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The Shopkeeper’s Son

Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live. – Cicero

My father wanted me to be a doctor: of that he made no secret. He planted the idea in my head, and anyone else’s who would listen, from when I was very young. He’d wanted to study medicine, but in his day medical training for blacks was inferior and he felt sure he’d end up as a glorified nurse, so he studied to be a teacher instead.

Even long after I’d decided I wanted to study engineering, Bhuti, as I called him because I’d grown up hearing my aunts calling him that, didn’t stop trying to change my mind. When, in 1982, he drove me to Durban from Mthatha to start my first year in the engineering faculty at Natal University (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal), he pestered me all the way.

‘Bhele, why don’t you just do medicine?’ was the intermittent refrain for over 400 km.

What made him more adamant was that residences were racially segregated and the only one that would accept black students was the Alan Taylor Residence in Wentworth, which housed medical students. In addition, the government of the then ‘independent’ Transkei gave bursaries to students who chose medicine. Instead, he and my mother had to pay for my engineering studies and I had to find digs off campus. It just didn’t make sense to him.

‘Everything, Bhele, is pointing to medicine!’

In his mind, engineering was a bit like being a car mechanic: good for a hobby, but not for a career. However, my mother had watched me, as a curious child, dismantling her radio to see how it worked, fiddling with car engines and puzzling over why a paraffin fridge was cold if it had a flame. And she supported me.

‘You do what you want, Dlambulo.’

When we got to Durban, my father drove straight to the medical school at King Edward VIII Hospital, hoping against hope that I would change my mind when I saw the place. There he met up with an old friend, a nursing sister, who agreed to provide me with accommodation in Umlazi. We dropped off my belongings at her home, but I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with the arrangement.

While registering, I bumped into a school friend, Loyiso ‘Blackie’ Magqaza, who told me about prefab accommodation for black Howard College students living at Alan Taylor Residence (used by black medical students). I jumped at the chance of being spared the long commute to and from Umlazi.

I shared a dormitory with the likes of Thembani Bukula, Mce Booi, and Manderese Panyana. Many years later, when Thembani was energy regulator at NERSA, he and his team had to withstand unrelenting political pressure, either not to put up Eskom tariffs because it was election year, or to put them up in order to afford the nuclear deal. I felt proud of my former dorm mate, who always did what he believed was right.

Thankfully, for my father’s sake, my brother Fundile, three years my junior, became a doctor. My sister Pelokazi studied physiotherapy and the last born, Langa, became an engineer like me.

Both my parents were teachers, trained under the Cape Education Department before Bantu education was introduced. They came from a long line of teachers – even my great-grandfather was in the profession. Bhuti taught Latin, English and History. He was a great raconteur and loved connecting history and religion to real life, be it sitting around with his friends drinking whisky, in the pulpit as a sub-deacon, as headmaster in front of his school, or as master of ceremonies at a community function. He particularly loved telling stories when he had a captive audience stuck in the car with him on a trip somewhere. One of his favourites was recounting how our ancestors had fled from the warriors of Sigidi kaSenzangakhona – King Shaka – in the Mfecane wars of the nineteenth century. When they reached the Eastern Cape, the Xhosas didn’t accept them either. Various tribes, dispersed by the Zulu armies and shunned by the Xhosa, came together, forming the Fingo nation, a name referring to their status as wanderers, or displaced people. After years of oppression by the amaGcaleka in the Transkei, the Fingo established themselves in the south-western corner of what is now the Eastern Cape. In the 1830s they forged an alliance with English missionaries – considered one of the worst things black people could do at the time, as it meant declaring loyalty to the British and their god. But it was also a commitment to education.

And that shaped us.

My mother taught grades 1 and 2 at Ntlaza Junior Primary School in the Ngqeleni district where, because rules weren’t always rules, I was allowed to attend classes from the age of four, instead of six. My brothers and sister did the same.

