Kagiso Lesego Molope: We Inherit the Fire

A freedom fighter can be a legend to the world and still feel unreachable to her own child. Kagiso Lesego Molope, acclaimed author and playwright, unpacks the raw emotional core of We Inherit the Fire, where mother-daughter love lives beside anger, disappointment, and the kind of silence that grows when survival takes up all the oxygen.

You'll discover how the novel's alternating perspectives build empathy without forcing easy forgiveness, why tenderness seems to skip a generation, and what happens when a nation and a husband both want a "hero" but refuse her full humanity. We explore the prison chapters as spaces where women are given names and full lives, not reduced to symbols, and break down the brutal power of white women's tears to flip guilt into punishment.

We delve into desegregated schools as quiet violence, the daily armour Black girls are forced to wear, and the dangerous ways institutions claim progress while practising harm. We unpack naming as a form of claim and hope, and why keeping Setswana on the page without translation matters for cultural memory and decolonial storytelling. Perfect for readers invested in South African literature, intergenerational trauma, Black feminist fiction, and language politics, this conversation confronts the private cost of liberation and demands we sit with what freedom leaves behind.

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Transcript

What We Carry Into School

SPEAKER_02 0:10

The most important part of that part of the story is the it what is what we carry, right? It's what we carry with us into the school, the armor that we need that is ultimately never enough because the violence is much stronger than the armor that we have. I want a black woman to have all her feelings, all of them acknowledged. And what do we want for our children? Do we want them to feel pride and joy, not struggle every day, like every single day, to survive? Or do we want to put them in a place where they can speak their own language? So I think the women get to decide what path they want their children to take to take by naming them. Like this is what I wish for you.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Hello, Cheeky Natives, and welcome to another episode of The Cheeky Natives. I'm so excited for this evening's conversation. And uh, before I get overly excited, the

Meet The Guest And The Novel

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Tochnol, how are you, friend?

SPEAKER_03 1:04

I'm doing well. Can you believe it? We're finally becoming the podcast people who are like, we we did podcasting when it was cool, but now we're like let people see our faces. Yeah. And what a wonderful way to bring like a very special guest with us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Indeed, indeed. And so I have the honor of introducing our guest today, who is Kakisulisiko Mulope, an internationally acclaimed novelist and playwright who was born in Achadril, Pretoria and studied English and literary theory at the University of Cape Town. Mulope is the author of Dancing in the Dust, The Mending Seasons, Such a Lonely, Lovely Road. And this book betrays my brother. She's a four-time nominee of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. She has received the Percy Fitzpatrick Award, the Ottawa Book Award for Fiction, and the inaugural Pierce Addison Me Memorial Award. Her works are read in schools in several languages across Southern Africa and in parts of Europe. Malopa currently lives and works in Canada and is the author of We Inherit the Fire, a novel. Welcome, Glakita's the Cheeky Native. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

It's such an honor. I've always wanted to hang with you guys.

SPEAKER_03 2:12

So we've always wanted to hang, and I was like, it so happened that you're in South Africa, and I was like, no, we have to make this conversation happen. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

In person.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Yeah. I think perhaps to you know give our listeners and our watchers now a taste of the novel, just to introduce us into the world of these women.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Yes, okay. I'll read the beginning. So the novel is it's got titled chapters, and uh it alternates it's a brader narrative. So you get the mother Giwami and then you get the daughter Galelo. But the first chapter is Galelo's narrative, and it's titled Mother and Child. There is that photograph, of course. My mother standing in front of a soldier, closer than anyone else would dare. Hair wrapped high in a blue duke, mouth wide open, mid shout. She leans in, her forefinger pointing between his eyes. The soldier, a wide-eyed young man in army khakis, close cropped hair, sideburned sweat, shoulders up, head pulled back, but he keeps his eyes on her. He has an AK-47 pushed up against his chest, and he clings to the thing, his sole cover against my mother in front of him. On her back, she cradles with her left forearm an infant wrapped in a white summer blanket. That infant is me. People know me as the child. I don't know if anyone outside our family knows it was me. My mother has four girls and has been a fighter all our lives, so the matter of which one of us she carries on her back in that picture is immaterial to the world. In a newspaper article from a foreign country, the photo caption reads Mother and Child, a township woman attacks a soldier in the street. It's a report on the unmanageable chaos in an unsettled settler state, savagery, trouble in the colonies. My mother's story does not begin with this photograph, but no account of her life can ever be told without it. If they've never met her in person, this is the image most people have of her.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

Thank you so much. Thank you. Hey, Gele Lo.

The Mother Daughter Fracture

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Just start by thinking about the rapture between mothers and daughters. Because I think that the book really excavates this kind of idea of this rapture. And I was wondering, this is the rapture between Giwami and Gele Lo one moment or something that accumulates until it becomes a wall, right? So do we know where the line, do you know where the line was when you started writing?

