Chapter 2: Ayanda's Echo
1404 Words
Dineo swallowed hard. This wasn’t a teenage fling. This was something deeper. More dangerous.
The next morning, after feeding Lutho porridge and letting him play quietly with the old crayons in the drawer, she called someone she hadn’t spoken to in over a year.
Reverend Tshepo Morake.
He had known Ayanda well—had mentored her when she was still singing in the church choir, back when things seemed simpler. He answered after the third ring.
“Dineo?” His voice was surprised, cautious.
“I need to see you,” she said. “It’s about Ayanda.”
Silence. Then: “Come to the church office. I’ll be here.”
She took Lutho with her. As they walked through the dusty paths of Mamelodi, people turned, watching the boy. Something in his eyes unsettled them—something they couldn’t name.
At the church, Reverend Morake looked at Lutho long and hard before saying a word.
“This is her child?”
Dineo nodded.
“Do you know who the father is?”
“I was hoping you might.”
The reverend sighed. “She came to me once. Crying. She said she’d fallen in love with a man she shouldn’t have. Someone older. Powerful. She wouldn’t say his name. Just that he visited only at night. And that if anyone found out, she’d be the one blamed.”
Dineo sat down heavily.
“She said… he was married.”
Dineo’s throat tightened. “Do you think he’s from here?”
Reverend Morake looked away.
“Not just from here,” he said quietly. “I think he’s someone people bow to.”
And before Dineo could press further, Lutho—who had been silently drawing on the church floor—looked up and said, in a voice clear and soft:
“He wears a red tie and drives a black car. I remember his smell. Sharp, like burnt leaves.”
The reverend paled.
Dineo turned to him.
“You know who it is.”
Morake hesitated.
Then he whispered, “If that child is who I think he is… you and him are not safe.”
The church felt colder now, even with the morning sun pouring through the dusty windows.
Dineo clutched her handbag tighter. “Tell me who you think it is, Reverend.”
But Morake shook his head, his face lined with something older than fear.
“If I speak it, I make it real. And that kind of real is dangerous.”
“I’m not a child,” Dineo said, her voice firm. “I buried my daughter. I’ve buried truth before. But not this time.”
Morake glanced at Lutho, who had gone quiet again, watching them with unreadable eyes. Then the reverend stood and walked to the back of the room, unlocking a drawer in his desk. From it, he pulled a photograph—an old church fundraising brochure with a row of suited men smiling at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
He slid it across the table.
“Fourth from the left,” he said.
Dineo’s eyes followed the row.
And there he was.
Councillor Vuyani Sefako.
Husband. Father of two. Politician. Regular donor to the church. The man whose posters were still hanging on electric poles in Mamelodi. Known for handing out food parcels and shaking hands with pensioners.
A man with power.
A man who had secrets.
“Impossible,” Dineo murmured. “Ayanda would never…”
“She didn’t plan it,” Morake said. “But she told me... he made her feel seen. He spoke poetry. Brought her books. Promised nothing, but gave just enough.”
Dineo’s mouth went dry. “And when she got pregnant?”
“She said he panicked. Told her to disappear for a while. To take care of it quietly. But she didn’t want to.”
“She never told me,” Dineo whispered. “I would have helped her.”
“She was protecting you, Dineo. And maybe… maybe him too.”
The boy stood up suddenly. His face pale.
“He used to yell at her. When he thought I was sleeping. One night, he told her if people found out, he’d lose everything. That if she said anything, they’d both vanish.”
Dineo stood and went to him, kneeling.
“You’re safe now, Lutho. I promise.”
But even as she said it, the wind outside shifted—and she knew.
Someone was watching.
A black car had been parked just down the street from the church for over twenty minutes.
Inside, behind tinted windows, someone lit a cigarette and took a long drag.
Then dialed a number.
“She has the boy,” a voice said. “And the old woman is starting to ask questions.”
A pause.
Then the reply:
“Make it go away.”
The sky turned strange over Mamelodi that afternoon. The kind of wind that carried more than dust—it carried warnings.
Dineo hadn’t gone home.
After the conversation with Reverend Morake, she took Lutho straight to her sister's house in Nellmapius, hoping it would be far enough to breathe. But even as she tucked him into a borrowed bed, her heart beat too fast.
She knew that car. Not personally, but the type—government plates, dark windows, the kind used to show power and erase it in the same breath.
By evening, she returned home to gather some things. She didn’t turn on the lights.
She had just finished packing Lutho’s shoes, some food, and the old journal when the knock came.
This time, it wasn’t soft.
It was sharp. Brutal. Like a warning.
She froze.
Another knock. Then a voice:
“Mama Dineo. Open the door. It’s Constable Nhlapo.”
Relief rushed through her—until she heard a second voice.
“I’ll handle it,” said a smoother, unfamiliar tone. “She’ll understand it’s not a request.”
Dineo inched toward the window. Peered through the curtain.
There he was.
Councillor Sefako.
Standing next to Constable Nhlapo in a tailored charcoal suit, the red tie exactly as Lutho had described. His face calm. His hands folded. A man used to being obeyed.
She opened the door just a c***k. “What do you want?”
Sefako smiled. “Just to talk. May we come in?”
“No,” she said quickly. “It’s late.”
Nhlapo stepped forward, clearing his throat. “Mama Dineo, there’s some confusion. We got a report you’re harboring a child who may have been abandoned. We need to verify—”
“I know who he is.”
“Then you also know this is a sensitive matter,” Sefako said smoothly. “For everyone involved.”
“Is that what Ayanda was?” Dineo said, voice rising. “A sensitive matter?”
The mask slipped—for a heartbeat. His jaw tightened.
“That boy should not be in your house.”
“Then why did my daughter name me as his guardian?”
That made him pause.
Constable Nhlapo looked uneasy. “Councillor, maybe we—”
“Leave us,” Sefako said.
“But—”
“I said leave us.”
Nhlapo hesitated. Then nodded stiffly and walked down the steps.
Dineo stood tall.
“If you came to threaten me, you’re wasting your time. You took my daughter. You don’t get to take her child.”
Sefako stepped closer, voice low now. “I didn’t take Ayanda. She left on her own. With secrets that could ruin people. She wasn’t a saint.”
“No,” Dineo said, her voice trembling with anger. “She was a girl who loved wrong, but loved deeply.”
Sefako looked at her. Something flickered in his eyes—guilt, or fear, or maybe both.
Then he said, “If you don’t give him up, someone else will come. And they won’t knock first.”
He turned and walked away, the red tie whipping in the wind like a warning flag.
Dineo shut the door, locked it, and leaned against it.
She had to protect Lutho.
But the storm had started.
And it wasn’t just political.
Because upstairs, in the drawer where Ayanda's last songbook had rested, pages began to flutter.
Without wind.
And in his sleep, Lutho whispered words in a language Dineo didn’t know.
Ancient. Echoed.
Like something older than Mamelodi itself had just woken up
- Writer
