LITMIR.BIZ

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      To Survive and Succeed

      From farm boy to businessman

      Mkhuseli Khusta Jack

      Kwela Books

      ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

      ANC – African National Congress

      Azapo – Azanian People’s Organisation

      BAAB – Bantu Affairs Administration Board

      BCM – Black Consciousness Movement

      BEE – Black Economic Empowerment

      BPC – Black People’s Convention

      CIA – Central Intelligence Agency (USA)

      Cosas – Congress of South African Students

      Cosatu – Congress of South African Trade Unions

      Cradora – Cradock Residents Association

      Cradoya – Cradock Youth Association

      DPSC – Detainees Parents Support Committee

      ECC – End Conscription Campaign

      EFF – Economic Freedom Fighters

      Fosatu – Federation of South African Trade Unions

      ICS – Imperial Cold Storage

      IDC – Industrial Development Corporation

      IYY – International Youth Year

      JC – Junior Certificate

      Macwusa – Motor Assembly and Component Workers Union of South Africa

      MDM – Mass Democratic Movement

      MPLA – Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola

      PAC – Pan Africanist Congress of Azania

      Pacla – Pan African Christian Leadership Assembly

      Pebco – Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation

      Pesco – Port Elizabeth Student Council

      Peyco – Port Elizabeth Youth Congress

      PFP – Progressive Federal Party

      PLO – Palestine Liberation Organisation

      SAARB – South African African Rugby Board

      SAAWU – South African Allied Workers Union

      SACC – South African Council of Churches

      Sacla – South African Christian Leadership Assembly

      SACP – South African Communist Party

      Sactu – South African Congress of Trade Unions

      SADF – South African Defence Force

      Safa – South African Football Association

      SANROC – South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee

      SASM – South African Student Movement

      SASO – South African Student Organisation

      SCA – Student Christian Association

      SCM – Student Christian Movement

      Soyco – Soweto Youth Congress

      SRC – Student Representative Council

      Swapo – South West African People’s Organisation

      TRC – Truth and Reconciliation Commission

      UDF – United Democratic Front

      VCA – Vaal Civic Association

      VWSA – Volkswagen South Africa

      YCW – Young Christian Workers

      I am sitting on a wagon in the dusk. Jammed alongside and under me are our meagre household goods: a bed frame with coiled steel springs, a mattress of hessian bags sewn together and stuffed with dry kikuyu grass, and amakhuko – our grass sleeping mats. There’s an enamel basin, a home-made table with rough wooden benches, our three-legged cast-iron cooking pot and some larger pots used for feasts.

      A pig and some chickens with their legs tied together have also been squeezed in, squealing and squawking in protest. Someone has remembered to pack the pumpkins that were being stored on the roof of our house and our stock of dried mealies.

      Also sandwiched among our possessions is my mother, holding my toddler brother. One or two other siblings manage to find a spot, but the older ones will have to walk.

      Some of our clothes are packed into the pots, the rest are bundled in blankets and tied onto the wagon with rawhide ropes, along with last-minute, almost forgotten items.

      I am wearing the shorts I got for Christmas six months earlier, and which will have to last until next Christmas. My shirt is made from a cotton flour sack that my mother sewed on her crank-handle Singer, now also wedged onto the wagon.

      As darkness falls, the icy wind whips my face and cuts through my flimsy clothing. I huddle deeper into the warmth and comfort of an old grey blanket.

      I am six years old. It is the winter of 1963 and we are being evicted from the farm where I have lived all my life. We are being evicted – from the home I thought was ours.

      CHAPTER 1

      Without a trace

      I was born on the eastern banks of the Gamtoos River but precisely when I do not know. State and church did not agree on the moment I spluttered into existence. Officially, my date of birth is recorded as 31 May 1957, yet my Christian baptism certificate claims that I was born a day earlier. This certificate was issued to my mother by the Anglican Church of the Province of South Africa in the parish of the Order of Ethiopia at Hankey in the Diocese of Grahamstown. My mother blames the mix-up on mistranslation. Whatever the reason, my family settled on the state’s date as my birthday.

      My siblings and I were all born at home on the farm Mauritzkraal, but after I was born complications forced my mother to be admitted to Livingstone state hospital in Port Elizabeth – an entirely new experience for her. Despite the trouble I caused, she chose to name me Mkhuseli, which means ‘protector of the family’.

      My mother’s husband, Fikile Jack, had died very young, leaving her with six children, the oldest barely a teen and the youngest not yet a year old. Three years later, I was conceived through a love relationship my mother had with a man who had his own house and family. My father and I have never met. Being brought up in a home with loving uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters and an army of cousins meant I never had to think about there being a person missing in my life.

      When I was four, a baby brother entered our lives. His father was a labourer employed by what was then known as the General Post Office. He was very close to all of us but particularly to my younger brother and he occasionally arrived with a pair of short pants and a shirt for him.

      Although some older siblings were old enough to remember their own father, they knew little about him. His surname was Khethani, but Jack became the surname that was officially documented and given to all of us. Its origins are not known, but we presume it was coined by white officials who could not be bothered with surnames they could not spell or pronounce.

      Fikile was a proud and dignified man who loved and practised all the Xhosa customs and traditions. This I gleaned from the fact that my grandfather never implied that Fikile had been in arrears with his lobola payments and because all my grandfather’s children spoke of him with respect. I could tell which of the sons-in-law had met their lobola obligations on time: their children enjoyed better treatment and more attention in the household.

      By the time he died Fikile had accumulated some livestock – cattle, goats, pigs and chickens – and had implements to till the land. For years after his death, these assets helped to sustain us until some of his children were old enough to fend for themselves. I, of course,

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