Alone - Growing Up in Alexandra

Growing up in
Alexandra
ALONE
~ BOOK 1 ~
The earth is a beehive; we all enter by the
same door but live in different cells.
African proverb
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording
or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the author.
© Lebo Pule, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-639968-99-5
First published in 2014 by Porcupine Press
Re-Published by Book Lingo in 2019
Email: publish@booklingo.co.za
Website: www.booklingo.co.za
Editor: David Robbins

Cover designer: RedRaven Designs
Typesetting: Book Lingo
Set in 11 point on 14 point Minion Pro
Printed by Digital Action, South Africa
Disclaimer
All the names of the people appearing in this memoir are
real except for the couple, Nosipho and Thabang, whose
identities cannot be revealed.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD 8
INTRODUCTION 11
Chapter 1: Alone 13
Chapter 2: Starting over 19
Chapter 3: Rescuing men 26
Chapter 4: Daddy issues 38
Chapter 5: Early days 48
Chapter 6: Dealing with reality 89
Chapter 7: I cried and cried 55
Chapter 8: Lebo the entrepreneur 66
Chapter 9: Bankrupt 69
Chapter 10: Healing 78
Epilogue: A new day 85
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is dedicated to my children and my mother.
To Tsholo
You give me hope, my girl. I don’t know where my life
would have been had it not been for you. Your birth was
a huge blessing in disguise. I love you madly.
To Thebe
You give me strength always. Your easy smile, your ability
to be vulnerable is where your strength lies, and it’s what
makes you so special. Thank you kindly, my shield. I’m
mad about you.
To Tau
You are extraordinary. You entered this world at the most
difficult time of my life, against all odds. You are a strong
little man; you continue to amaze me, my young Lion.
I love you.
To my mother
To my now late mother, I would like to thank you for
mothering my children when I could not. For supporting
me when you did not have to. For always believing in my
impossible dreams. You are the wind beneath my wings. I
love you dearly, Ma. Thank you.
7
FOREWORD
Lebo Pule may have worked on this blend of memoir,

essay and commentary as an individual, but she was
not alone. Even when seeking for solace, peace and self-
knowledge in the dark, she was still visible, struggling to
break out of silence and acquiescence. She is not the only
woman under siege because she is black and female; it
is carrying this cross that weighs heavily on her soul. It
drove her to write Alone, the story of women’s struggle for
self-realisation and knowledge. It is outrageously honest,
a voice of self-determination and a request for acceptance.
Growing up in a negative patriarchal context in
Alexandra Township, she tried to be one of the boys to
protect herself, but instead she was assaulted to make her
understand that there was something wrong with a girl
who outsmarts boys. At fifteen, she was forced to ‘prove’
love by having sex and she started to engage with the plight
of being black and female. She would later realise that her
story was a mirror that reflected the story of every woman
conditioned and condemned to be subordinate to men.
Alone deals with far-reaching subjects from difficult
relationships with abusive fathers, to witnessing mothers
prostrate before patriarchy, to raising fatherless children,
to rescuing needy men, to flirting with obsessive
materialism, to boosting fragile egos, to the downfall of
young multimillionaire moguls. It grapples not only with
male domination but also women’s desire for self-identity
8
and control over their own destiny.
Pule is a powerful storyteller who unites the army
of oppressed women, and articulates their soul ache and
redefines their agenda. She tells of her overwhelming
desire to be true to self. This story tells of her own raw
experience, and it will compel the reader to realise that the
female purpose is not simply to find a husband or fight to
be equal to men. It clearly states that women have a choice
to learn from their mistakes and not to perpetuate the
culture that silences and oppresses them.
This book will provoke, enlighten, amuse and shock
with its courageous honesty and self-revelation. This
glimpse into Pule’s inner dialogue will encourage women
to participate in community conversations and in the
national discourse. The book is an important development
in telling the collective story of what it is like to be black
and female.
Sandile Memela
April 2014
9
Introduction
Smooth seas do not a skilled sailor make
African Proverb
T he story you are about to read is about an inexperienced

sailor in the rough seas of life. For a very long time I
had been planning to write a book. When the time was
right I could not stop myself no matter how hard I tried.
The story wrote itself. I had something to say, something
to add to the lives of others. This story, in a weird way, is
everybody’s story – every woman’s story yet still uniquely
my story. Only I could live this life of mine. The story
serves as an encouragement for others to live their lives,
their true lives, their best lives.
I take you through my deep-seated issues with men
and society, the issues that created a gender activist in
me. I take you through my painful and almost non-
existent relationship with my father, a relationship that
has affected and tainted every relationship I had with
other men. I take you through my teenage pregnancy, my
teenage marriage and my subsequent divorce. I take you
through my rise, success in my first business, becoming
a millionaire at twenty-six years old; followed by the big
fall and bankruptcy at age thirty. It is a story of life; of
11
Alone: Growing up in Alexandra
living fully, of self-awareness, of humility, of forgiveness,

of healing and growth.
My hope is that this book brings light and
encouragement to the reader. Let my journey be the light
that leads your way to self-discovery, self-knowledge, self-
love and authenticity. I am a firm believer in the notion
that books choose you, you don’t choose books, and
therefore I am sure that having picked this book you are
ready to hear this story. Happy reading and I thank you.
12
Chapter One
Alone
Only when the waters are still can you see a clear
reflection of yourself.
Lebo Pule
I was thirty-two years old in September 2008, alone in

my new semi-furnished apartment. I have never been
afraid of the dark. I had become accustomed to sitting on
my bed in the dark and quiet of the night, just listening to
my body and thinking. The darker and quieter, the better
it was for me. I hung dark coloured curtains to block out
the outside lights in the complex. Living on my own was a
brand new experience.
During this time, I started feeling my feelings; I
mean really feeling them instead of suppressing them as
I normally did. I began to get in touch with them during
my quiet moments in the evenings. I stopped watching
television completely; a month would go by without ever
switching it on. Some nights I would not even switch on
the lights; I would get home, undress and shower in the
dark. An inexplicable comfort came with the darkness and
the quiet.
13
For the first time, I had freedom just to be me. I worked

very hard at my job and increased my business networks.
I kept jealously to myself with minimal socialising. It was
all just fabulous, it was great, and I was alone.
My children usually lived with me wherever I was.
This was the first time we had ever lived separately. I
had my first two children at a very young age. My first,
a daughter, Tsholofelo was half my age in 2008: she was
sixteen. I had her when I was sixteen, just a child myself.
Having a baby at this tender age had a profound impact on
me. It altered my life and changed my outlook. Instead of
making me depressed, hopeless and lethargic, which was
often the case with teenage mothers in the townships, I
found myself having an incomprehensible drive, hope and
faith that everything was going to be fine.
I became an over-achiever after the birth of Tsholofelo.
I needed to redeem myself and prove to my parents and
our community that I was still a good child. Nothing
was going to stand in my way. It was here that the over-
compensation for my deed and over-extension of myself
began. The year I gave birth to my daughter was the year
that I passed matric and had my first taste of being a true
entrepreneur. I had a thriving hair salon at home in my
parents garage.
My daughter’s name means hope, at the time I thought
Tsholofelo (Tsholo for short) was a beautiful name for a
little girl. Subconsciously I suppose the name held far
greater meaning for me; it was no coincidence that I chose
that name. Having finished matric at sixteen and already
being a mother I did not go to university. I figured that the
best thing for my child and me was to enter the job market
and consider studying part-time when I knew what I
14
Chapter 1: Alone
wanted to study. I got my first real job at First National

Bank where I worked as an enquiries clerk. That is where
I met him, the young man who married me at the end of
that year.
It was 1994 and in my continuing efforts to restore
the family name, I married the first young man who was
nice to me. He was so nice that he asked me to marry
him within three months of us meeting. I couldn’t say
no. I was eighteen and I thought that it was true love. I
thought I was in love and no one could have convinced me
otherwise. Marriage was such a prestigious thing, a very
important step in a young woman’s life. Saying no to a
marriage proposal was unheard of, it was taboo. Marrying
young was a generational pattern, my mother married at
seventeen, my grandmother at sixteen, my sister wed at
twenty-two and almost all my aunts from my mother’s
side were married before they turned twenty-three. So
when my proposal came, I agreed.
fh
WHEN I WAS twenty-two, I was already in my fourth
year of marriage. My second child was born, my sweet
son, Thebe. Thebe is a Tswana name for shield. I really
could not ask for a sweeter child. Thebe is the type of
person who feels deeply and gets overwhelmed by his
own emotions and intuition. He does not feel the need
to hide or camouflage his feelings, as other boys do. He
rarely, if ever, hides his excitement or his sadness. He is
very expressive and there is a naivety about the way he
conducts himself, which is so endearing. My third child
was born in 2007, my baby boy, Tau – my little lion. When
15
I announced that I was pregnant, everyone had a name

for my child, everyone around me wanted to name him.
Initially, I also had more than one name in mind for him,
which was unusual. I was very decisive about Tsholo and
Thebe’s names. Tau’s father is an alpha male character, a
man’s man, so I imagined that the baby would be similar
to him and for some reason the name Tau, which means
lion, was befitting and came instinctively to me.
My mother thought it was the craziest name she
had ever heard and told me that she will name him
Thembinkosi. I had other options like Thoriso and Tsebo.
His grandmother, on his father’s side, was adamant
on naming him Lucky; her reasons are just too eerie to
mention. Tsholo and Thebe were quite happy with Tau
or Thoriso. They thought it would be trendy for my three
children to all have Tswana names starting with the letter
T. My older brother Kabelo wanted the baby to be named
after him since they share a birthday.
As things stand the baby is called Lucky by his
grandmother and the rest of his father’s side of the family.
Friends and my side of the family call him Tau. To his
father he is Sfiso, who has his own reasons for calling him
that; and strangely enough, I alternate between calling
him Tau and Lucky. This is most curious because of all the
names that were imposed on my son, Lucky was the one I
disliked the most.
I considered terminating the pregnancy but I could
not go through with it despite the fact that I knew I did
not have a future with his father. Tau’s father came into
my life when I was spiralling into bankruptcy. He was a
shoulder to cry on, he supported me but mostly he was
fun and brought the necessary escape I needed at the time.
16
Chapter 1: Alone
Falling pregnant with him caught me completely off guard.

Paradoxically carrying Tau at thirty was far more daunting
than carrying Tsholo at sixteen. This pregnancy brought
a mixture of feelings; I was unprepared, emotionally I
was in turmoil, hence the confusion with names. Legend
has it that we live up to our names. In my opinion, Tau/
Lucky/Thoriso/Sfiso is very fortunate; there’s something
extraordinary about him. He came to this earth against all
odds incredible.
fh
WHILE I LIVED alone in Boksburg in 2008, my children
stayed with my parents at East Bank in Alexandra. Just a
few months earlier, I was also living with my parents. My
children and I had nowhere else to go but home after I lost
my business, which had been my sole income for the past
four years. This decision to return to my parents’ house
was one of the toughest I’ve ever had to make, because to
me, it meant that I had failed. I had failed to make my life
work; I had failed to take care of my children and myself.
It meant that I was not the smart, resourceful, successful
woman I thought I was.
I felt naked and embarrassed. I was so distressed I used
to dream of being naked or falling. Most psychologists
interpret dreams of being naked in a public place as having
deep feelings of insecurity, feeling unprotected, while the
falling dreams would represent being unsupported. These
interpretations were spot-on in my case; I felt insecure,
unsure of myself, exposed and vulnerable. Moving back
home was indeed a humbling experience. I had no income,
I was unemployed and possibly also unemployable.
17
I slipped into a mini-depression. I couldn’t think, I

couldn’t eat, but I slept. I slept for hours on end and was
negligent of the children. It was easier with the bigger
children, Tsholo and Thebe. They were fifteen and nine
respectively. But I was not coping with Tau, who was six
months old at the time. I made another hard decision,
the hardest decision a mother could ever take; I arranged
with Tau’s father to help me with him. I asked him to
take the baby for a while, for a few months, until I had
re-established my life. I needed to focus on getting a job.
Tau needed fulltime attention and energy. My mother was
a great help but she worked a full day. She needed to, her
daughter had come back home with all her children. I will
always be grateful to Tau’s father and grandmother, who
looked after Tau for nearly a year while I was getting myself
on track. Though the relief was great, the guilt gnawed at
me. I fetched him every weekend without fail, getting so
impatient on my way to pick him up on Friday afternoons,
as the traffic to Midrand was unbearable. My heart would
break every Sunday evening when we had to part.
I never liked the idea of separating my children, but
I needed to take that decision. We were all overwhelmed,
including my parents.
18
Chapter Two
Starting over
Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing
Seneca
S outh African companies are wary of entrepre-neurially