SPEAKER_02 4:44

No, and that's probably because that wasn't the first chapter when I uh when I wrote the book. So the the chapter got moved forward, so it would be the first one. And I think in my head there was always there was always this fracture. It was always there. It's not something that like came at a certain time. It was just always there. And so it that's why it made sense to have that chapter be the beginning because you I wanted the reader to to see to go right into it. Go right into the the fracture at the very beginning, right? So that it wasn't something that kind of built over time. It's just as soon as you open the book, they're apart.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

I think it's interesting that you've said that because what we do witness in the book is this almost a generational rupture. So I think about the relationship between Giwame and her mother, and the relationship between Gilelo and Giwame. And so there is a tenderness in in the ways in which Giwame's grandmother holds her that she's that she's unable to do for her own children, right? And and as a result, it's this generational fracture. There's a chasm between the children. And so I'm thinking a lot about why does the grandmother then offer Gilelo this tenderness, or the grandmother's actually in the book, offer Gilelo this tenderness that they're unable to do for Giwami. It's almost as if the tenderness between these black women skips a generation. And so there's this constant overcorrection that happens with subsequent generations.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

And I think there's a chapter where Giwami says like it's that's something about tenderness, something like about tenderness skipping a generation. And I think that's simply because of how difficult it is to parent to be in sort of this direct, like everyday parenting place. And so when you're a grandmother, you're removed from that, right? Because and also because you've had the, you know, the the time to learn about parenting. Well, and you know, like when you're parenting, everything you're doing for the first time. But when you're a grandmother, you know, you have that, you've had that space and time in between so that you have that the benefit of time, right? So you can offer the tenderness because you've you're also not judging yourself as much. I think that the women are struggling with all these different things, right? And there's all this intergenerational trauma. But I think the, you know, when the grandmothers parent the grandchildren, they've had like a lot of space and a lot of time to think, and they're not at work like the mothers are, you know, all the time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:05

I was thinking about what you said in the beginning about this idea of like two narratives but one rapture. Yeah. So you often think about like, I was curious about why you made that stylistic choice, right? So is it something that you wanted us as readers to learn about Gewame that Galelo never gets to know?

SPEAKER_02 7:21

I just wanted to extend some grace to each character, to both of them, but especially to Gewame. I think it's very easy to judge a mother, and I think we in all nations the mother is judged first. And I wanted to give you, as you know, different scenes from different perspectives, because I wanted the reader to empathize with both characters and understand where both empathize with each character, but also understand where the other character is is failing. Not failing, but you know, it's like it's struggling. Oh, yeah, I didn't want you to judge either one of the women. I wanted to, as I say, extend some grace to to both of them. I think they deserve that. I don't think black women get that so much in life. So I want to do it in my work.

unknown 8:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

I think relationships between mothers and daughters are so interesting. I think that they're not the relationships where there's space for anger and fury and disappointment. It's almost like how dare you be disappointed at this person who's extended themselves so much. And particularly in Gelelo's case, Kiwame is so well respected. She is a freedom fighter, she's this woman who's done all of these amazing things, but she's not the best mother to Gelelo, right? And so I think about whether Gelelo is actually allowed to be angry at her mother, is there's a space for what feels like a righteous anger? You know, is there space for that anger? Or is that the one thing that you feel that daughters, particularly of very prominent women in the community, uh in their spaces, be it at church, be it as as activists, is that the thing that daughters are not given space to have an anger towards their mothers?

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Yeah, and I I I think she's entitled to that anger. You know, I think this is her experience of her mother. She can't take the nation's reverence of her mother and take that into consideration whenever her mother is not present for her. I think that every child is entitled to care and tenderness and presence, you know? And I know that it can seem like she um you know, I mean, look, this is how we do it with black women. We judge from the very beginning, right? Like, so when you're 14, are you allowed to be, you know, angry with your mother? Your mother has worked so hard, you know, and and she she struggles so much. So you should you should you know extend her some grace. And when you're 20, uh when you're 30, like, are you allowed to be so angry with your children? And you know, like there's always judgment going on, and I think I think each woman in the book deserves their own their own anger. I like characters that are whole, right? So I want the angry girl to be to not be quiet about it. I don't want her anger to be silent. I want it to be on every page, but I also want the mother who went to prison to struggle with being a mother and not become suddenly this the hero of, you know, the the hero of the of the household. She doesn't she's entitled to lying in bed and being angry and being absent. You know, she's she's allowed. She's allowed that, right?

Prison As Community And Witness

SPEAKER_02 10:25

So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:26

I thought was really also really interesting. One of the chapters that I really like is Steel Doors and Night Songs. And I think about, you know, that the cell block has names and lives on its own, right? You who gave birth in prison and wails at night for a child taken from her. See, Bati is in for killing her husband. Elsa is jailed for holding hands with this white man. And before them was Cis Lindy, who very like very, very close place in my heart. And you gave these women kind of real weight rather than just leaving them as backgrounds, right? And I was uh really interested in what you wanted us to know about them, their losses, their cares, they meant to kew me.

