My Mother was a Woman

By Michael Dingake

Gender equality should be top of the agenda of discourse on human affairs. There is no rhyme nor reason for the status of women to be languishing below the male ranking. The ‘weaker sex’ label must cease forthwith. Women are strong, resilient and always unbowed. Moreover, women conceive and populate our world with all the talents the human race celebrates from time to time. Women deserve to be ululated and rewarded. The current status demeans women and denies the human race the chance to scale the heights it has the potential to scale!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398444171

Michael Dingake

Michael Kitso Dingake was born in Bobonong, Botswana. Dingake joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1952 and went on to serve in various capacities in different structures of the ANC. Dingake was indicted for membership and activities of banned organisations and for statutory sabotage by South Africa’s Apartheid government. He was sentenced to a total of 15 years and released on 5 May 1981. Being a Botswana national never prevented him from engaging in sacrificial struggles to realise the dream of a free, non-racist, non-sexist, just and democratic South Africa. Dingake is a retired political and gender activist.

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About the Author

Michael Kitso Dingake was born in Bobonong, Botswana. Dingake joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1952 and went on to serve in various capacities in different structures of the ANC. Dingake was indicted for membership and activities of banned organisations and for statutory sabotage by South Africa’s Apartheid government. He was sentenced to a total of 15 years and released on 5 May 1981. Being a Botswana national never prevented him from engaging in sacrificial struggles to realise the dream of a free, non-racist, non-sexist, just and democratic South Africa. Dingake is a retired political and gender activist.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my lovely wife, Tebby; and my dear daughters, Gosego, Thembi, and the late, Barbara.

Copyright Information ©

Michael Dingake 2022

The right of Michael Dingake to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398444164 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398444171 (ePub e-book)

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First Published 2022

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1. A Man Never Cries

You, look after me? Huh, you can hardly look after yourself! In any case, next year, you’ll be away to a boarding school in Johannesburg.

The secret was out. I didn’t know about going to school in Johannesburg. In the course of trying to console mama, morose, depressed and cross against her husband ‘joining’ the army to fight a war, nobody in the village knew why; her dejected look affected me and with filial chivalry, I had tried to assure her to let him go and I’d be there to look after her.

The rule was, ‘children were to be seen but not to be heard.’ Happily, the rule didn’t prohibit children from hearing what was talked about in their presence. So, I had been privy to the arguments about ‘joining’ the war by my father and the remonstration against sacrificing family togetherness for foreign war interests, by mum.

Dad’s argument was, there was no difference between fighting in a war in faraway Europe and working underground in the mines in nearby Union of South Africa. Both were hazardous occupations, reeking of untimely death. A rock fall, underground in the mine pit, might bury one alive; an enemy bullet in the war could end one’s life in a jiffy. It depended on the cast of the dice and mother luck.

One could survive these ever lurking mishaps and be remunerated for the risk one took to maintain the family. Lebitla la monna le ha thokoyatsela (a man’s grave lies along the road). With luck, one survived; short of it, one returned to dust prematurely to be mourned by family and relatives. Life for the poor was brutish, nasty and short.

Dad’s philosophy didn’t quash mum’s argument about the foolhardiness of ‘head’ of family abandoning family to sacrifice one’s life in foreign wars fought in foreign countries without the remotest interest in one’s family’s lives. Moreover, conscription orders from district headquarters demanded a minimum of one son per family. Dad had three brothers, two of them unmarried; he was the eldest and nearing 40, why couldn’t the family sacrifice one of the younger brothers?

Dad was adamant. He wanted to volunteer, to be the sacrificial lamb; he chose to spare his brothers. Don’t know whether he candidly expressed himself on this one, I didn’t hear that from him, but his volunteerism said it all. What I know is that resort to pleas, sobs and tears from mum failed to move him. It was a match without a referee, unwinnable on merits by either side. In the end, dad prevailed by fluke: ‘I am head of family, I play the guitar and I know better.’

