Sometimes There Is a Void by Zakes Mda Page A

leader who was murdered by the apartheid police, and Donald Woods, a white liberal who was hounded by the police as a result of that friendship. Woods had to go into exile in Lesotho, and later in England.
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    MORE THAN A DECADE before Donald Woods’ adventure – in January 1964 – I crossed the Telle River to exile. I was fifteen years old.
    I did not cross at the bridge as Mr Woods did. I wouldn’t dare face the South African border police without a valid passport. Instead, I waded in the water following a man who was carrying my heavy trunk on his shoulder. I don’t remember who he was. Maybe I never knew who he was in the first place. I only remember him talking to my mother in whispers on the banks of the river. Then I hugged my mother. I didn’t want to let go. But the man said to let go; we didn’t have all night. Unless we wanted the Boers to catch us. God knew what would happen to all of us if the Boers caught us. I let go and followed him. My mother stood on the bank sniffling.
    I was scared of the river, ever since the ice-cold water of a flooded rivulet that we had to cross on our way from Qoboshane to Aunt Nontsokolo’s general dealer’s store in Mmusong nearly swept me away when I was a tyke. I was saved by my aunt who held tightly to my hand even as the raging waters struggled with her. After heavy rain brooks and streams tend to have the most forceful of waters. Fortunately, that night of my exile the water in the Telle River reached only to my knees and I could wade with ease. And it was not cold at all. The man struggled with the trunk; it was loaded with my clothes and books – I had to leave behind some of my comic books for lack of room. It made me sad to see my trunk bobbing in front of me as the man tried to find a foothold in the sand and rocks under the water. My mother had bought it for me soon after I had received a first class pass in Standard Six. It was the trunk I was going to use for boarding school at St Teresa’s. But here now it was crossing the river to a foreign country where I was going to live as a refugee with my strict father and was going to repeat Standard Six because the British education of Lesotho was superior to our Bantu Education.
    A short distance away I could see the lights of cars that were crossing the border post at Telle Bridge. I envied those who were going in the opposite direction, driving into the country I was leaving.
    I panicked when I saw the light of a torch flashing in our direction. I thought the Boers had discovered us and we’d surely be locked up. Or they might just shoot us dead and let the flowing waters clean up the mess. Boers were known to do such things. But the man with the
trunk didn’t seem to be bothered. He walked purposefully towards the flashing light. My legs sank deeper as I got closer to the bank on the opposite side, and I slipped on the soft muddy sand and almost fell. The man with the trunk just walked on; obviously he had no time to nurse weaklings. As soon as he got to the shore he placed the trunk down and sighed deeply with relief. I straggled on until I joined him on land.
    From a field of maize that ran right up to the river bank a short and solidly built man wearing glasses appeared and walked towards us, torch flashing. The men mumbled greetings and the one who had brought me went back to the river.
    â€˜You hold the other handle of the trunk, Zani,’ said the man who had come to meet me. He called me Zani, which was what my parents called me. He must be close to my father to know that name, I thought to myself as we walked into the maize.
    He told me his name was Ntlabathi Mbuli. He was originally from some village in the Herschel District, but had been a refugee in Lesotho for the past two years or so. I was later to learn that he was a Poqo cadre who was doubling as my father’s clerk at his law office. Poqo – an isiXhosa word that variously means