A short story by Temitope Owolabi, in response to Sites of Mourning, a series of newly commissioned photographs by the South African photographer Lidudumalingani. This story contains descriptions of violence, and thus may be emotionally challenging for certain viewers and readers.
In the quiet modern zones of Abuja, Wapo found the community she had not imagined she needed. Her oldest friend, Asmau, introduced her to a running club in Area 10 and encouraged her to join their Ibadan secondary school WhatsApp group. A few former classmates lived in Abuja too.
“They don’t talk too much on the group,” Asmau offered in her usual placating manner, as if to appease her, allay her fears about the behaviour of Nigerians to anyone who left home and had become a foreigner. She agreed, although she never added to the discussions on the group. She tracked posts though, especially whenever donation links were set up. She donated anonymously towards the burial of the former Intro Tech teacher after an Okada accident, and to the baby shower of the library prefect in their set, and to another classmate in Science, whose restaurant was demolished.
In those first few months, shortly after returning from South Africa, she always noted the wonder in people’s eyes as they waited for her grand explanation for returning home to Nigeria, the spark before the dim in their eyes as they listened for something remarkable she might say, something that wasn’t a mere cliché, like, There’s no place like home.
And when it didn’t come – “It just felt right” was often her chosen response – she knew they would ask Asmau behind her back if she was one of those trust fund babies who could leave and return from anywhere at will. They wouldn’t know that she was a woman who had returned home so unsure of life she avoided calls from family. They wouldn’t know that instead of job searching, she spent most of her days sucked into celebrity posts and gossip on online blogs. Her most recent obsession was @Ladyknowsall, the South African media girl. She knew about her vaguely, back when she presented on Radio Splash. Now, she was a big-time influencer. Wapo followed her on Instagram, lingering on her curated posts, as if she might find a residue of her time in South Africa there, observing with intensity her bag and wig collection. She would forward her reels to Asmau and say, “This look will suit you.” And Asmau would reply, “You are obsessed with this babe.”
Everything about @Ladyknowsall was intriguing. Perhaps because she was often in the news for something – the mysterious man who was supposedly bankrolling her, or the breast enhancement surgery she had just done. She was one of those influencers who posted one arm or a muscled back shot of her significant other, or posted photos of herself in a restaurant and captioned it as his view.
Despite her notoriety in the news, @Ladyknowsall posted photos as though she did not have a care in the world. It was what made Wapo follow her on Instagram, the intensity of her I don’t careness. How it came across potently through her filtered photos. She looked familiar too, in a way that Wapo could not explain, in a way that Wapo knew deserved mild caution, because it almost bordered on obscene obsession. The way she stared at her photos felt like deja vu, like something she was a part of in the previous life she lived in South Africa, as if staring would bring to the forefront of her brain a long-suppressed memory.
“You have to leave South Africa behind completely and make a clean break if you truly want to move on from what happened,” Asmau said to her one evening, and she knew that her friend was right.
When they met all those years ago in Ibadan, in those tumultuous weeks just after Wapo’s father died, Asmau, small and chirpy with her northern accent was alone on the school field, isolated in her own peculiar grief of having moved from the north where she had friends and family, all the way down south because her father wanted to be nearer his warehouse business. The north, much as its expanse was in the evening network news, still often felt mostly distant, exotic even, in its reach. But Asmau, the only Hausa-speaking person in their school seemed to move the north of Nigeria ever so slightly within reach. Whenever school closed for Christmas or the long vacation in July, teachers still always said to Asmau, “Bring onions and potatoes for us from up north o,” as if her father’s house wasn’t right there in Akobo Estate.
It was Asmau who asked, “Can I shorten your name to Wapo?” one morning after assembly. “Because it really sounds Hausa”, she added, her words adorned with unhindered certitude.
Wapo had paused to think about it and said “it doesn’t translate to anything meaningful in Yoruba, but I like how it sounds.”
Even when senior secondary school required them to split classes, Asmau in the often-forgotten commercial block and Wapo in the arts, they remained good friends till Wapo left for Sixth Form in South Africa.
“Be useful to your Uncle and Aunty when you get there o, Anuoluwapo,” her mother said on the day she was leaving, all packed and slightly nervous. “I didn’t send you there to go and cross legeh like a princess without home training o.”
Wapo knew that her uncle and aunty had a soft spot for her and called her the daughter God gave us, since they kept trying for a girl and ended up with four boys instead.
Wapo knew too that the invitation to South Africa from them was an invitation to ease, a kind of reward for her mother who had given everything she could, and because despite the instability that her father’s passing had caused, Wapo navigated secondary school with only top grades and so 6th Form abroad became a gift.
•••
Lia Anita Adeline, 2021 Dwarsfontein Ardent Offramp, Delmas.
As a child, when Lindiwe sang in church or with the choir at school, everyone listened. “Carrot back,” her mother always reminded her before she climbed up to any stage. And whenever she finished, her mother would be waiting. “The whole world will know your voice very soon.”
