By Magogodi oaMphela Makhene

Bua

Everyone claims ancestral royalty. Even slaves. No one imagines their beginning damned or marred by mediocrity. No. The likely telling is of glory. Of kings and paramount chiefs prostrating themselves like bush rabbits fearing our forefathers—those fearsome foxes. Of queen mothers throwing their firstborn daughters into our bloodstream like eager spawn sifting salt water for sperm.

Our star was born long-tailed, the old man liked to say. We were kingmakers and twin sires. Even our cows came in pairs. We made rain fall in Great Zimbabwe.

No one asks him, How, then, did the Boers and the British happen? How did such a strong and certain seed turn slave on its own ancestral land?

So much of who we are is fiction. The old man’s wife used to tell him that. And that only a woman could be God. Only Woman—who takes heat, sweat and sin and turns it into flesh; into sacred being.

Carrying life teaches you that, she’d say.

Maybe that’s why history forgets our grandmothers. They are written in the womb.

Excerpt from “Innards” copyright © 2023 by Magogodi oaMphela Makhene. Published by Atlantic Books.

About the book: Set in Soweto, the urban heartland of South Africa, Magogodi oaMphela Makhene's debut collection Innards is an uncompromising depiction of black South Africa. Rich with the thrilling textures of township language and life, it braids the voices and perspectives of an indelible cast of characters into a breathtaking collection flush with forgiveness, rage, ugliness and beauty. Meet a fake PhD and ex-freedom fighter who remains unbothered by his own duplicity, a girl who goes mute after stumbling upon a burning body, twin siblings nursing a scorching feud, and a woman unravelling under the weight of a brutal encounter with the police.

Full to bursting with life, in all its complexities and vagaries, Innards shows in intimate detail how South Africans must navigate both the shadows of apartheid and the uncertain opportunities of the promised land.

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Magogodi oaMphela Makhene is a proudly Soweto-made soul, who now makes her home anywhere with sunshine and writing space. An Iowa Writers' Workshop alum, Magogodi is a Caine Prize, Hedgebrook, MacDowell and Rona Jaffe Award honoree. She leads immersive courses and experiences at Love As A Kind of Cure, a social enterprise she co-founded to dismantle white supremacy.