Three First Borns

S’cefe

On his 28^th birthday, Scefe’s bowlegged father bludgeoned him to a pulp for calling his mother a witch.

A terror to innocent gazes of women and children; having bled innumerable times in knife duels and gang attacks, he’s his father’s monstrosity tamed by sticks and steel pipes.

First born among six, he is son to a loud-hailing street evangelist, a staunch moralist who has baptized half the youth of this township.

His children are meant to lead by pious example, by being teachers’ pets in class and aspiring for aviation vocations acquired through military service.

A scar-riddled head, ever clean shaven for hair to never grow in unsavory patches that make him resemble a leper, he is now a formidable drunk among his peers.

Most are always on the receiving end of his avalanches of careless punches toned by mine-dump gravel shoveling and municipal bucket lavatory disposals.   

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Kissed too many a pavement in his short life, bearing a testament of vacant gums, a bruise he bears with every smile – an image cultivated in tortures.

Growing up among five sisters made him a protective ogre rumored as castrated among young initiates vying for his born-again house of sorority.

Yet S’cefe lost his cards in a game of breaking virginities, now an uncle to three nephews and a niece, bastards he curses every night of his brute rage after gurgling on backyard brews and left-over beer spittle.

Once engaged to a teenage fling and badly let off a leash for a pot-bellied mine supervisor, he has ever since loathed mines and any prospect of working there for love’s sake.

A type of irreconcilable grudge with whoever is a beneficiary of steamy shifts in sordid shafts dug once by forefathers who lived a legacy of tuberculosis and radiation poisoning, a worthy baton left for their young.

‘Lamagoduka aziz’cefe.’ S’cefe would say in clear view of sweaty men stewing in hard liquor, tortured by blue balls and a lust for young thighs, lost away from their slovenly wives stuck in aimless homelands and squatter camps.

On his 32^nd birthday, S’cefe and his three friends hijacked a beverage delivery truck, drove it through ogling squatter camp louts, in search of gullible customers and loose girls to impress.

To dispose of their merchandise, soft drink cargo sold like peanuts to adrenalin flushed school children and greedy tuck-shop owners who negotiated ridiculous bargains and stocked crates for the festive season.

But word got around through tracker devices and other monitors spying from fruit stalls and dingy hair salons that S’cefe is ghetto Santa and he came to town early.

The culprits were sourly paying for debts buried with uncles, snitched by vengeful women impregnated on one night stands or high school bonking parties organized by heirs to impounded taxi fleets.

And when news reached his father’s holy ears, hell walked on two crooked legs wielding a sjambok and machete handed down from times of hostel massacres and peerless riots, a deadly messiah pent on flagellating a heathen.

He dealt a wanton medley of blows on S’cefe’s dyslexic brain, hoarse tongued and doing the police a favor, he claimed.

Nobody disciplines his flock – that was his mantra when S’cefe’s mother intervened shielding her strange fruit that fell first from her tired branches.

Convulsing in tears and pleading to no avail, paraded before enemy and foe, S’cefe was thus disgraced by his father, among hooligans of a township that dreaded the buffoonish sight of him.

That was three years ago, before he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, before his headaches needed more than marijuana, before his rage could make him talk to himself in broad daylight.

Before bilious monologues directed at his cursed father became his uncensored script; before slurs unto his haggard sisters prostituting themselves in the same tavern that staged spoils of his soul became his mantra.

These infernal tirades became customized offences ever since, among other innocent mishaps like exposing his giant limp penis before children playing in mud and garbage piles, or burning paraffin at a tuck-shop that supposedly owed him small change.

These headaches sapped his brain of dignity and decorum, on his face left only twitches and a feature-less gaze filled with inner struggle and desertion.

And when the sun tilted one October afternoon over a rusty backyard hangout, being known as a staunch supporter of a skull and bones soccer team, he dared make a comment about some golden team player’s lack of skill and something flared up.

Okapi’s swung from fluid hands that knew anatomy, plunging and plucking, carving slits on supine arms and legs staggering over metals rails of security gates crowded by onlookers.

The brutal news of his death travelled rampantly from tavern to township folk, tears swelling in eyes of the sympathetic, and joy blinding his victims to the cruelty of his death by the hand of a mob of soccer fanatics.

Last moments of slipping breath, neither defiant nor clawing for life, he is said to have died contented with aims tossed aside at this end of another first born in a wasteland of constant births.

