By Mmathabo Maebela
As I rush to join the wave of people walking towards the complex, my phone rings. Absentmindedly, I fish it out of my backpack. (Eish, these focken telemarketers.) Before I could end the call, a brake squeals from a taxi hurtling past. My body jerks back, heart pumping in exasperation. The driver leans out the window, glances at me, and presses against the hooter in irritation.
(Yeses, death almost had me.)
The wave of people walking in front of me does not stop. Even those who click their tongues in dismay at my silliness. Urgently, they slide through the small gaps between side mirrors and bumpers. A woman with a pink ribboned baby on her back hurries past me, and a man in a reflective vest pushing a Shoprite trolley sidesteps her. A stare contest takes place, but no one says anything.
Phone stuffed back into my pocket; I swiftly step onto a sidewalk lined by street vendors installing their makeshift stalls, getting their various stocks of fruit and vegetables ready for the day. Another mama walks past them, pushing a trolley carrying a big skhaftin with fish and small transparent plastic bags. A few steps ahead, she converses with a lady who hands her a crisp R20 note. “Ndicel’ ismall change, mama,” a young man quickly exclaims upon noticing their exchange.
The lines at the Easy Pay offices resemble a train, even from outside the glass walls. One lady, among the five people who missed the train, waits outside impatiently in a long summer dress, using the documents in her hand as sunblock. A few steps from her, three men who had ingeniously left the line sit on the ground outside a Pakistani electronics store, talking extensively about the early morning’s sudden heat.
A crowd of people, some waiting to use the FNB ATM, fight for shade under a veranda at the peach spot. Some umbrellas act as canopies of patience in the long lines. Some people just opt to be on the heat-receiving end.
Across the Easy Pay offices, another Easy Pay line grows impatient as people wait to use the two ATMs lodged inside OBC. One frail-framed and tired makhulu stands before me with her two grandkids. The older one, with a backpack, lies on the wall, parched, all the moisture on his lips having lapsed with time. Two tiny socks drop from the little one’s feet.
The two ladies behind me indulge in grant day politics, expressing their discontent with how elders change children’s grant dynamics by not fetching their cash on time. “Eyabo ibingaleya mini,” one of them whispers loudly. “at least, you can get cash back from inside the shop if you buy ngeR10,” the other says.
A police officer walks by, holding one phone and staring at the other. Two men, in military wear and reflectors with the words ‘Thompson Security’ engraved on them, parade around the market. Broad shoulders, head held high, their steps steady and purposeful. Their eyes move like hawks as they scan through the crowd.
Two young girls walk past us, chatting about their futile financial plans as one joyfully folds two crisp R200 notes and a R100 note and hands the rest to her friend, who palms it discreetly. In the distance, a young lady in all black leaves the Capitec line and buys her kids two cones of smelting vanilla ice cream. They take them, she licks the remains off her hands.
A girl in a blue school uniform irritably stomps out of Pep with her mother, holding on tightly to her school bag as they walk towards the vendors. Another lady in an EPWP reflector strolls in with a little girl who excitedly runs out of the shop a moment later, new pink sandals in her hands, refusing to put them in the blue plastic bag. An Ackerman’s plastic bag with something that resembles a drymac walks into Pep.
Another makhulu leaves Shoprite with two semi-full plastics and a bag of nappies. Sweat drips off her, and she hurries away from the shops. Behind her, more trollies scurry around the Fidelity van parked outside the store – 12,5kg maize meal, rice, squash, eggs. Those shelves must be empty right now.
A young lady in a black dress carries a sack of onions while her Gran looks through the potatoes to find the best batch. I catch the price of the cabbage in the air – R25.
(Yeah, neh. I can’t spend die hele dag chilling here.)
As the queues behind me grow, more plastic bags leave the shops, and more backs bend at the vending stalls, minimising the grant to just a fleeting moment: a circle that fills capitalists’ pockets and leaves the rest of society with just small change. What a stellar way to boost Cupcake’s dwindling economy.
