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Another eternity went by; his eyes were still on James's.

“Boys and girls, I said lend me a phone.”

Mamafa took out his expensive phone. It had a camera and was not even a week old. He gave it to Tsietsi.

“No, you dial for me. Zero seven two ... Is it ringing?”

“Yes.”

“Ask them where they are. Tell them that I am here, looking for them.”

Someone, a girl, answered. Mamafa was obviously really scared – he looked like he wished that he could disappear into thin air – and he tried to give Tsietsi the phone, holding it out to him, but Tsietsi wouldn't take it. Meanwhile the girl on the other end just kept saying “Hello? Hello?” into midair.

“Ask her where she is.”

“Where are you?”

“Who am I talking to first? You cannot just ask people where they are. Who are you?”

“Ja! Tsietsi said that I should ask you where you are.”

“Ask him where he is first.”

“She wants to know where you are.”

The girl ended the call as Mamafa realised that what he had just asked was a dull question. He redialled:

“Hello. He is here at the hall.”

“What is he doing at the hall?”

“You cannot ask me that. He said that I must ask where you are.”

“I am waiting for him at home.”

“She says that she is waiting for you at home.”

“Is he there?”

“Tell her that she should wait. I am coming.”

“He says that you should wait – he is coming.”

“Is he there? Let me talk to him.”

“She wants to talk to you.”

“Tell her that I don't have a phone.”

“He says that he doesn't have a phone.”

“Give him the phone and let me talk to him.”

“Tell her that I don't have a phone, not that I said I don't have a phone ...”

“He doesn't have a phone.”

After a long three-way telephone conversation, Tsietsi thanked Mamafa for the use of the phone. We thought that he was going to take the phone with him but he thanked us for the money and the phone call and said:

“To democracy!”

Holding his hand high up, as if making a toast, he walked between me and Katlego.

“To democracy and mounting unbearable poverty.”

Then, making his voice humble, weak, almost childlike – a voice full of tears, one that you could forgive – he said:

“The struggle has changed its face.”

For a long time after he had gone we felt very shameful of being ourselves; we walked home in silence, unable to even look at each other. Really, I think we were very lucky, because if Tsietsi had decided to ...

Anyway, that was the way our Freedom Day celebrations ended. We didn't even report him, we just hoped that one day he would meet up with someone who would terrorise him as he had terrorised us.

Tsietsi has committed countless rapes that have never been reported. He will just tell a girl:

“You, from today, this very second, are my girlfriend. You love me more than I love you.”

That is it, and no girl will ever resist because she only has to look at his face to know what he can do to her. The police fear him too. When they came to pick him up the last time, almost twenty of them came in five cars. Though he didn't give them any trouble, it took them three hours to take him into custody. Apparently they were negotiating with him and he wouldn't go with them unless he got to sit in the front passenger seat.

Although Tsietsi gives me the creeps, there are girls who love him very much, including Pheladi.

“He is the ultimate man, the only man, the one and only man that I have ever met in my life and I don't think that there will ever be another.”

She murmured this to herself as if she missed him.

“Tsietsi is power, pure power. He is a man and nothing more. If he came here and found you with your boyfriend, he could take you and your boyfriend would put his tail between his thighs and run to the police. And that is power.”

“That is power to you?”

“He is a man. A complete man, Mokgethi. If he wants it, he gets it and he never tells lies.”

“Pheladi?”

“Do you know that he took me out of Calvo's car?”

“Yes.”

“Calvo has a gun; it is always hanging heavy on his waist.”

Calvo is a recent graduate of the University of Cape Town. Ever since he came home, he has been showing off his financial muscle and abusing young girls. He was abusing Pheladi for a while, but then they ran into Tsietsi.

It was a Friday night and Pheladi was sunk deep in the comfort of the passenger seat of Calvo's Swedish machine, soft music playing in the background. Pheladi saw Tsietsi approaching but she didn't think anything of it. He passed the car without looking at it. Moments later he knocked at the driver's door. A button was pressed and the window opened.

“Heita.”

“Die bra.”

For a moment Tsietsi paused – he was looking at Pheladi – then he greeted Calvo again.

“Heita.”

“Bra.”

“Ke zolana le ngwana o. Ke ngwanaka. Etswa mo koloing, if oa protesta, protesta.”

But there was no protest and so Pheladi got out of the car. Then Tsietsi asked for a cigarette, but Calvo a is non-smoker so he had to give him cash to buy a pack of cigarettes.

“Now you can go.”

And Calvo started his expensive car and left. He had his fists and his own gun, a legally registered weapon, but he could not do anything because he was not man enough.

“He is just a money man, the money makes him a man, but Tsietsi is truly a man.”

Pheladi, in a joyful mood, told us the story just a few days after it had all happened.

“Calvo has girlfriends because he is buying us; Tsietsi has girlfriends because he wants them. Most of them, they don't want him to begin with, but they end up loving him more than he loves them.”

“Calvo is a graduate and he has too much to lose,” I said, trying to justify Calvo's inaction.

“Yes. He lost me.”

Today Tsietsi has a P for Pheladi on the right side of his face, representing his devotion to her. It is three scars, two strokes across that meet in a point and a long stroke down to make the stalk of the letter. On the day he did it, he took Pheladi by the hand and knelt down like he was about to ask for her hand in marriage. Instead he took out his sharp knife and began to cut himself.