Her mother firmly believed that her voice would pave a glorious path for their family, lifting them out of struggle, just as Yvone Chaka Chaka’s had. Because her mother believed it, Lindiwe too did. Her mother enrolled her in the City Children’s Choir and found the means to pay for every show and costume. As a teenager, she performed solos at parties, and once in the middle of matric exams, her brother, Thabo drove her to his university campus because he had added her to the student line-up of performers for the social night.
Lindiwe always remembered that night with a peculiar fuzziness, the rowdiness of the campus, the loudness of the students, which she would later on come to know as the early stage of drunkenness, and the catcalling. She remembered too that Thabo had slapped the young woman in the reception area for refusing to let Lindiwe in.
“She’s not a student executive,” the young woman had argued.
“What do you mean she’s not a student executive? She’s with me!” Thabo barked.
“Well, you are not a performer either,” the young woman started to say, and immediately, Lindiwe knew that the woman was in trouble. She tried to warn her with her eyes that her brother was not to be talked back at. The woman had barely finished when Thabo slapped her across her left cheek, then, he took the bottle of water on the desk, opened it swiftly and tossed all the water in her face.
Later on, after Lindiwe’s singing was greeted with a rapturous applause from the crowd of students, and they walked back through the same room towards the parking lot, Thabo raised his middle finger to the young woman again, mouthing words she did not hear. On the drive home, Lindiwe struggled with both joy and shame, wishing there was a way she could get through to her brother, cut through this anger and frustration he always wore like a high-powered cloak and really understand him.
She knew her mother worried about these angry spells, and sometimes, Lindiwe wondered if her mother was stricter with her because she had decided that Thabo was a lost cause.
“We will keep on praying for him,” their mother often said with a hint of fear when he spent late nights out and came home drunk. And maybe it was that fear that made her mother never let Lindiwe go anywhere besides choir practice.
By the time she started her first year of university, Thabo still often trailed around the campus, drunk by midday, claiming to start one business venture or the other. He had not invited anyone to his graduation ceremony, and so she was not sure if he had even graduated or not.
Thabo may have caused her mother a lot of heartache, but one thing Lindiwe could never deny was that Thabo always came through for her. He would sign her up for talent shows and pay the entrance fees, sometimes following her to the auditions. She never knew where he got the money from, and she always hoped he wouldn't cause any trouble backstage, but it was as if he believed more in her dreams than he believed in the trajectory of his own life.
Once, during an audition inside a lecture theatre, one of the three judges, a woman with red hair and glasses had said, “It’s a no for me, but do you know what would be a yes? If you spoke on radio. You have a magical speaking voice that will be excellent on the night belt, you know… sending people into dreamland.”
“I think you actually might make it on morning shows too,” a second judge, a man in white t-shirt and ripped jeans, quipped. From the looks of it, he was supposed to be the Simon Cowell of the trio.
“Maybe reconsider singing and get the city started with their day by talking instead.”
Lindiwe had left the room crushed; a wave of disappointment engulfed her because, all her life, all she had heard was how wonderful a singer she was and how she would sell out auditoriums and shake the hands of presidents and important people. And now, she was not even good enough to break through a campus audition.
The thought of being on radio began to take shape shortly after. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea, after all, she could build a fan base on radio, and then release music. She accepted, even if grudgingly, that perhaps it was not through music that her voice would first be known. It could be through speaking. She began to offer herself to MC birthday parties and campus events. She volunteered at the campus radio station, too. And as friends began to get married, she hosted their wedding receptions and baby showers. Soon enough, she began her first real job as a co-presenter on Radio Splash, and her mother said, “I told you, your voice will go far.”
She found in that reassurance from her mother, a comforting warmth that cocooned her through the lonely commute to the radio station before the crack of dawn.
Thoughts would creep in every now and again, stifling her as she struggled to get the ratings for the show up. But even as she second-guessed herself and felt like she would never measure up, her mother’s voice would be in her ears saying, “Keep on going.” And Thabo’s random midnight text after talking on the phone for long, would say, “Go and rest up that wonderful voice that will take you all around the world.”
It did take her around the world, eventually, and the first stop was Nigeria.
•••
Monica Matrose, 2023. Wessels and Park Street, Pretoria
Wapo had never seen such a grand collision of nature and city before. As the plane descended into the breathtaking beauty of Cape Town, the city sprawled outward in scale, as though emptying itself into the Atlantic Ocean. And even though she had read about the wondrous elegance of the Table Mountain, the unique flatness of it, she had not imagined it looming large across the entire city, draped in soft clouds, as if someone had spread an actual table cloth on it. Cape Town made her feel as if she had been exported to some otherworldly place.
She remembered as a child how Uncle Gbile used to say to her father, “Kí ló ṣe mí tí mi ò lè gbé Cape Town?Àwọn tó wà nìbẹ́, do they have two heads?”
And here she was now, riding in Uncle Gbile’s Mercedes as it sped through the highway towards the central business district.
She had always known that her uncle was wealthy. He settled in Johannesburg after his degree, working first as a trauma doctor before moving to Cape Town to set up a private practice alongside his wife, fixing faces and giving butt lifts. Her father used to say “Gbile is making a killing as a surgeon where he is. He’s not coming back to Nigeria.”
