Like how it was possible that Dumisa could send so much money back home on an entry-level administrator’s salary, and how he could afford a secondhand car and be saving for a house mere months after starting his first job. Leleti and Zodwa’s gogo should have realized something was amiss, but they saw only what they wanted to see.

Cyril’s alcoholism makes sense now too, as does what Zodwa considered to be his incoherent ramblings when she first met him.

They are coming for me. I can’t hide. There’s nowhere to hide. They’re going to kill me. Help me, sisi. Help me.

Zodwa had thought he believed the security police were still after him but, of course, he wasn’t talking about them at all. He was talking about his own people and the families of the ones he betrayed. After the ANC came into power, he’d realized that his day of reckoning would come.

Dr. Boraine announces a break and loud conversations start up once again. Zodwa is grateful for the noise. It means she doesn’t have to speak to Delilah, who stands and reaches out a hand for her.

“You all go ahead,” Mama Beauty says. “I think Zodwa just needs a few minutes. I will sit here with her.” She reassures them all that Zodwa will be fine and Zodwa nods to confirm it so that the sisters will go. As Ruth leads Mandla out of the row, it’s suddenly painful for Zodwa to look at her son, who looks so much like his Judas uncle.

Once everyone has cleared out, the noise trailing behind them, Zodwa finds that she can’t face Mama Beauty. Her freedom-fighter daughter might very well have been betrayed by someone like Dumisa; someone pretending to care about the struggle but who was only in it for himself.

“My child,” Mama Beauty says, reaching out and taking Zodwa’s hand again. “This has been a terrible blow for you, I know. One of the hardest things in life is finding out that those we love the most are the ones we know the least.” She squeezes Zodwa’s fingers. “Sometimes good people do terrible things. It does not make them rotten to the core; it just means that they made bad decisions. Dumisa is still Dumisa. He is still your brother. Only now he is a little less of a myth and a little more a mere mortal.”

Mama Beauty is right. To think that Dumisa has been hailed a hero his whole life. To think that Zodwa forever felt like she lived in his shadow, as if she could never measure up. She thinks back to the last conversation they ever had.