Giving Birth to My Father

Acknowledgements and Dedications

What a journey this has been – both the search for my father and also the completion of this book! Thank you to all who have made it so meaningful and worthwhile.

You have helped me piece together my puzzles, enjoy the great small things in life and always show gratitude for my blessings!

I thank the loving kindness of my Father and God Jehovah. He has protected me. I fall many times, but He raises me up to go on. I am sinful, yet He continues to shower me with undeserved mercy. I am blessed to be one of His!

Mama Tau Mdleleni, thank you for loving me and for raising me to be the woman that I am. Thank you for being my mother, as well as my father. Njengamagama akho Superior Tau, uyingonyamakazi ephakeme! Thank you for allowing me to write about our shared stories and for allowing me to express my individual feelings freely. Words will never fully convey my gratitude to you. Because of You, I love Me, just the way she is.

My husband, Jabu Thandolwami, thank you for believing in my dream. For encouraging me to continue in the search for my father and for holding my hand through it! Later, when I started expressing my wish to share my experience by writing a book, you continued to support me and you believed in me. Thank you for your guidance and honest critique during my writing sessions. You have been invaluable!

My children Zithelo, Luthando (Pepe) and Lwando, you are my inspiration. Thank you for being interested in my life stories and for genuinely enjoying listening to me reading part of this one to you. Thank you for allowing me to take some time away from you, so that I could complete this writing. I am grateful to you for endlessly pushing me to wrap the book up and publish it.

To Jane Maluleke and Foster Maluleke, thank you for reading the message I sent to you through ‘Names Database’ while in search of my father. I’m grateful that you motivated me and encouraged me to keep the records so that I could relate our encounters later.

Lesley Molele, thank you for being a father while helping me to look for my biological father. I owe some of the sweetest memories I have to the kindness extended by you and the late ausi Jackinah Molele. I promised you I would write this book as a token of my gratitude—here it is.

To my childhood best friend Jane Maditse, thank you for allowing me to refer to your story and for being a friend to this day. Thanks for all the things you taught me as we were growing up. ‘Our Silver Cup’ is still intact.

To all the families that I have been part of, fleshly and spiritually, thank you for raising me. Had it not been for your love and protection, I could have grown to become an angry person and harboured bitterness towards life and my father.

To all those great men out there who have been father figures to me in countless ways, thank you. When you were not even aware, you walked beside me in my journey and inspired me. You might have no idea of the significance, but hopefully this book will give you perspective.

Special thanks to St. Andrew’s School for Girls for the work they have continued to do for social investment since inception of DEP to date. Dave Tredrea, thank you for your fatherliness.

Nomsa Mgcina, Ntokozo Mashita and Thabile Mzobe who are the rest of the members of our small, unconventional book club Inkomishi YoLwazi, thank you for pushing me towards the realization of this dream. Thevan Pillay, thank you for the constant encouragement towards the completion of this book.

Special thanks to Mandla Siluma, Jacky Erskine and again Thabile for assisting with proofreading the manuscript.

To all my friends and family who have been waiting to see this story in print and impatiently cheering me on to hasten my writing, I’m sorry for the delay. Finally, I have finished. Thank you for inspiring, motivating and supporting me in all the ways you did.

A Tribute to Mom

Indeed, you are a superior lioness,

Your folks named you just right.

Armed with a hunter’s prowess,

You walked life’s jungle upright.

To tragedies you never bowed,

For only your Creator you wowed.

With you I was blessed.

With you I was saved.

My agonies were lessened,

My life with favour paved.

By you I was taught to love,

Because of that I survived.

With you every day of my life,

Was a happy daughter’s day.

Even on days we had our fights,

You never left me in dismay.

Now if I were to forget that,

It’d be an inerasable debt.

If I were not to honour you,

It wouldn’t go well with me.

If I were not to obey you,

How then would I be let to live?

My days here would be fruitless,

If I trampled on your benevolence.

Mama Ndiyabulela,

Enkosi NoMahlangabeza!

