Hunger Eats a Man Read online

  You are uncertain whether you should join or not. The prospect of earning your own money is inviting, but you have a hunch that working there will not be a good idea. But when you hear that your friends, including your elder brother – who is two years your senior and looks as if he is your twin – are going, you decide to give it a try. You know you will be jealous if your friends have their money and you don’t. Also, staying alone at home during the day would be worse than any hardship you may encounter at the farm. Only, you are wrong. Very wrong.

  Thus, at about eight that morning, you find yourself at the back of the tractor – it carries a wagon that has steel walls but nothing on top – ready to be transported to the place you only know as Mbaqa. Mbaqa is a name black workers have given to the white farmer, and it has become his and his farm’s name. Mbaqa! Even today that name causes memories of hardship: toiling, rain, sun, thunder, lightning. And fear. The fear of what you might be made to do. The fear of being entirely at the mercy of your employer. Baas.

  One can say that going to the farm is some kind of an adventure for the four of you: you, your brother and your two friends. You have heeded Mbaqa’s call for manpower, knowing that much may happen in that place. It is not hunger or poverty that has forced you to board the wagon. No. You go there because you fear jealousy when your friends get paid. You don’t want to be left behind.

  The tractor swings its way past Wonela and Entabeni farms, moving at high speed. It is moving too swiftly for a tractor. You have only known the old, sluggish tractors that some people in your village own, so you are fascinated by the speed of Mbaqa’s tractor. It sounds like it has an engine as smooth as a car’s. As the tractor speeds along, the wind hitting your faces and ears, you think about your past and your future. Who are you? A twelve-year-old boy on a tractor ready to offer himself to work for a white farmer. Umlungu. You are travelling on the tractor of someone you do not know, to a place you do not know. When you pass the huge dam belonging to Jesus’s farm, you begin to have second thoughts. A voice inside you says, “You have made a grave mistake, you should not have come here.” But there is no going back. The wind blowing past your faces is stronger as you reach Jesus’s farm. It feels as though you have been kidnapped. You think that if you had the chance, you would escape, jump off. But there is none.

  Even though part of you has been wishing that you won’t be employed at the farm, you are. All of you. It is harvest time and the farmer needs as much cheap labour as he can possibly get. There are loads of potatoes to be picked and expanded fields to be cleared of potato plants. In no time a smaller tractor transports you to the fields where you are to work. There are people who have been consigned to other sections of the farm. The lucky ones are those who work in the shed. Working in the shed is the best thing that can happen to a Mbaqa farmworker; the work is not so bad there.

  The first job you do in the fields is to remove potato plants so that the reaping machine does not get damaged. Can you believe that? You have to have your hands blistered in order to protect those lifeless machines. But a voice inside you says, “They are not really lifeless because they can move and make a good deal of noise. The machines do a great job digging those potatoes. Had they not been here to dig them, you would have to dig them with hoes that would also blister your hands.” That voice inside you carries on talking. It tells you that you would have earned more money hoeing out potatoes in the vast fields. But that is not true. You do not even know how much you are to be paid for the work you are doing now.

  Yes, it was foolish of you to rush to the fields without knowing how much you are going to be paid, but there is one important thing you know about the South Africa of the 1960s – it is not easy to talk to a white person. You are growing up with your fathers telling you a white man is your God, and nothing happens to disprove that. They have everything and you have nothing. There you are on such a big piece of land owned by one man. You live with thousands of people on land not even half as big. You are there to reap God-knows-how-many hectares of potato fields for the benefit of the white man. So it is easy to believe the white man is some form of a god. He is the owner of land and money and everything. The owner of lives. Your lives.

  But it is the size of the fields that affects you most. Seeing all those rows of maize and potatoes, it feels as though you have arrived at some place beyond this planet. They stretch without end. The maize plants stand tall and green as you pass them on the way to the potato field, looking as though they are the ones that are moving while you stand motionless. So much food and you are hungry all the time!

  This makes you think about the hunger you have left at home. Hunger is one thing you find yourself unable to deal with. As you are growing up, it seems to you that you are the weakest child when it comes to bearing with hunger. You are fascinated by the way your brothers and sisters are able to tolerate it. You remember a day when you were crying for food and your mother shouted at you.

  “Why are you crying?” she demanded in a strangely harsh voice.

  “I’m hungry,” you told her.

  Then she said something … You don’t know if you should say it was strange or surprising or horrible. She said: “Now what do you want me to do? Do you think because I gave birth to you I can give birth to the food as well?”

  You did not stop crying. You cannot tell what you felt about this. But you still remember those words clearly. All you know is that it hurt her very much to see you cry like you were doing, knowing she could do nothing to help you.

  Your mother sometimes tells you to save your tears for when your father comes home from where he is working. It is in a factory in town where he lives in a hostel. He cannot afford the bus fare every day and they work shifts, sometimes starting work at two in the afternoon to ten at night. You hear they earn what is called upondo nofishi (pound and a fish). It is actually R2.50, and that R2.50 is not enough to support you. There are many of you. Too many even for someone who earns a better salary. That is why you vowed never to have more than five children, and you are glad that you have only two.