London

He was christened London by his father, slept in a partition behind a make shift kitchenette of a shack once located in the liquidated camp named Riverside.

Alone on his mattress until he was seven when Elizabeth who was six joined him in the kitchen hideout, they were inseparable, but only during school as they were in different classes.

A bright eyed child who played alone with gadgets of his making, he also became known as Madopa, a hoarder of junk magazines and obsolete encyclopedia discarded by the well-read.

After his pantsula father died in a rock fall in one of the mines, London, his sister and mother lived a life considered forfeit, disguised in shabby eccentricity and dreams of a former beauty-queen who once dated a sought after bachelor.

Moving from one settlement to another, among stints of boarding in backyards, they were eventually allocated a stand to build their shack.

Tending to a sickly mother and hungry sister, London carved a home for his loved ones and resolved to never be distracted by need nor fall into trappings of quick fixes.

Piously respectful, a tickler of infants along his every path, yet slightly afraid of dogs who he suspected of being ever rabid, he was a model burned by his mother’s failed dreams of affluence.

But when most people fail in their aims they blame the devil and witchcraft, and Zion Christian Church becomes a haven for most, together with the dying young begging for prayers to postpone their dates with the ripper.

The duo had become avid stompers since time immemorial, iconic in exhibition of spiritual fervor that often galvanized other congregants to heights of exhilaration from healing songs.

They were called ‘the anointed’ by many, and were zealous interceders, attending services in tempest or cold blizzards to ration blessings for the elderly.

On their way to church one Sunday, burying a surging excitement of children wearing humorless grins anticipating hymns and chants, they were hit by a taxi swerving on slippery potholes swelling with dirty water after a hail storm.

Avoiding splashes of filth from falling on their church green and gold uniforms made their strut through the street a bit discordant.

Lacking attention for nothing either than the mud they neglected to observe other concerns, and only screams from horrified mothers who anticipated unfortunate events to unfold, made them look about in a terror that stupefied their sense, and as he tells the story, they both froze.

How he forever recalls that sweetly curious being whose company he loved to walk through muddy summer days of Modderfontein, her lucid mind that always questioned and possibly made him as driven to inquiry and observation.

He lost his arm and she her life rolled up in bloody mingled wet soil, mud caked to their heads, hers still as a rock while he wailed at his dismembered arm to crawl back in place.

If fighters live to die so the innocent may survive, then he was no soldier on that day, but a scared fourteen year old writhing in the grip of ripped flesh and bone.

After long stints in hospitals and a barrage of insults from rowdy oafs, he reconciled to carry his life single-handedly with a new vigor.

London Madopa became an itinerant seller of assorted delicacies like magwinya and éclairs, a functionary who oiled his mother’s creaky wheels, for she was aging not too gracefully after years of debauchery, binge diets and a bad heart.

Broken radios, kettles and small appliances were his prized collections those high school days spend ripping the trivial and expendable trifles and reassembling them for a meager fee.

He never passed a discarded battery-cell, having shown us many experiments where we exploded these devices.

I recall that once black goo escaped after long periods in the colas, we filled the smudge in tin-cans to later remodel them into weird sculptures and toys for young ones.

After matriculation, it was no surprise that he went on to study physics at Potchefstroom University, and travelled many countries as a young prodigy for scientific minds languishing among us who are of unfortunate births.

Now 34, waving a stunted arm at my camera at his wedding celebration, I recall that I got acquainted to London Madopa in Primary School, a sporty soul who was always whistling a hymnal melody.

Left-handed genius with a penchant for Archie Shepp found buried in his late father’s records, he developed a vision beyond poverty’s wars by which he was assailed, and that vision became a light that guided his escape from the township prison.

He soared above depravity, carried by winds of jazz storms that inaugurated stars to his naked eyes, now he is an astrophysicist, envied by many inevitably uncultured and irredeemable children of the township who see him as a snob.

He was his mother’s pride, a colossal feat for a single woman tending to mean means, at trials with life’s tribulations and constant rules which work against any attempt by the frail.

Just as she carried herself with that air of self-assured importance, looking at others with superior answers for their inexperience and feebly secure arrangements of small town life, he grew to look undefeated.

And today, he defeats the stars, constellations and galaxies with an eye bred in dusty streets of a place known for killing dreamers.

