Modern African Writing

Niq Mhlongo

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780821444023
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Bafana Kuzwayo is a young man with a weight on his shoulders. After flunking his law studies at the University of Cape Town, he returns home to Soweto, where he must decide how to break the news to his family. But before he can confess, he is greeted as a hero by family and friends. His uncle calls him "Advo, " short for Advocate, and his mother wastes no time recruiting him to solve their legal problems. In a community that thrives on imagined realities, Bafana decides that it's easiest to create a lie that allows him to put off the truth indefinitely. Soon he's in business with Yomi, a Nigerian friend who promises to help him solve all his problems by purchasing a fake graduation document. One lie leads to another as Bafana navigates through a world that readers will find both funny and grim.

SIX
Wednesday, December 1

The following day I found myself sitting behind our family house next to Uncle Nyawana’s fruit-and-vegetable stall. In his left hand, my uncle was holding what he called his dream notebook, which he used to play fah-fee. Verwoerd was curled at my uncle’s feet with one eye open, watching me. I was sitting on an empty beer crate that was turned upside down. A pair of shears were on the ground in front of me as I’d been busy trimming the lawn since eight that morning. I was just about to wipe away the sweat that was streaming down my face when my cellphone started to ring and the name Mama appeared on the small screen.

“Hi, Mama.”

“Hello, baby, how are you this morning?”

“I’m fine, Mama.”

“Listen, I’m calling to ask you for a favour. I can see that your uncle is not concerned about it, but I am. I want you to go to the local Housing Department.” She paused.

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“I don’t know exactly, but I think it’s somewhere in Jo’burg city centre. I’m sure you’ll find it. I want you to go there and make certain that we are the rightful owners of the house.”

“Okay, Mama. When do you want me to go there?”

“As soon as possible, today or tomorrow at the latest.”

“Okay, I’ll go tomorrow morning,” I said. “It’s already late today and the queue there must be very long by now.”

“Please do that. I’ll see you in the morning . . . Oh, by the way, I saw a job advert in today’s Star. There is a company that is looking for a legal adviser. That’s why we have to get your results as soon as possible. The house must be sold or else you’ll lose out on opportunities like this one. Your profession is in high demand, Bafana. I’ll come with the newspaper in the morning.”

“But, Mama, I think they’re looking for experienced people.”

“Oh, they only need two years’ experience and that’s nothing, you meet all the other requirements. Just tell them that you’re fresh from one of the country’s biggest law schools.”

“Okay, Mama. If you come with the advert I’ll try to apply,” I said hesitantly, afraid to disappoint her.

“All right, baby, but you really must apply for this job. Let me read the benefits to you,” she said excitedly. “The salary range is R290 000 to R350 000 per annum. Uh, there is a thirteenth cheque as well and all they want is your LLB degree. That one you have, baby. They also need basic computer literacy and good listening skills, which I’m sure is nothing to you.”

“Fine, Mama, I’ll try.”

I finished talking on my cellphone and put it on the brick next to the lawn. My uncle was standing right behind me, but he seemed to be concentrating on his notebook rather than on the conversation I had just had with Mama.

“So, tell me, Advo, what did you dream about last night?” he asked, scratching out something in his notebook with his pen.

“Let me think, Uncle,” I responded, wiping away the sweat that was running down my face with the T-shirt that I was wearing.

“We don’t have much time, Advo,” he said, his eyes swinging in the direction of maMfundisi’s house. “That Chinese man, Liu, is coming in thirty minutes to collect all the bets.”

“Okay, give me a minute to remember, Uncle.”

“At ten o’clock that Fong Kong will be here.”

“All right, that dream is coming now, Uncle.”

He looked down at my watch, which he was wearing without my permission. Impatiently, he tucked his crutches under his arms and limped towards the low fence. He put his right hand up to his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun.

At the corner of the street a group of women had gathered and, within seconds, Priest Mthembu’s wife, maMfundisi, appeared. Not only was she Priest Mthembu’s wife, which is why we called her maMfundisi, but she was also the person who ran the fah-fee game in our part of Chi. I had heard from my uncle that her husband wasn’t aware that she was involved in fah-fee. The money bags that she was carrying were to be given to Liu.

Upon seeing maMfundisi, my uncle shouted, “I’m on my way, maMfundisi! Please wait for my bet!”

My uncle gave me an impatient stare as if he had just found a fresh reason to be angry with me.

“Please hurry, Advo! Liu will be here any moment now.”

“Okay, Uncle, it was a bad dream that I had last night and I’m not sure if I should tell you about it.”

“That’s fine, my laaitie, every dream has a number and a meaning in this game.”

“All right, Uncle . . .”

“Go on, I’m listening.”

“Mama caught me smoking a cigarette and scolded me.”

“Good! That’s a very good dream, my Advo,” said my uncle, barely concealing his delight. “When someone scolds you, the number to play is twenty-four.”

He wrote down the number in his notebook in his deformed, semiliterate handwriting.

“And then what happened?”

“Well, she called me a pig and broke my cigarette into pieces.”

“Aha! She called you a pig?” he asked, laughing. “Did she really say that?”

