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Chapter One

"Lobola Complicates Love"

One day in the summer of 1980, three of my boyfriend's relatives—his stepmother and two uncles—came to my father's shack on 13th Avenue to pay lobola for me. They brought no cattle as the bride price, as had been the custom back in the days of my grandmother. They came to pay cash.

For days my family had eagerly anticipated their coming. Elaborate preparations had been made to welcome them and to dignify our poverty. The small dirt courtyard in front of the two-room shack had been swept clean. The cement kitchen floor had been scrubbed and polished to a shining red. The two cracked windows with faded curtains had been washed till they shined like mirrors.

Florah and her daughter, Angeline

The furniture had been polished and dusted over and over again, to hide the fact that it was old and cheap. The single bed in one corner of the kitchen, on which my brother slept at night, had its sagging mattress replaced with a thick piece of sponge and decorated with throw pillows to resemble a sofa. The large, secondhand coal stove propped up on three sides with bricks because its legs were missing had been cleaned and its yellow enamel plates sparkled. A linen tablecloth, embroidered by my mother with patterns of colorful flowers, had been washed, ironed and spread conspicuously across the table.

Everything in the shack was spic-and-span. And I, the bride-to-be, assisted by my two sisters, Mirriam and Maria, had done all the work. I wanted to impress my prospective in-laws and show them that I was worth every penny they had come to pay as lobola.

The table was decked out with a sumptuous meal. It was easily our best meal for the year. It consisted of a chicken my father had bought and slaughtered, rice, pumpkins, green vegetables, beets, custard and jelly, cake, soda drinks and beer. Everything was served on the special dining-ware that had taken me months to purchase on layaway, and which was used only for special occasions such as Christmas celebrations.

The smiles and nods of satisfaction on the faces of Collin's stepmother and uncles told me that they were indeed impressed. After they had feasted, the lobola proceedings began. My father, dressed in a well-worn black suit, white shirt and gaudy tie, was accompanied by a male neighbor, similarly spiffed up, who acted as witness. The two sat solemnly at one end of the table, and Collin's relatives sat at the other.

I quietly removed myself to the bedroom of the shack, where I remained cloistered with the rest of the womenfolk in the house. The bride-to-be was forbidden to be present during lobola discussions. But I could overhear everything, as I listened intently through the thin walls.

"We've come to make a down payment of R100 (about $35) on your daughter Florah," Collin's uncle said. "Our son Collin has known her for nearly two years now. He's been so happy with her that he wants her for a wife."

"I trust you've already been informed that I want R1,000 for my daughter," my father said.

"Yes, we've been informed," said Collin's stepmother.

"She's worth more, you know," my father said. "You're getting her at a bargain price. She's the oldest and prettiest of my daughters. And she's been to school and is a hard worker."

"Yes, we know her virtues," said Collin's uncle. "They're well displayed in the beautiful appearance of the house, and in the fine meal we've just enjoyed. We appreciate your generosity in asking only R1,000 for such a splendid daughter. We're certain she's worth more."

"I guarantee you that," my father said. "She's been well raised and will be a boon to any man."

"We're confident our son will be most happy with her," Collin's uncle said. "As for the rest of the lobola, it will be paid to you in several installments. That is our solemn pledge."

Thus the bargain was struck, making me, at eighteen years old, Collin's betrothed. Once he had paid the balance of R900, I would be completely his, a permanent part of his household, his property.

At first I didn't mind that Collin had paid lobola for me. In fact I was relieved. Our love was real and only lobola remained to legitimize it in the eyes of society and of our parents. Now that he had paid part of it meant I could start living with him and his family without shame or violating any taboos. Most important, the move would place me beyond the reach of my father's tyranny.

I so much wanted to be away from my father. I was fed-up with his domineering over everything and everyone in the shack. And females were his special target. Whenever we bought things without consulting him, talked back to him each time lectured us about our duties, or fought for our rights, he always became irate and would remind us he was the ruler of his own home.

"As long as you live under my roof," he would bellow. "You'll do as I say."

Being a makoti, bride, also filled me with a sense of pride. For some time several of our neighbors had openly gossiped that my headstrong attitude would scare men away and leave me a childless spinster.

"Your daughter, Musadi (woman)," one neighbor had told my mother, "is good only for vat en set (shacking up)." "She's too loose with her tongue. And men don't like that in a woman."

My mother in part believed this. She feared that her enemies had somehow bewitched me into acting contrary to my matrimonial interests, in which case I was unlikely to find a husband willing to pay lobola for me.

