Conduit

Abahlali

48 Abahlali They were the Abahlali, shack-dwellers, their breaths misting the windows. The rusted corrugated iron roof nailed down their songs. It was warmer in the hall. Outside, the cold night air lay heavier than water over shacks that tracked a dirty sluice downhill. She was Nomvuyo, Vusile’s child, from the Eastern Cape. Their Xhosa tongues clicked. They took wood and plastic where they found it, made their homes bordering eThekwini, in the ‘mjondolo’. Her father’s eyes shone in the candle-light. Men entered, their sjamboks overturning chairs. ‘Kennedy Road for the Zulus,’ they cried, voices rising like hadedas in the night air. 49 Nomvuyo wrapped her blanket around her body, and ran out where the door had been. The police cars did not come. People scattered, a handful of dust, thrown. Angry men ransacked her father’s home. They tore a prayer-poster from the wall, left a strand of plastic flowers dangling, displaced. Now Nomvuyo begs for change, at the robots on the M41. The Umsinsi trees hide her when she sleeps, their red flowers raging. ...