Saturday with my father was splendid as we reminisced about times gone by, the days we used to play soccer together and many other things beside. He congratulated me several times on being selected as this year's Nieman Fellow, which means I will be taking my family with me to the US for a year as I pursue my studies at Harvard University.

But that's another story. My parents' house - the humble abode where I spent many blissful years, growing up, laughing, crying, shouting, screaming and dreaming about everything under the sky - is in Mpumalanga township. The township itself is adjacent to the small industrial town of Hammarsdale. In fact, the township was created to serve as a labour reservoir for the textile factories that were once the mainstay of the town of Hammarsdale. Apart from the textile industry, which is now comatose, Hammarsdale's claim to fame is that it is the headquarters of Rainbow Chickens, the guys who breed and murder chickens so you can have your Nando's on your table and eat it with a clean conscience, oblivious to the violence that normally has to take place so that we can eat. It's a small township, Mpumalanga is.

So, on Saturday I went to bed and, as usual, I reached out for my "sleeping pill" - a particularly boring book whose title I shall not mention as I don't want to offend the author, who is a fellow South African. I started reading. It must have been about 11 when I was startled out of the drab prose by the unmistakable sound of gunfire. Rat-tat-tat. Machine-gun sound. I dropped my book and sat up. Then there were screeches of car tyres. The gunfire continued. Rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat.

I was mentally thrown back to the late 1980s when my township was a veritable war zone.

During the political violence which continued until way after 1994 as Inkatha supporters battled against ANC supporters for political control of the province, Mpumalanga, small as it is, was put on the national map. If you told a stranger that you were from Mpumalanga, the stranger would give you a wide berth.

Daluxolo Luthuli, the commander of Inkatha's killing squads, was from Georgedale, outside this township. The men that he moulded into killers, with funding from the National Party government, had been selected from the very township before they were sent to Caprivi Strip where they were trained and made war-ready in an ambitious and deadly plan to decimate the UDF/ANC not only in the township but in the entire province. For the record, Luthuli did go to the TRC and apologised to the nation.

I leapt out of bed and switched off the lights. That's what we used to do during the political violence. I went back to bed and stared into the suffocating darkness as the gunfire continued. There were intermittent screams and ululations as the gunfire continued.

It went on until about 2am. Thereafter the township's mongrels, which had been startled into silence by the sudden outburst of gunfire, took over. They barked like demented creatures. There was a violence to their howls. I couldn't take it any more. I tiptoed to the window and peeped into the street. There was a pack of dogs out there, barking and running around. But I couldn't see the source of their irritation. Some of them were fighting each other, growling and rolling around. It was surreal. Like a scene from a horror movie.

Finally, at about 4am, there was a respite from the noise. I slipped into a fitful sleep.

When I woke up in the morning, I was a worried man. My journalistic blood was on the boil as I clambered into my jeans and prepared to venture out into the streets to find out who had been killed during the non-stop gunfire. After brushing my teeth, I asked one of my sisters who had been up quite early if she had heard anything about last night's violence.

She gave me a quizzical look and asked: "What violence are you referring to?"

"Are you telling me you slept through those exchanges of gunfire and screams last night?"

"Oh, that!" she said nonchalantly. "No one was fighting. The kids were playing. That's what they do on Friday and Saturday evenings. They shoot their guns and spin their cars. It's the normal weekend thing." Duh.

For a moment I stood there, looking at her. But she was already back to her chores. She could sense that I was still looking at her in disbelief. She turned and continued: "No one bothers anyone. They were just playing, as I said."

I walked into the street. The neighbours were going about their morning business. The women were sweeping yards, and the guys nursing cold beers to take care of the babalaas. I was back in my hood. The hood I no longer understood.

And so this is how we roll now? I thought to myself. Morbid as it might sound, I thought the gun thing made sense now that I thought about it. During the political violence of the 1990s, the township, like many parts of the province, was awash with guns. The IFP and the ANC factions were armed to the teeth.

When liberation was finally achieved, and the truce cemented between the warring factions the guns were still there, in the hands of the youth. Damn, I was naive to have imagined that the guns would miraculously disappear.

Indeed, all over the country, in the townships that were touched by the violence, the guns were there. They still are there. Because there's such a huge supply of guns, it's very easy and cheap to acquire one. But what do the owners of those guns do with those weapons now that the political violence is gone? Of course they hijack cars. They rob banks. They murder each other at the drop of the hat. Or, as in the case of my township, they play cowboy games. Needless to say, during those liquor-induced weekend games, people do get shot. Sometimes accidentally, but at other times deliberately.

When I told this story to colleagues at the office they thought it was funny. Uproariously hilarious. They guffawed as I related the story.

What the f**k is wrong with this country?

On that uproarious note, allow me to say goodbye to you, my dear readers. I will only resume this column when I come back next year from the land of Obama. So long, my peeps! See you when I see you.