My mother often shared her fears with me.

"Florah, my dear," she said one day, "stop talking back to men the way you do." "But I have my own mind, Mama," I replied.

"Of course you do, child. But men don't like women with an attitude."

"But Mama, I have to speak out to let people know how I feel. After all, I'm not a rock or a doll."

"You don't know men, my child. You're still young and inexperienced. I do. The one thing they hate the most is a woman who can't bridle her tongue."

"But you talk back to Papa."

"Yes, and you know the consequences. He beats me up and chases me out of the house. I just don't want the same to happen to you, child. I don't want you to suffer the way I have."

"Well, maybe it's best not to get married."

"Don't talk like that, child," my mother said, in an alarmed voice. "It's bad luck."

"What's wrong with not being married?"

"What sort of a woman will you be without a husband?"

"A free woman."

"Now don't be foolish, child. What will you do for children?"

"I don't have to marry to have children, do I?"

"Oh, Lord," my mother cried. "What's gotten into you, child? You're indeed bewitched. Do you know what it's like to raise children without a husband? Ask your grandmother. She'll tell you. And do you want to be called a skeberesh (whore)?"

"Times have changed, Mama. I know many unmarried women with children who are doing just fine. They feel no shame."

"But in our family it is shameful," my mother declared.

So when Collin finally agreed to pay lobola it came as a great relief to my mother, and to me. Yet I hated the feeling that I had been bought, that I was my husband's possession, that he now had control over my destiny.

In many ways I considered myself a modern woman, and the thought of losing my independence as part of the bargain over lobola scared me. But what could I do? Good men were hard to find. And I was living in black South Africa, where tradition ran deep, and lobola was still a revered institution, despite its abuse and the bondage and untold pain it has brought many a woman, as I vividly saw in the lives of my mother and grandmother.

I could only hope that the Collin I knew before lobola—respectful of me and my opinions, and supportive of my ambitions—would not be transformed into a sexist tyrant by the knowledge that I now belonged exclusively to him. I could only pray that he would not abuse the tremendous power lobola gave him over me, as my father did his power over my mother.

My mother had been bought cheap. Her lobola amounted to no more than R50. Maybe that partly explains why my father, in a long, abusive marriage which has lasted over 25 years and produced seven children, constantly demanded her total submission and obedience. Whenever she rebelled, which she had the habit of doing even when she was counseling me to submit to men, he would beat her and chase her out of the shack, calling her all sorts of degrading names and threatening to return her to her mother and demand his lobola back.

I was determined to let no man treat me the same way. I went about choosing my life mate very carefully. Women friends called me picky and warned me that my "attitude" was a guarantee that no man would want to marry me.

"The man I marry," I said to my friend Hlekani (laughter), "has to take me as I am."

"You don't know our men, Florah," Hlekani said. She was six years older and had been in several relationships, none of which ended up in marriage. Yet in all of them Hlekani had been the perfectly submissive and obedient girlfriend. "They don't like a woman who's too cheeky. They want a woman they can control." "Do you think wanting to be treated right is being cheeky?" I said. "No. But there's a way for a woman to get what she wants from a man without being too aggressive about it."

"Why should we always be changing ourselves to suit men's tastes?" I said. "Why don't they change themselves to suit our tastes for once? Why should we always pretend we're nothing when we know our worth? I hate playing these games." "They're not games, Florah," Hlekani said. "This is the way things are. That's how we've been raised. That's what men expect and want."

I believed I had found Mr. Right in Collin. I met him when I was seventeen and he two years older. I was returning home from work one day from the piano store in the white suburbs, where I helped polish and refurbish old pianos. My best friend Joyce and I worked there together. Tall, light-skinned and street-smart, Joyce was my age and we were inseparable. Each time I found a job, I made sure Joyce got one too at the same place—and she did the same for me.

Joyce and I had shared many secrets and experiences growing up in the same yard on 13th Avenue. We had even wanted to attend the same school, but because Joyce was a Mosotho and I was Venda, the authorities required that we go to separate tribal schools.

Every day when Joyce and I walked home from work we would pass a group of about a dozen boys hanging out on the street corner. Always we stopped and chatted with them. Joyce teased me for being shy and fearful of boys. She taught me to flirt. Collin vied with the other boys to gain my attention. He was tall, slender, and a snappy dresser, preferring a popular fashion called "hippies" or "American style." He wore small caps, colorful, baggy shirts and three-quarter-length jeans. He was laid-back and fond of making jokes.

