Push-Push! by Sindiwe Magona

Author:Sindiwe Magona
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2010-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

A Peaceful Exit

Mondli was thirty-nine years old; the furthest thing on his mind, death. Especially his own. Why, only a month before his last birthday, less than six months ago, he had bought himself a car. Granted second-hand but in good repair; the mileage low. The elderly widow from whom he’d bought it had rarely asked to be driven anywhere; the car was practically new.

So was his body. New. Well, young.

And his was no ordinary, run-of-the-mill body either. Mondli had been Captain of the rugby team at primary school. He was Captain at high school too. And he was Captain at Fort Hare and later made the Eastern Province Team. He won the most coveted Mr Sports Award when he was only in Form 1; breaking a record that went back as far as records had been kept at Siphumelele High School. MSA belonged to the higher forms – Four and Five. Only once before had there been an upset. And then, a Form Three student had stolen the prize. But that student was as ripe in age as any of the competitors he beat. The year Mondli got the prize, he was only sixteen years old. Almost.

As if to have such a powerful machine were not enough, Mondli was far from wanting in the Looks Department. Gorgeous, he’d heard people say that about himself. And that was nothing the mirror dared contradict. Genetics, a balanced diet, and sheer good luck had endowed him with strong bones well put together, a height that many envied, and skin the term velvety does not quite do justice. ‘Ngathi uhlamba ngobisi’ – ‘It’s as though he washes himself in milk’, marvelled many in utter amazedness.

A sound upbringing had made sure he was free of vanity; the Achilles heel of many a handsome lad. His father, from early on, drilled him, ‘a handsome face is but an accidental arrangement of the bones, my son. One is born looking the way one looks; that is nothing to be proud of, it is no achievement.’ The old man told him that so often that he believed it and, as a young man, conducted his life in manner fitting.

And so he had, from an early age, known that test of character lay in one’s achievement. As well as one’s conduct, of course. He knew that to be admired for looks was not enough to put bread on one’s plate. Indeed, to buy one that plate on which one would put one’s bread. Therefore, Mondli had applied himself and done well enough in school to please his parents and earn himself a degree and a teacher’s diploma.

He made his home with Noluntu, a daughter of the Tolo clan. Noluntu, orphaned early in life, had been raised by several relatives. However, from age eleven till she married Mondli, she had lived with a maternal uncle, umalume, and his wife. And, when she thought of parents, it was this childless couple, who had lavished so much kindness on her, she had in mind.

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