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PUSH - PUSH A short story by: I poetry/short stories I Sindiwe Magona Like a veld fire, the fever swept through Blouvlei; putting a jaunty spring to the gait of old men It painted a glint in the eyes of house-wives and made husbands tremble; filled with lust for the wealth and dire trepidation for the power it might bestow on their up-to-now docile wives Surely, that could happen were a man to be foolish enough to allow his wife to go it alone The whole of Blouvlei was astir Wealth had come a-knocking at the door of each and every family there Equal opportunity Poverty, that invisible guest intimate to all Blouvlei dwellers, was about to be banished from their homes - for ever Push-Push! Push-Push! Push-Push! sounded the siren call And like the children of Hamelin Town, in Brunswick, the residents responded with gleeful abandon The scheme was so simple many wondered why they had not thought of it themselves "It is a pyramid," explained the men who brought such glittering prospects to this sprawling location of rickety, rust-brown tin shacks, where modernity, a mere two or three miles away, had failed to penetrate "You put your money into the common fund and, as others put theirs after you, their money pushes yours up and up and up and up - till it gets to the very top!" That is how those in the know explained the affair However, that was not the end Would the whole of Blouvlei have been sizzling just for that? N o As it made its journey to the top of the pyramid, the money grew and grew and grew It accumulated more money: Profit Gain Interest No one paid particular attention to the preciseness of the terms "It breeds," said Blouvleils benefactors beaming from ear to ear There was a mad scramble as people cast their hands every which where in search of money - always a scarce commodity in their lives Push-Push! Push-Push! Here was a chance to escape poverty, once and for all Who was deaf? Not the people whose idea of splurging was tripe on a week day and skaap-kop for Sunday dinner All one had to do, was cough up twenty or fifty or a hundred pounds That's all 'And your money will come back multiplied ten times!' 'Ikhiwa nqezikotile! It is being scooped up in dishes!, Resounded the thrilling testimony, music to the ear Even people who'd never set foot in school, learnt the ten times multiplication table overnight Domestic workers, suddenly the envy of house-bound wives, borrowed money from their madams - most against future earnings Men, heads of families, mortgaged wages of two years and more, that searing was the dream of today: abundance unprecedented, about to be thrust upon their eager, outstretched hands People borrowed from the church, from the teachers of their children, parents from working children, friends from each other (and, indeed, sometimes from people they regarded as less than friend) It was hard to come across one person in Blouvlei who had not been bitten by the Push-Push bug O n e woman stumbled on the astounding fact that her husband, unable to raise funds any other way, was negotiating the sale of their son to a childless couple The bewildered woman fled to relatives in the Ciskei; taking the little boy with her Every neighbourhood has its sceptic In Blouvlei, this diabolical monster housed itself in the body of my father An otherwise kind and reasonable person, this gentleman had an in-born suspicion of all money that did not come in an envelope with his name on it - an envelope he received from the hands of a white man on a Friday - unless that day fell on a holiday in the midst of the frenzy, father refused to be drawn in He was not about to get up in the middle of some nameless, moonless night, open the window wide and fling his hard-earned money away through it "And then sit back, waiting for whoever happened to pick it up to not only return it to me...

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