The Sunday Mail
Robert Mshengu Kavanagh
PEARL was almost as beautiful as her young sister, Nesta. But she had been unlucky in marriage. After giving her brute of a husband a daughter and two sons, she discovered that he was busy giving another woman daughters and sons.
When she confronted him, he beat her up, saying: “What’s your problem? Didn’t you know you married a man?”
He left her battered and bruised on the bedroom carpet. Pearl phoned her father: “Daddy, come and fetch us.” Her father did not ask any questions. He knew his daughter and he could tell from the tone of her voice that something had happened. That was the end of Pearl’s marriage.
Adam got the story from Nesta. Now Adam is dead and from time to time I bump into Nesta. She is always happy to see me. She never mentions Adam but tears fill her eyes. It looks like she really did care a great deal for him. The lecherous old goat, I wonder how he did it.
Then I bumped into Nesta the other day. My eye had caught an article in which the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education had come out with what appeared to me to be a controversial statement to the effect that schools should encourage children to bring cellphones to school. Having read numerous articles describing the havoc that cellphones were playing with the education system and young people’s lives in South Africa, I found this strange. Obviously, I did not know the half of it.
We were both very happy to see each other and we decided to go up the road to the Ambassador Hotel and have a drink together. Nesta – that long-legged, silk-skinned “indoniyamanzi” (a woman of velvety black beauty) was Adam’s favourite nyatsi until he died. I asked Nesta how her sister, Pearl, was getting on.
What a coincidence! I say coincidence because Nesta told me a story the Honourable Minister might be interested to hear. Pearl’s position was no cellphones for school children. Too disruptive, she said. Her teenage daughter, Everjoy, attended a school which does not permit cellphones. But then Pearl began to detect tell-tale signs that she had a phone – chargers, strange noises in the night, the girl’s grades going right down. So she confronted her.
The First Lady reminded us the other day that many a man and woman was educated by mothers who sold tomatoes. This is true too of single mothers. Not only do they bring up children alone, usually with no assistance or even interest from their long-lost husbands, but they have to work long hours to feed, clothe, house and educate the children. Invariably to get better jobs they take courses which load them with assignments. The children are left very much to their own devices.
Everjoy started off by denying she had a phone – because once a child knowingly does what her mother does not approve of, she begins to lie and then to defy. When eventually Everjoy was forced to produce the phone, the mother asked her for the PIN code. She flatly refused and no amount of “persuasion” would change her mind. Similarly she refused to reveal how she got the phone. So now Everjoy was not only secretly disobeying her mother but defying her to her face.
In the old days back home there was a belief that if a child defies her parents and refuses to do what they tell her, usekhulile – she is now grown up and can go and look after herself. In truth how do you stay in the house with a child who refuses to accept your authority?
Anyway, Pearl got someone in town to bypass the password and began to read the messages with growing horror. She just could not believe it was her daughter who was writing these things or that it was her daughter these boys – or maybe even men – were writing to. There was one conversation where Everjoy was in the bathroom. She told whoever was on the other end that she was washing herself. He replied by wishing he could be there to wash her – that was just the beginning, as they graphically began to discuss, like man and wife, what they would be doing if they were in the bathroom together.
The battle for Everjoy continues, said Nesta. She has changed completely. From the little angel everyone doted on, she is now a problem child – and her school work has gone to the dogs. But, as if that is not enough, Pearl’s son, Farai, who attended a school in town where cellphones were allowed, began to pester her with requests for a phone.
He said the other boys had fancy phones and they were making his life a misery because he didn’t even have a Nokia. Pearl was now in two minds. Should she go against her own beliefs and get Farai a phone? She did not like to hear that he was being mocked at school by the other boys. Yet she knew getting him a kambudzi wouldn’t help much.
It would have to be a smart phone – wasting valuable money needed to pay for essentials at home. Then too Everjoy and Pearl’s younger son would demand one and if they all got onto the internet where everything is there for all to see, what would become of them?
While she was still having sleepless nights over the problem – sleep she could really not afford to lose, what with her job and her second year Business Administration exams coming up – the woman next door came round and shocked her rigid. Her iPad had been stolen and her son told her that Farai somehow made a copy of their kitchen door key. She asked Pearl to question Farai in case he was the one who took the phone.
It sounded to me to be very much like a never-ending story. Not only never-ending but also almost universal. From what Nesta said, it seems parents all over are fighting a losing battle to bring up their children according to what they believe is right, in the face of television, US American music, the internet and the social media – all of which seem to seize possession of a child’s mind and lure it into a world where there is no morality, nothing sacred, nothing to respect except wealth, fame and sexiness, a world in which anything goes. Eventually, after days of questioning, during which Farai pleaded his innocence, blamed others, wept, accused his mother of child abuse, Nesta advised Pearl to take her son to ZRP Public Relations. They seemed to be quite used to situations like this there and soon Farai admitted everything. He had used his key and stolen the iPad. He sold it to a boy at school, in return for two cheaper phones and some cash. Through the kind offices of the school – who “comforted” Pearl by telling her that such things were happening all the time and she should not be worried (remember this was a school that permitted cell phones) – the phone was recovered. However, Pearl’s son, Farai, had changed into a liar and a thief while Everjoy was in danger of becoming an online whore. I wondered in the light of this and many other stories – just ask the parents of Southern Africa – whether perhaps the Honourable Minister might not reconsider his position and in solidarity with parents join the fight to save our children. I said goodbye to the lovely Nesta with a very dangerous hug.
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