And so Tade went to the University of Kwazulu, Natal and took a degree in Food and Hotel Management. And so it became, Tade, equipped himself with what his dad called an ‘academic brain’ from the university to garnish the ‘practical’ gotten from his parents’ hospitality business. A business that had undergone three stages: a budding restaurant into big restaurants and then hotels.
Many middle-aged South Africans thought it was Tade’s father, a Yoruba man called Gbenga ─with three tribal marks on each of his deeply dark cheek that had started the food business. But, it was the far older ones ─these had become very few in the world who knew it wasn’t Tade’s father that started the venture but his grandfather.
Tade’s grandfather, Gbinle, had migrated from Lagos, Western Nigeria in the late fifties to South Africa with his white master. It had been a welcome idea to Gbinle from his benevolent British master who had taken an unusual liking to him, closer to that of a brother. Collins Moon admired greatly, hardworking Africans. He had nicknamed Gbinle, work-work and would hail and holler ‘work’ whenever he saw Gbinle tending to the garden behind his house; sweeping around the expansive residence that swallowed two plots of land; attending to house laundry or bathing the two German shepherds. The sixty-year-old Gbinle left Nigeria with his wife, Abike, and his only child, Gbenga, in 1958, two years to Nigeria’s independence.
Mr Moon was the chief scribe to the British colonial administration in Lagos. It was a directive from Sir James Wilson Robertson, the Governor-General of Nigeria that transferred his service to South Africa. A dream come true for Mr Moon: a yearning to spend his colonial service in South Africa, his favourite African country. He’d fallen for this love during his younger years in the 1930s in Cape Town, capital of the Cape Province when his father Sir Morris Moon was sent by the Crown from London as the new Resident of the Cape Province. The younger Moon ─like his father exulted in the natural taste of the African city: the refreshing breeze of its coast from The Berg River like The River Thames in London. The less sunny atmosphere of its summer, its winter, long views from the Table Mountain, and beautiful beach were delights akin to London. Moon felt London in Cape Town, unlike in Lagos, Nigeria. It was also a nice place but cooler Cape Town was a tempting bliss to re-taste. He also savoured the beauty of the floral region of the Cape. Its many variegated plants were discoveries he later narrated with awe to friends in London.
On Moon’s recurring request, Governor-General James Wilson Robertson spoke to his counterpart in the Union of South Africa, Governor-General Ernest George Jansen. Mr Moon left Nigeria to become the Assistant District Officer of Cape Town. He left with the gleeful Gbinle, who had always dreamt of flying in an aeroplane. Mr Moon’s benevolence also extended to the wife and son of his manservant.
The next thirteen years saw the senescent Collins Moon at seventy years and retiring as a district officer. He headed back to London having spent, altogether, thirty years in Africa. Gbinle, who was already seventy-three, was generously rewarded for his service. All his youthful life and years of senescence sunk into the service of Mr Moon, and there was no regret.
Before leaving for London, Mr Moon instructed his successor, Rudd Shitbow ─his assistant district officer to allow Gbinle to continue on as his manservant. Gbinle wasn’t interested in that. He was ─though still agile now a fairly old man that needed to slow down. But this wasn’t the main problem. It was the airs personifying Moon’s deputy, a very young man he could be a father to. His few encounters with Shitbow in the past were of sad memories. Thrice his eyes had glinted with bewilderment when Shitbow had bawled at him unnecessarily. He’d only said yes to his beloved master to avoid offending him in his moment of departure. It wasn’t six months before Gbinle hurriedly submitted his resignation letter to District Officer Rudd Shitbow. He couldn’t contain the young man’s excesses anymore and needed no one to confirm the glaring fact of their immiscibility.
After Moon’s departure, Gbinle’s eyes were already fixed on Port Elizabeth. A city on the eastern part of the Cape Province whose flourishing port became a hub for different commercial interests. With his purse ─greatly swollen by the purse of his beloved master and his gratuity, he had enough to start a business. Gbinle’s idea was for a food business. Abike, his wife, a cook with a knack for a luscious meal would be a major partner, concentrating on Nigerian dishes especially Yoruba foods. He would locate a white-only restaurant in one of the white concentrated areas of Port Elizabeth ─a restaurant serving both Blacks and Whites at that time was unimaginable. His many years associating with Europeans had trained his brain to cook European delicacies.