My mom also dabbled in raising poultry and pigs. My daily chore was to fetch leftover food from St Barnabas Hospital, about 2 km away, to feed the pigs. I was about eight years old and I’d set off at the crack of dawn, pushing a wheelbarrow. The driver of a bread delivery truck got so used to seeing me that he would hoot twice to greet me. I began looking forward to this sound as it was eerily quiet at 5 am and the road ahead seemed interminable. I had two older half-brothers and didn’t understand why I was the only one doing hard labour. I even started believing I had been adopted and that my parents were making me do this because I was the outsider who needed to pay for his keep. But those solitary walks sculpted me; today I often prefer my own company and thoughts.

When I was in standard 2 (grade 4) Theophilus Mvelase Mbambisa, an education inspector, asked my father to start a secondary school at Tabase, about 60 km away from where we lived. For some reason my father hero-worshipped Mr Mbambisa, calling him mkhuluwa – big brother. I suspect it was because his eldest son, Zwelidumile, was a medical doctor. Bhuti always had a soft spot for doctors.

The Transkei government had built a new junior school in Tabase. So we traded our comfortable brick home at Ntlaza, which had carpets on the floor and a tank for water, to live in the old mud school with cow-dung floors. We had to fetch water from a nearby river, so my sisters had to carry buckets of water on their heads, which they weren’t used to. Instead of our old Dover wood stove, we had to use a primus, both for cooking and to boil water for bathing in a metal tub. Because there was no infrastructure in the area and the nearest store was 10 km away, my mother converted one of the old classrooms into a general dealer store by putting in double doors, burglar bars, and an L-shaped counter made of glass so that customers could see what was on offer. Later, she introduced clothing, bought wholesale from Sparg’s in Mthatha. She cashed in her Bantu Education pension, bought a cream Toyota Hilux single cab, which had a bench seat, and loaded it with stock in Mthatha. The need was great and the business grew so quickly that my parents negotiated with the local chief, Inkosi Jumba, for land to build a bigger shop and a proper house. The shop came first, the house later. The community was a bit horrified when my father built us a temporary home of mud, branches and broken bricks.

But within two years we had a proper home and ran a well-equipped general dealer not far from the school where my father was headmaster. He had six children from a previous marriage who lived with us. Naturally it caused friction at times. Despite being a headmaster, he wasn’t much of a disciplinarian at home. He always tried to be Mr Nice Guy, which made things difficult for my mother, who was strict with her own offspring, so faced being labelled the mean stepmother.

On the plus side, there were plenty of us to help out in the shop. My oldest half-brother and I would wake at half past four every second morning to do the bread-and-milk run to Mthatha. We’d be back by seven-thirty, in time to have a quick breakfast before school began at eight. My brother, who was six years older than me, didn’t have a driver’s licence, but we’d all learned to drive sitting on a pillow so we could see over the dashboard. My father was fussy about the Hilux. The Nyati sons should not leave home in a dusty vehicle, so he would make us wash it before we set off, even though we had miles of dirt roads ahead. There was a rumour that the national road between Engcobo and Mthatha was untarred because the construction company had pulled out of the area after one of the foremen was killed and eaten!

In Mthatha we’d collect the village mail from the post office, buy six dozen loaves of bread, go to the fresh produce market for fruit and vegetables, then to the dairy where we’d get big cans of milk – to be dispensed into customers’ containers. By then, the Hilux, which had a canopy, was packed to the roof. On the drive home we’d breathe in the heavenly smell of freshly baked bread, which we’d sell in quarters at the shop for five cents each.

The shop gave us a sense of belonging in the community and a position in society. There was a kind of status that went with trading and I enjoyed interacting with customers. I would often advise them about new products – how, for example, they could use Compral painkillers instead of Panado. Many would arrive with a long shopping list and put their feet up while I found all the items they needed and entered them in our credit book. As their husbands were away working, many women could pay only when the men came home or sent money once a quarter. My mother made magwinyas and I’d take a bag of them to school, the aroma of fried dough pervading the classroom until the bell rang, making everyone’s mouth water. When breaktime came these vetkoek didn’t last long and I’d go home with a pocketful of jingling coins, which I handed over to my mother, who would count every cent.

