I thought I should, before we got married, visit Mbongeni’s ancestral home. Just to satisfy myself.
*
It was on a Saturday morning, having packed our suitcases the previous night, that Mbongeni and I boarded a bus to Zululand. The minute I boarded that bus, I knew I was about to enter a new world. There was a sense of foreboding. Fear and excitement. At the tender age of nineteen, I was to be somebody’s wife. Mbongeni Ngema’s wife. I loved him dearly. I respected him. I adored his worldliness. Prayed at the exalted altar of creativity. He made me whole. But I did still not know him. And I did not know the world he came from.
The bus roared to life. Passengers, having settled in their seats, craned their necks out of the windows and said their final farewells to those of their friends and loved ones who were staying behind in Johannesburg. Having in the past travelled a lot by train and by bus, from Johannesburg to the Transkei, where I had gone to school, I was used to covering long distances by public transport. Back then, those long distances – with the bus whooshing past picturesque villages, stopping every now and then to allow a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle to cross the road, negotiating treacherous mountain passes – were almost negligible. That was because they were funfilled as I was always travelling with friends, my age mates. There would be tons of food; people pulling pranks on each other. Boys would be pulling moves on girls. Some of the kids would be drinking – especially the boys – or just telling tall tales to while the time away. But those were days of childhood; I was in the company of my age mates. I could speak my mind, I could tell my own stories.
But here I was that day, on this Pullman bus packed mostly with men. The men were in good spirits. Bottles of alcohol passing from hand to hand, stories being passed around like handfuls of snuff. As the booze flowed, tongues loosened. Voices were raised. There was more ribaldry in the stories being told, some of them so risqué as to be offensive and outright sexist. To hear a grown-up man speaking at the top of his voice, in a bus packed with strangers, about what he was going to do to his wife when he got home was shocking to me. I can take a good joke, a good sex story, but shallow misogyny is not my cup of tea. I was still a young woman, my analysis of society still raw and unsophisticated, but I could tell an instance of verbal abuse against women masquerading as humour. And it never sat well with me.
Later, and with the benefit of hindsight, I would reflect on this bus journey and conclude that it wasn’t just a straight-ahead transfer from point A to point B. It was a metaphorical journey from a world that I’d called home to a world that seemed vaguely familiar to me, resonating as it did with the numerous stories that Mbongeni had shared with me about his part of the country, about his people, about his culture. But soon enough I would discover that the world that I thought I had come to grips with was actually alien to me. To people who did not know him, Mbongeni might have seemed like your stereotypical Zulu traditionalist – one of those Zulus who openly referred to non-Zulus as ‘izilwanyana’ (animals/creatures); those Zulus who, even though they’d lived in Johannesburg for many years, still refused to learn other people’s languages because they regarded them as inferior; those Zulu chauvinists who propounded Zulu physical prowess above all else.
But Mbongeni was not that type of Zulu. He could converse in many African languages. His best friends were non-Zulu – a case in point, Percy Mtwa himself, who was Xhosa. When he was still with Gibson Kente’s cast, one of his best friends was Paul Rapetswe, from Limpopo. Listen carefully now, before you misunderstand me: Mbongeni Ngema was proud, very proud of his Zulu roots; he spoke fondly of the heroic history of his people, and he wove this heroism into his stories. But he never allowed his pride in who he was, who his people were, to undermine others who did not belong to the Zulus, or even the greater Nguni group of people, who, if you come right down to it, are related. I am talking about amaXhosa (in all their diversity, including amaMpondomise, amaMpondo, amaGcaleka, amaRharhabe etc.), amaSwati, amaNdebele – these people are all related historically. But to hear some of the Zulu chauvinists on that bus talking, you would believe that Zulus dropped from heaven, and the rest of humanity (especially black humanity) sprouted from a rock. In many of the stories that Mbongeni had told over the time we’d known each other, he did tell cautionary tales about these types of Zulus.
We passed towns I’d never heard of. We stopped at some strategically located spots where we ducked behind bushes to relieve ourselves. Young people laugh at me these days when I tell them there were no Shell or BP halfway stations where people can get out of buses and cars, go to sweet-smelling and well-appointed toilets where they relieve themselves at their leisure, after which they can go to a Wimpy, or a KFC or Nando’s outlet and settle for a meal before resuming their journey. Those days there was no such luxury. Especially not for black people. Of course, the story was different for white people. White people, whether travelling by bus or car, could take a detour from the highway and sleep over at motels and hotels. Or they could choose to nose their cars into caravan parks where they would reach for their picnic baskets, unfurl their blankets and towels and spread these under the cool shades of trees. They would tuck into their roast chicken and potato salad and cheese and tomato sandwiches which had been lovingly prepared by their black maids. They might dig into the back of their truck and come out with a braai stand. They would chat away in good humour as the steak sizzled on the coals. If the weather was pleasant enough, and they were not in a hurry to get to their final destination, they would sleep on their picnic blankets under the stars.
No such luck for black people. For black people, the bus had to stop on the side of the road. People would fan out and find strategic positions behind bushes where they did their thing. I am recalling this specifically because as we were relieving ourselves out there in the bushes, it turned out that one of the men had suddenly been afflicted with a terrible tummy bug. Every time he thought he was done and he had already wiped he would soon start groaning again. A new onslaught of noises – bhah-bhah-bhah! – would ensue from the thickets where he was hiding. It was so bad that the driver of the bus almost drove away, leaving him behind. Of course, I would only know about this later, when the bus was back on the road and the men were talking at the top of their voices about the man’s smelly misfortunes.
As the shadows lengthened outside, the landscape became starkly beautiful, ever more breathtaking. Many outstanding writers, ranging from BW Vilakazi to Alan Paton, have written lyrically and eloquently about the landscapes of Zululand and Natal. The Drakensberg with its frowning craggy cliffs and precipices; the chattering and laughing waters of uThukela river. The graceful Valley of a Thousand Hills. But I am no poet. Suffice it to say that I could not help staring out there as the landscape swept past.
Mbongeni kept me entertained with stories about the various towns we passed. The battles of yore that had been fought in the mountains and valleys or some historic event that had led to the birth of a particular town. But I was only half listening. My mind was on the women who were on the bus. Not many women, by the way, just a sprinkling. But you could feel their presence. Some were dressed in their best city clothes so that everyone back home would see that they hadn’t gone to Johannesburg to play. They had gone there to scoop their pieces of gold. Or at least a handful of the gold dust that made them rich enough to afford these modern outfits. But some of the women were old. They had gone to Johannesburg only to fetch their husbands. Or to visit their husbands who were still obliged by their long work contracts to remain in the city. I’d been told that some men would go home only once a year. Or maybe once after two years. When this was the case the men’s wives were obliged to visit them in Johannesburg and other mining towns in the Greater Witwatersrand area. The women would spend a few days, a week, with their husbands, always praying that they would fall pregnant on this rare visit. It was called ‘ukuyolanda isisu’. Literally: to collect a belly.
I was lucky to not fall into that category. My man was right next to me. He was a modern man. I was a modern woman. He was not condemned to the life of a miner. He was an actor. I knew his time was coming. The time when he would grace the stages of the world. The time his name would appear on the front pages of newspapers. I would be there to support him. We would only go to his ancestral village so that I could be introduced to his people.
