Angelina Sithebe

The Interview

Angelina — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:39:12 +0000

To Dolly’s surprise when she phoned a few of those in power they were quite pleasant and eager to meet with her. A few suggested exploratory coffee, which sounded terrific and quite civilized. Then the time shifted to dinners, usually from the dodgy husbands. When the date and time of meeting did materialise, Dolly discovered that these days most people do not adhere to African time like sauntering an hour late without an apology or laughing in your face for trying to live like an English woman. They just don’t show up. As you wait they could be five hundred kilometres away or travelling overseas which you discover when you phone their roaming cell phones at your expense. An emergency cropped up, a friend they haven’t seen in ten years has died suddenly and their presence is required immediately. They might be waiting at the salon while their child is implanting hair extensions for four hours, tasting wine or any freebee, maybe buying food for their non-pedigree dogs. Or they might be at the doctors with the influenza while you hear the loud music playing and their chums laughing in the background. He might yelp in your ear while he’s gate-crashing a function, “I’m at the Conference Centre. I’ll call you now. Hey there’s the Minister…” And there is no phone call that follows. They’re never where they say they will be. Their word is as worthless as their bouncing cheques. If fortunately they do remember the meeting it is two hours late and they expect you to drive an hour to meet them. No apologies. Then they promise to make you a star as you listen to the eulogy of their deals.

Dolly actually nailed a few meetings. On those occasions she wore the same flat shoes, thick pantyhose, long sleeved loose fitting buttoned up blouse, long shapeless black skirt and no makeup. And just in case, she packed in her handbag the sharp army Swiss knife and a lighter to try out a trick she saw in a movie to blow up a sex-pest’s fuel tank. The first meeting was vague but there was promise of something. Dolly waited patiently at the eerie quiet reception for a while until he bounced down from behind the stairs. Dolly felt like an intruder and prayed he wasn’t armed. He swiftly took in her austere attire and the tiny flicker of hope disappeared from his greedy eyes. While he spoke, he chomped his potato chips and disgusting dried sausage snack with his mouth open. Not even an offer of tap water did he make to her. Dolly noticed he jerked furtively with wild eyes and thought he could be ADD inflicted or he could have been targeted too. His desk was littered with papers, he answered her silent question, “That’s how busy I am.” He expanded he was writing a book from the perspective of a teenage girl, which from the looks of it was copying from the ten books on his desk. At sixty years of age, Dolly wondered what did he know about teenage girls. He must have read her lack of enthusiasm for abruptly the meeting was over. His parting advice to her was invaluable though, “It’s a tough world out there.”

An excerpt from the “Target Life” series.

Next week….ANOTHER INTERVIEW

The Job Search

Angelina — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:41:52 +0000

She contemplated her own future. Top on her mind was job hunting. She had leafed through the thousands of jobs in the papers. She read about the skills shortage in the country with unemployment rates that reflect society. While 6% for whites less than some European countries, it is immeasurable for black people, around 50% or more. With those odds, she counted on her skills. But there was never any reply.

She went to friends, who were an unexpected source of no help at all. If people offer their lips to be kissed by her, Dolly did expect that they could bother to listen to her. When she broached the subject of work, they always said, “We’ll talk, call me…” while they pat her patronisingly on the shoulder and callously offered gossip about their best friends’ sacred secrets. Life is on the terms of those inside the gilded door and Dolly was still salivating at the tantalising prospects that were brandied but had not yet materialised. She would sell portions of her soul to join their exclusive blissful lives of decadent extravagance as a woman of leisure and drive around in big cars, live in a mansion with two maids and gardeners. And get exhausted from shopping for eye creams and obscure prawns straight after chasing mistresses and standing guard over health issues of the delicate kind.

During the old days in her job search, her male relatives would have gone to an induna – the king’s overseer, lower their heads, on their knees, bearing a gift of a goat, or chicken and plead then wait for him to offer what he felt she was worth. In the modern times, Dolly didn’t know what to do when the humble resume doesn’t generate any responses. She supposed things hadn’t changed that much. The king was still feted by the minions who have the power to select who gets a plot of land for ploughing. Who receives the spoils of war. The only way Dolly could find a job was to lick shoes of the powerful in the cloak and dagger incestuous world of big, shinny, special edition German cars, BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) mega business deals and high-powered political delegations making unimaginable piles of money. Only if she knew how.

So far it had been discouraging. Being targeted meant the only source of employment she could find would be consulting here and there with those who’ve been targeted themselves, who would understand the rules of the game and the excruciating pain of being targeted. Though they tended to be extremely paranoid and she might not want to be associated with them in any case. The only source of employment left was working for thieves – those who’ve been actually caught with their arms in the till. Or fraudsters, a sprinkling of renowned sex pests and IT nerds who’ve become gangsters or fugitives. Those most promising were the unsuccessful BEE paper millionaires who arrived at the right gravy train station with right tickets, who belong to the required clan with the dialect of the day, the right struggle credentials and vote correctly but they just don’t seem to cut it. They have a long list of failed deals for one reason or another. All they can show for their hard work are the rounded tummies and heavy thighs from all those networking dinners and freebees. They chase deals by hovering around the airport first class lounges to greet travelling government ministers and their entourages.