The shop was close to the clinic, so it attracted passing trade. It was also a good place to meet girls: in the late afternoon, young people would gather outside the shop, sit on paraffin tins and play amadice and cards for money. I loved the thrill of this amateur gambling and longed to join in. But my mother had other plans for me. While my classmates played, I’d be doing chores. We had an old-fashioned scale in the shop and I would make up 500 g, 1 kg and 2 kg bags of onions, potatoes and carrots from the vegetables we’d bought at the fresh produce market in Mthatha. I’d get the exact weight by putting the vegetables on the scale, then adding cast-iron weights to the other side until the scale balanced. Then I’d pop the veggies into plastic bags and price them with a koki pen. I would sort the mail and sometimes read letters for illiterate customers. In the process I’d sometimes hear stuff that wasn’t for pre-teen ears, such as details about family dramas or even illegitimate children.

We were the first to get a landline telephone in the area, which changed the life of a community whose relatives were migrant workers in Johannesburg and other far-flung places. Being able to verbally communicate with them made distances shorter. Our phone number was ‘Tabase 6’. I’d crank the handle to get hold of the central exchange and an old lady waiting next to me would bellow out the number she needed. It took all of them a while to realise that they didn’t have to shout, merely talk into the phone, but eventually they got it. When the phone rang, my siblings or I would rush off to find whoever the call was for, while the caller hung on for minutes on end.

Real progress came when my mother bought a diesel generator. It made a huge noise, but our neighbours tolerated it because of the advantages that came with it: trading hours were extended until after dark, food and drinks were kept cold and we also ran a freezer for ice and meat. The arrival of an electronic cash register meant that we didn’t have to count bank bags of coins every night. My eyes lit up almost as brightly as the numbers on the screen when I saw it magically come to life for the first time.

To my mother, nothing was impossible. She was the only woman in the area with a Code 10 (heavy duty) driver’s licence and her actions sent a message to others in the community: don’t wait for things to come to you. Eventually the shop did so well and expanded so much that she took on some employees, bought a Mazda truck and hired a driver. The shop was called Embekweni Store – place where you are respected – and my mother’s name was Nombeko – the one who has respect, which was how she treated everyone who worked for her. This has stayed with me and influenced me: treat people properly and they’ll respect you.

Having helpers in the shop meant that I had time to hang out with my friends. I didn’t always use my new-found time well. At the end of my primary-school years, my mother – despite her busy life – began noticing that I often smelled like petrol. This was because my friends and I stole petrol meant for our vehicles and inhaled it to get high. It took her a while to confront me, but when she did she lost it good and proper, beating me with a stick. This, in addition to my brother having told on me for smoking second-hand cigarette stompies, was enough to make my parents decide to pack me off to boarding school. It was non-negotiable. Bhuti said nothing, just looked on as my mother sat me down and told me I was to begin grade 8 at St Patrick’s Mission in Libode, almost 50 km from home.

It seemed to me a lonely prison without my large extended family and the hustle and bustle of the shop. The teachers were Catholic nuns whose only priorities were discipline, education and prayer. From the moment I set eyes on her, I was terrified of Sister Principal, the headmistress. Three times a day the Angelus bell would ring and we had to stop whatever we were doing and pray:

Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with thee … Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Apart from our lessons, we had to work in the vegetable gardens and grow our own food, which I thought they cooked really badly. I was used to better. My consolation was a tin trunk filled with goodies from home, which I tucked into on Sundays when no one was looking. My treat times ended when some older boys discovered my secret stash, broke the lock of my trunk and took everything. I never said a word, just watched them with a lump in my throat as they relished my cans of pilchards and my biscuits.

St Patrick’s Mission drew learners from far and wide. I shared a bunk bed with a boy named Lizo Mbetshu from New Brighton, Port Elizabeth. Today he’s an ophthalmologist in East London. I met other boys from Cape Town, Durban and Joburg who relayed stories about ‘black power’ riots in their townships. They talked about police brutality and tear gas. I found these stories of state violence hard to believe. Nationally, resistance against oppressive education policies was at boiling point. It was 1976. Back in Tabase, my father was organising learners to protect his school from protestors. The Transkei government had fuelled the narrative that uneducated ‘influences’ from Soweto would arrive to disrupt learning in the homeland, and my father believed this.

