Chapter 1: Brother’s from Other Mothers – Geoffrey, Qaba, Timothy

Solomon Cedile and I met in 2002 at a presentation by Thabang Ngcozela with Environmental Justice Networking Forum, EJNF. Thabang Ngcozela is no longer with us, 1966 to 2019, may God rest his soul.

“Eh, Comrade, Point of Order, Comrade! Comrade Thabang Ngcozela is eternally in our souls and buried in the heart of our South African soil. 

“So near yet so far away,

Spirit of a new African day,

Oh how we sang that song to be free,

In our hearts and in our dreams…” 

* “Woza Moya” by Juluka

In the beginning of this century and during the years leading up to 10 years of democracy in South Africa, Solomon was spearheading Community Networking Forum CNF, and I was networking but seldom RECYCLING nor able to sell my Recycle-ABLE campaign. Fired into action by a fiery redhead, who I was dating at the time, we were changing our world, developing new economic models that were sane, meeting underground characters who had been the caretakers of the revolution, challenging the system! 

She warned me at that time “Stay away from that man!” 

Time has passed, but even with the right to vote nothing has changed, but he is still “my brother from another mother”. 

He may have used the term lightly, but it was heavily weighted for me. Brutalised by the Broederbond, the Bantu peoples did not live as our friendly neighbours over the fence. 

“Hi howzit? Can I lend a bottle of milk for my coffee, man broer?“

“Molo boetie. How is your mother sleeping? Sky is dark today. I hear baboons calling a warning. The trees are uncomfortable wearing their roots today. I have heard that one day us people who are the Abaqabi will vote standing next to you, not behind you, at a day in the future I can see with my own eyes…” 

“Ja, lekker! My mother? Oh, the Madam. She got a hernia. Give me milk, man, before my coffee goes cold?“

We lived not even a stones throw away from our colourful neighbours, those people, they even had their own countries, called homelands. 

However… we were never neighbours. 

We were “whites”. 

They were “coloureds”. 

They were “blacks”. 

However… many stones were thrown. 

“She’s built more homes than fingers on her hands… 

A sharecropper’s wife living on county crown land…” 

** “Mama Shabalala” by Juluka, Sipho Mchunu and Johnny Clegg 

“Stay away from that man!” 

20 years later, counting all my fingers on both my calloused hands, and all my toes, blistered and battered on both my worn feet, I still have my toast buttered on both sides.

Solomon says, 

“You guys won, man! We fought for freedom, and still today I live in a little shack on a yard as big as your front stoep (veranda). 

You guys won! 

And now you, Geoffrey, you want take me walking around your house, and show me your childhood garden where you used to play, and unlike me, you had trees in your garden, you even had your favourite trees you loved to climb. 

You want to traumatise me?!?” 

I threw compassion and caution to the wind, my need was so great to share the spirit of my family home, Glenora. 

At age 40 Solomon let go of his Judaic Christian Biblical name, and adopted the first name of Kwame Nkrumah, first President of Ghana, with an ideology absolutely free from imperialism. 

At age 50 Nkwame let go of the name common in Ghana, and took the name Qaba. You know us Whiteys, we cannot say the clicks! The iQaba were Xhosa people who resisted Christianity and Colonisation. The Abaquibi tradition to smear their skin with red ochre was looked down upon by new converts to the religion of the Europeans. 

Qaba told my daughter, “Your father was a soldier in the South African Defence Force, SADF, for what? To defend white privilege. I myself crossed the border to undergo military training in Tanzania with Umkhonto We Siswe, MK, fighting with the spear of the nation against white supremacy and it’s privilege.” 

My daughter, India Keaton Babb, was born in 1999 and in 2022 at age 22 is studying at University of Cape Town, UCT.

Qaba’s daughter, Zukiswa Cedile, was born in 1999 and in 2022 at age 22 is studying at University of Cape Town, UCT. 

I flew away from the land of my birth to be witness to the death of my father in his new home in the State of Oklahoma, in the United States of America. 

I was in a state of shock! 

2006 America was like 1976 Apartheid, with Big Bother watching one’s every movement, with friendly faced neighbours judging one’s every intention, with socially accepted faces becoming the persons actual personality and their belief of who they really are. 

I was in a state of turmoil when my father, who had flown from The Struggle in his Motherland, commanded that I “may keep my Black friend but must only meet him elsewhere, and just never bring him home.” 

