South of Happy

By Lolo Ncube-Murape

South of Happy traces the life of Khanya, who was born in England in 1971 to Rhodesian parents. When their country gains independence from Britain in 1980, the family move back to the Southern African country of Zimbabwe, and Khanya struggles to find acceptance in an environment filled with hostility.
The book chronicles the familys journey to making a life for themselves in the new Zimbabwe, as seen through Khanyas eyes. Tragedy strikes the family when her father is brutally murdered for his political views, and Khanyas world changes yet again as her mother sinks into depression.
As Khanya grows into womanhood, the Zimbabwean economy starts to falter, and the family is torn apart once again as Khanya, newly married, makes the move across the border to Johannesburg in the beginning of what would be an exodus of millions seeking economic refuge outside the country.
In the bustling South African city, Khanya tries to pick up the pieces and build a home together with her husband, battling to rise above the many ensuing challenges.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Dec 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781482877144

Lolo Ncube-Murape

Lolo Ncube-Murape lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is a married mother of two daughters. She has a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science and a Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree in Modern Languages from the University of Zimbabwe. The organizations that she has worked for in her long and varied career include the World Bank, two of the major retail banks in South Africa, and a Swedish telecommunications equipment manufacturer. South of Happy is her debut novel.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Look at that sky! So blue.

MY MUM SAYS YOU don’t wear shoes where you come from!

She whipped her head round to face the direction the voice had come from and stared, appalled, at Gillian, blue eyes two belligerent slits and small pink mouth drawn into a thin line.

Why do you lot have to come over here anyway? As Khanya opened her mouth to retort, another voice shot out from across the classroom. Why don’t you go back to your own country, then?

She looked quickly around the room, trying to locate the speaker, but the teenagers were mute, staring defiantly at her, their eyes mean and cold. Her own eyes, an intense coffee brown fringed by thick black lashes, settled on Paul O’Flanagan, identifying him as the speaker from the way he had his tongue stuck out at her in a childish show of defiance.

She stood quickly up from her desk, sending pen and textbook flying across the floor. She looked first at Gillian, then at Paul, trying to decide which of her tormentors to confront first. Fists clenched, she advanced towards Paul, her rage blinding her to the fact that he stood a whole head taller than she and his large, beefy hands were rolling up the sleeves of his red cable-knit jumper, preparing for the fight that was sure to start. Despite the radiators hissing softy against the walls under the windows and the thin winter sun’s rays reluctantly exploring the far recesses of the back corner of the classroom, the air turned suddenly cold and electric.

That’s when the anger came, a red-hot knife slicing into her stomach and turning her insides into a pulsating, throbbing ball of fire. She shook her head, as if to dispel an invisible grip from yet another assailant.

At that moment the door swung open and Mrs O’Dwyer scurried into the room, bent almost double from the weight of the string bag slung across her bony shoulder. Sighing heavily, she deposited the bag with a dull thud on the desk next to the chalkboard, then wearily turned to face the 17 students of Form 1A, her pale, tired face glowing eerily against the matte blackness of the board.

Biting her lower lip to stop its treacherous trembling, Khanya slowly sat down, her eyes smarting. Blinking rapidly to banish the tears that threatened to spill down her smooth dark cheeks, she made her way back to her desk in the middle of the classroom and sat slowly down, resigning herself to an interminable hour of learning French nouns.

WHEN THE BELL RANG out shrilly across the empty hallways, signalling the end of the morning classes, she waited until all the other students had spilled noisily out into the corridors and onto the playground. She made her way to a spot at the far corner of the courtyard and leaned against the huge oak tree whose branches reached longingly over the wrought iron fence. She thought about how easy it would be to clamber up its thick trunk, jump onto its extended limbs and hop down on the other side of the fence to the road beyond and freedom. Never to return.

Instead, she fumbled in the inner breast pocket of her fur-lined anorak and pulled out an old photograph, its edges dog-eared and soft from constant fingering.

It must have been the faraway look in her eyes and the dejected droop of her shoulders that made Miss Hawkins stroll over to stand beside her. Looking up, Khanya grudgingly mumbled what might have passed for a greeting at the young teacher with the kind eyes and rosy cheeks.

