I Speak to the Silent: A Novel

By Mtutuzeli Nyoka

Walter Hambile Kondile is the typical ‘good native’ of his generation, poorly educated and subservient, brought up to know his place and believe that ‘it was God’s design for the white man to rule over me’.
Then Kondile’s beloved daughter, Sindiswa, a young struggle activist, goes missing in exile. Kondile’s search leads him to Lesotho and grim discoveries of betrayal that shatter forever his own ‘complicity of silence’, committing him to an irrevocable path of no return.
This is a compelling and beautifully written novel by Mtutuzeli Nyoka, a powerful storyteller who tells his history as he sees it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Picador Africa
• Release date: Aug 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781770103658

Book preview

1

On a rainy day in my fifth year in prison, I received a note from a Mr John Smith. He wanted to meet with me. I could see the ocean, dark and brooding. The waves undulated as if excited by the falling rain and the clouds hung low and menacing. I was deep in thought, my mind swirling with sad memories. I had received similar requests before. At first they would send a sudden gust, a ripple of excitement, through my body. Later, they became a source of annoyance and irritation.

A young coloured warder brought the note to me. He was very polite. He must have been new. Politeness was rare in prison. The warders mostly believed that to handle animals effectively you must be one yourself. I was consequently terrified of them. Their moods ranged from indifferent to callous, and their behaviour, from strange to downright wicked. The prison jungle that was our home could pollute the mind and soul of even the most decent human being. Some of the warders enjoyed using their batons. Indeed, much of their authority lay in their willingness to use these weapons. Sometimes they used other prisoners, the most violent, to do their dirty work. The collusion between the prisoners and officials made prison life not only unsafe but also unpredictable.

‘This is yours, meneer,’ the young warder said demurely, as he handed me the neat blue envelope. Like all the mail we prisoners received, it had been opened. Even though my long stay in prison had earned me certain privileges, privacy was not one of them. I read the letter from John Smith with absolute indifference. I did not realise that it marked the beginning of one of the most intimate relationships of my life.

Perhaps, I thought, it was from one of those lazy reporters looking to rehash an old story for tomorrow’s headline. Or was it a student from the university, seeking to impress his professor with an assignment teeming with ghoulish details? Or some idiot simply curious to know what I looked like?

Prisoners have a lot of time on their hands. Often, they welcome visits, even from fools, just to break the monotony. However, I was fortunate and had received many visitors during my prison stay. I was, after all, the famous prisoner – or rather, the infamous murderer of Raymond Mbete; ‘Comrade Ray’, as many called him.

Comrade Ray had been strangled to death. Someone strong – and I am strong – had put his hands around Mbete’s scrawny neck, firmly and long enough to squeeze the life from it. When the police arrived, they found him dead with his face submerged in his own vomit. Like most people who die in this fashion his pants were urine-soaked and soiled.

A fitting finale for a monster. A man as devoid of scruples as of morals.

Mbete was, however, the people’s hero. Blind idolatry was the curse of my people.

I remember the day of the judgement. It was a hot summer day. Not that this meant anything to me, because it was the day on which my fate was decided. I had slept poorly for several days and felt tired, almost indifferent to the scene around me. There was not a single empty seat inside the courtroom, the crowd a mixture of political activists with slogans branded on their shirts, and the merely curious. People even sat on the floor. The heat inside the courtroom was intense, though all the windows were open.

Outside was a surging, chanting mass of humanity, angry and animated in their quest for justice – or was it lust for blood?

‘Intambo – the noose!’ The call rang out repeatedly.

My people were begging for my blood, in a manner similar to the Roman crowds in the Colosseum of old. They were begging Caesar to raise his hand and give the signal for my execution. Caesar, in my case, was the Judge Boschoff. He passed the sentence without sympathy.

‘You have been tried before this court and found guilty of premeditated murder. You have been charged and convicted of the cold-blooded murder of an innocent man, a father as well as a husband. What goes on in the hearts and minds of men like you, I cannot divine. You are a viper in human clothing. Your vile deeds are a black stain on our community. I therefore sentence you to spend the rest of your life in prison.’

The judge’s face was an angry, quivering red. I heard every one of his words and felt their full force. He rose from his bench looking self-satisfied and left the court with a flourish. The show had come to an end. It was concluded by a judge, Judge Boschoff, whom I knew to have no respect for either justice or human life. The same judge, in this very courtroom, had set a white man free for killing a native whose mongrel dog had mated with his alsatian. It was this very judge who disparaged a black woman who had been raped by a farmer and his four sons. The same judge who set free a white man for burning an old native woman who had failed to pay rent. To the native, Judge Boschoff was a cruel and unsympathetic scourge.

