We Are Somewhat Homeless

We Are Homeless Somewhat

I feel the pain of South Africa, homogenized to suit Europeans, and my home has become where my body rests at night.

By Ziphozakhe Hlobo

It’s windy and the sand has risen for an uncomfortable dusty day. The sound of Golden Arrows buses leaving Strand Street make a noisy chant.

I wait with others before crossing the road to the train station.

“Last call for passengers going to Chris Hani. The train on platform 21 is in motion. The train will stop at all stations.”

The queue at the ticket sales shop is long, and I miss my train.

“When is the next train?” I ask the cleaner.

Silence.

An hour later, I am inside a dirty train compartment packed with passengers. Some are sitting and some are standing so close to me that I can smell what they ate — or drank — for lunch.

“Where is your home?” an old man asks a young man.

This is generally how black people start conversations. Often they will even ask, “What is your clan?” and then they tell you that their grandfather’s mother’s niece’s daughter has the same clan.

I don’t really care.

The young man says he is from Cape Town. “A black man cannot call a city his home.”

“But I was born here.”

“Where were your parents born?” “They were born in the Eastern Cape.”

“Then that’s your home”

The theory of the old man is that one belongs to the home where one’s grandfather was born, which, for black people in South Africa, always is a village outside the big cities. The young man says he has a house in Cape Town. He believes that Cape Town is his home because he has never Photo by Chris Allen been to his parent’s village. A pair of shoes lie abandoned in the city market square.

The discussion grows into an argument, and other passengers interrupt, And now I am in Cape Town. trying to calm emotions. My parents’ house was sold after

“Hello, brothers and sisters. Ever my mother died, so my sisters and I seen a snake’s cleavage?” a short, lightusually stay with relatives or rent. skinned and toothless hawker shouts. When we are asked where are home

I am told that he makes passengers is, our answer is not acceptable. laugh before he sells his chips, A place with two or three women fruit and cigarettes. People end up cannot be a home. However, my siblings taking out their last cents to buy and I always have lived with relatives from him because of his humour. in nuclear or single-parent households,

I was born in Queenstown, in but we always felt we did not belong. the Eastern Cape, just outside my I am not trying to narrate another mother’s home village. I never knew sad story from a black South African my mother’s parents. My father was girl. I want to break free from those born Engcobo, in the Eastern Cape. boring primordial, often untrue,

When I was seven, my parents sent ideologies that define being black. me to my aunt in Port Elizabeth, and she But this is my reality; this is the story raised me. I was the girl with a village of my life. I am somewhat homeless. accent and poor parents, living in a I mean not “homeless” homeless, but middle-class neighbourhood of a city. homeless. Like the way Luvuyo feels, the way white Africans never fully feel

The city of Cape Town is a beautiful sight from the air.

European or fully African, and the way I wish I could bring guests to that home South Africa is never quite sure if it is and tell them, “This is my parents’ house. Indian, black, coloured, white or foreign Here is the door. Here are the windows, in Africa. South Africa is too cosmopolitan and here is the floor. Outside are trees in Africa, but too backwards globally. and grass so green, we grow peas and

I feel like South Africa. I feel her potatoes, the best you’ve seen.” pain. When Europeans could not Because Mother lived in Cape Town appreciate her richness and diversity, until she died, I moved to Cape Town they homogenized her to suit themselves. thinking the move would provide a sense of For example, Americans ask, “What is home. Because Mother’s sister was in Cape the South African accent or traditional Town, I thought I would feel at home. dish?” I never know which accent to After I moved to Cape Town, my mimic or which “tradition” to pick. sisters and I wanted to know about

Being homeless can be lonely, and I our mother’s family history. am always uncertain of my certainty — “You have to know this: Your mother even my sanity. I wish I could dine with was not my biological sister. She was my friends, during birthdays and Christmas, cousin,” my aunt told my sisters and me. in my home with a perfect nuclear family. “Your mother’s mother was a drunk, and she left for Johannesburg when your mother was barely a year old. No one ever heard from her again. Your mother’s father left when your grandmother was still pregnant.” “I grew up with your mother, and we were raised as sisters by our uncle Frank and his wife Sarah. My parents both died before I was five.” To my siblings and me, this confirmed that we did not really have a home. Cape Town was just an illusion. I did not have a home. I felt the pieces of my home completely shattered. I had no idea where to begin fixing or rebuilding. My sisters were tempted to look for our grandmother, but I missed Port Elizabeth. At least Port Elizabeth was homish for me because I grew up there. I had friends there, and I went to school there.

