I Love my Gals

I LOVE MY GALS

MARGARET NDAWONDE

SYNOPSIS

I Love my Gals is Nomsebenzi Shange’s story, an unemployed, single South African mother, who ends up back in the tumultuous cleaning industry she thought she had left behind. Driven by the strong will to survive and the love of her children, she ends up taking a job far below her capabilities, skills and expectations in life. The strong need to keep her family’s heads above water leads her to the discovery of a whole new world of dynamic women who give a totally different meaning to life, love and survival as she has come to know and define it.

CHAPTER 1

Nomsebenzi’s hands and knees were slowing her down. The throbbing pain deep inside her knees caused by the ‘wear and tear’ of the muscles reminded her of the far of days in domestic work that she had worked so hard to bury in the deepest recesses of her mind. She was kneeling on all fours as she continued to scrub the one spot of the wall that looked like it has not been cleaned for the past decade.

This is how low the mighty have fallen, she thought to herself. She had promised herself she was not going to feel sorry for herself, not today of all days! This should be the start of her and her girls’ turnaround chapter. Days have been dark, and friends had thinned out to a trickle. Even the ones who were quite generous when she was first laid off were now not taking her calls. It was understandable in a way; they also have their own families to look after and could not afford to donate food parcels to her and her girls at the end of every month.

One of her good friends had advised Nomsebenzi to get over her pride and go to the government child support services and apply for a child support grant since both of her girls were under 18 years of age. As a South African citizen born and bred in the country, she was entitled to some form of financial support from the Government.

That was not how she was raised. The Shanges had always been hard working people and had never taken handouts from anyone. Her father worked as a panel beater for one employer all his life and instilled the same industrious spirit in her. He had managed to give them a good home, food on the table and sent her to good schools.

Nomsebenzi liked earning her own keep and giving her girls the best life, she could afford. Going to stand in line outside the Social grant offices would be tantamount to giving up on ever being able to earn a living again. She was also always aware that she was raising girls that needed to learn from her that women have to earn their own keep these days.

Marriage was not for her, she had tried with her eldest daughter’s father, but they didn’t share the same dreams. Sthembiso Gumby was her high school sweetheart and they had talked about their dreams after finishing school. She would be healing the sick as a doctor and he kept on vacillating between becoming a famous musician or a movie actor. He would jokingly say that if all else failed he would be a house husband and they would have a good laugh about it.

As it turned out, Sthembiso ended up working at an Aluminium factory in Pietermaritzburg, thanks to one of his friends. The friend had scored a job because his uncle worked there and then was told to go and recruit two more people. It was a good job that paid good money.

He kept on harping about getting a second wife to expand his family, maybe it had something to do with their first child being a girl when he clearly wanted a boy. When Nondefense’s daughter was nine months old, she finally broke ties with Sthembiso and decided to make it on her own. He was free to take as many wives as it pleased him and his expanding family.

When she left, Sthembiso made it clear that he was not going to pay child support. Nomsebenzi had never asked for child support or even think of taking to court and force him to pay. At first it had just been herself and Thandiwe for the longest time. Luthando was a pleasant surprise that came just before she turned forty. Her father disappeared the day Nomsebenzi hinted at the possibility that she might be pregnant.

So, it had always been her and her girls and they had lived life to the fullest, until she was retrenched without much notice. Being unemployed after seventeen years was a complete shock to the system, but she had thought she could turn the situation around. Alas! It was not be.

CHAPTER 2

Doing manual labour, something she had not done for more than 17 years! At least it is a job, something she had not managed to secure for a whole year. Their savings were quickly running out, in fact they would not even last through this month. She has to impress her newly found employers to keep a roof over her daughters’ heads. The last thing they need is to be kicked out of their present abode. Much as it was not what she would have ever envisaged them settling in.

"You missed a spot,” announced a voice right above her head.

Nomsebenzi’s head bobbed up fast, she was about to let the voice know exactly what she thinks of his observation. He should not start with her, this has been the worst month of her life, no, let’s make it the most horrible year she had had in a while.

She shouldn’t even be scrubbing floors at Dennilson Medical Centre, her office still had her name on the door at the Greening Process Engineers. This was just a side job that was supposed to bring much needed money in until her life goes back to normal. And in her normal life, nobody would address her like that!

