive networks experienced abject poverty. These households tended to be on the outskirts of the village, and were in most cases relatively new arrivals. Their properties were also not as well endowed with fruit trees and were less fertile, providing little opportunity for growing vegetables. The irrigation water which flowed along the street furrows reached them last, and often when it was too late and too dark to water properly.

Pain and joy were shared by residents. People supported one another in times of illness or loss through death. Funerals were communal responsibilities: at these times every member of the community played a supportive role. News of death was spread by word of mouth and people rallied to the bereaved household. A few old women would immediately move into the household to provide support, and remain there until some days after the funeral. Younger women helped with the practicalities of keeping the household clean, fed and comfortable.

Women were also responsible for preparing a meal for all those attending the funeral. A beast, commonly an ox for a grown-up man or a cow for a woman, was often slaughtered the night before the funeral. It was in some cases an expensive affair, but fellow villagers brought food and other goods as well as monetary contributions to help the affected family.

Children were not allowed to go to funerals, except those of close relatives, but we often watched processions as they passed by, and clandestinely listened to the conversations of adults around these issues. Death remained a mystery to us. Our curiosity was not seen as legitimate by adults, so we could not ask direct questions. There was an uneasy silence around death.

My closest encounter with death in my childhood was in 1955 when my mother gave birth to a baby boy on a Saturday afternoon (although I remember the day vividly, I don’t remember the date). It was a home birth assisted by the local midwife, Sister Nteta. We were shown the child after it was bathed, and were excited. Birth was another mystery – an area of silence which children had no right to explore. My paternal grandmother had come a few weeks before the birth to help support my mother during this period. Early on the Sunday morning my grandmother called my sister, elder brother and me, and told us that the baby was no more. The child had died during the course of its first night. I did not understand how this was possible, but from my sister’s reaction, I understood that its death was a reality. Her tears were infectious. We were later asked to go to the Sebatis, my mother’s relatives, for the day.

I still remember seeing my father, just before we left, digging what must have been the baby’s grave, in an enclosure (lapa) on the side of the house. He was assisted by one or two other men. We came home that afternoon to find a freshly smeared mud patch which my great-grandmother, Koko Tsheola, looked after and to which she repeatedly applied a mixture of cow dung and soil for the next few months until it faded into the rest of the lapa. It was customary for newborn babies and stillborns to be buried within the homestead – they were not regarded as fully developed, independent persons to be interred in the public graveyard. We were not given the opportunity to share this loss with my mother, who we hardly saw for the next few days, as she was confined to bed. This silence was very confusing to me as a child.

Sharing festivities was also part of life in Kranspoort. The residents knew how to celebrate in style. Weddings were elaborate, as were Christ­mas and New Year celebrations, which were particularly valued as times for family reunions and sharing of treats brought home by the makarapa (returning migrants). Almost all children were bought new clothes, and, for the fortunate few, new shoes were included. Homes were decorated with fresh colourful mud and cow-dung applications, as well as decorative paper ribbons and balloons for those who could afford such luxuries. Most people strung strips of colourful leftover material, and hung them on doorways. There were no Christmas trees, nor did anyone expect Father Christmas to come with presents or a stocking full of goodies down non-existent chimneys. People shared food and drink and the joy of life in song and dance.

On Christmas Day children walked in groups from house to house asking for ‘Christmas’, rather like the ‘trick or treat’ which American children indulge in on Halloween. Towards late afternoon, groups of children from different street choirs assembled in strategic places for friendly singing competitions. Good dancers displayed their talents. My most embarrassing moments came when I was pressured by my friends to join in the dancing. I was a typical wallflower. I was shy and tended to hide behind others, or bolted when I sensed that the net was closing in. Nonetheless I enjoyed the carnival atmosphere with all the streets brightened with colour, laughter and song.

I was never really a sociable child outside the family setting. I preferred my mother’s company to that of children my age. So I took on myself the role of a human pram and made myself useful by carrying my brothers on my back, thus relieving my overworked mother of the task. I also went around visiting with her on Sunday afternoons – the only time off she enjoyed. My presence enabled her to socialise with her friends in the secure knowledge that my baby brothers were in good hands.

In addition to Christmas and New Year, weddings were also wonderful occasions, and preparations for them were elaborate. Food and song were central to successful wedding feasts. There was often fierce competition between the bride’s and groom’s entourages in capturing the attention of the crowds through song and dance. White weddings were the norm. Wedding dresses were of varying degrees of sophistication depending on the means of the households involved. No expense was spared by parents on such occasions. It was an honour for young girls to be chosen as bridesmaids.

The wedding started with a procession to the church, for the marriage to be solemnised by the dominee. An even more vigorous parade with singing and dancing took place back to the bride’s home, where there would be more singing before the main meal was served to all the guests. After the meal the couple changed into another set of clothes, normally smart formal suits, and paraded along the street before retracing their steps back home. After an interval of an hour or two of continuous singing, the couple were seated in full view of the public in the household’s lapa where they were given advice about how to make their marriage a success, go laiwa. The parents of the bride or bridegroom, whichever was the case, started off the advice session, each pep talk being accompanied by a gift for the couple. After all the relatives had their turn, the general public joined in for their penny’s worth. These sessions often lasted into the late evening, with songs interspersed between the speeches.

The general tone of the advice was that marriage was difficult and that tolerance was the key to success. The woman was the focus for most of the advice. On her shoulders rested enormous responsibilities to create a new home, and to care for her husband and his family – indeed, to immerse herself in his family and to lose her maiden identity. Her child-bearing responsibilities were also stressed: heaven forbid that a woman should shun this duty or be unable to discharge it. It was not surprising that most brides spent the entire session sobbing uncontrollably. But it was also expected that the bride weep to show her sadness at having to leave the natal home, or else she was seen as being too eager for marriage. Such eagerness was regarded as a bad omen for the future of the couple. The groom’s family celebrated the marriage in a manner they saw fit, but in general the same ceremony was repeated.

7 Our family moved into this house in 1964.