Summary
In this chapter, Mandisa copes with learning that the murder happened in her neighborhood. The news is deeply shocking to her, and before she even takes time to consider it and its implications, she feels the physical toll of the shock: she feels "weepy," her "stomach turned," and her knees threaten to give out (38). What is most shocking to Mandisa is the fact of Guguletu itself. She is shocked that Amy would have happened to be in there at all: “Guguletu? Who would choose to come to this accursed, Godforsaken place?” She cannot understand why anyone who could elect to come to Guguleu would do so.
This question leads Mandisa to reminisce on how she got to the township herself. Mandisa and her family were moved to Guguletu as a part of a massive forced migration of black people out of "white areas." These people lived in clusters called "black spots," which usually appeared due to the amounts of black people who worked in white homes in "white areas." The white government, deciding that owning the majority of the land was not enough, pushed these black people out of the area and into crowded townships far away from the urban centers. These townships were unprepared for the millions of people who would soon flood into them. This forced migration is compared to a "whirlwind" by Mandisa, who describes black people in this situation as "perched on a precarious leaf balking a tornado" (38).
The rumors of the migration first reached Mandisa in her home town of Blouvlei weeks before they began. It was a Friday, a day Mandisa associates with many memories of playing with her friends and running about completing chores for her mother. Upon returning from school, Mandisa is sent to get ten cents' worth of vetkoekies, which are a kind of fried bun native to South Africa. The chef, who was selling the food out of her house, offers Mandisa an extra to eat on the way home, which she accepts with hands cupped. This causes her to be tardy in retuning home to her mom with the food, who can see the oily remnants of it all over her daughter's hands. She enjoys one for herself and shares another with her daughter, who very politely accepts the offering: "'Yes, I'd like one very much, if I may' I told her in my sweetest voice" (40). She and her mother complete chores for the rest of the day, and in the evening, a group of workers arrive at their home in order to buy some of her mother's ginger beer. Mandisa's mother ran a small ginger beer business out of her home, with which Mandisa helped with bottling and picking up after customers.
Mandisa is praised by the men that her mother serves, who tell her that she "would keep a very good house when [she] grew up" (40). Mandisa enjoys the compliments, which make her "beam from ear to ear" and soak "through to the marrow in my bones" (40). It is with this happiness that Mandisa hears the rumor, spoken from an unmarried elder to another man: "The Government is going to move all Africans in the Cape Town area to Nyanga!" (40). The other men reject the news as lies, not believing that anything of the sort could ever happen. A fight breaks out, and all the men begin to shout at once. Mandisa decides to go about her business and leave the home, finally able to go play with her friends in peace. As the days go by, she hears the rumor resurface a couple of times, but every time that it does people shut it down. They accuse the unmarried elder, Tat'uNonkayikhali, of making up lies. The fact that the man doesn't have a wife or children works against him. The fact that it is millions of people they intend to move, combined with the size of the settlement, and the "belief that our dwelling places, our homes, and our burial places were sacred" make people further discount the rumor. No matter how often it is denied, the rumor nonetheless grows, "like the rollings of the dung beetle, merely passing it along carried within itself the mechanism for its own augmentation and it grew until it became the hoarse roar of a river greedily drinking down the first rains after a long, hard-hitting drought" (41).
The terrible truth was, no matter how much the residents of Boulvlei met to discuss the rumor and consequently deny it, the government did intend on moving all of them to Nyanga (the larger area Guguletu was a township in). Even as adults laughed at the perceived absurdity of the rumor, the government made plans for the forced migration. The rumor becomes such a powerful force that it is personified: "Then one day, the rumour, all grown up and bearded, armed with the stamp of the government, returned. It was not smiling" (43). Mandisa was out playing in a field with some friends when some airplanes flew very low overhead. At first, the airplanes inspire an instinctual kind of panic, as many of the residents of Blouvlei had never seen an airplane before, and especially as it let loose thousands of pamphlets that at first seemed like an attack - "the aeroplane threw up... it emitted a big fluttering white cloud" (44). While not immediate, attack it was: the pamphlets advertised the forced migration, and gave it a date, July 1st.
The adults in the township gather, and after much discussion, they agree to send a few representatives to the capital. The parents are angry and powerless, "at war with the papers the airplane had dropped" (47). Mandisa goes back to play, "relieved of parental supervision, we children were in paradise. That day, we chased fireflies and bats till late into the night" (47). But the paradise does not last long. The representatives sent to the capital are ineffectual, as are every appeal sent to the government that follows. Despite daily meetings, the adults in Blouvlei cannot stop the move from happening—"the government had long ago made up its mind... on the issue of black removals" (48). Mandisa has to face losing everything she has ever known. She leaves behind her friends, her school, and most of her belongings. On September 1st, they come. Mandisa is woken by her father who does so by hugging her: "'Whites are pulling down our houses.' Tata said the words gently, with no hint of emotion whatsoever" (48). A fleet of police arrives, complete with bulldozers and army trucks. Policemen and volunteers destroyed each of the tin homes one by one, "in a cloud of pink-fleshed faces peeping from beneath heavy helmets, beefy hands sprouting camouflage uniform, the white men set upon the tin shacks like unruly children destroying a colony of anthils" (48). The houses were torn down with residents still inside; some were even torn down with its owners chained to the door.