In her distant past, Nomsebenzi was leading and giving strategic direction to the communications team and taking responsibility for all marketing activities within her department. She was developing communications and marketing strategies and plans that covered the full mix of communications and marketing tools, including media and public relations, internal communications, brand marketing, advertising, direct marketing, digital and social media and production of materials. She also implemented a marketing and communications strategy to build brand awareness, market services, promote income generation, communicate programmes, activities, and impact.

In fact, her team had always scored incentives for a job well done, she still did not understand how she ended on the outside and a brand-new person was now running her office.

Nomsebenzi’s well thought out retort did not escape her full lips. Because she was looking up at a stethoscope hanging from a pair of blue Scrubs.

“Where?”

She asked startled out of her reverie and raised her head up higher to get a better look up at her accuser. She might be rusty in the ways of floor scrubbing, but it is one job she was sure she could do with her eyes closed and her mind on the other side of town.

Then she smelled the cologne, Old Spice, was it? The real Makoya, definitely not what her smell sense was tortured with this morning from Sergeant Ikokobetse, her newly acquired Boss. The woman must have bathed in a knock off version of Chloe Narcisse. Nomsebenzi did not remember what trick she used to stop herself from vomiting on the spot.

She met the dangling stethoscope first, followed by the expectant eyes that were waiting for a reaction. Someone else wearing the same cleaner’s uniform would probably have asked; “Where, Sir?” in a hesitant or even frightened voice.

But Nomsebenzi surprised herself by finding her calm voice.

“Where might that spot be?” she asked slanting her heading and cocking her eyes.

“Here,” He pointed at the top corner of the door.

“You’ve got jokes, heh!” was her immediate response.

He rolled his eyes, shook his head and went on his way. He was quite tall and of average build under that flaring white coat, she noticed starring at his back before he disappeared into the nearest lift.

For a while Nomsebenzi forgot about the grimy floors and walls of Dennilson Medical Centre, which had become her place of work since early that morning. She felt like her old self again, an accomplished Author, Marketing and Advertising Professional, who had conquered a few proverbial mountains over the past sixteen years and had several T-shirts to prove it.

The nerve of Mr Stethoscope over there! Who was he, the spot police? Does he do this to all the other new cleaners, or did she really looked as if she didn’t know what she was doing? She a sked herself a million other questions but could not get any answers because all the people she had started working with this morning had also been allocated their own separate isles to clean. It would have to wait until tomorrow then. Until then, those floors were not going to clean themselves!

CHAPTER 3

Nomsebenzi dragged herself home, she was dead tired. The feeling was probably made worse by the fact that the day and the next two after that had been termed “training’’, so she would not be getting any pay for them.

By the time she got home all she wanted was a hot bath and her bed, but her daughters had cooked and were waiting to hear about her first day. It was a habit they had adopted a long time ago, where they would sit around the table and relate the good, the bad and the ugly in their day. This was the glue that kept them going.

Gosh, she loved her girls. She had no idea how she would have survived this past year and the valley they had plummeted into.

She had fond memories of her first big media project; Thandi Magazine’s Bride of the Year Competition back in 1996. As a newly appointed Trainee Reporter, Nomsebenzi Shange had been in her seventh heaven, but was still not even sure if the title was well-deserved. Yet she had thrown herself into the task, got lost in the thrill of going through mounds of wedding pictures, made recommendations to her superiors and finally ended up with a shortlist of ten couples from around the nine provinces of South Africa and the newly born Rainbow Nation.

Amongst the couples who had been shortlisted was the late Vuyo and Savita Mbuli, whom she believed should have walked away with the prize as the most good looking, sophisticated, not to mention most famous couple as Vuyo had just moved from being a Continuity Presenter on Simunye (SABC1) to being a co-host of his own Breakfast Show called Morning Live on SABC2. Besides, they were a shining example of the New South African dream of all races living in harmony, with Savita being coloured and married to a Zulu man.

Despite all her arguments in favour of her favourite couple, her superiors won the battle in the end. This was a magazine for aspirational black South African women, but they were not quite at the level she was thinking at; said Linda Kelly, the Acting Editor and the rest of the management team (who were all white women who had been porched from the other magazines that were being closed down as the company was streamlining their products before the big sale) agreed with her.

According to them, Thandi magazine readers were more interested in reading stories about people who looked like them, shared the same values of raising good families and having a successful township life.

