Over the past two decades many black families of the Eastern Cape
have gradually reclaimed their history. Across the province known
affectionately by its diaspora as Ephondweni
(literally “the province”) or Emakhaya
(literally “our homes”), many prominent families from Tsomo to Xhonxa to Mxhelo
have erected impressive stone monuments to their ancestry - some tracing their
lineage as far back as 300 years and more. AmaXhosa and many other African
language speaking peoples rely heavily on oral traditions such as that of iimbongi, as well as also what is known
as ukuzithutha. More than mere
“praise singers”, as the crude translation will have us believe, iimbongi are custodians of oral history
of the highest echelon akin to the griots
of West Africa or the Anglo-Saxon heralds of medieval times. Ukuzithutha is a heraldic practice
through which each Xhosa speaker is able to trace her ancestry by poetically
reciting the succession of male ancestors in her lineage up to and including
the ancestor from which her clan derives its name. Some fortunate families are
able to continue this poetic recitation to include those who came after the
clan name ancestor up to the present generation of family elders.
Mama Connie Manise Ngcaba’s memoir, May I Have This Dance (Face2Face) is an attempt at augmenting the
oral record of history, which often overlooks the intimate details and
achievements of family members other than the patriarchs of the family. The
book opens with a family tree spanning four generations, beginning with
MaNgcaba’s parents and the parents of her husband of sixty years, the late Bro
Sol Ngcaba. It closes with a family constitution, complete with a vision and a
mission, as well as descriptions of the various organisational structures and
committees the constitution is meant to give life to. It’s a modern extension
and a formalisation of an unwritten code of conduct amongst Xhosa families. It
gives shape to what is currently a loosely configured organisation of the
extended family structure and provides clear objectives and responsibilities to individual
members of the broader family and the family structures on which they may
volunteer to serve.
Far from being some dry family text or manual, this is a story of one woman’s
85 year-long journey. She describes the carefree days of her childhood, safe in
the loving cocoon of both her immediate and extended families growing up in the
hinterland that is the former Transkei where she was born, to her present
position as the matriarch of a family that has made an indelible mark on not
only the East London community that is now the family’s home, but also on the
greater South African community at large (her fourth son, Andile, was the first
director general of the Department of Communications during Nelson Mandela’s presidency).
The story is written in a very simple and easy style that traces a deceptively
linear arc. This belies the complex nature of real life, which is often much
more nuanced than any work of fiction.
There’s a particularly enthralling passage where she describes the
nightly ritual of bathing her children. By the time they had all arrived – six
in total – the Ngcaba’s had been allocated a “nice, four-roomed house” in
Duncan Village, East London through MaNgcaba’s state of employment as a nurse
in the local clinic. By then her first-born son was nearly a teenager and the
youngest of her six children was but a toddler. She tells of how the feat that
was bath time in the Ngcaba’s Bashe Street home was successfully accomplished
through much conscientious effort and inventiveness on the parts of both her
and her husband, Bro Sol. Through a system of improvised devices and a
laissez-faire attitude with regards to getting the kitchen floor flooded by
four boisterous boys in two zinc bath tubs, the Ngcaba’s were able to
accomplish this and come out on the other side with a fascinating story to
tell. Juxtaposed against the time later in her life where she was detained for
3 months for assisting her community in those heady days of apartheid
resistance, MaNgcaba’s story is at times comical while also awe-inspiring and
even tragic. This is the essence of MaNgcaba’s memoir – a fascinating story of
modest origins that has led to equally modest, though immeasurably impactful,
outcomes. It is ultimately a story of triumph.
There are many
clues that make it clear that this is not the work of a literary scholar
or a budding biographer, such as the brevity of the chapters, the concise
sentence structure and minimal use of metaphor and other sophisticated language
devices – all of which confirm the MaNgcaba’s unyielding pragmatism. It is,
however, a succinct archive of a piece of history that is often lost to many
families. In this she does not only her family a service, but renders a service
to posterity. MaNgcaba’s memoir provides a picture of the participation of
ordinary South Africans in world events as it spans the two World Wars, the
entirety of the apartheid years, and culminates in the birth of democracy in
South Africa. Her account shows how all these events impacted on the lives of
ordinary folk in general and the Ngcaba family in particular without getting
too bogged down in the details.
(edited by Mary Corrigall and published in the Sunday Independent's 8 February 2015 edition)