One day when Joyce and I paused to talk to Collin's group, he took me aside and whispered in my ear, "You're the loveliest girl I've ever seen. I especially like your smile and your big eyes."

"Thanks," I said softly, averting my eyes from his steady gaze in embarrassment. I thought myself ugly because I was skinny, even after I quit school and started working and dressing up in the latest fashions.

"Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Mirriam Makeba?"

"Do I?" I said with a smile, feeling flattered.

Mirriam Makeba was not only my favorite singer, she was also the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She had the looks of an African queen, the voice of a nightingale, and her haunting songs came from and touched the soul.

"Yes you do."

"You're just flattering me."

"No, I'm not."

"As a matter of fact, several people have told me the same thing," I said, "and I think they lie. No one is as beautiful as Mirriam Makeba."

"Well, you come close," Collin said. "Can you sing?"

"Like a frog," I said. "That's why they kicked me off my mother's church choir." We both laughed.

Again he whispered into my ear, "I dig you, Florah."

In South Africa when a boy says that to you, it usually means, "Let's go to bed."

"NO!" I said. "I don't do that."

My reaction seemed to please him and he became determined to win me. Collin's parents were divorced and he traveled back and forth between his mother's place in Vereeniging, where he attended school, and the home of his father, stepmother and step-siblings in Alexandra. His father, a musician who used to perform in a band, had many children by different wives, but Collin was his favorite son.

Collin came to Alexandra often during school holidays to visit his father, and that's when we got to see each other. When he matriculated he moved to Alexandra to look for work and to be near me.

Our relationship became serious. In my family, as in many others where tribal tradition still held sway, it was taboo for mothers to talk to their daughters about sex, yet I knew more or less what it was all about, mainly from talking to friends and cousins. When I brought up the issue of birth control with Collin, at first he laughed and didn't want to talk about it.

"You don't expect me to wear a rubber, do you?" he said.

"That would be the easiest form of birth control," I said. "But if you don't want to, I can go to family planning."

He said nothing, which meant I could go. Many black women often asked their husband and boyfriends for permission to use birth control. Many men were not satisfied simply with controlling women's lives, they also wanted to control their bodies. If a man wanted a baby, you had the baby. If you refused, that was often the end of the relationship or marriage.

There were four family planning centers in Alexandra. I went to the nearest one, located in a huge women's hostel. The center was a tiny, spare, unpretentious room staffed entirely by overworked black nurses who often took out their frustrations by being rude to the steady stream of young girls and illiterate women who came for services.

When I arrived there I found a long line already formed outside the facility. I was not surprised to see only women. For a variety of reasons, most black men, especially the uneducated, opposed any form of birth control. Some saw it as part of a devilish plot by the government to keep the black population down. Others regarded having lots of children, particularly girls, as wealth in the form of lobola. Still others believed that a woman who was perpetually pregnant was easy to control and to keep honest. And then there were the men who expressed their virility by the number of children they could father, usually by different women.

While I stood in line I started talking to a young woman named Precious, about twenty-one, who had already had four children, in rat-tat-tat fashion, one after the other.

"I envy you for not having any children and working," Precious said. She was accompanied by all four of her children—three girls and a boy, the oldest almost seven and the youngest still nursing. They wore rags and had no shoes. But despite their poverty the children looked beautiful. "But your babies are gorgeous," I said.

"People tell me so," Precious said with a heavy sigh. "But if I had to do it all over again, I would want only one. They're such hard work. They make me feel so old and helpless. They often get sick and they like playing in the streets, which are so dangerous nowadays. My husband and I are very poor. He never went to school and makes only R14 a week. That's hardly enough for food and rent. No one helps me take care of the children. I want to have a future. I want to work. I want us to have a better life. I want to be able to send my children to school and buy them nice things. That's why I'm here. I want to stop working at having babies. I want real work. But if my husband finds out I've been here, he'll kill me."

"Kill you?"

"Yes. He's warned me against using birth control," Precious said. "He doesn't believe in it. He wants more children. And he has this strange idea that birth control will affect his virility. Will it?"

"I don't know that much about birth control," I said. "But I don't think so." "Don't you think four children are enough?" Precious asked plaintively. "They're more than enough," I said. I wanted only two.

"So I'm right in coming here?" she asked dubiously. "A few of my women friends have told me I shouldn't come here. They say that birth control will make me sterile or make me have deformed babies."

"You're doing the right thing," I said reassuringly.

Yet the fears Precious had were not totally unfounded. At one time black women were being secretly sterilized at government-run family planning centers. And recently, in one factory in Natal, black female employees had to submit to monthly injections of Depo-Provera—a crude form of birth control with dangerous side effects—every three months or lose their jobs.

