‘A one-horse town.’ That's how Dad refers to the bustling village of Tsolo, heartland of the amaMpondomise-Xhosa.

Trudelwagen and ox-carts now replaced, rusted Nissan and Toyota bakkies patrol the dusty Transkeian homeland town streets, conveying goods, buyers and traders. Shops selling traditional dresses – ‘homemade’ from isishweshwe-German print (ancestral beginnings).

Street stalls: colourful and bright, adding texture to the trading chaos. A mixture of modernity and ancient custom; beaded fruit holder and trinket, grass laundry basket and broom, ostrich feather duster and zinc bin, live leghorn chickens, threelegged cast iron pots, Sunlight soap, Boxer tobacco and bananas all the way from Durban. Bright, lively displays on the street corners where Greek, Indian and amaXhosa-owned cafés and general dealers flourish.

The family farm on which we live, linking past and present, affectionately known as Ohlsen's Creek, lies between the villages of Tsolo and Maclear alongside the majestic, sweeping Ntywenka Forests of the newly ‘independent’ Republic of Transkei, seemingly oblivious to 1976. A strange tension exists as Dad is never sure whether we’ll be moved or not, displaced to make way for new homeland farmers. They say not – but who can trust them? Dad continually questions the reasons for our probable removal. An uneasy stress presents itself; the past, present and future, rolled into a question of rivers, red earth, and rolling hills – it's a question of belonging.

Ancestors: They lived and worked these lands for generations, side by side with amaXhosa, amaMfengu, English and Afrikaner, moving from Stutterheim in the South, phesheya kweNciba, crossing the great divide, the Fish and Kei Rivers - up through the valleys, the rocky scarps surrounding Cathcart and Queenstown, on northwards to the tall forests gathered at the foothills of the Ukhahlamba - Drakensberg Mountains - host to a vast canvas of caves painted by the abaThwa, the first people. No longer do the abaThwa freely roam these hills. Would this someday be our fate?

‘Land consolidation,’ Dad remarks, switching off the Springbok Radio news bulletin. ‘Bloody rubbish, that's what it is – the Nationalists are giving them everything, everything, even our land. Matanzima will just take it for himself – and what do he and his chief cronies know about farming? Verwoerd must be turning in his grave. Where will these borders end?’

Aged twelve, I do not speak when the news is read. That's the rule.