minded people. They are even more so of failed
entrepreneurs and they want a CV that makes sense to
them. Having a CV that shows four years of being your
own boss makes them uncomfortable. I needed a job as
soon as possible. I fixed up my CV and sent it to the best
employment agencies; I also called on a few influential
people to assist me with finding work. Fortunately, it did
not take long before I got a twelvemonth contract in the
Government.
It was a junior position compared to my previous work
experience before my years as an entrepreneur. The job
was cosy: assistant to the Chief Director of the Gauteng
Department of Social Development. I needed exactly
that after what I had been through: a soft landing place,
no pressure. I did not want to deal with targets, turnover
versus profits and SARS. I did not want to sit in long and
difficult meetings with suppliers and clients. I just wanted
19
an eight to five job, earn my salary and then go home to

sleep. I was tired. I was running on an emotional empty.
I was not only tired from the recent bankruptcy, but also
from a life lived in the fast lane.
The highlight of my job at the department was meeting
an incredible woman, Cynthia Mgijima, my boss. Cynthia
defied all the negative stereotypes so often associated with
black women bosses. She embraced me, she listened to
my stories, she shared her stories, she empathised with
me and she encouraged me to find my centre. Not once
did I feel she pitied me. She could be emotional with me
when I needed it. But she could be rational and declined
the invitation to my ‘pity party’ when I was feeling sorry
for myself – and she did that so delicately that I never felt
rejected.
She constantly reminded me how great and beautiful
I was. Cynthia shared her stories, intriguing stories of
growing up in Swaziland and living for many years in
America. She had an infectious laugh; we laughed often,
sprouting envy from other staff members. Here were two
black women, at different levels in the hierarchy, who got
on so well. The norm was that black, female bosses treated
subordinates, especially women, badly. Colleagues would
come to my office, telling tale after tale of how they were
treated.
Cynthia and I have an amazing connection. She is one
of those special people who have made peace with life,
who loves and accepts herself just as she is. She made no
excuses, took responsibility, was accountable when she
needed to be and chose her battles wisely and usually won.
Cynthia had the strongest intuition I knew of and she
listened to it. I was in awe when she foretold how things
20
Chapter 2: Starting over
would pan out. She was an excellent judge of character

and she discriminated against no one. I loved working
with her. Cynthia and I are still in touch, though not as
often as I would have liked, but then again we don’t need
to – our connection is there even if we don’t call or sms.
Cynthia and I worked together for about eight months
before I found another job, a better job. I had made friends
with colleagues at the department, so after just eight
months they threw a farewell party for me when I left. It
was so beautiful and so touching. People spoke of how
much I had touched their lives. I will never forget a note
I received from a young man called Kabelo ‘Lebo, I knew
you were not going to stay long here at the department,
I knew from the moment I spoke to you. For me you are
like a top racing car, you had raced a long tiring race. This
job was like a pit stop where you had to refuel, get your
tyres changed, get your oil changed, get all that needs to
be changed and replaced, and off you go to the next race
of your life.’ [sic]
That note touched me deeply; it was so close to the
truth, and he could not have chosen a better analogy. I
WAS now working for a well-known private business
school as their Business Development Executive. I was
earning a little more. I still had a lot of debt to pay, but
things were looking and feeling better. I loved the space
I found myself in and for the first time I was getting to
experience me for me. I was living alone. For years, I had
shared my space with someone else, together with my
children, and take care of someone else – and it would
usually be a grown man.
I had managed to get an apartment, a beautiful yet
standard two bedroomed apartment in Boksburg, I was
21
slowly getting back on my feet. I had to move away from

home after a bitter fight with my father. This was not new,
we often argued and fought, but the last fight had escalated
to another level. We exchanged some harsh words, words
that should never come between a father and a daughter;
it was so ugly that it nearly became physical. These fights
placed my mother and my children in very uncomfortable
positions. My father is a true patriarch and a bully who is
very uncomfortable with strong, opinionated women. My
father just prefers women to be quiet and pretty. When
I was growing up, he used to make comments about
independent women, calling them names like spinster
or worse. I knew that my moving back home made him
uneasy, but I did not realise to what extent.
It certainly made me uneasy; the atmosphere every
time I came home from work was so thick it was almost
tangible; he didn’t want to be in the same room as me.
During family gatherings, he would not interact with me.
My father was no longer working. In 2006, he was
diagnosed with chronic diabetes, which affected his
eyesight severely. Because his job as a labourer required
twenty-twenty vision he was laid off work. He now spent
his days either outside the house sitting in the shade or in
his bedroom. He would have no one to talk to until my
children came home from school. My father loved my
children, he particularly loved my boys, and after that
bitter fight my mother told me that his only regret was
that he had bickered in front of the boys.
I had another pressing reason to leave home. I was
extremely embarrassed by my collapse. I thought that
the eyes of all the neighbours and gossipers were on me.
I imagined people laughing at me behind their curtains
22
every time I drove past in my red Toyota Tazz. The

sooner I was back in ‘my world’, the world of suburbs and
townhouses, the better for my status. My mother and I
agreed that I would leave the children with her until I was
ready. My mother was concerned about the stability of
the children. ‘More than anything, children want a stable
place’, she would say. ‘You go for peace sake, find your feet
again, bana batla dula mo gae, otla ba bona ka di weekend
[the children will stay here at home with us, you will see
them on weekends],’ she said in such a matter of fact way.
I will be forever grateful to my mother for that.
Tsholo was not keen on moving with me to Boksburg
anyway, she said that she would only live with me when I
got a bigger house, ‘nearer to where life happens’. Boksburg
was not appealing to her at all, ‘… besides, Mama, I’m
really not prepared to share a bedroom with Thebe. I’m
enjoying Alexandra now, there’s life here’.
She added, ‘You are a great and hard-working woman,
you’ll bounce back and get a bigger house like the one we
had, in no time. I’ll move back in with you then.’
My daughter and I, because of the closeness of our
ages, have a unique relationship. I like to believe that we
manage the mother/daughter/friend relationship well. She
is one of the most intelligent people I know; she has always
been very smart and wise for her age. It’s uncanny how
I can ask Tsholo anything from why the animals reacted
so strangely a few hours before the Tsunami to questions
about the Milky Way or bacterial infections and she
always has an answer. She is an amazing child, generous
and kind. I received one of the best compliments from her
a few years back. I was in the kitchen preparing food while
Tsholo was watching
23
Oprah. I wondered why she liked Oprah so much. She

was only eleven and watching so intently; it would have
made sense if she were sixteen. So I asked her. Her answer
blew me away.
She said ‘Um… I don’t know… I guess she reminds
me of you, somehow, there’s something about Oprah that’s
very much like you, mama.’
Cheesy as it was, I thought it was one of the sweetest
things I had ever heard; my daughter likening me to one
of the most powerful and influential woman in the world.
Like Thebe, Tsholo is very intuitive; the difference is that
Tsholo trusts her intuition and instincts so she follows her
gut, while Thebe constantly doubts his. He will often say, ‘I
knew that I should have waited’, or ‘I wanted to do that’, or
‘I should have done that’. I always say to him that he needs
to trust more, to listen more to himself.
Thebe always says the sweetest things like, ‘Oh, mom,
I miss your face and your voice’. He is a very loving person,
always hugging and kissing. He did not mind very much
where I lived as long as he could be with me. He was
delighted when I found the apartment. However, I did not
want to split up the children further and have Thebe with
me, Tsholo with my mother and Tau with his father.
At the time, it was best that the two older children
stayed in Alexandra with my mother. My work schedule
was getting busy; dropping children at school and picking
them up again in the afternoon was not going to be possible.
I could not afford to arrange transport and a nanny for
them. Thebe did not take kindly to being separated from
me; he started calling me mommy and he would say it in
a baby voice, which disturbed me at best and seriously
annoyed me at worst. Fortunately he discovered soccer
24
and realised that Alexandra was not such a bad place for
children his age. There were always lots of friends and
activities, unlike in a typical suburban setting where the
highlights would be swimming, PlayStation and Dragon
Ball Z games. He joined a local soccer team and turned
out to be a talented player.
He took comfort in my frequent visits, sometime
three times a week after work, and our shared weekends,
the four of us, together. This, and many gifts, managed to
compensate for my not being physically present.
25
Chapter Three
Rescuing men
This is a man’s world
James Brown
I was a rescuer of note. I rescued people, specifically

men; I was the lesser-known Princess Charming. I had
three significant relationships in my life, and I played the
rescuer role in all of them. I played it so well.
When I was in a relationship, I did everything, I
never wanted to be vulnerable and I became the man. At
face value, my choice in men seemed varied but when I
scratched the surface, it was clear – each time I fell for the
same person in a different guise – damaged, emotionally
needy, financially broke with low self-esteem and little
self-confidence.
Subconsciously, I shied away from men who did not
present with needs because it was so important for me to
be needed. I thought they would not like me if I needed
them. I always insisted on paying the bill after a date and
would pressure my man to tell me about his deep, dark
issues. If he had no problems for me to solve then I could
be of no use. The deeper, darker and bigger the problem,
26
Chapter 3: Rescuing men
the more I was turned on. I had serious issues.

An excerpt from The White Knight Syndrome: Rescuing
yourself from your need to rescue others by Mary C Lamia,
PhD and Marilyn J Krieger, PhD. describes rescuers
as follows: ‘Real-life white knights are men and women
who enter into romantic relationships with damaged
and vulnerable partners, hoping that love will transform
their partner’s behaviour or lives; a relationship pattern
that seldom leads to a storybook ending. White knights
can be any age, race, sexual orientation, culture, or socio-
economic status, but all have the inclination and the
need to rescue … Take a few moments to consider the
various relationships you know about or those in which
you’ve been involved. It’s likely you know of relationships
that include people who have found partners in need of
rescuing – the rescue could have been from anything –
unhappiness, financial chaos, substance abuse, depression,
an abusive relationship, medical issues, or a past that left
them wounded. Perhaps the rescuers you know intuitively
recognised their partners’ core neediness or vulnerability;
regardless of how well disguised that person’s weakness
was at the beginning of their relationship. You will dis-
cover that rescuers often go from one person in need of
rescue to another, riding into each new partner’s life on
a white horse to save the day. In the initial stages of the
relationship, the rescuer seems gracious and happily
altruistic, but as time goes by, he feels increasingly unhappy,
disappointed, critical, and powerless. Although the white
knight’s heroic actions may take the form of slaying her
partner’s metaphorical dragons, her real goal, which is
often beyond her awareness, involves slaying the dragons
from her own past. Thus, at a deeper level the compulsive
27
rescuer is trying to repair the negative or damaged sense

of self that developed in childhood. Unfortunately, the
white knight’s choice of a partner, and how that partner
is eventually treated, often repeats symbolically the same
kind of distress that the white knight experienced in
childhood. Ultimately, rather than repairing the sense of
self, this repetition leaves the white knight feeling defeated’.
My cousin Thabo, who was also my best friend, was
male; I spent a lot of time with him and our ‘crew’. There
was Mphikeleni and his cousin, Jabu who was gay. At the
tender age of ten he knew and we all knew that he was gay.
This was the foundation for my rejection of the belief that
gay people are gay by choice and can be changed. Then
Vusi number eleven: there was another Vusi? We called
him Vusi number nine, and he was excluded from the
crew. They were named so because of their addresses, it
didn’t occur to us to call them by their surnames. I was
normally the only girl and I loved being with the boys.
Children in our community, particularly the girls,
would sing a derogatory song aimed at me: Asimboni
ebafazini simbone madodeni, [she is never seen in the
company of women, but she is always found in the
company of men], implying that I was promiscuous; it did
not matter that I was only eleven. What did I know about
promiscuity at eleven? These boys were my friends, I was
one of the few girls in the community who was not scared
of boys. I played with them, I fought them and I was with
them all the time. I was not a tomboy per se, though I was
not a ‘girly-girl’ either. I enjoyed my girlfriends very much
and I played with them too. My closest friends were Lulu
and Nelly; there was Ndaku too, but she and I had a love/
hate relationship.
28
There was something about boys that I loved and

envied. I had a rare and acute sensitivity to the societal
inequality placed on boys and girls. This is where my
gender activism began. I was busy trying to be a boy; my
mission was to prove that I was so much like a boy, if not
better. Boys were very funny. They told the best jokes,
they were real and they allowed themselves to be silly
with each other. Boys were creative and usually came up
with a plan to get food, money or something we needed. I
liked their resourcefulness. However, I was also extremely
jealous of them. I was aware how boys had it easier in life
and it seemed they could get away with anything. They
had few or no chores in their homes; they were favoured
by their mothers and approved of by their fathers. Boys
were elevated by society, they were allowed to explore,
encouraged to go and get what they wanted. Very few
restrictions were set for boys.
A pivotal moment of my life was when I was about
ten years old. I had my first real fight, well my first beating
from boys. I was walking home from our local spaza shop,
after buying Paraffin and bread for Busisiwe’s mom, a
neighbour. I was one of those obedient children that most
community members would send to shops or ask to run
little errands. I had my own selfish reasons for running
their errands. I did it because I always got the change ten
or twenty cents, sometime even fifty cents. Walking back
from the shops that day there were four boys standing at
a corner, all between thirteen and fourteen years old. Ma-
Ero (his real name was Errol), Vusi number nine, Eddie and
Kafena who called me, Ye wena Dada etlamo [Hey Dada,
come here] (Dada is my childhood nickname, bestowed on
me by the people I grew up with in Alexandra). I refused.
29
He rushed towards me and grabbed my arm. I pulled