And yet, his house in Bantry Bay had left Wapo almost in disbelief.
She understood what do they have two heads meant now, seeing as Uncle Gbile’s family was the only black one she noted for a long time in the entire Sea Point area. She did not pay attention to what the strangeness of being a minority in a city in Africa meant at the time, though, perhaps because the boarding school they chose for her in Johannesburg was distinctively assorted, as Aunty Sumbo liked to call it.
“It’s like assorted meat in stew. You will meet children from everywhere there.”
The brochure she looked through in Lagos, glossy and alive with photos of students playing a cello or looking through a microscope in a pristine science lab, did not do the actual elegance and assortment of the school justice. And it was only after walking through the grounds, taking in the commanding views and the heavy-set stone wall of the hallowed halls of Edward Hillingdon School on that first day of introduction that it occurred to her how much her uncle and aunt had paid for her to go to school there. When her new classmates struggled to say Anuoluwapo, she remembered Asmau and said, “You know what, just call me Wapo.”
Because of the sudden number of wealthy people she now had proximity to, Wapo wanted to remain as down to earth as possible. Desperate not to be seen as one of the spoilt rich children she now went to school with, she stayed in touch with Asmau, calling her house landline from the Sixth Form common room and then accepting her friend request a few years later on Facebook.
Sometimes, she felt disoriented in the quick pace of Edward Hillingdon, and the changing weather did not help. The most cold she had felt before was the nuisance of harmattan season, high wind carrying dust through the dome shaped hills of Ibadan, settling it over roofs and cars and faces.
She missed Ibadan, the peculiarity of the city, hearing Yoruba words slicing through the populous air, the high cadence of corn sellers shouting, Ìbẹ́-èní Àgbàdo in the rainy season, and the slow pace of weight watchers walking the streets saying, check your weight for small price.
Uncle Gbile and Aunty Sumbo hardly spoke Yoruba. When they did, the words felt strictly calculated, deeply purposeful, like a semicolon in the middle of a sentence. She had only ever heard a full Yoruba sentence from Aunty Sumbo twice. The first, when she told her boys off for wearing an emblazoned Naija-to-the-world t-shirt.
“Ahh Àwọn ọmọ yìí fẹ́ kó bá mi. Will you go inside and wear a jersey over that.
Nobody needs to know that you are Naija boys.”
Wapo had not known what to make of it then, but she would remember that as the first time she ever felt a distinct kind of fear of being in South Africa. It was mild because she couldn’t figure out why, but it was visceral enough to never leave her. The second time was years later, just as she was finishing university.
She went on to Wits, just like Uncle Gbile. And though everything was as he said – the information dump of O-week, the work ethic and academic rigour, the mentally draining admin that Uncle Gbile nicknamed sadmin, her university experience was great. It was there that she began to feel a semblance of normalcy, as she buried herself into the familiar rigours of academic work, settling into adulthood and finding interests like running.
And while she made friends and came into her own, she considered university largely uneventful until her flatmate turned up missing and everything changed.
The police asked a lot of questions about who was connected to Michaella and who knew her last whereabouts. Soon, there were placards all across the campus and chants of protect our girls and bring my sister back and enough is enough.
After about three days, everyone was saying that Michaella could be presumed dead now, as though there was a written suggestion somewhere that three days was the cut-off period for missing people.
“He probably raped her. And already doused her in petrol and burned her. I can guarantee," she overheard a group of ladies walking to a lecture. Something about how the word guarantee sounded, sent chills down Wapo’s spine. She could not imagine Michaella dead. The petite girl who reminded her of Asmau, with a small sparkling stud in her nose. She was studying Dentistry, and had often talked about how it was even more complicated than medicine, and although Wapo often wondered how Michaella was coping, she never asked. She didn’t know much about her, beyond the surface details that Michaella loved Nigerian music. She always did a hilarious waist move whenever they played Davido’s Skelewu on Radio Splash or she would shout “I’m looking for my Johnny, do you have any lovely Nigerian Johnny’s for me?” whenever Yemi Alade’s song came on. Now, Wapo wished she had gotten to know her better, asked her more questions or even leaned into a type of older sister role for Michaella, the kind that offered cereal, or ham slices, andJollof rice whenever she managed to cook some. Or even half-used perfume bottles. Maybe it would have protected her from this evil.
She called Asmau, her voice laced in sorrow and uncertainty.
“It cannot be. Relax. It cannot be.” Asmau said. It was as if, even Asmau, who was far away, could not bring herself to confront a perfect stranger dying, and so it simply could not be.
“Why are you punishing yourself like this?” Aunty Sumbo asked her when she returned to Cape Town shortly after Michaella’s disappearance. Her flat had become a museum of sorts for onlookers, staring up at the third-floor window from below.