The couple that ended up with the coveted first prize of Thandi Magazine’s Bride and Groom of the Year 1996 were the Ngcobos from Montclair in KwaZulu-Natal. Nomsebenzi’s favourite couple came up a close second, with much jubilation from the rest of the judging team, composed of an all-white cast of course, from her Editor to the Office Administrator (she only realised then that being the only Reporter at the time and black, might have had its disadvantages),

Her arguments that the Mbuli’s were most deserving, down to earth and came from Durban, a city in the province where their head office was based, fell on deaf ears. She still had a sneaking feeling that the Ngcobos won because they were very traditional and just didn’t challenge any of the pre 1994 Apartheid ideas of people marrying within their own race.

She had different ideas of course but knew when to fold. At 27 years of age and a single mother of a cute little Thandiwe, Nomsebenzi was still a good little girl at heart, sucking in all the new developments in her life and career and aiming to please all. Her strategy did work for her, when Thandi Magazine closed down, as one of the casualties of the publishing industry’s budget streamlining, she was well taken care of and ended up with a token position as one of the Writers of Living and Loving, when the rest of the black journalists on Thandi were shunted off to Bona Magazine, which most of them had looked down upon as a magazine with the most unsophisticated readers.

However, all of that was in the past. The present was here, as a cleaner for Rebo Outsourcing, crouching on all fours and scrubbing yellow corners and grooves, that were apparently supposed to be white, in fact Sergeant Ikokobetse wanted to see her panties reflection on the said floor when she made her rounds later on.

That message had been delivered that morning when upon arrival, Nomsebenzi had been handed that orange and red uniform, and told that she was on training for the next three days. She had promised herself that she will do everything she can to make this work. This was her first job in eighteen months, and she needed to hold on to it and make a success of it for her two girls’ sake. They needed to know that she could still put food on their table, keep a roof over all of their heads and give them back a semblance of the comfortable life they had been accustomed to before it all came tumbling down.

They had moved from having a comfortable flat they called home in Killarney, one of the high end suburbs in Johannesburg to living in a ‘grotto’ on Empire Road, which most people still called Parktown when they had to declare where they lived, but the honest truth is; it is just a stone’s throw from the grimy and crime infested Hillbrow.

When Nomsebenzi arrived in Johannesburg from her home in what used to be Natal back then, Hillbrow was still clean and still had the remnants of how it used to be in the 70s and 80s. These days, the inner city residential neighbourhood of Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, South Africa is known for its high levels of population density, unemployment, poverty, prostitution and crime.

In the 1970s it was an Apartheid-designated “whites only” area but soon became a “grey area”, where people of different ethnicities lived together. It acquired a cosmopolitan and politically progressive feel, and was one of the first identifiable gay and lesbian areas in urban South Africa. However, due to the mass growth of the population of poor and unemployed black people after the end of Apartheid, crime soared, and the streets became strewn with rubbish. This, together with lack of investment and fear led to an exodus of middle-class residents in the 1980s and the decay of major buildings, leaving in its wake an urban slum by the 1990s.

Today, the majority of the residents are incoming migrants from the townships, rural areas and the rest of Africa, many living in abject poverty. An urban regeneration programme is underway. There are street markets, mainly used by local residents, and the Johannesburg Art Gallery contains work by major local artists including William Kentridge.

If she had her way, Nomsebenzi would have continued cocooning her daughters in the pristine suburbs of Northern Johannesburg and paying the high exorbitant monthly rentals that her high salary could afford her. However, life was different now, so, she might as well accept her situation and own up to living amongst the walking dead.

They had moved into the place at the beginning of July, and within a month, Nomsebenzi’s eldest daughter was accosted in the early hours of the morning on her way to school by a vagrant who told her that he had a long stick under his coat and would whip it up and beat her if she didn’t hand over her phone.

“Oh no, not my phone on top of everything else,” Thandiwe had related her silent prayer to her mother when she came back from school.

“I kept on walking and looking around to see if there was anyone who could help me. But all I saw were two little girls in red uniform, and my heart sank as I realised that there was nothing they could do, even if they screamed, it was highly unlikely that anyone would hear them or come out to help.” Luckily for her, the old lady who sold sweets and other refreshments next to the school must have realised that there was discord between the two people walking in-front of her and decided to intervene. She got into the middle and asked Thandiwe if she could hold one of her bags until they get to the bus stop.