Preface

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." – Maya Angelou

This is my story. The story of how a daughter enabled a ‘re-birth’ of her father. When I started with the first step, I didn’t realise how much the theme of forgiveness would appear in my journey. It happened so inadvertently; as if through the natural flow of things. When I made the very first step towards this almost two-decade-long adventure, the desired outcome in mind was not getting an apology from my father, neither was it a delivery of forgiveness by me. It was just a journey of love, self-discovery, and curiosity. It was also a journey of thanksgiving to my mother; my own unique and odd way (I’m random like that) of showing gratitude to have been blessed with such a resilient woman in my life.

However, looking back, I must admit that this voyage would not have been worthwhile if I had scores to settle. If it was founded on a desire to hand-deliver a grudge and resentment to my father, I would have long been weighed down before I could even find him. A poisoned heart could have consumed me, contaminated my soul and thrown me into a crucible of a lifelong witch-hunt! What a waste of a beautiful life it would have been.

I was not even aware that I had forgiven a man for making me a fatherless child; half-orphan. It had all happened naturally in line with my character and in acceptance of my status, I had sincerely accepted an apology even though I hadn’t received it. This was my survival instinct, my lifeline. This absence of blazing anger was a blessing to me. It enabled me to be well and enjoy the life that was set before me.

In the middle of my journey, I began realising that what I was chasing was an unusual dream. Wanting to ‘give birth to my father’ was a bizarre and rum business. So, I knew one day I would want to write about this experience. I started keeping records and notes, to aid in the writing.

There have been a few hurdles in completing this piece. I have been doubtful many times and thought that I don’t want to publish my writing because it might leave inerasable accounts of other people’s stories better left untold.

I second-guessed myself and wondered if my story would leave tarnished images of my loved ones. Wouldn’t my family’s morals be questioned by the world because of the account that I told? Did I really want to hang some of my laundry in such public places?

What if others misinterpreted my motives? Wouldn’t I be labelled as pathetic for chasing after a man who didn’t want me, imposing my existence on him and forcing him to acknowledge me? Could that be wrongly defined as me having low self-esteem, forcing a stranger to validate my worth?

I had reservations about theories my father’s family might have too. I was concerned that they might feel robbed of an opportunity to tell their side of the story. To set matters straight. I didn’t want them to feel obliged to defend any perception I might have held of anyone, and writing a book could cause that.

In the end though, I decided to see my book to completion. I needed to tick it off my bucket list. It was my dream and not even my most genuine concerns could stop it. I was free in my conscience to tell this story. The story of how a daughter decided to reverse the roles, become the parent, the bigger person and allow her father to experience a snapshot observation of his ‘missed’ fatherhood debut. How she extended to him an invitation to reunite with his unfinished business and see what humanity had done with it! The story of how a daughter allowed a man an opportunity to re-define himself as a father, albeit at the end of the road.

My father had missed the opportunity to experience the first miracle of life he had been a catalyst to. But, I didn’t want him to grieve over absent memories of what could have been. On the contrary, I wanted to create a story of new beginnings, second chances and victorious endings! I had bestowed on him a bail-out for his crime against innocence and granted him pardon to live freely; and not as a runaway dad anymore. He would no longer have to watch his back; constantly feeling like his past was chasing him. To me, that was a story worth writing home about!

I wanted to share a story of survival against odds. My journey had in some ways mimicked the changing stages of a butterfly, my favourite insect. This story related how I wanted my father to experience a glimpse of the wonder of my resilient butterfly-like existence. Often a butterfly can still fly far even with a broken wing. I wanted my father to feel the strength in my brittle wings and see the many colours of my character.

More importantly, another reason was that of my own children. Even though I’ve shared countless stories from my childhood with them, I realised how much they still don’t know about me. The other day, while I was helping my son with his Grade 2 homework, I noticed he erroneously used the word ‘shake’ instead of ‘shack’ to make a sentence. After checking, he spotted his mistake. It was too late at night for me to ask him to come up with a new sentence so I offered him one. ‘My mom used to live in a shack.’ To my amazement, he refused politely and told me he doesn’t like using sentences that are false statements because his teacher might think what he wrote is true and ask him to elaborate.

It was a sad realisation to me that I still owed my children some of the most interesting stories from my childhood. I explained to him that every word in that sentence was true. Nothing was made up. The innocent disbelief in his eyes was intriguing. Nonetheless, we tidied up and stopped for the day, leaving his curiosity hanging in suspense.

