The Water Man's Daughter (3 page)

Nomsulwa’s shovel touches metal and the ring reverberates
down the line. There is a small whoop from the group and everyone renews their efforts.

The girl next to Nomsulwa crouches immediately and digs faster with her hands. Nomsulwa uses the edge of her shovel to scrape away the dirt that surrounds the pipe. She can see where the two pieces are screwed into each other. The pipe is new, glistening like silver as it had on the truck that morning. Just one pipe would bring over 2,500 rand in the Saturday market, but Nomsulwa has made it clear to everyone that they must leave the bounty in the borrowed dark blue pickup, parked earlier that day one block from the site. She isn’t going to let greed motivate her neighbours. The promise of a rich day on the black market would have brought more people out tonight, for sure – people who didn’t care enough about their wives’ dry taps or who couldn’t wait for more pennies to chalk up credit on their water meters. They would have been loud, excited by each pipe’s discovery. There would have been fights. No, it wasn’t worth it. Better to stick to a smaller crowd, a more dedicated community.

Mira comes up behind her and tickles her sides. She jumps.

“What are you doing!” she hisses.

“Sorry. Where are we moving this stuff when we finish?”

“To the shed behind my mother’s house. The chickens will cover it in shit and sawdust. No one will find it there.”

“Letting good steel rot in a chicken coop?”

“Leave it, Mira. We decided it was better than selling. It’s too risky to wander into the market with a barrowful of pipe.”

“Understood, boss.” Mira’s smile seems genuine and lets her breathe easier than she has all night. “We’ll leave it there, then. But after a while, we should sell it. The money can be divided among the community.”

Nomsulwa half nods to appease Mira and turns away from him to dig. She is happy, she thinks, maybe for the first time in weeks. Here, with her family of neighbours, they are going to bring the water back.

She begins to sing quietly, hoping the traditional song will encourage their tired backs:

Mothers join in with her, each carefully controlling her voice, leaving a chorus so soft it might be only the memory of a song.

Nomsulwa breaks off as another car turns the corner. The headlights obscure the colour of the vehicle and light up the trench. The group freezes again. Nomsulwa is less
worried, trusting now that the Numbers are being careful in their watch. Then she sees the South African Police Service insignia. She stands motionless as the car slowly passes the small groups one by one, moving only inches each second, as if savouring the power it has over the diggers. Nomsulwa wants to yell, “Run!” She mouths the words, turns her body. “
RUN
.” But no sound comes out.

Mira drops his shovel and drags the child nearest to him back from the trench into the shadow of the house behind. Nomsulwa remains fixed next to the trench as the car stops in front of her. The lone woman inside doesn’t open her door, she doesn’t step out, gun in hand. She doesn’t call on her radio for backup. Instead, the window rolls down and Zembe Afrika takes off her police cap and runs her fingers over her tightly tied hair.

“Amandla,” Zembe whispers to Nomsulwa. It sounds so beautiful, the words coming from this woman’s mouth, that Nomsulwa pauses, her mind blank. It takes a second for her to reconnect with the car in front of her, the officer leaning out.

“Awethu,” Nomsulwa returns. She raises her fist and leaves her hand clutched long after the police car has moved away and her comrades have begun to chatter among themselves.

“Who was it? What did you say? How did you—?” Mira rushes to her side.

“It was Mama Afrika.”

“What did she say to you?”

“She said, ‘Amandla.’ ”

Mira lets out a big barrel laugh. He slaps her on the back hard enough to make her stumble and then helps her get her footing again, apologizing and laughing still.

Nomsulwa chastises the young girl next to her, “Keep working!”

Her neighbours unveil their shovels and finish digging up the water pipes.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
N
OMSULWA FEELS LIKE SHE
has a hangover. Her muscles ache and grind as she rolls out of bed and touches the floor with her toes. The air is cold enough that she can actually feel it fill her lungs. She stretches upwards and tries to quiet her body, but she knows she will not be able to relax until they get the pipes away, up to the village where her mother lives. Although the truck with its load of thirteen pipes is well hidden, as long as the steel is in the township she must worry about the police recovering it, her comrades selling it, and the Numbers stealing more than their allotted payment.

A grunt comes from the living room. She steps out of the bedroom and walks towards the couch. Mira has one eye open and is in the process of cursing the sun, now illuminating his makeshift bed with early white light. Nomsulwa acknowledges his complaints as she moves past him to the counter where the kettle and stove are. She begins to boil water to warm up the frigid stream that runs into her bathtub. She puts a small amount in a bright-red electric kettle and then transfers it to a huge steel pot half full with cold water and sitting on two stove burners.

“You going to wash today?” she asks Mira. He shakes his head, covering his eyes with hand. “You always say no. But you’re covered in dust from last night and you stink. Wash. The water will still be warm when I’m done.” He shakes his head again and whines at the same time. His squirming makes him look even more like an overgrown child than usual.

Nomsulwa transfers more boiling water into the pot and then walks into her bathroom and fills the bath with a few inches of water. She returns to the kitchen and waits for the third kettle to sound. They will hold the meeting for the
PCF
today as usual. Their pattern can’t change just because so many of the members will be exhausted and as dirty and aching as Nomsulwa and Mira. Any deviation and they could tip off the police. Not that it won’t be obvious who took the pipes. Absent some large plot by a gang to steal them for profit, their group is the only one with the organization and the bodies to pull it off. And Mama Afrika could turn them in at any moment. Still, behaving normally will make it easier to deny the charge if it comes.