“Ma, you should have seen the smile I gave her. I was so relieved to know that God had heard my prayer and decided on a speedy answer that morning.” She concluded.

Nomsebenzi said a silent prayer for all the hawking ladies who leave their homes before dawn to make sure that they are outside the schools on time so that the learners can get amagwinya (fat cakes), sweets and fruits in exchange for a few cents. Was it not for her, who knows what would have happened to her first-born child?

Nomsebenzi grew up as an only child, and some might have assumed that she would have been selfish as she did not have to share her belongings with siblings. She was quite the opposite though and always made it a point that the next person is acknowledged and made to feel comfortable.

So, it was a no brainer for her when she was old enough to have children. She wanted a ton of them, maybe it was to fill the gap she had always had as an only child. She knew that her parents loved her, but for a long while had missed having that one person she could share her experiences with.

Although Thandiwe was a quiet and un-assuming child at face value, Nomsebenzi knew that her oldest daughter had inherited her stubborn streak and probably might have tried to fight the offender off, rather than hand over her priced Blackberry without a fight. As a mother, she knew that she wouldn’t have been able to live with the thought that her daughter was another crime statistic just for a cell phone and being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

CHAPTER 4

“Are you going to scrub that corner for the whole day?” Nomsebenzi was brought back to planet earth again as Sergeant Ikokobetse towered over her. Their meeting had not been a pleasant one and things had gone downhill from there.

She was a tall, dark and menacing figure. With her black crisply ironed suit and orange shirt, she would have fitted in as a stern warden at any of the Correctional Services Facilities around the country. In fact, Sergeant Ikokobetse was a nickname that the cleaning staff had given to her behind her back. The name had belonged to a character in one of the TV shows on the National Broadcaster back in the 80s.

The staff had been very welcoming when she was first introduced to them on the first morning. By teatime, she had gotten the low down on how to handle herself around the Supervisor. From the conversations she had caught around teatime with the other cleaning staff, Nkosazana Dlomo, the Supervisor of Rebo Outsourcing was a mean character who ran that branch of the BEE cleaning company with an iron fist. She had been known to keep the night shift cleaners long past their knock off time if she wasn’t satisfied with the job they had done during the night.

Nomsebenzi didn’t have a mirror close to her to decipher whether the expression she had given in response qualified as a forced smile or a grimace. This was her second day and she was still on “training”, three days of unpaid hard gruelling labour that would determine whether she got hired as a Casual worker at the end of the week.

All of this had been explained to a group of about ten of them who were newcomers the other morning. Women of varying ages and cultures from townships around Johannesburg, whose purpose was the same as hers that morning, get employed to break the vicious cycle of poverty engulfing them and their families.

This was a whole new world and territory for her. Two years back she was at the peak of her career as a thriving Marketing and Advertising Professional; she had climbed that proverbial ladder all the way to Senior Management. At the time, statistics such as the fact that South Africa’s Unemployment Rate averaged 25.47 Percent from 2000 until 2013, reaching an all-time high of 31.20 Percent in March of 2003 and a record low of 21.90 Percent in December of 2008, was just news that she glanced in passing as a voracious reader of the written word.

But since being laid off by the Greening Process Engineers she was part of these statistics. It wasn’t easy to accept her fate, because she had a full proof plan when she left her last job that she was going to apply her skills into opening up a company of her own. She had always been a perfectionist and hard worker, and had made loads of money for other people, now all of that money would be going into her own pocket. But the company just never picked up.

Masizazi Communications and Marketing PTY (Ltd) had all the makings of a good Public Relations engine, but without a sound client list, with budgets to match, the company existed in name only. It had been exhilarating for a while to run around setting up offices, printing business cards and doing cold calls introducing herself to companies that might have needed her company’s services. However, it was not as easy, and she had thought it was going to be.

Big companies already had agencies that were servicing them, small companies were willing to let you do the work for them but didn’t have any budgets to pay for the labour. Government tenders were also an option, but the exercise was too expensive. You had to make sure that the company had a BEE and Tax Clearance certificates, had to attend briefings with a fee attached and most of those tenders demanded a portfolio of clients you had served before. Not quite easy for an ex-employee masquerading as a Rain maker. In the end, Nomsebenzi had to vacate the office premises she had rented at The Business Place, in Jozi’s SME Hub.

