Review: May I Have This Last Dance

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.

One of the things the translation “praise singer” misses completely about the task and role of iimbongi is that they do not merely heap praises on their subjects. As custodians of history and truth, they are duty bound to tell the story of the past truthfully, without fear or favour. As such, they operate under poetic license to offend and shock if needs be. MaNgcaba has written a story that does not sugarcoat her experience and makes little attempt to glorify herself or her family. In a way, she has achieved the task of imbongi  and will hopefully inspire other families to record their histories in similar ways.

(edited by Mary Corrigall and published in the Sunday Independent's 8 February 2015 edition)