years.
Anyway, my sister Mpumi had every right to be angry when I defied her and started having a relationship with Mbongeni. She was more like a mother to me. She knew me better than my mother knew me. She had protected me from many storms in life – in the township when we were growing up, and in the Transkei when we were in boarding school. It was through her that I first met Mbongeni when the Gibson Kente cast came to Mthatha. Now I was defying her.
I will not lie to you, my reader: there were moments of doubt; moments when I thought my sister was telling the truth. I recalled that this man I was head over heels in love with had proposed to me twice before – each time mistaking me for a girl he’d never met. He was a player, indeed! But my inner voice said he had changed. Hadn’t he, after all, stopped drinking and smoking? Hadn’t he converted to Islam, which made him more focused and single-minded in what he wanted in life?
Apart from the fact that he was a smooth-talking player, another reality I couldn’t run away from was that the two of us were an odd couple, with almost nothing in common. He was Zulu, I was Xhosa. He was deeply rural, and I, on the other hand, was a city girl through and through. Until I went to boarding school in Transkei in 1976, I had never been to a place where they collected water from the river, where they used wet cow dung to polish their floors, where womenfolk crawled on all fours whenever they had to serve food to their menfolk. Mbongeni came from a polygamous family – his father had two wives – and in the compound in which he’d lived as a young man, he’d told me, he’d shared food and sleeping quarters with countless aunts and their offspring. I came from a close-knit family – one mother, one father and seven siblings. When my father came to the Transvaal as a young man, he’d cut ties with members of his extended family. As a result, we hardly knew our relatives. We would see them at extremely important family gatherings such as funerals and other traditional feasts, but that was all.
As if that were not enough, it occurred to me that I was far more educated than Mbongeni; I had finished matric at an exclusive boarding school and he hadn’t even finished high school. That did not stop him from being egotistical, patriarchal and talkative. Initially I thought that in his display of over-confidence he was compensating for his lack of schooling, but in due course I realised that, though he valued education, he did not feel inadequate in my presence. In fact, he wanted to embrace my academic achievements and draw inspiration from them. A voracious reader, he would sit me down and share with me writings by authors I’d never heard of. Everyone from Frantz Fanon to Peter Brook to Jerzy Grotowski.
Considering the fact that I’d been the one who’d spent three years at the prestigious St John’s College, where I’d just finished high school the previous year (1980), I should have been the one leading him to fresh and deep wells of intellectual thought and stimulation – yet Mbongeni, with his flimsy and incomplete high school education, obtained from a poor Bantu Education school, was leading the charge. He was one of the few people in Daveyton who visited the library to read books for leisure; the library was generally frequented by students who needed the peace and quiet of the place so they could study or do their homework. On Saturdays, Mbongeni and I would walk hand in hand – another unusual scene in our neighbourhood – all the way to the library. At the library he would check out a book, and we would go and sit out on the lawn, and he would read to me. It was a very unusual romance. I was impressed and awed by his capacity to absorb information like a sponge and, in turn, impart it generously and gently to whoever cared to listen. He spoke about everything, from politics to theatre, from music to religion. He was such a breath of fresh air at a time and place where boys, when chatting up girls, would talk about parties, fashion, booze and fast cars.
But his favourite subject, obviously, was theatre. Over and over again, he would tell me a story about one or other theatre luminary who was making waves on Broadway. ‘I think one day I’ll get to Broadway.’ He would always wrap up his talk with those words, wistfully looking into the distance.
Dreaming about Broadway was not going to put bread on the table or help him buy new clothes, which he sorely needed. Meantime he and Percy were working hard at the Market Theatre, where they were rehearsing that Woza Albert! play of theirs. Wait a minute, at that time the play was still called Our Father Who Art in Heaven. To an eighteen-year-old township girl whose experience of theatre was limited to Gibson Kente plays, Woza Albert! sounded very strange. A play featuring only two people? No music, no band, no dancers? Fearing that I would betray my ignorance, I kept my reservations to myself. Much as Mbongeni had swept me up in a wave of excitement over this play, I did have my doubts.
I was not the only one to have doubts. Percy’s older brother, at whose house Percy and Mbongeni were squatting while they were rehearsing Woza Albert!, suddenly got tired of the two men. ‘Why can’t you go and find work like your age mates?’ he complained. ‘Out of my house!’
Having been kicked out of the house, the two were suddenly homeless. They sponged off whomever they encountered at the Federated Union of Black Artists (Fuba), where they’d managed to secure rehearsal space for the play. My parents and my sister sighed in relief at the sudden disappearance of the man, hoping that he was finally out of my life. Little did they know that whenever Mbongeni had some cash, he would take a taxi and come visiting in the township. Otherwise he would phone me, choosing a time when he knew I was likely to be by myself. Or I would give him the number of a public phone. We always had a plan.
It was while he was still rehearsing at Fuba that he met a fellow Natalian who organised accommodation for him in Pimville. The landlady was a kindly woman called Ignatia. She shared her standard four-roomed house with about nineteen children – mostly orphans – who slept on sofas, or in Ignatia’s bed. Mbongeni couldn’t stop talking about Aunt Ignatia’s generosity and selflessness. He was surprised that in the dog-eat-dog world of Soweto there was such a giving soul. With her permission, he got Percy to come and stay at the house in Pimville too. The house might have been very overcrowded, but it was well kept. Aunt Ignatia had trained the children well and they cleaned up after themselves.
Rehearsals of the play continued. Mbongeni and Percy had initially planned on a large cast, but because they had no money whatsoever they couldn’t convince any actors to join them for rehearsals; so, the two of them rehearsed, playing multiple roles. The training they had acquired at Gibson Kente’s company served them well. They were fit, energetic and highly focused. One person could play five, six characters with relative ease. They sang and danced well. It was in the middle of their frenetic rehearsal programme that they learned that the Market Theatre, which had become the mecca of black theatrical activity, was looking for actors. They auditioned. They didn’t get the parts. However, forever bursting with confidence – they were Gibson Kente’s boys, after all! – they told Mannie Manim, who was managing director at the Market, about their own play. It took a few months before Manim was ready to see their effort. Though the script rambled, the bristling energy at the core of their performance bowled Manim over. Later, he paired them with one of the illustrious directors of that time, Barney Simon. Initially reluctant to work with them – for political reasons he believed they were better off working with a black director – Simon finally and very reluctantly started rehearsals with Percy and Mbongeni.
Word soon travelled in the close-knit Market Theatre community that these two young men who had worked with Gibson Kente were rehearsing a new production to be directed by the great Barney Simon. The buzz attracted a colourful personality – let’s call him Bra Vusi – who made his money ‘liberating cars’ and ‘repossessing the wealth from banks’. Essentially a good soul with a shady profession, Bra Vusi ingratiated himself with Percy and Mbongeni. He gave them a generous allowance so they could buy themselves decent food, and some clothes. Mbongeni could now, with a smile, contribute a little to Aunt Ignatia’s household budget.
Mbongeni’s life was about to change. Big time. And along with it, my own life was about to change in ways I’d never imagined.
Chapter 2
