LITMIR.BIZ

      I was around six or seven years old when we went overseas with Daddy for the first time, really over the seas, I mean. Flying to East Germany, part of Soviet Russia, was by far the longest trip I had ever been on.

      Daddy’s ties with the Soviets were strong. He had gone into exile to the Soviet Union in 1963, long before I was born. Along with 30 MK cadres, he initially went for six months’ military training but that was extended to a year when many of his comrades were arrested on Liliesleaf Farm back in South Africa. In 1974 Daddy went back to that part of the world, to East Germany, for three months’ military training.

      Taking off from the little airport in Maseru on a rickety old plane, then flying to Zambia to meet Daddy, who was waiting for us, to head off in a huge plane, all together as a family over the huge continent of Africa to East Europe, took what felt like forever! What I remember most was the sweet fragrance of summer in Eastern Europe.

      On another trip, we went to the seaside on the Baltic, with my parents and Uncle Thabo and Aunt Zanele. I absolutely loved staying in that hotel, which had a glass elevator. My sister Neo and Aunty Zanele really hit it off that holiday, spending hours together doing keep-fit exercises to Jane Fonda videos.

      I can still smell the freshly baked bread that seemed to waft from every part of the hotel. I adored spending time with my father, playing in the water alongside him as he swam, and mischievously pressing all the buttons of the elevator just because I could. I can’t remember being quite as carefree and happy as on that holiday.

      Then there was the holiday with Daddy when we flew all the way to Russia, where my love affair with collecting teddy bears began, and the rides in Gorky Park spun in my memory long after the holiday ended.

      But the highlight of that trip was viewing Lenin’s body displayed in Moscow. We queued in Red Square among hundreds of tourists for what felt like an eternity. I had no idea what we were waiting for, but when I stood in front of the glass coffin I remember that sense of utter amazement. Lenin had died in 1924 at the age of 53, but almost 70 years later his body was still perfectly preserved. It was such a powerful sensation; I just knew that I was witnessing something great. Who would have known that fewer than six years later, I would be standing in front of my own father’s coffin lying in state.

      It was such an anti-climax going back home to Lesotho, leaving behind all the exoticism, the new tastes and landscapes of Russia. Home and Maseru meant returning to school, which was a depressing thought on its own. But much more than the onset of school, after spending six whole weeks with Daddy, watching him leave us again left me totally bereft. I had learned to accept that greetings and partings were just the way of our existence and somehow I knew life would carry on regardless.

      The year that I turned nine Daddy came to visit us at home in Maseru. I waited at the entrance of Devcourt for what seemed like hours, scanning every vehicle that happened to drive past or stop to see if I could spot his car. When his dark sedan eventually drove through the entrance I began screaming like a banshee while sprinting behind it. The next day was school, and the thrill that my father was going to take me to school for the first time in my life was more than I could bear. I wanted to show him everything, but more importantly I wanted to show him off to all my peers and teachers. In fact, I was hoping that the entire school would notice Daddy by my side – that’s how proud I was of him. All the other kids at school had fathers and mothers who lived together, and now it was my turn to have my perfect little Huxtable family.

      That Saturday Prep was holding its inter-house school cross-country races and thereafter the parents were expected to participate. I ran my race as fast as my little legs could carry me, managing to come either first or second. But the price that I paid for my blind enthusiasm was not pacing myself, so I stood for a good 15 minutes after the race, panting like a wild dog, trying to catch my breath. But seeing Daddy bursting with pride made every rasping breath worth it.

      Naturally, being the fitness fiend that he was, when Daddy ran the parents’ race, he came in first. As I watched him take the lead, I screamed myself hoarse, “Go, Daddy!” from the sides. I don’t think I had ever experienced a prouder moment.

      All too soon, the precious time with Daddy flew by and, without warning, the dreaded moment arrived to say goodbye. Somehow this time felt different, because this time I was not saying goodbye to him in some foreign land. For the first time in my life, since the Lesotho Raids, when I was barely two years old, he had entered the very centre of our existence. Briefly, I had felt the unguarded joy of having him live with us and how it felt to have a father as part of our daily lives. And now he was leaving.

      CHAPTER 4

      Daddy

      Over the years many people have asked me what it was like having Chris Hani as my father.

      I believe every little girl, if she is lucky, considers her father her hero. I was no exception. I didn’t realise that my father was the Chris Hani until after he died. To me, he was just Daddy. Yes, I acknowledge he didn’t live with us like so many of my friends’ fathers did with them, but that made no difference to me. This was our lived existence. I knew no other way.

      Most people find it absurd that, as a child, I didn’t know that my father was an exceptional freedom fighter. That’s because my parents succeeded in making sure that I had the most normal childhood I could possibly have. My father made sure to phone us and speak to each one of his daughters while he was in exile. The conversations were never about world affairs. Instead, I would tell him that I came first in a race or that there was a girl at school who was bullying me. Not matter what I chose to tell my father, he would listen intently and give me advice as though I was discussing the freedom of Nelson Mandela. I now realise that that’s one of the reasons he is one of the most beloved leaders of the struggle – his capacity to listen to every problem as though his life depended on it.

      I often wish I had asked Daddy more about his experiences as a boy, when he was growing up in South Africa. If I’d known I would not have him around for much longer, I would have grabbed every hour we had together, to find out about his childhood home and family, what inspired him as a boy growing up in a small village, and what he dreamed about when he went to sleep at night under the huge black sky.

      What I do know is that my father arrived on this earth on 28 June 1942 in the tiny rural Eastern Cape village of Sabalele in Cofimvaba, about 200 kilometres from East London. It was the same year that the first Archie comics were published, there were race riots in Harlem, New York, and Jews in European Nazi-occupied territories were ordered to wear a yellow Star of David.

      Daddy was christened Martin Thembisile Hani, but later decided to give himself the name Chris, which was actually the name of his younger brother. His father, my paternal grandfather, Gilbert Hani, was, according to Daddy, a man who would love to have been educated but was instead a semi-literate migrant worker on the mines in the old Transvaal. My grandfather later found low-paying work as an unskilled worker in the building industry, as well as trying to eke out a living as a hawker. Daddy hardly ever saw his father, who was away from home most of the year, struggling to make a pittance.

      While Daddy’s family – his brothers Uncle Victor and Uncle Chris and his mother, Nomayisa Hani – continued to live in Cofimvaba, my grandfather, whom I grew up knowing as Tamkhulu, moved to Mafeteng, about 76 kilometres south of Maseru. Mafeteng literally means ‘The Place of the Passers-by’.

      Occasionally, Mama would take us to visit him but I always dreaded it because I truly disliked the woman he lived with, the one who turned out not to be my grandmother, as I had thought – a fact I only found out a few years

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