Читать книгу Heart of a Strong Woman - Xoliswa Nduneni-Ngema - Страница 6

Woza Albert!

Now imagine this!

SCENE ONE:1

The actors enter and take their positions quickly … On the first note of their music, overhead lights come on, sculpting them. They become an instrumental jazz band, using only their bodies and their mouths – double bass, saxophone, flute, drums, bongos, trumpet etcetera. At the climax of their performance, they transform into audience, applauding wildly.

Percy stands, disappears behind the clothes rail. Mbongeni goes on applauding. Percy reappears wearing his pink nose (to indicate he’s a white person) and a policeman’s cap. He is applauding patronisingly. Mbongeni stares at him. Stops applauding.

The policeman [Percy] gruffly demands to see Mbongeni’s passbook. Upon examining it, he discovers that Mbongeni hasn’t worked for four years. Emboldened by this discovery, the policeman says, ‘This is vagrancy. You’re unemployed.’

MBONGENI: No, my Colonel, I am a guitarist, I’ve been playing music for five years, my boss.

PERCY: Hey, you lie, you fuckin’ entertainer!

MBONGENI: It’s true, it’s true, my boss.

PERCY: Can you show me where it is written ‘musician’? Hey? Where’s a guitar? Where’s a guitar? Where’s a guitar?

MBONGENI: Ag, nee – my Brigadier, I am self-employed!

PERCY: Self-employed? (Chuckling collusively to audience) Hell, but these kaffirs can lie, hey?

MBONGENI: Maar, dis die waarheid, but it is true – my General!

PERCY: You know where you should be?

MBONGENI: No, my boss.

PERCY: You should be in prison!

MBONGENI: No, my boss.

PERCY: And when you come out of prison, do you know where you should go?

MBONGENI: No, my boss.

PERCY: Back to the bush with the baboons. That’s where you belong!

And so, Percy grabs Mbongeni and throws him in prison. It is while he is in prison that Mbongeni encounters Jesus (in the play the son of God is referred to as Morena). Morena finds himself in prison for the simple reason that he looks like a vagrant. From there it goes from bad to worse.

The play is a revolutionary tour de force unlike anything South Africa – and indeed, the entire world – has ever seen.

After an intense six-week rehearsal the play, now called Woza Albert!, opened to a full house at the Laager Theatre, with a seating capacity of 60, at the Market Theatre. Under Simon’s guidance the two young men reshaped the play, giving it a much sharper edge. It had soon occurred to all three of them that they in fact did not need extra bodies to play the roles the two had envisaged for the play. The intensity of the play lay in the two men’s ability to shape-shift from one role to the next: playing a female vagrant rummaging through the bins for food now, moving into the role of a white bureaucrat in the native affairs department next.

Apart from being hailed for its originality and freshness, Woza Albert! also became the talk of the town in that it succeeded, more than any other production before it, in bringing more black people into the Market which, although progressive, was still patronised mainly by white people. It can be argued, therefore, that, after the crossover appeal of King Kong in the late 1950s, Woza Albert! was another crossover breakthrough. As fate would have it, while the play was on at the Market a crew from the BBC was in town to cover the national elections taking place at the time. A local journalist alerted the crew to this revolutionary production, and the crew, having obtained permission from management at the Market Theatre, filmed some of Woza Albert!, which they would weave into the story of South Africa they were going to show to their viewers back home. Buoyed by the positive comments sparked by the flighting of a short segment of Woza Albert! back home in Britain, the director returned to South Africa to make an entire documentary film devoted to the play. What a pleasure! I was so proud of Mbongeni for the success. Now I could see that his dreams of going to Broadway could be fulfilled. From the Market, the play went on an extensive tour of the black townships, and later of the hinterland.

Because of his embarrassing financial status, Mbongeni had not been in contact with his family back in KwaZulu, but now he was confident enough to re-establish relations with his people. During a break from his frenetic activity, he took time to go to kwaHlabisa, his ancestral home. He went there in a car bursting with grocery items – seven years after the family had last seen him.

On his return from KwaZulu he came to visit me in Daveyton. I was thrilled to see him again. From someone who had always had only two outfits – that threadbare tracksuit and jeans he would wear during the day and wash at night – he was now resplendent in the latest fashion. Ah, my boyfriend was so beautiful! The rough diamond was finally beginning to metamorphose into the precious gem it was destined to be. We spoke at length about the towns he’d been to, and the responses the play had received.