Wapo refused to eat anything for days, because guilt and questions sat in her stomach, unmovable, like she had swallowed elephant meat. Not that she would know what elephant meat tasted like. Her mind flashed back to every detail of the uproar that took place on campus. The pockets of protests that erupted, the endless questions from police and students, the things she could have done. A form of punishment might lessen the guilt she was carrying about. It was why Wapo wanted Aunty Sumbo to punish her for something, anything. She wished that she would withhold food, or lock her out of the house for some time or say that she was only allowed to handwash her clothes now, instead of the ease of a washing machine.
She would be deserving of more punishment than all of that, because after all, it was she who told Michaella that she knew Kuhle from Sixth Form and that she could go out with him. It was she who told her that he left to England for university, but after one year, the rumour was that he returned to University of Johannesburg instead. Perhaps he had failed woefully after his first year abroad, wasting his mother’s hard-earned money. How would she have known that Kuhle would become a beast and that in the space of a few days, she would hear about a missing person, rape, petrol and a suspect who had possibly fled the country. But then, how could she not have known?
The police asked questions about where Michaella had been. About when she began a relationship with her boyfriend. And Wapo answered all, except the one about whether the boyfriend was a known violent person.
She remembered when Michaella first mentioned him. Wapo was leaving for a lecture and Michaella was arriving from town. They caught up quickly on the lower landing of the staircase about where the pantry key was, and she teased her about sleeping out, asked if it was at a class friend’s room or a guy's. And Michaella had said cheekily that there was a guy.
“Really? Who? Is it serious?” Wapo asked.
“Well, it is starting to get serious.
She showed her a photo of him on her Blackberry.
Kuhle? Wapo squirmed, half delighted, half surprised. Or was it half-disappointed and half-surprised.
“Oh, I know Kuhle.”
Kuhle, from Edward Hillingdon, who was notorious for being able to find everything from new season Fubu trainers to illicit drugs. His nickname was Ancient of Days because he had attended Edward Hillingdon School from Grade 1 through matric, before starting 6th Form. He could attend such an elite school for all the years he had because his wealthy mother was a special envoy of the UN. Her preference for world peace and unity may have skipped him, though, because Kuhle was known to unleash terror on anyone at any given time. Many matters should have gotten Kuhle expelled, as per the school code of conduct, but at most, he would be made to sit through an hour-long course on gentlemanliness or civil citizenship. His soft-faced mother would then donate a gratuitous fund for a spanking new music room and that would be the end of discussion.
Kuhle had a followership that was almost cult like too, because after every term break, he often came back to school with the best weed from his supplier.
Wapo wanted to be friends with him, in that way that was forbidden for someone appropriate and decent like her. She hardly felt a need to report him, even if she saw him smoking or skipping a class.
Why would she? She did not have protective stories about holiday homes in the south of France or skiing in the Swiss Alps. Once, when she mentioned that Cape Town was where she returned to during breaks, someone had asked what province? And because she did not know, thinking Cape Town was distinct like back home, where Ibadan was really just that, Ibadan, regardless of where you lived, Johan, the boy who captained the Rugby team and always stared her down with grey eyes shaded by his rough wolf cut, had responded with a wry smile, saying – “Masiphumelele of course.”
She did not know what was funny, but the entire class laughed. She had no clue what or where Masiphumelele was, or why it resolved in laughter, except that Kuhle had cut in and said, “She wouldn’t be in Edward Hillingdon if it was Masiphumelele.”
“He goes by Koolz now,” Michaella said, pulling her out of her thoughts. As if to say the Kuhle that Wapo knew was long gone, and she was the privileged one who knew the spanking new version called Koolz.
“We met at the urban rave in town. He was shy at first, then asked a friend of his to get my details.” He added me but didn’t say anything for like two weeks, until we saw each other again at AfroHouse. Then we started chatting a lot, and he’s asked for a proper date now, says he really likes me.”
“We went to school together, and he kind of spoke up for me once.” Wapo said, remembering that afternoon when Kuhle told Johan to fuck off, a small act of solidarity she knew was possible partly because of Kuhle’s stupendously superior wealth but mostly because in that very moment, she and Kuhle were visibly the same.
Maybe she imagined it, but Michaella’s face had softened as soon as Wapo said this, like it was a permission she had been wanting. Wapo would always think about that moment in hindsight as the moment when she made the gravest, costliest mistake of her life.
Because even after everything settled, and the campus protests fizzled out, and no details appeared in the newspaper anymore, and Michaella still remained missing, and several girl’s names circulated and overshadowed hers, even after she graduated and began an internship, all Wapo felt was a tight rope swirling in her stomach, a furious pull to go back to Nigeria, because it felt like any day longer in South Africa would pull the rope around her neck and strangle her, and the torment of Michaella’s disappearance would mark her forever.
“Come to Abuja.” Asmau said one day during one of their calls. “You need a change of scenery.”
Asmau now lived in Abuja, after attending university there. She always talked about how slow-paced it was, similar to living in Ibadan with, of course, a much smoother road network and proper yoghurt, not those watery things in a bottle. Every now and again, Wapo would consider it.
Asmau had said that if she was interested in working with any of the ministries, all she had to do was say the word, and she would speak to her father about it.
Wapo knew that Uncle Gbile would not want her to have an ordinary government job. He didn’t pay for one of the best schools in South Africa for her to end up working safe, pensionable government jobs.