  As a boy continuously haunted by hunger, it feels like a fair thing to blame your father. Your mother makes you believe it is your father’s fault that you are starving. And your father, for his part, wants you to believe it is not his fault. That you are all victims. But you are not at your home now. You are at the fields of Mbaqa’s farm. The fields have made you bitter and envious because of the hunger back home. Hunger! What a word if one really knows what it means!

  On your first day of working you encounter another setback. As you know nothing about farms and farm labour, you forget that there will come a time for you to eat. You have nothing to put your food in. You spend most of your lunch time looking at people eating their food. The food is provided by the farmer, so it is not delicious at all. But you still want it because you are hungry. The cook sees that you have not eaten and serves you your food on the plastic bag she has with her. It is dry pap and sugar. Your hands are not just dirty, they are filthy. You have no spoon to eat with so you have to use those filthy hands, yet you do not hesitate. You devour your food as if nothing is wrong. One can say you have become like a pig. That’s what farm work does to you sometimes, it makes you look and think like a pig.

  You are about to finish when Zuma, the induna, shouts, “Dinner is over!”

  You leave the plastic bag, which has the last of your food. You go to work only half content, complaining that Zuma should have let you finish your meal. But unfortunately Zuma does not permit anything he thinks would waste umlungu’s money, as he keeps reminding all of you.

  Zuma is the best overseer any farmer can hope for. He is loved by his employers and despised by his fellow workers. He is ugly inside and out. One of the few people you know who is endowed with complete darkness. Nobody ever speaks back to him. He beats people who dodge work. Then he reports them to the farmer, who will cut the person’s wages. He hurls a potato at anyone who leaves it unpicked in their line. But he is m
ost feared for his witchcrafting abilities. If you quarrel with him, you may lose your life in a mysterious manner. He watches and watches you for all the long hours that feel like days before the end of the shift strikes at five. “Ishayile!” Zuma announces.

  You are fascinated by people’s screams of celebration: “Hhiyo! It’s it.”

  Your days at the farm are always tough. Not only is the work impossibly difficult, but natural forces also play their role in making your lives miserable. It is summer when you are at the farm. If it is not raining, it will be hot. You always suffer. But the days when it rains are always worse. The rain finds you in the fields and Zuma does not call off work until the word comes from Mbaqa or Sisusiyaduma (The-Stomach-is-Rumbling) that you should stop work and come to hide in the shed. The word always comes too late, when the rain is about to stop. Then you have to continue working in your miserable condition.

  Today you are so drenched that your ticket is almost damaged. When you are ticketing, a white boy of sixteen looks at your ticket and you, “You see your ticket is like you?” This young man is Mbaqa’s son. When he has said this to you he takes some time looking at your ticket, considering whether to sign it or not. He is known for refusing to sign those tickets that do not appeal to him. That means a person may have toiled in the farm the whole day for nothing. Others tease those people by saying that they worked the whole day for unpeeled potatoes, which are provided for lunch instead of sugar.

  You are lucky; the young white boy signs your ticket. But you cannot help crying as you watch this boy: happy, dry and white! You have been working like an animal for him and his father, but instead of feeling sorry that you are drenched to the bone, he decides to mock you, and even contemplates punishing you. On the way home your fellow workers congratulate you that he signed your ticket, but you are crying. You keep looking at yourself and the ticket that is, indeed, as wet as you are.

  So it is that you vow never to work for the white farmer again. The physical and emotional abuse you suffer is beyond words. You feel that just being in this place is abuse enough for you.

  But it is at the end of your working period that the final blow is struck. It happens like this. At the end of each day the tractor transports you back to the offices for ticketing, when they log your hours of work. The three of you – you, your brother and Thami – earn eight cents a day while Tila earns seven cents. In fact, what happens is that you all ticketed seven cents the first day. But the following day Sisusiyaduma gives you a one-cent increase, changing the seven of the previous day to eight.

  Trouble comes when you are supposed to get paid. It is a week before the end of the month when Mbaqa summons you to the shed even before you go to work. He tells you that the police are on their way to arrest you because you have fraudulently tampered with your tickets, offering yourselves more than you deserve. The thought of being in the police van is very scary to you, not to mention spending a night in jail. You are not alone in this feeling because, as the police arrive, all four of you are begging Mbaqa not to send you to jail. Mbaqa is now blood red with anger, telling all who can hear that he has nothing to talk to you about. You are criminals and in his book criminals need to be put away from society.

  By this time Sisusiyaduma is pacing up and down, denying vehemently that he has increased your pay, but still begging Mbaqa not to dispatch you to jail. You believe these two are playing tricks on you. Why did Mbaqa not notice earlier that your payment has been increased? He has ticketed you himself many times before.

  After pleading and begging, something disturbing happens. Mbaqa agrees to give you your money, without removing the extra one cent a day. Instead of having you arrested, he offers to pay you half of what you have worked for, or what you think you have worked for.