“Yes, she did, in my dream, of course.”

He nodded slowly in approval.

“Okay, a pig is number eight. This is why I like you, Advo. Ever since you came back here from Cape Town I’m a lucky person.”

I smiled while my uncle held forth on his favourite subject.

“My dreams are always bad for this game, Advo,” he said. “I tell you, just a week before you came back I dreamt of my dog Verwoerd’s penis. I played thirty-six, because a penis is that number in fah-fee, and I lost all my money.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” I laughed, “is that right?”

My uncle smiled and slapped my back tenderly.

“That’s the truth, my laaitie. Your dreams are real because you’re very educated.”

My uncle was still scribbling some numbers on a piece of paper when a white four-wheel drive Toyota van passed stealthily along our street. Inside the bulletproof van were two Chinese guys wearing panama hats.

The car stopped in the middle of the street next to maMfundisi’s house where the group of women had gathered. Uncle Nyawana immediately gave me a piece of paper with the numbers on it, as well as R48.

“Look, Advo!” he said, spitting on the ground playfully. “If you come back before this saliva dries up, I’ll buy you four ngudus of Hansa Pilsner.”

With my uncle’s promise on my mind I ran immediately towards maMfundisi’s house, passing some kids that were playing hopscotch on the street. At the gate of her house I gave maMfundisi the bet and watched as she approached the car. The window was rolled down and I saw a hand receiving four bags of money.

When I got back to our house, my uncle was sitting on the beer crate and a woman was sitting on the lawn next to him.

“The millennium is just around the corner,” the woman was saying to my uncle, “so I have come here to make peace with you. Priest Mthembu told us that those who sin by hating others are not going to see the Kingdom of God.”

“Good! I forgive you,” said my uncle, as if he had been the wronged party, “and where is Mbuso?”

“He’s at work. He finally got a job. But he’ll also come to make peace with you because it’s not a good thing to hate each other. He understands that it was a mistake that you and your friends beat him so badly.”

They shook hands and the woman left. My uncle limped towards his room with his empty glass in his hand. He came back a few minutes later with the glass full of whisky.

“What was that all about, Uncle? Is she your girlfriend?” I joked.

“Girlfriend? Hell no, she’s too old for me, Advo. She’s the mother of that guy Mbuso, the one who was staying here until June.”

“You mean that guy who was staying where Zero’s zozo is now? I heard that you knocked his teeth out after he failed to pay the rent in time?”

“Exactly. The same guy who made us sleep in a prison cell for a week in winter. I tell you that if it was not for bra PP, who bribed the police officials with two straights of KWV brandy, we would still be in jail now. Money can really talk in this country, Advo. I’ve seen it.”

“But why did you beat him up? You should have simply told him to leave.”

“You don’t understand, Advo. It wasn’t that simple. You see that hosepipe in the toolbox behind the toilet?”

“Yes. What about it?”

“That guy came back in the evening, just after I’d told him to pack and go. I was out drinking at The White House with PP and Dilika, but when I came back at midnight my room was flooded. My bed, my clothes and everything was all wet. And, imagine, it was a very cold winter.”

“How did you know that it was him?”

“He was the only suspect, Advo. Who else could it have been, huh?”

“Maybe it was one of your old grudges, Uncle. I mean, you have no evidence it was him?”

“I knew it was him, Advo. He’d said during the day that he’d get me for throwing him out. The following morning I went to his home with PP and Dilika and we beat the shit out of him until he confessed.”

I shook my head in disapproval, but I still wanted to hear more.

“And that old man who came to the house yesterday and claimed it was his, who’s he?” I asked.

“Oh, that happened when your grandfather, my father, was still working at the city council. That man, my taima, was a real tsotsi. Many people lost their houses because of him. You see here, opposite, the Jobe’s place, where we ask for ice cubes every day, neh?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“They got that house through my taima. Some old man and his wife used to live there and they had no children. When they died in ’91, my father organised that the house be registered to the Jobe family. I think he was screwing Jobe’s wife . . .”

“So what’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• One November 22, 1999
• Two Tuesday, November 23
• Three Wednesday, November 24, Soweto
• Four Thursday, November 25
• Five Tuesday, November 30
• Six Wednesday, December 1
• Seven Thursday, December 2
• Eight Friday, December 3
• Nine Saturday, December 4
• Ten Monday, December 13
• Eleven Friday, December 17
• Twelve Saturday, December 18
• Thirteen Saturday, December 25
• Fourteen Sunday, December 26
• Fifteen Friday, December 31
• Sixteen Wednesday, January 5, 2000
• Seventeen Tuesday, January 11
• Eighteen Wednesday, January 12
• Nineteen Thursday, January 13
• Twenty Friday, January 14
• Twenty-One Monday, January 24
• Twenty-Two Monday, January 31
• Twenty-Three Tuesday, February 1
• Twenty-Four Monday, February 14
• Twenty-Five Tuesday, February 15
• Twenty-Six Sunday, February 20
• Twenty-Seven Tuesday, February 29
• Twenty-Eight Friday, March 3
• Twenty-Nine Tuesday, May 9
• Glossary
• Acknowledgements