"Thank you for your support," Precious said.

"You're welcome," I said.

I don't know if her husband ever found out she had been to family planning. I prayed he wouldn't.

My turn came. A short, fat black nurse, with a brusque manner, asked me my age and what form of birth control I wanted.

I told her I was eighteen, and since I hardly knew a thing about the various birth control devices, I simply said I wanted a device that worked and was safe.

"No form of birth control is 100 percent safe, girl," she said.

Without giving me a choice or explaining any bad side effects, the nurse told me that an IUD was the proper birth control device for me. She ordered me to pull up my dress, remove my underwear, and lie on a bunk. She proceeded to insert the IUD inside me. She did it hastily, and I felt stabs of pain which made me wince. But I didn't say anything as there were many other young women, most of them schoolgirls, eager for some form of birth control, presumably because their boyfriends were pressuring them into having sex, and their mothers hadn't, like mine, told them a thing about it. Most of the girls were not yet eighteen.

Several days after the IUD was inserted, I started having cramps and bleeding. I went back to the clinic and was told my symptoms were normal. All women feel discomfort from an IUD, the nurses said, especially after each monthly checkup. Every month I complained of the pain and bleeding, but no one listened or seemed to care.

At last I had the damn thing removed. Collin wanted a baby. I was madly in love with him and wanted to prove my fertility so that he'd marry me legally, before a magistrate. Without a marriage license, lobola or no lobola, I had no rights whatsoever should Collin leave me for another woman, as often happened in lobola marriages in which the woman bore no children.

Children are so precious to African men that sterility is frequently grounds for divorce. A married woman without a child is living on borrowed time. At any moment she might be returned by the husband to her parents, in disgrace and shame. The husband considers himself wronged, deceived, as if the woman and her parents should have known beforehand that she couldn't bear any children, which is absurd.

To appease a childless husband, and desperate to save their daughter's marriage, the parents of the infertile woman sometimes purchase him a second wife. If they can't afford to do so, they offer a younger sister or niece as a second wife. I had relatives who have done that. But I shuddered at the thought of sharing a husband with any of my younger sisters.

When a year and a half passed with Collin and I didn't get pregnant, I became extremely worried. To go that long without a child after lobola was paid was considered strange. Collin and his family began wondering too.

"Where are the grandchildren, Florah?" Collin's stepmother said. "Remember you're never quite a wife without children."

"They'll come," I said.

There had been tension between Collin's stepmother and me ever since I moved in with his family. She was a shrewd and domineering woman, accustomed to getting her way and running things. She resented my headstrong attitude, and thought that I was trying to remove Collin from under her control. Before I arrived on the scene, she was used to running Collin's life.

She demanded that he give her his wages, she set his priorities, and she monitored his comings and goings. When I tried to change all that she considered me as meddling in the affairs of "her house," and treated me almost like a stranger, an interloper, especially since I was from the Shangaan and Venda tribes, tribes many Xhosas looked down upon.

I tried making Collin aware of the problems and strains her stepmother's behavior was causing our relationship.

"I'm tired of having to seek your stepmother's approval before doing anything in this house," I said.

"It's her house, Florah."

"Granted it's her house," I said. "But we are grown ups, man and wife, and have the right to make up our minds about things. For instance, why do you always give her your wages? I'm tired of having to beg her for money whenever I need to buy something." I even had to get her approval to buy a dress or pair of shoes with my husband's money.

"My stepmother knows how to handle money," Collin said.

"I do too," I said, "and I'm your wife. Don't you trust me?"

"I trust you," Collin said, "but my stepmother will get mad if I stopped giving her money. Until I'm done paying lobola for you and we have a place of our own, it's best that I do things her way."

"But I'm your wife, for God's sake," I cried. "Your stepmother has no business telling you what you can and cannot do. You're not a child."

"She's not telling me what to do, Florah," Collin said. "I just don't want any trouble. So why don't we leave things as they are until we have a place of our own."

We left things as they were. While Collin's stepmother treated me with coldness, suspicion and disdain, his father, on the other hand, was a darling. He was easy-going, full of laughter and treated me with the kindness and respect I deserved as his son's wife. But his wife clearly had the power in the house, and he often had to defer to her judgment, albeit reluctantly.