Then he suddenly became serious. ‘Love,’ he said, ‘something serious is about to happen.’

I held my breath, wondering what it was that he was about to say to me. Ever the dramatist, he knew how to keep a person in suspense. While I waited for him to get to the point, he started telling some silly stories. I had to beg him to get back to the ‘serious issue’ that he wanted us to talk about.

‘The play is going overseas,’ he said.

I jumped up and screamed. Broadway, here we come! Arrangements were being made, he told me, for forays into Britain, the United States and Germany. Then he got serious again. He said, ‘Before we go, I want us to get married.’ A part of me was on cloud nine, because I truly loved him and knew there and then that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. Another part of me knew that it was impossible. For a start, there were my parents to contend with. Secondly, although he had new clothes now and some cash, Mbongeni still didn’t have a place of his own, so where were we to live, and what were we going to eat?

I did not want to dampen his spirit, but he was aware how my parents felt about our relationship, which had become a talking point in the neighbourhood. Even though Mbongeni was not yet a big name, he stood out in a crowd. When he walked down the street, people talked. At a time when many people from Natal were ashamed of their roots when they came to the Transvaal because it was largely urbanised, was considered civilised and modern, Mbongeni revelled in the fact that he came from rural Natal. He spoke his language with pride. Not to mention the countless crude Zulu jokes he told. In his self-deprecating style, he also engaged in colourful Zulu dancing.

I kissed him passionately and told him how happy I was to get married to him. But then I expressed my concerns. He brushed these aside, saying, ‘Not only am I a working man finally, my face is all over the place. Your parents will be happy to have umkhwenyana who is famous!’

Over the next days we spoke seriously about the matter. Having realised that if we went straight to my parents with this piece of news we would meet a brick wall, I thought of a different approach. My grandmother loved Mbongeni to bits. But she did not know him very well. When I approached her and told her I wanted to have a serious relationship with him, she naturally had a number of tough questions. Is the man employed? What work does he do? Does he wear a shirt and tie at work? We don’t want a man who is going to kill you with starvation. When I told her he was involved in plays, she appeared shocked. ‘He plays? What kind of man plays while other men are busy at work?’ Even after I’d explained what theatre was all about, she still wasn’t convinced that it was a real job. ‘One day he has to find a real job. But I can see you like him. Let’s think about it.’

A few days later I visited Grandma. This time I brought Mbongeni along, so he could answer some of the questions himself. I knew my grandmother wanted me to be happy. I also knew she had a soft spot for him. A feisty, strong-willed woman who spoke her mind, she could be our champion.

When we got to Grandma’s place, she was happy to see us again. After exchanging a few pleasantries, Mbongeni got to the point and said he wanted to marry me. My grandmother asked him repeatedly, ‘Are you sure you want to do this, my boy? You’re a big star now, and many women will be throwing themselves at you. And many of them would probably be more beautiful than my little girl here. Why, many of them would be rich and influential people who will do anything to draw you to them.’

Mbongeni confirmed that he had thought long and hard about it. Then my grandmother turned to me and interrogated me at length as we sat drinking tea. I also confirmed that I was ready to get married.

She looked intensely at me. Then she said, ‘But you are so young! And what are you bringing into this marriage? You don’t have a job, you’re not educated.’ Before I could blurt out and remind her that I’d graduated from one of the country’s coveted colleges, she steamed ahead. ‘Having a high school education is not enough. You need to go to university. You need a proper education so you can properly support your husband. This business he is in is so unpredictable. I would have been happy for you if he were a teacher, or a clerk at a government department. Those are dignified positions. There’s security in those jobs. Not this sketch-sketch play-play thing of his. I never thought a man could make a living making a fool of himself in front of other people. But the young man here has explained his business properly to me now. I am happy he was honest enough to admit that this business of his is finicky, unpredictable. I believe him when he says he is going to make it work for you and him. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But you need to have a proper, solid education …’

Mbongeni cleared his throat to indicate he wanted to interrupt my grandmother. She got the message. ‘Go ahead, my boy, what is it you want to say?’

‘Gogo, I want to promise you here and now that the first thing I will do once we get married is take Xoli to university.’ He looked solemnly at me. He could not look my grandmother in the eye. In our culture, to show respect and deference to your elders or social superior, you never look them in the eye. It is considered disrespectful. I know in the Western world you’re supposed to look a person in the eye to prove your honesty, to prove you are not lying, that you have nothing to hide.