I was disgusted by his hypocrisy. I felt like emptying my bladder on the bald patch on top of his head. However, the judge was the hero on that day. I could hear my wife, Nomsa, crying in the background, her sobs all but drowned out by the jubilant chants from the public gallery. Turning my head, I witnessed a scene of unfolding madness. Seldom had I seen so much passion and joy from my people before.

‘Intambo!’ Some of the crowd were still clamouring for the ultimate sentence.

Hirschberg, my lawyer, put his chubby hand on my shoulder and said: ‘It’s not over yet.’ He had a strange accent and I always struggled to make out what he was saying. I was quickly surrounded by the police and taken away. For the second time in my life I was going to prison, and this time around for a very long spell.

In prison I lived for a long while surrounded by hatred. I lost count of the number of times I was spat on. The smell and taste of spit were my constant companions. Other prisoners seldom spoke to me. When they did, it was frequently with invective. Despite the profusion of threats I was never physically molested. Even more significantly, I was not sexually molested. I remember musing over this and wondering how I had escaped this fate. It happened to so many around me. The threat was made often but, thankfully, never carried out.

They called me ‘old chick’ or ‘ou pussy’ but never went further than that. Perhaps, I thought, even prison perverts have their own vile standards to uphold. They probably had no wish to defile themselves with an old traitor like me. Over time I had inured myself to hatred and hostility. I even came to appreciate these reactions for the space and solitude they provided. The bullies got tired of spitting at me. The perverts turned their attention to other prison ‘maidens’.

My fortunes had indeed changed. I was no longer the master of my own house but prisoner KL128467. I was told when to sleep, when to wake and when to eat. My daily dress was a green shirt and long green pants. This was standard prison uniform. I was no longer surrounded by loving relatives but by rabble; robbers, rapists, murderers and a miscellany of other scoundrels. Prison was teeming with psychopaths of all kinds. In such an environment, you find yourself prey to all manner of anxieties.

Contraband found a ready market here. There was a thriving trade in dagga and alcohol. Some of the warders were the major benefactors of this. They had to be paid for everything, even for bringing us our mail. In return, they turned a blind eye to the illicit goings-on. There were even male prostitutes who brazenly peddled their wares.

‘Do you want a jol?’ was their trademark opener.

A refusal was often received with profound vulgarity. Strangely, I am grateful to these male harlots. Perhaps without them I would not have escaped the lustful attentions of the gang leaders. These savages were, unfortunately, the law in prison. They raped at random, not only to satisfy a basic need, but also to humiliate and punish. The best course was to stay out of their way as much as possible.

Gang rapes were common and terrifying. Once, I was made to watch a youth being raped by one of these prison gangs. What crime he had committed I do not know. They only stopped the torture when blood started spurting out his anus. Even this was greeted with cries of satisfaction from these men. There were unfortunately many children in our overcrowded prisons – plenty of game for these human predators.

In prison I thought a great deal about the trial and the events preceding it. I relived the various scenes in my mind: the taunts, threats and curses from the crowd, the urine-soaked body of Raymond Mbete, the piercing screams of his wife, and that sanctimonious man, Judge Boschoff. Not once did I regret my defence, which was to offer no defence at all. The case was open and shut, the situation hopeless. Arthur Hirschberg, the young lawyer hired for me by Simon Blithedale, my employer, was annoyed. Trying to defend a man who had no will to save himself was a frustrating task.

He cajoled me like a football coach. ‘Defend yourself! What about your family? At least tell them what you know,’ he would reproach me incessantly.

I would not budge in my intractable silence, however. I was doomed from the very beginning. I felt like one of the animals we hunted in my youth with my father, cornered and defeated. I had murdered a hero and had to pay. The case had created a political crisis and the only solution was for me to be punished – severely. The truth was known – no other truth was necessary or desired. The traitor’s version of the truth could not be the truth. Perhaps his truth was too painful. Perhaps it showed us all to be human – black and white. That we were all of us fallible, and no race had a monopoly over righteousness.

On realising the utter hopelessness of my situation I retreated deep into my shell. I recoiled in both anger and fear. Now Mr John Smith wanted me to come out. He wanted me to wake up the dead and resurrect my pain. Little did he realise that this, for me, was not simply some story I happened to know, but the memory of terrible events that shattered my family and nearly destroyed my own life.

My silence had long belied the desperation and anguish that I felt. For many years my mind had been tormented by recurrent flashes of recollection. Time had, unfortunately, not worn out my memory. Throughout my years in prison, those fateful events that preceded them and the memory of my daughter, Sindiswa, stayed vivid in my mind. But until now all of it had remained hidden and in the past.

John Smith was persistent. As I later found out, he had been hired by Simon Blithedale to record the story of my life and perhaps write a book on it. Simon Blithedale had put him in touch with me in the belief that mine was a story that should be heard.

Mr Simon Blithedale and I have known each other practically all our lives. We literally grew up together. My father worked for his father for most of his adult life. When my father died I took over his job and have worked for the Blithedale family for over four decades.

