Mother to Mother

Mandisa's employer, Mrs. Nelson, tells her to leave early. Mandisa is surprised, because Mrs. Nelson is usually very picky about the work she does. Mrs. Nelson, however, says that there is "trouble in Guguletu," and that she'll drive Mandisa to the bus station (23).

The station itself is busy and in turmoil. Mandisa asks what’s happened, and someone says that the students in Guguletu are rioting. This angers Mandisa: "These tyrants our children have become, power crazed, at the drop of a hat, they make these often-absurd demands on us, their parents" (24).

Mandisa eventually manages to jostle her way onto a bus, where people are gossiping about what's happening in Guguletu. Mandisa thinks to herself that there has "always [been] trouble in Guguletu…since the government uprooted us from all over the show: all around Cape Town's locations, suburbs, and other of its environs, and dumped us on the arid, windswept, sandy Flats" (26). She continues to think about Guguletu and how it appeared to her when she first moved there as a ten-year-old girl: poor, overcrowded, and ugly. In fact, when Mandisa's family first moved, there were not even enough houses, and many people had to erect temporary shacks on the borders of the town.