I never forgave my Father and never forgot, until I came deeply to understanding him, that he was, unjust as it appeared, only protecting his survival in The Land of The Free. 

My Father was a new settler in an inland farming community whose conservative estimation of eternity gave their historically recent settlement of Gods land his commandments and bestowed upon them the human right of judgment against their fellows. 

My Father repented. He tightened his Bible Belt and bit his bottom lip, swallowed his pride and principles, adopted prejudice, and conformed to necessary conformity to fit in, to win friends, to influence people, to be admired and be respected, and finally to convince colleagues and clients to travel to Africa. 

William Keaton Wright is no longer with us, 1926 to 2006, may God rest his soul. He was an angry man, who lived with great passion, and died with a great fear of what is unknown. 

I have not forgotten him, he is living The African Dream, and his ashes are scatterlings, near his rocky childhood beach, in the ocean, in the wind. 

Moya is wind. 

Moya is spirit. 

“Show me your anger and I’ll show you my fear, 

Give me your hand and I’ll draw you near, 

You’ve been down so long, I’ve been so long afraid, 

To share what shines beneath each African day…” *

At age 40, on returning from The United States of America to South Africa, I missed the 40th birthday of Timothy Hewitt-Coleman in 2007 because I had not been converted to a certain computer networking application. [Facebook] 

Timothy and I were caught in The Hippo Trap in the dark and freezing decay of the township of White City Location. In the dead of night in armoured vehicles we were driven down a sewerage and mud flooded street… right into an Ambush! Ordered against our will and our despite our resistance, the superior officer was significgantly inferior in his judgment. 

Disregard for human life. 

Regardless and nevertheless, Sergeant “Blackie” Swart slept safely back at base camp.

Delusions of a normal life. 

Slept safely, while myself and two terrified school boys with with only six months of military training stayed to defend the abandoned military vehicle from after midnight until reinforcements were detached with the morning light. Last year they were school boys, maybe drinking their first beer, maybe experiencing their first kiss, maybe teasing their mates about smelly finger. 

This year the boys clung to their sanity, maybe drinking in their first kiss with death… and it’s dark stench. 

This night the boys clung to their weapons with whitening knuckles… white from freezing weather and fear in denying the dreadful realisation that our destiny was not in our hands, nor in the hands of our White leaders. 

Their lives were at the mercy of the everyday residents in this township. Residents who for over 40 years had been discriminated against because of the colour of their skin. Residents who had been denied the right to vote for their own choice of leadership in their own country of their own birth. Residents with many an axe to grind and patiently still sharpening their spears. Residents who organised a consumer boycott in August 1985, where black communities stopped buying from white owned businesses in Queenstown. Residents who, if they failed to show their lodger’s permit could be dragged in the dead of night from the warmth of their homes, arrested by the police. Residents whose children delayed their 3rd Class education as Black schools were on boycott in protest of the assassination of The Cradock Four. Residents whose children played in the streets and received an education as witnesses of a Coloured resident “necklaced” by forcing a car tyre over his neck, down over his shoulders and disabling his arms from escape , as the residents who may have been uncles or cousins, but nevertheless brothers, set the tyre on fire and burned him alive. Residents whose children fled in the streets from a vigilante group of Coloured residents in retaliation who attacked the black people, indiscriminately, and were supported by the South African Police, SAP and armed soldiers of the South African Defence Force, SADF. Residents whose children learned not to say a word of incriminating evidence after witnessing the brother of a suspected Apartheid informer “necklaced” in their township playground. Residents of low dilapidated homes, single room homes with communal shared public toilets at the far end of the street. Homes ironically laid out in the grid of perpetual perpendicular and parallel streets of order in the European mind set of mind control, homes not in the natural form and flow of organic practical accessibility to life supporting resources of water, soil and sunshine. Homes in a township ironically called White City Location. 

Mlungisi Township, Queenstown, Eastern Cape, Republic of South Africa. 

The location of the most violent of massacres, second only to the massacre of school children in the Soweto riots in 1976.  Children protesting the law that forced them to have their education in a language that was not their home language, that was not of their mother tongue. 

The 1985 Queenstown Massacre, occurred less than 2 years before we arrived to occupy 

the township of White City Location, in 1987.  Our temporary military base was formally an African shebeen, or informal beer hall, which had been burned out and mostly destroyed during the riots. As protection against further destruction and the soldiers likelihood of death, there was low roll of barbed wire right around the dilapidated building which held fort in the middle of a large field of dry yellow grass. As security sentries, two more young boys clasping their weapons with whitening knuckles against the freezing night, cuddled as close to a blazing fire as they could for comfort. 