N
OMSULWA AND
M
IRA WALK THE TEN BLOCKS TO THE
community centre. Although it is early on this weekday morning, the township is busy. Women and old men have taken over the streets. They sit on their front stoops in twos and threes. Some of them wave a friendly hello to the pair as they pass. Nomsulwa keeps expecting to see the police appear from behind a corner, ready to arrest. She can’t shake the uneasy feeling.

The creaking community centre sits in the middle of a concrete pool. From the outside it looks empty. A scatter of shopping bags and food wrappers dance in front of the door. A young man steps out, leans against the brick wall, and lights his cigarette. He inhales. A bag catches on his running shoe. He exhales, ignoring the plastic. A cheer sounds from the inside. The members have beaten them to the meeting.

The large room is full of women who create a moving mass of red. Each one wears a
PCF
T-shirt. The older women have wrapped their heads in brightly coloured scarves with geometric patterns that fold into their necks. The younger girls swim in the huge T-shirts; their small shoulders and short hair poke up between their mothers. The room they sit in dwarfs them, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t enough people there. There are over a hundred women gathered, talking and singing, waiting for the meeting to start.

Nomsulwa begins yelling as she runs forward and up the stairs, “Phansi ngoAmanzi Phansi!”
Down with Amanzi down!
The people on the floor in front of the raised stage call back to her, repeating her cry. Mira is right behind her, and he leans first into the microphone, “Molweni, ninjani?”
Hello all, how are you?
The traditional greeting. Mira waits for silence and then opens his speech.

“Last time we walked into downtown eGoli and demanded the water we were promised, we stopped traffic for an hour. This time, let’s shut down Rissik Street for the whole day!” They all cheer and wait for him to continue.
“First, our government sold off the public electricity company and we were left with meter boxes and no coins to put in them. Now they have done the same with our water. Our Constitution guarantees us access to water, they promised that the new South Africa would take care of us. But we had
more
water,
more
electricity under Apartheid.”

The
PCF
started small, as a collection of teenagers who learned how to fiddle with the electricity boxes in the poorest neighbourhoods. When the company cut off those families who couldn’t pay, the community called in the “electricians” to reconnect their electricity. They marched into the neighbourhoods in the daytime, under the noses of the company-controlled police and under the protection of the community. Now they hold meetings in massive halls. They bus in women from over ten different sections of Soweto. They have white women from America come to study them. They march down the streets of the business district, stopping traffic, demanding access to electricity. Water is new for the
PCF
. When the women of Soweto were cut off from their taps, they didn’t have anywhere else to turn. The new meters, tightly monitored and equipped with brand new anti-tamper devices, are hard to reconnect. But Nomsulwa’s women are organized, and there are a lot of them – if technicians can’t do it, they will reconnect the water through their protest.

“We will meet at eleven here, and there will be pick-up and drop-off points in Chaiwelo, Mapetla, and Protea South,” Nomsulwa explains. “It will take us an hour to get into the city centre and then we will congregate for the march. The
route has been sent to the police, but we must be ready for everything. Once we make it down Rissik Street we will end on the steps of the city legislature. Mira and I will then enter the lobby and demand an audience with Mayor Masondo.”

Cheers rise again. They are all excited about raising the stakes. Some women will bring bandanas soaked in vinegar to combat the tear gas, but most will brave it with nothing. Despite the vicious stinging in their eyes, they will continue forward. Some women will bring chairs to sit on, but most will endure the hot sun for hours, sitting and standing on command with the crowd. They will stand even though their legs are pressing inwards from too much weight for too many years.

“Bring your kids,” Nomsulwa tells the women, but they know to do that already. Kids form the front lines, right behind the banner. The police are less likely to use the water cannons and the gas if the
TV
cameras are trained on the youngest marchers.

Nomsulwa yells, “Fire the Mayor! Fire the Councillor!”

The women answer back at her, repeating the sentence.

She calls again, “Viva
PCF
viva!”

There is a low rumble as Nomsulwa waves her arms and leads the group in a chant of “Shame! Shame!” Mira pauses for it to build, then, when it is at its loudest, he yells over the voices, “We will demand what the
ANC
promised us!”

The cries are joyful again and turn quickly into a song led by an old woman in the front row, standing with her granddaughter. Their voices warble and are disjointed at
first. Then they find the harmony and the melody comes through strong and supported. Nomsulwa sings too, enjoying the sound of so many voices. Filling her lungs with grand air, the people’s air, the air you only get in churches or at funerals.

“M
AMA, WE’RE ARRIVING SOON
. I
T’S A LARGE TRUCK
 … No, not more than four men … They won’t notice. They won’t. Sesizofika lapho.”
We’ll be there soon
. Nomsulwa clicks her cellphone closed before her mother has a chance to protest further.

The pickup truck moans along the dirt path, and Nomsulwa can hear the pipes thunk hollowly against one another, although they tied them down as tightly as possible. They are driving along the edge of the shantytown. The shacks creak and move with the wind that has risen up just as the cover of the township buildings falls away and there is nothing but flat field on the horizon. Nomsulwa gives over to the bumps in the road. Her body jolts up, to the left, she flops nearly into her cousin’s lap. She doesn’t have the strength to hold herself upright anymore. Her eyes are closing even though she is pinching her palm to stay awake. Jolt to the left … jolt to the right … flop forward …