Everything Happens At Night

100 the minnesota review Maggie Jaffe Everything Happens At Night (In Memory, Stephen Biko, d. September 12, 1977) In South Africa everything happens at night. Night held captive, smeared, retched in Soweto, Nyanga, Sharpeville . . At railway stations, cinemas, restaurants, toilets ("Non-Whites Only") color itself is void. Copper sun, sere earth, weaver bird-song, mealie fields at dusk. In the veldt night is lion-tongue, giraffe-knowing, antelope-grace impressed on pale gold Krugerrands. Suburban swimming pools, chained guard-dogs, white walls splashed with bougainvillea, protea, cape primrose. In Black townships only thorn trees survive. "When I'm nervous," she says, "I have a double scotch and clean my husband's rifle." Outside, the Karroo dorp bellows like a wounded wildebeest. Waiting for what? Steve Biko, brain injury. jaffe 101 Jacob Monakgotla, heart attack. James Lenkoe, suicide by hanging. Dumisani Mbatha, unknown illness. Joseph MdIuIi, hanged himself. Lawrence Ndznaga, natural causes. Neil Aggett, hanged himself. Sifundile Matalasi, self-strangulation. Thabo Mosala, internal bleeding. 'Looksmart' S. Ngudle, suicide by hanging. J.B. Tubakwe, suicide by hanging. Ahmed Timol, fell out of tenth story window. Ernest Dipale, hanged himself. * "Official Version," yet their names snake through unrecorded history like the yellow Molopo River. In shebeens not enough brandy to washclean their dying, not enough night — Business as usual, in the mines, extricating gold and diamond bullets: "nigger rhymes with trigger" in this suck, suck, suck hole, South Africa. 12 September 1984. "South African police and Blacks battle in the township of Soweto. Killed: thirty-three, wounded: three hundred." Nyana we sizwe: brothers of the land, here is where you stand. There is witness. * Grateful acknowledgment is made to Sue Coe and Holly Metz, How to Commit Suicide in South Africa (N.Y.: Raw Books and Graphics, 1983), for the list of the dead. ...