back. I put the bread and paraffin down. He slapped me
across the face. I slapped him back. He kicked me. I kicked
him back. Within what seemed like seconds, I was on the
dusty ground of the Alexandra street being kicked by all
four boys in broad daylight.
The grown-ups just stared, only one distant voice
shouted, ‘ye lona, tlogelang ngwana oo’ [Hey you lot, leave
that child alone]. Oupa rescued me. He was my older
brother’s friend; he chased them off and told them how
cowardly they were. Oupa dusted me off, walked me home
and told me he would look out for me. Whenever we saw
each other in the street, he always asked whether I had
been bullied. Oupa intervened whenever the boys fought.
My older brother lived in Swaziland at in the mid-
1980s. My mother sent him there to live with my
grandmother soon after the uprising in 1986 at the height
of apartheid. Young activists were not safe because of their
involvement in politics or crime; some did both and were
often referred to as Com-Tsotsi meaning comrade and
tsotsi combined. These boys attended secret ‘free Mandela’
and ‘Viva Mandela’ meetings at churches.
The cruellest part of that era was the black on black
violence that manifested in the brutal killings between
two rival groups, Azapo and ANC. Scenes of butchered
young men were the norm in Alexandra, so my mother
sent Kabelo away to save his life. Kabelo, my older brother
and two of his closest friends, Sello and Anthony, belonged
to the ANC. They were earmarked to be killed. Sello and
Anthony were attacked one evening; Sello was hacked to
death by young Azapo members. He was unrecognisable
when they found him. Anthony survived with a badly
30
injured leg, but mysteriously disappeared. We later found

out that he had gone into exile and joined the ANC army,
UMkhontho We Sizwe.
Kabelo was not there to protect me on that painful day
of my life. When I got home after the beating I got into
serious trouble for spilling the paraffin and getting dust all
over the bread. None of the adults cared much about what
had happened to me when I reported it. I was only told
Tlogela bashimane, tswa bashimaneng [leave boys alone,
stay away from boys]. Hearing that was worse than the
beating. I could not understand that what those four boys
did was permitted, dismissed. Later that evening when I
told my mother, she was too absent-minded to take what
I told her seriously. My father was unapproachable so I
didn’t bother him. I felt a deep betrayal, a betrayal I could
only comprehend later in my life when I had to admit to
myself, and a therapist, that I was bursting with rage. As
a child I had felt let down by the adults in my life, by my
community and by boys. I could not understand why a
beating like that held no consequence for those boys. This
turned into a deep-seated anger against men and society;
it created the rebel in me.
In our yard, there was a man who used to send girls to
the shops to buy him cigarettes or a fizzy drink. I did not
know why but he used to make me very nervous. I was
one of the girls he liked to call on, but I always came up
with excuses. Maybe it was because he always wanted me
to fetch the money from his dingy room, or perhaps it was
the way he looked at me.
One day, he was standing outside the main yard gate
with two other men, smoking. He called me and sent me
to buy him a pack of matches. Reluctantly, I complied.
31
When I came back, he was no longer at the gate. One of the

men told me he had gone to his room. I instinctively knew
that something was amiss. I asked the man to give him
the matches. He scolded me for not respecting grownups
and sending him to deliver the matches. I nervously went
to deliver the matches. The door was ajar and the interior
dark and gloomy. My plan was to put the matches on the
table and run out. As my eyes adjusted from the bright
sun, I saw him on the bed, no t-shirt, only underwear and
as he saw me he exposed his very big and very erect penis.
He had a creepy smile on his face. I threw the matches on
the floor and raced out. I was so scared.
A few months later my friend’s mother was up in
arms, screaming and protesting. Rumour had it that
he had raped my friend, another of his victims. He was
a paedophile and there were no consequences for his
transgressions. Older men targeted young girls and this
was another accepted practice; they groomed young girls,
telling them Wankgolela, uyangikhulela [you are growing
up for me]. I had a string of men like that, for whom I was
apparently growing up.
At school, the sex education was directed at girls who
were told to keep their legs closed. Boys were almost
unleashed to get any girl they wanted. It was bizarre and
confusing. One group was conditioned to be prey, while the
other was conditioned to be predators; when the predator
caught the prey, the prey would be blamed for being
caught. Boys were not blamed for impregnating teenage
girls. They were fiercely protected by their mothers, who
denied that their innocent boys would ever do such a thing.
It would always be the girl’s fault for throwing herself at
the boy, for tempting him, for using the baby to marry him
32
and trap him or for causing problems in the boy’s life. The
girls were labelled promiscuous, irresponsible or a ‘gold
digger’. The married men who impregnated school girls
were fiercely protected by society; the blame was always
placed on the girl.
My rescuer syndrome developed because I wanted to
prove that men can be needy and vulnerable. Men need
help, my help in particular, subconsciously I vowed to be
the man.
fh
NOW THAT I had all this space and was alone, I gave
myself time to make sense of my rescuer syndrome.
Thinking back, I recognise that though I did not
consciously look for men who were in need of my help, I
consciously avoided those that didn’t. I remember saying
that I did not want to date anyone who is established and
accomplished because he would want to control me.
The truth is that I feared that they would not need
me. It was very important to be needed because I did not
think that I had value as I was. I wanted to start from the
bottom with someone so that we can build something
together, contribute equally to each other’s successes and
lives. Despite this, I gravitated towards those who needed
lots of help, the parasitic types; and I did rescue a few. Like
any needy person, once they had received the help they
needed, they simply moved on. This tended to leave me
feeling bitter and resentful. Or I would not be happy with
this newly confident and restored man and would find a
way to chase him away – which would leave me with the
same feelings of bitterness and resentment.
33
Living alone brought with it varied events. I found

myself enjoying dinners for one at restaurants. It fascinated
me that male waiters tried to keep me company whenever
they were not tending a table, some even trying to chat me
up. I suppose it made them uncomfortable to see a woman
sitting alone eating prawns or medium-rare steak. I would
always politely tell them that I was happy to be on my own;
that they should not worry about me and that I needed
the time alone to quietly enjoy my dinner. Sometimes
the manager of the restaurant would be the one trying to
strike up a conversation; but this was merely to ensure that
I could afford to pay for what I had ordered – something I
never experienced when I had male company.
It intrigued me when couples would sit next to me in
a restaurant. The whites kept to themselves. However, the
black couples would show some discomfort upon realising
that I was indeed there alone.
One evening, a black couple came in as I was sitting
down. I saw them whispering in a way that was clear that
they were talking about me. Soon after, the woman came
to me with a big smile and a friendly demeanour and said,
‘Don’t worry otla fitlha maybe o stakile ka trafficking’, [Don’t
worry, he will be here, he is stuck in traffic]. I wanted to
ask her: Mang?
[Who?] but out of politeness I said, ‘Dankie [thank
you] for caring; I hope so, too.’
Throughout the evening she kept checking on me,
making hand signals pointing at her wrist to indicate
her shock at the time that had passed. She would make
phone call signals to enquire whether my non-existent
date had called. I thought it was so sweet, stereotypical in
the way she pandered to the patriarchal system, but sweet
34
nonetheless. Her partner did not once look at me; perhaps

it was guilt that one of his own had dropped me.
When they left, she asked for my number, she said
she had someone in mind for me, and I should dump
this loser. I gave her a wrong number. I did not need new
friends, nor to be hooked up. I became a regular at a small
yet stylish Italian restaurant in Boksburg. I did not need
to order: they knew exactly what I wanted, and soon after
sitting down my favourite drink and meal would follow.
The manager and owner, a handsome Italian man, would
always make small talk with me – maybe some politics of
the day, my career or his world travels –but none of the
stereotypical nonsense such as when I was getting married
or how many children I had. One evening as I left the
restaurant, he told me how much he admired me. That
simple unassuming statement moved me to tears.
Living alone I also started thinking more, I am a
thinker by nature but this time I started thinking deeply
and consistently about real issues in life; not only in my
life but also about the society in which I lived.
Society discourages women to be themselves, to
find themselves as individuals. Society considers women
successful if she moves from her father’s house to her
husband’s house with minimal kicking and screaming.
Society deems it normal for a woman to endure
unthinkable pressures and ills without complaining. I
would think about how as a black woman in my thirties,
it was still considered strange to be living alone, unwed
or worse, divorced. My male counterparts were seen in
a very different light. The security guards at my complex
had vowed to find me a man; there was one in particular
who kept insisting that I must be a lesbian. He said if it
35
was not for the children that visit me on weekends, he

was convinced I was not a heterosexual woman; his sheer
ignorance baffled me. ‘Ungumfazi onjani ongana Ndoda?’
Uphi ubaba wa lezingane?’
[What kind of women does not have a man? Where is
the father of these children?], he would condescendingly
ask me. The guard started giving bachelors living in the
complex, my home number. One evening a stranger
knocked at my door and demanded to take me out to
dinner; saying that I had requested the date via security.
He came ready to take me out. What surprised me was
how sure he was that the date would happen. He was
taken aback when I declined. I dismissed the actions of
the security guard as a misguided patriarchal tendency,
but when it happened for the second time, I reported him
to the security company, the caretaker and my landlord. I
never saw him again in the complex.
There was a woman who lived one floor above me, with
a philandering husband that made her extremely insecure.
Most Friday evenings, particularly at month-ends she
would come to my apartment to cry about her ‘dirty man’.
She would threaten to leave him on Friday. When I saw
them at the local Spar on Sunday, all lovey-dovey, buying
groceries and newspapers, she wouldn’t even look my way.
Her husband would always greet me and play around with
my boys.
One Friday evening she knocked at my door and
without saying a word handed me a small note that read,
‘My husband does not want you, stay away from him, you
single women are a pain, get your own man.’ I laughed, but
the next day I could not let it go. After my run, I slipped
a note under their door that read ‘I don’t want him either.
36
Please, you keep him. I insist’. It was sarcastic and shallow,

not my proudest moment. They moved out without my
noticing soon after the letter episode.
Right next door to me, was a Nigerian couple. The wife
always invited me to church and she kept telling me that
only if I go to church with her would I find a husband,
or the father of my boys would come back. She never
bothered to ask me about what was going on in my life.
She had concluded that something was wrong because I
live alone as a young woman. ‘Kom met ons mama Lebo,
kom to church, it’s not good for a woman to be alone, kom,
God will help you,’ she would say with her heavy Nigerian
accent. I would always respond by saying that God was
working very hard with me directly, every day, and that I
did not need the church as ‘middleman’. She would shake
her head in disbelief. When I told her that my children
had different fathers, she couldn’t hide her shock. Despite
this, I liked her. She was very generous and always shared
her Nigerian fish dish whenever she made it – and gave
me weird vegetables when one of her cousins or sisters
visited from Nigeria. She always had treats for my sons on
weekends.
37
Chapter Four
Daddy issues
The sins of the father will be visited upon the son
The Bible
I come from a dysfunctional family. It took me a long

time to admit that to myself. I believe my parents played
a major role in the development of my rescuer syndrome
and my unhealthy relationships with men. I always thought
that a dysfunctional family would be characterised by a
single parent, usually promiscuous, physical and sexual
abuse, drug and alcohol dependency, to name the obvious;
I didn’t realise that it could look and feel like mine.
My parents had a schizophrenic relationship, my
mother a staunch Christian, my father an abusive drunk.
My father was the classic ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ he
was sober and very quiet from Monday to Thursday, he
barely said a word; but on weekends he became a loud,
monstrous man. When I was growing up he was treated
like a king. I never saw my dad help in the house, all I
remember was his reading the newspaper after work from
38
Chapter 4: Daddy issues
Monday to Thursday.
On Fridays, after receiving his weekly wage, he would
come home with fruit as treats for the children, something
I really looked forward to. It was the only time my dad did
something thoughtful for us. After dropping off the fruits,
he would disappear until the early hours of Saturday
morning, when he would come home very drunk. Every
weekend would be characterised by a drunken, loud and
very violent father. He would always hit my mother, he
would hit her privately, he would hit her publicly and he
would hit her in front of us.
No one came to my mother’s rescue except my aunt,
Mamcane Nomvula. She was the one who stood up to
him. She would get into fistfights with my father; she was
a strong woman who took no nonsense from anyone, men
in particular. My father loathed her. He would often call
her names because she had not lived with a man for any
length of time and she was unmarried.
Come Monday, the usual routine would resume.
My mother would wait on him hand and foot until
Thursday; this was over and above her equal financial
contribution to the household. On weekends, she would
wear the victim’s hat and she would take it all, the verbal,
emotional and physical abuse. He never once beat me or
any of his children. My mother always got the beatings.
This was my childhood. I suppose that in my little girl’s
mind I subconsciously resolved that a man would never
dominate me. This was the birth of the rescuer and the
over-achiever, the start of a series of over compensation
and over reliance on myself.
I don’t remember ever having a real conversation with
my father about anything significant. My father never
39
even looked at us, my siblings and I. He never made eye

