Sebokeng, unwanted home

So when Sebokeng speaks, she doesn’t raise her voice; she raises her history. She speaks through every mother with calloused hands who makes pap stretch like gospel, through every child whose dusty shoes slap the pavement like war drums, and through every hustler who sharpens his grin because he’s got nothing else to polish. She doesn’t beg to be heard; she dares you to listen. Her voice is the sound of pride with a cracked lip, Sunday praise tangled with Saturday trauma, the warm smell of mangwenaya merging with the cold sweat of a raid. She’s a grandmother’s hymn surviving a blackout, a school bell ringing through the silence of unpaid teachers. Politicians speak of her in whispers, but the people who really know her, they laugh loud and raw. She is the prayer the nation mumbles but never memorizes.

When Sebokeng speaks, she doesn’t just tell you about pain, she performs it in you, pulling it out like an old story you thought you’d forgotten. She asks: “Where do you think your hustle comes from? Your rhythm? Your rage? Who taught you to flirt with danger and still pray before bed? Why do you speak like a poet but fight like a soldier?” She mothered you in contradiction, fed you hope and disappointment in the same meal, told you “you can be anything” but warned you not to get too big for the township. And she’s controversial, she doesn’t just survive oppression, she wears it, turning it into drip, slang, tiktoks, culture they steal. She’s the ghetto they build malls around, the girl they want to fuck but not marry, the boy they cheer on in soccer but disappoints in the streets. She’s what they shame and sell at the same time.

Yet she doesn’t want your sympathy, she wants your mirror. She says, “Don’t love me for my struggle, love me despite it. Don’t visit me like a zoo, come home like a son. Don’t romanticize my ruin, repair it.” Because she’s tired of being a metaphor, tired of being reduced to “potential,” tired of watching her children leave just to find the language to describe her somewhere else. Sebokeng isn’t asking to be loved, love is not enough; love never kept the lights on. She’s asking to be seen, in her filth and beauty, her contradictions and clarity, her rage and her grace. She’s not a quote for your captions. She’s a mirror. Look into her and see what it really means to come from somewhere.

Sebokeng, the township, the mother, the survivor, is not just a place. She’s the first heartbeat you heard before you knew language, the soft hum of a kettle boiling before school, the quiet laughter outside while the sun sets behind sheets strung across rusted wires. She’s not perfect, but she’s ours. Sebokeng is that kind of mom who doesn’t always know how to say “I love you,” but she’ll walk to the ends of the earth with cracked heels to make sure you eat. She might cuss under her breath, be rough with her hugs, but when your world crashes, her arms, though tired, are still open.

She’ll scold you for dreaming big, then brag about you to every neighbor when you do exactly that: “Yena? That one? That one’s always been too ambitious for the kasi, the kind of kid who dreamed in colours too bright for cracked pavements. The one whose ideas were too crazy for normal people to understand, who’d talk about futures the rest of us couldn’t even imagine. That one’s always been kind, even when he was broke, even when they laughed at him for being “too much”. Always giving, always listening, always dreaming, as if the world’s limits didn’t apply to him. That one?"

"Eish, I told him to focus, but deep down, I always knew he was going somewhere. But he’s mine, neh, don’t forget that! He came from here, from my street, from my house! They can have him now, but we knew him first.” She’s not cold, she’s just been through a lot. Love was never handed to her gently, so she learned to give it tough. But she gives it, in her way, every day. If you really listen to her, really listen, you’ll hear hope. Not loud and polished, but scrappy, stubborn, resilient hope. Hope in the way kids race home after school with snotty noses and fire in their eyes. Hope in the aunty who opens her spaza shop every morning, even if she barely sold anything the day before. Hope in the uncle who fixes shoes and dreams on the same table. You might have left her, maybe for varsity, maybe for a “better” life. But every time you say “I’m from Sebokeng,” she grins a little. Not because you’ve escaped her, but because you carry her with you, in your hustle, in the way you greet elders, in the way you don’t take “no” from a world that’s always told you “less.”

Sebokeng isn’t ashamed of her roughness. She knows she’s got potholes and power cuts, she knows some nights she feels more like a cage than a cradle. But she also knows what she’s made of: grit, rhythm, faith, laughter, survival, and you. And you! You’re proof that love can come from the most unlikely soil, that gold can grow from grey dust, that beauty can exist without polish. So yeah, Sebokeng speaks. And she says now: “You are bigger than what tried to break you. You are the softness I never got to be. I might not be your future, but I’m your beginning, and beginnings matter.” She says: “I love you, my child, even if I showed it in poverty. Even if I had no lullaby but the sound of drunkards and struggle. I love you because you are me, evolved.” She’s not perfect. But she’s strong. She’s real. She’s a home. And in her own rough, loving way, she’s always believed in you.

She’s a home, not because she’s always kind, but because she always knows you. Deeply. Instinctively. Like the smell of rain on warm pavement, like the sound of your name shouted from two blocks away, and you know exactly who it is. Sebokeng is home because she raised you without needing to say so. She taught you to read people before books, to dodge danger like a dance, to dream in spite of nightmares, and to laugh hard even with your stomach growling. She’s a home because she remembers everything you’ve forgotten. She remembers you playing diketo in the dust, knees white with ash, lips blue from too sweet juice in a cheap plastic packet. She remembers your teenage rage, how you hated her gravel roads, her gossiping uncles, her crooked streetlights.

How you said, “I’m leaving this place. For good.” And yet, even now, when you’re far away, when city lights flicker where stars used to sit, you miss the sound of her. The loud hooting taxis, the corner speakers playing deep house, the man singing "Ice Quava…. Quava juice" and another man shouting  “mangwenya! Two rand! mangwenya! Fresh! mangwenya!” The sound of life lived honestly, unfiltered, fully. 

She’s a home because she doesn’t need you to perform. You can come back dusty, tired, broke, confused, and she’ll just say, “Eish, o kgotlile? Come, eat.” She won’t ask for an explanation. She’ll just make space. She’s the room that never changes, even as you do. She smells the same. Feels the same. That broken gate still squeaks. That one wall still has your childhood scribbles. Your neighbor still hangs her washing the same way and greets you like no time has passed. She’s a home because she gave you your life, the way you speak, the way you throw in a joke when things get tense, the way you feel music before you hear it, the way you move, like you’ve had to dance around broken things your whole life and still made it look beautiful. She’s the reason you can sit in silence and still feel full, the reason you give more than you have, the reason you’re strong but soft, loud but thoughtful, brave even when you’re scared.

She’s not perfect. She’s cracked in places, bruised, just like you. But she never gave up on you. Not once. Not even when you gave up on her. And in some strange way, everything you are becoming, everything beautiful, resilient, gentle, sharp, is shaped by her hands. She didn’t just raise you. She formed you, from the same dust that dirtied your socks, from the same streetlights that flickered above your first kiss, from the same bus stop where you decided, “One day, I’m gonna make it.” She’s a home because she made you possible. And no matter where you go, no matter what suit you wear, what office you sit in, what city lights you live under, a part of you is always that barefoot kid, playing with dreams too big for his pockets, held together by her invisible hands. And when the world feels too fake, too fast, too cold, you’ll think of her. And you’ll know: You came from something real. You came from her. You came from home.