I have always called Simon Blithedale ‘Mr Blithedale’, ever since childhood. Certain things were made clear to me from an early age: he was the master’s son and I was the servant’s. I was senior to him by two years and he was senior to me in everything else.

‘You must talk to him, Hambile,’ Simon Blithedale appealed on John Smith’s behalf during one of his many visits to me. ‘Your daughter’s story must be told. It must be heard,’ he continued.

‘Certain things are best left alone, sir,’ I said respectfully.

I was grateful for his concern but slightly irritated by his intrusion.

‘I have known you for a long time, old chap. You are not a scoundrel.’ Coming from a white man this could easily be interpreted as, ‘you are not a scoundrel like other natives’. Much as I was aware of these subtleties of the white man’s language, I had long ago taught myself to ignore them. It served no useful purpose to respond.

‘Make at least some effort to save yourself. You have been in prison for long enough. If you will not speak out for yourself, then do so for your daughter’s memory.’ His voice betrayed more than a hint of frustration.

His comment hit home. Indeed, I had a daughter called Sindiswa. For many years I had not had the slightest wish to talk about her or my case. This was a chapter of my life far too painful and unpleasant to re-open. However, with the many appeals from family and friends, the resolve to remain silent had gradually weakened. In its place was now a strong wish to talk. To talk about Sindiswa’s life and death. About the misery she suffered in her short but remarkable existence.

John Smith had responded to my initial refusal to speak to him with another short note:

Dear Mr Kondile

I apologise in advance for my persistent appeals to have an audience with you. As a father myself, I empathise with your pain. However, I wish to state strongly that your continued silence is regrettable. It will certainly not lessen the pain that you now suffer.

John Smith

What cheek!

Still his letters kept coming. They were forceful. They were reasoned. They were persuasive. His letters rained down on me like hailstones in a storm. I could not escape them nor could I hide from them. I felt at times like a reluctant maiden being wooed by a stubborn suitor. Gradually but steadily, the yearning to speak strengthened. It was a desire to speak to the silent.

To awaken them to the simple but salient fact that iniquity is not only the work of the evil among us, but also a product of the silence of those who bear witness to it. My story, I hope, will clearly show the immense difference that simple folk, ordinary beings, can make when supported by implacable courage, and demonstrate the power of uncorrupted virtue and the truth. It will also show that sometimes evil does come with a hero’s face.

This is a story with a strong bias. It is a story with a lot of anger. When I refer to whites there will be a distinct harshness of tone. This is a product of many years of misery, an anguish of the soul that cannot be easily healed. When I refer to the native there will be affinity, warmth and sympathy. By native I refer to ‘the African’, ‘the Bantu’, ‘the kaffir’.

Another letter came from John Smith, and this was perhaps the one that finally broke my rapidly waning resolve:

Dear Mr Kondile

I am of course disappointed that you will not be opening my letters anymore. But please permit me to say that your stubborn silence is no different from a lie. Lying is not merely saying what isn’t true, but silence about what you know. This is no different from the silence and lies of those who witnessed your daughter’s suffering.

Respectfully yours,

John Smith

My daughter’s story does not make life simple. It demonstrates conclusively that evil is generic to humankind, that it is suffered by all nations and practised by all nations. It thrives where indifference prevails. I have no material gifts to give to my granddaughter, Vuyelwa, since my entire life has been one of poverty and hard labour. I have neither wisdom nor knowledge to impart to her. But my story, I hope, will be a gift to her, a monument in words to her mother, my daughter. For it was words that her mother loved. I offer my story as testimony to the fact that the best societies on earth are built on courage and truth. These are virtues my daughter had in abundance. She stood up to the evil of her time and she stood up to the evil of her own people. In the end she perished. For in the fight between good and evil, only one can survive. Never both.

John Smith was a Professor of Journalism from Rhodes University in Grahamstown. He was a tall, slender man with grey, luminous eyes and a deeply lined face, his forehead grooved with a permanent frown that gave him a melancholy look. His manner was deliberate and unhurried, and he carried about him the assurance of one accustomed to authority and control. I had found the disguised nervousness of previous interviewers vexing and irritating. John Smith, by contrast, was calmness itself, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I was a convicted murderer.

‘My name is Walter Hambile Kondile.’ I spoke directly into John Smith’s tape recorder. ‘I am a simple man, a Xhosa and an African, whose life is of no significance to the world.’

The recorder was an old flat black machine, a piece of crackling antiquity of the sort I imagined a university professor would have. It resembled a large black cigarette packet. The sceptical look on my face when I first saw it prompted John Smith to assure me that the recorder really worked.

‘I was born in the Eastern Cape town of Alice, seventy years ago. I lived there all my life before I came to prison. My father’s name was Makhankata – but the white people called