FINDING A WIFE

When I was working at my aunt’s food shop in Johannesburg everything was new for me. I was from a farm – far away. People talked about girls and how much they spent on them. ‘If you don’t pay you won’t have a girl,’ they said.

Where I’m coming from we don’t pay for love. You tell a girl how much you love her and if your words are strong and she loves you back – you are the winner. So me, a farm boy, I don’t see any chance of having a girlfriend in the city.

Then I met a girl from Zimbabwe called Priscilla. She was working in an Indian supermarket. We started dating. Then one day she asked me to help her. Her mother was in hospital in Zimbabwe. I took R2 out of my pocket. I still remember the disappointment on her face. I explained my situation at work – that I wasn’t getting paid. She told me to go to hell. She didn’t want to see me any more. Many years later I was working at Newtown Mall. I was with my friend Madoda and we were working on our laptops. I saw her come in and I started to speak very loudly about Vaya, my new movie.

‘It has just been shown at the Toronto Film Festival,’ I shouted. I made sure she could hear everything. Madoda thought I had gone crazy shouting about how wonderful Vaya was at the top of my voice.

But I enjoyed that. The boy who had to work for nothing got paid for something. He had a laptop. So screw you if you didn’t want me because I was poor.

In 2010 I went back to Matatiele for a visit. I was happy because I had had some work and been paid. I took a bus to my village. On the bus I found myself next to Mr Qhokosa, the old man who worked at the chief’s office. Mr Qhokosa was seated next to a big goat. We started chatting and I told him I was working in movies. He was excited because he had heard people in the village say they had seen me on TV in Soul City.

Then he announced that he wanted me to marry his granddaughter. ‘She is a great woman who works all day,’ he said. ‘She will be good at acting because she talks the whole time.’

I told him I couldn’t marry his granddaughter because I didn’t have money for lobola. He didn’t believe me. ‘If you have been on television you must have money,’ he said.

When the bus arrived at my stop I took off. He shouted through the window of the bus, ‘Tshaba, I know you will think about marrying her. She has a bright complexion.’ I laughed.

Tshabalira Lebakeng

SLAUGHTERING A COW

It is traditional to slaughter a cow as an offering to the ancestors at a funeral. If you are a boy in Matatiele, you must learn to be responsible at an early age. You start by killing a chicken. In the afternoon you will find lots of young boys running after chickens – and those rural chickens can run! Once you’ve caught it you must kill it. If you can’t they call you isilima sendoda (stupid man).

I was 30 years old, at my uncle’s unveiling, when I was told that I would be the one to kill the ritual cow. I must not sleep with a girl before, because that would disrespect the ancestors. On the day when I saw the cow, I was shocked. I knew and loved that cow. It was BIG. They gave me a knife and I stabbed it between the horns and neck.

When I came to Jozi I was shocked at how people killed cows. They shot them like they were criminals. Once, I was at a funeral, and I stopped them shooting the cow and showed them how to do it. I stabbed it in the correct way. I showed those people how to respect the cow. And now they respect me too.

David Majoka and Tshabalira Lebakeng

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