To: Trinity Luhabe trinityluhabe@gmail.com
From: Xolela Parrish xolelaparrish@TribuneMediaSA.co.za
Re: Permission to access archives

Dear Ms Luhabe,

Your father mentioned to our Managing Editor that you would be emailing us. You and your friend Lael Lieberman would be very welcome to spend time in our archives room for your school project.

Just announce yourselves at reception and you will be supplied with ID lanyards. Someone will come down to lead you to the basement where the archives are stored. Our records are digitised as far back as 1970. If you need articles from before then, they are available on microfiche. We do have hard copies of every edition of the newspaper going back to 1919, but they are fragile and handled only in exceptional circumstances.

We look forward to welcoming you to the Gauteng Tribune.

Kind regards,

Xolela Parrish
Staff Writer

***

We have a crisis on our hands. Nosipho got called into a meeting with the head of the Life Orientation Department and some other teachers. The head of LO is called Mrs Oosthuizen, and she’s an old bat with the most ridiculous ideas you ever heard. I wish they’d make Ms Bhamjee head of LO. She’s been teaching us since Grade Eight and she’s awesome.

Anyway, they told Nosipho that they had “received reports” that she might be pregnant, and was it true? So, she said it was, and that she was planning on keeping the baby. Then they threatened to tell her mom. And she said good luck tracking her down in Washington DC, and that she would tell her mom herself when she was ready. She also said that the aunt she is staying with knows all about the pregnancy and is supporting her decision. (Which is absolutely true.)

So then, if you can believe it, they said it was “prob-lematic for the school’s image” to have a pregnant learner in Grade Ten, and that she should either go to a private cram college for the rest of the year or do home-schooling. They told her they’d keep a place open for her to return to school next year if she wanted, which is something, I suppose. But they didn’t seem to think that she would even want to return.

Apparently, Nosipho has thirty days’ notice, at the end of which she must have “made other arrangements” and left the school.

Nosipho told us all this after school today. She was looking a bit pale and upset, but otherwise amazingly strong. If it were me, I’d be falling apart right now.

“That doesn’t sound right to me,” Lael says.

“I can’t believe they’re allowed to do this. We need to do some-thing. We need to think of something.”

“What I want to know is who tipped them off?” says Nosipho.

“I know it wasn’t you guys, and I know it wasn’t my aunt. Who else could it have been?”
“I can think of one candidate…” I say.

“Sophie Agincourt?” says Lael.

“But how? I know she was suspicious, but she didn’t have any proof.”

“Think about it. Who was sneaking around going through our bins in the dorm? Who found the pregnan-cy tests? It has to be her. Who else could it be?”

“But why?” Nosipho says. “I don’t even know her that well. Why would she do that to me?”

“Sophie doesn’t need a reason,” I say. “She just needs an opportunity. Telling on people and getting them into trouble has been her favourite thing since Grade One.”

“I wish I could get back at her,” Nosipho sighs.

I shake my head like the wise elder. “Don’t even go there, young Padawan. Many have tried and many have failed. Believe me, I know.”

Nosipho shrugs. “Okay. I suppose I won’t have much opportunity anyway. You know … while I’m being home-schooled.”

“That is not going to happen,” I say. “We won’t allow it. We’re going to think of something.”

Nosipho and Lael turn to me with hope in their faces. “Have you thought of a plan, Trinity?”
“Not yet. But let’s sleep on it, and talk about it again tomorrow. We’ll have thought of something by then, for sure.”

***

“Can I ask you something?” I say as my mom comes into my room to say goodnight to me that evening.

“Of course, my skattebol. Anything. Ask away.”

“Okay… let’ s just say… hypothetically speaking… that something was going on at school that wasn’t right. And you had to decide whether to – don’t sit down!” I yell as my mother plonks herself comfortably on the foot of my bed.

“Too late.” She gives me a smug smile.

“Aargh!” I clutch my hair. “Mommmm! This is not a sit-down chat. It’s nearly ten o’clock. I need to sleep. Stand up!”

“Nope.”

I rock backwards and forwards in frustration. Once my mom sits down, there is no getting rid of her. She’ll be here chatting half the night. She knows the rules – no sitting in my bedroom. But there she is, propping a cushion behind her back, getting comfortable.

“So … something at school, you say?”

I give in. The fastest way to get her out of here is to move the discussion along.
“Okay, let’s say there was something happening at school that just wasn’t right. And you wanted to make them change their minds about it. How would you go about it?”

My mom sits up like a soldier hearing the call to battle. She gives a power salute. “Protest action, of course.”

I sigh hugely. “Mom … this isn’t apartheid. We’re not protesting the Group Areas Act. This is just a school thing.”

“Doesn’t matter. Injustice is injustice. This is a case of injustice, isn’t it?”

I think about Nosipho being forced to move out of the boarding house, to leave school and try to get educated at home just because she happens to be pregnant. And I think about how nothing at all will happen to Themba, despite the fact that he is fifty per cent responsible for the situation.

“Yes,” I say. “This is about injustice.”

“Mooi so!” She rubs her hands together.

I roll my eyes. “Really, Mom? I tell you there is in-justice at my school, and your answer is mooi so? There’s nothing mooi about it.”

She clears her throat and looks a bit embarrassed. “What I meant was, we can work out a plan of action now that we know what we’re dealing with. I will mobilise some protestors, and we can organise banners, and maybe get buses to bring in a crowd, and we’ll get permission from the cops to hold a rally…”
“Hey, wait a minute!” I feel like one of those buses of hers is about to run over me. “It’s not that kind of thing. My friends and I want to handle this our own way.”

Her face falls. Then she perks up again. “Well, listen, I can still mobilise the NGO to raise awareness and con-scientise the masses and…”

I drop my head into my hands. My mom runs this NGO that always seems to be fighting a different cause. One minute they are providing counselling for victims of domestic abuse, the next they are collecting clothes for the elderly, and the next they are putting together food parcels for children. They are always trying to raise funds, but they keep going bankrupt and having to be bailed out by my dad.

I know they mean well and everything, and they do really good work most of the time, but they are not exactly efficient. Basically, I don’t want them anywhere near this problem. But how do I say that diplomatically?

“Mom … the NGO is a total nightmare. They can’t even organise blankets for Mandela Day without holding five committee meetings first. If you get them involved in this, I’m going to run away from home and go and live with Ouma and Oupa in Polokwane.”

Okay, maybe that wasn’t diplomatic, but at least it got my point across.

“Ag, okay my girlie. Point taken. So, what do you want from me if not my help?”

“Your advice,” I say. “We really need your advice on how to go about this. How do we get an institution – like, hypothetically speaking, a school – to pay attention to our grievances?”

“That’s easy. You make them uncomfortable. You make them so uncomfortable that they can’t ignore you any-more. You hit them where it hurts. And if this hypothetical school happened to be a private school like Brentwood – you hit them with their public image. That’s their Achilles heel. It’s all about PR with these bourgeois places.”

Needless to say, Mom wanted to send the three of us to the local government school, but Dad put his foot down.

“Hmm.” An idea is starting to take shape in my mind. “PR … public image … hit them where it hurts. I can work with this. I can definitely work with this. Thanks, Mom!”

At this point, any other mother would be worrying about what kind of madness she had unleashed, but not my mom. Not the woman who got tear-gassed last year at a Fees Must Fall protest at Wits.

She just smiles and pats my leg. “It’s a pleasure, skat. Now try to get some sleep.”

***