By Khanya Mtshali
He brought an honesty to work
deemed unskilled and menial.
A self-respect that towered
over the egos of overlords
occupying fancy positions,
in a hierarchy of thanklessness.
He had to work.
As a younger man,
he preferred the solitary jobs
that kept him away from the world
for days and weeks.
Sometimes it got so quiet that
he heard his breath whispering to itself,
never quite making out what was being said
— the secrets of an unconscious realm.
As an older man,
he yearned to work with others,
relished the challenge of synchronising his movements
to fit into an orchestra of minds and bodies
assembled for the purposes of extraction.
His uniform beamed with the same flair
as his Sunday Best
— loud with expression and gesture.
He belonged to a time
when taste was considered a virtue
as sacrosanct as the scriptures
he recited as a child,
a simple joy abetted
by the miracle of payday.
Short-lived like most,
but testament to the fact
that there was a God
for as long as they
could make the money last.
A cycle of fleeting abundance and perennial lack,
a fate that alienated him
from his own humanity,
shamed him into walking long distances
to stand in queues and sit in waiting rooms
thick with desperation and indifference,
filling out documents
certifying the plight he was born into
— a heritage of humiliation.
Bio
Khanya Mtshali is a writer and critic from Johannesburg, South Africa. She writes about literature, culture, tech, politics, and fashion and her work has been published in The Guardian, The New Yorker, Africa Is a Country, Bookforum.com, Mail & Guardian, The Johannesburg Review of Books, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the author of It’s Not Inside, It’s On Top: Memorable Moments in South African Advertising and she has published an introduction to the book Last Interview and Other Conversations: Billie Holiday.