To the poet, the ‘grunts’, the ‘croaks and gurgle-sounds’ and even the ass-whipping of these early non-verbal friendships remain preferable to those false communications based on misunderstandings that come later with language.
Talking about unhealed wounds and my cicatrix that never give up on their itching: this Mark Of Cain below my left eye, this is how I got it. My high school mates wanted to run a train, a belt on this girl I had connected with in a tavern. Let me properly break it down. I lived in Phefeni, that night I was in a place called Emndeni, other side of that botched Pavlovian experiment slave-labour camp called Soweto. Far from home. We went drinking. I met a girl. Street-corner chemistry and the fireflames. Happiness, all good and nice in the neighbourhood. That was the night vagina circumcised me. I took a thrust and pain shot through my groin, like dynamite going off in my crotch. Like some razor had gone slash in my loins. I left the place with blood on my pants-front and flowing from under my eye cos then, these guys, friends of mine, came in and stuck an Okapi in my back, demanding that I get off so they could go in.
Memories of shit I would rather drop except to say I got cut, the one with the knife was trying to poke my eye out, I think. Well, they carry reminders of that night too. We all do, hearts heavy with piled-up crap.
Friendship here is not achieved by speech, but by sensation. It is communicated by means of the flesh. For Lesego, friendship is a trace left by and on the body.
I am no great emo-anything ultra-sensitive just cos I go as a poet, no need to strike hurt poses at the slightest provocation and bitching out. I’ve known all sorts abuse, rejection, been humiliated enough to know I prefer my wounds physical.
Lying to me means you view me as beneath you, in my books, cos you with-hold, bend/twist/turn-about information I am the poorer for not having and I think you laughing at me from some dark depths in you somewhere. You put yourself in superior-mode because you KNOW & GLORY in my ignorance. That is how it reads. So high you have a god’s arse-view ... and all the way down ... thinking: slow, cretin, blind, can’t see when being played. Superiority and inferiority. But guess what, I can pat you on your head. I can be very liberal to you. My name can be Alan Paton.5 I can run my reformatory. And you’re inferior to me.
Time and time again it is language that fails and betrays us — in its inability to communicate, but also in how it defines and polices friendship, nowhere more so than in the rhetoric saturating our political national discourse. ‘Comrade’ as a case in point: party political affiliation as the definition of camaraderie and the bond that dictates companionship — this is what language thrusts on us.
Let me start off by saying about this comrade thing. I’ve already spoke of was cousin, Vincent Sekete. He was one of the Sasol Three, the first guerillas of MK. They hit Sasol.6 They hit Voortrekker Hoogte. They hit Sasol again. Up to today they are standard icons, lions of the apartheid revolutionary struggle. They were finally shot, ambushed along the 20km fence of Kruger National Park. The way I see it is like several war movies put together: SA defense force uniforms strewn across that landscape.7
Later, we sought to find how they were betrayed, how they were known to have been in that place at that time. Leaders to wit Joe Modise and Alfred Nzo were said to be to blame for having tipped off the SA authorities about that. Now they are high up in the ANC, now ruling party ... So it was a shock for me to hear my aunt telling me, that actually no, those might have been in the know, but the actual person who fingered them was the hero of the SA struggle, that great hero-leader later to be himself slain. All said, no need for names. I then get to ask myself about this cause of which we are speaking, comradeship. About whether comradeship is about giving up that within us that defines us human. Because you have to be something other than human to be at home with that, it was betrayal, treachery hurts very deep within you.
We see in this country people who are threatening all the rest of us with obliteration if we dare speak ill against this one pathetic creature with a lot of power. They’re saying we are prepared to die, to kill for him. And then they sell out in that person and become them. So what exactly is it that we mean? Are we talking about the politics of expediency? It’s expedient that I sit across the table from you, Stacy, now talking friendship because it serves my purpose.
Let’s talk about Durban today. Joburg today. We don’t have to go to the Holocaust. Rwanda. We can just talk about today. I have spent a lot of my time in KZN [KwaZulu-Natal]. Today people are being killed because they are dark. How long before the people I stood with, the comrades turn on me? How long before it graduates from people darker than navy blue to you, to me? ‘I might’ve had a droplet of my blood merged with him, but it’s not Zulu, man. He should die too, this guy.’ So for me, this issue of friendship is ...
Patrice Lumumba sold out by who? Thomas Sankara ... who killed Sankara? Blaise Compaoré, longtime comrade, friend if you want to say, whatever. The list is endless, endless. And once you’re conscious of these things, once you know of these things, then you know more likely than not you are going to die at the hands of whoever it is you consider friend ... I know that, I know that.
To embrace friendship then, Lesego suggests, one must embrace betrayal and perhaps it is only at the moment of betrayal, and in the loss that comes after, that we truly recognize friendship. The opposite of ‘friend’, then, is not ‘enemy’ but ‘askari’ (traitor).8 He writes, ‘I’m just saying ... betrayed by these people. I define myself as their friend. Whether they are my friends in turn is for them to say. I operate from the inside out. That’s it. I operate from the inside out. I embrace them.’
Similarly Lesego refuses binaries via which friendship is constrained to amity, benevolence, brotherhood, charity, fellowship, or friendliness:
Are we grappling with a moral issue? Does positivity or negativity impact on what defines friendship? Does it need to be defined in terms of whether it operates on the positive sphere? Is it only friendship when it comes to good? I’ll clarify what I mean. My brother in law ... these people were terrible criminals, who killed people and whatever, whatever. People in gangs ... The flipside of that is, when they would go out together and rob people, they were prepared to give their lives for each other. Is that friendship or is it not? If I don’t leave you there. I’m prepared to die with you. Surely that’s a human thing? Human beings are stealthy beings.
Nor is he prepared to accept an idea of public, or ‘civic friendship’, based in kinship, collegiality, community, civility, or even ideology or artistic practice. Lesego does acknowledge that political, social, and artistic formations such as Black Consciousness and the cultural organizations and independent magazines that sprang up under apartheid were hotbeds of immanence, presenting themselves as a society of friends (influence, competition, rivalry), and thus promoting opinion. His debut documentary film, Word Down the Line (2014), directed by Bobby Rodwell and featuring interviews with South African poets such as James Matthews, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Mafika Gwala, Jeremy Cronin, Sandile Dikeni, Vonani Bila, Khulile Nxumalo, Kgafela oa Magogodi, and Gift Ramashia, tells this story. But he is wary of absorption by any groups, institutions, and other forces that might reduce one’s ability to change, move, or create freely.
Here’s another thing. I’ve got my eyes open to what some people regard as a Black Consciousness era. I don’t think it was an era petrified in time; it’s not a frozen moment. I am very conscious of who and what I am. I define myself as Black Conscious. I understand what BC is, indeed, as the Wretched of the Earth. Regardless of the amount of melanin they’ve got and dah, dah, dah ... Now, we show, Down the Line at Rhodes University. And at the end of it, the Q&A session these youngsters say, ‘No, you know what elder?’ They say to me, ‘I suggest that all the white people leave the hall now so we can get started.’ Now, a comrade of mine, who I would give my life for, who’s directed this thing that’s moved them so much, is caucasian. She’s caucasian. I know who this person is. And I know what this person did at a time when these black people were too even scared to scratch out a little word on a page for fear of brutalisation.