Sundays with him. Nomkhitha began to anticipate Joseph’s visits eagerly; she liked his neat appearance and disciplined manner. (Even Letitia approved of their liaison because of Joseph’s avid church attendance.) Joseph usually dispatched one of his young nephews by bicycle to inform Nomkhitha of their meeting time. At the appointed hour, she and Joseph would stroll slowly along the row of shops, then into the field that lay beyond. There they sat and talked for hours. One afternoon, Joseph spoke of marriage; he hadn’t intended to marry so young, but found that Nomkhitha had an irresistible quality about her. Nomkhitha, who had decided she was in love with Joseph, nonetheless wouldn’t countenance such a discussion. Not long after, Joseph sent his sister May to visit Nomkhitha on a kind of scouting mission. She reported back to Sara and Joseph’s siblings that Nomkhitha was a beautiful woman: this was the one their brother should marry.
Then Nomkhitha discovered she was pregnant. Now she and Joseph had to get married; she would have brought a terrible dishonour to herself and her family otherwise. Besides, Sara insisted on the nuptials as soon as she heard the news. Joseph’s brothers travelled to Bengu to meet Nomkhitha’s family and arrange lobola, the bride price. The Mashininis agreed to pay the equivalent, in cash, of five cows. They also paid for a wedding dress and veil. Olive came north to help Nomkhitha select the household goods she would bring, as tradition demanded, to the marriage. By then, Daniel was too old and sickly to contribute much money; Olive, Nomkhitha and Letitia scoured the city to find an affordable dinner set, cups, cutlery, brooms, sheets, towels. Furniture was out of the question. It saddened Olive that she could not provide her daughter with the same elaborate dowry she had taken to Daniel’s village.
Joseph and Nomkhitha’s wedding lasted for two days. It was a small affair; Transkei was too far away for many members of Nomkhitha’s family or her friends to attend. Thabiso, Joseph’s childhood companion from the farm, was his best man. He had stayed behind when Joseph moved to Johannesburg, but made the journey for the most important day of his friend’s life. The wedding began with a service at the Presbyterian church. Throughout the ceremony, Nomkhitha kept repeating to herself, almost as a mantra: I will still go to school, I will still go to school. Afterwards, there was much praying and singing and taking of pictures. In one, Nomkhitha signs the registry while Joseph gazes over her shoulder: he is dapper in a tuxedo and bow tie, a white carnation stuck in his lapel; Nomkhitha has her veil up, as tradition required of pregnant brides. Both look young and hopeful.
Letitia had a reception at her rooming house after the church service. Nomkhitha changed into another dress for the festivities; people sang traditional paeans to the bride and groom, danced in the garden and ate copiously. Olive arranged for two sheep to be slaughtered for the occasion and provided beer as well. The latter was illegal; blacks could drink beer only in licensed establishments. People came from all over Kliptown, many of them uninvited, and the celebration went on all day. Nomkhitha slept at Letitia’s house that night; Joseph returned to Sara’s. The next day, in a much-diminished re-enactment of Olive’s grand, cross-country trek to her husband’s home, Joseph loaded Nomkhitha’s belongings into a borrowed car and drove the several blocks to Sara’s rooms. There they had another party that continued late into the night.
CHAPTER TWO
Joseph, Nomkhitha and the Children
The day after the wedding celebrations, elders from Nomkhitha’s and Joseph’s family sat down with the newlyweds and, as was their tradition, talked about the couple’s responsibilities: From today, you are no longer a boy and girl. Now you are husband and wife; soon you will have a child. You must act accordingly.