What do you have there, Khanya? Miss Hawkins reached out and pulled the photograph from Khanya’s grip. Khanya looked away, annoyed at this unwelcome intrusion.

Ooo-oh! Look at that sky. So blue!

Her eyes wide, Miss Hawkins stared wistfully at the sky that took up half of the photograph. Smiling, she gazed at the three children in wide-brimmed floppy hats and flip-flops, their luminescent skin licked and kissed by the African sun. The children, barely more than toddlers, were grinning into the camera, their dark eyes squinting in the bright afternoon sun and their teeth a dazzling snow-white against their ebony skin.

Yes, Miss. That’s my mum and her brother and sister. Taken back home when they were small.

Still smiling, Miss Hawkins handed the photograph back to Khanya, and, turning, walked across to the boys and girls congregated in motley groups and told them to prepare to go back inside.

Khanya looked up at the gloomy grey darkness that was her present ceiling and back again at the magical blue marvel in the picture. This world, captured and frozen on polaroid, seemed like a whole other universe, and even though Khanya had drawn her first breath in a large hospital in the Ilford suburb of East London and had never even been to Africa, she missed the continent with a pain almost physical; a pain she could not explain, for how can you miss a place you have never been? Does the spirit remember what should have been but never was? When she asked Mama these questions, Mama would smile, and tell her that she was a true daughter of the soil, a descendant of proud Nguni kings, and Africa was in her blood.

Mama would tell her the story of how, when she was born, Daddy sent word of her birth to his father, a revered spiritual guide. The news took many weeks to reach the remote village in the southern part of Rhodesia. Upon receiving the news, Khulu, her grandfather, had entered his hut in the middle of his sprawling compound at the foot of the hills and stayed in there for three days and two nights. He lit a fire when it got dark and stoked it with green branches from the eucalyptus tree, such that for three days the doorway of Khulu’s hut was obscured by thick, acrid-smelling fumes. The villagers still told the story of how a stray goat had had the temerity to approach the black smoke and been instantly enveloped by the sinuous thick shroud, never to be seen again.

At the end of the third day, Khulu had tossed water on the fire to put it out. Then he summoned Grandmother. He told her that her new-born grand-daughter had been bestowed a great gift by the ancestors, a gift so great and wondrous that it could not be named; a magical gift bequeathed to none other of his clan. Khanya, Grandfather pronounced, would lead a charmed life, always under the watchful eye of her forefathers. She would have the most formidable isithunzi - a stature so powerful that through her would be manifest the greatness of her ancestors for all to acknowledge.

Grand-mother rushed out of the hut, ululating and dancing. She did not speak of Khulu’s prophecy that day, but called out to the heavens in jubilation, pointing her walking stick this way and that.

Se zimbili intombi zika Kenneth; intombi zami bo! Zimbili-i-i! - My son Kenneth has two daughters. I have two maidens!

And so it was that months after she was born, Khanya received her second name, Zimbili. From then on, Daddy called her Lii, an affectionate abbreviation.

Turning her mind back to the present, Khanya looked around the now deserted courtyard and slipped the photograph back in her pocket. She ran her hand slowly over the massive trunk of her silent companion, then laid her cheek flat against its truck, relishing the feel of its dry, scaly roughness against her skin. She felt a strange kinship with this tree. She shifted to rest her back against the tree, left knee bent to rest her foot against the solid trunk.

She stayed that way for several minutes, her khaki anorak and dark skin gradually blending into the tree, like a giant chameleon. She watched a discarded empty blue crisps packet and a Mars bar wrapper race each other lopsidedly in fits and starts across the paved playground, each one buoyed by the frequent gusts of icy wind to rest among the short skirting of grass at the base of the green railing. The gaily colored pieces of paper looked like some strange blooms in a barren urban jungle. Khanya could smell winter in the air, and with it an imagined aroma of hot chocolate and freshly-baked gingerbread.

This made her suddenly think of Mama, who must at this very moment be leaving the junior school at which she worked until noon to hurry home, her coat wrapped tightly around her and her high forehead furrowed as she planned the evening meal. With one long, lithe movement, Khanya launched herself away from the tree, wondering if Mr. Laurie would notice that she was not in his algebra class.

