Native tongue Bafana Khumalo
DEBI, come back, my love. All is forgiven. I apologise for treating you badly. I know that when we decided to call it quits last year — when you doffed your hat at me, clenched that cigarette at the corner of your mouth and said, “Keep the peace black brother, I will be back. Maybe not tomorrow, but I will be back” — I derisively spat out a racial expletive at you and called you a condescending, patronising guilt tripper. I then watched that all-knowing smile at the corner of your mouth as you cranked up your coughing Volkswagen and rode into the sunset, jumping a robot on account of the brakes not working. “What a waste,” I spat out and the brothers laughed out loud when I said, “Good riddance.”
Yeah, now I remember when I first met you. It was around this time last year and I was hanging out on a street corner reading the comics section in a newspaper and you said: “Hi, my name is Democracy Education Broadcast Initiative, but my friends call me Debi or Debs. May I sit down next to you?” I gave you the look and considered telling you to go and do something to yourself, but then thought better of it.
That was the beginning of a very strange relationship, for after that initial meeting, you were everywhere. You hounded me like an old South Africa policeman on a pass-raid detail. You were going to teach me how to vote by hook or by crook. I thought I was loosing my sanity, for no matter how much I tried to avoid you, you always would find me and recite that mantra to me: “Your vote is your secret, black brother. Exercise it.”
Even when I was able to avoid you, I would still see your influence around me. I would be having a conversation with a brother and innocently ask him who he would be voting for. The brother’s response would be quite passionate, far too passionate for such an innocent question: “My vote is my secret, broer.”
I hated you then for I thought that in your quest to teach me to liberate myself with an X, as opposed to an axe, you treated my intelligence with profound disrespect. I also saw a number of other people who kept on telling me that they too were doing the same thing that you were doing. You know what, Debs? I have subsequently discovered that some of them had their hands in a Danish cookie jar, devouring those Danish cookies with the passion of a toyi-toyier on a march to Pretoria.
There, not everyone is as honest as you are. You might have been flaky with all your multicoloured puppets and pictures, but you were the real thing. At least, I think so — not one of those smash-and-grab operations, like the Rockey Street-off-Raleigh Street Grunge Voter Education Project.
I hope you understand my feelings towards you were influenced by the view that you were spending far too much time teaching me how to put an X while you could have been teaching white South Africans that stockpiling tinned foods was not an environmentally friendly thing to do. Such practices were going to lead toward the depletion of the ozone layer and the exacerbation of the greenhouse effect. I think I was right: look at the heat wave we are experiencing now.
Yeah, we stood in queues all day and you, like a proud parent on graduation day, watched as I cast my vote and hugged the man who voted for the Lambada Democratic Party (LDP), even though that group and the Basketball Party — my heroes — were sworn enemies.
You then jumped into your jalopy and spluttered away. Although I thought your departure was a good thing, I have to acknowledge that you did some good work. I also thought it would be the last time — at least until after a five-year break — that there would be a need for your presence.
I recently suddenly discovered that I will again be required to liberate myself further this year in the local government elections.
Now, not only do I have to wake up and drag myself to scrawl an X in secrecy anywhere in the country, but I also have to register in order to be able to do that. I thought the last registration I would have to undergo would be for my passbook. I really am not comfortable with the idea of giving my identity number to a grey civil servant who obviously supports the LDP. I wonder if the registration will be as secret as my vote. I also wonder whether the gravy train-stampeding civil servants will not take my identity number and use it to withdraw my sizeable fortune from the bank.
I really am in a bad way Debs, babe, for I do not even know where to register, or when the closing date is. Please, Debi, come back. We need you. Again. I swear, this time I will treat you better than I did last time.