She had tried to play it down by telling aIl who happen to ask her how the job hunting was going that;

“I’m my own boss now.”

She had enjoyed hearing the sound of it for a while; even though there was no money coming into the company. But she had to eventually face reality when her three-year-old had fallen on her head and had to be rushed into hospital. As she set in that long queue at a public hospital, she was forced to review her life within the past eighteen months and admit that she had put her children through enough suffering. She had to show up as a parent and had then and there resolved to take whatever job offer that would come her way.

Nomsebenzi heard about the cleaning job opportunity from her neighbour, Mrs Cary North, who had been a pillar of strength since she and her two girls, had moved into the ‘grotto’. The one-bedroom flat was long, dark, with only one window bringing in just slits of the sun, which made it to resemble a cave. As she’d always been the one to try and find the funny side of any situation , Nomsebenzi had immediately nicknamed the place the grotto, to which her eldest daughter had immediately quipped; “I guess that makes us cavemen then,” and had continued to address her younger sister Luthando as Quasimodo, in honour of Salvatore Quasimodo, the Italian author and poet and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1959 , whose lyrical poetry so fully expressed the tragic experience of life in his own time.

Mrs North had asked her what field of work she was in and it had not felt easy to explain to a total stranger that she had not worked for the past eighteen months, but when she did work, she was in Senior Management in Communications and Marketing.

“From the little I know, it’s very hard to find work in that field at the moment,” she had commented. She further told Nomsebenzi that she used to be a nurse, but life had also humbled her, and she was now employed in the cleaning industry. At least she was lucky to have been employed as one of the supervisors.

She told Nomsebenzi that there were job openings at the Dennilson Medical Centre where she was currently stationed and she might be able to put in a good word for her with her employers; “But you might not find this kind of work appealing since you’ve gone all the way to Management level” she had concluded.

That statement took Nomsebenzi back to the high dreams she had started out with. Seventeen years ago, in May 1996, at the ripe age of twenty-seven to be exact, Nomsebenzi’s first novel so far, ‘’It is What you Make of It’’, had been launched to much acclaim. The teenage love story was based in the late eighties in Howick, in what was then called the Natal Province, where Nomsebenzi was born and bred. What made the story so relevant, you may ask?

Because, the book, which was published by Siyavaya Publishers, had been a dissertation for her Creative Writing Diploma which she had written on a part time basis while she was working as a domestic worker for an Afrikaans family in Johannesburg.

She had landed in domestic work because, even back in the late eighties, when she finished her matric, there was already a scarcity of jobs for people without a specified skill or a tertiary qualification. Nomsebenzi had originally set her sights on becoming a doctor because she was a very industrious student and was good in Maths and Science at school. She knew that to study for a degree in medicine required a substantial amount of money and always believed that; where there is a will there is a way.

That way was long and took a lot of twists and turns when her father, the only breadwinner and provider in the family died suddenly when she was doing standard nine. As much as she was a voracious reader, her focus was more concentrated on novels and magazines of the time, so she couldn’t crack the code into finding more information on applying for bursaries to help her pursue her chosen career.

She had then decided to fall back onto nursing and had applied to almost all the hospitals in her province. The universe was not playing ball with her and patience had never been one of her virtues. Nomsebenzi knew people who had finished their matric three or four years before her and were still waiting for an acceptance letter from any of the hospitals to study nursing.

She then made up her mind that she was going to go it alone and get to her desired destination in her own steam.

After working for two years at a local supermarket, that destination had changed from medicine to creative writing, which she had found more enjoyable as she could do it in her own time and at her own pace. The choice Nomsebenzi had made was concretised by her tutor at the Writing school.

Marie Gurr was a respected writer in her own right. She had already written more than five children’s books but kept a very low profile. Her only other vice was the pre-school that she had created for the community living in shacks next to the Durban Station.

As they went through the modules for her Creative Writing Diploma, her tutor had advised her to choose a piece of writing that she could be proud to show off and also present to the school to be assessed on to ensure that she gets her diploma. That fertile mind of hers had gone on complete overdrive;

“How about a movie about based on a story of a child born in abject poverty, who goes on to run a multi-billion Rand empire?” she had asked her tutor excitedly. Gurr had liked the idea, but thought it was very vague and far-fetched. Besides the fact that story was not quite fleshed out as yet, where was Nomsebenzi going to get the budget to produce that movie in time to get her diploma?

