Dreaming of Light
Jayne Bauling
Tafelberg
For my family, and for all the real life Spike Maphosas, giving hope.
Chapter 1
There’s a shoot-out in the mine tonight.
One of the new Mozambican boys speaks awkward English. He’s the one who gets excited when we hear the gunfire. He sits up and switches on his miners’ lamp. Then he nudges the smaller boy he keeps close to him most of the time.
They must be thirteen or fourteen. I’m only eighteen, but I feel thirty, forty years older than these two.
The bigger boy is saying something to his friend. I don’t know their language, but I can tell from the lift in his voice that he thinks the shooting signifies something good.
“Your lamp won’t last if you waste it on this,” I warn him, using the harsh voice I’ve taught myself since Papa Mavuso put me in charge of his recruits.
Recruits. That’s what he calls them, expecting me to believe him. He’s forgotten that I was one of his recruits four years ago.
The boy turns his head my way, but he doesn’t switch off the lamp. You can’t see people’s faces properly down here. The lamps we use create too many shadows, but I remember what this boy looks like from the day Papa Mavuso showed him and the other one to me and told me it was time to go down the mine again. That was two months ago. The smaller boy looked nervous that day, but not really scared. That could have been because the bigger one kept talking to him in their language, laughing and encouraging him.
He had no idea what was coming. When he switched to English to talk to Papa and me, I understood that he was eager to start his new job, proud that he’d be doing men’s work, earning good money. His eyes were shining and he smiled nearly all the time, a fat, happy smile that puffed up his cheeks into smooth rounds.
I hadn’t seen the two boys before so I knew they must have been brought through to the Barberton mountainlands during the night, after I’d locked the other boys into the shed where they sleep when we’re up from the mine.
I used to be one of those locked-in boys, but Papa Mavuso trusts me now. I’m the oldest one left, so I think he has to. He has even let me go home to Swaziland twice in the last two years. That’s because he knows I’ll be back, like the other men. That’s the difference between men and boys. It’s only the children, the very new ones, who want to run away, back to the places where they were stolen.
Maybe this boy thinks the gunfight will provide a chance for him to escape.
The shots are coming from somewhere past the place where the men sleep. It’s tradition that they always take the wider spaces and the boys and I must make do with whatever else is available.
“What’s your name?” I ask the boy with the lamp.
Two months and I don’t know their names. That’s the way it is in the mines. I don’t really know why I’m asking now.
“Me, I am Taiba Nhaca,” he says, and I can hear that he’s smiling. “And my friend, he is called Aires.”
Smiling, just because I’ve asked his name. There must be something wrong with the kid. People don’t smile underground. What boys do underground is grow up fast, but this Taiba seems like a child still.
“What do you think it is?” I ask. “The shooting?”
Most of the time I don’t want to know anything about anyone down here. Especially, I don’t want to know anything about the children. The recruits.
So I’m not sure why I’ve asked Taiba that question. Maybe just so I can kick him into reality, force him into the jump from boy to man that most of them make in their first few weeks.
“Police maybe?” he suggests, and I understand that he wants it to be the police. “They come get us out from here. Take us home, me and Aires.”
“Don’t be stupid. The police won’t come down into the mines. They’re not paid enough and it’s too dangerous. When the big companies shut down a mine, they pay for private security firms – big bucks. They’re supposed to catch us. Then they hand us over to the police.”
“So it’s same?” Taiba doesn’t get it. “For me and Aires, also the other boys from home and from Swaziland. And that other one, Zimbabwe?”
I didn’t know I could laugh underground. It’s an ugly sound, meant to crush the stupid innocence out of him the way a rockfall would crush out his life.
“Better hope it’s just our guys and men from another syndicate shooting each other. Wena, trust me, you don’t want it to be security. I’ve seen them in action. It doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to. Anyway, it sounds like the shooting is stopping.”
There has been just one shot in the last thirty seconds. Now there are only angry male voices, voices I know from every day down here – our men, with one of them groaning and crying out in pain. I don’t even wonder if anyone is dead. It makes no difference to me. It would only make a difference if another syndicate took over the mine.
Or if the security people cleared us out.
I used to be like Taiba Nhaca. I also thought there would be an end to the heat and the darkness. For some it does end, almost as soon as it starts. I’m one of the lucky ones. So far. Luck doesn’t last, only the darkness does. I will probably die down here, in a rockfall or from trapped poisonous gases. Or I might be shot. Soon the syndicate will start arming me like the older men. I’ll have to shoot then, and there’ll be someone shooting back at me.
Best would be arrest and jail, even deportation. Then I could still come back, like all the others do. It’s the zama zama cycle: underground, jail, back underground. Some of the men down here have been in prison two, three times.
“But me and Aires, we must go home.” This kid is obstinate. “Our families, I think they are . . . worry?”
I lift my shoulders, though I don’t think he can see me.
“I was also trafficked into South Africa,” I tell him. “Four years ago. After a time you stop thinking about home so much.”
“But that first man, at my home there in Mozambique? He say is good work for us in South Africa, one month only, but big money to take home. For me very big, because I learn English helping the people from South Africa when they come make holiday in my country.” Something like longing vibrates in his voice so that I know it’s a good memory. “And that Papa Mavuso, the first man he give us to him when we cross. Papa, he say men’s work in the mine and men’s money. But we get nothing, us boys. We cannot buy food and drinks like you and the men when those other people come selling. The food Papa send down for us, it is bad food. I think Aires get sick. Also from that Faceman beating when we don’t bring enough . . . This is why we must leave here and go home.”
“Papa Mavuso didn’t let me have money for the first two years,” I say to let him know he won’t get me to feel sorry for him. “Be patient. The money will be good when it comes. That’s how Papa knows he can trust me to come back. He only sends some of my money to me here in the mine; the rest he holds for me. Sometimes he lets me take it to my mother in Swaziland, and then I come back and go down again, three months, six months the one time, and up again.”
It’s half true. I keep doing it for the money, but also because it’s all I know. In those first two years I stopped wanting, stopped caring, because wanting and caring made it worse – being half naked in the heat and dark, getting beaten, listening to shoot-outs and thinking I was going to die. Most of all, I stopped wanting to survive because the wanting could turn your terror to madness.
“No.” This Taiba is obstinate, like I said. “Aires, I must take him home.”
“Wake up, bhuti.” I’m surprised to hear myself calling him bhuti. “You know Faceman and those others, how they call us foreigners fools and send us into the most dangerous parts of the mine. They’re not going