Holding Up the Sky Read Online Free Page A

schools to hear from the black trainees and understand a little more about them. As Msizi was a particularly gifted speaker, and both Vusi and Tshidi were quite shy, he was often given this role. Sometimes he spoke about his thoughts on hot issues such as conscription of young white men into the army, other times he read some of his poetry. Either way, he always had an impact.
    When I first met Msizi, he took my breath away. He was tall, broad shouldered, dark skinned and beautiful. He had a quiet confidence that few of his peers possessed. He was also articulate and intelligent, always ready for a robust discussion on politics, sport, life and love. And lastly, he had a deep commitment to justice and the poor. I was in trouble.
    Msizi was given his name by his mother. He was the second born son in his household and she named him ‘the one who helps’ in the hope that one day he would. His youngest brother, born a few years after him, was named Jonga, ‘to look after’, though it was mostly Msizi who ultimately did the looking after. He had grown up hard. His mother worked long hours in the homes of white families to support her own. His father was rarely around and if he was, rarely in a state to work. While Msizi grew up very close to his mother, he was frustrated by her tolerance of his father’s behaviour. Until he moved to Pietermaritzburg, Msizi had lived with his family in Rini, a small township over the hill from Grahamstown.
    The Eastern Cape produced more than its fair share of ANC leaders, the most notable of whom was Nelson Mandela. I have often wondered why this was the case. Some say that it was an old boys’ network among Xhosa-speaking men. However, I think it was something to do with the harshness of the region and the harsh characters it produced. Perhaps the extremes turned blood into steel, forging the creation of both uncompromising activists and hard-nosed racists who were often in conflict with one another. Either way, Msizi was a son of the soil and his many childhood experiences of prejudice created a man who was deeply committed to the struggle for change and also deeply angry.
    In the years to come, he would go on to be an award-winning film maker and journalist, directing numerous documentaries on the lives of black South Africans, before and after the end of Apartheid. Through his work, he was offered many scholarships, training courses and conference engagements all around the world. However, like a true homing pigeon, he was always drawn back home.
    When there weren’t programs being run at the centre, the nights were quiet. The other Australians would end up in the guys’ cottage, talking with a few other volunteers. Not comfortable there, I would follow the trainees up to the house where someone would build a fire while the candles were being lit. Each night we took turns to tell stories about our lives and the people in them. It was during this nightly story telling that I began to understand the impact of state sanctioned poverty and discrimination, not in an abstract way, but in the lives of people I shared a house with, people I was beginning to care about. It was impossible not to be moved, not to want to be part of working towards a different future. Having said this, they were not always heart-wrenching tales; my new friends also made fun of themselves, telling jokes and lighter stories of their love lives and ill-fated pursuits of the opposite sex.
    My ears pricked up whenever Msizi told stories about one conquest or another, as I hadn’t yet plucked up the courage to find out if he was seeing someone. It didn’t seem as if he was, but he was also a bit of a dark horse so it I couldn’t be certain. This, of course, made him even more intriguing to me.
    Towards the end of our first week, Steve announced that we were going to visit a few project sites in the township. Both projects were at creches–child care centres–one in rural