Gbinle arrived in Port Elizabeth with his family and settled in one of the city’s suburbs set aside for Blacks. He founded a restaurant called Gbinlex Restaurant. More money would be required to set up a restaurant for whites only; he wisely decided to concentrate on a black-only restaurant, waiting for a convenient time to launch a white-only restaurant. Luck beamed on him. Within months, Gbinle’s restaurant attracted many customers. His wife did the cooking; he supervised the serving of food done by four South African employees. The responsibility of the now twenty-seven-year-old Gbenga was to buy foodstuffs in the market. They discovered South Africans relished Yoruba food, especially Amala and Ewedu soup, Eba and Efo soup. But their greatest discovery was the people’s favourite local liquor. Most South Africans would not have a complete meal without umqombothi. The demand for the local brew spurred Gbinle to employ a brewer of the drink. He also enhanced their satisfaction by including their favourite dishes of Chakalaka, Biltong and Umphokogo-Omncinci, to his menu. The food venture grew impressively, making Gbinle dismiss the idea of a white-only restaurant to focus on a black-only one.
The next six years welcomed three branches. It was at this time Gbenga took over the management of the business from his father. Gbinle clearly understood his old frame needed to rest. In four years, Gbenga marvellously revolutionized the business. He made the enterprise birth three additional branches in Port Elizabeth, Durban and Johannesburg. The family now had three hotels and three posh restaurants. It was the same year he married Fola, a very shy, skinny, village belle, his parents had prepared for him. Gbenga was an only child; his parents showered him with all the parental love while also taking caution to forge a son worthy of pride. The couple had lingered in childlessness for many years before Gbenga became an answer to several prayers. The few times his father and mother had flown to Nigeria were mainly to visit kinsmen and scout for a good girl for their son as wife.
By the time Gbinle and his wife left the world, Gbenga had upgraded the three hotels to a five-star. Luck gave him additional land beside each hotel to buy. But luck, sometimes, is short-lived bliss; slender trees that broke too soon. Few weeks after the upgrade of the hotels, Gbenga received a phone call that a crisis in Johannesburg had turned their largest hotel into ashes. He was in his bedroom knotting his tie, set to go to work when he received the news. He dropped himself on his bed, woke his wife up and informed her. He called someone with the family phone that was on a stool beside the bed then brooded for twenty-five minutes before springing up from the bed to continue knotting his tie.
“And what are you still doing? Still knotting your tie?” Asked the visibly scared and teary Fola who was now in a state of subsided emotional reaction caused by the morning news. She had already wept painful tears for a huge business investment wasted suddenly.
Gbenga responded to his wife with a voice struggling to maintain his composure; violated by the disturbing news.
“I have to go to work, dear. Port Elizabeth is still safe. You saw me call my hotel manager and he said everywhere is calm as usual.”
“Anything can still happen. Stay home today and call the police to secure the hotel. I will call the children’s schools to allow them to come home immediately.”
“Port Elizabeth has always been a peaceful place, unlike Johannesburg that is cursed with recurring xenophobic ailments. I don’t think anything like that can happen here. The madness cannot escalate to this place.”
Gbenga gave an assuring nod that was replied with a doubtful mien by his wife. He moved closer to her and hugged her.
“I am safe. We are all safe.”
Gbenga stepped out of his residence, entered one of the cars in the garage, reversed to the outside of it and further out of the gate that had been opened by the gateman before driving off.
On his way, his eyes like a monitoring apparatus observed for any obstruction in the daily life of Port Elizabeth but it looked the same. There was the traffic jam which he was now participating in; hawkers peddling things he hardly needed; black and white people in either moving public or private cars or tricycles, and pedestrians who were mostly blacks.
Gbenga arrived at his three-storied hotel to see the glum faces of the staff coming out to meet him. He needed not to ask why. “Why ask when you know why?” he muttered to himself and stepped out of his car to address them.
“Friends, please put on a smile. The hotel in Johannesburg is gone, but thank God we still have something to rely on here.”
After a brief interaction, Gbenga entered his office to mull over his burnt hotel. Should he sell the land and completely cancel all business pursuits in Johannesburg? But the hospitality business had always been a boom in the city. Income generated from the now burnt hotel had tripled the capital that had built the hotel. It would be unwise to ignore the huge hospitality pull of Johannesburg, he concluded.
The next day was a Friday, and as was normal, Gbenga usually had meetings with his key staff. He arrived a bit late to meet his staff waiting for him in the conference room. He was about to sit down when an uproar from the entrance of the hotel distracted everyone in the conference room.
“What’s that?” he asked.
No one knew the answer. “Let me go and see, sir,” a staff member said and scooted out. Four others followed, Gbenga and two employees remained. The first worker that had dashed out returned in a few minutes panting like a racer.
“Sir, some bad boys are outside the gate trying to force it open. One of our security team has been wounded!”