Every week, he sent her vacancies in top organisations by email and promised to write references, and each time, she hoped that she did so badly they wouldn’t shortlist her for the next round. She interned at Uncle Gbile’s practice in the meantime, taking on a communications role that helped her zone out through the day. In the cool breeze of the evenings, she would go out for a long run, pounding the stretch of Sea Point, the crash of the heavy waves propelling her all through to Three Anchor Bay before she turned around through Green Point park.
One evening, she turned before Green Point Park and sprinted all the way back to Uncle Gbile’s clinic. She opened his office door gently, and said as calmly as she could, despite her heart still racing fast, “Uncle, I really need to return home.”
Six weeks later, she left.
•••
Soldier in uniform, 2015. N3 Highway, Edenvale Alberton.
After her first trip to Nigeria, Thabo began calling Lindiwe big madam. “Your rates have gone up now, big madam, not so?” he teased.
She had gone to Nigeria with the production team of the radio station as guests of Channel O, the organisers of the Africa Music Awards. And maybe it was the endless food at the hotel in Victoria Island, or simply the fashion that she fed fat on over that single weekend, watching people attend weddings and parties, she knew she wanted to come back to Lagos.
“The energy of that city is unmatched,” she told Thabo when she returned. They were meeting up for lunch at HeSheng to catch up, and because he wanted to introduce her to his business partner, Koolz, who ran a boutique advertising agency and wanted to give her a small gig. She thought Koolz looked a little shifty. He was wearing sunshades indoors and had a condescending manner when he said, “How would you know that the energy is unmatched? How many other cities have you been to?”
She had ignored him, out of respect for Thabo and because she didn’t want to jeopardise anything about this new sensible character her brother looked to be building. For too long, their mother had been worried about Thabo, his riffraff friends, the degree he refused to complete, and the dubious amounts of money he seemed to always have in his bank account.
Now, he was building a traceable business, looking more and more respectable, his hair in a nicely locked trim instead of that matted mess their mother hated.
But as the afternoon wore on, so did her irritation for Koolz. He had just returned to South Africa after a period in Europe, he said.
He schooled partly in England and also in South Africa and was now starting up an advertising agency. He seemed younger than Thabo, possibly younger than her, too, but she suspected that the main reason Thabo was partnering with him was that he had money, lots of it from the looks of it. What he lacked in work experience, he more than made up for with money.
When she looked up the advertising agency online, she was surprised to find that Thabo was the frontman for it while Koolz wasn’t even named on the website or in the obviously bought media interviews. Still, from that one meeting with him, it was clear that even though Thabo was front and centre online, Koolz made all the decisions.
“He doesn’t like publicity, so he just does things in the background,” Thabo said when she asked him, and although she was not convinced, she did not bring it up again. She wanted to say, he does not like publicity so you get to do his dirty laundry for him? But she liked this perceived safety in being able to trust Thabo’s judgement. It meant she was supportive of him and not judging him for his past irrationalities.
They wanted her to voiceover a commercial for a new tourism contract that Koolz had just signed. They would pay her a small commission, of course.
Lindiwe agreed, grudgingly. “Only because of you,” she said to Thabo.
In the studio, Koolz listened and gave feedback a few times.
“Put a little bit more sexiness in your voice; we are trying to attract people here.” He said across the glass divider. She did not expect that she would fire back at him until she heard her own voice carrying through the booth.
“Why does an ad about tourism need sexiness?”
Koolz lifted his sunglasses briefly and stared her down. And shortly after, as she came out from the booth and walked to the door, he said, “Wow, you know what, I like you. I actually like you.”
Shortly after the ad hit the radio, Koolz asked if she had a portfolio of her work. She did not tell him she did not have one, but she began creating one, putting together highlights of the jobs she had done. Pictures and photos of events, from high-profile ones to music shows. She had quite enough, and yet, it took a while, settling into this talking business, convincing people. Her big break eventually came, an invitation to host the Miss South Africa pageant, a miracle of sorts because the man who had hosted it for six years in a row was now in the middle of a sexual assault scandal, and Koolz had mentioned to the organisers that he knew someone who could do the job.
The cheque was good, even though there were rumours that it was far less than the previous host made yearly, but the outfits it came with were a particularly big bonus. Regal, off-the-runway pieces by designers from across the continent, she had always admired.
Her mother watched on television with pride.
“They will call you again next year, I’m sure,” Thabo said, as if he knew something she didn’t. She wanted to be mad at him because she had gotten him VIP tickets so he could be there to watch her. But he didn’t show up, giving the excuse of a last-minute thing at work. Koolz was there though, cheering like a manager.
At the end of the night, they spoke for hours. Even though she was tired, and her back hurt from the high heels, the champagne from the after party may have loosened her tongue, made her feel chatty and drawn to Koolz.
“They will call you again next year. And when they do, tell them you want a multi-year contract, and you want them to speak to your agent.”
“But I don’t have one.” Lindiwe laughed
“Well, you do now, tell them to call me.”
Koolz was right, because they did call her.