“In the name of the father, Jehovah.”

He cut the first stroke, an inch-long line down the side of his face, and the blood rushed out.

“In the name of the son, Jesus Christ.”

Cutting the second line, halfway up the first one, curving towards his mouth.

“In the name of the Holy Ghost.”

Finally cutting the last line, joining it with the small one to make a P on his jaw.

“I will forever be devoted to you in my heart, Pheladi.”

This was the greatest act of love that Pheladi had ever witnessed and it showed her that he loved her more than she loved him.

For Tsietsi, prison is home – he likes it much more in there than he does out here in the real world. He is rarely out for more than three months at a time and this time I am not sure that he will come out, but, then again, I thought the same thing the last time he was behind bars. I didn't believe the person who told us that he was out and I even forgot about it until, suddenly, we were trying to disappear from the face of the earth.

He was out to celebrate Freedom Day with us but not long after that he went back to the five star hotel again. That is his life and I think that he loves it very much. He is proud of it. Assault, attempted murder, housebreaking, rape and robbery are all on his résumé. But this time he is in for double murder and he'll have to get a good, no, a godlike sangoma to get him out again.

 

Mokgethi's poetry

1. Khutso

Funny you are

Whoever taught you fun is a Prof

Loving you are

Whoever taught you love must be a god

You are an irritation when I am there

But here, now, I more than miss you

 

2. Bonolo

The name of her disappointment was deprivation

The age of her disappointment was eleven

As I feel your pain I am angry

Proud princess, just sixteen

Finding herself in a world that isn't pretty

Your mishaps don't appear petty

Take time to digest

Don't be in a rush to grow

Might knock some hurdles down

On your way to see eighteen

Through your smile you lessened the anger

You hit your thigh hard

There was nothing in this life you couldn't handle

Forever understand that you are my great South African

 

3. Tribute to my old school [Praise to my new school]

 

4. My pleasure

My pleasure is not being naked

My orgasm is not sex

To enjoy I don't have to be sexed

To rejoice I don't have to be drunk

 

5. To Aborted

Understand please

You were not meant to be, it was a mistake

I am thirteen and I still need my mother

You will be here when I have a nest

Now the season of winter is still long

I was only being comforted through

Only for the pleasure of it

Weep not, please understand

You were not meant to be

You were a mistake

 

6. Joke or a sad fact

“Beautiful child

Like mother like daughter

She is the future

How old is she?”

“Two and a half.”

“I give you thirteen and a half years

And I will be sugar-daddying you.”

“Ha!”

Was it a joke?

Did we have to laugh?

 

7. Shatale

If you could set your thinking straight

You would remember that you have a loving wife, needy kids and a home

If you could introspect yourself

You would recognise that the only thing you can do for me is teach me

If you could be a man

You would be a better husband and father

If you could act as a father

Maybe you would see that I am only a child

If you could understand yourself

Maybe you would know that all you can give me is protection

You allowed the contamination of your mind

You allowed yourself to forget that I am a daughter to you

You allowed yourself to see only the sex in me

 

8. What could have been

I ponder the life of a teenage girl

She is still learning in all ways

Experience is not always the greatest teacher

Guardians lose their guard

Guarding currency so that

She can be fed

She can be clothed

She can be schooled

She falls into an old snare

Struggling to be free

And I am pondering two lives

What could have been ...

 

PART TWO

Saturday

Six o' clock.

I wake up at the usual time, which is exactly five fifty-five, because my clock is set five minutes ahead of the real time. I set it this way so that whatever I am doing I am always five minutes early.

As I do every morning, I run to the kitchen and switch on the kettle, which I filled with water before I went to sleep, and run back to my room and get back into bed. It doesn't feel like it is going to be a cold day, and it is not a cold morning, but this is my routine – I do the same thing every morning. When the water boils, I pour it into a pot and fill the kettle again, boiling another one and a half litres of water. Switching on the stove, I put the pot on top of it and add some cold water. Though my grandmother does not like this way of boiling water – she says it is a waste of electricity – we do it anyway. She thinks that we should wash with only a litre and a half of water but I cannot wash with so little water.

After bathing, I dress for Saturday school.

I always have a problem deciding what to wear – it is the same every day. I used to take clothes out of my wardrobe and lay them out on the bed, trying to decide this and that before putting them on and taking them off again. Then one day I saw someone doing exactly this in some show on television, and although at the time I found it funny, later I was irritated that I was doing things that other people do. These days I sit on my bed and look at the wardrobe and when I stand up and open it, I know exactly what I am taking out and I don't think about it again.

I make my bed, then I sit and look at the wardrobe, contemplating what to wear like a chess player carefully contemplating their next move. I know exactly what is inside it and when I last wore what. Finally I stand up, open the wardrobe and take out my black miniskirt, that I have not worn in six months, and a maroon top. After dressing, I slip on a pair of high-heeled sandals, do my hair and then, finally, put on perfume, a Saturday perfume. Weekdays are deodorant days, but Saturday has its perfume, as does Sunday.

Back to the mirror and take a look at myself. I love what the mirror is showing me and if anybody has a problem with that, well, sorry, but that's their problem.