SPEAKER_02 11:09

Yeah, I think that I wanted to say, well, two things. One is that, you know, when I went to visit the prison, I became so much more aware of why women were imprisoned than who was imprisoned. And I think they all deserve to be named and honored and celebrated. And I wanted you to see the strength in every one of those women. I wanted them to have a place in the book. I wanted to say there's a woman who's there for like murdering her husband, you know, that I wanted to say there's a woman who that man betrayed her and she did this. And then I wanted, you know, and I wanted to kind of touch on motherhood even more with Beatrice and say there are women in there who aren't able unable to mother or that, you know, were driven mad by being in there, so mad that they couldn't stop wailing for their children. That there was every kind of woman in there. And I didn't want to paint this very pretty picture of they were all amazing uh activists, they were all Bomamuini, you know. I just I didn't want that. I was I wanted to say every woman who was in there deserved to be named.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

I like that. Yeah, Jason, I'm thinking a lot about the comments you just made around um performance of perfection. So I think about uh Kiwame's relationship with her husband.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

And so much of that is is an interesting relationship. He he's intrigued by the idea of her, but the reality of her also then becomes a thing that he wants to punish her for. So almost like what we do to very successful women where you are expected to be successful and have all of these accolades, but the envy of your male partner can also then mean that it's okay for them to behave in ways that are actually almost just like oppressive and violent towards you and abusive towards you. And so I wanted to speak a little bit about that relationship because I'm intrigued. He on paper is such a good husband, he's a good father to the children, but in the reality, he subjects almost to a punishment because of her achievements, right? His own envy pours out in the way that he treats him. So you have this juxtaposition of this man who performs the goodness of being a father and a present father, but is also simultaneously a very terrible husband to Gilwam.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

And I think uh Gilwam's relationship with her husband slightly but not completely mirrors her relationship with the nation. I think he picks her up as this trophy wife, right? And she's not allowed to be whole, she's not allowed to be human, right? She's allowed to be the picture that he wants the world to see. But and I think there's a, you know, towards the end of the book, I sort of I think Kellalo kind of realizes that the nation may not be so adoring if they got a full picture of her mother's mind, right? Like she says, she's afraid that they will see the truth of her mother's mind will come to light. So I think this is the thing that I I wanted to kind of look more deeply into who the hero is in intimate relationships. But I think at the same time, I was saying, how do we view our heroes? How do we say, like, you know, like, yeah, do we just do we want them to stand on a podium and look beautiful and say Amanda with their fist tied? Or do we want them to sit down and say, like, yo, like it's been rough, you know? And he's he doesn't allow that. He doesn't allow her her full humanity. And and I think that's very unfair. Adrian Rich had this quote where she says, There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep. Yeah. And I think Kiawame deserves that circle, but I think she only gets it with the women. She gets it with Cicely and Dear, right? She gets it with the women in prison. But her husband refuses that, right?

SPEAKER_03 14:52

Yeah. I wanted to speak about what I found is really interesting, right? Um, kind of what we term how I think how whiteness feels in the book. Yeah. But also to talk about white women in their tears. Yeah. Because I was like, how did you want whiteness to feel, right? Like an institution, something up close, something personal. And did you decide on purpose not to give any of these white characters much depth?

SPEAKER_02 15:16

Yeah, I it's very much on purpose. It's also like very much alongside patriarchy. Like I wanted it to be us, you know, it's all obviously whiteness and patriarchal systems are very much in the book. But I wanted to move them to the margins and say, it's not yet like we're we're not talking about you. Like we're not, we're speaking to each other and about each other. Yeah. And yes, the effects of what you the violence that you have inflicted upon us are very much present in our circle. But right now we don't, we are not directly addressing you. Yeah. We're speaking of you, but not to you.

SPEAKER_03 15:54

Yeah.

unknown 15:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:55

I like that because I was thinking about the many white women and their tears, but I think about the the initial kind of incident that leads us to, you know, be confronted with even more whiteness in their tears, right? Like what where did you want this white woman's tears or complaints to work like a weapon, right? Bringing down real consequences on black women or black girls, right? In their own harm that gets a pass. Because we know the scene, right? The scene is like this girl is the one who is inflicting harm. Yes. She's the instigator. But then she's the one who's a victim at the end. And for me, I'm like, it's 2026, and this definitely still happens. So like 1980s, 2026, and I wanted to speak a little bit about that, but that, right? What you were trying to say about like the cost of white women's tears.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

Yeah. I think I wanted to look at a white woman as quote unquote victim. And but at I think more importantly, I wanted to, for lack of a better way of putting it, sort of like points to its unimportance for like, you know what I mean? Yes, yes, yes. This this is not what is going to determine how I move forward, right? Like, this is not as important as you feel it is, and my feet your feelings are not my responsibility. And yeah, just point to the unfairness of it all that the world will will protect the white woman, it will protect protect the crying white woman before anything or anyone else, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Speaking about school, I think it was so interesting that school was the size of so much trauma for the for the people in this book, right? And at Gellila's new school, you know, she walks in, everyone pretends to be welcoming. Yeah. But we're still also very acutely aware of who holds the power, and nothing about who holds that that power changes. So I also feel that in many ways that kind of welcome was problematic. It almost felt like a quiet violence. And so I wanted to speak a little bit about the quiet violence of these spaces that that love black patronage but don't respect black culture, black people, and black humanity. Because we see that play out in real time for Gelil over and over again. Like I could feel the anger rising every time I read a scene from Gilel's school. I was just like, unhand me.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Because I need to get into that book and deal with those nuns. Hold my drink and my earring.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

I'm going for it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, the most important part of that part of the story is what we carry, right? It's what we carry with us into the school, the armor that we need that is ultimately never enough because the violence is much stronger than the armor that we have. And then what we leave the schools with, the trauma that's inflicted on black girls every single day, right? So there isn't even enough time to go home and process it before there's time to go back and experience it again, over and over and over, every single day. And watching the parts of her that she values, her language, the way she sees the world, who is she is in the world. Every day it, you know, she gets stripped of that. And she has to go back home. And when she's with her grandmother, her great-grandparents, her great her grandgrandmother, and her great aunts, when she goes back, she sort of gets a hold of a little bit of what she has, but then she knows when she goes back, it will be taken away from her.

