Ayanda told Sipho that he had to share his vast amounts of Lego with Jannie which he happily did. One day while playing both Jannie and Sipho were looking for the same specific piece of Lego, Jannie eventually found it and Sipho joyously told him he was looking for that piece and asked to have it. Jannie told him that he also needed it and the boys were eventually fighting over it.
Sipho felt that he deserved the pieces more because the Lego initially belonged to him, Jannie felt he deserved them because he worked hard to find the pieces. Ayanda intervened and separated the pieces equally so that each boy had his own pile of Lego. At this point a new orphan named Riaad found his way to Ayanda’s house and was subsequently adopted.
Riaad had to ask permission from the older boys if he wanted to play with them but he never complained. He was quite happy to be able to play with the older boys and grateful when they shared their Lego with him. Sipho jealously threw pieces at Jannie and broke some of his own blocks out of frustration. Jannie proceeded to build houses and other constructions at a modest pace.
Sometimes Riaad helped Sipho break or lose pieces and sometimes he helped Jannie build structures. Feeling that Riaad was being left out, Ayanda adopted another boy named Pranav. He and Riaad immediately became good friends. Sipho and Jannie continued to jealously guard their Lego but they did allow the younger boys to join in as long as they remembered who’s Lego it was.
Eventually Jannie had a bustling Lego town thanks to the help he received, however Sipho had one or two poorly built structures and plenty of broken or lost pieces. This made Sipho resort to occasionally stealing and breaking a few structures in Jannie’s town. Because of that Jannie refused to let anyone else play with his Lego town.
Eventually Jannie realised that playing by himself wasn’t very fun and he devised a system where he would give the other boys each a ticket that allowed them to join in. By threatening to take their tickets away he would then be able to control when they were allowed to play and what they were allowed to play with. The other boys were initially grateful and Sipho offered the few structures he had built and the two piles were effectively merged.
Jannie didn’t really like Sipho's creations but not to offend him he added them to his town. The boys naturally wanted to play freely in the town but while Jannie did allow them to play with all the structures he was quite strict about how long and how often they were allowed to do so. Of course this eventually degraded into feelings of resentment.
So, when Jannie wasn’t looking Sipho, Riaad and Pranav played with the prized structures outside of their designated times and occasionally got caught. Getting annoyed with the shenanigans, Jannie made some of his best creations off-limits to the other boys at all times. This made the boys openly fight Jannie on the issue and they eventually created a structure in the town called the ANC which Jannie refused to accept as part of the town.
One day Janice, Ayanda’s friend, was over for tea and she saw the boys playing and was quite shocked to see how aggressively the boys fought over the Lego. She was also shocked that Jannie was the one dictating how the other boys were allowed to play. She remembered that Ayanda initially bought the Lego for Sipho, Janice shared her opinion that if anyone were in charge, it should be Sipho.
With Sipho being Ayanda’s only biological child, she conceded to the idea and went and told Jannie that he was not allowed to tell the other boys what they were allowed to do. She then told Sipho that he was now in charge of all the Lego. He vowed that he would never exclude anyone the way Jannie did, not even Jannie would be excluded. Soon afterwards, Sipho made a rule that People who’s name started with an S had first choice in what they wanted to play with and People with R or P were second in line.
Still believing that he was being more fair than Jannie was before him, Sipho set to work deconstructing the structures that took so long to build. While Riaad and Pranav were occasionally given handfuls of pieces, Sipho was blissfully enjoying his large pile of blocks. He completely neglected the fact that he himself was running out of structures to play with and he eventually had less to play with than when Jannie was in charge.
Sipho was oblivious to the fact that the blocks on their own provided no real entertainment but he was enthralled by his dominance over the other boys. All the while Riaad, Pranav and Jannie were hard at work trying to rebuild the city despite Sipho deconstructing their creations almost as fast as they built them. Riaad and Pranav initially felt they were on Sipho’s side but quickly realised that Sipho was in it for himself.
Jannie had realised the error of his ways and felt responsible for rebuilding a town where everyone had equal opportunity to play. Unfortunately they were now in a situation where everyone’s play-time was suffering even Sipho’s, especially Sipho’s. He had become so blinded by the greed he felt he deserved that he didn’t realise how much he was destroying.
In the mean time, Anyanda was generously allowing other children to come and play, many of whom were stealing Lego pieces which Sipho was aware of and allowing because he was getting sweets in exchange. The other boys tried to tell Ayanda about this but Sipho convinced her (and himself) that the boys didn’t like him because his name started with an S and that they didn’t want someone who’s name started with an S to be in charge of the Lego.
Anyanda was sincerely a loving and caring person but she was simple minded. She just could not grasp the complexity of the problems her children were facing. She allowed others to convince her that her biological child was more important than the rest. Worst of all she allowed the feud between the two older boys to have a very negative affect on the two younger boys who had nothing to do with the problem in the first place.
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