I remained focused on my studies and gradually my grades improved. I came to love science and maths and I was sporty, having inherited a love of rugby from my father, who’d introduced it at all the schools he’d taught at. I continued playing rugby at university – first as scrumhalf, then wing – until I broke my collarbone in a bruising match against the University of Zululand.

I also enjoyed soccer and because I was quick, with loads of energy, at school they nicknamed me ‘double engine’ until I somehow burst the only soccer ball we had and I was called much ruder names.

In 1978, I began my high school at St John’s College in Mthatha, one of the oldest schools in the country and the most prestigious in Transkei. You’d find a lot of black parents from all over the country sending their kids to St John’s.

The school logo has an eagle holding a Bible, with the motto ‘Rise like an eagle and shine like a star’. I decided that’s what I needed to do.

In their desire to make sure we were properly educated, my parents had no qualms about sending us to a mission school, which meant that we had to be boarders. People in Tabase didn’t understand why anyone would want to send their children away to be influenced by others: the fear was that they might not want to do physical labour after being cosseted. Although St John’s – founded as a theological college by missionary Bishop Henry Callaway in 1879 – shied away from political involvement, the school system was firmly based on the principles of equality. Our teachers came from all walks of life and from all over the world. They had a liberal outlook and wanted to make a difference in a sea of injustice.

In 1978 Vuyisile ‘PV’ Maneli took over as principal and became the first black head of St John’s. He was a talented rugby player – he’d been a member of the Leopards team, also known as the African XV – and had studied maths and science in the US during the ’60s. At last I had a role model who looked like me. He encouraged us to compete against each other for good grades, to choose an area of expertise and excel at it.

Each year the school competed in the International Science Olympiad (ISO). The aim of the competition was to promote careers in science, pit the brightest students in the world against one another and to compare teaching systems in different countries. Doing well in an ISO virtually guaranteed you university entrance and a bursary from Anglo American.

In my first year at St John’s, when I was in grade 10, a grade 12 learner named Derek Hughes was selected to represent South Africa at the ISO. I looked up to Derek, who was the goalkeeper for the school soccer team. When he told me about an academic scholarship available to top grade 10 students, I set my mind to it. I was awarded a full scholarship, which brought some financial relief for my parents who were raising ten children.

In 1980, I was the top student and I was chosen to represent South Africa at the ISO (International Science Olympiad) in London. Derek had taught me how to act on my dreams. It was a big deal at St John’s and before I left I had to make a speech in front of everyone, including officials from the Education Department. As I wasn’t much of an orator, a more outspoken friend, Oyama Mabandla, decided this was a good opportunity to put words in my mouth. He wrote me a speech that any revolutionary would’ve been proud of. It surprised my classmates and teachers, coming from someone who didn’t usually express strong political opinions.

My parents had never been abroad, nor had anyone in Tabase, and I had never travelled beyond the borders of Transkei. At just sixteen years old, I flew to Joburg to be put through my paces at an orientation week sponsored by Anglo American. Sister Lane, who had succeeded Maneli as school principal, organised for the entire grade 12 contingent to be at Mthatha’s KD Matanzima Airport to see me off.

In Joburg white students were taught to sing ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’, black students to sing ‘Die Stem’, and how to use a knife and fork – a rather telling assumption that we didn’t know how.

The visit to London exposed me to a world I’d never considered and, after a fortnight, I returned home as Tabase’s expert in international affairs and post-matric careers.

The Daily Dispatch newspaper published an article on me, no doubt egged on by my father, who said I had plans to study medicine the following year. What he didn’t know was that my mind was set on mechanical engineering – nothing else.

For my first year I enrolled for a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Transkei (Unitra), which didn’t offer engineering. Black students had to get permission from the Ministry of Higher Education if they wanted to study engineering. When he was the minister of native affairs, HF Verwoerd – the so-called architect of apartheid – had said something like: ‘What is the use of teaching a Bantu child mathematics when he cannot use it in practice?’

At Unitra I reconnected with former classmates such as Andile Mvinjelwa and Zwai Tshwele. I did well; my only real competition came from a student named Xoliswa Kakana, who had done her matric at Inanda High School in Durban. She qualified in Germany as an electronics engineer and became the founder, chairperson and group CEO of ICT-Works.

