political leader), to confer upon him the title of ‘Shakespeare’s friend in Africa’. To Nomkhitha, his oratorical prowess seemed a direct line from his grandfather, the imbongi. Tsietsi’s talent came to define his adolescent life; he used it to make friends and recruit like-minded youths to his projects. And he employed it to express a nascent hatred of white people – utterances whose virulence surprised his parents.
As head of his debating team at Morris Issacson High, Tsietsi regularly competed against other schools. Debating clubs were immensely popular in the township: students vied fiercely for membership in them, and their debates were always well attended. Khotso Seatlholo, an intense, articulate youth, was in the audience at Naledi High for a contest against Morris Issacson. The topic was ‘The Pen is Mightier than the Sword’; Tsietsi argued for the motion. Khotso was spellbound. Unlike the other speakers, who were clutching reams of notes, Tsietsi had only a small index card which he barely consulted. He was bold, eloquent, witty, quick thinking. It seemed impossible that Tsietsi was the product of Bantu education (as it was called under apartheid). He exuded an uncanny confidence; his closing statement brought a standing ovation from the audience.
Afterwards, at a social gathering, Tsietsi sought out Khotso. Khotso felt flattered: Tsietsi was popular, well-known, a prefect at his school. He had a swarm of girls around him. Tsietsi made polite enquiries about Khotso’s family and church affiliation; they talked for a while, then Tsietsi left. Khotso gave little import to the encounter.
But Tsietsi returned to see Khotso after school the following week. Again, he asked about Khotso’s family, his church, membership in clubs, and so on. Thus began a pattern that continued for several weeks: Tsietsi would appear at Naledi at the end of the school day once a week to talk. He and Khotso would find an empty classroom or, if the weather was fine, sit outside. They covered a range of mostly neutral topics, but occasionally Tsietsi would insert a question about the situation in South Africa. Khotso understood that Tsietsi was trying to tease out his political views. But Tsietsi’s approach was so slow and convincing that Khotso, despite his reservations, found himself being drawn to his new friend.
Mpho, the fourth son, shared little of his older brothers’ anguish about being a poor township boy. Growing up in the political void of the 1960s, it seemed the normal state of things. His house was like his neighbours’ (albeit more cramped), his possessions not dissimilar to theirs. In fact, Mpho felt a great sense of security. Long before he had friends, his gaggle of brothers provided protection and fellowship.
But there were hazards to having so many siblings. At mealtimes, Nomkhitha seated the youngest children on the floor of the living room. (The older ones got to eat at the dining-room table with their parents.) She set down a big bowl of pap with vegetables or traces of meat and there followed an intense struggle to get at the food. Despite the exertion of sharing from one bowl, Mpho came to think of eating as a highly communal experience. It would take him a long time after leaving home to adjust to using his own plate; having a meal in such a manner seemed so solitary, so lonely.
Eating on the floor required a careful choreography. You had to balance getting enough food to eat with finishing promptly; the first to push away from the bowl got his pick of the after-dinner chores. For Mpho, there was always a kind of tension: resisting the lure of more food allowed him to stand up and claim drying, the easiest of the jobs. Gluttony meant some other brother would assert his right before him. That left the washing-up, an odious task or, even worse, cleaning the floor. The older children were responsible for washing and drying the dishes and setting them on the table for the younger ones to put away. In Soweto, girls traditionally did this type of work; but until 1974, when the twins Lindi and Linda were born, the Mashininis were a family of boys.
As such, they were also obliged to do chores around the house, and to finish them before Nomkhitha returned from work late in the afternoon. The children had to wash the breakfast dishes, clean out the ashes from the morning fire, make the beds, fold their clothes, scrub the tiles and sweep the floor. They were each assigned tasks in different rooms; and they were always grumbling about the injustice of doing a particular chore today when they had done it yesterday. ‘Okay, you ate yesterday,’ Nomkhitha would retort, ‘so should we get someone else to eat for you today?’
Lighting the fire in the afternoon was the bane of Mpho’s life. He simply could not work out how to do it and play football after school. Mpho devised three strategies, all of which had serious drawbacks. He could light the fire immediately upon returning home, before heading out to a match. But the fire was sure to burn out in the three hours or so before Nomkhitha’s arrival. Or he could dash home at half time, hurriedly kindle a blaze and check the chimney for smoke, then race back to the field across the street to finish the game. The fire rarely caught properly and would be stone cold by the time Nomkhitha entered the house. As a third course of action, Mpho could keep playing until the last possible moment, until he saw Nomkhitha walking tiredly up the street. Then he would sprint home and madly start making the fire.
Football was, unquestionably, the most important thing in Mpho’s existence. The rubbish-littered field across from his house regulated the pulse and rhythm of his youth. School, church, household chores – all seemed nothing more than interruptions to the real substance of life: playing football. He could not step outside without seeing that field. It was beckoning, seductive, omnipresent: the stuff of dreams.
In the summer Mpho played barefoot; when he was older and had got a bit of money, he bought takkies, or sports shoes. Each neighbourhood had its own team, but would send its best players to participate in area competitions. On Sundays, Mpho and his mates went to the nearby hostels where migrant labourers lived. The workers organized their teams along tribal lines, but were often short of players and paid the township kids to fill in the open positions. Mpho could earn as much as three rand in an afternoon, a princely sum. (He could also take a shower, a unique experience. The hostels had virtually the only showers in the township.) Nomkhitha never knew of Mpho’s exploits; he feared she would have been outraged. As it was, she would often march over to the field and, screaming at Mpho, jerk him from a game.
Swimming was Mpho’s other great passion. The township had only one public pool, located in White City – a section of Soweto named for its low, white houses made from concrete blocks. Mpho liked to spend the entire day there during the summer holidays, returning home at night ravenously hungry and exhausted from the sun. But swimmers had to pay an entrance fee of two cents and Mpho always struggled to find the money. One method was to ‘liberate’ it from the gangs that roamed the area. Mpho, his older brother Cougar, and a group of friends often ambushed a squad of Zulu youths who had to pass through Mpho’s territory to arrive at the pool. They would thrash the youngsters and appropriate their money. But that didn’t ensure a day of swimming: they still had to negotiate the back streets of White City to avoid getting molested themselves by a gang called the Damaras (after a Namibian tribe), bent on relieving Mpho and his companions of their coins.
One day they decided to use Cougar, who had had polio as an infant, as a kind of courier. (The disease had attacked his leg and arm, but permanently affected only the latter.) After assaulting the Zulus, Mpho hid the money in the hand of Cougar’s disabled arm. Then he pushed Cougar to the front of their group as they approached the Damaras; the gang, seeing that Cougar was disabled, let him pass. At that moment, Cougar accidentally let the precious coins clatter to the ground. There was no swimming for them on that day.
Like his siblings, Mpho was always desperate for money. His one steady source of income came from reselling train tickets. Trains were the main mode of transportation between the township and Johannesburg; taxis and buses hardly ran in the black areas. On Sundays, Mpho’s parents sent him to stand in line to buy a six-day ticket for the coming week, the cheapest fare. As a reward, they allowed him to sell the sixth ticket (still valid for another day) back at the station on the following Saturday morning. Mpho charged 30 or 40 cents for the 50-cent ticket, a saving for people who wanted to go into town to shop. He got to keep the money he earned: sometimes he spent it on the
