Andile Gaelesiwe: Remembering

By Andile Gaelesiwe

Andile Gaelesiwe is the adored Khumbul' ekhaya host. She was raped by her father at the age of 11. The second rape was by a taxi driver who beat her up. Andile entered the music scene with the big hit of the late 90s, Abuti Yo. She started Open Disclosure for rape survivors. This fierce, at times funny memoir, an insight into Andile’s consciousness that keeps reviving her will reverberate in young and adult readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: May 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9780624089322

Andile Gaelesiwe

Andile Gaelesiwe hosts the popular TV show, Khumbul' ekhaya. She founded the sexual victim survivor NGO, Open Disclosure. At YFM she started YCARES. She released five music albums. Some achievements: Youth Development Trust Award; Women Demand Dignity Award; Amnesty International anti-sexual violence ambassador; Bill Clinton democracy fellowship.

Book preview

Part One

Growing up in Meadowlands

Remembering One

Phiriphiri Street, Meadowlands

– umgwaqo lowo

O tla utlwa makgowa a re

Are yeng ko Meadowlands

O tla utlwa makgowa a re

Are yeng ko Meadowlands, sthandwa sam’

You’ll hear the whites say: Let’s move to Meadowlands;

Meadowlands, Meadowlands, Meadowlands, my love.

– ‘Meadowlands’ by Strike Vilakazi

Darkness

… but I remember that there was a man next to my grandmother’s house. I don’t know exactly what he did to me but I can see myself lying on a bed, a bunk or something, and he is touching me. And then I don’t know what happens after that. Lights go out. It is dark.

And then there was light. I was born in the township of Meadowlands, which is immortalised in the song, on September 13, 1973, just three years before the Soweto uprisings on June 16, 1976.

It was after midnight at Meadowlands Clinic when I was born, my head covered in a ‘white veil’. According to African belief, a child born under those circumstances is umntwana wenhlanhla, a child of fortune. It is often said that a child born with a caul will become a healer when he or she grows up. This amniotic sac or ‘veil’ symbolises a blessing, but this blessing can sometimes be wrapped in a curse.

Any gift you receive also carries great responsibility. With every light comes darkness. Depending how you handle that gift, it can bring blessings or become a problem for you later in life.

There is a belief that the veil needs to ukuphahlelwa and ukuthandazelwa in a certain way; there is a ritual to make sure it always works in your favour because if it is not taken care of in a particular way, it can appear to be a curse rather than a blessing.

I learnt later from my grandmother that the veil that covered my head at birth had mysteriously disappeared from the clinic.

But there is a higher being in whom I trust.

* * * *

My mother is the eldest of her siblings, and the only girl. I am my mother’s firstborn, two more children would come later.

That is why I was named Andile to say ‘andile amantombazane’, meaning the number of girls in the family has increased. I have two names: the second is a Greek word, Eugenia, meaning well born.

I was sickly while I was growing up. I was always in and out of hospital. One of my legs wouldn’t work properly, making it difficult for me to walk. My mother would take me to traditional healers and they would tell her that they could not heal me because I was an inyanga (healer) myself. During my teens, there were times that I did not go to school because I was not well, my hospital visits continued through my late teens into my early twenties.

Throughout these years, Meadowlands, or Ndofaya as it is popularly known, was my home – the place of my childhood and youth. My mother’s memory of how we got to Ndofaya is hazy, but what I know is that her family, the Masekos, had lived in Alexandra before they moved to this part of Soweto with my grandmother.

I come from a very well-respected family. Our queen mother is Jane Thandekile Maseko and she comes from a large family of seven daughters and two sons. We call her NaMaseko – LaMaseko in Swati. She married into the Sibanda family. My mother, Dolly, was NaMaseko’s firstborn. Her father, Dube, did not raise her. Instead, she grew up with the Sibanda family. She was followed by three boys, Sphiwe, Sifiso and Dumisani.

My mother has me as the firstborn, and my siblings are Sonto and Koketso.

Sonto is the mother of Kamogelo.

Koketso is the father of Thoriso and Kagoentle.

