Chapter 1:never make the mistakes that I've m
My name is Tau Masilo. I am 58 years old. I am dying.
Not today. The doctors say maybe six months. Maybe less. My liver is the color of old beer. My bank balance is the color of nothing.
The only thing I own now is this voice. So listen.
Never make the mistakes I’ve made.
2003. Seshego Zone 4. Winter.
I had one pair of tekkies. Bata. White. Hole in front. My big toe said hello to the world every morning.
I had one shirt. Blue. Size M. I was a size L, but size M looked expensive if you ironed it hard enough.
Lerato ironed it hard enough.
She had nothing too. But she had two things I didn’t: a plan, and faith in me.
_“Tau,”_ she said at 5AM, steam from the iron kissing her face. _“Today you get that warehouse job. You walk in like you already work there. You don’t ask. You tell them. ‘I start Monday.’ Hungry men don’t beg. They declare.”_
I was hungry. For pap. For a job. For her to stop looking at me like I was a maybe.
She didn’t eat breakfast. She said she wasn’t hungry. Liars go to hell, but angels go hungry first.
I took her R20 for taxi. I smelled like Sunlight soap and courage.
I got the job. R1800 a month. First payday, I brought the brown envelope home like it was gold.
She opened it. Counted it. Took R1500.
“You robbing me?”_ I laughed. My stomach didn’t.
“No,”_ she said, writing in a small book. _“I’m building us. R500 rent. R300 food. R700 savings. R200 for you.”
“R200? For what?”
“To look good. Men who look like money, get money. Next month you buy polish. Next month after that, a belt. We build a king slowly.”
She was 19. I was 20. We were building an empire with R200.
Two years later, I was foreman. R4500.
Five years later, Busisiwe came. Then Boikgantsho. Two kids. One room. But full.
Lerato never asked for a ring. I asked her once, drunk on Black Label after promotion.
She laughed. _“Rings don’t build houses, Tau. Houses build rings. Build us first. Then you can put metal on my finger.”_
She was building a king.
I should have built her a throne.
Instead, 2015, I built myself one.
Golf 7 GTI. White. R320,000. 60 months. Ballon payment like a bomb.
First time I turned the key, I heard God.
VRRRRR PHAH!!!!!!!!
That sound didn’t come from the engine.
It came from the devil, whispering: _“You arrived. You don’t need Seshego. You don’t need Leroato. You are new now.”_
And I believed him.
God doesn’t sleep in a one-room house in Zone 4.
God sleeps in Menlyn. God sleeps with university girls named Thato who say _“Your English is sexy”_ and don’t know you used to run when you saw the council truck because you owed R300 for water.
Never make the mistakes I’ve made.
Because _Vrrrrr phah_ is not happiness.
Vrrrrr phah_ is a test.
And I failed it.
Today, Busisiwe is a nurse. She bought this hospital a new dialysis machine last month. With her money.
Today, Boikgantsho is a site manager. He’s parking his BMW X5 outside. The one he bought _her_. Leroato. The woman I never married.
My kids call her _Mama.
They call me Sir.
Because fathers who disappear for 20 years don’t get to be Daddy again. They get a bed in the guest room. And silence at dinner.
The nurse is coming. Time for my pills. Yellow ones. Like my liver. Like my life.
But before she does, let me tell you one more thing.
Money can’t buy happiness. But it can bring happiness to you.
When my son starts that BMW to take me to dialysis...
When he turns the key...And you hear _VRRRRR PHAH!!!!!!!!..
That’s not my car. It’s his.Mine got repossessed in 2019. Thato left in 2020. My liver started dying in 2022.
Remember me.
Remember Tau Masilo.
The man who had everything And drove away from it.
Never make the mistakes I’ve made.
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