Gbenga’s response was a dash to his office to call the police then he ordered the lock-up of the main door of the hotel and the backdoor including the windows. The hoodlums outside the gate were wielding knobkerries and pangas while shouting: “Fuck you, all you kwerekwere! Leave our land, bastard kwerekwere! Go, kwerekwere thieves! Go, Ngangawane oppressors!”
Gbenga wondered why he was called a thief and an oppressor. He was a benefactor to many South Africans. Almost half of the workforce in his hotel were South Africans. Gbenga ensured that. It was like a quota. The rest were either Mozambicans, Zimbabweans Namibians or Nigerians like him. And this ‘rest’, especially Nigerians, were the targeted prey of these armed hooligans banging the gate to open it.
The South African staff encouraged their foreign colleagues to remain calm, assuring them the police were coming.
“But who can remain calm?” some foreigners asked, “in the face of death? The intending murderers could spare you, their countrymen, but not us!”
Seeing through a chink in the hotel’s main door, the gate was almost surrendering to the assault of the miscreants. Gbenga sped back into his office and dialled the emergency line of the police again. He was talking to an officer when the gate was slammed open.
Someone run to him, “Sir, the gate has been broken!” He told the policeman on the phone what had befallen them, begging for immediate salvage and run out of his office to see through the chink. He saw the mob advancing towards the hotel and, in seconds, begin to bang on the door. Not even the pleading voices of their country folks inside the hotel softened them, instead, some lashed out in Zulu, “You fools are the reason why we don’t want to burn this hotel immediately until we get in to separate you all from these kwerekwere!”
Gbenga run back to his office to call the police, no one picked the ringing phone. He dialled twice unsuccessfully and hurried back to the hotel’s door. The door was almost surrendering too, its hinges now loosely attached to the formerly finely carved, black painted mahogany wood frame and the white-painted bricks.
All the frightened faces looked to Gbenga. He was even more helpless than they but being the boss, he struggled and succeeded in feigning a bold face and commanded.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there is still hope! Run to your offices or the lodging rooms and lock the doors!” They obeyed and scudded. Gbenga and some Nigerians rushed back to his office locking themselves in.
They heard the massive door crashing down and the hooligans pouring in roaring victory, but almost simultaneously, they heard the sound of a siren. The police had arrived. The hoodlums, already in the hotel, turned back to flee. Some were surrounded and arrested. The officers entered the hotel. The occupants came out to cheer them for a timely extrication. The most senior officer informed that a curfew had been imposed, the staff should hurry home.
Gbenga, before leaving, struck a deal with the superior officer to have some of his boys secure his hotel at a fee. He agreed. But the following morning, a staff member, residing close to the hospitality centre called to tell him his hotel had been burned down. It was not just a shock to the hotel owner but also a cause of confusion about how the xenophobic merchants were able to burn a secured place during a curfew! The police authority never gave him a convincing explanation other than that they were overwhelmed and overpowered by the hoodlums that stormed the hotel in the night.
Losing two hotels in forty-eight hours made Gbenga an emotional wreck for weeks, but he bounced back. In a few years, he had the two hotels rebuilt in posher form. It was a marvel to the business community of South Africa which earned him a unanimous nomination and, eventually, the award for the coveted South Africa Business Man of The Year Award; organized annually by the Zuluman Business Watch.
Gbenga received several awards, but there was just one great honour he believed he lacked. His father had pulled him into the family’s business immediately after he’d finished his secondary schooling. He never had the time to pull out again to go for further education, to earn a degree. Gbenga marked Tade, his youngest and the only son among four daughters, as his educational compensation.
Tade was designed, right from childhood, to study Food and Hotel Management in a university. So, that was why Tade went to the University of KwaZulu-Natal, to take a degree in Food and Hotel Management. His four sisters, after their schoolings, married one after the other while he was in the university. Tade’s university’s life had fetched him more South African friends. Before then, Tade’s solid friend was Bongani, a Zulu neighbour, living with his parents. Through Bongani, he had become fluent in the Zulu language. Many of his university friends spoke Afrikaans alongside English and Xhosa. Within three years at university, he got an ‘Afrikaans tongue.’
Tade’s coruscation was known in the faculty. He kept dwarfing others every year on the faculty’s scorecard, earning commendations and envious eyes. Envious eyes that glowered more during his final year when a ‘practical’ was demanded to justify a degree. During ‘practical,’ students prepared their dishes in the expansive dining hall of the university built behind the faculty. Assessors came to eat and assess the platefuls. The chief assessor, Mr Kuhle, a slim built Mpondo man, scored Tade highest in the preparation of South African delicacies like Mogudu, Biltong, Koeksister, Chakalaka and Braa. Other members of the panel also concurred with how toothsome Tade’s dishes were and hailed him as the winner. An ovation erupted for Tade while glowering eyes reddened, even though a bulk of these red eyes had their hands clapping loudly. But his closest friends, Mbopha and Mbuyiseni’s eyes glinted with elation and marvelled at his uncommon victory.