He negotiated all the right things. Weekly flights from Johannesburg to Cape Town in the weeks leading up to the finale, billboard contracts, makeup and wardrobe, accommodation, media and photography, and a PA. Suddenly, it was as if, because of Koolz, her life surged upwards. He booked her for all the biggest events on the social calendar, from the movies to music. And before long, she had become this celebrated figure that she did not recognise, appearing in gossip blogs and the news, a long list of email requests for an interview with her.
She became comfortable with Koolz doing all her behind-the-scenes work for her, finding her the right glam team for an event or putting out a statement when her name was in the news for wearing Gucci from head to toe to visit an orphanage.
And as she moved through this vibrant life of being visible, she remembered her mother’s hustle all those years ago, and she felt a gratefulness to Koolz that she could never put into words. She owed Koolz for this life he created for her, this life that she now found herself completely attached to. If she could, she would shed those long days of hustling through auditions and early morning drives like old skin so that only her newly styled life, the one that allowed her pay for trips for her mother, was singular.
Because she knew that she would never be able to pay Koolz back, she made sure that she always offered her unmistaken gratitude to him. If he said she shouldn’t do a show, she didn’t. If he said he didn’t like the vibe from a group of people, she stopped talking to them. And when he insinuated that Thabo had sidelined him on one of their projects, she believed him and apologised on her brother’s behalf. It was Koolz who made her delete her old Instagram and rebrand with a delicately curated influencer page @Ladyknowsall. When the page took off in no time, she knew Koolz was once again right about strategy. With everything she did, she hoped that he knew how much she was indebted to him.
On some nights, after a long day of back-to-back events, he drove her to his apartment in Delta Park and soon, she began to stay over there, first leaving a toothbrush and then her robe and then a few clothes. It was easier, she rationalised, for the quick exchange of contracts and paperwork or scheduling for an event.
His Porsche Taycan was better to arrive at events in, he always teased. And she agreed.
“Are you and Koolz a thing now, or what is going on?” Thabo asked one afternoon when she arrived with him to a music festival pre drinks.
She smiled cheekily, because she didn’t know what a proper response should be for whatever she and Koolz had going on.
“He’s good people, but you must be careful still, because, guys will always be guys… you know?” And because Thabo left whatever he needed to say hanging, she took it that he didn’t mind. The relationship was not a big deal anyway; it worked simply as a matter of convenience, nothing more in the moment. And yet, at the thought of this, she wondered if she was trying to convince Thabo or herself.
Years later, after settling into the grand life of hopping on private jets around the country and holidaying in Ibiza and Paris, a life well curated by Koolz because of all the gigs he put in place for her, she had become so booked and busy that when news first broke that Thabo had been arrested after a run-in with the police, she had casually thought it had to be another Thabo. There were far too many Thabos in Johannesburg for it to be her own relative. But her phone wouldn’t stop ringing, desperate attempts from her mother to reach her, to ask her if she had heard what happened and what they should do. After reading the news properly she called her mother back.
“He didn’t do this thing they are saying he did,” her mother said, as if she knew that what her son did was so vile, so dirty, even she couldn’t say the name. And yet, Lindiwe did not feel any kind of urgency. Her brother’s name being mentioned for a heinous crime did not come with the unbridled shock it was supposed to come with. Instead, Lindiwe felt as though all her life, she had been waiting for this unravelling to happen. It was always going to happen, only a matter of time. It was like a dream.
“Rape is not a small matter,” Koolz said to her.
Tell me about it, she wanted to say to him, but all she had was silence, even as he rambled on.
Two men had raped a woman inside a laundromat, the news report said, but it was only one who had been seen on CCTV exiting the parking lot. Everything Koolz said afterwards might as well have been a foreign language. Disjointed statements about him not wanting to be involved with someone accused of such a thing. Such a thing. About working too hard after his return from Europe to keep his name clean as a whistle. None of his words settled in the inner recesses of her mind.
“You don’t have to make any statement yet, but we have to make a plan.”
The we roused her back gently, and she forced a smile, enveloping herself in the thin layer of comfort from Koolz saying we. It was as if he had inserted himself into her horror and made it his own.
He had a plan, he always did, and even when she didn’t know it, it had never failed. He only needed to make a few calls. They would head to Lagos and lay low there for a while. Lagos, because it was rowdy enough to easily slip under the radar.
•••
Unknown, 2019. Delta Park, Blairgowrie.
It took Wapo years to realise that guilt did not just disappear.
She would never hear Yemi Alade’s Johnny without feeling guilty about Michaella. Then there was the guilt that she had disappointed Uncle Gbile and Aunty Sumbo, guilt that whenever her mother called, she didn’t pick up the phone because she could never quite explain what she was doing in Abuja, guilt that she was living rent-free with Asmau, although technically, so was Asmau. The block of eight flats in Utako belonged to Asmau’s father, and Asmau lived in one for free, helping him manage and coordinate rent from the rest of the tenants.