Sphiwe, who comes after Dolly, is the father of Khosi, Poppy, and Lusizo.

Sifiso is the father of Themba and Zonke.

Dumisani is the father of Thami and Lerato.

Our queen mother is the firstborn of my great-grandmother, MaKhumalo, followed by Ivy, Muriel, Leonard, Mfanekhaya and Thami – the only surviving sibling. Thami is the mother of Nono, Sipho and Popo. Two of her other children passed away. My great-uncles Mfanekhaya and Leonard never had children. Muriel has a daughter, Phumza, and a son, Zivuyise. Ivy is the mother of Thulani. Thulani who then fathered two kids, Monde and Sihle.

On my father Gaelesiwe’s side is his brother, Bra Moss, who passed away without any children.

There is uncle Bobby, who has two daughters, Mmabatho and Keabetswe.

Then there is Uncle Pule, who recently returned from exile; he has two children, Andile and Oratile.

Other relatives include Otlareng, Kenalemang, Charlie and Nthabiseng, who are children from my father Gaelesiwe’s brothers.

My father also has a sister, Waitse, whose son is Mabuza.

Although I never met my grandfather Dube, my mother found his family in Cape Town, and we had a big get-together.

These people are my family. They have my back. Like all families, we fight, but we are still family and we love each other.

My grandmother Jane was affectionately called Stephanie Forrester, after the no-nonsense soapie character in The Bold and the Beautiful. A true matriarch. You couldn’t touch her kids. If you did anything to any of her children she would go and make sure that justice was served in her own way.

My biological father is Philemon Mofokeng. Mofokeng was his stepfather’s surname. His biological surname is Mntshilibe.

Perhaps you are wondering why I am telling you about my biological father, after having mentioned the man who raised me, Gaelesiwe. There is a good reason.

What I can tell you is that in his youth, he was a famous musician who travelled a lot. He was tall, light skinned and good looking. When he and my mom met, they had a brief relationship and I was the product of that. He started abusing my mom and must have left her while she was pregnant because he did not even want to come and see me when I was born.

Now, I want to rather talk about my friends. I had a friend next door named Fofo, who was Sotho. Next to Fofo’s house lived the Mabaso family.

On the right side of our house I had a friend named Millie – she was Tsonga. In the two houses next to Millie’s lived a Xhosa family, and on the other side a Venda family.

As you can see, on just the one street in Meadowlands you would find people from different ethnic backgrounds. Phiriphiri Street in Meadowlands, lowomgwaqo lowo – that, is a street, one that represents the diversity of our country. This is how I learnt to speak a range of languages, something that would help me later in my TV-presenting career.

Soon after I started school, my mother sent me to Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal. I did Sub B at Hlabana Primary School in Madadeni and during that time one of the most significant things I discovered was that I could not see properly. I was a confident kid but I would feel very slow, dumb and shy because I had a problem with my eyesight. I remember one day being asked to read the word Uxamu on the board. I could only read the first two letters and could not see the rest.

In Newcastle I lived with MaKhumalo. There was not always enough food, so sometimes we had to eat iskhokho from pap, and drink black tea without sugar. Some family members were unhappy about me and my cousins living with our great-grandparents while our mothers were supposedly having a good time in Johannesburg.

It was hard for our great-grandparents because she was unemployed and had us children to support. But her two granddaughters, our mothers, would either send money for food or bring money with them when they came to visit.

I was at Hlabana Primary School for about a year before returning to Meadowlands. Although I had spent only a short time in Newcastle, I was already speaking deep isiZulu and had adopted certain words and Zulu mannerisms. When I went back to Joburg my friends started calling me Ehhene because that was my favourite expression for agreeing to things.

I was back to living with my grandparents in Meadowlands. It was nice living with them because they were very fond of me. Our grandmother, NaMaseko, was strict but very loving. In addition to my mom and me, there was my sister Sonto, my uncle Sphiwe and his wife, who was a fun person to be with, and my uncle Dumisani. We all shared a four-roomed house.