***
“Still on your story?” Senzo said to Tola when he entered his friend’s posh sitting room to meet him writing on his dining table. He sat down beside him.
“It’s not really a story but chronicling a reality,” Tola said warmly, dropping his pen on the table.
“Still a story. Whether fictional or factual, it will still be called a story,” Senzo insisted.
“You are right. But I will call it a faction.”
“Faction?”
“Yes. I first heard the word from my favourite writer, Kole Omotoso, in a magazine he was interviewed for.”
Senzo scoffed. “A magazine was the first to open your eyes to what a popular word like faction means.”
“You missed the point. I know faction means a splinter group within a group.”
“What else does it mean?” Senzo said with a visage wondering if he had actually missed something.
Tola chuckled at his confusion. “You see? I should be the one to educate you. ‘Faction’ also means to weave facts and fiction together. Or using your creative tools to write history. That was what Kole Omotoso did in his magnum opus, Just Before Dawn.”
“Magnum what?”
Tola broke into laughter. “You don’t know that, too? It means the book of a writer that brings the writer to limelight or stardom. Just like your South African brother, Oswald Mitshali, whose book of poetry, Sound Of A Cowhide Drum brought him to the limelight.”
“Hmm. But you can understand my ignorance. I am not a student of Literature but of Accounting.”
“You were when we were in secondary school, in the same class. We studied Literature in English, remember?”
“So?” Senzo grunted. “You are better than me?”
“You be the Judge.”
“You be the judge!”
Tola ripped out laughter. “You see? You are already getting annoyed because of the truth. And truth of this nature had and is still fetching troubles and deaths on us, Nigerians, here. But I meant no offence, Brother.”
“I wasn’t offended. Only learning things from you.” A beam suddenly brightened Senzo’s face.
“Really?”
“Ooooh! But why is it that you people rarely trust us, and see every South African as synonymous with violence? I greatly encouraged you to write this story, remember? I want the world to know the truth about your family and the atrocious deeds heaped upon them by some disgruntled elements here. I want you to be the voice of your family. The voice for other Nigerians and nationalities here that have suffered for just being foreigners. You still distrust me?”
“Just kidding, Senzo.” He turned and faced him, smiling. “Don’t tell me you want to believe I trust you no more. You and a few others of your people are my hope and strength in this country. Though you and I were not born then I was told your parents shared my parents’ pains when our hotels in Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg were turned into burnt wastes. Your parents shared the sorrow of my mother when some crazy, jealous folks gunned down my father before I was born. You are a brother, Senzo, and you will always be to me.”
“Get your brother Umqombothi. That is what you need to soothe his soul now!” He replied in feigned anger.
Tola laughed. “When will you get rid of this local liquor? Get down with international tastes like scotch, Poplar soul, Pink Ghost …”
“I am not a ghost. Drinking Umqombothi is all I care for.”
“And where do you think I can get umqombothi in this elitist part of the city?”
“Shuu. Have you not heard the popular saying? Anywhere a South African lives, lives umqombothi. The drink is right here.”
“Here? Do not make me laugh.”
“Call your manservant.”
“Makeba!”
A middle-aged, chubby looking Zulu man walked in from the compound.
“Sir, I want to believe you know where umqombothi is sold here?” Senzo asked.
“I know.”
“What?” It sounded unbelievable to Tola. Senzo guffawed. Tola asked. “Where?”
“Next Street, Sir. Oliver Tambo Street.”
“Oliver Tambo Street?”
Senzo threw out another laugh at the stunned visage of his friend. “I told you. I told you!”
“Hm. Get some for my friend.”
The man left.
“Have you finally pinned down a title for the story?” Senzo asked.
“I think I have. You Be The Judge. The phrase rang into my head just these few minutes as I was conversing with you.”
“Hm. That gives me co-ownership of the title.”
Tola laughed. “Whichever, you are already part of making the story into a success. What do you think about the title?” Tola asked.
“Though the phrase is a cliche it’s apt. It rhymes with the story. Let people judge sincerely. Was the violence on your family a justified vengeance or not?”
“You got it.”
“So, what stage are you at the moment? You should have gone far by now.”
“Well, not really. At times, this writer’s block afflicts me. But I have written about how my great-grandfather came to South Africa through the kindness of his white master called Mr Collins Moon. A District officer in the British colonial administration. Then the commencement of a restaurant business, after his master retired to London. How the business blossomed; the death of my great-grandfather; my grandfather taking over the business. Then about my father, who was a student at the University of Kwazulu-Natal; his triumph as the best student in his faculty. This is where I am at the moment.”