When Collin's stepmother realized that I was determined to wrest Collin from under her control, she started watching me like a hawk. It wasn't a hard thing to do in the two-room house. She scrutinized my cooking, washing and cleaning, on the lookout for excuses to use against me. I gave her none. She then latched on to the issue of children. She started telling me that Collin was complaining to her because I was unable to conceive, and that under no circumstances would he make further lobola payments without a baby. This of course was a veiled threat that either I conceived or the marriage would soon be over.

When I confronted Collin about his stepmother's threats he was evasive.

"You know children are important, Florah," he said.

"Yes, I know," I said. "And we've been trying, haven't we?"

"Yes, but—"

"But what?"

"You haven't had any."

"So I have to go?"

"I didn't say that."

I wanted him to repudiate his stepmother's threats but he didn't. He didn't. Instead he became somewhat distant and impatient with me. He started hanging out in shebeens with his friends and would come back home drunk. Sometimes he didn't come home at all.

The pressure to conceive came not only from Collin and his family, but also from my family.

"Any child on the way?" my mother asked me one day.

"I don't think so," I said.

"Is there anything wrong?"

"No, I don't think so," I said in a doubtful voice. "We've been trying but have had no luck."

"Well," my mother said. "You shouldn't worry too much. They'll come."

"But Collin and his parents are concerned."

"Your father is concerned too," my mother said. "He thinks the reason Collin is behind in his lobola payments may be because of your inability to conceive. But I told your father not to worry and the babies will come."

"I love Collin, Mama," I said. "I badly want to give him a child. I don't want to lose him to another woman."

"You won't," my mother said. "Trust me you won't. The God of Israel will see to it that you and Collin have a tribe of children."

My mother was such a fervent Christian that she thought nothing beyond the power of her God. But I wasn't leaving my matrimonial fate only to the God of Israel. I consulted a nganga, traditional healer, who prescribed some muti - herbs and roots that were supposed to increase fertility. I even went to a Zionist prophet, who recommended ablutions and laxatives, and still nothing happened. And although my IUD had been removed, the cramps and bleeding continued.

I was now frantic. I began wondering if I was unable to conceive because I had used an IUD. I asked questions but no one provided me with satisfactory answers. On the contrary, I discovered evidence that there was something terribly wrong with the IUDs they were putting in us. I saw children born with IUDs imbedded in the flesh behind their ears and in their cheeks. I heard other women talk about cramps and bleeding. I couldn't see a gynecologist because they were white and expensive. I could only pray and keep trying to conceive.

At last, I conceived. For several months I did not realize I was pregnant because I continued to menstruate, or thought I was. The IUD had messed up my uterus so badly that I had pain, cramps and bleeding all through my pregnancy. I was working at a fiberglass factory on the outskirts of Alexandra at the time. The work was hard, the fiberglass material was itchy, and I was always sick. Because my precarious health made it impossible for me to work long on the assembly line, I was often sent to buy lunch for fellow workers. Frequently I ended up at the clinic and people would tell me I had passed out while waiting in line at the store. The clinic told me I had low blood pressure and needed to stop working.

But I was reluctant to quit my job. I needed the money to support myself so I would not have to rely on Collin's stepmother, and to help my parents and siblings because my father was unemployed and my mother was sick. I continued working until the eighth month, when cramps, bleeding, fatigue and fainting spells often made it impossible for me to leave the house.

On the 13th of August 1982, four months before my twenty-first birthday, I gave birth to a baby girl and named her Angeline Nonqeba. Nonqeba in Xhosa means a sensitive, kindhearted person who is always eager to help others. I continued to experience pain and cramps and bleeding, but now I knew that whatever the IUD had done to my womb, even if I never conceived again, at least I had had one child.

Without any income or job, I had to constantly beg Collin's stepmother for money for food, diapers, trips to the clinic, and baby clothes. This sort of humiliation was intolerable. Shortly after Angeline was born I began combing the want-ads section for jobs. Luckily I was hired as an assistant at a store in the city, and my mother and sisters took care of Angeline when I was away at work.

Collin was very happy when I had the baby. He doted on her. Collin's parents' too were happy, even though I had given birth to a girl—a boy is often preferred as the firstborn because he insures that the family name and line will be perpetuated. I was now finally one of the family.

With Angeline's arrival, Collin's stepmother's attitude towards me changed from one of coldness, resentment and suspicion to one of tolerable warmth. One thing, however, didn't change. I was still the family drudge. Despite nursing an infant and working, I was still expected to clean the whole house alone, do laundry, and cook for everybody. When I complained to Collin, he told me that his parents had a right to expect the woman he had paid lobola for to do all the work around the house, because that was her duty. Most African women are such slaves, and they mourn in silence.

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