Deciding that he wouldn’t, and perhaps not really caring if he did, she zipped up her anorak and headed for the school’s front hall. She located her own little battered piece of Ilford Lower Comprehensive real estate, opened the locker and fished out her worn denim satchel. Slinging it over one shoulder, she quickly made her way across the courtyard and out through the tall gates, the two stone eagles perched on either side of the gates staring regally ahead, wings raised in pretend flight and completely unperturbed by the jaunty departing gait of one small Nutella-skinned girl and her massive bouncy Afro.

AS SHE ROUNDED THE corner and turned into Henley Road, she quickly glanced across the street to see if any one of the Benn brothers were outside. From the corner of her eye, she saw that two of the youngest were leaning against their rusty red Fiat, while the eldest brother was sitting forward in the front passenger seat, fiddling about with a screw driver.

Well hello there, love! Back from school already? An emphasis on the word already.

As usual, it was Anthony who had called out, and the other two fell about laughing when she hitched her satchel higher on her shoulder and quickened her pace.

Mind your own business! she shouted the words across the street, but a gust of wind snatched the words away.

The Benn brothers always had something to say, often mean-spirited and rude, sometimes neutral, but never complimentary or kind. Whenever she complained to her older sister, Sukoluhle, the latter would suck her teeth, give her a playful shove and say Give it a rest, why don’t you! Boys always tease girls they like. Khanya felt this to be odd and incredibly perverse of the male species, and vowed to stay away from all boys, and the Benn brothers in particular.

Reaching the front of the double storey Victorian semi that was her home, she swung the short gate back on its hinges and stepped onto the paved walkway. Barring the doors painted in different hues, the house looked the same as the other twelve houses on the block, each with its front room whose bay window encroached on the small garden, and each one attached to the next, such that they formed a long, impenetrable fort.

From her vantage point at the front door, she paused for a moment to look down the street, wondering when Mama would be home. She pulled up the key on a string around her neck and, stooping, unlocked the door and stepped inside, blinking to adjust her eyes to the dimness of the front hallway.

"GOGO, I’M HOME! WHERE’S your sister?"

Khanya slowly sat up from her position curled up on the sofa, where she had fallen asleep while reading. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and got up to face Mama, who had turned around and was headed for the kitchen, her arms laden with several grocery bags.

Stretching like a cat, Khanya padded across the floor in her thick grey school socks after Mama, and watched her place the bags on the kitchen counter with a faint grunt. She moved around the counter and wrapped her arms around Mama’s waist, silent.

They stood there for a moment, then Mama gently peeled Khanya’s thin arms from around her waist and with her smooth, warm hand she lifted Khanya’s face and looked into her eyes.

"What’s wrong, gogo? What happened?" Mama always called her gogo - grandma or old woman - except when she was angry with her, and then it was Khanyisile Zimbili Siziba!

Nothing, Mama. I’m just tired. Mama gave her one last searching look then turned to the counter and started unpacking the groceries. Khanya reached for cans of vegetables and packets of pasta, standing on tiptoe to pack them away in the overhead cupboards.

Suko said she’d be going to the library after school to finish her book review. It’s due tomorrow. She put away the last of the tins, and started to peel the carrots that Mama had placed over the sink.

For the next hour or so, they worked in a comfortable, companionable silence, Mama turning from the hissing pots on the stove now and again to sip from the glass of red wine placed at the far end of the counter. With every sip, she would wink conspiratorially at Khanya over the rim of the glass and Khanya would laugh softly.

Khanya loved these moments, when it was just her and Mama, uttering no words, their movements in total sync. They had a special ability to communicate without speaking, instinctively knowing what the other was thinking. Pausing to lean against the sink, Khanya watched Mama, marvelling at her ability to fill a space with her placid presence.

Mama was quiet and unassuming, and yet when she entered a room people would turn to look at her, feeling a sudden nervous energy that they couldn’t explain. Because of this, most people were wary around Mama, and would watch her with hooded eyes, not knowing why this serene woman unsettled them so. Daddy often called her his regal Zulu queen, at which Mama would throw her head back and laugh, as if Daddy had said the funniest thing. Khanya knew this pleased Mama from the way her eyes would dance and the slow smile that stole across her face.