contact; he spoke at us, not to us. I cannot tell you what my
father likes or dislikes are, what makes him happy, what
he stands for or what matters to him. I can really only tell
you that he seemed to be angry at everything, pessimistic
and paranoid. The only time my father laughed aloud was
when he was with his friends in a local shebeen.
I craved my father’s attention. When I did well at
school I would show him my report card and he would
lower his newspaper, not put it down, just lower it, grunt
something inaudible and then say, ‘Show your mother.’
Sometimes I would deliberately ask him for money for a
school trip and without looking at me he would say, ‘Ask
your mother; why are you asking me?’
I never gave up. I kept trying to get him to notice us,
to notice me – but I failed dismally. The only time I got his
attention was when I was making a noise during a news
bulletin on TV and he was trying to get me to be quiet. He
would tell me how loud I was.
There were some rare weekends when instead of
wreaking havoc in his drunken state he would play jazz
and dance, and talk about how beautiful and clever I was
and how much he loved me, ‘Ke a lerata, bana baka, ke a
go rata, Doll’, [I love you, my children. I love you, Doll].
Doll was a nickname used only by my mother and
on occasion by my father when he was in a good mood.
I was so excited when he told me he loved me. I would
reciprocate eagerly, but he could not accept that. In fact, it
was my reciprocation that made him stop, or so I thought.
I constantly felt rejected by my father and as a child I
always thought that there was something wrong with me
and that I must do more to be accepted and loved by him
40
and others. Then after this short stint of drunken affection

he would resort to verbal abuse specifically directed at
my mother. Some Saturday nights he would reminisce
about the ‘good old days’ when his mother was still alive.
He would talk about how hardworking and respectful his
mother was, and how his father did not respect or love her.
He would get into a trance-like state for what seemed like
hours. Then he would go to bed and sleep until Sunday
morning.
The only other times he showed affection was if there
was an audience, for example when he was drinking with
his friends at Magimiza’s, Aunt Maggie’s shebeen. If we
happened to go past that yard after church he would call
me and parade me to his friends, saying how beautiful I
was and how clever I was at school. He would even kiss
me right there in public and give me money. As a young
girl, seeking daddy’s attention and love, I looked forward
to those moments.
At times I would hang around the shebeen playing
with Aunt Maggie’s daughter who was a few years younger,
hoping for that affectionate moment where my father told
me how amazing I was. Sometimes he would just send me
home. His way of loving confused me profoundly. I did
not know what to do to get him to love me in a way I could
understand.
On occasion, disoriented from a hangover, he would
wake up on Sunday mornings in a panic thinking that it
was Monday and he was late for work. Some Mondays
he would be so hung-over that he could not go to work.
Instead, he would go to the shebeen, spend the day there
and later demand that my mother find a way to get him a
doctor’s note for the following day at work.
41
My grandfather, Papa Joe, used to sit under the peach

tree in Pimville, drinking Gordon’s gin or Mainstay vodka.
He would drink it straight from the bottle, no ice, no
tonic water, no orange juice. If he was not sitting under
the peach tree he would be in his bedroom staring at the
blank wall. He did not tolerate noise, particularly children
making a ‘noise’ by laughing or crying. He would lose his
temper and shout, a booming roar. The children were told
to be quiet whenever he entered the house. He brought
with him an aura of fear. There would be an instant cold
silence when he walked past. He made me very nervous.
He would roar from his bedroom ‘SHUT UP! I SAID
SHUT UP!
Intriguingly, he used to speak English predominately.
When the noise did not subside, he would come out of the
bedroom, ‘I WILL CHASE YOU OUT OF MY HOUSE!
SHUT UP, LANTLHODIYA! [You are too loud for me].
There would be dead silence for a short while and then the
whole scene would play again.
We were children, we laughed, we played, we cried
regardless of his temper. There was no guessing that he
was a troubled soul, but listening to the stories from my
aunts, he was a highly intelligent man and a mysterious
character. Papa Joe died in 1992. I wish I had known him
better.
My father never interacted with Papa Joe during our
visits to Pimville. We were told that my grandfather used
to beat my grandmother and that my father often had
to protect his mother. My mother, for as long as I can
remember, has been going to church. She always found
solace in the word of God. She sent us to Sunday school
every Sunday. When we came back, she would invariably
42
have made a full lunch for us. She ensured that we changed
from our Sunday clothes, then she dished up for us before
going off to big church from noon until late evening.
My mother worked hard; she still does. She has always
been a working woman. She was the parent we went to
for everything from school stuff to Christmas clothes. Like
my father, my mother never really spoke to us. We didn’t
have a real relationship with her. She never specified any
rules, apart from sending us to church and ensuring that
we went to school. She was not a disciplinarian. She never
emphasised the importance of education or studying
further; she only emphasised the importance of God in
our lives.
It always astonished me when other children would
say things like ‘My mother would kill me if I did this’ or
‘I would get into so much trouble if my father found this
out’; we did not have that. Mother was very sweet to us
and tried her best to give us everything we wanted. My
mother worked hard to ensure that we lacked for nothing
materially, even though we were not wealthy and had no
luxuries. She made sure we were not destitute. My mother
always had a distant look in her eyes and she would
frequently speak to herself. I think my mother lived with
constant worry, in fear of my father. My mother and father
were never affectionate with each other, at least not in
front of us, like most African families. I have never seen
a hug, an affectionate touch or kiss between them. I am
not sure if they ever truly spoke. She was a busy mother at
home, cooking or cleaning or going to church; and if my
father was not sitting reading a newspaper he was absent.
I have never seen them sitting together, talking, laughing
and spending time with one another.
43
My maternal grandparents were the complete

opposite. Mkhulu was the most loving man I knew. He
was very close to my mother, in fact to all his children.
He lived in Johannesburg while his wife, my grandmother,
lived in Swaziland. Every year in the December holidays,
we would all travel to Swaziland: my mother, my siblings,
my grandfather and me. We would travel overnight on
the train, the long journey and sleeping on the train was
something to look forward to. I enjoyed the Mphago
[traveling food], which would usually be a full roast
chicken, dumplings, scones, lots of fruit, chips and many
other treats like biscuits. There were new clothes for
Christmas. The energy and atmosphere around the trip
were electric. I could not sit still, nor could I sleep the day
before the trip.
Mkhulu and Gogo were a remarkable sight, they
would sit under a tree for hours talking, reading the Bible
and singing hymns together. Mkhulu loved to sing, we
would gather around them as they told us bible stories,
there was always warmth and laughter and lots of food in
Swaziland. Mkhulu did not see children as children, he saw
us as little people. Mkhulu was involved in the household
activities. Every morning he would make a big pot of tea
for everybody. He would wake up early in the morning
to slaughter, clean and cook two or three chickens;
then he would lay the table and call all the children and
grandchildren to feast. Whenever there were dishes,
Mkhulu did not mind washing them. They say women
marry their fathers and men marry their mothers. I have
often wondered how my mother chose my father. My
father got it right though, he certainly married his mother
in my mother. There were many similarities between my
44
paternal grandmother and my mother; however, very few

similarities between my maternal grandfather and my
father existed.
I never really knew my paternal grandmother and
grandfather well. My grandmother passed away in 1986
when I was ten. ‘Ouma Girly’ she was called; her real name
was Naomi, which is also my middle name. The little that
I do remember was a hardworking woman, always busy
doing laundry, making tea, cooking a meal or sweeping
the yard. I remember she was very warm and enjoyed our
school holiday visits to her home in Pimville, Soweto. My
father would take us to Pimville most school holidays,
except for December – December we went to Swaziland.
In Pimville we would stay for two weeks or more. The only
fun part about the visit to Pimville was the bus ride and the
Russian sausage and chips my father would buy us on the
way, we would each have a packet of chips and a sausage. I
would always save some for my cousins in Pimville.
It was tough to be there. I remember being always
hungry. We did not eat whenever we felt hungry like we
did at home; here there was a timetable of when we could
eat. We would have tea and very thin slices of bread with
minimal butter in the morning. We would only eat again at
about two in the afternoon when my grandmother or one
of the aunts had cooked; and then supper was very late,
around eight o’clock. The place we could go to when my
cousins and I were too hungry, as we were active children,
was a place called Malebese [the milk place]. It was an
NGO run at the local clinic. We were given delicious
peanut butter sandwiches and milk.
Pimville seemed to be in the middle of nowhere,
barren with red dust, which made us filthy. Town was
45
far from Soweto, Sandton was even further, and it was

very unlike Alexandra which was fun and beautiful. I
remember Ninth Avenue where we lived in Alexandra:
there was a creek between yard nine and yard seven. It was
green and lush, with weeping willow trees and tall green
grass where we played hide and seek, caught grasshoppers
and swung from the branches. The creek would swell up
after a storm. We would all come out of our homes to sail
our paper boats and watch the swollen stream rush past to
eventually join with the mighty Jukskei River.
In the 1980s, Alexandra was rich with factories
and firms in the surrounding Marlboro, Wynberg and
Bramley. There was little unemployment during the height
of apartheid. If someone was unemployed it was because
of their involvement in politics or out of sheer laziness. A
man would leave home in the morning to look for work
and not come back until early evening because he would
have been employed and had started immediately.
I remember how my friends and I would walk to
Sandton, Parkmore or Kelvin to the public parks and pools
where we would swing, slide and swim. I would usually be
the only girl among the boys. We would steal peaches and
apricots from overhanging trees in white people’s gardens;
sometimes the white boys would spot us and release their
vicious dogs to chase us away. Generally, we were left alone
as people thought we were the maids’ children. We would
play until we were tired and hungry and then walk into
Sandton City to hang around the food court where there
was a Steers, a Wimpy and a shwama place. We would wait
for scraps of food that people had left behind on the tables.
Some white people were ‘kind’ enough to buy us a burger
meal from Steers or Wimpy. I looked forward to those.
46
Others would give us money as we stood there begging for

food and money. Not that we needed it: none of us came
from destitute families. We were just naughty children,
fascinated by white people and their strange lives.
One afternoon we were up to our shenanigans, begging
in the food court, when a neighbour saw us. She reported
us to my aunt. When we got home we were beaten, and
consequently we never again went to beg in Sandton City.
47
Chapter Five
Early days
The young are permanently in a state of intoxication.
Aristotle
I fell pregnant at the age of fifteen, but only found out

at sixteen that I was. I was in matric at a good Model
C school. According to the community, I was the type of
child who was not supposed to fall pregnant. I was that
rare child who went to sub A (grade one) at five years old
and was promoted every year to the next standard with
very few problems. I was bright and did well. I was always
in the top ten, or sometimes even the top five. I was an
exemplary child in the community. I came from a family
with both parents ‘present’, and my mother was a good
Christian woman who instilled Christian values in her
children. While I was in matric, I turned sixteen; my peers
were in standard eight or nine (grade ten or eleven).
My pregnancy was a blow to the community, not to
mention my mother. I will never forget the disappointment
in my mother’s face upon finding out. In fact, she found out
quite by accident. My plan was to never tell (I still wonder
how that would have panned out), to keep it a secret
48
Chapter 5: Early days
between the father, Kenneth, who was a mere nineteen

years old, and myself. The plan was to pretend everything
was okay, go to school as per normal and never, ever say
anything. Because I was so young, I carried small. I only
started showing in the later part of my third trimester.
At that time, there were rumours about my possible
pregnancy but none of the children in my neighbourhood
knew for sure. Only two of my schoolmates knew because
I had told them.
My school did not have a standard typical school
uniform with tunics. We used to wear jeans and a white or
navy blue t-shirt. We were not obligated to tuck our shirts
in. I wore my jeans, buttoned them under my bulging
tummy and just put a bigger, baggier t-shirt on top. Baggy
clothes were in style then. In winter, we wore jeans and
navy blue sweaters, which suited me in my state.
Kenneth was a typical township boy: for him, making
me pregnant proved that he was a man. He got praises
from all the boys ekasi [in the township]. He had not
simply impregnated a girl: he had impregnated a beautiful
Model C girl who spoke English and did ballet, a girl who
went to a library and did her homework.
But he had no idea how it altered my entire life.
Getting someone pregnant in Alexandra was like a male
medal of honour; what happened after the baby was born
was immaterial. Boys could also prove their manhood by
brutally beating their girlfriends, preferably in public, or
by having as many beautiful girlfriends as possible. They
could also steal cars, beat each other up, own a gun, bunk
school or just not go to school, be part of a gang, get drunk
– the list goes on.
Though Kenneth was my boyfriend and I cared for
49
him with all the care that a fifteen year old could afford,
I was also very scared of him – perhaps more scared of
him than in love with him. He belonged to the Azapos, a
group that was feared in the township. Dating him offered
me protection from the bad boys who wanted to take me
by force. I heard rumours that I was on the jack-rolling
target list. Jack-rolling meant the abduction and gang rape
of a girl, common practice then. This was seen as a mild
annoyance in the community, even accepted as the norm
but never treated as the serious crime it is. Boys could
gang rape a girl on a Friday afternoon, next Monday at
school they would parade and strut as the heroes who had
‘got her’.
When the time came to have sex with Kenneth, I
protested but I feared he would hit me the same way he
beat up anyone who so much as looked at me. Like most
young boys in the township, he believed in violence as a
way to solve any problem. He had a motto, ‘Hit first, ask
questions later.’ One afternoon after school, he said he
wanted me to prove my love to him.
‘But I do love you,’ I said unconvincingly.
‘I know; I just want you to prove it,’ he said. I knew
exactly what those words meant. The time I had dreaded
had come, the time to have sex with him.
I was terrified. I tried to refuse him, but he would
have none of it. I protested a little more, and he got
annoyed, which scared me even more. So I succumbed.
We had sex and a few months later I discovered I was
pregnant. The plan to hide my pregnancy did not work.
One Sunday morning I had just bathed and was dressing
in the bedroom I shared with my sister. I remember I was
struggling to fit into a skirt. It was February 1992 and I
50
was four months pregnant. My mother came into the