SPEAKER_03 19:13

Yeah. It's so interesting that you you you were talking about like the body and like what it holds. And I'm thinking about like one of the key things that I think the book is really doing is about that the body belongs to everyone but the woman. Right. And I wanted to to ask a kind of Tanangin Qi question. Is there is there a moment where black women's bodies can be their own, right? Soft, private, unwatched. Because it feels like these women in their many parts, their bodies don't belong to them, right? Like it's it's always a sight of being like staring into. Yes. Yeah. And I want to to speak a little bit about that, like the body belonging to everyone but the woman.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

But the woman, yeah. I think as you as I hear you talk, I'm thinking, it feels really odd to say this, but it also feels like in the prison, when the women are taking care of each other and holding each other, that's when their bodies belong to themselves, right? They're giving each other the space to say, this is yours. I honor this, you're entitled to like safety, you're entitled to softness, you know. Is there a moment where the woman's body belongs to themselves? Or do we have that as black women? In silence, in in our quiet, in our quiet spaces, I guess, in in our aloneness, maybe, you know, in the moments where Gewame is alone and is able to cry in the bathroom by herself, what she what her body carries, what her body feels, is she acknowledges that, she gives that to herself in those moments, yeah, when nobody's looking and the whole house is sleeping. And she says to, you know, essentially she's saying to her body, you're allowed to, you're allowed to feel.

SPEAKER_03 20:53

You're allowed to You're allowed to not be dolly.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. What was

Heroes At Home And In Public

SPEAKER_01 20:57

interesting for me in the book, particularly, was the questions around what mothers are allowed to claim. So what do they claim? Who do they claim? How do they claim them? I think of the the part of the book where there's the mother and the child photos. And so you've got those two twins that look alike, but they're across the color lines. And so we're never told also, you know, for example, about which child Guami is carrying. So there's also different questions around what can a mother lay claim to, you know. So it's very clear in like our lexicon what what when it comes to children, what belongs to a father, right? Like this is your progeny, these are your children. But for women, we're never quite sure what women can lay what mothers can lay claim to. And so I was curious about some of your reflections, particularly in those moments where we see Giuami trying to it almost feels like she's trying to grab at something, but even she herself is not sure what she's trying to lay claim to.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

And I think she's in a really difficult place where um I don't know. I feel like she I don't know, actually. I think it's a really good question. What is she allowed to lay claim to? Because not even her children are her children, right? Because not even Yeah, because not even her marriage is her marriage. Like everything feels as if it belongs to something and someone. Else, right? The laws can take her children away from her. Her husband can take the things that are precious to her away from her. There's not much that is truly hers. But yeah, I agree that she's always grasping and is not quite sure like what she can have and what she can't. Quite painful, I think.

SPEAKER_03 22:31

You know what's interesting when you talk about that lay claim to? I'm always thinking about this kind of fracture in the rapture in the book where it feels like Kiwame knows that she wants to be close to Kelala. Yeah. But she doesn't quite know how to bridge that gap. Yeah. And I was interested in that. Is that often when we read books, particularly fiction, you're hoping for a happier ending, right? And like life is not happy endings. I don't get many happy endings in my book. I was thinking about that, right? Like, as I'm reading the book, I'm like hoping for a big moment of redemption and reconciliation.

SPEAKER_04 23:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:07

But actually, there is none, right? It's like it's kind of like this laying claim to like Kiwami knows that Kelilo is her daughter. But she often says, like, Gelelo's the quiet one. Like, I just don't quite know how to reach her. Yeah. And I wanted to think a little bit about that, right? Like whether they're in our in our minds as we think about like what are there really relationships where like it just doesn't land? You know, mother and child, it just doesn't land. And I I was curious about that.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

And I feel like I want to acknowledge the women for whom Mother's Day is not a beautiful thing, you know? And I want to say sometimes there was never the hands were reaching towards each other, but they could never touch, they could never find each other. Yeah, I I think it's a very painful relationship, but I think it's a very realistic relationship. And I think it would actually be quite unrealistic to expect Giuami and also unfair, I think, to expect her to sort of solve all those problems to for her to like move past her trauma in the space of the book and just suddenly be able to say, This is my child, and we are close now and we get each other. Like she's it's I I wanna say, like it's kind of what her husband expected.

SPEAKER_03 24:23

The husband just expected her to be.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

And there are assumptions we make about being in particular spaces and proximity to whiteness, right? And we use that almost as a proxy for moving up in the world. And so I'm curious about that shift because I think that there's a commentary that you're making there. We see Gilelo get to be herself at the school in the mountains. She gets to understand her home language, she gets to navigate the world in a place where there are people who look like her and who consider her of value. And she moves to the space which is supposedly better, but it's just run by rampant racists who are also just so incredibly insensitive and violent towards people who are ultimately powerless, right? Because there's a power gradient between a teacher and a student. And so I was curious about what what was the commentary around this striving for better and what better looks like in different contexts?

