As South Africans we are becoming a bit more aware of each other’s stories, writes Michael Weeder.
Boetman Maqolo and I sat gossiping in the lounge, sipping condensed milk-sweet rooibos tea.
It was late evening but still light enough for the children to be playing outside on the dusty streets of Zolani location. Their voices contributed to the overall sense of wellbeing one could feel at the end of a socially busy Sunday.
Boetman was the chapel-warden of St Paul’s, one of the clusters of Anglican congregations forming the Ashton-Montagu parochial district.
Kowie Matthys, a lay minister at the Chapelry of St Joseph the Worker in Ashton, had told me that morning of an incident involving his wife, Lenie.
The previous Saturday she had been part of a women-only march through the town led by Cheryl Carolus. The flag with the colours of the recently unbanned ANC seemed to infuriate the local police and the reinforcements from Worcester.
Rubber bullets were fired and a tear-gas canister hit a few months pregnant Lenie. When the baby was born, his forehead had a slight indent, a memento of the past which remains evident to this day. The young fellow was named Michael, after me.
I was visiting Boetman to hear, given the political turbulence in the area and the role of the church in all of it, if there was a need to placate some of the more conservative parishioners.
All was well.
Elizabeth, the mother of the house and an active member of the local branch of the Mothers’ Union, was busy in the kitchen. Occasionally, her soft singing rose above the sizzle of deep-fried bread dough. A welcome gentle breeze cooled the air.
Eventually the delectable smell of vetkoek drew me to the kitchen. I asked how long one must be visiting before you are offered what is being cooked. Elizabeth laughed and replied: “I didn’t know that coloured people liked vetkoek.”
I assured her that not only did we like it but we’d taught Afrikaners how to cook it in the days of slavery.
As South Africans we are becoming a bit more aware of each other’s stories. Sometimes these reflect shared beliefs and values, albeit expressed in a different language or expressed in a religious format. We discover that what we thought was “mine” is actually “ours”.
A Sotho-speaking friend asserts that the word va’doek (dishcloth) belongs to her community exclusively. She budged ever so slightly when I told her that this very same cloth, when wet and in the absence of a wooden spoon, was used to express parental rebuke.
Mothers bought these dishcloths bearing in mind one of its end purposes. It was not only to take a hot Pyrex dish out of the oven, or cover something or dry the dishes. They would stand in the relevant section at Ackermans and ponderously test texture strength: this to counter any attempt of a desperate offender to grab hold of the doek and unintentionally tear it.
Weight when wet was another feature as the quality of water retention helped create that desired threatening sound-effect as the va’doek met cringing flesh.
Sometimes you didn’t even have to have done anything. A shell child (one who was just being miserable) would be grabbed by the arm and told, “Here let me give you something to cry about!” as the doek did its business.
My northern friend could relate to the shared experience of being slapped across skipping-hopping legs, flaying arms and any other parts of the body that came into the path of a wrath-wielded va’doek.
This is one of the reasons that black people have such massive rhythm because, as you were being va’doeked, the lesson was verbally underscored: “Did I not tell you not to (the nature of the crime was then named) with an accompanying double-tap and slap.”
The coloured love of jazzing, the Cape Flats nod to the samba, started here as you anticipated your mom’s move: if she steps left, then you dip to the right and then when she double-dips then you back-step. But you keep moving. Keep the beat alive. That jazz.
I am not so good at jazzing, a testament to how obedient and well-behaved a child I was.
* The Right Reverend Michael Weeder is the Dean of St George's Cathedral.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.