CHAPTER 2

Divided

SEE YA!

It was early evening on April 17th, 1980, when Khanya and Nicola, the pretty tomboy with long wispy blonde hair from the neighbouring house, called out their goodbyes and skipped and skidded up their respective pathways to their front doors.

Khanya saw that the door was slightly ajar and felt a faint shiver of alarm. Khanya and Suko spent much time alone at the house, and Daddy always insisted that the door be locked at all times. Khanya quietly closed and locked the door behind her, and, overwhelmed by a sudden sense of foreboding, she started up the steps towards the voices coming from upstairs. She paused on the landing, recognising the voices as her parents’. Their voices were not raised, but there was a sense of urgency in their words, and an unsettling feeling of something new and unknown in the air.

Don’t you think it’s too soon, Ken? Should we not wait another year at least?

"Sibonokuhle, in a year it may be too late. The new Prime Minister is getting sworn in tomorrow. The time to make a difference is now!" From Daddy’s tone and the way he used Mama’s full name, Khanya could tell that he felt impatient, even though he spoke quietly and his words were measured.

But Mama was uncertain. What about the girls? The disruption may be more than they can cope with. How about school? You know how well Suko has been doing lately. This could set her back. The vowels that formed her words seemed to be jostling helter-skelter out of her mouth, with scarcely any spaces in between.

Remember that the schools that were not open to us are now no longer segregated, Boni. We can have them enrolled at the best school! It will be good for them. Much better than here where they’re always made to feel like second-class citizens. I want better than that for our girls.

At that moment Khanya entered the room to see Daddy drop Mama’s hands, which had been tightly clasped in his own two. His usually smiling countenance was earnest, and his eyes shone with a brilliant intensity. They both turned to look at her, and Mama turned away from where they had been standing in front of the window and sat down in the armchair next to the mantelpiece. Her face was drawn and her shoulders uncharacteristically slumped, and for the first time that Khanya could remember, she saw fear in her mother’s gentle eyes before she quickly lowered them to the floor.

Daddy turned to her and said, Lii. There you are. I was just about to come and fetch you from the Youth Club. I hope you’re hungry - I brought fish and chips!

He walked over to her, linked his strong arm through hers and, smiling, walked her to the kitchen. Daddy smelled like Old Spice and old books, and Khanya inhaled his scent; it was familiar and comforting. She smiled back up at him, and busied herself setting the table for the evening meal.

After dinner, the sisters washed the dishes while Mama settled on the sofa in front of the telly. No one mentioned the scene that had played out earlier, and Khanya began to wonder if she had imagined it all. But try as she might, she could not dispel the feeling that a series of events had been set in motion that would change their lives forever.

THE MORNING HAD PASSED in a flurry of activity, punctuated by Mama occasionally breaking into spontaneous song or humming happily under her breath. Mama had commandeered the whole family to assist with the preparations for the barbecue, to be held in their back garden later that afternoon. Now, satisfied that all was going well, she tripped lightly up the stairs, no doubt to pick out a dress for the afternoon’s festivities.

Grateful for this moment of reprieve, Khanya and Suko stretched out on their backs on the grass, their faces to the sun. Khanya looked suspiciously up at the sky, and sent up a silent prayer to the weather gods to hold off on rain. She hadn’t seen Mama this happy and animated since the day when she had walked in on her parents’ strange conversation, and Khanya wanted nothing to spoil her sunny mood.

After a while, Suko turned to her and said, You know that Daddy wants us to move back to Rhodesia, right?

It’s not Rhodesia any more, silly.

Suko rolled her eyes. Zimbabwe, then. How do you feel about going? I don’t want to.

It’s home, Suko. It’s where we belong. But her words sounded hollow even to her own ears. Khanya didn’t know what to feel. She remembered the story of her birth and her grandfather’s prophecy, and decided she would trust in that, if nothing else. She set her mouth into a resolute line; she would not be afraid.

Besides, she continued, speaking slowly. Nothing has been concluded. Daddy might decide that we should stay.