SPEAKER_02 25:45

I think we don't acknowledge enough the violence of desegregation. Yeah. I think we because what it is essentially is just taking black kids and putting them in violent spaces where they have to survive. Every day they have to be concerned with survival. And that no childhood deserves that, you know? And obviously, she's thriving in the mount, the school on the mountain. And who wouldn't thrive when they're speaking and crying and feeling in their own language, right? I mean, that's what we all want for ourselves and for our minds, for our growth, yeah? And so I think it's a conversation that we need to have more and more. That when we desegregate schools and we say it's progress, who is it progress for? And what do we want for our children? Do we want them to feel pride and joy and not struggle every day, like every single day, to survive? Or do we want to put them in a place where they can speak their own language and live not in translation?

SPEAKER_03 26:42

Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting. You you speak about this idea of not in translation. I was thinking about your book, right? While I was reading your book, I was thinking about a scholar that I really love, Marcus Bay, who they write a lot on, you know, a black life as something full, something unruly, not just a record of suffering, right? And they talk about like this idea of fugitive, right? Like

Desegregation And Quiet Violence

SPEAKER_03 27:07

borrowing from like Fred Morton, for instance. And I was really thinking about your book in that context. I was like, oh my gosh, yes, it's fugitive, right? And again, I'll go to my favorite chapter in Steel Doors and Night Songs, where Dorima Laga sings her way out to exercise so that the other prisoners can put, as you write, a face to the voice, right? And she spends her nights not weeping, but listing what the women need, right? Bandages, a doctor for Lisa sanitary tiles instead of bleeding through the uniform. And there's this idea of like Omama's little rituals and Galelo's inner world. And so for me, I wanted to know like, do these moments, right, feel to you like that quiet refusing the rules that were handed to you? Like living free where you're not meant to. I was thinking about that. Like I was really like, actually, you know, it's kind of fugitive. But because these are, you're not allowed to do these particular things, but you're doing them. Yeah. So I wanted to speak a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

I love that. I love that, especially in the prison. There's such a I it's the thing that I find most intriguing is the the camaraderie in the in the prison and and how they claim that space, which is like this really awful, dehumanizing place. But these women manage to claim it as their own, you know, make it what they decide it's gonna be, right? Like you say that we're not allowed to eat this kind of food, but we're gonna tell you what kind of food we want here, right? Yeah, and we're gonna sing to each other so that we understood, so we speak the same language. Exactly. And we're living in freedom in a place that is anything but free, right? Yeah, and I love that. But also, like that's that's how townships are, right? Like in townships, there's so much being ourselves that we lose when we cross, again, we cross over to that, you know, desegregated space. And yeah, and I I just I loved, and I think that is something that Gewame continues to recognize that in that place there was there was a space for everybody to be who they wanted to be.

SPEAKER_03 29:09

As you said that, you know, what scene came into my mind is when Kelelo is angry, right? Because we'll talk about the bus scene, because I listen. So when when she walks out, right, and Kiwame is about to like go after her, and Dumani says, There are no white people in the township. Like, relax, girls, she'll be fine. And that's what I was thinking about.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

Yeah, it's like how do you how do you live your life in these hostile states and what does that do for your own sense of being, right? And sense of awareness, because you're now in this hypervigilance looking around. Yes, because you're not safe. You're not safe. Yeah, and I'm thinking a lot about also inheritance, right? Because that comes up often in the book. And I think about what are the things that that Gilelo inherits from her mother. Because in many ways, she's incredibly different from her mother. She's also different from her family, she's different from her sisters. She's almost a child who sets apart. And you get you get the sense that even her mother has decided that ah, this one is just not like us. And she carries a lot of her mother's wounds because I think that she's a child who feels their most adversary. She feels her mother's inability to connect with her, she feels her mother's inability to to move past some of the things that have happened to her. But I also think she also inherits a lot of her mother's courage. Because Gilelo is quietly courageous. If there's anyone who's going to quietly set things off, you know, and there's there's a few incidents in the book where you say that even in her quietness, there is a there is a very brave person there. And so I'm curious about the things we leave behind for our children, whether we mean to or not. Like what is what does Gilelo inherit from her mother and what does she do with the things that she inherits from her mother?

SPEAKER_02 30:45

Yeah, I mean, I think, and somebody was asking me, what does what does we inherit the fire mean? Like what is what is the inheritance there? And I said, well, it's two, it's two things. First of all, it's the the fire that was like set by the beginning of colonialism, and the entire country has inherited that, and we're constantly trying to figure out what to do with it. But I think Gala from her mother inherits like the the strength, the courage. It doesn't present the same way that her mother's does. Like she's not gonna stand on a podium and you know, rally. She doesn't do that, but she knows her place in the world, and that she gets from her mother. That it is wrong and unacceptable for you to not be allowed to speak your language. It is wrong and unacceptable for the white girl to, you know, be violent and then cry and make it make it your problem, make you, you know, call you the instigator, right? She she inherits that it's a quiet, a quiet courage.

SPEAKER_03 31:42

Yeah. I mean, Kelelo meets her mother as a legend before she understands her.