The Black African township of Mlungisi surrounded our temporary military base while we slept, however inadequately defended. The Black residents also slept, except those workers working the night shift for more pay, and for the unofficial soldiers of the MK, the AmaButho, who were busy digging their next Hippo Trap in the dark. To these Residents we were the White enemy… regardless of our sentiments. 

We as soldiers were intentionally uninformed of the severity of our situation. Residents gathered in Nonzwakazi Methodist Church to hear feedback from their Local Residents Association, who had met with authorities including the Department of Education and the Chamber of Commerce, to discuss the end of the consumer boycott. Instead, the South African Police stormed into the meeting, opened fire on the residents. The Minister of Justice, said in Parliament that nobody was criminally liable. However in 1996, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissionfound the SADF and SAP guilty and accountable for 14 residents shot dead, and 22 residents injured. 

We were White and we were the enemy… regardless of our sentiments. 

As Conscripts into The South African Defence Force, SADF, Timothy and myself were the only two white English speaking non-commissioned officers, and we were surrounded by the white Afrikaans speakers with their attitude of brutality towards the black Africans… regardless of their sentiments. 

“Skiet die vokkin’ kaffirs!” 

Timothy married Nomahlubi, a Black African woman, and bore three children who are of mixed race, with a brown skin, with defined cheek bones, and with dark eyes. 

I met and spoke with Timothy’s son. 22 year old, Noah Mzwandile Hewitt-Coleman is gentleman and in 2022 at age 22 he is studying at University of Cape Town, UCT. 

Myself and Qaba were born in 1966, with Timothy trailing a year behind. In 1966, Kwame Nkrumah, was deposed as first President of Ghana by The National Liberation Council. In 1994 Nelson Mandela became the first President of the newly democratic South Africa. 

Mandela is the hero of the lighter shades of The Rainbow Nation. 

“Mandela?” 

says a darker voice… 

“Mandela sold us out!” 

Moya is wind. Moya is spirit. 

“Woza Moya muhle

Sibambana ngezandla sibemunye

(Come good spirit

Let us hold each other’s hands and be one)” *

My Mother, Doreen, celebrated her 90th birthday in 2022, with contestant family, at our family home, Glenora. Doreen has had 17 mobile phones stolen from her home… 

Oops, another one stolen just last week, so that’s 18, possibly by the same person who the previous time beat her, and stabbed her with a knife, and hospitalised an elderly lady, my Mother. Possibly the person who arrives as a man, commits the crimes, but who leaves dressed as a woman… disguised to challenge the prejudices of safe white suburbia. 

Stabbed and Hospitalised, Doreen Wright, despite her age, despite all that she has worked for in children’s education, despite her dedication to start and sustain  a school for children with disabilities, despite her selfless non-judgment of creed and of colour… an enemy… regardless of her sentiments…

“An old lady walking down the dusty farm road, 

Looking for a simple home, 

She doesn’t want anything extremely smart, 

And she doesn’t need a telephone…” ** 

For myself, I trust that the next generation, Zukiswa, India, and Noah, will connect and not just over a telephone… 

For my Brother’s From Other Mothers, Qaba and Timothy, you have blessed me by knowing me, Geoffrey, as you have blessed this land and it’s people… 

For my Mother, I trust she will look after our family home… 

For the Spirit, I trust you will continue to bless and look after my Mother and our families, and our land… 

“Doreen, you and I are old. We must write our family stories down, or they will die and be forgotten.” 

Timothy met my mother, Doreen, for the first time, at my family home, Glenora, in 2022, and, with his words, teased her and her “sharp sharp” memory! 

Qaba met my mother, Doreen, for the first time, and my daughter India for the second time, at our family home, Glenora, in 2022, and we laughed and chatted and challenged as we sat around a braai fire, on our large front lawn, beneath the largest of our trees in our garden, beneath the largesse of the stars in a dark African sky. 

Written by: 

Geoffrey Wright 

2022/02/27 

Glenora, Somerset West, Cape Town, South Africa 

Copyright © Geoffrey Wright 

SONGS quoted: 

* Woza Moya

Song by Juluka, Sipho Mchunu and Johnny Clegg 

** Mama Shabalala

Song by Juluka, Sipho Mchunu and Johnny Clegg