June 16, 1976 – I am 10 years old. I have a copy of Trompie en die Boksombende and a glass of guava juice in my hands. I flop myself on the bed and continue reading the Afrikaans novel. It is beautiful. I finish it.
I stride into the kitchen looking for mom, ready to share with her the delightful narrative of the Afrikaans novel. I find her there, but mom looks sad and morose, so I decide to take a pause on sharing with her my Trompie delight. So, I ask her why she looks so sad. Then she tells me that she was worried about my brother and sister, Douglas and Nomonde, at high school. So I ask why she was worried and I explain that as far as I was concerned, high school is a cool place and me, one day, I was also gonna go to high school.
We lived in Victoria West, you see. So, after passing Standard 6, Xhosa children had to leave town and go to a place with a high school. My brother and sister went to a school called Themba Labantu in a township called Zwelitsha near King Williamstown in the Eastern Cape. Then, mom tells me, that she heard from Bantu Radio news that pupils at high schools right across the country were protesting against Afrikaans, and the police were shooting them. So I asked, “shooting them dead with guns like in the movies?”. She said yes. I decided to shelve my Trompie narrative because I did not feel okay to narrate a story about a white Afrikaner boy at that time.
Rest in peace man of letters
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