Two old men and an entourage. They speak in quiet tones. Hunched over, sitting on the bare earth, knopkieries at their sides, they negotiate. It is a deliberate, measured, yet unsure process. Their words dance closer and closer then flit away, like moths to a flame. They sit apart from the thatched rondawels, under a weary old oak tree clad in autumn's rusted leaves, near the wattle poles fencing the cattle kraal. A place for men. A place of words, fluttering softly down, disappearing into the dry, red, cracked earth, a place of secrets.

‘It's good to see you Bhuti,’ the old man, my own father, begins the conversation. There are other men, my older brother, Duma – negotiators. As for my father, yes my own Tata speaks, as he drags heavily on his pipe filled with home-grown Xhosa tobacco, cured in the hot sun that beats down on the rusted roof of the chicken coop. The tobacco smoke drifts steadily upwards, escaping the circle of men.

I – just a girl – will come to know about what was said only some time in the future. By then my fate will have been negotiated and sealed. Though I can speak, I remain mute – one who does not speak, who is not spoken to. It is a debate about me, by men, for men.

I make nothing of it, for words often float about, light as feathers, meaningless.

I am Sweetness Faku, born of the amaMpondo tribe. I live in a village called Gcobane, not far from spiritual Port St Johns, but closer to the manic tradingtown of Lusikisiki. My father loves me and calls me, mntwana wam omncinci, ‘my precious little one’. I love him too and do all that I can to please and respect him. Duma looks after Tata's livestock. The cattle are many and fat, roaming freely, grazing in the lush valleys and traversing the hills and dales, chewing their cud. They are free, but not altogether so. Freedom, an enigma to all living things. Cattle. Animals that will seal my fate. Animals that dictate how we should live, how we should die and how we should commune with the living-dead.