ZCC

I remember my 8-year-old brother right behind me, barefooted, as we sprinted through the seherwana gate, as soon as we heard the vocal harmonies and the uplifting chants. We would then chase the fast-paced singers all the way past the Apola-Jase Shebeen, kwa ga-bo Dede, my tall classmate, about 300 metres from our house.

Defying the temperature, they were dressed in an all-khaki uniform of trousers and button-up jackets, and black police-like caps with shiny stars on them. Luckily for the out of breath brothers, the roaring men, orchestrated by a short and stocky gentleman in the front, who simultaneously cracked the air with a black whip, suddenly came to a halt and together with the rythmic singers, leaped into the air and then came down stamping their feet on the dusty ground with their manyanyatha – somehow, the huge crisp white boots always retained their colour.

The spectacular jump and stomp dance, repeated about 4 or 5 times, was called Mokhukhu, we were told. By that time, my brother would have finally caught up with me, Dede too, from the veranda of his lime-painted haisi, and we would join in the thundering ululations, whistles and clapping by fellow onlookers of all ages, covered in a cloud of dust.

Round about the same years, my father’s talkative paternal cousin, always came to see my parents at home from another village. I was told that the soft-spoken bald-headed man had a flock of sheep and goats, and that he also took care of my father’s goats at Ntlhantlhe village, where he lived with his family.

He would be wearing a brownish check jacket with elbow patches, and always pinned to his lapel was a small star that was inscribed with the letters Z.C.C and swatches of green and black cloth underneath the five-point silver star. I remember that every time he visited home, mostly to bring one of my father’s goats for slaughter, he slept in our room. Following the ritual 30-minute 8:30 Bible study and praying time in the sitting room with my sister, my piously Adventist parents and him, he would take my brother’s bed and I would share my bed with my brother.

I remember that we slept very late in the night, following his whispering revelations to my brother and me, on how the Zion Christian Church (ZCC) had saved him. He went on to tell us that the church was vitally important to his wellbeing and spirituality. And that, unlike most churches, ZCC had explicitly subjugated evil spirits tormenting its members, he included. He told us about the holy water that the church elders would sprinkle around his home yard for protection.  He also gave an example of poisonous evil roots and herbs extracted by the church elders from various yards. My brother and I always fondly mimicked him as soon as he left for Ntlhantlhe.

I last saw him on 9 May 2009, at around 8:30 pm, the night before we buried my father. We firmly shook hands, he asked me whether I remembered him, and I did, very well. That time, he slept on the floor, in the sofa-less sitting room, among elderly mothers and grandmothers, my father, in a brownish coffin, was just by the window. In the next room, our sisters’ bedroom, was my brother and I in the same bed. In the kitchen, inside the commercial fridge (my father’s maternal cousin who owned a bar had lent us the big fridge), was the slaughtered goat that he had brought with him from Ntlhantlhe.