“Indlela” the Path

By Siphiwe Vincent Vilakazi

Bad choices, death, regrets and punishment...

This is a story about misguided youth and follows three boys in particular from a village called Greenock in the regions of Newcastle, Northern KwaZulu-Natal.

Sanele, Senzo and Thokozani were brought up in a home with good values and morals. They were taught every lesson a child should learn about life and walking the right path. But then in their late teens, they changed, restyling their lives and becoming people they were not, even changing their original names to names that personalised who they had become.

They had lost their path.

Because of their impishness, acrimony and massacre, the three boys found themselves tangled in a web of murder involving a female classmate. To escape their fate, they ran away from home to another province, Mpumalanga Witbank, where they began another life of drug trading, looting and marauding, making people’s lives difficult and a living hell.

Not only does this story highlight the very real and all too common issue of veering down the wrong path during youth and the dire consequences thereof but it also sheds lights on the life of a girl coming from a very disturbing family background where she is mistreated by the very people who are supposed to protect her – another all too familiar circumstance in our country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Siphiwe Vincent Vilakazi
• Release date: May 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005547233

Book preview

Indlela

The Path

Which we left before we wandered haphazardly

Siphiwe Vincent Vilakazi

Copyright © 2021 Siphiwe Vincent Vilakazi

Published by Siphiwe Vincent Vilakazi Publishing at Smashwords

First edition 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Siphiwe Vincent Vilakazi using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Edited by Colleen Figg for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.org

E-mail: [e-mail]

Siphiwe Vincent Vilakazi

[e-mail]

Introduction

Teachings from our parents have always said that how people treat us is often a reflection of how we present ourselves. It is up to the person to make the overall experience of life with the family and community good. It is not one’s background status that determines a person’s personality; it is about the individual person. We decide whether we will be friendly and polite or not. Life is about experience and the time one puts in to improving one’s life. Simply put, we choose for ourselves here on Earth how we want to live our lives. Some people choose to be good while others choose to be bad. We do something that fills our eagerness, we tell our own story. That is how we’ll be known and remembered. However, we are judged by how we walk our path from the beginning of our journey – which is when we can differentiate between good and bad – to the end. And how we walk our path determines our struggles, our happiness, and how long we will live our lives.

All of our lives have a beginning and an ending, and in between, there are blank pages that we need to fill. Whatever we do is a contribution to our life. It can be good or bad, it counts, nonetheless. Whether we do a little less or nothing at all, just sit and let the day pass by, without paying any attention to our surroundings, it affects us. It is very important we do not waste time by doing nothing. Let every day be a challenge we must face, a race we must run and let there be victories to be won; and let us achieve something in life.

It has been estimated that humans live approximately twenty-eight thousand days and anything that exceeds that is a bonus. When we are young, we should be working hard because we still have the strength and power. Our life is filled with excitement. And we have so much time on our hands to do whatever we want and do what is right. When we get older, we cannot do everything we wish to do anymore; things seem far away from us and time tends to rush us, seeming to move faster the older we get.

The question we should really ask ourselves is: why don’t we do what is right when we still have time?

Because many of the things we do as young people are bad, or ill-considered things. If we do not end up hurting someone else, we hurt ourselves. And we do bad things in the name of poverty. When a thief steals, he or she will say, ‘I am doing it because I am poor.’ A prostitute will say, ‘I am selling myself because I am poor; what else I can do to get money?’ We do many other bad things knowing we should not do them. We need to start working hard at a very early stage of our lives to avoid such pitfalls. We’re told from childhood onwards that everything we want to accomplish in life, is all in our hands and that is true.

The problem is that, in most instances, we are not sure about what we want to do with our lives. This makes it appear that we don’t have a dream, which is not true. Every person does indeed have a dream. We do dream about becoming something or someone in life. The only problem is we do not pursue our dreams – which would usually or hopefully bring about positive results – because we are afraid of not succeeding. In our vision, the dream fades away while it’s being created. It doesn’t even get to the progression stage, let alone get executed. As young people, we often doubt ourselves in many things; sometimes we are afraid because we have seen those who came before us fail. Therefore, we choose the ‘easy’ way, which is not actually easy at all, and which often brings bad things with it. In choosing the ‘easy’ route, we often also cause those who love us to suffer. We forget that good things do not come easily, it takes hard work to get them.