It was after dad had walked away from the zone of the bitter war of words that I sidled nearer my vanquished, tearful parent that I’d chipped in, chivalrously; let him go, I’ll take his place to look after you! I was twelve. Hence the sceptic dismissal, You, look after me?

The information that I was to go to a boarding school in Johannesburg deflected the bravura of filial concern to sudden ecstatic self- interest. School in Johannesburg? Hmm. The village school ceiling was at Standard IV, where I was currently perched. Though divided on war matters, my parents were unanimous on affording me higher schooling above Standard IV. It was my ambition too. Attending school was a blissful diversion from the boredom of herding cows, sheep and goats.

All herd boys envied their age mates at school. Opportunity to attend school was a dream of every herd boy. Attending school in Johannesburg was novel, like Christmas came early. Pure bonanza! The ceiling fixed by the village school didn’t augur well for me. Boarding school in the city of gold was fantastic, a miracle from heaven above. My parents could have sent me to Serowe, Francistown or Khale within Bechuanaland to complete my primary schooling but chose Johannesburg! Wouldn’t swap them for any other parents!

Yes, while my parents argued and quarrelled about whether to allow conscription to take its course or not, they agreed on affording me some modicum of education even without knowing the pinnacle and objective of the learning they wanted me to acquire. School was the new-fangled way of life and my parents had fallen in step with the trend; they had sent me to school at the age of eight, considered too young for the village child, whose traditional place was the cattle-post.

The extended family had done its utmost bit, to dissuade my parents from sending me to the local school at that tender age. The case of a girl, Gatweng Ramatebele, my age, who made a spectacle of herself by reciting fable stories when she was asked to read from the reader, in class, was cited as an example of an unripe age of children pushed pre-maturely into school classroom. Extended family members to the hilt shook their heads objecting in dismay on the wisdom of sending me to school at that immature age. My parents exercised their sovereignty and won against extended family mob prejudice, doubts and scepticism.

Extended family objections overcome, I was soon the pleasure of my teacher, envy of my schoolmates and talk of the village, pride of my parents, full of myself because bright and unbeatable in class. One girl, Serara Selelo, standard IV class-mate (in class of four girls and two boys) was the first classmate to relegate me to number two position, in only one test. Unacquainted with the ‘humiliation,’ from a girl, above all, I wagged my finger at her and threatened to beat her up if she dared outclass me again. In her small, but firm, squeaky voice, she challenged me to try. I didn’t. Not only because the opportunity didn’t present itself again but because Serara wasn’t going to tolerate bullying by a boy-child, who was in fact two years younger than herself.

In due course she proved her mettle by becoming the first village girl to attain a PhD in nursing education and climbing to university professor level. Not to be outdone, I emerged with a PGD (Prison Graduate Degree) from a Maximum Penitentiary ‘University,’ where I had been dragged, resisting to emerge a decade and half later with this degree that was not a normal university degree. Surreal consolation.

The threat to beat up SS was not so much because of my higher IQ on the day in question. It was more of a typical boy-child conceit, ‘Hey, I’m male and therefore superior to girls of whatever IQ or age!’ My mother had inadvertently planted the misguided notion of male status and self-esteem in me.

One day, I came home from the pasturelands snivelling, to report, that one bigger boy had thrashed me for no good reason. Mum had firmly and without sympathy scolded me.

A man never cries, you hear? You hear? Whether another boy is bigger, you fight back, he too can feel pain, he too can bleed and don’t forget a man never cries!

‘Man’ repeated twice, meant I was different from a girl-child; it meant I had let the male side down.

Encouraged by my above average capacity to absorb knowledge in class, more parents in the village began to send their children to school, not only children of my age but some younger and some much older than eight years. Probably that’s what encouraged my parents to look outside the village, across the borders, in search of higher education opportunities, when the village school reached its ceiling.

The formal education rush was on in the small village. Always a short step ahead, the couple, they were looking for new pastures. Not unchallenged though. Serara’s parents also sent her to a school outside the country in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Hope Fountain was the name of the school if my memory is right. Competition between village boy and village girl was on, alive and well.

