Rural Dust

By Scelo Duma

Rural Dust is a gripping novel that combines features of a traditional thriller with a touch of a psychological thriller, and borrows from African Traditional Medicine, which is then blended with Christian imagery and a dream motif to craft a fine fictional representation of the New South Africa characterised by corruption, lies, deception and disillusionment. This is Duma’s debut novel, in which he brings to bear his experience in local governance in KwaZulu-Natal to explore the intricate relationship between political power and money, and how powerful persons can subvert social justice for their own selfish ends. Themba is the protagonist who is born and grows up under difficult circumstances. He tries to escape his circumstances and almost always finds himself tripping over and drowning in the potholes of life and particularly the web of deceit and betrayal set up by his nemesis, the Mayor. The villain, the Mayor, wages both a physical and a psychological fight against Themba. Yet the Mayor is a villain who causes harm to everyone who crosses his path: his comrades, his party, municipal employees and, inadvertently, the community. He publicly professes to be a priest and hides behind the clerical collar and the robe, which is intended to deceive others into believing that he is celibate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scelo Duma
• Release date: Jul 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781990970726

Scelo Duma

The author is a Municipal Governance Expert with more than twenty years’ experience working with municipalities across the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The author holds a Master of Science Degree in Development and Planning: Development Administration & Planning from the University of London (University College London).

Book preview

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RURAL DUST

A NOVEL

SCELO DUMA

CESRIX BOOKS

© Scelo B Duma 2020

Rural Dust

Published by Cesrix Books

Scottsville, Pietermaritzburg

www.cesrix.co.za

[e-mail]

ISBN 978-1-990970-71-9

eSIBN 978-1-990970-72-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Cover art by Jula Da Buddha

Layout and publication facilitation by Boutique Books

ONE

Longing for you has become my pastime. When I talk to you I let go of the pain in my veins. I feel drunk. The nothingness in my heart becomes great and fills the void of your absence and your quietness even in these trying times. I know why you left. I think. Actually, nothing can quite permanently fill the void left by your disappearance. I have to keep writing to you, even though the things I write about are the same ones that made you leave. Perhaps I need not tell you how things have changed since you left. I will tell you nonetheless because I miss you. I wish you were here. Things would have been different, perhaps better.

I think of you as someone who possessed wisdom and courage. Someone cunning and who had a subtle way of looking at life. I think of you as a woman of peace and love. Someone who is honest and a perfect contrast of the life I have come to live in your absence. I could have done the things that other kids do. But, I know there is no turning back now. The floods brought down the trees and the boulders that no one is pre­pared to clear. The way back is blocked. I am not sure whether I want to go back. The things I have seen and done frighten me so much so that if cans were to be opened, the worms would be all over. People we love would be harmed. They would be cast in a bad light.

I am telling you these things in the hope that one day you will find it expedient to shine your bright light on me and chase away the darkness and the ghosts that have haunted me since you left. Those who knew these things together with me have since been taken out of the stage for good. For reasons that are yet to be revealed to me, I am still here. It may well be that those who took out our Dad do not know that I know what I know to the extent to which I know it, or they simply do not know that I still exist.

It was in the early hours of the morning when mysterious men, may be they were police, came for him. They had a conversation, not a fight. They knew him, he knew them. I never saw him again. In my daily dreams I have spoken to him many times. When I first spoke to him he told me he was aware of my anguish, the hurt and pain I was going through. He said he understood and that it would all pass one day. When I asked him questions he turned his back on me. He looked away, walked away as if to spurn me. His back would look different. It would seem like he was a different person altogether. It would look bare. It would seem as if I can see through him. I see all the bad animals and people in him. It was a bad omen, I thought. Indeed, his prediction that my problems would one day go away has not come to pass. If anything, they feel like a permanent feature of my life. We are married in community of property: no divorce.

I was doing my penultimate year at primary when one Friday afternoon as I passed by the gate of the village sangoma’s homestead, someone called me in. I think it was one of her interns. Normally I would have been afraid to go in but this time I walked in as if walking through our home gate.

‘Her Highness wants to see you,’ said the intern.

As I approached her rondavel she walked back into the house and the intern ushered me in, observing protocols as she did. I was confused. She referred to me by my name.

‘Sit down, my boy’.