One of my first memories of growing up in Meadowlands is of a man who lived in a room next door to us. I can’t remember the exact details but I know that my first experience of rape and sexual abuse did not start with my biological father, but with this man.

I played with other children while growing up in Phiriphiri Street, but I spent most of my time indoors. Now I realise that was when I started being afraid of people.

I cannot blame my family because they did not know what was happening. Although, I thought Malum’ Sphiwe’s wife knew what the man who lived next door was doing to me but did not say anything. They were living with us at the time but when she and my grandmother were not getting along they moved out, which resulted in us not seeing our uncle for about ten years.

I remember coming back from school to a house without adults. Some of my uncles did not always treat us well. Sometimes they would spend the money saved for bread and other times they would hide the bread on top of one of those colourful long cupboards with drawers. The bread was beyond our reach so we would only eat when they gave us food.

If you reported them to the adults they would hold it against you and would not be nice when you were left with them again. But it was part of growing up and you always knew that your family was there and that they loved you. Even if some people treated you badly, you always knew that you had a grandmother who loved you.

My mother was also there in her own way. But my childhood was still very tough. Some of the choices I have made as an adult are a result of my early impressions as a child.

You see, when you are born, your mind is open and blank and your heart is full of love. You have no previous experiences, but as life happens, that pure soul starts gathering dark patches. You start keeping secrets and your innocence leaves you because you feel as if you have taken part in someone violating you, that somehow it has happened with your consent.

Keeping that secret makes you feel both guilty and complicit, like you wanted your abuser to do those terrible things to you, to violate your purity. Keeping such a secret means you knew exactly what was happening and that you enjoyed it.

So, that smile that you were born with disappears. It is wiped away and replaced with silence and sadness.

I felt alone even when there were people around me. And even now as the adult Andile, I still spend most of my time alone. I do not know why but I do not fully trust people.

Remembering Two

Dear Dolly, father not holy

– ungutata onjani?

‘Andile, yini ungazithengeli ibhokisi kuqala uma ufuna ukuzibulala?’ – Andile, why don’t you first buy yourself a coffin if you want to kill yourself? That was my mother, Dolly Gaelesiwe, reacting to my being depressed all the time.

When I was growing up, I had a complicated relationship with my mother. I was a problem child at home. No one could understand my behaviour. I was always sulky even when other people were happy. I was stubborn and rebellious, or so they thought.

During the time I lived with my grandmother, she called my mother a number of times, trying to find out why she would wake up every day to find me kneeling and praying. They did not understand what was happening with me because she had raised me well.

My mother is a former model and singer. She did not have a good life while she was growing up. She has had to be a fighter.

Although my childhood was difficult too, my grandmother was always there to lift me up. My mom was a young working mother who was trying to create a life for herself and her children. Because her stepfather did not like her, she had been chased out of the home and was always running, often finding shelter with friends.

Except for when she sent me to Newcastle, the one thing my mother never did was leave me behind. I was her handbag, as she likes to say. Wherever she ran to, she always took me with her. Whatever happened, she was always around me. Sometimes I feel that she always suspected something had gone wrong with me as a child, or knew that something would happen to me and always wanted to protect me.

I suppose the fighting spirit I inherited from my mother contributed to the corrosive relationship I had with her while I was growing up. There was a lot of friction because I was very curious about everything. I was not scared to delve into things and find out.

She and my biological father never got married. Later, she met a man who genuinely loved her. This man became a dear husband to her. He loved and took care of us. My life was somehow a reflection of my mother’s because she too was not raised by her biological father but by her stepfather. Mom always felt that I was gentle towards my father but that I was harsh towards her.

My mother is very religious. I inherited the same gift of spirituality from her. I attended my church Bible school where we learnt about God and meditated on His word. She would force me to go even if I did not want to. I got to know uNkulunkulu for the first time when I attended the church Bible school in Nelspruit (now Mbombela), Mpumalanga. I was in standard seven or eight.