“Since you put it like that, I think I’ll write a novel then.” She had told her tutor.

She had been dreaming more and more about writing a novel that could actually be published and read by as many people who might find the subject matter appealing. Her tutor was convinced that Nomsebenzi’s first dream could actually come true as she read chapter after chapter that would accompany her assignments each and every month.

By the time Nomsebenzi’s body of work was introduced to Isabel Cooke, a literary agent, the principal of the school was also referring to her as their author in training. The school had done more than just asses her work, they had also approached Siyavaya Publishers on her behalf just before she got her Diploma in 1993.

Her offering was met with excitement by Siyavaya Publishers. They not only published the book, but also sat down and crafted a publicity campaign that saw Nomsebenzi interviewed by The Star, Mercury, Drum, Thandi, Pace and Next Magazines. That was just the beginning, the TV lights followed in the form of interviews on M-Net’s Front Row, SABC’s I believe you believe and a couple of Radio Stations.

The period between May to August 1996 was surreal for Nomsebenzi Shange, as she was going through all these interviews, she was watching her dream of ten years playing itself out in real life.

“Watch out world, Nomsebenzi has finally arrived!” she would whisper under her breath as she stood on podiums and related her story of hope.

Every sweat that had transpired in the past ten years were more than worth it. From packing shelves at Siphamandla Supermarket, her very first job after finishing school, to her seven years as a domestic worker were leading to this moment of glory.

When she started writing the book, it was more about getting her diploma, which she had paid for herself, as she was convinced that with a proven qualification she could progress to a better life. A life she had been working towards ever since she left school with only a matric certificate. Those odd jobs with minimum pay for almost ten years were finally paying off big!

For her, a girl who came from poverty, getting a job in the media meant more than just a better pay, it meant entering the land of the professionals and being able to hold her head high. It also meant getting a glance at a life that she had once before just dreamed of, as she sat in-front of her old typewriter late into the night.

She would write letters to the Editors of magazines such as Pace, Tribute, True Love and Drum, commenting on whatever topic she felt strongly about at the time. And boy, did she have opinions!

This was the girl who had breezed through every class in Primary school, leaving her classmates behind and collecting promotions to the next class in the middle of the year sometimes.

The classic incident that made her family question the stuff Nomsebenzi was made of happened in 1982 in her second year of High School at Georgetown High. There was a parents’ meeting at her cousins’ local primary school and none of the grownups were able to attend. Her mother had asked Nomsebenzi to attend the meeting on her behalf as she was feeling poorly. All she had to do was to sit there and listen, take notes of what was said and then bring the message back home.

As it turned out, the school had not been completely honest with the parents, because the meeting was bigger than just a parents meeting. It was an Imbizo, which is a gathering, usually called by a traditional leader. Her family were not into traditional activities, they just happened to live in a village, because her father loved big open spaces and detested township living with all his heart. He did pay all the annual obligatory fees towards the local Chief. Some people were starting to complain though, as they didn’t believe that the services offered matched the value they were charged.

Nomsebenzi was fourteen years old, a voracious reader who kept herself informed about the political situation in the country. If it was up to her, her family would have rather moved to one of the townships, such as Ashdown or Imbali, because people had more freedom to make decisions about their lives. As long as you paid for your services, you did not have to report to any Chief if you wanted to maybe hold a gathering of friends to discuss pertinent political matters in the country.

As a young woman growing up in a changing South Africa, Nomsebenzi Shange was finding her voice and SPEAK Magazine was one of her favourite mags.

Since the beginning of the struggle of apartheid in 1948, women were at the forefront of resisting the government and fighting their actions. Over the next four decades, women continued to fight for their rights not just against the restrictions of apartheid but also for their rights as women. SPEAK magazine was started in 1982 as a platform for women to voice their opinions and concerns about the future of women’s rights in South Africa.

The magazine brought together women from different communities facing the same issues to realize that they were not alone. In a letter written to the editors of SPEAK, a woman from the Philippines says that the magazine shares ’the real-life stories of so-called ‘ordinary’ women. As their stories get printed and known, one realizes that they are not ordinary at all’ (SPEAK 51). Because of the community that the magazine provided, women were able to share their personal and political lives with women that they knew were behind their cause and their demands. Throughout the years of apartheid, SPEAK magazine allowed women all over the South Africa to organise and fight against oppression in personal lives, the workplace, and in politics.