Nnana

Her younger brother Pampangtjie was arrested for possessing a pistol in 2008; a boy of 16, just a couple of days after her 22nd second birthday, wielding it at his mates in drunken stupor.

On his return from stoutskool, he couldn’t keep out trouble, as political rallies for manifestos by new parties in a democracy made of glass became his favorite past-time.

He has been a member of three political parties, while Nnana has never even voted; a revolutionary spirit filled with commercialized hopes inherited from dead stalwarts.

Promised lucrative posts as councilors and commanders, many who stuffed armored boxes with crossed ballots learnt deceit of political charlatans through ordered massacres of women begging for water and clinics.

When he turned 28, he had paid with his leg for sloganeering during some botched service delivery protestations that rendered him paralyzed and wheelchair-bound.

She tends to his crushed body now, a swollen leg bulging with pussy stews that ooze copiously, scabs rotten with skin that dries smeared with expired salves and bandages flaking off disgustingly.

16 rubber bullets can crack ribcages irreparably, making breathing a noisy feat; but Nnana has developed a patient empathy that resembles a mother’s courage for her despondent brother.

She is all he has and all she has in a world where being an orphan is commonplace, a light burns in their RDP house flickering testaments that life draws its strength from all souls.

She enjoys his company hugely, his chatter and pontifications about workers’ rights and capitalist gallows piled with black fathers and sons.

Pampangtjie was well versed in struggle polemics, having spent his time seated among books bought in thrift shops and pawn garages before dropping out of university.

A weary voice that nevertheless spoke ceaselessly, he kept Nnana’s eyes fixed on her dream of starting a salon, in a township where there was an oversupply of hairstyles in shebeens.

Nnana however, had her fun as stokvel mistress, together with friends from Toekomsrus, travelling west rand mine dumps in search of golden opportunities at marriage or other tactical careers.

After stints of bagging real cash from beer sales at hostels, their stokvel grew in strength, organizing trips to coastal cities during holidays and attracting men vying for made women.

Big spenders in flashy cars bought on credit proposed marriage on many occasions, for men seemed to fall in love with her on first night acquaintances – spellbound by a charcoal black skin glistening with beauty that haunts.

And she fell for a biker - a rush after a foxy target that was in every hunter’s sights.

Polished lies of a sleuth made a bed of roses for Nnana, after thrilling rides among street lights of unknown suburbs and freeways she would never travel again.

For a monster bears no markings of ill intent, so her biker was an epitome of fast love.

Unable to disguise a riff of anticipation one night, she asked if he intended to marry her someday.

That turned out a bad idea during a whirlwind love shared through bodies in tantric collisions and nervous groping at unisex lavatories of over-priced restaurants.

When that candle-lit dinner ended, she knew her home address, once forgotten with friends she left with a doomed business she could not stomach and despised.

Biting her words that she will never return to township life whatsoever, with bags strewn across a jacaranda clad street under golden streetlamps, she told the cab driver to take her to Wanderers Taxi Rank.

That was the year her brother was paralyzed, after a memorable rejection that stunted her ego, making a nun of her to a point of supplication and devout service of her unfit sibling.

Her service to Pampangtjie would vindicate her sinful condemnation sanctioned her by their dead parents she thought, to perhaps dredge out remorse from tacit faces of those who might have to bury them when they can never see another sun rising.

Naturally, funerals then exerted a fascinating pull for Nnana, for she tried to attend one every Saturday.

Unfazed by whatever awful exchanges between relatives or chorus-leader contests between women in mystery journeys of the betrothed, she was preparing a smoother path for their departure.

She was a decent singer herself, she’d been told on occasion; but she never felt worthy of being accompanied in praise, even when death summoned all to the disquiet of mourning.

And it was after one such funeral on the outskirts of an arid river cutting the township in half that she met three men, one a familiar face of childhood flings gone into wet sands of her deserts of lovers.

His anger had never abated it seemed, as he began denigrating her for not giving herself to the trivia of his advances.

It was thus that up a hillside, near farms and a cemetery, a bared throat of a woman being violated was choked with her panties, her head yanked back as men overlooked angels and spat at their birth.

Her cold remains were found stabbed 16 times and raped in no known order, by other mourners passing nearby, those who opted for meals queues after washing hands off the aura of graves that clung to all who are certain to die.

When the police arrived at the scene, others were already planning their attires for the next farewell trip of yet another young life snuffed undeniably by death at the hands of those who are familiar.