Even when Wapo found a job working as a social media manager for a Minister in the city, her chest still often filled with dread. Every week, it seemed there was a news report intent on haunting her from a place that was supposed to be her past. And she would feel this detonation, this explosion of hate because somehow, a demented violence against women continued to happen. Her phone would light up with news – from South Africa, disappointment about Oscar Pistorius being released from jail to house arrest, the national outcry for 19-year-old Uyinene, raped and murdered inside a post office, in England, protests after Sarah Everand is murdered by a police officer, and right there in Nigeria, Augusta Osedion. It would remind her of Michaella all over again. Too much violence that was too impossible to live with and yet, women did, because there was no alternative but to keep going, because hardly was justice ever served in real time.
Once, she woke Asmau with her loud pants from a vicious dream, after falling asleep in blistering heat because the national grid had collapsed, yet again.
“We need a comedy show to attend,” Asmau said later that morning, as they both got ready for work. “Something to help us relax before we die prematurely because we are adulting.”
“If you can find one where the line up of comedians don’t make silly jokes about rape, I’m down.”
That weekend, Asmau managed to get them VIP tickets to the Shots of Laughter show at Ladi Kwali Hall. They were walking the rumpled red carpet when Wapo spotted Lindiwe like a flash moment in a cartoon.
“It’s her abi?” she asked Asmau.
“Oh it’s definitely her.” Asmau said.
It was her, in an unmistakable shiny leather dress and high heels.
“Why is she wearing leather in this heat? Asmau said, but Wapo did not pay her any mind.
They didn’t see her again until after the show, when the lights in the VIP booth came on.
She and Asmau were waiting a few minutes, so the high traffic in the parking area would wear off before they began their drive home. Lindiwe walked in again just as they were almost ready to leave and Wapo might have melted like ice cream in the sun, because Lindiwe looked at her and smiled back. A proper smile that lingered.
She moved closer and said, “can I sit here quickly, please?”
Asmau answered, knowing that Wapo was still mesmerised by the fact that Lindiwe was only inches away from her. “You could totally sit on our heads and we won’t complain. My friend here is a huge fan of yours.”
Lindiwe laughed. She was seated already and bending over to slide off her shoes. “My shoes are killing me. I thought I could manage the heel, you know, sit and enjoy the show, then head out to the car immediately, but my man has been talking to people and I’ve been standing on these for over thirty minutes.”
Wapo knew that when they got home that night, Asmau would have a time discussing the absurdity of women saying my man.
Right now though, she was just excited to be close to Lindiwe.
“I lived in South Africa for some time, and I’ve known about you since your Radio Splash days.” She said.
“Aww that seems like a lifetime ago now, whereabouts in SA?
“Well, mostly Cape Town and then Joburg.” Wapo said.
“Ahh, my man grew up in Cape Town, he’s somewhere chatting business with a friend. She fluffed a well-manicured hand about, to say anywhere and everywhere.
They talked for a few minutes and Wapo asked for a photo.
“Of course,” she said, “as long as we take the photo sitting. No shoes.”
It impressed Wapo that Lindiwe had no airs around her. If anything, she was an oversharer even, telling them about settling in Lagos, and the career milestone she just hit, getting signed to host a reality TV show, and being in Abuja because her man wanted to invest in property there, instead of Lagos only and so they were on a weekend staycation to see the city.
“Speak of the devil,” She said, as her man walked in just then and said, “Ready to roll babe?”
“Okrrrr, nice to meet you ladies,” Lindiwe said, sliding grudgingly into her shoes again before hanging on to her man and walking like a penguin. Wapo overheard Lindiwe say “one of them said she lived in SA for a bit…” and then “You might have to carry me to the car with these damn shoes…” before she called out over her shoulder in a theatrical voice as they began descending the stairs “Goodnight ladies.”
Wapo was in a state of shock as she watched them leave.
“Two of them fit each other sha,” Asmau began laughing. “Sunglasses indoors and leather dress in this heat. Na wa.”
“I know that guy.” Wapo stood, pointing as if she had just recovered from a trance. “I know that guy, Asmau! We did Sixth Form together. That’s Kuhle. That is him.”
“Ahhhhhhh, it can’t be naa.”
“I’m telling you. That’s him. Even with the dark shades he had on, I’m hundred percent sure.”
As they walked to the car, that overwhelming sense of guilt enveloped Wapo all over again. It was that feeling that she could have done a bit more that always sent her spiraling. Guilt that she could have mentioned to the police back then all the other details about Kuhle that she knew. That he often skipped classes and was always in the principal’s office for being violent. Maybe it would have made a difference in the trajectory of the police case and she wouldn’t be carrying the burden she still was despite many years passing. Maybe it would have made the police watchful for longer and he wouldn’t have the chance to be dating another woman so brazenly now. But they stopped, as soon as he could prove that he was not in Johannesburg on the evening that Michaella went missing. Should she have known that Khule, who had contraband in school, was very capable of eliminating a whole person? Was skipping classes enough to make him a petrol-dousing-killer?
“Trust me, even your information about his personality in school would not have done jack.” Asmau always told her.
“His mother must have sorted his alibi for him. Probably why his name was never released. She sorted it out and immediately put the bastard on a private plane to Luxemburg or some obscure place in Europe.
