style="font-size:15px;"> He looked at himself from the chest down to Matome’s old shoes and then up into Matome’s eyes.
Flip the page.
On the other side he had drawn Matome, me and an exact replica of my girlfriend – with all her beauty enhanced and emboldened. She was the only one that he had drawn from head to toe. Matome and I were only half-bodies. My hand was stroking my girlfriend, but despite that I didn’t look happy. Matome was drawn with his permanent smile. Underneath, the caption read: Life is treacherous quicksand with no guarantees . . .
That was definitely from one of Head’s books, but I couldn’t remember which one.
I understood the other side, the picture and the message, but I couldn’t connect the picture and the message on this side.
That morning was the last time Matome and I saw Justice. A homeless man was the only thing in this life that I ever saw shake Matome’s heart. And the cruel part of it was that there was nothing he could do about it. Justice was gone.
3. D’nice
D’nice
Honestly, we are a drinking nation. We don’t go, during the holidays, on tours of this lovely country of ours, from the Klein Karoo to Skukuza, via Borakalalo National Park. No.
Why not?
Because we don’t care. That’s for white people. I don’t blame them. Don’t blame us. We drink, grill meat and cook some hard porridge, then quarrel and maybe end up fighting or trying to stop one fight from getting way out of hand.
I was at a New Year celebration; it was just before half-four, New Year. Only a few people, the real party animals and drinkers, were still partying and drinking. Matome and I were still fighting the war, which so far had been without incident, and then these two guys who were sitting not far from us, sharing a beer, started to quarrel about something. We didn’t take any notice of them and they quarrelled on, still sharing the beer.
The first guy said, “You take me as the things you shit in the toilet.”
The second guy, ignoring him, said, “Let me smoke.”
And the first guy took a cigarette out of his pocket and gave it to him, repeating to him, as he gave him the cigarette, “You take me for your shit in the toilet.”
He even gave him the lighter.
Then the second guy, after lighting the cigarette, replied, “If you feel like you are someone else’s shit in the toilet, then you are shit.”
“Joe! Joe! Joe! I’m going to break you, going to break you now.”
“Hey! Drink beer. This is the first day of this year. So don’t try, because then I’ll have to do something very bad to you. It will be a bad year for you.”
They went on talking, frightening and threatening each other with harmless words. To make it seem even more harmless they were sharing the cigarette and a seven-fifty lengolongolo.
Surprise.
It got very ugly and there was blood everywhere.
Afterwards, they patched it up with each other, and shared a cigarette and a lekhamba, like they didn’t want to break each other’s heads any more. And that was how I met D’nice for the first time; after he had been fighting with his dear friend.
D’nice came to the city the very same year that I met Matome. He came, as everybody who comes to dream city, hoping and dreaming. He came to the city to continue with his education. He was brilliant, with a three digit IQ. He’d passed eight of the nine subjects in matric with straight As and got a B in the other one – and that’s way ahead of the fifteen points needed to gain acceptance to Wits.
Well, let’s look carefully at the issues.
The issue here: The cost of tertiary education and black students.
We were all like D’nice in one way or another, or maybe like him in every way.
Your mother works as a washerwoman. Your father, at fifty-one, is on the blue card, leaving his house every morning to take refuge and comfort with his mates in the war against alcohol. If you’re lucky you have a grandparent or two and through them some pension money, which doesn’t really help with anything, but is better than nothing. Then there are seven of you. Your two older sisters, who are sitting at home with one-year computer certificates waiting for that job, which, let’s be honest, isn’t coming. But what is coming is a child, whose father won’t show up, even at its first birthday party. The other two are doing grade twelve this year, and the others are in grade ten and grade eight respectively.
Then you get admitted to the great institution and, before even three months have passed, the last cent from the blue card is gone.
Have you ever been at university?
With two pairs of black shoes (the good pair and the other pair, in which your feet act as the sole – thank God your toes are still intact), two T-shirts, two round-neck skippers, one V-neck, one vest, two pairs of underwear (that should be written off), four pairs of jeans and four pairs of smart trousers. Not to forget about the pair of washed-every-evening socks. You have absolutely no pocket money at all, and then there is the institution itself, which keeps reminding you that you need to pay your fees or you are out. As if you weren’t their student at all, but were working. Four months pass with their share of peer pressure and stress. Then comes the student awards and they award you the most unfashionable student of the year or, worse still, they look at you as some kind of socially handicapped library-dweller . . .
It gets too deep inside, into the soul, and then you start to lose a kilogram every two and a quarter days and now your well-cared-for clothing hangs on you like it was never yours.
Have you ever been at a tertiary institution of education and witnessed what the black students are going through?
D’nice survived Wits by his own will and sometimes, when he looked back and thought about how he made it, it puzzled him.
From a high school in the rural areas, where not that much matters much and the school didn’t even have a proper office. From a place where what matters the most is to see a smile on your face.
He came into the heart of the dream city with his dreams, putting on a smile with a promise: I am going to show them the best of me and they will think I’m from a private school.
Three months into the thing, peer pressure ran him down, and he realised nobody gave a shit about the smile on his face.
He lay on his bed in his paid-for room, courtesy of his scholarship, thinking that he was in the wrong place, thinking that he didn’t belong there, while the tears were trying hard to wet the bed.
Then he made a decision.
He got up, wiping away the tears, shook his head and promised them, “They have to take me as I am, because I am what I am.”
And that was that.
D’nice was the kind of guy who’d wake up at ten to prepare an assignment that was due at four. He had no need for a rubber or Tipp-Ex. He wrote. It was written. No looking back.
