Zama never saw that chicken. It all happened too quickly. He was going at full speed, bent over, hugging the frame of his bicycle. He felt like a jockey riding an untamed horse. It was downhill. The wind whipped against his body, his legs, his chest. Tears streamed down his face. Everyone came out of their shacks and houses. They stopped their morning chores to watch his bravery.

‘Zama, uza kuwa, you’re going to fall!’ he heard Mama shouting from the entrance to their bits-and-pieces township shack, large blue enamel basin of water in hand. His ritual was to cycle to the top of the hill, above the house. He would then speed down on his way to school, waving to Mama as he went by.

They lived in the Imizamo Yethu Township, on the outskirts of Ekhowa Town. Tata, Zama's father, was a petrol attendant by day. He had already left for work. At night he studied. At the end of that year, 1998, he was going to graduate with an Education Degree via distance learning from the University of South Africa. It was an exciting time - a time for freedom, Madiba and prosperity. Even the children knew that.

‘I’m going to find a good job and move us to a nice house,’ Tata responded to Mama's irritation concerning the fact that he always had his nose in a book.

‘Yinyathele, yinyathele, put your foot on it …’ some of the bystanders egged Zama on as he swept on down the road. He was picking up speed, a mini hurricane. His white school shirt flapped noisily around his body. Zama was of slight build, short, like his father. That did not matter to him, even if his friends sometimes teased him with the name ‘Shorty’. As long as his feet touched the pedals, he did not have a worry in the world!

‘After all,’ he told his friends, ‘dynamite comes in small packages!’

Zama enjoyed cycling fast, even if he knew that the brakes were not so good, squealing metal on metal. He was on his way to the local school. It was still only black children who went to his school. The white kids went to a school in the middle of town. Zama was in Grade six, and proud of it.