“You have gone far and done well.”
“Thanks, Brother. As soon as you leave here, I will continue. I am free these days.”
“Was there a time you were not free? Born into affluence. Born into a business empire, and the chief heir to this empire. What work do you need to do other than sit, eat and shit!”
“Hahaha, really?”
***
Tade had gone home with boundless elation. At home, he conveyed the good news to his mother, Fola, and about the grinning and griming faces. Many years had changed Fola, his mother. She was now plump, prettier and polished by exposure and educational acquisition.
The following month came the graduation ceremony of Tade. His father, Gbenga, had travelled to Nigeria, so his mother led other members of the family to the ceremony at the university to felicitate with their own. The next day while sitting with his mother at the spacious sitting room, he rang his girlfriend, Zakhona, who had also attended the ceremony, to come over. He cut off the line of his handset to be greeted by one of his mum’s recurring admonitions:
“Hm, you are still serious with this girl? Are you not afraid? You told me how her people, your own course mates, were drunk with jealousy when you emerged as the best student in your faculty because you defeated all of them in their own food preparations. You know how hostile many of them are to Nigerians. And they pass on the hostility to their own women married to Nigerians, insulting them as paper wives, gold diggers, and further pass on their animosity to any child born from such union. You and I know exactly the derogatory name they will give to your children if Zakhona bears them for you: Small lee kwerekwere!”
Remember our burnt hotels; remember one of them almost lynched you some years ago on an issue related to this. How do you now think they will feel for you to be romancing one of their most beautiful girls, perhaps the most beautiful here in Port Elizabeth, and you, a bloody Nigerian is the one flogging her?”
Sexual privacy and prudishness were not meant for Tade’s mother. Fola was always open and raw with her son.
Tade laughed. “Ha, Mama. You have come again.”
“Shut up! Can you swear that you have never flogged her?” She feigned fury.
“Hey, Mama. Who told …?”
“Just be careful not to impregnate someone you are not married to otherwise I will pray to Sango, not Jesus Christ, to punish your careless penis!”
Tade shook with a guffaw. His mother could not help laughing too.
“Hey, Mama, I hope you will not kill me one day.” He continued to laugh.
“Now, now, let us be serious. I have no hatred for that girl. She is nice and very beautiful. Tall like you with the same fair complexion. This is a good match. Apart from her people, you know how things like this are in our family’s clan. Our first males don’t marry non-Yoruba. Your grandfather had to return to Nigeria to fetch me for your father. Even your sisters ─theirs is not a necessity, but we still worked out Yoruba husbands for them except Bisola, whose heart was stolen by one Xhosa man. You should please not allow the same thing to be done to you. If not that the time is not ripe, your father would have used the opportunity of his journey to Nigeria to get a worthy suitor for you in the village. This Zakhona girl is not meant for you.”
“She is meant for me, Mama. We have talked about this. I love her, I really do.”
Fola ripped out a hiss and stood up. “We are talking about a better love life for you; you are here rambling about one foreigner you are infatuating with.”
“Ha, Infa …”
“Please, please, let me go and take care of some things in one of the hotels. I will be back in two hours.” She headed out.
“Ok, Mama.”
As if the woman forgot something, she turned back swiftly to her son. “I just told you now to be very careful with these people, I mean it. They are terrors to foreigners.”
“I know mum, and I will, thanks.”
Fola zoomed off in her jeep. She had long refused the service of a driver and considered it wastage of money. “I have hands,” was her recurring response to friends who saw it as a necessity for a woman of worth to hire a driver.
Tade’s mother’s sudden repeated warning took him back in memory. Indeed some South Africans are terrors to foreigners. He said in his mind and somewhat unconsciously found himself nodding to substantiate his own statement.
He had on some occasions encountered in words and deeds the barbs and airs unleashed on him by the citizens of the country he was born into, a country he loved and lived in as a foreigner, but the harshest encounter that remained etched in his memory occurred eight years ago when he was a secondary school student at the Dennis Brutus College. He was in his final year at that time:
His closest friend in the class was a Mpondo girl called Ntokozi, it wasn’t Tade that brought about the closeness but her.
Ntokozo had the habit of showering compliments on Tade’s well ironed, neat uniform even to the detriment of hers. The encomiums weren’t an exaggeration nor borne out of the girl’s admiration of Tade, that had helplessly slipped into affection, it was actually a truth uncontested.
He was arguably the best well-dressed student in the class. It wasn’t officially announced but others knew he held the prize.
This status and Ntokozo’s close fraternity with Tade emitted envy from his classmates with the harshest boiling out from Sibisi, who was long nursing a yet to be revealed affection for Ntokozi. He had always been bedevilled with a lack of courage to woo.