Most of the things that fill us with eagerness are things that we want, in order to make ourselves known. We want to make a mark for ourselves; sometimes this means that we start to live dangerously. We change our original birth names to give ourselves names that personalise who we have become. We want other people to respect our trend and respect us. I can say it’s not just simple respect we want; rather, it is to be feared. We want to show the world that we are fearless and very strong. That we can take and have whatever we want at any time we want. That is what our world has come to as young people in South Africa.

Let me give you an example: in my village, there was a young man known as Guitar, and nobody actually knew his real name; he was short and very slim. He would dress in silk shirts, Bren-hood trousers, and a hat and he would wear Converse All-Star sneakers. He also would wear nice gold necklaces. When you looked at him you would think, ‘What a decent person he is’. Until you look into his eyes. They were the colour of flames, very red. And it was not because that was their natural colour, but it was because of the drugs he abused every day of his life, since he had begun smoking at the age of fourteen. Nobody came across Guitar and left him without being either robbed or stabbed. Whatever you had on you, it was his. And your choice was either to give it to him nicely or he takes it over your dead body. He did all these things in broad daylight, with people watching and nobody did a thing about it. Killing another human being was nothing to Guitar. People respected him, but, more than that, they feared him. He was notorious. Law enforcement did everything they could to catch Guitar, but they never succeeded. That is how dangerously Guitar was living, and he cared about nothing.

As young people in South Africa, we need to understand who we are, where we come from, how we got to be at this point and why we’re still here. Once we have examined these questions, we will understand in which direction we are going, too.

The Path

With a broken heart and soul, Mbali finally got up from the chair she had been sitting on for the past hour. Her eyes were swollen and red from all the crying she had been doing. Clenching her hands at her sides, she slowly walked forward towards where the pastor was standing with the servant.

She was shaking.

She could hardly walk.

Her eyes were still full of tears and her path ahead was blurred. She stopped, then bent down, crying harder. All the students who attended the funeral were heartbroken and they cried too. Everyone cried.

Lucia was gone, and it was the end.

Just at that moment, the thought that she would never see her again, felt worse than death itself. Mbali wished only to die with her. She was feeling so much grief.

‘Come child, the Lord knows of this and those who are responsible,’ the pastor’s mild voice was barely audible over the crying of students. Mbali could not move: she was shaky, like a newborn deer. Quickly, Maphanga was by her side to help get her balance. The pastor stretched out his hand and helped Mbali to the servant of the church who was carrying a shovelful of soil. Standing in front of the servant, Mbali wiped her eyes and regained her vision. ‘I have to be strong,’ she told herself. She picked up a handful of soil, some being blown away by the light wind. She closed her hand and thought of Lucia Gumbhi, her best friend. ‘She would not have died if she had not come to my house.’ Mbali murmured these words between her breaths. It was quiet and only the sound of dry leaves blowing on the ground could be heard. The shadows from the tombstones covered the paths between the graves, and the sun shimmered over the coffin. Another good soul lost at a young age. Mbali could almost hear Lucia’s screams, as she begged to be freed. The pain she felt as she was raped multiple times, then stabbed three times in her chest before her body was dumped and burnt. It must have been gruesome. Mbali imagined Lucia’s wounds. It was as if she could feel them.

She looked inside the grave before she scattered the soil from her hand that fell onto the coffin and echoed down inside the grave. She sighed and turned back. Again, Maphanga walked her back to her chair, and she let her sit down. It was the hardest moment of her life, the moment Mbali was never going to forget.

Chapter 1

The three boys’ names were Sanele, Senzo and Thokozani and they came from a small village called Greenock in Newcastle, a northern town in KwaZulu-Natal. Because they had played together since childhood, herded cattle together and gone to the same school and been in the same class, the boys were very close. More than that, they were relatives too: Sanele and Senzo were cousins while Thokozani was their uncle. That created a very strong, certainly unbreakable bond which tied the trio together.

In their childhood, a bright future shone ahead of the boys especially Sanele; the family was so proud of him and expected that many good things were going to come from him. He looked promising as he showed himself to be smart in everything he did. The same went for Senzo and Thokozani, they were promising too. It showed in their character that they had grown up with someone with a sharp mind and that they were raised in a good home by good parents.