SPEAKER_02 31:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:47

Right? And she finds this mother-child photo uh in the pile of newspaper clippings in her father's study. And it's interesting because you you do something with secrets, right? Like in my mind, I was thinking about what we inherit. Yeah. Is that one Kelelo finds this kind of clipping, this photograph, but Omama also has a box of secrets in her wardrobe that Kiwame also finds. Yeah. So I was interested to think about that, right? Like what like the the cost of secrets. Because I think that in in in many ways it also increases the rapture. It does. Right. Kiwame thought she was close to Omama, but she even says she feels like Omama, she's there's a part of Omama that she's she was like, wow, she didn't tell me this part, right? And obviously, we also know there's lots that Kiwami is not telling Kelly Law. And I wanted to speak a little bit about that, like the cost of secrets to these relationships.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

I think how much of society is predicated on the ability of women to hold secrets. How much of the ways in which we view the people in our lives predicates on the silence and the secret keeping of women.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

And Giwami speaks of it like quite directly, right? That we that women are, you know, that it the secrets will drive you mad. Yes. Right? Like she she talks about how what they carry that can't be spoken tears them apart inside. And I think she points to the unfairness of it. That what you hold that can never be told, it eats away at you. And I mean, I think we see at the very end that she really comes apart finally because of Secrets Unearthed, right?

SPEAKER_03 33:27

Hey, that scene where she's just like, girls, stay outside, I'm going in.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Listen, we all need a little bit of that in our lives, I'm gonna see honest. I'm I'm so curious, right? I I think we was we were speaking about the bus scene earlier, and that scene angered me. I think I s that was the one part of the book that angered me. And I don't know if it's because I now have my own children and I think about like the kind of navigations that my children are going to have to have, right? I mean, the bus is a public it's public transport. You know, it is meant to be the space which unfortunately is not neutral. So even the spaces in which are meant to be neutral, which are meant to be accessible to all are not. They actually become the sites of a very particular kind of violence

Inheritance Secrets And The Bus

SPEAKER_01 34:07

because they also are the site where people get to dictate who belongs and to which extent they belong. And so I wanted to talk about what you wanted that that bus scene to tell us about the in-between space. Because you can't it's not even you can't even say this happened at place X at this time because the bus is in transition, it's moving. But so is is all of the violence and all of the life skills and all of the life experiences that these children are accumulating, and so they're in this weird, like liminal space. Yeah, but it's interesting that the bus is the mood, it's the place where all of this happens.

SPEAKER_03 34:40

Sorry, I want to say, like, I mean, uh it's a really serious question, but I was just thinking about Kellelo Singh to Lerado. Don't be Rosa Parks, yeah. That was the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

But anyway, it's like we ain't gonna be sitting in no bus. Because honestly, like to think of of the bus as a site of activism is just interesting for these children. I mean, this is in the 80s. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, no one is they're on the bus, they're going home like normal children on their way from school.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

It's supposed to be a symbol of progress, right? You know, our mode of transport is supposed to be a sing a symbol of uh progress, right? Like we're not taking taxis anymore, we're riding on the buses because the buses are a step up from the taxis. So the buses are a sign of protest uh progress. And when you're riding on the city bus, then you've really arrived, right? Like there's a little bit of that. And I think I I like that Galolo refuses that. Like, this is not what what moving forward is gonna look like for me. Like I'm not fooled here. This is not progress. And if this is progress, then I don't want it because I I know I know a better world, you know, and I want something, I want something more and bigger for myself. And I think that's something that she's always saying in the book. Yeah. That this is not this is not freedom. But also I come from freedom. I know what freedom looks like. What I'm being pushed towards is not it.

SPEAKER_03 35:56

To talk about the mothers and storytelling, right? I think about the mothers or mama and her sisters that surround the girls, but particularly in this instance, with the easy talk, right? And even Gowamy says, you know, I'm learning these different languages because if they don't want me to hear, they'll speak in this course and all of that. So it was just like this chorus of communal mothering, right? And I wanted to speak about that. I think often when we speak about black women, even in these tumultuous times, right? There's also a mothering, like a communal mothering that kind of happens, right? Like your mother's sisters are kind of your mothers. And you also treat them like your mothers. And I wanted to speak a little bit about that, what you were trying to say about this kind of chorus of mothering.

SPEAKER_02 36:41

Yeah. I people who speak only English and who are not, you know, South African, I always tell them everybody's your mother, right? Like we don't have aunt in our language, right? Meh and then Mamu Holu. So they're all your mothers. It's just older mother, younger mother and younger mother. That's true, right? So we are always being mothered, even if it's somebody who is next door and you're not, you know, directly related to, but their neighbor is your mother. We all we call them all mama so-and-so, mama, you know what I mean? And that's true.

SPEAKER_03 37:14

Like, right, like when you c when you meet two, I mean, when I speak to Alma's mom, I don't say her name. I call her. I'm like, Mama Keta, how are you doing? And all of that, because there is this kind of like you acknowledge this older black woman as a parent.

