The Quality of Mercy

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Theory of Flight (2018)

The History of Man (2020)

Published in 2022 by Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd

Company Reg. No. 1953/000441/07

The Estuaries No. 4, Oxbow Crescent, Century Avenue, Century City, 7441, South Africa

PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

First edition, first printing 2022

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

ISBN 978-1-7763-8000-8 (Print)

ISBN 978-1-77638-023-7 (ePub)

The quotation from The Sunday News is from ‘Ceasefire Hopes’, p. 10, 23 December 1979.

Quotations by Zora Neale are from ‘How It Feels to Be Colored Me’ by Zora Neale Hurston, first published in The World Tomorrow, May 1928.

Cover design by Gretchen van der Byl

Text design by Fahiema Hallam

In loving memory of my grandparents, Sibabi Charles Ndlovu and Kearabiloe Mokoena Ndlovu. Thank you both for the love given and the promises kept.

THE PROLOGUE

Based on a story my grandmother told me

Spokes M Moloi, recently returned from the war, stood at the corner of Lobengula Street and Selborne Avenue and waited on a promise. In 1941, the British had pledged that if he went to fight against the Germans, they would give him many acres of farming land that he could call his own. What man did not want a piece of viable land that belonged to him? And so Spokes had eagerly signed the papers they put in front of him, immediately joined the ranks of the newly formed African Rifles, and gladly collected the issued uniform – feeling, all the while, certain that this was a step in the right direction for him.

Even when they refused to give him – a soldier in the African Rifles – a rifle, Spokes chose to overlook the irony of the situation and chose, instead, to believe that he was walking towards something truly glorious. So strong was his belief in this glorious something that when they made his unit carry things here and there and everywhere, Spokes steadfastly refused to call himself a porter. He had joined the war a soldier, and as he carried weapons, ammunition, sundry supplies and wares in all kinds of weather and across desert and tundra, he saw this as his necessary contribution to the war effort.

When others of his ilk began to criticise the British for what they perceived to be unfair and unequal treatment, Spokes valiantly refused to be drawn into their malaise. His only complaint, and it was a small one, was that the greens and slouch hats that constituted their uniform did not seem to have taken into consideration all the various climates through which they would have to travel.