room and the first thing she noticed were my enlarged
breasts and particularly the darkened areolas. To this day
I cannot describe the expression on my mother’s face.
It was a combination of horror, defeat, shame, guilt and
disappointment.
‘Why are your nipples so dark? I know your nipples
... (choking) ... I know them, they are pink,’ she said in a
shaky voice.
She did not wait for an answer. I did not have an
answer. That Sunday we proceeded to church as if nothing
had happened. I kept looking at her in church; she was
only there physically; everything about her body language
told me that she was far away. I can only imagine what
must have been going on in her mind.
It was a matter of days before she told all the important
people in our lives, which included the elders in the church,
all my aunts and uncles, and including Molly Smith, the
principal of Mitzvah High where I had just started Matric.
Molly insisted that I come to school until I gave birth and
ordered me to come straight back after the birth of my
child.
As my mother was a Jehovah’s Witness, by association
so were her children. Because I had had sex out of wedlock
I was now cast out. I was relegated to coming into church
after the opening prayer and leaving before the closing
prayer, because people who had sex before marriage were
dirty and did not pray with the ‘pure’ people. I complied,
with guilt and shame.
I had lectures from all the important people, the
overarching theme being that they had not expected
this from me, and that I was better than my behaviour
51
suggested. The strange part was that much as they did

not expect that from me, none of them ever bothered to
understand what had really happened to get me pregnant.
Obviously, I had sex and that led to pregnancy, but I was
sixteen years old. Couldn’t they dig a little deeper to find
out exactly how it had happened?
I wonder if any of them even understood that what
had happened to me was statutory rape. Did they think
I was a willing and happy participant in the sexual act? I
wanted to run away from home, but the thought of being
a hobo on the street was enough to deter me. I shouldered
the shame and the guilt. I worked harder at school. I had
a daily routine: wake up, get on the bus to school, come
home, do homework, study, eat and sleep. Kenneth was
always waiting to walk me to and from the bus stop. This
was his daily routine. Unlike other township boys, who
would disappear after impregnating a girl, Kenneth never
left my side. He was almost obsessed with me. He walked
me to the bus in the mornings and waited for me after
school.
One early Saturday morning, two of my aunts and
I went to Kenneth’s house to report the ‘damage’. The
meeting did not last long because Kenneth did not hesitate
to accept the pregnancy as his. I remember his mother
telling him not to be so quick in answering; he must first
be sure; and he said Ke Sure [I’m sure], with an element
of ego.
I gave birth to Tsholofelo on 12 July 1992; it was school
holidays. When the school re-opened I missed only a
week of school. The second week I was back and I never
missed a day after that. I passed my matric exams. There
were rumours at school that I may have aborted the child.
52
I remember a particularly embarrassing moment when I

had to squeeze my breast to produce milk to prove to the
gossipers that I had the baby, and hadn’t aborted her.
I opted not to go to university because I was a mother.
I knew the responsible thing to do was to get a job and
study part time. I did not expect my parents to pay for
university or to take care of my child and me. My parents
and I never spoke about the matter; it was one of those
unspoken agreements, which would not be broken.
‘In hindsight, I wonder if I would have chosen to go to
university even under different circumstances. University
had never truly appealed to me. I have always been an
entrepreneur. In standard nine (grade eleven), we had a
career exploration session where representatives from
every major field and industry were brought to the school
to tell us what it would take to follow the various career
paths. We had everybody from lawyers and engineers
to doctors and pharmacists. After the session we were
expected to write an essay about which career appealed to
us and why. My essay began with ‘I don’t want to get into
any of those careers, but I know I will be a success ...’
fh
KENNETH, MY BABY’S father, turned out to be a very
good father to my daughter. Even when I was married he
would always reach out to his daughter. He would send
me money; he would want to see her; he insisted on her
visiting him at least once a month, something that I also
encouraged. One day, Kenneth urgently wanted to see me:
he told me there was something he needed to get off his
chest. I eventually granted him the meeting and he told
53
me that he was very sorry for making me pregnant when

I was just a little girl. He said he hadn’t realised at the
time that having a baby was such a life-altering event. His
gesture was deeply touching; I had a deepened respect for
Kenneth from that day. We remain very good friends.
54
Chapter Six
Dealing with reality
You cannot change what you do not acknowledge.
Dr Phillip McGraw
A fter matric, I had my own hair salon at home. I used

the money I earned to attend short skills courses
at the Academy of Learning and Damelin. I did a basic
secretarial course and a public relations course in 1993. A
facilitator at the Academy of Learning recommended me
for a receptionist position at a start-up company, in order
to gain some working experience.
I got the job but only worked for three months because
at the beginning of 1994 First National Bank invited me
for an interview. A week later I was offered a position as an
enquiries clerk, beginning in March 1994.
I was eighteen years old and officially a working girl,
while my peers were barely out of high school or at first
year university. As if that was not enough, I got married at
the end of that year.
I married the first man who was ever nice to me.
He smelled good; he bought me lunch; he told me how
beautiful I was; he took me to a real restaurant. He was
55
employed and he had a car. He did not mind that I had a

child; in fact, he was prepared to adopt her. He was eleven
years my senior. For an eighteen-year-old that was a big
gap. But getting married made sense to me. If I married
this man everyone would be happy. My deeply religious
mother and grandmother would be proud of me again.
Society would realise that, with or without a baby, I could
still be married. My daughter would have a ‘proper’ family,
my eighteen-year-old mind reasoned. All my friends
would be envious of me. Even God would be happy with
me.
So when he asked me to marry him after seven
months of dating I did not waste any time. It seemed to be
a foolproof plan; I was going to be in good hands. Lobola
was paid at the end of 1994. We started living together
early in 1995. I was nineteen years old, a working and
married woman. My marriage lasted six years. At the age
of twenty-six, I got divorced.
My marriage was interesting in a disturbing way. I
married a man who, at face value, seemed like the opposite
of my father, exactly what I wanted. He had his good side.
He neither drank nor smoked. He was gentle and he
listened to me; he was a modern man. Like Mkhulu, he
cooked for me; he ran my bath; he woke me up with a
cup of coffee every morning; he ironed my clothes and did
everything I asked. He had recently lost his mother and he
told me it would help his heart to heal faster if I married
him. Of course, I had my own reasons for getting married.
He was a dream man in every sense. However, he had
another side which rankled. He was laid back and relaxed,
he was quite happy with an average life, he did not aspire
to more than he had. I was always pushing him to apply
56
Chapter 6: Dealing with reality
for a promotion or take a course to improve his skills. But

he showed little interest.
I, on the other hand, was dynamic and ambitious. I
wanted to excel; I wanted to succeed; I wanted more out
of life. I was highly driven at work and I attended every
course that the companies I worked for threw at me. I
read everything about everything. Although I job hopped,
I was highly motivated and I worked hard.
I suspect my pushy, ambitious side bothered him
because he became devious and shifty. He checked my cell
phone every night when I was asleep. All the people with
whom I been in contact, he called and cross questioned
them about their relationship with me. When I challenged
him, he denied it convincingly. He often woke up in the
middle of the night and disappeared until the early hours
of the morning. When I asked him where he went he said
he had insomnia and went to visit the petrol attendants
at a local filling station. Then, he was mysteriously fired
from his work. I would never have known if it wasn’t for
an ex-colleague whom I bumped into at the mall and who
innocently asked me how we were coping since he had lost
his job.
He remained unemployed and unemployable for
nearly two years, I became the sole breadwinner. I did
everything for him. Our helper inexplicably resigned,
when I reached her on the phone she said we needed to
meet so she could tell me what was going on. We never did
meet. He was fiercely jealous and called me every hour at
the office. I felt smothered by his ‘love’ and attention. On
my first attempt to leave him I realised I was pregnant with
Thebe. When Thebe was two years old we separated and
two years later we were officially divorced.
57
My lease in Edenvale was terminated unexpectedly

and I battled to find a suitably big enough place that was
close to my children’s schools and my work. When my
rental agent suggested I view a flat in Yeoville and live there
for a few months until they found something suitable, I
was sceptical. I went reluctantly because I had no choice,
but my reluctance evaporated when I saw the flat. I loved
everything about it. I loved how roomy and spacious it
was: it had two bathrooms, two very large bedrooms and
a panoramic view. On a clear day, I could see as far as
Pretoria; at night the Jozi lights were breathtaking. It is sad
how Yeoville has been left to deteriorate. It was one of the
best parts of the city, and I will never forget my short stint
at Xanadu Court on Cavendish Road.
It was while I was living there that I met a man in a
lift. I was going home after a long day, and I remember
thinking he looked like R Kelly. He was tall, dark and
very handsome. He politely introduced himself, asked my
name and went through all the niceties, he made me laugh
a little and then he made me laugh some more.
As we lived in the same block of flats he promised
to see me again, soon. He found out my flat number and
when he knocked at the door one afternoon, I was happy
to see him. At the time, I was working for a stable firm and
making good money. He was employed in a very small IT
firm. Sometimes he would not be paid until the seventh of
the next month, or not at all. He shared a three bedroom
flat with his cousins; they were struggling, living from
hand to mouth. By comparison, I was living in opulence.
My rent was low and apart from the school fees, food and
clothing. I had no pressing needs; I never believed in store
cards; I had a company car and a petrol card. The rest of
58
my money was there to be spent.

It all started when I offered to cook every night so
that he could at least have a square meal. So, every night
when my children were asleep, he would visit me. I used
to send Tsholo and Thebe to sleep at half-past-eight. I
was wary of introducing my children to men; children
are impressionable and I did not want them to form
any unnecessary attachments. Every night we would eat
dinner, have long conversations and do whatever else
came naturally.
We became very close; we were the best of friends. We
understood each other and, as clichéd as might sound,
we finished each other’s sentences. I knew how his mind
worked, and he understood my feelings and emotions in a
way that no one else ever had. He was always a step ahead of
me in terms of what I wanted to say or do. I loved him with
every cell of my body, and I felt him loving me in the same
way. I believed we were soul mates. We were inseparable; if
you saw me somewhere in a mall, rest assured he would be
around the corner. It was an exhilarating time of my life.
After some six or seven months of sneaking around
at night, hiding from the children, I decided he must
officially meet them. Of course, they used to see him on
weekends when he popped in, but they didn’t know he was
visiting me most nights and that he spent all weekend with
me when they visited their fathers or my mother. We had a
talk about it. He was keen and ready to meet the children.
I was ecstatic. I figured he was a nice enough man that
even if we didn’t make it as a couple, my children would
have at least met a lovely person.
My rental agent had finally found an apartment for
me in Edenvale, in Dowerglen, a lovely middle class area
59
where I believed I ‘belonged’. It was appropriate for my