A curious thing happened on my first day at Unitra. I was about to get into a lift on campus when I spotted an envelope on the floor and picked it up. It was full of banknotes, enough for tuition and accommodation for the whole year. There was no one around. For a moment I panicked. What should I do? I got into the lift and pressed the button to close the door.

I kept the envelope, waiting to hear if anyone had lost money. Eventually I used it to pay what my parents owed the university. When I told my mother about it she decided it must have been God smiling on us. Did I make the right decision? Maybe I should have done things differently and handed it in. But I didn’t.

For my second year I applied to the University of Natal’s engineering faculty. Even though I had won the science olympiad, I still had to apply for ministerial permission. But the university refused to accept my first year BSc credits from Unitra. I had to do physics, applied maths and chemistry all over again. It worked to my advantage because I was a novice at two of my other subjects: engineering drawing and design, and calculus.

Calculus and engineering drawing were part of the matric syllabus at white schools but weren’t in the Bantu Education curriculum, maths included only algebra, geometry and trigonometry. Black engineering students were at a distinct disadvantage. Dissecting a piston engine in your mind is one thing, being expected to draw it from memory was another. A number of dreams were shattered, as calculus, drawing and design effectively became a tool to exclude black students from the faculty of engineering. The playing fields were not level.

In 1989, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) calculated that of the 163 800 professionals working in the fields of science and technology, just one per cent were black.

In lectures, I found myself a seat at the front of the class, constantly asked questions and concentrated on my drawing and design, assured of cruising through my other subjects, second time round. Just three black mechanical engineering students made it to second year: me, Edwin Mabelane and Joe Mathebula. Edwin became a GM at Eskom and he and I would meet up in later years in rather different circumstances.

My stint at Natal University politicised me and I joined the Azanian Students’ Organisation (AZASO). Its leaders were Joe Phaahla, now deputy health minister and Aaron Motsoaledi, the current home affairs minister. Others I came into contact with were ANC heavyweights Zweli Mkhize and Siyabonga Cwele, former KZN health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo and Dr Judy Dlamini, chancellor of Wits University.

Through friends from St John’s such as Oyama Mabandla and Mce Booi, whose father had been a minister in the Transkei government, I became active in the ANC’s underground network. Both eventually went into exile – Oyama to Lesotho where he helped set up MK cells, linking operatives to units based in Transkei and the Eastern Cape and recruiting people for missions. We would travel to Lesotho for weekends, on the pretext of attending graduation ceremonies at Roma University in Maseru. The contacts I made led to many unexpected overnight visitors to my university room – activists who were passing through on some or other operation, the details of which I never found out.

When the United Democratic Front (UDF) was launched in Cape Town on 20 August 1983, the AZASO hired a bus and we travelled down to draw courage from the likes of Joe Marks, Frank Chikane, Archie Gumede, Helen Joseph, Popo Molefe, Frances Baard and Pius Langa. I was nineteen years old and was inspired by the defiant mood – freedom now! The powerful gathering in Mitchells Plain was peaceful though, and I felt part of a momentous event. I was particularly impressed with Dr Allan Boesak, and judged him to be a great orator:

[T]he formation of the United Democratic Front … symbolises the crisis apartheid and its supporters have created for themselves. After a history of some 331 years of slavery, racial discrimination, dehumanisation and economic exploitation, what they expected were acceptance of the status quo, docility and subservience.

Instead they are finding a people, refusing to accept racial injustice and ready to face the challenges of the moment …

After more than twenty years of apartheid education they expected to see totally brainwashed, perfect little ‘hotnotjies’ and ‘kaffirtjies’ who knew their place in the world. Instead, they find the most politically conscious generation of young people determined to struggle for a better future.

He reminded us that one of the reasons the UDF was formed was to fight the introduction of the farcical Tricameral Parliament, intended to further entrench the exclusion of the black population, designated to homelands:

So our African brothers and sisters will be driven even further into the wilderness of homeland politics, millions will have to find their political rights in the sham independence of those bush republics; millions more will be forcibly removed from their homes into resettlement camps.