I came across a Rastafarian

artistic movement and built friendships. You should see the way people often stare at me when I attend their gigs and visit their homes. The Rastas told me about their struggles regarding their way of life. One was thrown out of school during the 1990s because of the oppressive stereotypes Photo by Chris Allen A woman hails a taxi on Strand Street in Port Elizabeth with her child on her back. attached to Rastafarians, and he never returned to school.

“Who can employ me? People look at these dreadlocks, and they say I am dirty. Even our kids as Rastas struggle to go to school because we are being sidelined. People in America and Europe love our music, but here in Africa, in our own home, we are denied human rights.”

I did research about whether local schools in Port Elizabeth would allow Rastafarian children to attend their schools. Ninety percent said “no.”

The other Rasta fled his religious family in Zimbabwe, illegally entering South Africa to stay with his Rastafarian friends. His family does not talk to him or financially support him. He has been homeless since he became a Rastafarian. “Life is rough, my sister, but Jah is with us.”

They make damn good revolutionary and conscious reggae music. So I felt the need to work with them to try to raise awareness that Rastafarians are human beings. This is not without challenges.

“Jah is the one keeping you alive, and Rasta is the true meaning of being African. If you are not Rasta, you are not African,” they say.

We cannot agree, but we come to an understanding to focus on music and poetry.

Their frustration with society lingers in my mind. I cannot understand why people choose to look at the things that differentiate us, instead of realizing that we are all human beings. Like me, the Rastas have a sense of not fully belonging. For them, Rasta is Africa, and so they want to be accepted in Africa.

To be homeless is the epitome of being loyal to humanity for humanity’s sake, and I feel peace with my homeless identity because, at least for me, people are people.

I love those suburban snobs I grew up with, those backward rural girls I left when I went to Port Elizabeth and those ghetto boys who used to whistle at me on the streets when I visited Mother in Cape Town.

Being homeless opens my heart to possibilities. I don’t get homesick. I can blend in.

It is exciting not knowing where I will end up and where the next lifetime lesson will come from. It could even come from an old man in a train compartment asking me, “Where is your home?”

My home is where my body rests when night falls. It could be my aunt’s place, a friend’s house or a flat I rent.

Clearly, I am at home being homeless.

Students in the Class

Kate du Toit manages international partnerships at NMMU. She previously was a producer and scriptwriter at Rooftop Productions and a foreign language teacher. She is owner of The Writing Co.

Bracey Harris is a senior at Ole Miss. She has internships at a television station in Jackson, MS, and at The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson. She is in the Honors College and the Meek School of Journalism and New Media.

Jontarius Haywood was graduated from Ole Miss since taking the course in Port Elizabeth. He majored in broadcast journalism and has chosen to begin his career by teaching middle school in the Mississippi Delta community where he grew up.

Ziphozakhe Hlobo is a poet and creative writer. In her poem “I Am An African,” she describes herself as “a descendant of the Thembu clan, ooQhudeni, ooMpafane nooThukela.” She wrote, “I know where I come from … I am a young woman, the pride of Africa.”

Andrew Howarth was the comedian in the class, a perceptive young man who took the visitors from Mississippi out to show them Port Elizabeth. He often spoke of how different his South Africa is from that of his parents.

Rahmat Luvuyo Nomvete is a Bahai from Umtata in the Eastern Cape. His mother is Persian and his father Xhosa. He was a volunteer in the holy Land for a year and committed to memory The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh.

Okhule Dotwana was graduated from NMMU with a major in public relations and communications. She is from Bhisho, the capital of the Eastern Cape. Bhisho is the Xhosa word for buffalo. The town previously was called Bisho.

Lisa Weideman is a graduate student in journalism, media and philosophy. She has written on the possibilities of ecofeminism and on hydraulic fracturing in the Karoo. Her multiple interests seem to focus on stewardship of resources.