When my father departed for the Middle East war theatre, I departed for St Ansgar’s Institute, in the town of Roodepoort, a short distance from the city of Johannesburg. St Ansgar’s was a Swedish Mission school−it was in the era when African schools in the Union of South Africa, as the country was known, were all under the auspices of Christian missions, not government.

St Ansgar’s was a pleasantly unique boys boarding school, that admitted children, right from the lowest formal school standard, Sub A. Children of both sexes from the nearby ‘native’ (African) location also attended the school as, ‘day scholars’. Children came from all social, religious and ethnic backgrounds. Only white kids were missing from this jamboree of ethnicity and Babel of tongues. White children were missing due to the racial policy then known as the ‘colour bar’, the fore-runner of the apartheid policy of the latter years.

The boarding school environment was good for juvenile independence and development. Contact with both my parents at their respective addresses, dad in the Middle East and mum at Bobonong village, by letter, was an occasional diversion, primarily to request pocket money, not meant to stay idle in the pocket but to be broadcasted and splashed on knick-knacks in novel cafes and shops. The variety of goodies, money could buy, for young ones here in Roodepoort, was nothing compared with what obtained in the backwaters of Bobonong village. Mum had a hard time indulging me in my unceasing demands for pocket money.

I wonder how parents without regular income cope with the demands of brats away in boarding schools. Letters soliciting pocket money become a nightmare from insatiable kids, like we were. Demands weren’t always motivated by genuine needs but rather frivolous wants, often sparked by an urge to compete with schoolmates from more affluent families. Cash demands became some sort of game played by boarding school kids.

In my case, the demand was induced more by the sheer excess of goodies abundant here, which were unavailable in the bundus. Here, the rural kid in my image could celebrate without end. The moment the money arrived and was burning the pocket, I stole away from school together with similarly loaded mates over weekends, walked to town, a short walking distance, to diversify our school diet with fish and chips, fish crumbs, buttered scones and fat cakes (special food item) from Mogorosi’s ‘native’ restaurant in the native location we walked past on our way to the town.

Now and then in the company of the urban little guys, we’d jump into the local train without train tickets, play cat and mouse game with the ticket examiners to avoid depleting our resources meant to be enjoyed at Saturday matinees at Reno Cinema in New Clare or Good Hope cinema right in Johannesburg, to watch our favourite cowboy movies, dubbed Westerns.

Visits to the Johannesburg Zoo was another weekend pastime, when pocket money jingled in our pockets. Pocket money was sheer delight; it ignited frolic and merriment. In the background was mum, always responding to my juvenile demands to satisfy my newly acquired tastes.

I adored my mum; she was queen of my heart for her liberal indulgence with pocket money matters. Eldest of the siblings, I felt blessed and beloved, smug under her loving tender care; she was stoical in her new situation of single parenthood, she seldom let me down. I had always loved both my parents; Mum had a head start; she enjoyed the lion’s share of my affection.

Long before dad’s departure, I’d always revelled in warmer sentiments towards mum. I enjoyed being sent by her on errands around the village. I revelled in whatever she asked me to do. What the girls of my age did for their mums, I did for my mum. My aunt, Mma-Motsamai gave me derogatory names, to discourage me from engaging in girls’ chores; I politely ignored her. What I thought pleased mum, I did without inhibition, without scruple, without hesitation. She was crown of my head, queen of my heart, trump card in all my games, balm of my aesthetic senses. I had a sense, all mums were created in the image of my mum, to be loved and adored. Mum was mother and woman in one. A woman, equal to none in the world. James Baldwin expresses my feeling when he writes in his book, Evidence of Things Not Seen:

I do not remember, will never remember, how I howled and screamed the first time my mother was carried away from me. My mother was the only human being in the world. The only human being, everyone else existed by her permission.