“I have to find some way to right my wrong, so that I don’t continue to be tormented like this,” Wapo said as they approached the traffic light on Aminu Kano Crescent. “I hate how this thing has choked me for too long, meanwhile somebody is walking freely with sunglasses all over the place.
“So what do you want to do?” Asmau asked, easing the car to the stop line.
•••
Lindiwe often ignored DMs. It was a suggestion from Koolz immediately after her fame began to skyrocket, and especially since moving to Lagos. For some reason though, she checked it on Monday morning, perhaps because it was the first time in a long time she didn’t have to rush anywhere. She had gone for a quick swim in the hotel pool to burn off her heavy breakfast. Koolz was at the hotel lobby, having a meeting, and her schedule was free till about midday when they would fly back to Lagos in a private plane. She was thinking about the content she would create on the flight back when she tapped open her DM. There was a long message that she almost dismissed as the usual psychotic profession of love from men, but the urgency in the first few lines made her pause.
Hi Lindiwe, it was lovely to meet you yesterday at the Shots of Laughter show. The photos are really cute.
My advance apologies for overstepping, but I just need to say upfront that I would never do what I’m about to do if I wasn’t absolutely certain. The decision to do this kept me up all through the night so I hope you will understand that I’m doing this because I believe it is the right thing to do.
I know your man Kuhle from when we both did sixth form together in Cape Town. The school was called Edward Hillingdon and you can confirm it from him. He probably doesn’t recognise me but when he came to get you last night, I recognised him immediately. I don’t know if you ever heard of a case many years ago about a disappearance that happened on the Wits campus, a missing student called Michaella? She was my flatmate. The suspect in the case was Kuhle. He was the one Michaella was dating and the person who saw her last…
Lindiwe wanted to continue reading but a lump caught in her throat, a forceful choke that made her suddenly develop a headache, because there, in that moment, was a strange feeling she had always wanted to confront but never had the courage to.
The cowardly way she left South Africa simply because Koolz asked her to, simply because she banked assuredly on the ways he had moulded life for her was not something she was proud of. But it was the unavoidable cost for the life she always wanted. It was why she never talked about it with anyone. How exigently she had left, running away from the controversy surrounding Thabo without leaving any room for nuance, or allowing space for answers about what happened. And now, she was sitting here reading about Koolz from a stranger, thinking about her own carefully created life and his own possibly erased one. The hotel room seemed suddenly blurry.
If you search online, you may not find much about the suspect in the case because his name was never released to the public. But I knew Michaella, and I know that she was dating Kuhle.
I have argued with myself if it is right to bring this up with you considering this was a case that was never resolved, but I need to clear my conscience and make sure that I’m not partaking in an injustice or enabling it in any way. We connected on a kind of sisterly level yesterday, so I wanted to make sure that at the very least, I mention this to you and speak my truth.
My truth. Lindiwe hated that phrase that was now so popularly used by everyone. The pretentious way it conferred an uncommon wisdom that was not really wisdom. And yet, she could not deny that there was a lot to consider from the message, that there was a doom she had been speeding towards for some years now and would soon come to a head if she did not pause to address it.
For the first time, she thought she might know the answer to the question that had plagued her since the day she was informed that Thabo was in jail awaiting trial. Did Koolz set her brother up after a business deal went sour? Now, she knew that she had been asking the wrong question all along because what she really wanted to know, what she should have asked was, Did Koolz make her brother take the fall for something he did? Everything lined up. The second person that was never seen on CCTV, the Porsche that was allegedly at the crime scene, the hurried manner Kuhle denounced her brother. And yet, the privilege of her new wealth had made her deny Thabo the grace to make a mistake, all the while granting Kuhle the freedom to cause havoc. She held her phone in her hand, staring shakily at the timed out screen, wondering what to make of her shock, wondering what to do. A fall from grace was not appealing. She knew that if her choice made Kuhle fall, he was dragging her right down with him.
She was living a lie surely and had been living one for a long while. She stared long into the massive space of the air-conditioned hotel room, fiddling with the four-leaf clover of her Van Cleef bracelet, as if the symbol of luck would tell her what to do. Her gaze settled on the safe in the top corner of the open shelf where she had put her passport, wondering for the first time, how long she had left on her TWP. It was Kuhle who always sorted out the renewal every few months with a connect he had at the immigration office. By the time Kuhle walked back into the room later to ask her to begin getting ready for their flight, she had made a choice. No doubt, a reckless one, she told herself, but a choice nonetheless.
Temitope Owolabi’s writing explores the hopelessness of loss together with the delicateness and possibilities of love on the human experience. Her fiction won second place in the inaugural Mo Siewcharran manuscript prize and she has been a finalist for the prestigious Miles Morland Writing scholarship twice. In 2015, she was selected to participate in the Farafina creative writing workshop hosted by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She writes from London where she lives with her family.
This short story by Temitope Owolabi responds to the series of photographs by Lidudumalingani. It was preceded by an essay by Bongani Kona contextualising the photographs. For press and other media inquiries, contact us.