SPEAKER_02 37:29

As a parent, yeah. I was being interviewed in Canada for about this book, and someone said, Who, like, who would you like some of the the women you know, can you say their names? The some of the ones who went to prison, the ones you've read about. I said, You would never do that. They're elders. So I would have to, yeah, they would have to be mama so-and-so, and mama so-and-so. I would never just be like Weenie Mandela, like we don't speak like that. Mama we mama all the time.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

Also, I feel like I've arrived, right? Because now I've I've heard like children call me mama, mom. So, and it was it's funny because it was a debate in the office, and someone was like, I absolutely cannot stand it. I was like, what do you mean? You've arrived. Like someone is looking at you, they're looking at their mother, and they're realizing this person could be in community with my mother, you know what I mean? And for me, I was just like, Okay, mama, I made it because you know, here we are. But I want to speak about naming. I'm so intrigued by the naming in this book, you know. So Giwame almost ends up ends up as Serame, right? After her grandfather. Well, Omama decides otherwise, right? And you know, there's something about naming and who gets named, because even that is political, and even that is an example of the power dynamics in our lives. And so I'm intrigued by the fact that the woman in this book gets to proceed and decide on on how the children are named in this book. But what did you want the power to name and rename tell us about who gets to all the particular moments in the lives of black children?

SPEAKER_02 38:52

Yeah. But I think then this goes back to what they get to lame claim to. There are these these the naming is it's extremely important because Oma is saying she is mine. I mean, like the name literally is Kiwaami, right? Like she claims her as her own, right? And I think the women they have this quiet power all throughout. And I mean, so in our culture, like in Stoana, and and I would say all of uh indigenous cultures, naming is it's aspirational, right? Also, like this is what I want for my child, therefore I'm gonna name like I was born in 76, my parents wanted peace, they named me Gariso, you know? So I think the the women get to decide what path they want their children to take to take by naming them. Like, this is what I wish for you. I'm gonna name you Gewami because I always want you to know that you belong to me, you are of me, right? You are ours, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:44

Yeah, Lali. You know, I'm just thinking about the naming because it's like, you know, the secret, but then realizing like Lily is kind of also, in a way, a homage to a sister that she couldn't build a relationship with. Like, so I was thinking about that, like back to Mama Lindi, because Mama Lindi, she my girl. She my girl. She my girl. So we know her as the mother in prison, right? Because she creates this relationship with uh with Kiwami. But she's also continue mothering even outside of prison. That's why they live in the same area. Yeah. Because she's like, I I I can relate to this woman. But she becomes the children's storyteller. And she often is like, I'm only gonna tell you the story once, you know, Kirita Vateyu. I'm not gonna tell you the story once. What did you want to say about mothering and what happens through storytelling, right? About a woman who mothers a family that isn't hers by blood, right? Is storytelling, I guess, a form of mothering in a novel?

SPEAKER_02 40:44

It absolutely is. I think she lives in a world where she knows

Naming Storytelling And Keeping Language

SPEAKER_02 40:47

that a lot will be taken away from the children by them going to these schools, by them, you know, being taught by people who don't want them to be themselves. And I think this is what I come from. I think we all come from that. Like all Indigenous people come from that, that our elders give us a story as the gift for to carry forward, but also as a map, right? And say this is a map to the past and the map to the future. You only know who we are as a people if we tell you who we are instead of what the history books are gonna tell you, right? It's urgent, I think, for Sis Lindi to give the children these stories before she passes. Like she knows she's about to go. But also, I think when it comes to mothering and in terms of Sis Lindi and Kiwami, I think Sis Lindi telling the children the stories is a way of taking care of Kiwami, right? Like, so also in as we go all the way back to where the conversation started, the grandmother takes care of the mother by taking care of the mother's children.

SPEAKER_04 41:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

So Gewame is allowed to keep some secrets, uh, is allowed to kind of deal with her own trauma, and she doesn't have the time to tell the children. So somebody else comes in and tells the children. And so in that way, yeah, she takes care of Gewame's mind and she uh of her legacy and all of that, and I think she gives her the right to be quiet about it. But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:08

Admit one of my favorite scenes is the Giwame coming to school.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

I channeled that literally. I said, What would Giwame do? And I said, Do you know what? Kiwame would be banging on tables. Like, do you know what?

SPEAKER_03 42:26

What was really fascinating for me is like it felt like, and I want to say you have some playwright experience when it felt like a scene on stage because it felt like these two white women were just moving constantly, like the only kind of still thing was Kiwami. But these white women were fidgeting. And I was just like, okay, what's gonna happen next? What's gonna happen next? I was just like, get her think.

SPEAKER_02 42:53

I love that she locks the door.

SPEAKER_03 42:55

The best, right? Y'all are not gonna leave. Because where are you going? Until I'm done with you.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

Where are you going? The conversation's not done. Where are you going? You and I, we have not completed what we were saying. But you know what? I I think I'm so struck by in the book. I think about how their grandmother is like tender, you know, she's very tender. I think we've spoken quite a lot about how Kiwame is the rapture. So there's that intergenerational rapture, and Kiwame encompasses that. But Gelelo is witness, so she bears witness to her mother's stories, to her mother's rapture. And so I think about how all of these elements come together in some ways to create some kind of wholeness. But also I think about how all the women in this book are aspiring to being whole. And so, what are some of your reflections about what wholeness takes when you have witness and rapture and tenderness all coexisting?

SPEAKER_02 43:46

Well, I think it's something they're always striving towards. I think wholeness is never quite achieved. And I think it's something that I maybe as an author you can't fully give your characters, you can only observe them. And also as an author, I think you are witness, right? Like you're also bearing witness to all these struggles and their struggle to move forward, but you understand that it can't fully be achieved in that short space of time.

