I needed to escape my home. I walked out of the front door, into the street. I ignored the automatic voices in my head that warned me that it was not safe; that there were muggings; someone would be waiting round the corner to snatch whatever I had. The electricity poles on our street were newly decorated with posters of politicians, all wearing wide smiles, seeking support. I remembered that I had still not registered to vote, despite my parents’ reminders to do so: “You must exercise your democratic right.”

The small corner store had a ‘Closing Down’ sign on it and I wondered why. The shop had been there for as long as I could remember. I walked inside and overheard the two cashiers lamenting the closure. The owner had been robbed twice and had had it with running a small business. She was moving away. The cashiers did not know what they were going to do. They had rent to pay, children to feed.

I bought a drink and left the shop. I walked down the road, two more blocks, before I felt the hot sun begin to get to me.

The anger that had propelled me out of my home had cooled. I faced the naked truth: I had nowhere to go, no-one to turn to but my ‘parents’ and so I turned back. I returned home.

I found them there, frantic, and I felt the anger that had gripped me so tightly let go a little more.

I went straight to my bedroom. Questions repeated in my mind: What happened? Where exactly did she go? Where did she live? Did she miss me? How could she leave me?

But the two questions that were uppermost in my mind were: why did my biological parents have to die? Why was I never told the truth until now?

On my bed a small, old briefcase had been placed. I opened it with trembling fingers and inside I found clues to my mother and father. I studied a photograph of a woman cradling a baby, a man with one arm round the woman, one hand touching the baby. I assumed it was her, carrying me. Him, holding us both. There was a bundle of letters held together with a rubber band, all of them from my biological mother, addressed to my adoptive mother. She asked how her family was. She said she was fine in all of them. There was nothing to say where she was and when she was coming back.

Eventually I fell asleep, holding the photo and letters to my chest. On the chair at the other side of the room was my crumpled dress. Next to my bed, the glittering heels I had worn lay toppled on their sides, forgotten.

* * * * *

In the morning, I was possessed with an urgent need to know more. “Who is the man who brought the letter? Why only now? When and how did she die?” I asked my mother. She sighed.

“I have been dreading this day, so afraid we might lose you, if you knew the truth. But, I do know how to contact him. Long ago I found out about survivors through the Umkhonto We Sizwe Military Veterans’ Association, just in case … in case I ever needed to. This is the time. Let me call him.”

The man rang our bell with confidence, and was welcomed into the house. I listened intently as he explained that he was the only survivor of the apartheid army’s raid on their camp in Botswana. He told the story of the night that my mother and father died.

“It was our last night together before we left for military training in Tanzania. We wrote letters to our loved ones, gave them to other recruits and promised to deliver them if the worst should happen.”

He and my mother had exchanged letters.

The man cried as he remembered what the others had endured when they were captured during the raid in which he had escaped.

“They were tortured for information about the location of the training camp we were due to go to. When they rip your toenails out you begin to say things that you had vowed you never would. When they ask you where the camps, the other soldiers are, you sing.

“But your mother was a brave soldier. Her heart was like that of a lion and she did not break. When they said she should tell them she bit her bottom lip, till it bled, and said nothing.”

It was a gory telling. I closed my eyes and wanted to close my ears too but I needed to know and he left out no details. Blood everywhere. It was a gory telling.

“She and many comrades died. I went on to Tanzania, and sent the letter back to my family for safe-keeping. Eventually I myself was captured and interrogated. I would have liked to say I kept the pain inside and locked the secrets inside too, but that would not be telling the truth. It took me a long, long time to recover. Part of my memory was gone, damaged in the beatings.

“My mother died recently. When I was going through her things I found this letter, forgotten in the pain of my past. I knew I had to find her family and deliver it. Painful as this is for all of you, I feel better, feel relief that I have carried out my duty to that brave woman who sacrificed her life for our liberation.”

The enormity of what he was saying punched the breath out of me. My mother had died – so that I could live … like this? In this lovely house? Free? Could vote?

We all wept, and my adoptive mother hugged me tight. She continued the story.

“Your mother left home when you were still a baby, before you sprouted your first tooth. You had not started to talk yet. I had seen the signs – a restlessness in her that would not be calmed. It was like that then, Mpho. We lived in fear, waiting for someone to come and deliver us from Apartheid. When we heard that she had been killed, a piece of me died with her that day. But we had you. We have tried to love you the way we know she wanted you to be loved. You are our daughter. We would not have it any other way.”

My father continued: “She had been coming home later and later and going to meetings in the middle of the night. The security police came to the house once, twice. The third time they took her away and we did not see her again for ten days. Two days later she left for good.”

“The decision to go away was a difficult one. She could have stayed but she would sooner or later have been thrown into prison. She was thinking of you when she left. It was always her plan to come back and fetch you.” He sighed deeply. “You never think you will die when you are young. Then that terrible raid took place. You were only one year old and you were too young to understand and we thought it would be easier this way.”

* * *

Tell us what you think: ‘The truth will set you free.’ ‘Ignorance is bliss.’ Which saying do you believe in?