To Tade, Ntokozo was a very good friend of his and nothing more. To Sibisi, Tade was an impediment, worsened by his own trembling tongue that kept suffering a comatose anytime time availed him the opportunity to talk to Ntokozo. Sibisi’s inability to woo depressed him and in turn heightened by Tade and Ntokozo’s rosy relationship turned into a deep hatred and anger towards Ntokozo’s favourite friend.
During one of their saunterings during break hours, they sauntered way down into the bushy part of the school’s expansive landmass. It was a virgin land earmarked for the building of more classes and a befitting, modern science laboratory in the future. Tade and his friend rarely moved that far into the heart of the land that mainly housed mango trees and cashews before making a u-turn. They strolled further on that particular day, and trouble came calling.
Three students that were obviously strangers to them came out from their hideouts of large mango trees and surrounded them. Armed with kieries and pangas, one of them barked out:
“You kwerekwere dare to steal our friend’s girlfriend!?”
Tade stood still, tried almost successfully to banish his fear to think straight on how to defend himself and his friend or possibly find an escape route.
Ntokozo was already shivering with fear, pleading and whimpering.
“Don’t beg us!” one of them yelled at her, “you are too foolish to know that it’s madness to ignore your fellow South African for a Grijambas!”
“Please, she… she is just a …”
“Shut up!” One of them cut off Tade, they moved closer, Tade dashed out in speed before they closed in, they pursued, but the chase was a very short-lived one.
It was truncated by the emergence of a teacher, also strolling around. As Tade’s speeding legs raced towards him the man stopped abruptly, “Hey! what’s going on?”
Tade, visibly grateful for such an unexpected gift of salvage, stopped running while the chasers scudded away in different routes.
Breathing heavily, he thanked the teacher for a life saved. The horrid scene had since remained evergreen in his memory.
Tade called a maid who went to the fridge in the kitchen and returned with a tray of Apples and bananas for him.
Minutes later, he received a visitor.
“It is really a great feat to become number one on things you leant, flooring those who are born into it. I can’t help repeating it. I am so proud of you, darling.” Zakhona said with all the warmth of love generous on her face.
“I wouldn’t have achieved this without you. You are the rock rocking me to move on.” Tade’s staring eyes at his lover were soulful and sincere.
Zakhona released a chuckle. “Why are you staring at me?”
He smiled and insinuated his right hand up to her left shoulder. “Because I keep falling in love with you again and again.”
“Hm. Again and again. When the same love is under a threat to be dissevered by people from your side?”
Tade’s mother had never expressed her disapproval in words or actions to Zakhona. She was the cheerful mother wearing all warmness coated with joviality whenever Zakhona visited. But Tade had awhile ago, through the sweet aroma of tact, conveyed the message of an unbroken family record of marrying from their kind ─which his mother would be happier for him to maintain, the unbroken cord.
Zakhona got the message even though it was said with a harmless tongue trained to talk tactfully.
“No one can dissever our romance,” Tade assured.
“When your mother is gunning for another for you in Nigeria.”
Tade’s forehead furrowed. “And who gave you this latest BBC information?”
“Is it not true?”
Tade smiled, shook his head. He saw the nakedness of his girlfriend’s shrewdness to loosen his tongue, for her to know whether their relationship was blessed with longevity that would stretch into marriage.
“Well, I don’t know where you got your Aljazeera news from. But I know I once told you about an unbroken marital record in my family which I am ready to break for you even though my parents would not want it broken.”
“And how would you sort things out with them?”
“That’s my business, not yours. You are mine already.” He released another smile, designed to show he was in full control of the matter and to blot out her doubt. “What concerns me now is Yende.”
“Yende?”
“The guy still loves you. Still embittered. To him, I am still the devil that stole you from him.”
“Stole? Hunh. But I was never once his.”
“I know. You needed to see his face during the presentation of a plaque to me as the overall winner. And what more, he was actually among the least in the scorecard.”
“Keep keeping him aside. He is not a priority in our relationship.”
“He has painted me with the blackest colour to people. I can feel the coldness in the conducts of some of my course mates.”
“Thank God you are through with your studies. You will no longer go to a place where another will be boiling with jealousy on you.”
“But he lives here in Port Elizabeth with his parents.”
“So? He is far away from this area, and further from my residence. Our encounters will be rare. He should be the least of our concern, especially me that has something more important to be concerned about at the moment.”
“What is it?”
“Not now. I need to be very sure of something before telling you something.”
“Something like?”
“Hey, you do counsel me to be patient. I am flinging the same counsel at you. I might need to discuss something with you but definitely not now, Sweetie.”