Less than an hour later, Khanya opened her eyes to see Mama silhouetted against the sky, contemplating her daughters lying there on the grass. Mama looked resplendent in an off-the-shoulder yellow dress which showed off her beautiful neckline and shoulders to perfection, its skirt gently skimming her slender calves. Her pretty feet were encased in white sandals. She had picked a fresh white daisy and tucked it behind her ear, but her wayward Afro kept jealously trying to push the daisy out, making her raise her hand distractedly to her ear time and again.

When the doorbell rang, Khanya, dressed in her summer uniform of tank-top, denim shorts and flip-flops and her wayward hair tamed for the moment in two thick plaits, ran to open the door, her flip-flops slapping her heels noisily. For a moment she didn’t recognise the tall, handsome man at the door as Uncle Mhambi. Then he smiled that familiar wide grin, all teeth and gums, and Khanya involuntarily took a step back, surprised.

Uncle Mhambi had let his beard grow long and unchecked, and perched atop his head and cheekily over one eye was a large woolen cap in the Rastafarian colours of red, yellow and green. He wore faded blue bell-bottom jeans and a gaily-coloured long sleeved cotton shirt unbuttoned low down his chest. Thandekile, his 13 year-old daughter and Khanya’s friend, was standing at his side, teetering precariously on gold platform sandals, a cling-film covered plastic bowl of coleslaw in her arms.

Khanya felt a twinge of pity for Thandekile. How on earth could she bear to kiss her father goodnight with that scratchy-looking beard? But despite the bristly beard, she politely leaned over and offered her cheek to be kissed by Uncle Mhambi, before enveloping Thandekile in a warm hug.

Please do come in. I’ll tell Daddy you’re here.

Uncle Mhambi was one of the first of a loud, boisterous crowd to arrive that afternoon, and they stayed late into the night. When evening fell, they piled into the front room and Daddy started playing LP’s on the record player. Many of the records were scratched, and would hiccup the same lyric or beat over and over before Khanya would dash across and lift the needle and replace it further down on the vinyl disc. But the revellers carried on unperturbed. They danced, glasses held in hand and mouths opened wide as they bopped up and down and sang along to the lyrics of Stevie Wonder’s Master Blaster.

Everyone seemed to have been bitten by the same bug, Khanya thought. She hardly recognised these bold, exotic beings as the suited and booted professionals she knew. She looked at their happy faces, glistening with sweat and an odd blend of excitement and trepidation. They all seemed to have grown several inches, and loomed over her, larger than life.

Many years later, Khanya would come to understand that although they had left the country of their birth, just like the loved ones they had left behind, they too had carried the mantle of the oppressor during all those years in self-imposed exile. But with the news of their people’s ascendance to power and self-rule, they had shrugged off those mantles, which now lay discarded and crumpled at whatever place they happened to have been when they heard the glorious news. In her mind’s eye, Khanya saw hundreds of these sad discarded garments, littering streets and alleyways all across London.

When they tired of dancing, these magical beings sat about, sometimes five to a sofa, and chattered excitedly about the future of their beloved country. Seated on the floor with her back to the mantel, Khanya’s hungry gaze shifted from impassioned speaker to speaker.

For the first time, she heard and latched on to flying phrases like black consciousness and African renaissance and tucked them away in a special corner of her heart, knowing somehow that these were sacred words that had the power to change lives.

GIVEN THE EVENTS OF the previous weeks - whispered conversations between Mama and Daddy consisting of furtive, weighty words that stole away to hide behind the furniture as soon as either Khanya or Suko entered the room plus the festivities of the backyard barbecue, when even the house itself had seemed to dance along with its revellers - Khanya was not surprised when her father gently knocked on their open bedroom door and asked her and Suko to join him in the front room.

The move to England was always a temporary one for me and your mother, Daddy began.

He paused, searching for the words to break to his daughters the momentous decision that he had taken. From the corners of her eyes, Suko glanced sideways to where Khanya was seated beside her on the sofa, a quick look that said, clear as a bell, Ngikutshelile. Told you!

Khanya wondered why Daddy had chosen to give them this news in Mama’s absence. Was he afraid that with Mama there, it would become apparent that Mama was opposed to the move? Did he not know that his daughters already knew that Mama had misgivings about going back home? But in a way, Khanya was not surprised. She was aware that no matter how grown up she and Suko would get, Daddy would always view them as his little girls. Even now, at age eleven