in some prescribed job. That was the way of the world.
Once, Dee and his classmates were taken on a trip to the Voortrekker Monument near Pretoria. A hulking granite structure, the Monument stood as a temple to the struggle between (white) civilization and (black) barbarism. It was constructed so that at noon on December 16, the day that Afrikaners commemorated the defeat of the Zulu warriors, a ray of light shining through the Monument’s dome would strike an inscription on a cenotaph. The symbolic tomb honoured Piet Retief, a Boer leader murdered by the Zulus. The purpose of the outing was to make history come alive for the students. But Dee didn’t need to gaze upon cold marble friezes to grasp the significance of white domination; under apartheid, he lived it.
A more quotidian lesson could be found in the constant police presence in Soweto. That, for Dee, was a live thing: the police were everywhere, rounding up men whose passes weren’t in order. Every day Dee saw long queues of transgressors, miserable and defeated, handcuffed together and sitting on the ground, waiting to be taken to jail. Policemen were the highest figures of authority in the township. It seemed natural that Dee would aspire to enter the profession when he grew up, perhaps as a traffic officer – they got to ride on motorcycles. Then again, maybe he would be a teacher – they dressed better than most of the adults Dee knew.
By the time of Tshepiso’s birth – he was the seventh child – Nomkhitha and Joseph were too burdened to lavish much attention on him. He was left mostly to his own devices. At a young age, Tshepiso developed a loathing for school: he despised the overcrowded classroom, the single, harassed teacher, the long list of supplementary reading his parents could not afford. He had to beg his friends to share their books with him. His teacher tormented him on the subject constantly. ‘Where is your book?’ she would demand in front of the class. Next week, Tshepiso always stammered, I promise I’ll buy it next week. But Joseph never had the money until much too late in the school year. The next week Tshepiso would be subjected to the same humiliating interrogation.
Despite his antipathy to school, Tshepiso – as was characteristic of Nomkhitha’s children – loved to read. Mpho supplied him with cast-off books. Tshepiso developed a reputation as the laziest of the siblings: he would stumble from his bed, search around the house for a book, then – instead of doing his chores – crawl back beneath the blankets to read. He spent hours engrossed in magazines, newspapers, paperbacks, any printed material he could find. Only Nomkhitha’s threats of retribution would rouse him from his reverie.
His ardour for reading notwithstanding, Tshepiso was, in other respects, a typical township boy. He excelled at removing the spokes from abandoned bicycle wheels and, using a wire as a kind of prod, conducting races through the streets of Soweto. He collected large pieces of scrap metal to make into sledges for the sandy hills that dotted the township. He created catapults from smashed bottles, arrows from sticks and bits of wire; these he employed in competitions among his younger siblings and friends to shoot down birds.
Tshepiso found it difficult being part of so large a family. He sucked his thumb until he was seven and was tortured by his older brothers for it – they smeared his thumb with chili peppers as a deterrent. In another act of dissuasion, they inflicted small cuts with a razor blade on the top of the digit. Tshepiso saw his siblings not only as tormentors, but as the cause of his poverty. His house felt suffocatingly crammed, especially at night when everyone was present. Joseph and Nomkhitha slept in one bedroom, the latest baby between them. The older children stayed in the dining room: they pushed the table to one side and pulled out a bed from underneath a sofa. The youngest ones – Tshepiso included – slept in the other bedroom, packed into beds, squeezed onto the floor. Tshepiso would dream that his house had miraculously expanded during the night; on waking, he peered around the room, hoping to see wide spaces beyond the bodies of his sleeping brothers.
By Tshepiso’s calculations, fewer brothers would have meant more money for the things he coveted. He yearned to buy a proper lunch at school. With the coins he received from his parents, he could only purchase bread and potatoes from the old grannies who sold food at the schoolyard gates; other kids (whom Tshepiso suspected came from smaller families) bought bits of meat for their sandwiches, cold drinks, ice cream. His school uniform caused him similar misery. The black shorts, white shirt, jersey, socks and black shoes cost more than a domestic worker’s monthly wage and the uniform the children received each Christmas had to last for the entire year. Tshepiso washed one of his two shirts every night. He brushed and pressed his single pair of shorts after each use, until they were shiny and threadbare. He stitched the holes that seemed to appear daily in his shoes. Tshepiso longed for shirts and shorts enough to last the entire week, and for a trunkful of shoes.
To have a more prosperous life, his parents told him, you must stay in school. But from a young age, Tshepiso understood the limits of even a good education. White people ruled them. He had seen how at night, Johannesburg, the white man’s city, shimmered with light; it seemed to Tshepiso the very essence of hope. Soweto was always in darkness.
Nomkhitha exerted the most influence over the children when they were very young. She was their confidante, the one they played with and cuddled. After work and on Sunday afternoons, Nomkhitha would sit with them on the veranda, talking, telling stories, teasing.
But as the boys grew, Joseph became the figure of authority. They craved his approval; each wanted to be his favourite. This was no easy thing. Joseph held himself apart as a strict disciplinarian – so strict, in fact, that neighbourhood parents used to compel good behaviour in their children by invoking his name. If Joseph found one of his sons being disobedient, he made the child lie down on the bedroom floor; Joseph then took off his belt and gave him a beating. (Behind his back, the boys called him ‘The Sheriff’. Rocks thought up the nickname from the Westerns he read).
Misconduct was subject to punishment by the belt. One day, Cougar, Mpho and about a dozen friends were putting small rocks on the rail lines near the house for trains to crush. The boys could have been electrocuted by the line or caused a train to derail. Suddenly, Joseph appeared on the other side of the lines and emitted a low whistle. Cougar and Mpho jumped up, terrified; they knew what the whistle meant. Go home immediately, he commanded them, lie down on the bedroom floor and wait for me to return.
Joseph had an array of belts with which to inflict punishment; some hurt more than others. The most feared was the one the children called Paris, after its manufacturer’s name. As painful as the beatings were, the boys preferred to have them administered immediately. Often, Nomkhitha would note a transgression, with a promise to inform Joseph. Then the culprit lived in unbearable anticipation for days.
(Smoking was another major offence; the children avoided smoking in Joseph’s presence. Of all the things Mpho would receive in jail after his arrest in 1977, none touched him more than the three packets of cigarettes his father included in his bundle. Mpho had thought Joseph unaware of his addiction.)
Beyond his authoritarianism, Joseph’s religiosity had the greatest influence on his children. He had switched to the Methodist Church, Nomkhitha’s denomination, because of disputes among the ministers in his Presbyterian parish. Joseph found the Methodist traditions powerful and satisfying. Every Sunday he donned the dark suit jacket, red waistcoat, grey flannel trousers, white shirt, black tie and lapel pin of his men’s guild. He sat with the other guild members at the front of church; seated near them were the manyano, or women’s guild. The married ones wore orange jackets, white collars, white caps, black skirts, black shoes and stockings. The single women’s garb was reversed: white jackets with orange collars. The guild members faced the congregants and the rows of hard, wooden pews. Small children, who maintained a murmur of babble throughout the service, played on the worn linoleum floor.
At a raised lectern, the preacher delivered the weekly sermon. He became intensely animated when expounding on a particular biblical passage, gesticulating with both arms and raising his voice to a fevered pitch. Behind him, a simple crucifix hung on the wall; a purple cloth, embroidered with the words ‘God is Love’, covered the altar. The members of the men’s guild listened intently to the sermon. Some held their heads in concentration; others, like Joseph, wiped tears from their cheeks.
When the service ended, the guild members rose from their seats. Pounding leather pillows like small