“Ok. Em … walk with me down to the next street. My body needs a stroll. Have been at home all morning.”
“Ok. After that, I will go home. It’s almost night.”
“Yeah, will drive you home when we return.”
Tade was returning from the short stroll with his girlfriend when a car in red zoomed from behind and knocked him down with a bullet to the head before speeding off.
***
Tola was with his mother in her expansive bedroom decorated to taste like a five-star hotel’s presidential suit. Zakhona used to share gags with friends, that, she would not have a hotel with a lodging room grander than the one she laid her body to sleep. Her bedroom often wore new looks.
Tola sat on one of the only two sofas imported from Dubai. The lustrous fur-like covering of the settee had the exact black and white stripes of a panda, and so was the bedsheet.
Tola saw the Sunday evening as the right time to meet his mum, for some info. He went to her with a pen and jotter.
“So you are really serious to write this book?” Her mum said, sitting on the bed. Zakhona had appreciated more in beauty over the years. Growing older did nothing to her ravishing physique. At forty-four, wooers kept stalking. But no wooer had ever understood the mystery to why she always said no.
“We need to write our story. There is a need to set the record straight.” Her son replied.
”Will that bring back to life the love of my life? Your father, Tade, was all I had. Can your book bring him back? If no, then it isn’t worth it.”
“It’s worth it, Mum. And have you forgotten you have me?”
She looked at her son and smiled, followed by a whisper. “Never.” It never ceased to surprise her that her little boy had grown so big and even well bearded at just twenty-three.
“I know. But we must let these people know that our family worked hard for the affluence we have gotten. Not the parasites, swindlers, oppressors and whatever they have labelled us as.”
“Well, you know I will always support you on anything.” She said, still staring proudly at him. She knew she had a son of precocity. Who would say she hadn’t when he could, at such a very young age walk in the brainy arena of the intellectuals. Chronicling different worlds before his. Poised to defend his forbears. Wherever they were, they would be proud of a great descendant. She must encourage him. “What do you want from me, sweetheart?”
“I have arrived ─in the story at the point where daddy was killed as he was returning home with you from a stroll. I want details on that. How was Yende caught as the killer?” Tola drew closer the gold-coloured table in the bedroom, ready to scribble.
“Hmmm. After your dad was shot, it was reported to the police. Your grandfather, who had travelled to Nigeria at that time, rushed down here to attend the burial and to push for justice. Your grandfather was rich and popular; you should understand why the police authority handled his case with all seriousness. Soon, Yende ─the main plotter and others were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Before then, I knew it was Yende. I told the investigating officers when they came to me for questioning.”
“What were really his reasons for carrying out such a crime? Although I remember you told me he was jealous of dad’s academic success, and that he wooed you unsuccessfully, and that deepened his hatred to dad. Any other reason?”
“Envy. Envious of your family’s wealth. Some of my people have this spirit of envy and hatred. Look at the burning of our biggest hotels. Look at the killings of other prosperous Africans like Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and Malawians. Actually, some foreigners here have their faults but my people are overreacting. Their overreactions are rooted sometimes in envy and hatred.”
“Hm, true. You once told me that grandma disapproved of your relationship with dad because you are not Yoruba. After the murder of my dad, how did she react?”
“But you don’t need that in the book.” Her brows furrowed.
“I do. But not to cast anyone in a bad light. After all, you and granny became best of friends before she passed away. It’s just to enlighten people on certain family life.”
“Well, Mama was angry. She said it was because of me her son was killed. I received terrible insults. I understood her. After the burial ceremony of your father, my parents came to announce to your grandparents that I was carrying his baby. Mama called me a liar. Baba believed his son was responsible for my pregnancy and urged me to come and live with them. My parents agreed. That was how I began to live with your father’s parents. It wasn’t rosy at the beginning. Except for Baba, oh, I will forever be grateful to him, every member of your family hurled contempt on me. Anytime your father’s sisters visited, I could smell heavily the contempt they had for me. Still, I could understand them: my people murdered their brother because of me. A foreigner who was now claiming to be pregnant for him. You know I told you, your father didn’t know I was pregnant. I was only suspecting I was. I intended to go for a pregnancy test to confirm before informing him. But unfortunately, it was the day I told him I will tell him something another day that he was gruesomely taken away from me.” The last sentence was followed with teary eyes.
“Mummy that is enough. We will continue another day.”