Clearly the oppression will continue, the brutal break-up of black family life will not end. The apartheid line is not all abolished, it is simply shifted so as to include those so-called coloureds and Indians who are willing to co-operate with the government.

We returned to Natal invigorated into supporting the UDF’s Million Signatures Campaign and went round canvassing in Wentworth, a semi-industrial area of Durban to which coloured people had been relocated.

Despite my extramural activities, I didn’t neglect my studies.

I was the only black engineering student to graduate in my year, others having fallen victim to engineering drawing and design, calculus – or politics, never far from the life of a black student.

After my final year exams, I went back to Tabase, where I found my mother hosting a group of MK activists who had come to see me. One of them was a former St John’s classmate from Alice who had been politically active against the repressive homeland governments and had skipped the country. Now he was back and in my family home; Transkei was an important infiltration route for MK activists.

This group was on what appeared to be an operation of some sort. I found myself eyeing their many bags anxiously, wondering if they contained weapons. Up until then my involvement in the struggle had been mainly on an intellectual level. I didn’t know what their mission was – nor was I sure that they did. One Saturday night I took them partying in Southernwood, Mthatha, near Unitra. At some point during the evening, one of my mysterious guests came and told me he had ‘lost a hand grenade’. We set about hunting for the missing device and attracting unnecessary attention, I thought. It seemed to me a rather haphazard operation and it was with sadness, but not surprise, that I heard some months later that the group had been ambushed and killed by police near Fort Jackson in East London.

*

At the end of my first semester at Natal University, Afrox – a subsidiary of a British industrial gas company called BOC (of which I had never heard) – gave me a bursary to complete my degree. Then, in my final year, I was offered a Rhodes scholarship to study towards a master’s degree in engineering in Germany. It would have taken me away from South Africa for two years. I turned it down because, at the time, my mother wasn’t in good health: she had debilitating stomach pains that doctors couldn’t attribute to anything in particular. She, however, kept sending out signals that she wasn’t long for this world. It was probably overwork and stress, but I didn’t feel comfortable moving so far away from her.

It was the right decision. I was destined for business, not academia.

I headed for Selby, Joburg, the headquarters of Afrox.

Words from Fundile Nyati

Our Nyati family as we know it today are descendants of the Fingo people of the Eastern Cape, refugees from the ‘Shaka Wars’ (1818–1828) in KwaZulu-Natal. They were allocated land in the ‘buffer zone’ between the 1820 settlers of Grahamstown and the indigenous Xhosa people of the Far Eastern Cape.

These destitute Fingos were then caught up in the Frontier Wars between the Xhosas and the settlers. Although they tried to integrate with the indigenous Xhosa communities, they were not fully accepted.

On 14 May 1835, our Fingo forefathers gathered under a milkwood tree in the Peddie district, in the presence of a missionary, Reverend John Ayliff, who was sympathetic to their refugee status. At that gathering they swore a Great Oath (‘Fingo Oath’) that:

They would obey the Queen of England;

They would accept Christianity; and

They would educate their children.

Because of their alliance with the colonial forces, the Fingos were the first African people to use ploughs and to plant wheat. They were well educated and secured the bulk of elite positions as clerks, teachers and traders.

As descendants of the Fingo people, in line with the ‘Fingo Oath’, our family valued education more than anything. It was a practical route to a better life. We’ve passed on the Fingo education gene – my son is an engineering graduate from MIT in Massachusetts and Mteto’s daughter, Anda, is a pre-medical student in Baltimore.

Our dad, Michael Mtutuzeli Nyati, born in 1929, became a teacher, like his parents and grandparents before him. But what he really wanted was to be a medical doctor. He matriculated from Healdtown College in 1947 as top student in the Cape Province. Before that, he had been the best student at St John’s College in Mthatha, where he obtained his Junior Certificate.

My siblings and I followed in his footsteps and also went to St John’s and did well enough to obtain merit bursaries.

In 1948, when apartheid was enacted, our dad was among the first group of ‘medical’ students at the newly opened Medical School for blacks at Wentworth, outside Durban.

