Dog Eat Dog. Niq Mhlongo

      Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

       www.ohioswallow.com

      All rights reserved

      First published by Kwela Books,

      a division of NB Publishers,

      40 Heerengracht, Cape Town, South Africa

      PO Box 6525, Roggebaai, 8012, South Africa

       http://www.kwela.com

      Copyright © N Mhlongo 2004

      First published in North America 2012 by Ohio University Press

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      Printed in the United States of America

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      20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1

      First edition 2004

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Mhlongo, Nicholas.

      Dog eat dog / Niq Mhlongo. — 1st ed.

      p. cm. — (Modern African writing)

      ISBN 978-0-8214-1994-6 (pbk. : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-8214-4413-9 (electronic)

      1. College students—Fiction. 2. City and town life—Fiction. 3. Johannesburg (South Africa)—Fiction. 4. South Africa—Fiction. I. Title.

      PR9369.4.M48D64 2012

      823’.92—dc23

      2012016750

       To Lily Morobane

      for giving me all the support that I needed.

      one

      Dear Mr Njomane

      The University of the Witwatersrand Bursary Committee acknowledges that it has received your application for a bursary dated the 4^th of March.

      We regret to inform you that your application was unsuccessful.

      We have looked carefully at your application letter and based our decision on the information that you have supplied. Unfortunately you did not meet the criteria set by this Committee.

      We wish you every success in your future academic endeavours.

      Kind regards

      Dr Jane Winterburn

      Chairperson and registrar:

      The University Bursary Committee

      I received that curt, insensitive letter on the warm evening of the 13^th of March 1994. I had just eaten my dinner at the YMCA in Braamfontein. The Y, as we affectionately called it, had offered me temporary accommodation for about a month now, while I tried to sort out my disagreement with the University Bursary Committee.

      I got up off my bed and opened the drawer where I had put my other two ‘we regret’ letters. As if to make sure of their meaning, I unfolded each one and read it again. The wording was the same except for the dates. Did anybody even read my applications? I wondered angrily. I thought I had supplied everything that the Bursary Committee needed: copies of my father’s death certificate and my mother’s pension slip, an affidavit sworn at our local police station giving the names and ages of the nine other family members who depended on my mother’s pension, as well as three other affidavits confirming all movable and immovable property that we owned. Although, unfortunately, my family did not own any immovable property as the house in Soweto that we had been living in since 1963 was leased to us by the apartheid government for a period of 99 years. What more information do these people want about the poverty that my family is living in? I asked myself.

      Anger smouldered inside me as I read the letter again. Why did the committee have to be so polite in dismissing my application? They should have told me plainly, ‘We regret to inform you that you are black, stupid and poor; therefore we can not waste our money on your thick Bantu skull.’ I could have swallowed the words if they were simple and direct.

      Now the thought of being forced to part with the cheese life of the Y because of this letter from the Bursary Committee was like a curse. It was as cruel as a man who chops off the breasts of the mother as the hungry baby tries to suck the fresh milk from them.

      Did this mean I would be forced to hook up again with those hopeless drunken friends of mine? Was I going back to that life of wolf-whistling the ladies who passed by in the street, calling them izifebe (prostitutes) if they did not respond the way we liked? I felt like I was being pushed back into a gorge filled with hungry crocodiles.

      There was nothing exciting for me about living the life of the unemployed and unemployable, whose days in the township fold without hope. I thought I had said goodbye to cleaning the dog shit out of our small garden. I didn’t want to go back to waking up early every Tuesday morning to stand outside with the rubbish bag in my hands, waiting for the garbage truck. I was completely bored of watching the predictable soapies on my brother’s television set just to kill the slow-moving time. I was tired of my uneventful township life as a whole.

      That month that I had been allowed to stay at the Y I had tasted the cheese life. I had my own room, and although I was sharing it with my newly acquired friend Dworkin at least I enjoyed some privacy, unlike at home in our four-roomed Soweto house.

      At