It’s not illegal to belong to the AWB, is it? They’re perfectly within their rights to belong to whatever organization they want.

Do vile things have to personally affect you for you to give a shit?

At the time I’d considered it a stupid question because I didn’t see how racism could affect me personally. How well my sister knew me, and how valid her point, because nothing is more personal than Mandla. How extraordinarily transformative love is, how utterly it changes you so that now I can see so clearly something I was always so blind to. When it comes to these kinds of prejudices, you don’t need to be one of the idiots actively shouting your racism from the rooftops; silence and inertia are collusion, and I will be complicit no longer.

“We don’t want him and his disease anywhere near us,” Klein Maynard says.

“Get the fuck out of my way, you racist bastard,” I say as I push past him. His eyes bulge with either surprise or fury. “Come near my son, and I’ll fucking kill you, do you hear me?” I stare him down and when he blinks, shocked to be on the receiving end of a threat, I turn and march away.

After that, I begin to fight off sleep as Mandla fights off death, superstitiously believing that as long as I stay awake, Mandla will continue to breathe. My boy wouldn’t leave me on my watch. He won’t leave me while I stand guard.

But there’s only so long a human body can stay conscious and I eventually give in to the darkness that encroaches every time I blink. I have no idea how long I sleep but when I come to with a start, I’m immediately aware of where I am and that I’ve broken my vigil. Vince is standing over Mandla, tears streaming down his face.

I bolt up, certain that my boy is dead.

Instead, he’s awake. The fever has broken. My boy has found his way back to me.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

Zodwa

1 January 1996

Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa

It’s been eight days of absolute agony and Zodwa feels like she’s going to go out of her mind.

What is wrong with my son? How can he possibly be fighting for his life when all he had was a cold?

She thinks of all the medicine Mandla spat out over the past few months and all the times she should have forced him to swallow it but didn’t. Is that why he didn’t get better? Is this her fault?

They wouldn’t let her in to visit him at the hospital, but she could see the machines that were breathing for Mandla; all the staff who were constantly checking in on him; the medicine that was pouring into his veins. How could so much be necessary to save such a small body?