By now I was shivering and regretting why I came in. I sat on the grass mat and leaned backwards against the rondavel’s wall.

‘You are late, my boy,’ she said, not looking at me but preparing her own mat to sit. I was shocked and shivering.

‘Your father woke me up in the early hours of the morning,’ she said politely. ‘He told me you are on your way and you will be passing by here. I’ve been expecting you ever since,’ she said as she was sitting down.

‘You know my father? Was he in your dreams?’ I asked hysterically.

‘Yes,’ she muttered. ‘Lots of people know your father, or shall I say, your grandfather.’

I raised my head and looked at her, and then tried to summon courage to probe her further but she looked back at me with bright red eyes as if to say ‘if you ask another question I will strangle you’. I looked down again and kept quiet, wondering what she meant by grandfather. You know that I have never known my grandfather. I could barely remember Daddy.

I had never been to a sangoma’s house, let alone talked to one. I am too young for it anyway. So I did not know how to conduct myself. I was frightened. She caught me off guard. Since Dad’s departure I had never met anyone who claims to have known him. I had heard stories about him. Some were incredible, hard to believe. Anyway, I didn’t know what to believe. I could see the sangoma was not willing to talk about him. Maybe even in my dreams I was too afraid to ask or just too young to understand. She was frightening.

‘Your Dad said there is a file,’ she muttered again. Then she remained silent and looked at me as if to say, ‘Why are you still here? Go.’ She did not say anything, and for a moment I froze.

‘Is that it?’ I mastered the courage to ask. She did not bother to answer but instead called for one of her interns, who came rushing.

‘Take this boy away. I don’t want to talk to him again. This is not a place for kids,’ she said angrily, as if I had asked to speak to her. The intern led me out of the rondavel.

As I walked out following the intern, still shivering, someone touched me. I jolted out of bed. It was Mom. She was waking me up. ‘You are going to be late for school, young man,’ she said while walking away from me, never waiting to see if I woke up. I sat on the side of the squeaky bed, sweating. This dream was strange.

As I walked pass the sangoma’s place on my way to school that morning, I was frightened. Fortunately, I was not alone and I hoped that the dream would not materialise in real life. When Dad came back to me in a dream, I asked him when he would come home.

‘I don’t know the way home,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where I am and neither do I know the people I’m with,’ he added.

This time he looked old and tired but said the people looked after him well. His eyes looked red, his beard had grown long and although I do not remember him well, he looked thinner. I could not see the place where he was nor the people he was with. I heard them speak in what sounded like a strange antiquated dialect. I could never tell what they were saying. ‘It’s just a dream,’ I said to myself.

‘My journey is long,’ he said as he walked away. He looked like he was wearing a gown, one of those worn by church ministers. It was strange.

In a subsequent dream, we spoke about many things, but he would never talk about the file, and each time I asked him about it he would leave. ‘My time is up,’ he would say.

This time he simply vanished into thin air. However, unlike on other days, this time it looked like he was back in the village. ‘My journey is long,’ he would say, but never mentioning the destination. I had several of these dreams. One night he spoke about the journey through ‘the twelve villages’.

‘Right now we are entering the village of the valley of the dead,’ he said.

I jumped out of the bed as if it was suddenly full of thorns. I was sweating. It was raining and fiery outside.

When I arrived at school that morning I heard that twelve people were killed in our village by lightning bolts.

‘This is the worst I have ever seen since I first came to this place,’ Madam Sokhulu, our teacher, would say. ‘Councillors should be blamed for this,’ she would continue. I never understood, so I kept quiet. Not that I would have asked her anything anyway.

‘If the evil councillors had not pocketed the money for lightening conductors all of this would not have happened. You know, my kids, none of you should become politicians when you are old. In fact we should do away with politicians and put development champions instead,’ she would go on and on as if we understood. I didn’t.

Unlike other dreams, the dream about Dad entering ‘the valley of the dead’ bothered me the whole day, and days to come. My mind went back and forth. All along I had hoped that one day Dad would ‘rock up’ at our door and say, ‘I’m back.’ The idea that Daddy had reached the ‘valley of the dead’ troubled me even as I refused to believe that he might be dead. I had heard on radio people finding their long lost relatives but no one said anything about Daddy even as I heard that he was once a big shot in the party.