‘status’. When I moved to Dowerglen, we decided to move
in together. The transition was smooth for the children;
we were all moving to a new place. It was unlike someone
moving into our place.
It was perfect. The children loved him and he loved
them. I helped him with everything. I felt the urge to
get him a better job. I helped him with his CV and even
emailed his applications for him. I would steal time
from work to drive him to wherever he needed to go for
interviews. I would lend him the company car. I was there
for him; I would do anything for him.
He was great to me too; he was gentle yet very firm.
He would advise me on things that were hard for me. He
was the one who grounded me enough to enable me to
stay when things got tough at work; he was the one who
made me see reason instead of simply fleeing when things
got tough. He was the one who tried to help me mend my
relations with my father. He was mature; I was smitten
with him. Like me, he saw things metaphorically and
was so articulate and clear. We would debate for hours,
something I thoroughly enjoyed. He made me laugh aloud
every day. Unlike my marriage, this was a real relationship.
We had it good; even when we fought, it was still good.
Early in 2002, he landed a job at a large international
corporate. He started at the bottom, but because he had
so much potential, he quickly moved up the ladder. He
was just as ambitious as I was. He wanted the good life, he
wanted to be his own man and I was very proud of him. He
played corporate politics like a pro; he ensured that he was
close to the ‘top dogs’ and every year he got a promotion
and a raise along with prestige. I was also doing extremely
60
well in my furniture business, so we were living well and

large. We were in love. From 2001 to 2003 it was beautiful.
Our first real fight was about money, about him
helping with rent and groceries. It was not so much about
the money, it was more about contributing. He was no
longer struggling to make ends meet. He was now earning
well and he could have helped. Yet he didn’t. He told me
about how he was saving money though he never told me
what for. We would fight at restaurants about who should
take the bill. I thought we should share these expenses.
His thinking was that whoever suggested going out should
pay. I was always the one who suggested going out.
On days when I got him to buy groceries, he would
insist on a list with prices so he could budget and plan.
He would come back with half the goods on the list. He
had great taste in clothing, shoes and cologne and he
would shop most weekends for himself. At one point he
had more shoes and clothes than I did. I never expected
him to buy clothes for the children. After all, they were not
his. But somehow it surprised me that he wouldn’t pick
up something small like a nice pair of shoes for Thebe or
a pair of jeans for Tsholo. When he was with me and I
saw something nice for either Thebe or Tsholo, then out of
guilt he would pay for it.
We fought like cat and dog; it got nastier by the week.
We bickered so hard it would often get violent, always
instigated by me. I was always ready to slap him or to
throw a shoe or a bag at him.
He would say to me: ‘I am not your father, calm down,
I am not your past.’ But the more he said that the harder I
fought. He would hold my wrists tightly and say, ‘CALM
DOWN, CALM DOWN, LEBO!’ But I wouldn’t listen.
61
One evening I broke his prescription glasses, the

frame and the lenses. I smashed them against the wall
and stamped on them. I was out of my mind with rage.
Another evening
I threw water at him in the middle of dinner at a
restaurant; I don’t even remember what he had said that
inflamed me. I was out of control, enraged; I had become
my father, throwing things and being uncontrollably
violent. I was the monster.
I started therapy and the psychologist revealed that I
was extremely angry and enraged at my father and mother.
Everyone and everything in my life was my scapegoat. At
the time my man, my best friend and my lover, was the
object of my frustrations, rage and deep seated hurt; I took
everything out on him. I didn’t like what the psychologist
was telling me so I stopped going to therapy. I was not
ready to deal with all my issues.
In 2004, I got tired of renting and I decided to buy a
house. My business seemed to be doing well. I was a ‘big
business woman’ now and I could afford it. I told my live-
in man that when we moved to the house he should help
with the bond and the maintenance of the house.
He told me he was looking for a place of his own and
could not take on the responsibility of a bonded home
with a woman he was not married to; his parents had not
raised him that way. I wondered what his parents had
thought about him co-habiting with me for nearly three
years. Where were they when I did everything in my
power to help him get onto his feet? What did they think
of his sudden ‘success’? Did they really think he was a self-
made man?
Being a Congolese, he came from a conservative
62
family. I remember the first time I met his mother; it

was early in the turbulent stage of our relationship. She
was shocked that I had two children, was divorced and
running my own business. She told me that she had heard
of this Lebo person but did think they were referring to a
‘grown woman’.
At the time, I could not read her disapproval. I was
excited to meet his mother, aunts and cousins; I tried to
make a good impression. I had met his sister and brother-
in-law who lived in Bramley. We had lunches with them
every so often. I never saw the disapproval in his sister’s
eyes, but suspicion arose during the latter part of our
relationship when he would go to his sister’s lunches alone.
When I met his father, I saw unequivocal disapproval and
disappointment. I suppose his father could not fathom
how a young handsome man who had everything going
for him could live with a divorced woman with two
children. His father never spoke to me directly; he would
speak French to his son who would translate. He could
speak English, but he chose not to. I started paying careful
attention to his other family members: and there it was,
the disapproval. I was not accepted by his family, which
obviously had a profound influence over his choice of
woman.
My family had accepted him completely after seeing
how wonderful he was with my children who would
usually call him instead of me in an emergency. He was
more maternal and nurturing than I was. My mother was
convinced that he would be my second husband.
At the end of 2004 he found his own apartment. I
helped him move, there wasn’t much to move, a lot of
clothes and a two-seater couch. A month later, I moved
63
into my new home, a large three bedroom stand-alone

house with two bathrooms, a pool and a gorgeous garden.
I moved alone, with help only from the moving company.
He only came to see me late that evening with excuses
about work. I was hurt and sad. What had happened to
us? Things deteriorated: days would go by without any
contact. Every so often we would meet to try to rekindle
what we had, but it was gone.
We used to be ‘the’ couple. At family gatherings,
children would immitate us. My sister’s daughter would
play me and one of my brother’s sons would be him.
Neighbours at the complex thought we were a very loving
and solid couple. We were great together. I often wondered
what happened to all that. But things got steadily worse
and we broke up.
By the end of 2005, I heard through a mutual friend
that he had paid lobola for a young colleague of his, a
Christian woman who had no children. They told me that
the affair had been going on for a while and that it was a
matter of time before they got married. ‘She is not as pretty
as you’, they would reassure me; ‘she’s not as assertive as
you’, they would console me. I was inconsolable.
The timing could not have been worse. My business
was showing cracks; buying the house had turned out
to be a very bad decision; there was far more work and
responsibility than I had anticipated. I was beginning to
drown in debt. The news that he was marrying someone
else broke me. But I was Lebo Pule. I couldn’t let myself
cry. So I blocked it out.
fh
64
STAYING ALONE MADE me more self-aware. I cared

very much about what I said and did, how and to whom. I
became more in tune with my feelings and my emotional
make up. I would reflect on the day every night after work,
responses and reactions, both mine and other people’s. I
was more in the present than ever before. I listened, not
only with my ears but with my body too. I wanted to
reawaken the intuition I had as a little girl, which saved
me from being raped by the local paedophile.
I had always been an avid reader; I have always
preferred non-fiction, biographical and self-help books.
The first self-help book I read was when I was in my
early twenties, during my first marriage: The Road Less
Travelled by M Scott Peck. The book made me realise that
I had loads of issues. Iyanla Vanzant’s books were my all-
time favourites; I was re-reading all of them. I read In the
Meantime and One Day My Soul Just Opened Up in my
twenties, but at the time I did not have the capacity to
comprehend the message. At thirty-two, I found myself
re-reading her books and I was in complete awe. I was
very excited by the other books I was reading too; the
highly recommended Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
was one of them. I had a love affair with that book and
many others. I would rush home, as though there was a
special someone; it was exhilarating
65
Chapter Seven
I cried and cried
‘Cry me a river … ‘cause I cried a river over you.
Arthur Hamilton
S omething else happened to me when I lived alone: I

discovered crying. I found crying extremely soothing,
I found it so soothing that I even dedicated time each day
to crying, from nine to eleven at night or midnight until I
fell asleep. The more I cried, the better I felt and the clearer
things were for me.
I realised that I had not cried in my life. I did cry, of
course, but never for anything significant. My life was
characterised by moving swiftly through events. I was
always doing, never feeling. There was always a sense
of urgency to move, to run away from issues; my daddy
issues, my dysfunctional relationships with men and
many related issues. I read somewhere that you can’t see
your reflection in running water, and I realised that the
time for running was over. I had my IyanIa’s ‘Yesterday
I cried’ moment at thirty-two. I cried uncontrollably at
times, wailing from the pit of my stomach as if something
that was stuck was breaking free. I cried for the loss of
66
Chapter 7: I cried and cried
my childhood and not ever knowing what a father’s love

and attention was; for the little girl who reluctantly had
sex at fifteen and got pregnant because she thought if
she did not have sex, she was going to die. I cried for her
powerlessness, for her naivety to fathom what it meant to
be a mother at sixteen. I cried for the teenager who was
too concerned with what people thought of her; a girl who
did not understand that getting married was a big deal,
meant for big people. I cried for the girl who did not know
who she was, and did not know what she wanted.
I cried for the young woman who entered a work
market prematurely, with no chance to think about a
career, which led to an endless search for a place to belong.
I cried for not having had the chance to date in my early
twenties, to go clubbing with the girls and to experience
being a carefree young woman. I cried for feeling out
of place when my colleagues spoke about campus life at
university. I cried for all those times that I felt ashamed for
having ‘old’ children for my age. I cried for feeling guilty
that I wanted more out of life, yet feeling as if I did not
deserve it. I cried for not knowing and understanding
what I wanted from, or had to offer, a relationship. I cried
for feeling all alone in the world. I cried for the loss of
my business and everything that it brought with it: my
comfortable home, my elite lifestyle and all the things I
believed I had worked very hard for.
I was sitting on my couch thinking back and crying for
the loss of a relationship – the love of my life – the man who
broke my spirit and left my heart in pieces. In my attempt
to rescue him, I wondered if I had emasculated him, if I
was too much for him. When did he grow out of love with
me? Did I underestimate the influence of his parents on
67
his choice of partner? Was I no longer attractive to him?

On the other hand, staying alone made me long
for someone who cared for and loved me, to share all
my experiences, to come home to. I yearned for long
conversations over glasses of wine on a summer night or
hot cups of coffee on a lazy Sunday morning. This time
alone sparked in me an awareness of how valuable people
and family were in my life. I cried for all of that. I cried
almost every night for four months, until one night the
tears just stopped. I got into bed at my usual time and I
could not cry anymore. The pain that used to choke me
every night was no longer there.
68
Chapter Eight
Lebo the entrepreneur
The good, the bad and the ugly.
Title of 1966 Spaghetti Western film
F rom a young age I have always been a hungry child. I

had a deep hunger for knowledge, success and power.
I have always behaved as someone older than my actual
years. At fourteen I started a youth club in our community,
gathering children from the neighbourhood, we would
dance and sing, do drama and all sorts of activities –
like they did at the main youth centres. At school I got
involved in everything. I played in the netball squad and
participated in the running, debating and public speaking
teams. I was also an entertainer. I sang Tracy Chapman’s
song Behind the Wall during an interval of a tough debating
session. During the debating intervals the norm was either
an amateur stand-up comedian or a school choir to pass
the time. My singing took everybody by surprise; it was
so unexpected to have someone singing solo during the
intervals, especially a Tracy Chapman song. Those were
the days of rhythm and blues: Brenda Fassie, Yvonne
Chaka Chaka and Rebecca Malope.
69
Tracy Chapman had a profound impact on my life.

Every day after school I would play my cassettes, much to
the irritation of my sister and my mother. I loved all the
songs in her first album, but my favourite was ‘Deep in my
Heart’, a very intense song. I sang ‘Behind the Wall’ because
it was a cappella. I was asked to sing whenever there was
an event at school. I was popular; I was sometimes called
Tracy.
For me, success meant being admired and liked by
everybody and having influence. I was determined to be
successful, one way or the other. I was not a very talented
singer, so that part of my life died a natural death. I did
discover, however, that I was more of an entrepreneur.
Our family moved from number eleven Ninth Avenue
in Alexandra to East Bank, which was regarded as the posh
side of Alexandra because the houses were new and had
bathrooms inside. Alexandra in the late 1980s had very few
shacks, no rats and was not the over-crowded township
it is today. The community was small and close-knit. We
had two main community/youth centres: Thusong and
Thabisong, the former being where I went with the other
trendy youngsters. At Thusong, we could do karate, ballet,
singing, drama, traditional dance, cooking, pottery and
poetry. I, of course, did all of them.
East Bank, our new home, was bare and empty – it
did not have the soul that Alexandra had. We were all new
there and had not yet established a rhythm or culture.
There were no shops or salons; we went back to Alexandra
for these services. The perm was still in style in the late
eighties, early nineties, so I decided to open my own hair
salon to fill that gap. I was good with my hands and at
fourteen I had regular clients. I made good money. By the
70
Chapter 8: Lebo the entrepreneur
time I was sixteen it was a fully-fledged salon.

