For Sizwe Vilakazi
Fearing electricity – only installed
in rural Kwazulu post-Apartheid –
would disturb and thus devalue their cattle
the village elders decided it should come
no closer than the main road to Bergville,
a mile or so from their scattered houses.
Though the night sky, with its myriads
and myriads of stars, stayed above
the ancestors’ houses unpolluted,
in time there were fewer cattle, fewer folk.
Young people still left for the townships.
***
On our last morning, the family’s
little girl and her younger brother took us
across the veldt to their uncle’s kraal
to see newly born twin calves. The children,
on the dirt path through high dry grasses,
moved like silence, but we, clumsy townies,
raised a flock of plovers. The spindly calves
were suckling, and watched us with startled,
curious eyes, their mother impassive.
***
As we drove north on the Bergville road
to join the N3 we passed a primary school
with a Coca Cola sponsored sign,
and slowly over the Drakensberg mountains
winter’s first clouds appeared.
By David Selzer