Silence fell while the old man took out six faded black-and-white pictures from his pocket and, uncomfortably, pushed them across the table towards Mama. I approached the table to have a better look at them. The pictures were almost identical. In each one of them he had posed with three other people, but before he even began to tell us about the people in the pictures, I had guessed that they were his wife and two sons. The sons looked like they were aged between two and four when the photo was taken. In the background of each picture was a number that was scrawled in white paint on the wall of a house. It appeared on the brick wall next to the steel door and it read 9183. That was our house number. The very same house that Mama was selling so that she could pay for my nonexistent university results.
Mama looked away.
“That’s my wife there,” said the old man, pointing at the woman in the photograph that Mama was still holding. “She used to be a great friend of Nandi, your mother,” he continued in a nostalgic tone of a voice. “Ah, those days . . .”
“And where is she now?” Mama asked, as if she had suddenly remembered something about the woman.
“I last saw her in 1979, immediately before I was committed to Weskoppies.”
The old man looked at the asbestos roof of our house and smiled, and at that moment, I was convinced that he was still mad. Mama watched him as well, not moving.
“Oh, I was looking at that hole up there.” The old man pointed at the roof of the house. “It happened in 1972, during the rent boycott,” he continued. “The police were shooting all over the township.”
Mama appeared uninterested in what the old man was saying. She looked very tired and annoyed, but, indeed, there was a hole where he was pointing to and the roof always leaked slightly from there when it rained.
“And where are your children?” Mama asked, her expressionless eyes meeting those of the old man.
“The older one, Tumi, died in 1978 when I was in Welkom and the other one, Pule, I don’t know where he is. I’m still looking for him and his mother. I heard that they’re somewhere here in Jo’burg.”
Mama frowned before she fired another question at him.
“So, what other proof do you have to support your claim that this is your house, huh? I mean, where is your title deed for this house?”
The old man searched his pocket again and came out with a very old, dog-eared document that looked like a passport, only bigger. He handed it to Mama. As I moved closer to see what was written in it, I saw the words Residential Permit Holder written on the outside in black. Inside there was a black-and-white photograph of the old man when he was still middle-aged. There were also fingerprints, the old man’s date of birth (which happened to be 1928), his race, sex, names of his previous employers and their addresses, how long he had been employed there and so forth. In one section the pages were stamped in red, stating Permission Request Denied or Permission Request Granted.
Mama turned to the next page which was headed Lawful Dependants. Three dependants as well as their ages were mentioned. The old man’s wife was called Tseli and she had been born in 1941. Their son Tumi was born in 1960 and the other one, Pule, was born in 1963. The document was stamped with the words Urban Dwellers. There were also two pink cards with the children’s names on them and they bore the official stamps of the primary schools they had been attending. In the permit I also saw our house number again: 9183, Chiawelo Section Two, Soweto.
His papers looked genuine although they were old.
“Is this what you call a title deed, huh?” Mama asked with an expression of pure scorn on her face.
“Yes, that’s it,” the old man replied, but at that moment Uncle Nyawana came limping through the door carrying his syringe in his hand.
“Jabu, listen to this old man here. He says he has come to occupy this house because it’s his and he leased it out to our parents in seventy-something. He shows us these old papers and a dompas, and expects us to believe him,” she said contemptuously.
“He’s mad,” my uncle declared, tapping at the side of his own head with his finger. “I told him a month ago already, when he was here before, that we have the title deed for this house. I forgot to tell you about him because I didn’t think it was important. He’s mentally disturbed.”
“I have a title deed in my room and it says the house belongs to my father, Sbusiso Kuzwayo,” said Mama. “Do you hear me? Sbusiso Kuzwayo, my father,” she repeated. “Go fetch the title deed, Bafana, it’s in the suitcase in the wardrobe.”
Within seconds I was back with the title deed. Mama was right, the house belonged to Mr Sibusiso Kuzwayo, my late grandfather, who passed away in 1992. According to the document, the title right of the former council house was bestowed on him on the 10th of June in 1989 at the cost of R1 300. There was no indication in the document that the house had once belonged to some John Sekoto. Mama showed the document to the old man with confidence.
“Ahhh, I sensed this was going to happen,” said the old man, flushing with rage. “I knew it. Your father arranged that title deed when he heard I had been committed to Weskoppies.”
“That’s not important now, is it?” interrupted my uncle. “It’s your problem if you think that my father robbed you of this house. Don’t make your problem ours. My father knew you were mad, but this house legally belongs to the Kuzwayo family, so you must fuck off.”
The humiliation on the old man’s dark face was plain, but my doubts about his claim had started to abandon me. I believed him. When I looked into his eyes again I felt pity for him and, in that moment, I began to dislike my uncle and Mama’s attitude towards him. The manner in which they talked to him was disrespectful and Mama had raised me to always be respectful to the elders.
“But it’s my house. You have no right,” insisted the old man.
“Uyabhema yini, mkhulu?” asked my uncle in a condescending tone. “I think you must have smoked a lot of zol because you don’t listen! I told you not to come here again with your bullshit stories. It seems you didn’t take me seriously then?” he said, his tone full of manufactured anger.
The old man didn’t answer, but he looked intimidated.
“Now, let me be fair with you, madala, because I hate bullshit! I tell you for the last time,” Uncle Nyawana shouted impatiently, as if he had reached the limit of his tolerance with the old man, “if you want to know what the devil looks like, just come here again and I’ll show you. Do you hear me, madala? I’ll cut your crazy head off with that axe over there and feed it to my dog, Verwoerd.”
The old man stood up, but his eyes were darting into the four corners of our kitchen.
“But I want my house back. I’m giving you two months’ notice,” he insisted nervously. “If I have to go to the highest court in the land to get back what rightfully belongs to me, I will,” he said, standing at the door. “I can’t allow somebody to be the proud owner of my house. The umbilical cords of my two sons are buried in this yard.”
“Who do you think you are to come here with your old useless papers and claim this house is yours, huh?” Mama demanded angrily. “Hamba! Go away!”
I felt very sorry for the old man as he walked out of our house with the submissiveness
