The diary of Maria Tholo - February 16 by Carol Hermer

From the book: The Diary of Maria Tholo by Carol Hermer

Maria's Diary, Wednesday, February 16

What a welcome change. On Sunday a week ago we heard the happy chant and mock stick fighting of an initiation group. We'd got used to not hearing all sorts of things through the tension.

This group was Amahlubi boys who had been circumcised in Herschel in the Transkei - but they lived here in Guguletu, so their parents made a feast for them after their return. You must let your friends and neighbours know that the boys have reached manhood. We all felt lightheaded when we heard the women ululating and the men chanting, and watched the group of mock fighters armed with sticks clash in front of about seven khaki-clad and red-blanketed abakhwetha. ¹It started at about 6 a.m. We all came out clapping and singing and shouting, 'Halala halaaala. You are men now. Pity those who bore no sons.' We were so delighted; we forgot we were still in our nighties. Nobody minded because there we were, dancing and singing for a change. Things are slowly getting back to normal.

There was a meeting this Sunday to discuss getting the high school children back for the exams. ²It was organised by two of our so-called community leaders. One of them begged us to cool down - use the pen and not the sword - because look what Matanzima had achieved in the Transkei without any force, which was the worst thing he could have said. In Cape Town, Matanzima is totally unacceptable.

And then the other one completely contradicted him by saying that we all started the struggle together and should finish it together. He called for those children who had been sent to schools in the Transkei and Ciskei to come back to Cape Town to join their comrades. One never knows where one is. These two are both supposed to be in the same pot - government supporters - yet here the one talked about using the pen, and the other said continue the struggle.

No one trusts the community leaders anyway because they have got one foot here and one foot in the Transkei. They are working for both places, which means that they are working for the govern­ment. They are not interested in improving the lot of the Cape Town people because most of them are business-minded and have already started buying other businesses in the Transkei and Ciskei. They are just using us to get enough money together to get away and leave us.

Whatever they plan, it's not for our good but just to keep on friendly terms with the authorities. Who are our leaders? Even the ministers who always showed the way are temporary people who are liable to be moved to another city at a moment's notice.

The children don't listen to what is said at meetings anyway. They make their own decisions. It was rumoured that they were going to burn the schools this week to stop the exams from taking place. We were very worried on Monday and that was just the day that everything started to go back to normal and many of the students went to school.

On Monday, Connie, the girl who was shot at Langa High, came to tell me she was going back to school the next day. Her friend was with her and they were plaiting each other's hair in readiness. 'We are going to be armed,' she told me. 'I am taking a can of Doom ³and I am going to spray anyone who tries to stop me. Today I just fixed up my uniform and watched the situation, but tomorrow I am going to write. I don't know what I remember anymore but I am going to do my exams.'

I've heard that the balance amongst the comrades is not the same as before. There are rumours that the fires that occurred over the last month were directed at those students who had been militant but have now moved away to schools somewhere else. They were the first targets. So there has been infighting amongst the comrades. Only a very small militant group is still in the townships. Many of the older ones have gone across the border to the camps. I heard that already over 80 children from Cape Town are in camps. They have gone to learn to fight. They are all going to come back here as terrorists. ⁴Others were arrested trying to cross the border.

As usual it's the parents who have been suffering. My neighbour was telling me that she had met people who had taken their children to a Transkei school, only to be told that the school wouldn't accept them. The headmaster said it was like putting a rotten apple amongst new ones. He said it was all very well if a child came on his own but if his parents it meant he didn't want to come and he would cause trouble brought him. Students have had to return and then couldn't find places here. Some parents are really worried.

The riot squads were very active this week, anticipating trouble over exams. I counted 18 vans. They picked up everyone without passes. But perhaps it may thin out the skollie element. I'm sorry they missed the group of tsotsis on my street. They are still there. I have never known those boys to work. And they are fat, which means that someone is feeding them.

My father was very strict. Even as children we weren't allowed to eat if we hadn't done our work first. We all had chores, in the kitchen and out. No difference was made between boys and girls. Dan was the lazy one. We did kitchen duty in turns. The rest of us used to compete to find a special recipe - but not Dan. He wasn't interested. I remember one time; he had to bake the bread for the week. So he kneaded the dough, put it in the oven and went out to play with his friends. He only remembered while he was playing that he had forgotten to put in yeast, so he quickly took the bread out of the oven, mixed in the yeast with a wooden spoon and put it straight back.

Well, the bread got dry eventually but, of course, it didn't rise. Next morning it was Isaac's turn to make lunch for my father and he couldn't cut the bread, the knife Just slid off it.

My father could get very cross but he could also be very funny. He Just asked who had done the baking and sent for Dan. Father said, 'Please Dan, will you cut the bread.' Of course he couldn't.

'Cut it, Dan,' said Father. 'If that knife is too blunt, use the saw.'

Dan had to get the saw and slice the whole loaf. He thought it was a Joke. But then Father said, 'In this house nothing gets wasted. Today you will eat nothing but this bread. If you can't finish it, eat it again tomorrow.' So Dan had to sit there chewing away. He didn't finish it. He waited for Father to leave for work, and then he hid the rest.

But we had a very different upbringing to these children today. We girls weren't allowed to wear any clothes that would make men stare at us. We weren't allowed sandals - Father called them 'unfinished shoes'. We had terrible clothes. He used to come with us to buy them. Nothing bright. The first thing Rebecca did after she'd left home and was earning her own money was to send Father a pair of the brightest sheets she could buy so he would have to live with something really loud.

The best thing to have come out of these riots is that the council vans have stopped dumping at the tip across from 108. So there is less smell from there. Not less flies, because as if to counter­act any good effect, the garbage people no longer collect regularly. And the street cleaners seem to have disappeared. We are going mad.

The whole thing is mad. I listened to the radio this morning and they said that South Africa would no longer refer to 'multiracial sport'. From now on we would just have 'sport'. And in future when people go to international games and get Springbok colours they will be plain Springboks, no more 'Non-white Springboks'. It's the same with the toilets. At Kenilworth Centre it used to say, 'Whites' and 'Non-Whites'. Now on both it just says 'Women'. But you still don't want to use the other one because you are used to your own. The post office has also taken down its notices, but at the same time there is all this fuss about non-Whites going to white church schools.

So you can go to the same toilet and we now have 'sport', but you can't go to the same school which is much more important when our schools are so crowded and have less funds.

I had to laugh at Nomsa the other day. She came home from school and for homework she had to draw a map. So she coloured Europe in greens and the Americas in all those pinkish and mauve colours, but Africa she coloured all in black. I asked her very quietly, 'Those others are such pretty colours. Why did you colour all of this black?'

'Oh Mother, don't you know that Africa is for blacks? From Cape Town right to the very top in Egypt it is black. This is the only place where they really belong.' At her age we would never have thought like that. It just shows what sort of generation is growing up now. This place is for them.

Africa! We are in for big trouble.