Luntu Masiza Tells the Truth

By Penny Lorimer

The story takes the form of a series of emails written by Luntu Masiza to his grade 11 English and History teacher, Mr Bali, to fulfil a school-holiday assignment. Over the course of these emails, the reader hears the story of a particularly challenging year in Luntu’s life. Brilliantly, through Luntu’s words we also access the life lessons passed on by a remarkable teacher, whose wisdom pulls Luntu back from the brink.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Nov 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9780624092957

Penny Lorimer

Penny Lorimer grew up in Johannesburg and studied drama at UCT. Recently she worked for a group of independent high schools serving children from economically marginalised communities. She has co-written life orientation text books for primary schools, and published a Gr 8 novel and an adult novel. She is based in Cape Town.    

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9780624089810_FC

Penny Lorimer

Tafelberg

This book was awarded the

Silver Sanlam Prize for Youth

Literature 2021

For the LEAP students and teachers:

Thanks for all the learning and unlearning.

From: Luntu Masiza [e-mail]

To: [e-mail]

Subject: Luntu Masiza (Saturday)

Holiday Homework

Good evening Sir!

You have asked me, above all, to be honest and, to tell the truth, Sir, this assignment you have given me is b.o.r.i.n.g! I mean, it’s school holidays – just over three weeks for a little R & R to prepare for the year’s final terms. It is not matric, it’s true, but all the teachers say that Grade 11 is the most important academic year. Matric is just revision.

I already told you, Sir, that it would be a drag, that I had other things to do in the holiday, but you said: On the contrary, Mr Luntu, writing your story will serve a number of purposes.

(You always call us Mr or Ms together with our name because you said that you have to respect us the same way that we respect you, otherwise it indicates an unbalanced relationship with one person holding all the power and status. At first I did not understand this. I mean, I thought that this is how it should be with teachers, and I myself cannot help calling you Sir out of habit, but I think I am beginning to understand you. We can talk more about this another time.)

You listed a few of these purposes of this assignment on your bony, tea-coloured, hairy fingers. I hope I am not insulting you by describing your fingers this way, but you said I should use my powers of description and your fingers are exactly as I have written. The one part I have missed out is your beautiful, shiny, pink fingernails – as perfect as a young girl’s. That is too many adjectives, which I know you do not like, but as you often say to us: You’ll have to live with it for now.

I always look at people’s hands. Yours are restful most of the time, zipped up on your lap or in your pockets, sometimes turning the pages of a book or emphasising only one important point.

Other teachers’ hands do a lot of moving.

Mrs Mitchell’s, for example, flap like white moths panicking inside a light when she is explaining something or when she talks about the latest debating club topic with the team. I think that if you cut them off, she would be dumb. The skin on the back of them is soft and thin and wrinkled like the skin on warm milk and her veins stand out like green, plastic straws. I notice, when she taps her finger on my life science book, that many of her nails have white spots all over them. The white spots remind me of a code, like the blind writing in my grandmother’s Bible. If I could read the code, maybe I would know everything about her. Her wedding ring is thin and plain and gold. Yours is silver and thick, with tiny designs or symbols carved into it.

Mr Van der Merwe does not wear a ring although I have heard that he is married. His big, fat hands have big, fat fingers with hair below the second joint which is the colour of rusty metal – thicker than the hair on yours, though yours is black – and little bits of skin sticking out along the edges of his nails, which are yellow like his palms, stained by his secret cigarettes behind the principal’s carport. His smoky hands move in quick, short bursts as he dances his precious numbers along the whiteboard or stabs his red pen into my maths homework.

Miss Raeesa’s hands are soft, like her voice, like gentle music. The nails are short and tidy like the rest of her – everything tucked away inside her clothes, with even her hair hidden by a scarf. Her hands are peaceful, like yours, but sometimes they pat the seat next to hers when she wants a student to sit next to her because she has something important to say to them about a personal problem or about living a healthy lifestyle.

