Chronicle Editor
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena
She gave me many trials and tribulations. So much that she frequently featured in my dreams and nightmares.
Now and again I dreamt of her chasing me with a flaming devil’s fork. My primary school life at Siganda was defined by her terrors and troubles. Nonhlanhla was a problem.
When I was busy at play or in conversation with other boys at break time she appeared from nowhere at all and gave my meagre behind a hard slap and then took off at high speed, leaving me to the laughter and ridicule of the boys club. She ran faster that the legendary Joe Luphahla after the ball.
She ran very fast and always to one direction into the bushes that surrounded the playground. To preserve my dignity I would angrily speed after her to the bushes, menacingly, I pursued the fleeing butterfly. As soon as we were the only living things in the bushes she would lose her speed and stop her flight, kneel down and plead for mercy and forgiveness, puffing and panting. Angry me would stand before her and read the riot act. I dispensed the threat to call lightning from above to strike her to ashes if she ever slapped my bum again. Walking back to the playground she would follow me from a distance with strange but real disappointment in her face.
Both of us seemed to know that this slapping, that running and the chasing game was always going to repeat itself if not the same day the following. I was sure that I hated her for the insolence of dealing slaps to my respectable behind; I was the Headmaster’s son. It was gutsy for her dimples and rolling big eyes to be messing with my proud bum. I only realised that I did not really hate her rude attentions when she regularly shifted her rudeness to the very annoying habit of slapping the bum of one Nkosinathi, a dark and muscular monstrosity of a boy.
No matter how bad it was the slap was supposed to be reserved for my bum. I radically resolved to end the mischief once and for all. I conspired with my disastrous cousin brother, Khulekani, to assassinate the character of Nkosinathi for good. Khulekani was the go-to guy if you wanted someone buried alive. He seemed more alive and more comfortable lying than he was telling the truth, may his soul rest in peace.
He was the ultimate fixer. We carefully lifted our lady teacher’s treasured Parker Pen and deposited it in Nkosinathi’s Red Seal maize meal plastic bag that was his apology for a school bag. After the sin we alerted the teacher of Nkosinathi’s heist of the expensive pen. He was done.
After his public humiliation I approached Nonhlanhla to laugh at her for her thieving and miserable friend. His bum never had the slap of Nonhlanhla again. He from then walked around the playground with the heavy name of Parker Pen. My now mature mind is able to process the truth that I really did not hate Nkosinathi, I only loved Nonhlanhla. It is my corrupt mind that can understand that Nonhlanhla and I had a thing at Siganda Primary school. The evil of incriminating and crucifying Nkosinathi, also called Nkonkoni, was rooted on my love for No.
It is for love that I had to surrender Nkosinathi to the cross of crucifixion. Some of the darkest evils are done for love. Love is the true framework and organising idea of life in the world and the results are not pretty.
The Absent Devil
This short essay is a consideration of the tyranny and violence of the passion and sentiment of love. In the entire canvas of world history there is no country that has gone to war with another for the reason of hate. Countries declare war on others because they love their territorial integrity, political and economic interests. Patriotism is the father of war. It is the love of motherlands and fatherlands that sets men and women on war paths against others.
Love is the sentiment and passion that is announced and declared without shame. No country or community of people has the agency to announce themselves as hateful. Wars are declared because citizens love their country and for the love are prepared to die and to kill at war.
We are all prepared to explain every attack we make on others as a justified defence of some treasured ideal. Hate has no owner. None of us as communities and individuals will admit conducting any action because of hate. Love is the permanent explanation and excuse for even the most hateful deeds. Hate is so unclaimed that one can make the observation that in actuality hate does not exist. What exists, perhaps, is the other and the darker side of love. Hate might after all be what love does to preserve its loveness. Hate is the absent devil that love always blames for its crimes.
In the name of Love
Money is not the root of all evil as alleged. The love for money is the root of all evil. Once again love is the criminal not money. It is the love for things that leads to hate and evil. One of the most evil inventions under the sun is the atom bomb. The bomb was conceptualised first by German physicists that were contemplating, out of love for the country, the defence of Germany from enemies.
When in August 1945 the American B-29 bomber jet dropped an atomic bomb in the city of Hiroshima in Japan the motive was not hate for the Japanese but love for America. If there was anger at and hate of the Japanese it was all based on the love of America by the Americans.
What makes us cowards that fear the fight and choose flight is not the hate of fighting or fear of pain and death but the love for life. Love loves itself so much that it is not capable of seeing and calling out its violence. There is, perhaps no more divisive, discriminatory and violent sentiment as love. To declare love for one thing is without having to say it to declare hated for other things, and much unfortunately, other people. We might search for causes of problems of the world and troubles of men and women all over the place and blame the devil and evil when the root causes are hidden in our most treasured passion, love.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Gezina in Pretoria: [email protected].
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