In the days that followed, Mom went to attend one of the burials of the twelve people who were killed by lightening. She said the twelfth lady to be killed was related to our family. I never knew how. I never asked. I wondered whether Dad was trying to convey a message to me and if so what was the message. Whatever it was, I did not think it was a good message. ‘Twelve villages and the valley of the dead’ and suddenly twelve people are dead from lightning bolts and the twelfth one is our relative? At school, pupils spoke about charred bodies of those struck by lightning. It was scary but I did not think much of it. So many people had died in our village that a burial free weekend was like threatened species. Mom tried her best to keep these sad stories to herself. Fellow pupils spoke about them as if they had become a natural part of the village life.

I never told Mom about the conversations I had had with Dad. I toyed with the idea of approaching Madam Sokhulu. ‘My child, dreams are natural. It’s natural to dream about people we love, people we long for and those who have passed on,’ I concluded would be her explanation. In any case, she was a devout Christian, never believing in dreams. Funny that as pupils we saw her as the embodiment of the ‘devil’ himself. Yes, we understood the devil to be a man. Anyway, there was no one to talk to about the dreams I was having. I kept thinking that if you were here I would have told you. In fact I thought, if you were here, I would not have had these bad dreams. Children are not supposed to be dreaming about sangomas.

Indeed, the dream about the sangoma came back. It was as if I was back at the sangoma’s house hoping to talk to her about my dreams.

‘She has not been consulting for a while now. In fact, she is not here at all,’ one of her many interns told me. ‘What is the business you wanted to see Her Highness about? Did she not say she never wanted to talk to you again,’ she asked.

I looked at her and shook my head. ‘You won’t understand,’ I said.

‘Try me,’ she said boldly. ‘Try me,’ she repeated.

‘It’s about a multifarious dream,’ I told her half-heartedly.

‘Child, a dream is a dream. It is never multifarious,’ she said cheekily. ‘In any event Her Highness does not do dreams,’ she assured me. ‘There is a sangoma in Mtubatuba who does dreams.’

‘Where is Mtubatuba? I have never heard of such a place,’ I said. Before she could tell me where Mtubatuba was, someone called me by name. It was another intern.

‘Her Highness will see you. She said she is in a hurry and will not tolerate your being late,’ she said, sounding polite and respectful as though I were her peer.

‘You cannot just drop in here each time you have dreams. I don’t do dreams. However, your grandfather keeps pressuring me to attend to your problems.’

I froze, and although I wanted to apologise, words failed me. I was frightened and could not understand how she knew about my dreams. I kept my head down, never looking her in the eye.

‘You are too young to understand these things, my child.’ She was calm now.

I was shivering and sweating at the same time, cursing myself for daring to come to this place. I could not fully comprehend what she was saying.

‘My child, your father came to me about the file. Perhaps it is the file that has answers to all these questions in your mind,’ she said, again calmly and in a motherly way. She even came closer and put her hand on my shoulder. It felt so heavy I almost collapsed. She referred to Daddy as ‘your father’ and yet previously she called him ‘your grandfather’. I got confused. I wanted to ask her to explain but I was afraid.

She ordered one of the interns to make sure that I was taken care of. The intern led me to one of the many rondavels in the yard. I was given food and once I had finished eating the intern saw me off. As I stepped out of the gate it felt like I was stepping into a void and was falling fast. I was trying to scream but the voice would not come out. At last, I screamed so loud that Mom came rushing in to see what was wrong.

‘What is the problem, young man?’ she said as she woke me up.

‘I’m late for school,’ I replied as I jumped out of bed. She laughed.

‘You are dreaming again, young man. There is no school today. It’s a public holiday. That’s why I’m still here as well,’ she assured me as she walked out. ‘Wake up nonetheless. There are many chores in the house,’ she said in her usual low tone voice, which was still piercing.

‘The file has all the answers,’ I kept repeating to myself what the sangoma said in the dream. During the day, I kept toying with the idea of asking Mom whether she knew of any file left by Dad or that belonged to Dad.

‘What do you know about files? Your Dad never left anything, haven’t I told you that before?’ I thought she would say. So I never asked Mom anything and she never told me anything.

For days, weeks and months that followed I was bothered about the file, the dreams and Daddy. One day Madam Sokhulu visited Mom. They spoke for a while. When she left Mom gave me that look. I knew something was not right.