Mrs Moyo’s hands are the most beautiful. Brown as chocolate, smooth and sweet-smelling, with thin fingers, like dancers, and flawless rectangular nails, painted a different colour every single week. They flash blood-red, gash-pink, flame-orange or bruise-purple as she talks, but sometimes sit quietly – as if posing for a photo – joined on the desk in front of her when she is talking to people in her office, or on her lap during school assemblies. This is how I imagine the hands of my mother.

The purposes of this holiday project that you listed on your spider-leg fingers were as follows:

1. It will improve my English (and, by extension, my isiXhosa).

2. It will improve my writing skills.

3. It may teach me something about how history is recorded – even if that short history is about one, ordinary sixteen-year-old boy.

4. It will help me to remember recent important changes and choices in my life.

5. It may encourage even deeper self-exploration.

Aristotle said that knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom, you said. The Ancient Greeks gave it as a warning to those whose boasts exceeded who they were.

Luckily, by this time you had reached your opposable thumb because my head was buzzing like flies trapped against a closed window.

Don’t look so worried, you said. You may borrow my dictionary for the duration. Write every day about yourself, for just an hour or so, without fail, and, above all, be honest, and all will become as clear as daylight.

I wanted to argue that where I live, daylight is not always completely clear. Some days we wake to fog that hides even the houses next door, or summer dust that turns everything pale and makes us cough, or thick, brown smoke from winter cooking fires at the shacks, that lies over us like a blanket hiding us from the sun. But I knew that you would look at me in your way and shake your head and say: Enough of the argy-bargy, Mr Luntu!

So I didn’t bother.

I took the dictionary, which I admit is a very good dictionary, Sir, although, to be honest, spellcheck is often quicker.

You once told us that the title of a story should, in some way, reflect the story. It should also hook the reader firmly, like a small fish on a strong line, and wind him slowly in, so he is unable to break away.

My first idea was to call this assignment THE LEGEND OF LUNTU MASIZA because it sounded exciting. I was thinking of starting it in the following way:

People sometimes say that Luntu Masiza was not born. Instead, he fell from a passing comet to set the earth alight. They say that his brain burned as brightly as the comet against the night sky, that his heart was as hot and red as the comet’s core, that his tongue was as smooth and golden as its flashing tail, that his feet raced as fast as comets are said to move, etc.

Which, I think you’ll agree, Sir, would be very exciting to read and to write, even if it was full of exaggeration for effect (or hyperbole, as you have taught us). But then I remembered the purposes of the assignment.

I have thought about this for so long that it is almost 7 p.m. and time for the computers to be shut down and the containers to be locked for the night. I have decided that my title will be:

LUNTU MASIZA TELLS THE TRUTH

I think you will agree, Sir, that this is accurate.

Yours sincerely

Luntu

From: Luntu Masiza [e-mail]

To: [e-mail]

Subject: Luntu Masiza Tells the Truth (Sunday)

Sunday at the Containers

Good afternoon Sir.

I am back again – working on holiday. I am happy you are enjoying my story so far.

People were complaining after church this morning about the new priest who has not properly accounted for the money he collected last week. My grandmother always saves R5 for the collection bag, but last week even she put in double because he was asking people to give more to repair the church roof. Then, during the week, some people saw him driving a brand-new Subaru even though they did not see anyone working on the church roof. They wanted to know how he had paid for the Subaru. His answer that he is paying it from his salary over five years satisfied some people, but it did not satisfy me – or my grandmother. She did not take the collection bag when I touched it against her hands, so I passed it on to the person on the other side of her. My grandmother might be blind and love her church, but she is not stupid. I thought she might stand up and say something, because she is, like you, a big fan of the truth.

Do not say yes when you mean no, she always says. Rather go without food for a night than not be honest.

But this time she kept quiet. Maybe she is giving the priest a chance for one more week.

Be my eyes, she