SPEAKER_03 44:11

What do you think this country owes the truth? Children of freedom fighters, not as monuments, but as people who grew up with the wreckage of someone else's heroism.

SPEAKER_02 44:19

I think that we should be allowed our stories. I think that's what we're owed. I think we're, when I first started writing, publishers would not publish me because they didn't want to publish apartheid stories, right? And I hear all the time people referring to the low literacy level in Indigenous children. And I think, you know, there's there's a thing called orature, right? And it's centuries old. And we're entitled to that. I think that's what the country owes us, it owes us our stories. If they were given to us, we should hold on to them, and we have the right to give them to our children, our children's children.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

Yeah. If your book was found 50 years from now, what would you want us to tell people about the private cost of liberation, just the the persistence of black lives, how we've persisted and how we endured. But also what quiet repair looks like between children, their mothers, and their grandmothers.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

I think that if anything, I would hope that people look at it and allow us our humanity. That's what I strive for. I think beyond the podium, right? Someone like Mamwini, like she, I I would like for people to look back and see a full human. I just would that's what I hope is to see us in our wholeness, in our fullness as humans, right? Yeah. I think it would be, I think there's a lot that gets written in history books that are that's supposed to be factual, right? But I like to explore things through intimate relationships because I want people to acknowledge our humanity.

SPEAKER_03 45:54

I wanted to speak a little bit about Setswana. Yeah. Like it was such a breath of fresh air to just read a book and read your language. Yeah. And I wanted to know why it was important for you to because I think we often speak about this, right? Like when people write in indigenous languages, they kind of have to translate. But you were intentional not to do that. And I wanted to to to speak a little bit about that, how it felt like to to to to write Sitswana for these Sitswana characters.

SPEAKER_02 46:24

You know, there's a in Canada, there's a Cree writer who says he doesn't translate his books. And he said, somebody asked him, why don't you translate like the Cree in your in your book? And he said, because that's the point. And I think it's true. That is the point. The point is this is a language, a full language that's centuries old, that exists, and it's pr you know, it it deserves its its place in in literature. And also I think I I wish I I lost so much of my Stuana when I moved to to uh desegregated schools. And I I like to kind of find it more and more in the work that I write, because I don't want to lose all of it. I used to read entire books in Stuana, and I wish I could write entire books in Stuana, but I'm part of the point is that it cannot fade, it cannot be taken away. It belongs to us, right? It belongs to Galelo.

SPEAKER_03 47:18

It's interesting that you say that because I think often about the language discussion when people are like, oh my gosh, we can't learn in Afrikaans, you know. If we if we live in Afrikaans, it's gonna die. But this is exactly what you're saying. Like, it's centuries old. Like Setswana is not taught formally. I mean, it's taught in schools where it is, but like we still speak Setswana, so it still exists, right? So Afrikaans will still exist.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

Yes, exactly, exactly. And we're about Tsuana, and we just couldn't, you know, conducted this whole interview in English, right? Yeah. And it fades, it fades. The more, the less of it we speak, the more it fades, or the quicker it fades, right? And this is what this is what I meant before by we're old, our our own stories is that we we should be speaking Soana or Sizulu or whatever language on the page, right? Because the page is forever.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

Yeah. Sure. I think that is uh such a powerful note to end what has been such a beautiful conversation. Thank you so much, because I think

Wholeness Our Stories And Goodbye

SPEAKER_01 48:17

we've inherited a lot from this book. Um we laugh about the fact that I was channeling Giwami. Sometimes we have to find you in a kiwame, but it it was important for me to find someone who looked like me whose anger I was not repulsed by, right? So, like it's a thing about who is allowed the full range of emotions. And so to see people who look like you on the page experiencing the full breadth of their emotions and to know that you can be angry and still have people consider you to be in control and important was so necessary for me. So thank you for writing this book and thank you for bringing Giwame to life. I think we all need to channel a little bit of Giwame now. Think about where you channel her, but th channel her nonetheless, right? Because there is also something political about whose whose anger is considered righteous and appropriate.

SPEAKER_03 49:04

Yeah, but also thank you for Kellala. For me, Kellalo is that it's just like sometimes your bravery is the quiet.

SPEAKER_02 49:12

Yeah, absolutely. Still courageous.

SPEAKER_03 49:14

Yeah, yeah. So thank you really so much, Gariso. We've so much as you can tell, we've loved your book. And uh Yeah, we really hope that it will do amazing things because I think that it's it's deeply beautiful, and it really is telling us about like kind of the not so nice things about mother-daughter relationships, but also the tenderness of grandmother, yeah, granddaughter relationships.

SPEAKER_02 49:40

And I think I also wanted to take away that whole angry black woman thing where like no no strong black woman, right? I want it to be like, yeah, she's strong, but she's allowed her softness. You should allow her her softness. And she insists on it, right?

SPEAKER_03 49:54

Yeah. So, chicken natives, until next time, please don't forget to go out and buy your book, We Inherit The Fire by Gahisole Suchomolope, which is absolutely wonderful. And if you are an Audible person, you can actually also get it on Audible. It's actually really it's read by I a South African, and uh it re it's interesting to to kind of also hear the Sotswana. But until next time, we're Audi. Thank you.