LANGUAGE DIFFICULTIES
I have my fair share of regrets and not least among these is the fact that I did not learn a black language such as Xhosa. Being on the border of Lesotho, Sterkspruit has about equal numbers of Sotho and Xhosa speakers. Heaven knows I could have picked up at least a basic command of say Xhosa but I never tried, thinking it would be pointless as I wasn’t going to be there long! And I guess I was lazy too, just as I was at school.
Yet I did pick up the odd word here and there but could not string a sentence together. Xhosa has the advantage of being spelled phonetically and I learned to pronounce words and names by reading them out loud and have Jakes correct me. He taught me about all the clicks one finds in the language and how to pronounce them. Apart from the basic C, Q & X clicks, I found the sounds could be further augmented by adding an N or a G. So for instance, a Q could go NQ or GQ . I also discovered the rolling R of Afrikaans sounded more guttural in Xhosa. Today I can look at the new name of Port Elizabeth, GQEBERHA and not find it an unpronounceable mouthful of consonants. (I pity our trading partners who are confronted by this word though. I wonder if the zealous name-changers in the ANC ever thought about how other nations would cope with the strangeness of such names?)
Just for fun, let me recall the names of some of my staff :
Anderson Msekeli Hlalukana
George Sakhakude Mehlomakulu (The latter meaning “Big Eyes”)
Bryce Xorile Magengenene
Ian Mgijima
Joseph Mbuli
Assistance Mbambisi Poyo
Notice how many names/surnames start with the letter M. The size of the M savings ledger eclipsed all the others by a huge margin!
I have already mentioned that my Xhosa name was Ndevu Ebomvu. Colin Pankhurst was known as “Umfana Emondi” – the Boy from East London. I think it’s a charming custom but time has unfortunately necessitated another name change for me as my beard is closer to snow white than red now and Jakes is no longer here to rename me. I had sympathy for one poor Sterkspruit mother who had named her child, Igamapelile which I believe means, “Names are finished”. She had obviously had such a string of kids that she had run out of names for them! Another named her kid “Mahlale Shushu” which means “always hot” or “always drunk”. That probably was prophetic …
INITIATION RITES
I had heard that initiation rites were an integral part of the culture of the region but I had no idea what it entailed. I was brought up to date by my friend Jakes when my cleaner, Jeremiah Molefe, who had only a week before returned from leave, told me he wanted to take unpaid leave. I was annoyed and even more so when he refused to tell me why. He was adamant and promised that he would resign if we could not grant him the leave.
Mystified, I consulted Jakes who let me into Jeremiah’s secret. Up until then, he had been head of his family, being the oldest son but a younger brother, who had undergone the initiation circumcision, was challenging for the senior position as Jeremiah, despite being middle-aged, had not attended an initiation school when he was young and had not been circumcised. In the eyes of his family, he was technically still a boy. The position of family head was so important to him that he was prepared to forfeit his job in order to go through the process needed for him to retain his position.
I thought the whole idea quite laughable but Jakes warned me that I should treat this matter very seriously, which needless to say, I did. So, along with a whole bunch of teenage boys, Jeremiah was what they called “inkwenkwe” (Boy) and wrapped in his “karos” (Animal skin)/blanket he went off into the cold veld. Much of what happens at what they sometimes call a “donker skool” (Dark school) I could not glean but was told that the removed foreskin has to be sewn into a corner of the karos/blanket for the full duration of his healing time. The initiations were always done in winter, the better for the wound to heal but it must have been hell for those lads, essentially naked except for the karos/blanket.
Anyway, Jeremiah came back, pretty chastened by his ordeal and although I teased him about his “Ijwabi” (foreskin), he would not discuss the matter but Jakes reported that the pecking order had been restored in Jeremiah’s family. (No pecker pun intended)
For the record, I consider ALL circumcisions a barbaric practice, which has no place in our modern world. Nature put the foreskin in place for a reason and I feel it should be left in place to fulfil Nature’s plan for it. On the whole I am very against the retention of senseless practices just for the sake of cultural tradition or religion. Now stand back so that the zealots can get their hands on this old heretic……..
MUSICALITY
I’ve always loved music and always will but I don’t play an instrument or sing in choirs. Once upon a time I used to sing “karaoke-style” in my car as I travelled and somewhere I still have a tape of those efforts. I think while I don’t have perfect pitch, I do have quite a good musical ear and a sense of rhythm but it’s quite safe to say that I’m very average musically.
Black folk generally are a totally different kettle of fish – they are universally musical, with incredible choral and harmonic talent. When Tom Wiggett, the original Sterkspruit manager was transferred, a number of the local communities organized farewells for him, which I also attended. I never liked choirs, especially not school choirs. They were just pure cacophony to my ears; just a bunch of kids making awful noises. Yet the first farewell for Tom induced a radical change in my opinion of choirs as I listened in wonder to how a large group of black people sang some traditional songs. Every voice in that choir was producing perfect sounds, totally blending with the others to the extent that one could not isolate a voice at all. Every singer, whether a bass, a tenor, a soprano or whatever, knew his or her level in the choir apparently instinctively and harmonies soared as they sang. But hey! This was not the Mormon Tabernacle choir I was listening to but a tiny Village choir in a remote part of South Africa – not the slightest bit unique or different to many others. As we toured from function to function, I looked forward to the sublime singing and I was never disappointed.
I’ve been implying that this choral singing ability among the black people of South Africa was cultural but how do you account for the fact that a random selection of pre-primary white kids will almost always produce an unmusical noise when singing together while a similar bunch of black kids will be a choir? I now think the talent is a genetic trait and that it’s a rare black kid that is not able to sing. I don’t understand how they slip so easily into a harmony because it simply is not easy when I try it!
A fine example of this talent emerged years later when I had returned to Sterkspruit to audit the branch. During the weekend prior to my arrival, one of the staff members had been killed in a motor accident at Herschel. As he was from Engcobo, his funeral was to take place there but his colleagues decided to arrange a memorial service in Sterkspruit for him. I was amazed when that group used their lunch hour to practice singing a number of songs for the service. They were just ordinary male and female bank clerks, not normally choir members and yet they sang together as if they had done so for years. I listened raptly as each person found his/her level and place in the choir and glorious music emerged. No one voice dominated the sound – they were just a single voice to my ears. I wish I could have recorded that little recital.
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