Alpheus and Lerato Tashinga had travelled all night from Port St Johns, bringing only a change of clothes and a packet of wild guavas.

Security wanted to turn them away, but after a long discussion Lethabo’s parents managed to convince the superintendent that their son was indeed lying in the casualty ward of the Kroonstad private MediClinic.

Alpheus looked like he was dressed for church; Lerato walked with the aid of a stick on account of a bad hip, and looked too old to be Lethabo’s mom.

When she saw Lethabo her free hand shot up to her mouth. “Yo yo Lethabo! What have they done to you?” She leaned her stick on the side of the bed and gathered him up in her arms.

“It’s OK mom. The doctors say I’m going to be just fine. Really.”

She looked unconvinced, inspected the bandage and tightened it at the back of his head. Only then did she notice there were several other visitors in the room.

Pieter Cronje sat on the edge of his chair, his head bowed. The sight of Lethabo’s parents had brought tears to his eyes. Next to him Tersia was crying too. Even Mr Cronje, his arms folded firmly across his chest, was strangely subdued, his eyes fixed blankly on the wall above Lethabo’s head.

There were others in the room too: Mr Vosloo, the school Principal; Pieter’s mom Irene Cronje, who looked nervous and kept fidgeting with her handbag or dabbing her nose with a tissue, and the school guidance counsellor who made scribbly notes on a clipboard balanced on his knee.

Hospital staff brought in two extra chairs and signalled for Lethabo’s parents to be seated. Mr Cronje stood up to pour them water from a canister on Lethabo’s side table. “Thank you for coming,” he said, handing them each a glass. “You have travelled a long way.” Unsure what to say next, Mr Cronje sat down.

A deep silence set into the room, each marooned in their own thoughts as if washed up on the shores of an unknown land where nothing made sense; victim and perpetrator sitting across from each other, their families too; black and white South Africans discovering the shared humanity bridging their cultural divide.

To Lethabo it seemed a healing silence, the kind he hoped would be waiting for him when he crossed the try line at the end of his life.

After several minutes Mrs Tashinga cleared her throat and spoke. Although she kept her eyes glued on Lethabo, stroking his hand, she addressed nobody in particular. She told the story of Lethabo’s early life in Port St Johns: how he had always loved sport and had always been first down on the beach to join the older boys playing soccer or rugby. “Anything with a ball,” she chuckled. “Even a bush melon would do.” She patted his hand.

The family had all rejoiced when Lethabo moved to a ‘white’ school – they felt it was a rare opportunity. They warned him it might be difficult at first, but also reminded him that anything was possible in the new South Africa. This was the lesson of Tata Madiba, Mrs Tashinga said. If Lethabo worked hard and trained hard, he would get his chance. His time would come.

She said it was her lifelong dream that her children would never know the discrimination she had known in her life growing up in rural South Africa, where blacks were second class citizens. She had seen a Xhosa version of the new Constitution pinned to a wall inside the Port St Johns post office, and the words were so beautiful she had memorised some of them: “All South Africans are born free and equal in dignity and rights – I never thought I would live to see something like that pinned up on a post office wall,” she said, before pausing again for several seconds.

“I don’t know exactly what happened to my son’s eye, and maybe it is just as well,” she sighed, reaching up to adjust his bandage one more time. “What I do know is that Lethabo is no second class citizen. Today, tomorrow, maybe forever more, we are defined by our actions, not by our hair or our skin. That is what we know and that is what we taught our boy.”

She nodded to signal that she had finished, and the room fell silent again except for the faint scribbling of the guidance counsellor and his pen. But it was an anxious silence this time, and it was a relief to everybody when Mr Cronje heaved himself out of his chair and walked across the room to open the window. When he spoke it came as a surprise, mostly because his voice was gentle – not the booming weapon he unleashed on the rugby field.

“Lethabo is one of the bravest people I know,” he began. “On the rugby field he has been punched, kicked, called racist names, and to me it seems he comes back stronger every time. If he can do that on the field, he can do that off the field. It is the reason I made him team captain.”

A rare smile curled up from under Mr Cronje’s moustache as he caught Lethabo’s eye. Then he turned, walked over to Pieter whose face was still bowed and hidden behind a curtain of blonde hair. Mr Cronje rested a hand gently on the back of his son’s neck.

“Pieter was born into a different world, a privileged world it is true,” he said. “We always wanted him to be the best. Too much pressure is a terrible thing. I see now that I put pressure on Pieter because I want him to make up for the failures in my own life. This was not fair.”

With one hand still resting on Pieter, Mr Cronje reached out to wrap an arm around his wife, who had begun to weep into a fresh tissue retrieved from her bag. “Mrs Tashinga, you are right,” he continued, looking at her. “We are all equal. Pieter has his own life, and I have tried to bend him to my will. It was only a matter of time before he lashed out at somebody. I must also take the blame for what has happened.

“I hope we can learn from this. I’ve suspended Pieter from the team, and he will pay Lethabo’s medical bills out of his own savings, even if it takes him a few years. He too must take responsibility.

“I have also asked the Headmaster to set up a counselling service to prevent this type of racism and violence from happening again.”

With that the coach sat down in his chair.

If Mr Cronje’s words were surprising, what happened next almost made Lethabo fall out of his bed. Pieter, who up until that moment had hardly made a sound, got up from his chair, walked around the bed and put his arms around Lethabo’s mom. When he started to cry, she held him tight. Neither of them wanted to let go.

*****

Mud. Oozy and fresh. Thicker than the prawn flats along the Umzumvubu River. Lethabo felt it trickle into his nose as he lay face down on the pitch, the ball tucked under his arm.

A hand landed on his neck, another on his shoulder, and another. Slapping him on the back. Ruffling his hair. Congratulating him. Then somebody hauled him up by his collar.

“Try of the season, dude,” said Pieter, back in the team after his six match suspension. “Not bad for an nkwenkwe from the Transkei.”

Lethabo flipped the ball into the air in triumph. They were still a point behind, but with the conversion to come. Two minutes left on the clock. If the kick went over they won, if not they lost. Lethabo laughed out loud when he realised that for the first time in his life he was no longer worried about the score.

The crowd cheered, the loudspeaker blared. Lethabo glanced at the pavilion and saw Tersia under an umbrella, her hair dancing out of a woollen beanie, her arm wrapped around her dad.

Something had changed for the better, he wasn’t sure what.

“You take the kick,” Lethabo said, nudging the ball into Pieter’s stomach. “No pressure.” He slapped him on the back and winked. “Just one thing though: if you miss I get to date your sister, OK?”

Pieter set the ball, stepped back, and took aim at the posts: “You know Lethabo, it’s very windy,” he said. “Maybe I’ll hook this one to the left – you never can tell.”

The thud of the kick startled a flock of hadedas out of the jacaranda tree behind the posts.

At a distance the thunderstorm trundling over the rooftops of Kroonstad sounded just like the surf at Port St Johns.

***

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