The youth club I had started was also going well. The
idea was to showcase the club’s talents: singing, dancing
or acting in the hopes that we would be featured on TV
shows like Diwetse or Mokibelo/Ngomgcibelo.
At 18 I entered the job market. Of all the problems I
had in my life, finding a job was not one of them. It was
effortless, and so I job hopped. If I stayed longer than
two years at one company that was an achievement. My
average length of tenure was nine months; the shortest
was one day at a Marketing and Public Relations firm.
On my first day, I decided that I did not like the
offices, so the next day I did not go back. I did not stay
long enough in any company to learn about my flaws, a
mistake I later paid for dearly. I always itched for more and
better, I thought that the grass was obviously greener on
the other side. I would resign at the slightest provocation:
the company was too far, not corporate enough, too
corporate, too many white people, too many black people,
or the people were not nice. Often I would resign without
having secured my next job.
My recruitment agent once advised me to temp, take
on short assignments; she told me it was a new trend
that was taking the US by storm. I temped for a few
months. The companies would always want me to stay
on permanently because I was a hard worker and a fast
learner. I was very lucky that I was employable and likable.
I would seldom attend an interview and not get a job offer.
Often I had two, sometimes three, offers to choose from. I
kept moving to fill the void, the deep hollow feeling inside;
the feeling of not belonging, and vague feelings of shame
and not ever being good enough.
71
In the late 1990s, early 2000s I was caught in the BEE

wave. As young aspiring entrepreneurs, four partners
and I established an investment holding called Nkwe
Investments. Tenders and tendering were popular, and
being politically connected was the only way to win
tenders worth millions of Rands. We knew nothing. We
didn’t even know that we didn’t know anything about
tendering or about business. We sat in meetings in five
star hotel lobbies such as the Michelangelo, Hilton and
Park Hyatt. We would sometimes steal time out of our real
jobs to attend these nonsensical meetings. We met with
would-be politicians and businesspeople, not realising
that we were just would-be business people ourselves.
I was very young. I had no clue what it took to start
and build a business. In those meetings, we would talk
about the millions and millions of Rands that the deals
we were putting together would bring us. The plan was to
tender for anything, construction of roads, construction
of houses, medical supplies or road sign supplies, without
a clue as to what we were doing. It was not real and it
fizzled into nothingness.
In 2002, I decided to start my own business, after just
over two years of working for a stable construction and
furniture manufacturing firm. It was a good company, I
was one of the top sales people. Every month I would reach
and exceed my sales target. Despite stealing time from
them to attend my silly tender meetings, I still delivered.
Selling has always been my strength.
I was not doing the world any justice by remaining an
employee and not becoming the entrepreneur that God
had intended for me to be. Countless people told me that
I was better than the job. I had potential. I was special and
72
smart and meant for greater things in life. My ego was

boosted almost every day. My existing clients at the firm I
worked for promised to support me in my own business.
In November 2001, I resigned from that company in
the most careless of ways, which I later discovered had
hurt and offended my former boss. He was the one who
had been the kindest to me in my entire working career,
and with whom I had a rewarding working relationship.
Incidentally this was the only company where I worked
for more than two years.
I registered ‘Exquisite Interiors’ and my first order in
my first month of operation was for R600 thousand from
a parastatal, another one of R400 thousand followed two
months later and a few more soon after that. I remember
thinking: What does everybody mean when they say
business is tough? That was the easiest R1-million
turnover I had ever made. Little did I realise that there is a
big problem when the words easy and R1-million appear
in one sentence. The first year went exceptionally well. I
turned over seven figures and technically a millionaire,
well on paper.
By the second year my business was booming and life
was good. I was twenty-seven years old. I lived an elitist
lifestyle. I was not conscious of the fact that there are very
few women of my age who lived like I did, from their own
hard work.
I lived in an up-market townhouse with a gorgeous
man who I was head over heels in love with – as usual
a man I had rescued. My children went to good schools.
Money was no object. Everything that my children and
I wanted, I bought. We went on holiday every year; we
ate out every weekend and most nights during the week.
73
I may not have literally burnt money but I was skhothane

[crass] without even realising it. Whenever I did shopping
at Woolworths I would open a packet of blueberries in the
store, eat them all and buy two more packs. These packs
would rot in the fridge and then be thrown away. I was
wasteful. I was crass.
I had very few friends. I did not socialise much. With
my strong work ethic, I worked hard and spent a great
deal of my time at work. The remainder was spent with
my gorgeous boyfriend and my children. I seldom went
to Alexandra unless it was to drop off the children at my
mother’s house when they missed her, or pick them up
after a weekend visit.
I thought Alexandra was just a dirty township with
which I wanted no association. My relationship with my
mother was strained. She was not happy with the fact that
I had divorced and brought shame to the family. Neither
was she impressed that I was living with a man to whom I
was not married.
I had a big office, staff and a showroom that I did not
really need. I worked very hard and kept my clients happy.
Every month I would dedicate a week to visiting all my
clients. I would visit three or four a day, spending an hour
or so just to connect with them. I would start in Pretoria
and end up in the Vaal area by the end of the week. New
orders would follow via fax and sometimes clients placed
orders immediately. I could connect with people and had
clients of all races and ages, both men and women.
One particular client at a Government Department,
Dorothy, made sure that my business was supported. She
was one of the few officials who applied the BEE codes and
supported gender equality.
74
My downfall was my non-existent business acumen.

I may have been streetwise and understood about being
an entrepreneur but the core business skills, financial
management and administrative savvy, were sadly lacking.
The charm that came with being a great salesperson did not
translate into being a financial guru. I was very lazy when
it came to finances. This was real business, and I needed to
understand costing, margins and profit. However, I didn’t
bother.
My focus was on new business. It didn’t matter how
much I charged as long as it looked like I was making
some profit. My cash flow was good because I invoiced
regularly and while orders were plentiful, it was difficult
to detect that my margins were much too low. If I sent out
an invoice of R100 thousand to a client I would receive
an invoice for R97 thousand from the supplier. In the
furniture business margins should be at least twenty-five
percent. I was lucky if mine were between seven and ten
percent.
What sustained me for a while was the volume of
sales, but I did not realise that timing played a major
role in invoicing and payment cycles. All I knew was
when there was money in the business. If I received six
invoices, I would pay three and wait for the next round of
payments, just to repeat the cycle. I was bankrolling. The
rest of the money would go on my lavish lifestyle and huge
overheads, rent for the showroom and office, salaries,
travelling and phone calls. Sheer waste.
During the third year of business things slowed across
the industry, affecting everyone in furniture and interior
decorating. My part-time accountant tried to warn me
about the unsustainable margins. But I did not listen; I
75
listened to no one.
My main supplier, Brian Strang, was a wise old man
and he tried to talk to me. He suspected that my business
was struggling because I no longer paid them regularly.
He invited me for lunch at his house and told me about the
dealers he had seen come and go in his twenty-two years in
the furniture manufacturing business. He was determined
to help me not to go the same route and suggested that I
give up the big office and showroom and keep only one
staff member. He offered me part of his factory rent-free,
and he and his partners offered to teach me everything
they knew about furniture and how to run a successful
business. But I did not hear any of that; all I heard was an
old white man who wanted to swallow me whole.
I thought Brian wanted to make me a front for his
business, having a black female in his business to increase
his BEE status. His advice was genuine and I didn’t take it.
Brian believed in me, he always put in a good word for me
and made sure that other manufacturing firms supplied
me with what he could not supply. Despite this, I paid
everyone else except Brian. I lied, saying clients had not
paid me; while I had used money owing to him to pay my
credit card or something else unimportant.
I was getting deeper and deeper into trouble and was
naively hopeful that my business would pick up as soon as
the industry lifted. I refused to work at Brian’s office as he
had suggested and carried on in complete denial. I asked
the bank for a larger overdraft, I lived on my credit card to
continue with a lifestyle I could no longer afford.
The only advice I took from Brian was about the office.
I did not renew my lease with my landlord because he
made it very clear that our relationship would only work if
76
the office rent was paid on time, every time.

My house was big enough to house an office, so I sold
all the showroom furniture. No real business was coming
in and the cracks in my business started to show. I could
no longer bankroll, and I opted instead to pay salaries
and my lifestyle with money coming in. I did not pay my
suppliers unless they threatened me and I avoided phone
calls, particularly private numbers. I was getting deeper
and deeper into trouble, yet blind hope remained that a
big tender would be approved any day and things would
get back to normal. There was a part of me that knew the
truth. It manifested in my absent mindedness, constant
irritation, and ceaseless fatigue; the vibrant and energetic
me had disappeared.
77
Chapter Nine
Bankrupt
Many small businesses are doomed from day one,
not from competition or the economy, but from
the ignorance of their owners . . . their destiny is
already decided because they have no idea how a
business should be operated.
William Manchee,
T hings got very tough. In 2005, business got slower and

slower – tenders were cancelled at the last minute. My
cash flow dwindled. Like any business, I relied on cash
flow, which meant I needed to constantly invoice, but I
couldn’t invoice when there was no business. I not only
stopped paying my suppliers, I stopped communicating
with them which made them panic. Normally only a small
payment would keep them happy and they would continue
to supply. I stopped paying SARS too, which was a huge
mistake, something I paid for dearly later. The payment
on cars, the bond and everything else that constituted
personal debt started to lapse.
I lied about money coming in, making empty
promises about when all my creditors could expect
78
Chapter 9: Bankrupt
payment. I got tired of lying and would not answer the

phone. I continued to lie for a short while until it was
just not working anymore. The furniture manufacturing
industry is small. The suppliers started talking to each
other and before long no one wanted to supply me; they
wanted their money. I no longer had any income.
The summonses started pouring in, at least one every
two weeks. I learnt the harsh reality of the law and lawyers.
I received a summons to attach my furniture. I decided to
visit the attorney offices to try to explain my situation. I was
faced with an unfeeling, uncompromising female attorney
who was so cold and so unkind (I thought at the time), her
only interest was that of her client and the money I owed. I
tried to reason with her, to no avail. I resorted to emotion
and threw a tantrum. I still cringe when I think about that
day, but I was desperate.
The sheriff visited me so often that I knew him by
name: a Mr Du Plessis. One afternoon we started talking
while his men were estimating the value of the furniture
and furnishings in my house.
‘How old are you, Miss Pule?’ he asked with deep
concern in his voice.
‘I’m twenty-nine, turning thirty in January,’ I answered.
It was December 2005. ‘My God, you are so young, you
have your whole life ahead of you,’ he said again with
mixture of concern and pity in his voice.
‘What do you mean, Mr Du Plessis? I hear people use
that phrase a lot – “Your whole life is ahead of you” – what
does it really mean?’ I asked with tears in my eyes.
‘It means you can still live longer than you have lived
now.’ He paused and added: ‘At the age of thirty you have
probably another thirty, maybe forty years ahead of you to
79
turn your life around. If I were you, I would put the house
up for sale because it is going to follow. You did buy the
house, right? Or are you renting it?’
‘No, I bought it,’ I answered, crying.
‘Which bank? Who’s your bond holder?’
‘ABSA.’
He shook his head, no longer with only concern, but
also deep worry.
‘Absa is the strictest; they will auction it off for sure.
How many months have you missed your payment?’
‘Four months, maybe five.’ I hesitated, but in fact I was
not sure, that was how dazed and in denial I was.
‘Put it up for sale, Ms Pule, put it up for sale right now.
They are going to take it if you don’t,’ he emphasised. I did
not listen. I managed to pay the bond with the scraps of
money I borrowed from friends, friends I promised to pay
as soon as a tender came through. This interim plan was
not sustainable and my house was auctioned off on the
second of November 2006. The highest bidder bought it
for R500 000. I had paid R650 000.
I had bought the house prematurely under some
imagined pressure: I thought that because I was a
businesswoman I needed to stop renting and start paying
a bond like a grown up. When I bought the house I put
down a deposit of R150 000. I had missed eight months
instalments and my house was gone.
The highest bidders were in the business of property,
they bought houses at auctions, fixed them up and sold
them. My house did not need any fixing. I had repainted,
re-tiled and re-carpeted every square centimetre, and
I had done up the garden too. The only thing they had
to do was to clean up the pool, which I could not afford
80
Chapter 9: Bankrupt
to maintain. The pool had turned from blue to green to

brown; however, the garden was beautiful. Malume James,
my gardener, came every Tuesday and Friday without
fail, whether I could afford to pay him or not. He would
always say, ‘Suster, ga bateng ba tshwanang le wena, ke
tlogo thusa go tlabe gwa loka.’ [Sister, they don’t make
them like you anymore; I will help you, until you come
right.] I would give him whatever I could afford, I would
give him transport money and food. Malume James had
a connection with the garden; he had tended it for twelve
years for the previous owners.
My house was always clean, thanks to my domestic
worker Ausi Poppy, who was with me until the end, I could
not afford to pay her but she kept coming. I will never
forget Ausi Poppy. Despite my carelessness with money, I
looked after my staff. I paid a little more than average for
their services; both Malume James and Ausi Poppy were
loyal to the bitter end.
The new owners of my house offered me a worn
out house in President Park, Midrand, rent-free for two
months until I got back on my feet and then I would start
paying rent. In December 2006, I moved to Midrand. I
hated the house in Midrand. I am not sure if it was because
of how I felt at the time, but the house looked awful and
I’m sure it was haunted.
Tsholo and Thebe were fourteen and eight respectively
when I put them through hell. I always felt guilty when I
looked at them, especially Tsholo. I suppose because she
was older, I assumed she could understand more. I felt
terrible. However, children are resilient and my two took
everything as it came.
I got a few temporary jobs to put food on the table
81
and pay rent. Then in February 2007 I got a permanent

