#Umoya
UMOYA
By Zakes Mdluli
Two hours out of Johannesburg, past the koppies and the maize and the last farm stall on the R24, there is a private estate called Umoya. Whitewashed villas with red-tiled roofs. Gardens you can get lost in. A dam with a small sandy beach. A dining room with chandeliers and white cloths, where the only rule anyone bothers to enforce is that you have to keep your clothes on. Everywhere else at Umoya, the clothes are optional — and so is almost everything else. Busisiwe and Sizwe Ngcobo did not choose it. Their spa burned down the morning they were due to leave, and Busi grabbed the first smart-looking place with a vacancy. Twenty years married. Two children safely at her mother’s in Tembisa. One weekend to themselves — and a resort full of couples who had all read the brochure rather more carefully than she had. This is not a story about a marriage in trouble. There is no jealousy in it, no betrayal, no third act where somebody cries in a parked car. It is warmer than that, and considerably filthier: two people who genuinely like each other finding out what else they like, together, somewhere that assumes the answer is nobody’s business but theirs. Be honest. Would you have got back in the car?
12 parts