  You are so grateful not to be arrested that you take the money. It is then that you realise the paradox of your lives. How can you be grateful when you have been toiling in the harshest of conditions for little money, and yet that little is cheated from you into even less?

  Some people will think your story is not worth telling when all this mad exploitation is over. But you know your story is worthwhile. Without your story, your country will have no history. Or its history will be partial and untrue, as it has been.

  3

  On the Wednesday of Priest’s visit, Bongani Hadebe leaves Bambanani High School – his school, as many people refer to it – tired and angry. He is short in height and has a big, protruding stomach that many people attribute to the large quantities of beer and brandy he gulps every day. He is very light in complexion and is known for his penchant for costly, beautiful clothes, such as Brentwood trousers, of which he has twenty pairs. He comes from a rich family, his father having once owned a number of stores and buses called Phuzushukela (Drink-Sugar), after his nickname. Wealth allowed Phuzushukela’s son to become hooked on wearing costly clothes at a young age. Not only did he have all the kinds of clothes he wanted, he was also the only student to drive to school, when even some of the teachers didn’t have cars. Students joked that Bongani could change cars while they could not even change shoes.

  But Bongani is also known for his lack of intelligence and the fact that he reached his present position by buying his diploma certificate. Only God knows how he got his university degree.

  Bongani climbs into his bottle-green Audi A6 and drives slowly out of the gates, absently saluting Mr Ndlovu, the security guard. He turns to his right when he joins Giants Castle Road, and Ndlovu notices his boss is not going home. Bongani wants to take time to clear his mind because he is worried by Priest’s visit. More than that, he is mad at his wife, Nomsa, because she does not want him to be a man. Last night he fought and lost what he thought was his last battle and now he feels like screaming.

  When he reaches the bridge at Ncibidwane, his ill mind urges him to let the car drive straight into the river, but “Not yet” says another part of him. He continues on, past Ncibidwane Clinic and the taxi rank and through MaHlutshini Village. He relishes the sight of the gorgeous Drakensberg mountains and feels some consolation in his heart. The big, dark rocks seem as if they might open up and allow him to meet the two beautiful characters of the fairy tale, Demane and Demazane.

  He parks his car when he is about two kilometres from Giant’s Castle and climbs the hill on foot. He knows the area now belongs to KZN Wildlife, but he decides that no one will arrest him since it is daytime and he has no dogs or hunting tools. As he walks, Bongani comes across a family of five baboons. “Even the ugliest animals have children and I don’t!” he laments. As if they hear him, the baboons laugh and go on, seemingly heading for a small area called Place of Power.

  Before Bongani is a big, dark forest. He is tempted to go back to the car, but looking down, he notices how his trousers and shoes are covered in dirt. That dirt, and some greater force, are pushing or pulling him towards the forest. This is where the bones of his great ancestor, Langalibalele, lie. It fascinates him that some people are so sacred that rather than being buried in graves dug for them, big rocks open up to take their dead bodies into themselves.

  Just now he remembers a day two years before when all the Hadebe males gathered for the ritual of appointing the new chief. How much he had hoped and prayed that the ancestors would choose him! Perhaps if they had been living people he might have been able to influence them by speaking the most convincing language he knew – money. But dead people do things their own way. He had not liked that thin bastard Fana before that day, but his hatred towards him multiplied considerably when Fana turned out to be the chosen one. If he had not seen for himself the corn before everybody closed theirs in their hands, he would have said there was something sinister about the appointment. But each person held the corn for five minutes in front of the spectators and, when they opened their hands, Fana’s was already sprouting.

  “But why would the ancestors choose someone so thin instead of me? What do they see in someone who farts by the bone?” he demanded angrily
when he was coming from the meeting. Now he forces this thought out of his mind.

  Bongani feels tears form in his eyes as he contemplates his surrounds. This is the place where the great African who fought with the colonialists rests. It angers him to think that it was another African chief who finally conquered his great ancestor on behalf of the whites. “I hate Chunus!” he tells himself.

  Again, he thinks about his warrior ancestor, and this time he feels ashamed of himself. Langalibalele was a brave man and he, his great-grandchild, is a coward! At thirty-seven he has no child of his own. Not because he cannot have them, but because his wife does not want to have children because, as she says, she is not a slave to bear children. Compounding his sorrow is his inability to let his wife know that he cannot be happy without having children. How can he be happy if even the baboons laugh at him?

  He has seated himself on a rock now. At times he cannot stop the tears from dripping down his face as he meditates on his marriage. Why doesn’t he leave her? The thought of living without Nomsa is as hurtful to Bongani as not having children. It is hard to think of replacing her with someone else. That is out of the question. Impossible. He just cannot live without his wife. But why doesn’t she understand? Why doesn’t she understand that he needs to be a man? He needs to leave his name on earth when he dies.

  Bongani is gripped by a sudden fear. He feels his scalp tingle as he sees a tall, strongly built man standing just in front of him. He seems to be heavy with contempt, and this frightens Bongani even more. The man then speaks in a piercing voice and Bongani feels as if the whole world is supposed to hear it: “I am disappointed in you!”