When I returned to Soweto, I attended my church’s Bible classes for over a year before graduating. Even though I had immersed myself in the church, I was a growing girl with other interests. I had dreams of being a musician, not necessarily a famous one, but I just wanted to sing. I was already singing at the school and church choirs. Of course my mother preferred that I focus more on church.

When I graduated from the church Bible school I went out into the world and became aware of how other teenagers spent their time. Although I had completed the church Bible school classes, there was new pressure to stay because kumele ubuyelele esontweni – you must go back to church and carry on with the work. At times I really would not want to because I felt ukuthi ngisharp seng’graduatile – I am good, I have graduated. I wanted to discover myself as a young person. I wanted to live my life like a teenager. I felt that my mother was too strict and that I could not breathe. And although my stepfather Gaelesiwe was an amazing father, I did not really know him at that point.

I was a difficult teenager, a recluse. Music was my refuge and all I wanted to do was to sing. My mother and I fought so much that I ran away from home and that is how my biological father found me. You see, he ‘found’ me, because he had never been there for me, his daughter.

I was not close to my mother; I was her first child and, as such, she was very strict with me – she was a ‘Hitler’! So when my biological father came along, I thought I was going to a saviour because I did not trust what my mother had told me about him at the time. Meanwhile, I was unwittingly going into a lion’s den.

How my father found me: you would think wawujola nomuntu – you had dated a person, you would know where they live, especially if you not only have a past but share a child with them. But instead he went back to my grandmother ekhaya eMeadowlands and that is how he found out that my mother and I now lived in Jabulani emaflatini.

I had heard about my biological father but had never met him. After he arranged our first meeting, I used to tell him to call me on the phone at home, when no one was around. I started having secret meetings with him and he would buy me fancy clothes from United Colors of Benetton.

At the time, my relationship with my stepdad was not great as we were not getting along. To me, he was just this guy who had married my mom and we were living in one house, but he was not my dad. I knew I had a father out there.

Abantu baselokishini – people of the neighbourhood told kids things that the family perhaps did not tell them or were not comfortable to say. This was the case with me, they would tell me elokishini that I looked like Phili. I remember when I went with him to United Colors of Benetton, we would walk into the shop and people would say, ‘yho, lentombazane ifana nawe’ – this girl looks like you.

My mom insisted on knowing where the clothes came from. Come to think of it now, understandably so, as I was a young girl. Who could be buying me such clothes? I eventually told my mom that it was my father. She was furious, ‘uhlangana kanjani nalomuntu ngingazi’ – how are you meeting this man behind my back? ‘Umthole kanjani?’ – how did you find him? It caused a huge fight at home. I was banned from seeing him. That was part of my resentment towards my mom – that there was a man out there who was my father and she didn’t want me to see him.

She then started explaining how cruel my biological father was. That he was the first guy she had dated, and that after she fell pregnant he wouldn’t have anything to do with her. He had even accused her of bewitching him, saying ‘why ngingakukhohlwa’ – why do I struggle to forget about you? ‘Ungenzeni’ – what did you do to me? And my mom was young when she had me, in her late teens.

He did not accept the fact that he had made my mother pregnant. And when I arrived, he did not accept me. By the time my mother gave birth, she was on her own and she was just a teenager.

I still wanted to get to know ubaba – his blood still ran in my veins.

Let me tell you about this day that I have buried deep in my memory. The day my biological father wabuthatha ubuntombi bam – painfully cut my innocent girlhood, breaking my virginity.

Remembering Three

The violation of rape

– wabuthatha ubuntombi bam

My biological father’s home was a small, open-plan studio apartment with a bed, a TV and a bathroom. It was in Joburg CBD.

There I met the woman my father was married to at the time. I remember having more conversations with her than I did with him. He and I did talk, especially about school, when he asked me what I wanted to do after finishing matric.

My father was a quiet man. He did not drink or smoke. He was a church person and became a pastor at some point. Even now, he is an ‘elder’ at the church.

People would say I took after him: with my height and similar stature. Also, I am light skinned,

Reviews for Andile Gaelesiwe

[Blumur Minaisa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

All the chapters I've read thus far. It's insightful and intriguing