Nomsebenzi was part of the Students Representative Council (SRC) at school and they ate, slept and dreamed of politics and the Freedom from the reigning political regime. Nelson Mandela was the ultimate hero to them, even though none of them had ever laid eyes on the man. This was confirmed as the stronghold of the African National Congress (ANC) and in their meetings they would refer to each other as; ’’Comrades.”

The only fly in the ointment for all these strong believers was the fact that they all happen to reside in Natal, which was the stronghold of the Inkatha Freedom Party, under the leadership of the Chief Minister of the KwaZulu Bantustan, Mangosuthu Buthelezi.

It turned out that the “Parents meeting” that Nomsebenzi had been asked to attend, was in fact the hosting of Umntwana KaPhindangene himself. The IFP wanted to ensure that all the people who resided in the area around KwaMnyandu, eMsunduzi and Edendale were all certified members of the IFP.

After the Minister’s speech regaling the wonderful services the IFP has brought to the community, everyone was supposed to sign the register and be a fully-fledged member of the IFP. Since Nomsebenzi already knew that her heart belonged to the ANC, she could not in her right mind sign the register. She decided to stage a lone ranger walkout of the meeting, with all eyes on her, as he happened to have been sitting at the back of the hall.

The Minister himself asked her why she was in such a hurry to leave:

“Hawu Nkosazane, ujahephi usuhamba ungasayinanga neregister?”

Being a respectful Zulu girl, she politely told the Minister that she couldn’t sign that register as she is already a member of the ANC. She will however pass the message on to her parents that they would need to make a way to sign the register if they are so inclined.

The older members of the community shook their heads and begged for forgiveness on behalf of her parents. Nomsebenzi’s walkout was a topic of choice for quite some time. Her parents admonished her strongly as they were Christians and did not believe in involving themselves in the politics of the day.

This was the fire that pushed Nomsebenzi to throw herself into any project she took on. After matric she had to go straight to work as her father died in her last year of high school. When she got into Johannesburg, she was so excited in finding vibrant political conversations she could participate in. She was forever writing to papers and magazines arguing or commenting on the political situation under the State of Emergency.

Her winning letters in those days got paid R10 at the most, but her elation was not only for the money, which she would spend on a magazine or two. It was part of proving to the naysayers that; she could make money through creative writing and change her life from just surviving to being hopeful and growing from day to day.

Her greatest elation came when she got her first job in the media industry as a trainee reporter with the now defunct Thandi Magazine. In her year with them, she had the opportunity to interview some of the first members of parliament in the democratic dispensation as well as a number of budding celebrities. She felt like a triumphant member of the Rainbow Nation, as she spent the next five years riding on the cloud of our new-found freedom wave.

Amongst her notable milestones she could list; the doors that opened up for her to write for Living and Loving and Drum Magazine, where she got the opportunity to learn a whole lot more about writing as a skill, as she was mentored by the best editors and was also able to tap into and marvelled at the history of some of the greatest writers who had gone through those walls.

To see herself, Nomsebenzi Shange, holding her own in every position she had occupied in her professional career always brought a tear to her eye, especially when she remembered her father, who had worked so hard to build the confidence in her that she could do anything she set her mind to, had Ieft before he could witness some of the fruits of his labour.

As she sat down and updated her CV for a Publicity Officer position that had opened up at M-Net in 2002, it didn’t even hit her until later that she had just turned another corner in her career and was entering a completely new and exciting field of Public Relations. As much as she had written so many promotional pages in her magazine feature writing career, Nomsebenzi realised that she had to go for further training to master this new-found skill. She was in her element again as she juggled being a single mother, a part-time student again and a PR Officer.

The next five years were a breeze, and as a Media Relations Officer, she learned the art of identifying the best angles in publishable matter and negotiating for the best spot to maximise the value of her company’s offerings as a pay television platform. She still felt tremendously indebted to the media professionals who partnered with her on all those activations she was tasked to execute, some of them, such as Big Brother, were the first of many to grace not only South Africa, but the rest of Africa’s budding television industry. Those experiences were the foundation on which her growth and journey to management was built on.

After six years spent in different managerial positions within the media and communications field, she started yearning for another big challenge. She started listening to talk on entrepreneurship and was fascinated. For her, the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary definition an entrepreneur as; ‘a person who makes money by starting or running a business, especially when this involves taking financial risks,’ was just something she could see herself thriving in.

