When Morning Comes by Arushi Raina

Author:Arushi Raina
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young adult, novel, fiction, South Africa, Soweto Uprising, Baas Law, apartheid
ISBN: 9781926890777
Publisher: Tradewind Books
Published: 2016-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

Zanele

I was sitting in the long yellow grass telling the other students about the protest, like Vusi asked. He called this “making student cells.” All his talk of shadows, a secret army, and I was sitting out in the sun with Soweto’s loudest grade twelves, arguing with them. Cars passed by on the highway. Some seemed to slow near us. Some were red. But it was not the mlungu’s.

The students were from Orlando West, Jabavu, Naledi and Phefeni. Most of them I’d either seen in debates or hanging around the shebeen. Some of them were the kind who picked fights with other students, tsotsis or whoever they could find. And some were the ones who started fights and then stood back, watched. I needed the troublemakers.

“So you say all this. How you going to do it?” one of them asked. The others stuck their faces closer.

“We’re going to have a meeting—”

“Meetings, meetings, meetings, suka wena, that’s all you people say,” Winston, from Naledi, said, getting up to leave. I put my hand on his shoulder, felt his muscles tighten. It would be easy for him to throw me off, like throwing off a fly. The other students watched. If Winston left, they’d leave too.

Slowly, Winston sat down again. But he was angry. I dropped my hand.

“This meeting, it’s not like any of the others,” I said. “It’s the meeting before the strike. So you better believe it’s happening.”

“There was a strike in Phefeni last month,” Winston said. “And nothing is better. So what do you expect now? Just because Zanele decides there’s a protest, the Boers will say, ‘Sorry, sorry, Zanele. We will change the baas law, just for you.’”

“At least we tried at Phefeni,” a boy interrupted.

“So what?” a boy from Orlando West shouted. “You wrote some signs and walked around the school.”

“We chased the principal out of school.”

“Ja, looking at your principal, it’s not a hard thing to do.”

“This time everyone is coming,” I said, shouting over them. “All the schools. Too many to ignore.”

“Which ones?” Winston said.

I turned my arm over and showed him the signatures there, of the student representatives from all the different schools.

They ran their fingers over the names. There was Masi’s, a bit bigger than the others. And Themba’s. And Vusi’s, which was small, almost invisible in black ink near my elbow.

“June 13th,” I said.

“June 13th. Amandla!” someone shouted, and the boy from Phefeni raised his fist. It stuck out, black against the yellow grass. Then there were other fists up against the grass.

And then I went home and washed the names off my arm.

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