My grandmother said, ‘Can you say that again, my boy?’

‘Gogo, I solemnly swear that I will make sure that Xoli goes to university as soon as we’ve tied the matrimonial knot. I never got a chance to finish high school myself, but Xoli will tell you how I feel about education.’

The statement seemed to overwhelm my grandmother. I thought I saw tears in her eyes. But she soon regained her composure. Then she said, ‘I know her parents are not comfortable with this relationship of yours. But if you can tell them what you’ve just said to me, maybe that can sway them.’

‘Yebo, Gogo,’ Mbongeni said. ‘I would like to appeal to Gogo to go and speak to them on my behalf. I stand by my solemn words: I will pay for Xoliswa’s university education from my own pocket. That’s a promise.’

Emboldened by those words, a few days later my grandma travelled from her own house in Wattville all the way to my parents’ house. When she arrived, I met her at the door. Having greeted her, I called my mother and told her Grandma was in the house. I was as nonchalant as possible, pretending as if I didn’t know why she was here. My mother came to the sitting area. They exchanged greetings in our elaborate way, and started drinking tea. At long last, Grandma got to the point.

‘What is this that I hear?’ she started. ‘My little girl Xoli has been a model child. Girls her age are dropping out of school. They are getting pregnant left, right and centre, yet Xoliswa here has not only finished her high school, she is also without a blemish. Her name is clean. I know that she is the pride of this family. What I want to know, then, is why are you standing in her way?’

My mother said, ‘What is makhulu referring to?’

‘You don’t want this girl to be happy, from what I hear.’ She paused dramatically. By that time, my father had joined them in the sitting area. I sat in the bedroom I shared with my sister and listened to the conversation – the beauty of living in a small house where voices carry easily. My grandmother continued, ‘This Ngema young man wants to make your girl a proper and honest woman, but you two are standing in their way.’

The debate got heated, with my parents pointing out that I was too young for him – he was born in June 1955, and I in July 1962. Not much of an age gap, if you think seriously about it, but my parents had to have a weapon to use against him. The fact that he was an actor also did not do him a favour with my parents, who were career oriented.

‘That man does not have a job, as far as I am concerned,’ said my mother.

‘Have you seen his picture in the newspapers?’ countered my grandmother.

‘My child is not going to eat newspaper pictures of that man,’ my father came in.

‘Not only is he famous, he is on his way to being rich,’ my grandmother argued. ‘You see, not everyone should be a teacher, a lawyer, a government clerk. There are other ways of making a living. One day this young man is going to appear on TV!’

My mother retorted, ‘But still, these play-play things on the stage and on TV do not guarantee you a solid future.’

‘And what about her education?’ my father pointed out. ‘She is still young. She needs to go to university so she can have a solid future for herself and her future family.’

My grandmother cleared her throat dramatically. I could picture her sitting back in the sofa, smiling triumphantly as she said, ‘Now this Ngema young man is going to take care of that. He is going to pay for Xoliswa’s university education.’

‘But, Mama, how would you know that? Can he afford that?’

‘Don’t underestimate this young man. This play of his is going overseas. Everything is confirmed. That’s why he wants to get started with lobola negotiations, so that by the time he shakes those people overseas he will have Xoliswa by his side. That’s what he told me!’

‘He told you?’ my parents cried in unison.

‘Yes, he came to my house. We spoke at length about this.’ There was a triumphant tone to her voice. ‘He is going to pay for Xoliswa’s university. I quizzed him numerous times on that particular aspect during our talk. He told me not once, not twice, but three times that the first thing he would do after they got married would be to take Xoliswa to university. From his own pocket!’

Over the next few days, my parents finally acquiesced and accepted Mbongeni’s proposal. In due course, lobola negotiations started. Things were happening fast, too fast. I was about to be someone’s wife; I was about to go to university; the person I so much loved and respected had suddenly became a celebrity.

Every waking moment I had to keep pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I had to take things easy. I had to think, seriously think, about what I was getting myself into.

Although I was over the moon that my parents had acquiesced, I thought I should, before we got married, visit Mbongeni’s ancestral home. Just to satisfy myself.

