Friday night, 30 March, 1990

“Hey, Sue, do you want to come with us?” said Gary. “There’s a house warming just up the road in Scottsville.”

“Nah. I need some me time, I’m exhausted. Early night for me tonight.”

She went to her room, closed the door, threw herself onto her bed, smothering her face in her pillow. She couldn’t face a house warming, her friends drinking, joking and jolling as if there wasn’t a war going on over the hill. As if people weren’t dying in another part of the city…

And having to face Vicky again. How could she tell Vicky that all week she’d been miserable, thinking he was dead when he wasn’t. Vicky would die laughing. Even now, she hadn’t a fucking clue where he was, who he was with, nor what he was doing.

“He’ll see you tomorrow after Thulani’s funeral,” Lisa had said. And she was just expected to be at home, waiting for him with open arms. He knew he’d been worried about her, otherwise why did he tell Lisa to tell her that he ‘was fine’. Bloody shit.

She’d seen the warning signs early on but she’d ignored them. Like the day just after their first time, when Mandla had told her he loved her. Gugu had come into the office, she’d watched him undressing Gugu with his eyes, right from her ample boobs down to her toes.

“She’s my ex, she’s just a friend,” he’d laughed when she’d asked what Gugu meant to him. But then he’d given the same once over to Vicky and to Maddy. He still did, to any woman that was worth looking at.

She’d known a relationship with him would be difficult. She was ecstatic when she was with him, distraught when he was away. Everything was on his terms. Could she expect anything else? His life was totally upside down.

She raised her face from her damp pillow, hauled herself out of bed and shuffled to the kitchen in her slippers. The kettle hummed. She spooned powdered chocolate into her mug, filled it with boiling water, then watched the powder explode through the water to the top. It wasn’t her love he needed. He was married to the struggle, he needed a safe house. This was his safe house and it came with benefits. Maybe he had others too. He could bloody stay at another one but she couldn’t do it anymore.

The doorbell rang. Must be another of Gary’s drunken friends trying to find the party. She peered around the kitchen door at the security gate. Mandla’s silhouette was etched against the orange glow of the streetlight. The moths were thumping at her rib cage, a yelp came from somewhere inside her.

“Hey, can I come in?”

***

Tell us: What do you think of the story?

*****

‘ACCORDING to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 200 people died and 20 000 were displaced during the Seven-Day War of March 25 to 31, 1990 in Pietermaritzburg. The TRC found that there had been gross human rights violations. It held Ntombela [an Inkatha leader in Pietermaritzburg] accountable, but named no one else and referred simply to persons unknown. Inkatha was assigned overwhelming responsibility together with the SAP; and the KwaZulu Bantustan government and the KwaZulu police were also blamed.

‘Apart from the TRC and the research of NGOs such as Pacsa, there has been no further investigation of a devastating event that deserved a judicial commission of inquiry.’

‘Aside from a few minor cases, there were no prosecutions for serious criminal acts and thus no justice for victims. The printed record, memories and psychological scars are all that remain. Yet history suggests this was a systematic and well-organised act of political cleansing aided and abetted by the government of the day. The number of unanswered questions is as great as the evidence.’

Chris Merrett, writing in the Natal Witness, March 20 2010