A year into the programme, he was expelled. Black students had discovered that they weren’t actually being trained as doctors and revolted. They were being trained as auxiliaries, professional nurses, only good enough to assist white doctors. As one of the protest leaders, my dad was kicked out of Wentworth and forced to go back to Transkei, where he grudgingly took up the tried-and-tested family profession.

He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Africa through correspondence.

Although he became a headmaster, his dream of being a doctor never died, and he tried to make it live on in his children. I am the only one who bit and he was proud of that.

Our dad got married when he was only 23 years old. He had five children with his first wife (three girls and two boys), and also had an extramarital girl child. When they divorced, he obtained custody of all his kids.

In 1963, he met our mom Nombeko Annie Nogemane. They married and had four children, three boys and a girl. The oldest of the kids from the second marriage was a boy named Mteto Silumko Mzuvukile, born on 21 December 1964; followed by me, Fundile Mabhelandile three years later, and then Pelokazi Nomfundo in August 1968. The last-born, in 1970, was Mcebisi Langa, on our mom’s birthday, 14 April.

When my mom married our dad, she took on a lot more than a husband. She had to play a parenting role to six stepchildren, and later to her own four children. Two parents and ten kids in one household! In her attempts to ensure that she would not be perceived as soft on her biological kids, she was big on discipline. My mom was of the belief that sparing the rod would spoil the child. Even the name Mteto means law, order, discipline.

When my mother decided to quit teaching in the mid-’70s to run our store in the Tabase Mission village, she expected Mteto to spend his free time assisting at the shop. So he grew up behind the counter of a general dealer, serving rural customers, and respecting them. Growing up with a businesswoman – and the only woman who drove a truck in Mthatha – taught us that success does not come easily, and that women are as good as men, if not better.

As firstborn, Mteto had it tough sometimes, especially when he began to be naughty in his early teens. Despite her heavy hand, our mom loved Mteto so much and shaped him into something the rest of us could follow. She was determined, in bringing him up, that he would be a role model and useful member of society.

He was our mom’s ‘guinea pig’ – she tried to create a child who would not take privilege for granted, a child who could put himself in the shoes of others, a child who valued focus and hard work as the only way to sustainable success, a child who would lead others without making them feel small.

Mteto has always been an inspiration, but there are a few things I would not ask his advice on: the latest fashion, parties or music. I would not go to him at all. He is slow in those areas … he prefers sitting at home reading biographies and motivational books, or travelling the world.

– Dr Fundile Nyati is CEO of Proactive Health Solutions

Words from Pelokazi Madlingozi

Bhuti Mteto was always my hero: from the first memory I have of him, which goes back to the age of three. He would act like a ‘mother hen’, fending off anything, or anyone that threatened my wellbeing. I would run to him crying and he would tell me to be brave like a boy and make me confront the bullies. It made me fearless, which didn’t always work in my favour. In my teenage years, most boys were scared of me because I would intimidate them. Bhuti Mteto would even confront our mom, telling her not to raise her voice at ‘the child’ (me) because she would make me nervous. He was my protector and my hero.

When Mteto went overseas as part of the Youth Science Olympiad, I was scared that he would never return because no one in my family had ever gone abroad. When he did, he brought me a miniature of London’s Tower Bridge. It ignited my passion for overseas travel.

I doubt that he will like my reference to the fact that in higher primary he sang so sweetly that he was placed with the female voices in the school choir. We teased him.

Because of the standards he set at school, our mom and dad expected nothing less from us and at times it made life difficult. He always excelled, setting the bar very high for his younger siblings. In my first year at St John’s College, the teachers told me in no uncertain terms that as Mteto and Fundile’s younger sister, I was expected to achieve excellent grades. The pressure helped mould achievers in our family.

In his university years, Mteto and his friends listened to Radio Freedom and his political icon was former president Thabo Mbeki. I used to fear that Mteto would get detained, or disappear like other student activists. Although he didn’t realise it, he was a big influence on my political activism when I got to university. I did not listen to anyone who held views that differed from his.

The quest for academic excellence our parents instilled in us fuelled the work ethic we all have today and within all of us is a streak of business leadership, which we learned from our mother. I could never trade this for anything.

– Pelokazi Madlingozi is an Executive Manager at Proactive Health Solutions