*

It was on a Saturday morning, having packed our suitcases the previous night, that Mbongeni and I boarded a bus to Zululand. The minute I boarded that bus, I knew I was about to enter a new world. There was a sense of foreboding. Fear and excitement. At the tender age of nineteen, I was to be somebody’s wife. Mbongeni Ngema’s wife. I loved him dearly. I respected him. I adored his worldliness. Prayed at the exalted altar of creativity. He made me whole. But I did still not know him. And I did not know the world he came from.

The bus roared to life. Passengers, having settled in their seats, craned their necks out of the windows and said their final farewells to those of their friends and loved ones who were staying behind in Johannesburg. Having in the past travelled a lot by train and by bus, from Johannesburg to the Transkei, where I had gone to school, I was used to covering long distances by public transport. Back then, those long distances – with the bus whooshing past picturesque villages, stopping every now and then to allow a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle to cross the road, negotiating treacherous mountain passes – were almost negligible. That was because they were funfilled as I was always travelling with friends, my age mates. There would be tons of food; people pulling pranks on each other. Boys would be pulling moves on girls. Some of the kids would be drinking – especially the boys – or just telling tall tales to while the time away. But those were days of childhood; I was in the company of my age mates. I could speak my mind, I could tell my own stories.

But here I was that day, on this Pullman bus packed mostly with men. The men were in good spirits. Bottles of alcohol passing from hand to hand, stories being passed around like handfuls of snuff. As the booze flowed, tongues loosened. Voices were raised. There was more ribaldry in the stories being told, some of them so risqué as to be offensive and outright sexist. To hear a grown-up man speaking at the top of his voice, in a bus packed with strangers, about what he was going to do to his wife when he got home was shocking to me. I can take a good joke, a good sex story, but shallow misogyny is not my cup of tea. I was still a young woman, my analysis of society still raw and unsophisticated, but I could tell an instance of verbal abuse against women masquerading as humour. And it never sat well with me.

Later, and with the benefit of hindsight, I would reflect on this bus journey and conclude that it wasn’t just a straight-ahead transfer from point A to point B. It was a metaphorical journey from a world that I’d called home to a world that seemed vaguely familiar to me, resonating as it did with the numerous stories that Mbongeni had shared with me about his part of the country, about his people, about his culture. But soon enough I would discover that the world that I thought I had come to grips with was actually alien to me. To people who did not know him, Mbongeni might have seemed like your stereotypical Zulu traditionalist – one of those Zulus who openly referred to non-Zulus as ‘izilwanyana’ (animals/creatures); those Zulus who, even though they’d lived in Johannesburg for many years, still refused to learn other people’s languages because they regarded them as inferior; those Zulu chauvinists who propounded Zulu physical prowess above all else.

But Mbongeni was not that type of Zulu. He could converse in many African languages. His best friends were non-Zulu – a case in point, Percy Mtwa himself, who was Xhosa. When he was still with Gibson Kente’s cast, one of his best friends was Paul Rapetswe, from Limpopo. Listen carefully now, before you misunderstand me: Mbongeni Ngema was proud, very proud of his Zulu roots; he spoke fondly of the heroic history of his people, and he wove this heroism into his stories. But he never allowed his pride in who he was, who his people were, to undermine others who did not belong to the Zulus, or even the greater Nguni group of people, who, if you come right down to it, are related. I am talking about amaXhosa (in all their diversity, including amaMpondomise, amaMpondo, amaGcaleka, amaRharhabe etc.), amaSwati, amaNdebele – these people are all related historically. But to hear some of the Zulu chauvinists on that bus talking, you would believe that Zulus dropped from heaven, and the rest of humanity (especially black humanity) sprouted from a rock. In many of the stories that Mbongeni had told over the time we’d known each other, he did tell cautionary tales about these types of Zulus.

We passed towns I’d never heard of. We stopped at some strategically located spots where we ducked behind bushes to relieve ourselves. Young people laugh at me these days when I tell them there were no Shell or BP halfway stations where people can get out of buses and cars, go to sweet-smelling and well-appointed toilets where they relieve themselves at their leisure, after which they can go to a Wimpy, or a KFC or Nando’s outlet and settle for a meal before resuming their journey. Those days there was no such luxury. Especially not for black people. Of course, the story was different for white people. White people, whether travelling by bus or car, could take a detour from the highway and sleep over at motels and hotels. Or they could choose to nose their cars into caravan parks where they would reach for their picnic baskets, unfurl their blankets and towels and spread these under the cool shades of trees. They would tuck into their roast chicken and potato salad and cheese and tomato sandwiches which had been lovingly prepared by their black maids. They might dig into the back of their truck and come out with a braai stand. They would chat away in good humour as the steak sizzled on the coals. If the weather was pleasant enough, and they were not in a hurry to get to their final destination, they would sleep on their picnic blankets under the stars.