But, all of that had gone up in flames. In 2013, Nomsebenzi Shange had gone full circle, she was now back on the grind, cleaning floors at Dennilson Medical Centre for a promise of a paltry R2 500 per month. Not even a drop in the ocean when compared to the R50 000 per month she used to earn at the Greening Process Engineers.

As if that was not enough, now she has to deal with insolent Medical doctors who had eyes for missed spots!

CHAPTER 5

“Can you follow me please,’’ said Mr Stethoscope’s cool voice breaking into Nomsebenzi’s reverie again. She had survived a week of cleaning all kinds of dirt and grime at Dennilson Medical Centre. She had hoped that after they learned about all her qualifications and work experience, the powers that be at Rebo Cleaning were maybe going to offer her a position in their Marketing department, even if it was as an administrator, but Alas! Cleaning it was.

As much as she has always been her own woman and went wherever she pleased, she had come to learn that this was a different environment. Time was precious and loitering around was not encouraged, even if you get called by one of the Ward doctors, as she had found out upon asking her other teammates where Stethoscope worked.

He was the Chief of the Oncology Ward at Dennilson Medical Centre. Although cancer had never been one of her go to subjects, Nomsebenzi found herself reading up on it and asking more questions. It might have been just her imagination, but she was sure he always made a point of saying something whenever he passed her isle. It was a blessing in disguise that Nomsebenzi had travelled extensively, because anyone else in her position might have battled understanding and responding to his dry sense of humour.

So, now she was supposed to drop all and follow Dr Piet van Tonder to God knows where. Sergeant Ikokobetse was definitely not going to like this. She had warned Nomsebenzi on several occasions that her polished English was making the other workers uncomfortable. In fact, even some of the nurses were not chafed with her; ‘’show off nature’’ as they called it.

Nomsebenzi now walked on eggshells and would have walked off in a huff in other circumstances, but all she could think about was her daughters not having food at the end of the month.

“Are you coming or not?’’ Stethoscope asked again with a hint of exasperation.

’’I could get into trouble for this,” she said coolly, trying to match his long strides. ’’Ms Dlomo does not take kindly to anyone leaving their station in the middle of a shift.”

“Well, uMiss Dlomo uzobastrong,” he answered with a lopsided smile.

“Ahhh,” Nomsebenzi almost shrieked, “Look who can speak Vernacular,” she said rather impressed.

“Ah, glad to finally make a breakthrough,’’ he returned matter-of-factly. “I spent the past week trying to find out what makes you tick, Ms Shange.”

Nomsebenzi loudly whispered, in her best Professor Dumbledore rendition: ““Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.”

’’Oh, look who has jokes now!” Dr Piet van Tonder chuckled, leading the way into the Oncology Ward. He explained that the resident Assistant Nurse was going on Maternity leave. The Hospital was supposed to have organised a replacement, but there was a miscommunication with HR, so if Ms Shange were inclined to the move, this would be her new position at Dennilson Medical Centre.

“I think I’m gonna like it here,” Throwing her hands in the air, twirling around and assuming her best Annie voice, Nomsebenzi sang to her hearts content!

“ends”

References

1.https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/rounds/what-doctors-wear-really-does-matter-to-patients

2.https://www.surgeryencyclopedia.com/St-Wr/Stethoscope.html

3.https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/speak-magazine-1982-1994

4.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkatha_Freedom_Party

5.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangosuthu_Buthelezi

6.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbrow

7.https://www.sassa.gov.za/Documents/Grants-Documents/Child-Support-Grant.pdf

8.www.gov.za/services/child-support-social-benefits/child-support-grant

9.https://lymphoma-action.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/documents/2018-05/senior-marketing-and-communications-manager-job-description-and-person-spec-may-2018%20%28003%29.pdf

10.https://www.google.com/search?q=chloe+narcisse+clicks&rlz=1C1OKWM_enZA871ZA871&source=lnms&tbm=shop&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjdk_jniPjoAhW9VBUIHQxQCjoQ_AUoAXoECAwQAw&biw=1920&bih=950

11.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firstborn

12.https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/hospital-doctor

13.https://www.popsugar.com/smart-living/Best-Dumbledore-Quotes-36242499?stream_view=1#photo-36242518art writing here…