In my earlier years,
typical of any young boy growing up in the township,
I was obsessed with playing soccer.
We all were—regardless of skill.
We all played, regardless of will.
To opt out was to opt into an early existential exile.
You were better off making a fool of yourself on the pitch
than not pitching at all.
Sitting on the sidelines was social suicide,
a one-way path to a permanent purgatory.
So we played.
We played everywhere and at every chance we got.
We played with everyone and with everything we could.
At school, on the streets,
on our way to school, on our way back,
during breaktime, before assembly,
we played even in our sleep,
kicking our siblings and everything within reach under the sheets.
With bottle caps, with plastic bottles,
with beheaded doll heads, with bundled-up rubbish bags,
with rolled-up stockings, with orange sacks,
with air, with smoke, with flair, with float.
We played to remember.
We played to forget.
We played to be members of something larger than ourselves.
We played to dismember the muddy memories of our fathers at death, at dusk, or disappearing at birth.
We played for the local football clubs.
For the school soccer team.
We played and, in playing, we would dream.
We dreamt and, in dreaming, would see, ourselves
at the centre of packed stadiums,
as the captains of men and unseen beings.
We were all driven by one collective dream:
we would all be professionals,
all be captains in one gigantic team.
That was the legacy we were meant to leave,
the glorious lives we were meant to lead.
But look at us now—
leaders in a different kind of league,
victors in the world championships of violence,
lifters of a trophy won from greed,
hoisters of a most terrible title.
World-renowned rapists and murderers and fiends,
global sensations in thieving and dealing and fleeing.
Leaving our offspring, our children, our seeds,
leaving our lovers unable to breathe,
leading our brothers to slaughter to bleed.
Just as we wished,
we are known the world over,
not for our goals,
but for the ghosts we produce with ease,
for the torture we’ve been taught to breed,
to disorder we’re devoted beings.
Just as we wished,
we are known the world over,
not for our great strikers,
but for our constant striking of women.
Just as we wished,
we are known the world over,
not for our skills,
but for all the women we kill,
all the children we rape for the thrill.
We are feared the world over,
not for our technique,
but for the terror we strike into the hearts of the weak,
for the evil we’ve become and the blood we have leaked.
We are notorious for it,
we draw it from each other, from the elderly,
from newborn babies, from our very own mothers,
from the unfortunate women we meet.
We murder them for sport.
We bludgeon them for breakfast.
We pummel them for dinner.
We strangle them when bored.
We
are why
the earth
is scorched.
The young bullies on the playground return to us transformed,
bigger and bitter and bursting with brawn,
sicker, as critters, with fists fully formed,
stiffer and thicker like bricks flung as storms.
Still the beastly spirit thrives.
Still the meek one suffers thorns.
But it’s no longer other little boys that suffer the force,
it is the wives and children in the homes we’ve forged.
And are failing to cherish,
for we were never really taught,
how to love without lashing,
how to live with ourselves and our failures and our flaws.
How to care without crushing.
How to give without cause.
How to live like boiling porridge.
How to lead with love and warmth.
Thus the beast remains alive,
in all of us it lies and it lurks and it breathes.
In all of us is rapist, is murderer, is thief,
the difference is the power given to the beast.
Boys will indeed be boys,
if they never grow into men.
And there are few things more dangerous
than the mind of a little boy, trapped
in the body of a raging man.
Perhaps every boy needs exactly four mothers,
always there to nurture,
to remind him all will be alright,
to discourage him from listening,
to the beast and all his lies,
to encourage a forgiveness,
to defeat the inner night.
To let love lead us from bitterness,
to let the bullies be:
Ba tlogele, Papa. Ga bo legwala a go lliwe.
Though much time has passed,
the mantra that was muttered to me still remains true.
For without it, I would never have been fortified against the fights most undue.
There were far more significant battles my mothers pointed me to in my youth.
Some in the Scoundrel Squad lacked a similar fortune.
Moses is still fumbling about, trying to find his place in the world.
Bloss is now a nyaope addict, stalking the night like a ghost,
gobbling at his own marrow and guzzling down the worms.
Tshepo has been struggling with addiction for a very long time,
switching his poisons while sticking to his heights.
Skabla Tsotsi seems to have survived the worst of life in the township.
His father forecasted the disaster and sent him to the village in his early teens, just as the demon was pouncing.
He and I are the only two who made it to varsity.
Even then, by the skin of our bloody teeth,
reached the peak of the mountain.
Word is that he’s doing fairly well somewhere.
His fortune was in his father.
I myself am still chipping away at the shit in my pants and the mucus in my pocket,
with much still to do—but not doing badly.
My fortune was in my four mothers.
These days,
with much firmer fists than before,
I’m not always so quick to turn the other cheek.
For the world never ceases to wage its war,
and if Jesus never sees us, we must fight for our own cause.
Though gone, my mother and my two eldest sisters persist:
Ba tlogele, Ba tlogele, Modise.
Ba tlogele Skabla.
Bloss, ba tlogele.
Ba tlogele, Tshepo.
Ba tlogele, Moses.
Go lokile.
Ba tlogeleng, ga bo legwala a go lliwe.
This poem is extracted from Gabo Legwala is a critically acclaimed autobiographical poetic theatre piece and published book by South African poet and Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner Modise Sekgothe. It is also referenced in his article ‘Maponapona Strateng‘.