No such luck for black people. For black people, the bus had to stop on the side of the road. People would fan out and find strategic positions behind bushes where they did their thing. I am recalling this specifically because as we were relieving ourselves out there in the bushes, it turned out that one of the men had suddenly been afflicted with a terrible tummy bug. Every time he thought he was done and he had already wiped he would soon start groaning again. A new onslaught of noises – bhah-bhah-bhah! – would ensue from the thickets where he was hiding. It was so bad that the driver of the bus almost drove away, leaving him behind. Of course, I would only know about this later, when the bus was back on the road and the men were talking at the top of their voices about the man’s smelly misfortunes.

As the shadows lengthened outside, the landscape became starkly beautiful, ever more breathtaking. Many outstanding writers, ranging from BW Vilakazi to Alan Paton, have written lyrically and eloquently about the landscapes of Zululand and Natal. The Drakensberg with its frowning craggy cliffs and precipices; the chattering and laughing waters of uThukela river. The graceful Valley of a Thousand Hills. But I am no poet. Suffice it to say that I could not help staring out there as the landscape swept past.

Mbongeni kept me entertained with stories about the various towns we passed. The battles of yore that had been fought in the mountains and valleys or some historic event that had led to the birth of a particular town. But I was only half listening. My mind was on the women who were on the bus. Not many women, by the way, just a sprinkling. But you could feel their presence. Some were dressed in their best city clothes so that everyone back home would see that they hadn’t gone to Johannesburg to play. They had gone there to scoop their pieces of gold. Or at least a handful of the gold dust that made them rich enough to afford these modern outfits. But some of the women were old. They had gone to Johannesburg only to fetch their husbands. Or to visit their husbands who were still obliged by their long work contracts to remain in the city. I’d been told that some men would go home only once a year. Or maybe once after two years. When this was the case the men’s wives were obliged to visit them in Johannesburg and other mining towns in the Greater Witwatersrand area. The women would spend a few days, a week, with their husbands, always praying that they would fall pregnant on this rare visit. It was called ‘ukuyolanda isisu’. Literally: to collect a belly.

I was lucky to not fall into that category. My man was right next to me. He was a modern man. I was a modern woman. He was not condemned to the life of a miner. He was an actor. I knew his time was coming. The time when he would grace the stages of the world. The time his name would appear on the front pages of newspapers. I would be there to support him. We would only go to his ancestral village so that I could be introduced to his people. Then we would go back to Johannesburg, where we would start our own family, far from the rivers and mountains.

I wondered what Mbongeni’s village looked like. He’d warned me that there were no tarred roads, women still fetched water from the river or stream nearby, that they still cooked on open fires and primus stoves. It was already dark outside when the bus finally came to a stop in eMtubatuba, our destination. Well, not exactly. From eMtubatuba, we took a van which served as the local taxi. We rumbled through the gravel, penetrating thick bushes, the van’s headlights carving a canyon of light in the thick darkness which had suddenly taken over. Finally, we arrived in Mbongeni’s village, eNhlwathi. The place of the python, to translate the Zulu moniker. The village of eNhlwathi is one of many villages in the Greater kwaHlabisa area, which in turn looks up to Mtubatuba as its seat of power and commerce.

‘Here we are, then, sweetheart,’ Mbongeni said as he picked up our luggage. The distance from where the car had dropped us to the Ngema yard was not that long. Except that it was pitch-black. Not a pinprick of light. It was like walking around with a blindfold on. Sadly, I was wearing high-heeled shoes, and I kept stumbling on the uneven traditional path leading to the yard. By the time we arrived in the yard, my calves and ankles were sore.

It was only when we’d been ushered into Mbongeni’s room and I sat on his bed that I realised just how exhausted I was. But the excitement of being there, on the premises of the Ngema people, being right there on the threshold of joining this family officially as their makoti, filled me with such energy and joy that I couldn’t resist making love to Mbongeni.

When it was over, we slept like logs.