The next day after work, I came home and greeted them all as I usually do, exchanging hugs in between. I asked him how his day had been.

He quickly summarised it for me and immediately asked, So, how was it? I could have easily assumed he was asking about my day, but there was something peculiar in the way he asked and put an emphasis on the word ‘it’.

So, I had to ask, What?

Living in a shack, he said with pure interest. He and his sister then pressurised me to tell them more about my life in a shack. I read a few chapters from this book that evening. I sat in between them on the couch in my bedroom. We switched the TV off, pulled a blanket over us, and they were both intimately glued to me in an instant. It was so satisfying to have them listening so attentively to a part of my story being read to them, by me. When I was finished, they still sat there for a moment, deep in thought.

Come Lwando, Pepe ordered a few seconds later. They followed each other to my eldest daughter’s bedroom. Thelo, I heard Pepe call out, hmm, you have to read Mom’s book. I promise you, you have to read it. They then asked me when they would be able to listen to me reading the rest of the book to them. That was another motivation right there.

ONE

Avocados, Cocoyams

and the Red Flats

Some of the best childhood moments I can recall are contained in these two words: Gogo’s House.

The night was silent after a frenetic day. I lay on my stomach on the top bed of our red-painted single bunk-beds. I had my arms crossed, pillowing my head.

I was sharing the bedroom with my mom and my two cousins, Zodwa and S’phokazi. My mother had brought these two cousins of mine to stay with us so that she could sponsor their education and mentor them through life. She had a hope of a better tomorrow for us; their next generation. Mom believed this could be achieved through schooling in an area close to Johannesburg, open to sustainable opportunities; far away from the poverty she had left behind in her childhood home in the Durban township of Lamontville. She had tried to do this before with another niece of hers, Joana – Zodwa’s sister – but that attempt hadn’t materialized. Next, she wanted to take their sister Nomvula, but my aunt had refused, saying that they would not be able to survive without her. Nomvula has always been one of the most industrious of my cousins; a home-maker since childhood. So, Zodwa came instead of her.

My cousins shared the single bed below mine, and Mom slept on the three-quarter bed which stood at a right angle to the twin beds. They had all fallen asleep already even though the light was still on. I stepped down to switch it off and climbed up again into the same position I was before, hoping I would fall asleep. I didn’t. I should have been tired and sleepy after the day’s activities, but instead, I was stuck in the hectic traffic of my thoughts. I found my mind wandering about and pondering over my life as a little girl, then thirteen years old, or so. It was a beautiful, simple life yet awkward in some ways.

I had spent the most part of that day with my best friend, Jane. We had cleaned up her house and mine, then we went to play and finished off with some studying.

I used to hate the first part but it was one of Jane’s favourite things to do. She thought I was a lazy bum, and I thought she was Mr Min’s sister, too immaculate. She didn’t just do her chores because it was expected of her, she did them with passion. I think it she found some meaning in it; it relaxed her.

Every time I showed up at her house in the morning, she would adopt this school mistress tone and ask, "Lorna, o feditse go phutha already? Are you done tidying up?"

I’d roll my eyes and sigh, feeling defeated and wishing the rest of our duty-free lives could begin already so we could live happily ever after. When our friendship had started to develop, she introduced a deal. We would clean up her house together, then go do mine and then afterwards we could go and play with the rest of the neighbourhood kids.

Outside games were popular, and Jane and I joined our other friends at most times, if we were not doing books—her other much-loved pastime. Even though some luckier friends of ours had TV’s, they were not yet an in thing to waste time on. We favoured playing house outside and cooking groceries taken from home without permission; cooking them in the field, using emptied canned food containers. We also liked playing various rhythmic and patterned hand-clapping games, accompanied by made-up township rhymes and songs. We preferred ending the day with dirty feet, stinking of sweat and being dead tired after playing i-zingedo, i-chigago, i-bhathi, i-gqupsayz (skipping rope), i-nguust (hopscotch), and a lot more. I honestly don’t know who dubbed some of these indigenous sports with these creatively tongue-twisting, oddly unspellable names but the activities were a stimulating way of passing time. Gratifyingly priceless.

On that day too, the sequence had been similar. As we did the