position as a sales consultant at a small black consulting
firm. However, my emotional state was grave; I was still
reeling from my bankruptcy. The owners of the consulting
firm were good people, a young Christian couple. Nosipho
employed me against her husband Thabang’s wishes;
she felt I deserved the job after all I had been through.
Thabang sensed my emotional turmoil and instability,
which he verbalised during a meeting. I found out that
the reason he could pick up my emotional instability was
because he had been through it all before. No one, not
even me, realised how wounded I was. Then I found out I
was pregnant with Tau, a child I was not ready for. I was a
big mess. What I needed was to stop: stop trying and stop
doing. I needed time to feel what was happening around
me. I needed a quiet moment to cry, to reflect, to sleep, to
allow myself to just be and heal my wounds, to pray, to go
back and deal with what had happened to me, both in my
business and my personal life.
I detested the job, not because the job was bad but
because I was in quite a serious emotional state. I needed
the salary, I needed to keep my children in school, I needed
to put food on the table and I needed to put fuel in my car.
I hated Midrand; it was too far from my children’s school
in Edenvale. We had to wake up at four in the morning
just to get to school on time. Then I’d get stuck in the traffic
going back to Midrand where I worked. In the afternoon,
I would drive the same route to fetch the children from
school. This routine was too much, so after four months
in Midrand, I moved back to Edenvale, into a townhouse.
Things were tough; the salary barely covered my expenses
and monumental debts. The pregnancy made me more
82
Chapter 9: Bankrupt
tired and sluggish by the day. After six months, I had a

fall out with Nosipho and Thabang, my employers, over
something trivial and I no longer had a job. I blamed it
on pregnancy hormones, but I knew that it wasn’t that. I
needed to stop.
I was unemployed, pregnant, with no income and
drowning in debt. My boyfriend at the time, Tau’s father,
helped with rent and food until the baby was born – but
I couldn’t continue like that. I have always been uneasy
with being ‘kept’. So the only thing to do was to move back
home. Home to Alexandra to my mother’s house.
I sent her a ‘please call me’. When she called I couldn’t
talk I was crying so much. All she asked was where I was.
Then she said, ‘Buya ekhaya, Doll,’ [Come home, Doll].
That weekend my younger brother and his friend came
with a van and helped me move back home with my two
children and a new-born. It was December 2007.
I went back to what seemed like a very small house.
Although it was still the three-bedroomed house with a
garage and two external rooms, it seemed so much smaller
than when I was a child. I slept in my brothers’ former
bedroom with the baby, Thebe and Tsholo shared the
bedroom that I use to share with my sister. It was extremely
uncomfortable for Tsholo: at fifteen she was used to her
own room.
During the first week, the awkwardness and dis-
comfort was overwhelming. I felt the walls in the tiny
bedroom closing in on me; it was so engulfing I could not
breathe. I developed a severe case of sinusitis. My nose
was blocked, my eyes swollen and my throat itched. My
body was communicating: it was in shock.
I am not sure what was worse: having my children see
83
me in that state after the life we had lived, or the rawness

of having lost everything and the feeling of being naked
and vulnerable. And the looks from neighbours and old
friends whenever I bumped into them at Pan Mall or at
the local Spaza shop made everything worse, like salt
in my wounds. In addition, there were the looks of pity,
worry and fear that my mother gave me when she thought
I was not looking – and of course my father never really
looked at me at all.
84
Chapter Ten
Healing
Behold, I make everything new
The Bible
T he year 2009 came along and I was a pro at living alone.

I thought long and hard about my relationship with
my father. I accepted that it was what it was. I accepted
that no one comes out of this world unscarred. All we can
do is to be the best we can be in spite of where we come
from. I acknowledged that it could have been worse, that
there are other people in much worse relationships.
I started doing things I never thought I would do for
myself, like cleaning my own home. I have always relied
on a helper to clean up my mess and do my laundry. I was
very messy and would not lift a finger, even on weekends.
I would let the dishes pile up all weekend and wait for my
helper to clean it all up on Monday. One long weekend,
I let the dishes pile up until there were no clean cups
left. Instead of washing up, I went to Clicks and bought
a new set. I did not make my own bed nor did I teach my
children about cleaning; this was something other people
did for them. I paid dearly for that. I struggled to teach
85
Tsholo and Thebe the basics of looking after themselves

and cleaning up their own mess. It was not easy.
There was something about cleaning my own
mess that mirrored an internal cleansing and spiritual
purification. When I cleaned I always found something
I could now deal with that I had previously suppressed,
whether it was work or personal. I cleared it as soon as
possible. In taking responsibility, I became more and more
trusting of my own thoughts and feelings, a kinder and
more authentic person. While living alone, healing and
dealing with myself, one of my goals was to make amends
with my mother. We had drifted apart over the years. I
started seeing my mother as a human being who was, like
me, just trying to navigate her way through life. She was
doing the best she could with what she had and what she
knew. I developed deep compassion and empathy for her.
I no longer judged her for staying in a bad marriage. I did
not pity her. I accepted her for who she was and for being
there for me.
When I stopped at my mother’s home in Alexandra
to see the children, I would take between five and ten
minutes to speak to her alone. I would thank her for
looking after my children, for both mothering and
grand-mothering them. She always found those gratitude
moments strange, she did not understand where I was
coming from. After all, she was the grandmother and did
what she had to do. I knew that she did not have to take
on my responsibility. This is where the generation gap
came in. My mother saw a need; she could help and she
did. She never considered the modern way of thinking;
letting children suffer just because someone had made a
blunder and a mess of their life.
86
Chapter 10: Healing
It was important that I acknowledged the role she was

playing in my and my children’s lives. My mother loves
fresh flowers, so I bought her a bunch whenever I could. I
bought the groceries and whatever else she needed. All she
had to focus on was clearing whatever debt she had.
My relationship with my father had not improved. We
still barely spoke but I was determined to make amends
with him too.
I wrote letters to all the people I had hurt on my path
of self-destruction, both in business and personally. Top
of the list on the business side was Brian Strang. I wrote
him a letter apologising for having given him the rawest
deal when he was my best supplier. I wrote to Mindo,
my boss at the last company I worked for before starting
my own business. I apologised for the manner in which I
had left and for not appreciating him at the time. I wrote
to the couple that employed me after my bankruptcy. I
apologised for the state I had been in and that I had not
meant to waste their time and money.
I wrote a letter of closure to my long term ex-
boyfriend, the man I loved. I thanked him for the time
he had spent with me, saying as hard as the break up was,
I was no longer sad that the relationship had ended but
happy that it had happened. I wanted the letter to release
him, to release us both.
I gathered my children around and apologised for
what I had put them through. I promised them that I was
working very hard to make sure that this situation does
not happen again. I would never again unnecessarily put
my needs first before theirs. The letters were received well;
I had coffee with some and lunches with others. I received
emails of acknowledgement and forgiveness from some.
87
There were tears and laughter at the coffee and lunch

meetings, but mostly there was forgiveness and moving
on.
There was a noticeable difference in my relations
with men. Attention from men was not new to me. It was
something I had been accustomed to since childhood.
The difference now was that I no longer felt the need to
engage just because they showed interest, regardless of
their motives. I no longer felt that I had to say yes to a
coffee or lunch request. Neither did I feel the need to be
rude and aggressive when the attention was not welcome.
I was less edgy, gentler.
I would decline a dinner date with the humility it
deserved. Men I had previously avoided, those good men
who were stable, respectful and kind and who did not
need me started noticing me and I began to notice them. I
was not in a hurry to get involved in a serious relationship.
I had just found myself and was enjoying the space and
time. I still had a lot of work to do and many debts to pay.
Staying alone allowed me to focus on myself without
being self-absorbed. I realised that the more in tune
I was with myself the better I was to others. I became a
better mother, friend, daughter, woman, colleague and
listener. I was less hurried, less panicked. I began getting
interesting and unusual compliments from family and
friends, compliments, such as: ‘Lebo, you are so calm,’ or
‘You seem to be in your element these days’. Staying alone
helped me to end some dysfunctional relationships with
old friends. I also met and befriended amazing women,
women who were strong without being aggressive, women
who were kind.
88
Epilogue
A new day
The morning is wiser than the evening.
Russian proverb
Y ear 2013, and my relationship with my father is still

difficult. We tolerate each other. What has changed is
that I am no longer caught up in rage whenever I see him.
I am sad for him, sad that he never got to know me and he
did not become part of my life. I am even sadder that I did
not get to know him. We have lost so much time and have
had some of the most virulent fights that I wonder if it is
able to be fixed. I acknowledge his presence, but can’t help
but wonder what he sees when he looks at me? I wonder
if I have caused him sleepless nights, like he caused me.
I wonder if he sees the link between his behaviour and
my previous disastrous relationships with men. I have no
energy yet to engage him, maybe this is something best
left alone for now.
I am a free spirit. I am an entrepreneur and I am a
gender activist. I am many other things but a large part
of my life is characterised by those three identities.
Everything I say and do encompasses at least one of
89
these three. My spiritual beliefs reflect my freedom and

my hunger for the truth. As such I am restless soul. I test
everything. I question everything. I listen to everything. I
take everyone seriously. I am a seeker. My entrepreneurial
journey continues. My business, Lebo Pule Business
Networks, is shaping and building me, bringing out the
best in me as a person and an entrepreneur.
Lebo Pule Business Networks is a business that is
much more in line with my strengths, skills and abilities.
It offers everything sales-related to my clients. I train
people on selling techniques and I assist sales managers
to manage their sales teams. I am enjoying the ride, the
challenges, opportunities and people I meet along the
way. My gender activism is the only thing that keeps me
awake at night. I cannot stop. I will not let myself tire
while there is still so much work to do. The emancipation
of men and women in this country is paramount to its
success.
The struggle to free women from the grips of patriarchy
is a daunting one. The dynamics that religion, culture and
traditions bring to this playing field are fundamental. As
long as women are not emancipated, no man will be free,
even if they think they are.
It is a new day and I am embracing it minute by
minute. I continue to grow and learn. The past seven years
have taught me that in as much as I am on my own as I
experience my life, my thoughts and my feelings? I am, in
fact, not alone.
90

Alone - Growing Up in Alexandra

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Alone - Growing Up in Alexandra

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Growing up in

© Lebo Pule, 2019

Editor: David Robbins

Lebo Pule may have worked on this blend of memoir,

T he story you are about to read is about an inexperienced

living fully, of self-awareness, of humility, of forgiveness,

I was thirty-two years old in September 2008, alone in

For the first time, I had freedom just to be me. I worked

wanted to study. I got my first real job at First National

I announced that I was pregnant, everyone had a name

Falling pregnant with him caught me completely off guard.

I slipped into a mini-depression. I couldn’t think, I

S outh African companies are wary of entrepre-neurially

an eight to five job, earn my salary and then go home to

would pan out. She was an excellent judge of character

slowly getting back on my feet. I had to move away from

every time I drove past in my red Toyota Tazz. The

Oprah. I wondered why she liked Oprah so much. She

I was a rescuer of note. I rescued people, specifically

the more I was turned on. I had serious issues.

rescuer is trying to repair the negative or damaged sense

There was something about boys that I loved and

He rushed towards me and grabbed my arm. I pulled

injured leg, but mysteriously disappeared. We later found

When I came back, he was no longer at the gate. One of the

Living alone brought with it varied events. I found

nonetheless. Her partner did not once look at me; perhaps

was not for the children that visit me on weekends, he

Please, you keep him. I insist’. It was sarcastic and shallow,

I come from a dysfunctional family. It took me a long

even looked at us, my siblings and I. He never made eye

and others. Then after this short stint of drunken affection

My grandfather, Papa Joe, used to sit under the peach

My maternal grandparents were the complete

paternal grandmother and my mother; however, very few

far from Soweto, Sandton was even further, and it was

Others would give us money as we stood there begging for

I fell pregnant at the age of fifteen, but only found out

between the father, Kenneth, who was a mere nineteen

was four months pregnant. My mother came into the

suggested. The strange part was that much as they did

I remember a particularly embarrassing moment when I

me that he was very sorry for making me pregnant when

A fter matric, I had my own hair salon at home. I used

employed and he had a car. He did not mind that I had a

for a promotion or take a course to improve his skills. But

My lease in Edenvale was terminated unexpectedly

my money was there to be spent.

where I believed I ‘belonged’. It was appropriate for my

well in my furniture business, so we were living well and

One evening I broke his prescription glasses, the

family. I remember the first time I met his mother; it

into my new home, a large three bedroom stand-alone

STAYING ALONE MADE me more self-aware. I cared

S omething else happened to me when I lived alone: I

my childhood and not ever knowing what a father’s love

his choice of partner? Was I no longer attractive to him?

F rom a young age I have always been a hungry child. I

Tracy Chapman had a profound impact on my life.

time I was sixteen it was a fully-fledged salon.

In the late 1990s, early 2000s I was caught in the BEE

smart and meant for greater things in life. My ego was

I may not have literally burnt money but I was skhothane