Third World Child
The wolf, Enoch Nkosa could still remember the day when the bus arrived in Pretoria twenty-five years ago on a rainy day. He could still remember the sad looks on the faces of the emigrants from the north, from Zimbabwe who were cleared of the low-cost housing and slums in the major cities. Many of them were young and Nkosa could remember how the bus driver was himself not a day past twenty years old, illiterate in any language, and how he had lost his father and mother to the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army.
ZIPRA was the militant wing of the left-wing ZAPU run by Robert Mugabe, someone who many looked at as the hope for a new Africa. At one point, Mugabe had fought brilliantly for the independence of Rhodesia from the British occupiers but once he declared his allegiance to Marxist principles, atrocities were to follow. Those who had differing opinions on how to run the country were forced to exile (if they could afford to leave) or hunted down and killed by the ZAPU. This was a very bad time- paranoia ran everywhere.
Nkosa recalled the horror stories of Gukurahundi, the terrorist uprising that the ZAPU had orchestrated in which those who were accused of helping Mugabe's opponent, Joshua Nkomo had their homes torched, their farmlands usurped by ZAPU generals, and everything they owned given to other people. Many of these accused opponents were accused of treason- summary executions were common. These executions created many orphans- so many that partially due to overcrowding and partially due to fears of death squads, the Catholic-run orphanages would have to transit their parent-less children to orphanages in the capitol of Pretoria.
One of these, Moses Dumesheti would win Nkosa's heart after the harrowing bus ride from Matabeleland, the region which served as the focus of Mugabe's homicidal rage. An older leopard who had no doubt seen some of the atrocities firsthand against his family from the ZAPU, Dumesheti was fiercely unapproachable and defensive. (How else would one act after losing his home and family?) His family consisted of Nkomo supporters who were shot and killed summarily; Dumesheti left the moment he saw the ZAPU soldiers, running for miles for the gates of Our Lady of Eternal Mercy, which had an adjoining orphanage. From that moment on, he like so many African boys and girls would be an orphan.
Over several very difficult months, the leopard soon adapted to the peaceful nature of life in Pretoria; his experiences with apartheid in 1980's South Africa were nothing compared to the injustices he had witnessed in Zimbabwe. Over the course of only a year, Dumesheti learned to speak English, Dutch and Afrikaans under Enoch's tutelage. He had developed a love of traditional South African cuisine, of cricket and soccer, of the mbaqanga played on Radio Suid-Afrika, which broadcasted the music from the heart of the large cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town.
And yet he knew this city for all its peace was not his home- the leopard still remembered the songs of his family, and he carried with him a broken drum which he had taken with him from the church. In time, the iporiyana the "breastplate" of hyena skin which served as the traditional garb of the Zimbabweans would be replaced by a suit and tie. He had grown fond of the city and he enjoyed seeing the capitol building with its magnificent architecture. He celebrated with his close friends the death of apartheid. But South Africa was not his home and Dumesheti would be the first to admit it.
Twenty-five years had passed since the young 12-year-old orphan had come to live in South Africa and while his wolf mentor only had to teach him and care for him until he turned 18, Nkosa developed a fraternal bond with the leopard. But both Nkosa and Dumesheti knew that there would always be a difference between the two of them- one of them could lived in peace during his childhood, the other one had to literally run for his life. Nkosa was an active member of left-wing political groups, his friend was understandably afraid of them. For Nkosa, condom usage was second nature but to Dumesheti the concept of birth control was something that was utterly foreign to him.
The years had come and gone and now Dumesheti was a politician who lobbied in Parliament for the rights of deposed orphans like himself. With an entourage of South African bodyguards, the leopard revisited the village in Zimbabwe in which his parents were killed. Though the violence of his youth left deep scarsw on his psychological development, Dumesheti bore no ill will to the people that left him orphaned. It was during his time at the Catholic-run orphanage that he learned the importance of forgiveness.
It was at that moment where Dumesheti, his wife who was also a Zimbabwean orphan and Nkosa, who was his closest friend surveying the fields where he grew up, a revelation struck the leopard. When he was alone with the two he spoke to them privately- "I can speak English, I am the seed that has survived the violent threshing, I am the fire that has rekindled, I am the Third World Child."