“Good,” Mr 90 balances his elbows on the table and puts his hands together in a loud echoing clap. He keeps his hands together like that, as if he’s about to pray. “Tell me. What’s the first horrible experience you remember having?”

“Seeing my father being stabbed to death.” Musa folds his arms and sits back exactly like Mr 90 does.

“Excellent.” Mr 90 separates his hands, balances them on the table and pushes himself up to his feet. The backs of his legs push back his steel chair and the squeak of metal sliding on metal echoes. “Unfold your arms, Musa.”

“Why?” Musa keeps his arms folded.

“It’s not your turn to ask questions.” Mr 90 walks around the rectangular steel table. His steps sound like someone hammering a nail into the wall of an empty cathedral. He stops beside Musa and looks down at him. “Do it. Unfold your arms.”

Musa clicks his tongue and shakes his head. He unfolds his arms. Mr 90 quickly makes a fist with his right hand, takes a step back for proper balance and launches the fist towards Musa’s chest. Musa lifts both his arms to block, but he’s too slow. The punch hits Musa with a thousand volts of electricity. His throat drags in all the air in the room. His chest inflates as if it’s about to burst into pieces. His belly button is sucked in until it touches his spinal cord. Every muscle in Musa’s body becomes rock solid. Then everything relaxes as he passes out.

Mr 90 casually walks back to his chair. He sits down, folds his arms and taps his foot on the floor, waiting for the unconscious Musa to wake up. A real punch swung like Mr 90’s would’ve knocked Musa out of his chair. But that was not a real punch. Musa remains seated on his chair with his face and arms lying limply on the table. Mr 90 has sent him to live in the shoes of the man who stabbed his father to death, Sizwe Khumalo. Musa will experience life and know himself as Sizwe for a long 24 years while Mr 90 will only wait for him for 5 minutes until he wakes up.

Sizwe is born at 6:32 am on the Friday of March 23, 1978. He is raised by his loving stay-at-home mother, Zimbili Agnes Khumalo, and a truck mechanic/ANC comrade father, Muzikayise David Khumalo. Sizwe is the last-born to two older sisters. The first seven years of Sizwe’s life are the best years of his life: his mother and father are happily married and take the best care of their children. Sizwe most enjoys riding on his father’s shoulders when Muzikayise is walking somewhere. And he loves it that when he has flu, Zimbili gives him medicine and rubs his chest with Vicks while singing for him.

One morning, Sizwe overhears his parents arguing for the first time in his life. They are inside their bedroom and Sizwe is in the kitchen.

“What did you do?” says Zimbili. “Ntinga can’t just say you’re an informant out of nowhere.”

“Whose side are you on?” Muzikayise shouts. “I did nothing wrong. Ntinga found out that Mr Van Reik offered me the tender for fixing his trucks. Everyone knows that I refused his offer, but now Ntinga is pushing rumours that I got the offer because I’m an informant.”

Later that day, right after the Khumalo family eats supper together, Ntinga and other ANC comrades come and call Muzikayise outside. Muzikayise refuses to go out. Ntinga and the comrades throw petrol bombs at the house. When the Khumalo family finally comes out, Ntinga grabs Muzikayise and drags him to the comrades who then beat him to death. Sizwe watches his father get beaten to death while his mother and sisters cry until their voices are gone. He takes a close look at the face of the man called Ntinga and promises himself that when he’s old enough, he will take his revenge.

Sizwe’s life becomes very hard from then on. At the age of 12 he is forced to quit school and go hunting for jobs. His mother dies from diabetes when he’s 14 and his two sisters both die when he’s 17, one from AIDS and the other from suicide. When Sizwe is 24, drinking in a shebeen, he sees Ntinga after not seeing him for more than 10 years. Ntinga is doing a job there, welding on a burglar guard. Without second guessing it, Sizwe breaks a beer bottle and attacks. He doesn’t know that the boy watching him stab Ntinga is Ntinga’s son, Musa.

Tell us: How do you think this experience of living in the shoes of Sizwe, the man who killed Musa’s father and who he has always hated, will affect Musa?