A few decades ago, we lived in the province of Kwazulu Natal,a lush and tropical part of South Africa. Many of our friends still live there; one couple was stopped a while back by a (black) man they did not recognise. He however knew they were friends of my mother. They did not recognise him because he had been a teenager when they last met, and now looked very different in his late thirties. A large and proud Zulu man, with very dark skin and close-cropped peppercorn hair, he cut an imposing figure.

This man, Charles, called my mother here in the Western Cape, and when she went to KZN for a holiday she contacted him and they met up. He told her his story. She relayed it to me, and now I am passing it on to you.

Charles is a Zulu from KZN, and when he was young he lived with his mother in a shack in a township. She was working but there was not enough money with her small wages, so when he started high school he looked for some kind of job to help put bread on the table. It was at this stage that he started working for us as a garden boy. (more…)