Nomzamo Dube

Milk, Bile and Honey Nomzamo Dube

Born to present yet absent parents, a young man has no choice but suckle from his Grandmother' sagging breasts. His life is accompanied by catastrophes that he cannot disentangle. He loses his breadwinner-Uncle before completing primary school, hence dropping out. The woes of living with his extended maternal family also torment his childhood. As the wave of the liberation struggle in Southern Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe) intensifies, he joins, mainly pushed by his desperate desire to hold an AK47, a toy he never had as a child. He narrowly escapes death at the famous ZIPRA training camp ambush in Zambia. When the liberation war came to a halt, another war of ethnic groups followed, famously known as Gukurahundi, later referred to as 'a moment of madness'. He has no choice but to flee the country as a fugitive, landing himself in the heart of Hillbrow in Johannesburg, a residential area where only the fittest survive. Living as an undocumented foreigner in the Apartheid South Africa is no cup of coffee. His life is further soured when his buried past reincarnates to haunt him. With the scarcity of employment in SA, he finds himself 'piece jobs', working for 'Baas'. Life castrates him again when he is fired by his Baas for an ironic reason. He begins living the day he stops looking for a job.