Baldwin expresses my unique attachment to my own mum, precisely. It didn’t matter how she might have been viewed by anyone; she was the be-all and end-all of my existence. I’d have felt like Baldwin had my mum ever been taken away from me by any hostile forces. I only took myself away from her by mutual consent and missed her capture, by the hostile forces of death. Too bad!

Mum’s name was Sekoro, named, I was informed, after a ‘weed’ that plagued the peasant community when she was born. Sekoro, the hardy weed. She projected her hardiness in her unwavering love for her children and unflagging cordial relations with the villagers, even strangers.

Dad returning from one of his mine stints had brought her a Singer sewing machine. She was one of the first proud villagers to own a sewing machine. There were only two other villagers in the small village, I knew, who owned sewing machine: Mmadinekere, Gatweng’s mum and RreTsokota who operated a sewing machine, outside Rabinowitz (Ramaragwana) trading store, in what appeared to be a roaring business; villagers brought their torn clothes to be mended by RreTsokota.

Mum’s sewing machine wasn’t for business but more for personal and family use. Pestered by villagers however, she availed her sewing machine to them provided they brought their own cotton threads to mend their torn and broken clothes; those who were gracious enough and wanted to show their appreciation by paying cash, were charged discounted prices after a brief jovial haggling.

2. The Widening Horizon

One balmy afternoon, I returned from school at the usual lunch hour, famished and looking forward to my daily grub, pap with sour milk, to find mum hosting two male ebony strangers with food she had cooked, apparently at their request. The strangers responded in a mumbled unfamiliar language when I greeted. They communicated with mum in the universal sign language of gesticulations, copious smiles, laughter and general decorum expected of visitors.

Dad arriving from his thirst-quenching spot joined the invading strangers and engaged them in animated conversation in their foreign language. I gathered later that the language spoken was Chichewa, the language of the Nyasas of Nyasaland (Malawi), which dad had apparently picked up in the mines in South Africa. South African mines, then, were the melting-pot, where migrant workers from all cardinal points assembled to dig the yellow metal, pocket peanuts and leave mine-owners with money bulging in their pockets and swelling their bank accounts.

I had expected dad to take exception to find these aliens, given the hospitality they were enjoying in the homestead, in his absence. On the contrary, he was cheery, spontaneously befriending the strange men and conversing animatedly with them, in Chichewa. I learnt later that was the language. The Malawi men migrated from Nyasaland their home, trudging all the way through Rhodesia, tarrying along the way to do short stints on farms for cash, to enable them to continue their journey to final destination, the gold fields of the Witwatersrand. The passageway through Bechuanaland Protectorate was an uneasy one as they were declared persona non grata and liable to arrest on sight, by law enforcement officers, ably assisted by ordinary Batswana, instructed to report the presence of any persons who spoke in foreign tongues in the area.

The British colonial jurisdiction had incorporated Nyasaland Protectorate and Bechuanaland under the colonial umbrella but the inhabitants of these protectorates were unrelated, to be kept in their separate tribal compartments. In both ‘Protectorates’, natives job opportunities to enable them to pay the hut tax demanded by the colonial administrators, came through The Employment Bureau of Africa (TEBA); unfortunately not all the inhabitants had access to TEBA offices in their country, hence some decided to walk all the way to the goldfields risking interception on their way to their final destination, the gold reefs through the unfriendly territory.

Harbouring itinerant non-Batswana was an offence in terms of the colonial administration authority. My parents like all the villagers certainly knew of the persona non grata status of the Nyasas, though they apparently dissented from or even resented the inhospitable stance of the authorities against the Nyasaland wanderlust undesirables. Otherwise why did my parents welcome them in their home, risking the wrath of the authorities?

The collaboration of some villagers with the authorities, would have been mutatis mutandis despicable to my parents, one might surmise. Villagers without mama’s kind-heartedness and papa’s acquaintance with the mosaic branches of the African brotherhood didn’t hesitate to report the vagrants who traversed the land under suspicious circumstances, to police authorities. That was evident from the population of prohibited migrants