Mandisa brings us back to the present. It is 10 pm, and Mxolisi is not yet home. Every minute that passes only works to make her more concerned for her wayward son. She wonders at when her son had grown up and out of telling her about her life. To distract herself, she gets some laundry done. Dwadwa comes home with some cow spleen, which they cook and eat that night. She drags her feet while serving the food in the hopes that Mxolisi will arrive, but he never does. As she gets ready for bed, Mandisa considers how horrified she is at the violence that happened just outside her door. Not simply because it was violence ("For years... many, many years, we have lived with violence"), but because it was a white woman who was killed in Guguletu. Killed for no reason at all, killed while doing good for the community. But this isn't new. In the 1960s, three young nurses traveled to Lunga to protest brutality inflicted on the African people by the police and army. Before they could do any effectual work, they were beaten up by a group of men.
Dwadwa and Mandisa argue about Mxolisi's whereabouts and calls the boy "long-foot," which is supposed to signify the amount of time he spends outside of the house, walking around with friends. He holds that Mxolisi will bring his mother misery one day. When Mandisa was in school, the classes were so overcrowded that she didn't learn the names of everyone in her class by the end of the year. The teachers found ways to help the children pass, often by cheating. The schools have only worsened since then, as "boycotts, strikes, and indifference have plagued the schools" (54). Mxolisi is 20 years old, but only in Standard 6. Mandisa grieves Amy that night and feels deep compassion for the girl's parents, especially her mother. Mandisa blames the children, who are wreaking havoc on everything they have been provided by their parents. A traditional hierarchical structure has been subverted, and the children "have decided that all parents carry sawdust where their brains used to be" (54). She traces their devolution. First, they stoned cars and were cheered on, as the cars were the cars of white people. They learned a song of hatred, "AmaBhulu, aziznja!" - Whites are dogs!, sung in earnest by their parents. Then they went and burned down their schools, began to burn buildings, black people's cars, black people's homes. These black people were called Iimpimpi, informers to the whites, and so they were said to deserve the brutality. And then, soon, the children were murderers. The "Youg Lions," praised by their community, "fast descended into barbarism" (56). All of this was done in the name of the war against the apartheid government.
Analysis
Part of the function of this chapter is to show how drastically life has changed for black people since their move to Guguletu. We have already become accustomed to the township, which is dirty, crowded, and full of roaming schoolchildren. When she lived in Boulvlei, Mandisa's life was much more ordered. She came from a comparatively small community. She was an optimistic young girl, who was very preoccupied with being a good helper to her mother. Her mom worked half days and was, therefore, able to spend her afternoons looking after her children. Her behavior was therefore very different from that of her children as well. Mandisa was a very polite young girl, subservient and helpful to the adults around her. A contrast is built between her and Mxolisi, for example, when she asks her mother for another vetkoek, using "please" and a sweet voice. We are reminded of Mxolisi complaining about a lack of food for breakfast in the first chapter. While some of the difference has to do with character, it is clear that Mandisa had a better life as a child than she was able to offer her children later on. At the end of the chapter, we see the effect of such subversion, and watch Guguletu descend into chaos at the hands of disobedient children.
Through this whole chapter, Mandisa utilizes vivid imagery to describe the setting of her youth. For example, she takes us along on her run to get vetkoekies, "I ran out of the house, across the field of scraggy grass, past the little dam fringed with a thin crop of straggling reeds and oononboxana, so delicious to the taste" (39). And later, while describing Blouvlei: "The sea of tin shacks lying lazily in the flats, surrounded by gentle white hills, sandy hills dotted with scrub, gave us... such a fantastic sense of security we could not conceive of its ever ceasing to exist" (42). The imagery works to show that her precious memories are well-preserved, and this section reads like a series of recollections that she looks back over often. It is clear that Mandisa holds the time before her move to Guguletu in high esteem.
The portrait of Mandisa's character deepens in this chapter, as we are able to meet the woman before she has taken on all of the heavy baggage of her adulthood. She is a bright and eager girl, obedient to her parents, and very optimistic. When she runs to get vetkoekies from the store, for example, we see the girl hopeful that she will be able to eat some of the treats: "My mouth watered and I swallowed several times. Swallowed, although there was nothing but good, fat hope in my mouth" (39). Mandisa has a genuine enthusiasm for life. She describes playing with her friends in rich detail: "dress skirts stuffed in bloomers to avoid their getting soiled or tearing, we ran up and down the hill, chasing galloping goats and squealing pigs, chasing stubborn, bleating sheep" (43).
The government is personified many times in this chapter. An antagonist of the novel in its own right, the government is shown to be an evil force in the lives of black people. The South African government, because of greed and hatred, upended the lives of millions of people in order for the few to benefit. It did so callously, indifferent to the suffering the forced migrations would cause. Every appeal that was sent to the government after the pamphlets were distributed, even the appeals sent to the few representatives of Natives in Cape Town, were unmet. In this chapter, the government, as one entity, had long made up its mind about the upheavals. As the elders of Mandisa's community laugh at a dangerous rumor, "the government was not laughing... the government never showed its smiling teeth when dealing with any matter in connection with Africans" (42).
The scene with the airplane is one of particular importance. Many residents of Blouvlei had never seen an airplane before, so their arrival caused a great disturbance in the community. Panicked parents ran out of homes in search of their children, who were playing directly in their airplane's path. The airplanes were flying so low, the children could see the people inside, "their pink-pink skin and the colours of the clothes they wore... see the dark glasses hiding their coloured eyes" (43). The arrival of the planes, so loud and close to the ground, put them on the "same level as the burning bush, the water-sprouting rock and talking serpents of the Bible" (44). It is the children, who ran inside when the papers were dropped, that are brave enough to go receive the pamphlets, and so it is the children who get the news of the move first. The residents of Blouvlei are warned about the move, but not in an empowering way. They learn they are doomed to lose everything they have ever known.