Others for consideration were aged equal opportunity and affirmative action throwbacks, who were the only game in town back in the 1980’s when 70% of the black population was excluded from economic participation in the urban areas through the apartheid Group Areas Act. That was before the savvy, suave and solvent moguls in mining, cell phone technology and venture capitalism of the new millennium hit town armed with billions. Back then these businessmen watched ‘Dallas’ and thought JR was real and they continue to emulate his speech and manner of dress. Thus their spouses still often display heavy gilded costumes with shoulder pads and those awful big hair beehive hairdos. To save face at being obsolete in their own lifetime, the thousandaires (virtual billionaires) while away time chasing balls and deals around all the holes of the golf courses in the country. While seducing amateur gold diggers who still believe a big car and a pretentious twang equals wealth, until the naïve girls discover a mogul’s driver passing himself off as a mogul and are from then onwards suspicious of any man in a huge car.

Amongst the hurdles Dolly faced when dealing with these genderless characters was that they were never available in the daylight for mere mortals. They professed to sleep three hours a night as they pile money, “Easy to make money,” in the remaining twenty hours. These nocturnal creatures do their best work in the cover of the night. Self-proclaimed multitasking individuals, they are experts at everything by delegating to others what they cannot themselves perform as they are almost totally dysfunctional in all faculties. Their impending dementia a stark reality, they try to mask it wit h arrogance, which they call self-confidence and what common sense calls bad manners.

An excerpt from the “Target Life” series.

Sunday Times Notes and Podcast

Angelina — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:41:03 +0000

I was in the Sunday Times reading room this week:

Load-shedding has taken me back to my childhood and the nostalgic pleasure of reading by candlelight without the distraction of television.

In childhood, I knew the mysteries of adult life lay in letters on a page when my parents too read by candlelight, and the words prompted their moans, laughter, anger.

I can still feel the triumph of finishing my first book in Standard Three — a thriller about a man on a torturous search for his shadowy nemesis, Gwaqaza. In Standard Six, I cried when I lived in World War II’s concentration camps, through the words of a brave girl my age, Anne Frank. During puberty, I experienced my first flutterings of love and heartbreak through romance novels.

Complete article in the Sunday Times

There is meant to be a podcast, too, with myself and Tymon Smith, but it hasn’t appeared here yet. It will soon, I’m sure.

UFS Cuisine

Angelina — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:14:19 +0000

For many it will be: where were you when you heard about the UFS stew?

On an innocent day I was watching the news expecting the usual menu of crime, mayhem and celebrities in and out of rehab when it hit my screen. CNN played it over and over until I could anticipate the next scene like a favourite movie.

I was so outraged I wanted to run to the Free State, I couldn’t wait for the bus or to consult and share with my trusted the details of that video. Across the world there was outrage. Except for some South African whites who were angry crime didn’t draw as much attention – it was, after all, just a stew with the unusual ingredient. They didn’t see that this was not about them, it was about the humiliation of the humanity of others, who also happen to be the first target for criminals.

Why the anger? When only less than two months earlier a white man mowed down four people in Skierlek. Their community was in pain, but there were no large multi-racial demonstrations and bus loads to Skierlek. In our typical apartheid amnesia, after shaking heads when we saw the rows of coffins at their funeral, life returned to load shedding and our own lives.

Why then are we so outraged? I don’t know about others. I know my outrage was because I was those women who were eating the stew. I eat pee stew every time I jump and race to the beat at being told what, when and how to do to feed my children. I saw myself in that woman who swallowed the indignity and laughed, flirted and promised to bring more whores for cheap liquor and beer. I have laughed at cameras when deep down I knew I was just being a token, something to bring colour to a picture. I have even flirted with somebody’s bad teeth because I couldn’t look at his full face. I have watched myself from a distance while being torn apart by a virulent bigot in the guise of literary critic, my reward being the applauded dignity with which I handled the indignity. I entered the age of scrutiny. I saw racism in every white person I encountered. I questioned my black pride, I need to have more.

Yesterday, just when I was getting comfortable in the hate zone I had a flat battery. The young black man who was sitting in a car who I asked to help me jump start my car continued to play with his cell phone while he told me he couldn’t help me. A security guard came back with a white woman who left her work, soiled her white shirt, cheerfully helped me and wished me luck.

To be Continued……..

Welcome to Angelina Sithebe’s Blog

Angelina — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 06:55:32 +0000

…where I would like to communicate with fellow writers and keep up to date with the industry in general, but mostly to interact with the readers of my work and other literature, because they are the ones with enough interest to take their cash and actually support the books. Not to exclude the critics, so far they’ve been generous, Bless them.

My current offerings are my South African debut novel, Holy Hill, and the Target Life short story series which is available on Amazon.com (click the link to view).

Holy Hill

Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

When Christina Nana Mlozi leaves Holy Hill, a Roman Catholic convent school in Zululand, she is broken spiritually, mentally and physically. A problem child who sees little men who tell her to do mischief and who is more at home in ‘the brown place’ of the spirit world, Nana was sent to the Convent by her parents at an early age to be tutored and disciplined.
A rebel who drifts between relationships, jobs, homes, Nana is accompanied by her guides and protectors, spirits and souls that find in her a suitable host. The novel opens in the year 2004 in Durban where she meets her nemesis and saviour: Claude Dema, former child soldier, opportunistic male prostitute, part-time drug dealer, a drug addict who is a born-again Christian. Propelled towards her own demise and desperate for answers, Nana returns to Holy Hill after an absence of sixteen years.

A powerful and disturbing South African story of the present, Angelina Sithebe’s novel prods harshly to a level of discomfort, raising issues about religion, patriarchy, child-rearing in African society, xenophobia and justification for petty crime.