It was a difficult transition. Nomkhitha found the living conditions at Sara’s uncomfortable. Her mother-in-law rented two rooms in a big brick boarding house; Sara, Joseph, Nomkhitha, Joseph’s sister May and her four children all squeezed into the small space. Although always surrounded by people, Nomkhitha felt lonely. She had to stop speaking Xhosa out of respect for her mother-in-law, yet she didn’t know Sotho. Nomkhitha, eager to prove herself as a makoti, a young bride, devoted much energy to mastering the new language. That accomplishment alleviated her sense of isolation only slightly. Being the dutiful daughter-in-law and wife meant subordinating her culture, her ways, to those of the Mashininis. Nomkhitha had a brief respite when, a few months after the wedding, she gave birth to a son, Mokete. Tradition required that a woman return home the week before the arrival of her first-born, and stay there for the first month of the baby’s life. So Nomkhitha got to go back to Letitia’s for a glorious, five-week reunion.
Joseph, too, was overwhelmed by the changes. Supporting a wife and child seemed an enormous task; how could he provide a home for them on the pittance he earned? With little confidence, Joseph put his name down for a tiny plot of land offered by the government in the areas reserved for black inhabitants. The Johannesburg municipality had acquired considerable acreage to the south-west of the city on which to house its proliferating black population. It charged rent for the minute pieces of land carved from these tracts; but tenants owned whatever abode they constructed. The government hoped to engender social stability among the disenfranchised blacks by making them homeowners. Of course, because it retained possession of the land, the government could dismantle the native locations – as they were known – at will and only pay compensation for the dwellings it destroyed.
In this manner, Soweto was created. (The name is an acronym for South-Western Townships.) The place was unspeakably bleak: barren, brown, dusty. Few trees grew there. The streets were narrow and rutted; they flooded when it rained. Hillocks of garbage decomposed by the roadside. It took hours to commute to work in Johannesburg. But with the areas allowed them already crammed, blacks were desperate for any place to live; they flocked to get their names on the government’s list for Soweto. Joseph and Nomkhitha rejoiced when, the year after Mokete’s birth, they were allocated a plot in the township.
They were among the first families to move to Pitso Street in the Central Western Jabavu section of Soweto. Their neighbourhood consisted of a rubbish-filled field across the road and a smattering of shops. The plot was similarly spartan: the government provided a single cold-water tap and a latrine – both outside. At first, Nomkhitha and Joseph could only afford to erect a zinc shack. In that small space they had to cook, eat, sleep. (They would later build a ‘matchbox’ house: the ubiquitous, concrete structures that, when seen from afar, made the township look like rows of monochromatic blocks marching to the horizon.) Despite the rudimentary nature of their residence, Nomkhitha and Joseph considered themselves lucky. They had got away from the suffocating closeness of Joseph’s family and, unlike many of their friends, they had their own home.
To make more money, Joseph left his job at the medical school for one in a factory manufacturing brushes and brooms. The factory operated on a piece-work system: the more shoe brushes Joseph turned out, the more he earned. The pressure to produce was tremendous. Foremen were forever shouting at the workers; if someone made a mistake or dawdled, his entire line was penalized. Employees had to punch a time clock to use the toilets. The tea-break lasted exactly fifteen minutes: a bell rang, and the workers rushed to gulp down a cup of the steaming liquid; another bell rang, and workers rushed back to their machines. Joseph hated his job – but kept at it because he had a family to support.
That sentiment became the watchword of Nomkhitha’s and Joseph’s marriage. In the beginning, Nomkhitha still had hopes of pursuing an education: Okay, I’m married, she would tell herself, but that doesn’t mean I can’t go to school. I’ll find a way somehow. But then the babies started coming: two years after Mokete’s birth, Tsietsi was born. Lehlohonolo came two years later. Then Mpho. Then Lebakeng. Then Moeketsi. Then Tshepiso. And so on: a new baby arriving just about every two years. Nomkhitha would give birth to a total of thirteen children – all of them boys, but for a set of twin girls.
At times, she resented the demands of so large a family. But, like many African women of her generation, Nomkhitha felt powerless to prevent her pregnancies. Contraception was viewed very much as a woman’s responsibility. Medicines were expensive; Nomkhitha could not afford
