It is the end of the month. Month end. The evidence is all over town. There are crowds of people moving up and down the malls and the streets, bumping each other. The spectacle resembles tadpoles swimming directionless in a pond.
There are loud chatters. This one man in blue overalls and a plastic bag dangling on his calloused left hand is talking loudly on the phone. He is asking what food supplies are short at home in the village. After a few moments he assures the person on the other side—the wife perhaps—that he shall buy it and come with it in the afternoon. His face beams a smile as he replaces his cell phone in his pocket.
There are loud chatters. This one man in blue overalls and a plastic bag dangling on his calloused left hand is talking loudly on the phone. He is asking what food supplies are short at home in the village. After a few moments he assures the person on the other side—the wife perhaps—that he shall buy it and come with it in the afternoon. His face beams a smile as he replaces his cell phone in his pocket.
I spot another woman. She is carrying two heavy plastic bags in her hands, and at the same time she is trying to take care that the two children she is with do not get lost. She shouts every now and again, calling them to order. They listen, but only for a second. They then stray again, their tiny bodies disappearing in the mass of big bodies shuffling up and down, side to side. I can see the woman’s exhaustion from the weight of the bags. It is written all over her face. The children’s shenanigans only make it worse. But nonetheless, she is happy. She can buy something and her children won’t starve. At least for now. I wonder to myself, where her husband or partner is?
I continue to press my way through the crowds. Then I find myself in the bus rank. There isa deafening cacophony of sounds. The buses are honking their horns, notifying boarders that they are about to leave. The kombis swerve dangerously in the crowded space, their engines revving up, and pedestrians duck from them. Occasionally, expletives are exchanged in loud angry voices between the drivers or with pedestrians, as if it were a casual “hello”. Next to the boondocks buses, the women have sprawled their kangas next to the platforms and are sitting there. They laugh out loud as they eat bananas, fried chicken, buns, and other what-have-you. All of these victualsare washed down with Coke and other fizzy drinks. They are having a ball of a time. One of them whips out her breast and begins to suckle her crying child. The child eventually stops crying, and suckles quietly. It is enjoying end-of-the-month breast milk.
In the midst of all this, there are thugs, the pick-pocketers and the hustlers also hoping to get lucky by stealing these ordinary people’s hard-earned money. They mingle with the rest of the people, their eyes looking for slightly-opened bags, protruding wallets and cell-phones. They too must eat. In one of the platform shelters, a man shuffles three-cards as quick as a lightning bolt. He then drops them face-down on the concrete seat and dares the spectators to point out the Jack of Spades. ‘You point out the Jack of Spades, I give you this Two-hundred Emalangeni’, he says, as he waves it about the faces of the people. ‘If you fail, you give me Fifty Emalangeni.’ The deal is tempting. One man tries, but fails. His face contorts as he hands the man the Fifty Emalangeni. Maybe it was the last money he was supposed to buy mealie-meal for the children? I say to myself. But now it’s gone. He is tempted to play again. He sticks his hand into his pocket, but then he checks himself. He seems not prepared to lose the 10 kilograms sugar money. Then abruptly, he leaves.
Then suddenly, my weak bladder tells me that I must go to the public toilet. Thither I go. In the men’s, I find that the month-end fever has spread its tentacles up to that far. A pantsula is ripping off an All-Star box. He takes out the black tekkies (sneakers) and stares at them as a mother would her long-lost child. Then he whistles in admiration and capers a celebratory dance. ‘Chuck Taylor, half-jack, the kasi way,’ he says out loud, praising his newest and proud possession. Thereafter he strips the old and dusty Converses on his feet and puts on the new ones. He then stares at his feet and smiles. Rearranging the Dickies hat on his head, he saunters out of the rest room, and dumps the old tekkies and the ripped box in the dust-bin at the door. He is happy.
Needless to say, this is the month-end of the common people. It does not last because they hardly earn enough. Two days is the maximum days that most of them can live like “kings”. And it is that two days of living big that sustains them throughout the whole month, till the 30th, 31st, or 1st of every month. These are the workers. The people to whom politics do not mean much, except a bunch of people bent on stealing money and acting big. Politics to them is the game of the big men. It is of no consequence to them. Their politics is that of survival. Of feeding the children, taking them to school with a hope of making them better people. Therefore I take my hat off for the common people, who dare to live; to be happy when the situation hardly permits. I take my hat off for the mothers in the villages, in the kasis, and in the slums. You are the people that make life make sense. Your tenacity inspires me to get up and own myself.