“No, no, am ok.” She swiftly wiped her face with her hand.”Their hostilities died when I gave birth to you. They could see clearly a mini version of your father. As you grew up it became clearer. Mama began to shower me with motherly love. She often said you reminded her exactly of how your father used to cry during his childhood. I became a friend to all. Just like the biblical Job in his later years. And also, my decision to remain unmarried endeared me to your people. They stopped seeing me as a gold-digger. They saw selflessness. I kept refusing mama’s suggestion to allow another man to marry me until she left me alone. Your grandparents later suggested to me that I am free to bear the family’s surname if I wanted. That was how I became known as Zakhona Gbinle. So, any other thing?”
“Thanks, Mum. That will be all for now. I still need to talk to grandfather when he returns from visiting Auntie Dupe for more info.”
“When are you publishing and launching the book?”
“I will launch it hopefully in December, during the fortieth anniversary of our business empire. The book will also compliment the history of our family’s business life.”
***
It was an occasion that pulled South Africa’s elites to Port Elizabeth, the headquarters of Gbilex International Hotels. Some invitees had wondered why such a big event hadn’t been held in either of the country’s three capital cities: Pretoria, Cape Town or Bloemfontein. Or, in Johannesburg South Africa’s largest commercial city, where the biggest of the Gbinlex International Hotels was located. Some concluded the decision to have the book launch at Port Elizabeth may not have been far from the uncertainty that had seen the family’s largest hotel at the time, burnt to ashes in Johannesburg some years ago. But the Gbinles didn’t in their faintest thought mark Johannesburg as nightmarish nor the devil’s zone because of their painful loss. After all, they had made good money in the city, and a new hotel had been built in the same location ─where the previous one was burnt with a grandeur that dwarfed the first. Their choice for Port Elizabeth was simply because it was where it all began. Where the mother hen first hatched the first chick. Respect and recognition, she must not be deprived.
The venue was the family’s largest hotel in the city whose reception hall had seaters totalling three thousand. Every invited dignitary living outside Port Elizabeth had been lodged and refreshed freely in the hotel for the one-day event. It was a very huge bill but the Gbinles were far stronger than that. Every lodged invitee received one of the most expensive wines in South Africa, the Pink Ghost with every comfort craved for was given.
At the event, was the Gbinle family, starting with Grandfather Gbenga Gbinle. The patriarch of the house ─donned in white Agbada lace was sandwiched in the front seats by his descendants. On his right was Tola, in a black suit similar to that of his four in-laws and six male cousins. Tola’s mother’s seat was to the immediate left of Grandfather Gbenga. Others on the left included Tola’s four Aunts and his nine female cousins. The female Gbinles were all in white laces with a different style to each’s taste.
The Book reviewer was Dr Rohihlahla Tutu of the University of Pretoria. He had been a friend of the Gbinles for many years. It was in the knowledge of a few, that, grandfather’s benevolence saw him through his university’s learning.
“This book, written by Tola Gbinle, tells it all,” said Dr Tutu, as he adjusted the frame of his lens on his left ear lobe. He had just been called up to the dais, suited in a pinstripe suit. “The Gbinle family is indeed a blessing to South Africa. Reading through this book, I saw how perseverance and commitment built a business to its peak. I saw an ageing Nigerian arriving in South Africa in the late fifties ─with his family along with his white master, who was transferred by his colonial superiors to this country during the colonial era. This Nigerian has given to us the largest hospitality business in South Africa!”
Applause erupted and lingered for a while. The reviewer assessed the aesthetic strength of the book and also pointed out its few flaws before touching its title.
“The title is apt. What else should the book be called other than You Be The Judge? We must be the judge and judge rightly that these people,” pointing at the Gbinles, “our brothers and sisters from Nigeria, have not in any way become oppressors nor thieves in our land as claimed by the ignoramuses in our midst. The killing of their son and the burning of their hotels were perpetrated by envious and evil hearts among us. This is not to say every Nigerian or other fellow Africans on our soil are all saints and blessings to us. And equally, this is not to say that, no South African has touched their lives positively. I believe many have.”
Tutu’s felicitous words attracted clapping hands from the Gbinles with approbating nods that were joined by others. He continued. “But the point is, and I believe many will concur to this fact, we have benefited from Nigerians far more than what they have benefited from us.”
A standing ovation for the family followed.
GLOSSARY:
KIERIES OR KNOBKIERIES: A short, thick stick with a knobbed head, traditionally used as a club or missile by the indigenous peoples of South Africa.
KWEREKWERE: (Also called Makwerekwere) A derogatory word for despised, unwanted foreigners in South Africa. It’s used to mock Nigerians in particular who they believe have a peculiar way of speaking, saying Nigerian speeches sound awful to their ears as: “kwere … Kwere,” or “kwe … kwe … kwe.
NGANGAWANE AND GRIJAMBAS are derogatory terms or insults. Having almost the same meaning as kwerekwere.
PANGAS: Is a kind of South African machete.