Sanele’s house was a hundred metres away from his granny’s house, and he lived there with his mother, Jabulile, and young sister, Gugu. His mother was so proud of him; she believed that one day he would become a good husband and a great father. The boy was just magnificent. She had taught him that life is short. Human life is like a morning mist that appears for a little while and then disappears. He must love and value his life and that of others, she told him. No life is more important than anyone else’s and there is nothing without a purpose; we are all born for a reason. We may be different, but we are all one person. We are the image of God, she had told him.

The boys had started herding cattle at the age of ten. Every time the boys herded cattle to the green fields of Greenock where they grew up, they would lose themselves in the freedom of wandering into nothingness. While the cattle were grazing, the boys would be doing what boys at their age naturally do. They would run around playing, ‘don’t touch’, a game where you have to chase and touch someone. They would slingshot at the birds. They would hunt. They were good hunters and could aim accurately. They never missed their target. Whenever they caught or killed something, you would see a column of grey smoke rising to the clouds as they would be preparing their fire to braai their meat. They used small sticks and dry leaves as kindling for the wood to catch alight quickly. They wouldn’t want other boys from other villages leading their cattle to the side of the grazing land where they were, to find them still cooking their meat because then they would have to fight for it. So sometimes, it was best they just take it home. When they were not hunting, they would be looking for digger bees and follow the bees to their hives, which are commonly made in anthills. Blocking the openings the bees used as entrance and exit, they would open another hole where they would burn dry dung. This would create confusion in the bees, with the smoke clouding their hive and their doorway being blocked. In that way, the boys would have some control over the bees, and it would be easy for them to excavate and take the honeycombs, without having to worry about the bees attacking them. They would squeeze some of the honey in their mouths and take the rest home. But once Sanele got stung on his tongue! He ran madly, screaming, ‘Yabo, yabo, yabo, yabo!’ until he tripped on a small rock and fell flat on his face.

Well, it was better to trip and fall on his own than from someone else’s fist. Lands were not just for the cattle to graze but were also a battlefield for boys. The reasons for the fighting were many and varied: if you came from another village, if you didn’t bring a tribute or if you didn’t show some sign of respect, you would be guaranteed a fight. As the sun reached its highest point, the fields would be marked with blood. The boys would stand in a ring and fighters would come forth. Each village would send their best fighter. For one village to rule the rich pastures they needed to destroy all their opponents.

When the other villages couldn’t beat one fighter, Dan, from Springbok village, Themba, from Greenock village made his move. He had a unique strategy of fighting. He was related to the three boys, being Senzo’s older brother. He came forward for his village after Dan had refused to fight Maphanga, also from Greenock, and the only girl shepherd among boys.

Themba’s fight with Dan was about to come to an end, as they were both tired. Everyone encouraged them to postpone the fight to another day. Their fight had turned unnatural and very violent. Themba’s final blow landed on the side of Dan’s jaw and he fell and hit his head on a rock. Themba’s gaze travelled over everyone who was there; from the way Dan lay without any movement, it was obvious he was dead. Themba came up with a plan that everyone must say Dan was stung by a bee and when he tried to run he had slipped and hit his head on a rock. After the death of Dan, these field fights became fewer, and Greenock village ruled all the rich pastures.

When the sun was down on the hills, setting at dusk, the boys would herd the cattle back home. They would lead them to the kraal located fifty metres down the yard. They would make sure they returned with all the cattle, and that none had strayed away from the rest. After they put the cattle in the kraal and closed it, Sanele would start counting, making sure all sixty-seven cattle were home. He could even identify them individually and call some by their names, especially the old ones.

Outside the house, there was a homemade fire pit, made from a zinc drum and it was very strong and useful. Mrs. Khumalo, who was Thokozani’s mother and grandmother to Sanele and Senzo, usually used the pit to boil water and sometimes even cooked her food there. She used cow dung to maintain the fire, keeping it burning for a little while and saving wood in the process.

Shivering from the suddenly cold wind, the boys would gather around the fire pit to keep warm. The boys were always very close to Mrs. Khumalo and her fire pit during the chilly mornings and evenings of that winter. Moreover, they loved to sauté some maize whenever Mrs. Khumalo had prepared the fire.

One time, as they were gathered around the fire, Thokozani got up from his chair and ran to the end of the fence to take a leak and Senzo had taken his seat. When he got back, he tossed his head with a scowl across his face