‘Madam Sokhulu is worried about your school work,’ she said. I never answered.

You know better than me that she did not like being spoken back to even when one was answering a question she had asked. So I had learnt to regard all her questions as rhetorical.

‘I’m talking to you, are you deaf?’ she said forcefully. Then I knew that the question was not a rhetorical one, but one that you had to answer, even though your answer changed nothing.

Madam Sokhulu kept a black book in each class and would occasionally read it to us. Not that we listened. One day seating alone in class during break as I had become accustomed to, it struck me that perhaps the answers I was looking for could be in the black book. I didn’t know where to start. It was the vernacular version. I took the black book and started reading. My reading skills were poor, but I persisted.

‘Ah! Good boy reading the great book.’ I had not heard Madam Sokhulu walking into the classroom. I jumped.

‘No Mam, yes Mam,’ I retorted. I could never have a conversation with Madam Sokhulu. I thought of her as scary.

‘Sit down, my boy,’ she said calmly. ‘What seems to be the problem,’ she asked.

My mind was all over the place. I did not know how to respond, let alone tell her about the dreams, the sangoma and the mysterious file.

‘Nothing Mam,’ I said while looking down. By now she was seated. She was going nowhere until I have told her what was bothering me.

‘I miss my Dad,’ I said.

My cheeks felt warm and wet. A breeze swept through the door of the classroom out of the open window. It was autumn. Winter was approaching.

‘Have you been thinking about him a lot lately?’ she said in a motherly voice.

I missed that voice from Mom. Since Dad’s disappearance, she has changed. Even when she speaks in hushed tones her voice seems to pierce me and I always freeze when that happens. We never speak much. She instructs and I act.

‘Yes Mam.’

More tears rolled down my face. She threw her big hand at me. She pulled me towards her. I felt warm and safe. I tried to summon courage to talk to her about my dreams, the encounter with the sangoma, and the file, but words failed. The bell rang. It was the end of the break.

‘You’re going to be fine, my boy…the good Lord will look after you. You are going to grow into a big man and take care of your Mom,’ she said with a sense of warmth and assurance. It was as though she had gotten the assurance from God himself or herself. I felt comforted and for days to come I felt better.

A few days later Madam Sokhulu gave me a box wrapped like a gift. It was slightly heavy.

‘Are you going to open it,’ she said while smiling at me.

I must admit I was not too excited. I was not used to being given gifts. It was the black book.

‘Thank you, Mam. Thank you,’ I said, pretending to be happy.

Maybe I was happy. I had to tell Mom about what had happened but only because I did not want her to hear it from Madam Sokhulu.

Initially I read the black book once or twice a week, but later I began to read it every day in the hope of finding answers. Day after day I thought and longed for Dad to appear in my dreams again and answer my questions instead of me trying to find these answers on my own. ‘Does he not know I am too young for these things?’ I would ask myself. Days turned to weeks. Weeks to months. Perhaps it was reading the black book that chased away the dreams.

One night I read the black book till late. I lost track of time. I woke up in the morning cuddled on the old sofa in our sitting room. Mom had put a warm throw over my little body and had put the black book on the small black coffee table next to the sofa. It was as if I had had a deep and long dream, except that Dad was not in it. When I reached for the black book, I noticed an old envelope sticking out of the book. Mom had inserted the envelope between the pages to mark the point where I stopped reading. She never asked me anything about my sudden interest in the black book. She was always preoccupied with her own troubles. I never asked her about what bothered her either.

I was too preoccupied with the black book to notice that she was in fact in the room looking at me.

‘Are you alright young man?’ she asked in what sounded like a normal motherly voice. It took me by surprise. I longed for that voice. You probably don’t know, she always called me young man, never using the words ‘my son’. Every now and then I wondered about that but it never really bothered me.

‘You are up early,’ she added before I could answer her first question. ‘You slept very late,’ she said while seating herself down. I felt warm and frozen at the same time. It had been a long time since Mom spoke so kindly to me.

‘I am going to be late for school,’ I retorted.

She smiled and reminded me it was Saturday. I guess as an adult she may have realised that I was uncomfortable with her new approach, or shall I say her different approach.

‘Put the book down, wash your face and make yourself a sandwich.

Reviews for Rural Dust

[Musa Khabzela · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I just loved it from the very first page .