The Real Interior

Part 1

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

I was born at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto to Serame, my father, and Fikile, my mother. I have two brothers, one older and one younger, and this is my story…

I have often been asked how it was that a child born in Soweto in the 1970s could have gone on to study and pursue a career in interior design, when that was not what was expected of a black girl born in the height of apartheid, in one of the biggest townships in South Africa. What made my life and upbringing at home so different that I was supported and encouraged to pursue a creative path?

To be honest, I thought that how we grew up was what everybody else was experiencing in their homes too, well especially in the townships – our struggle was the same across the streets.

My home life was wonderful, I could have never asked for a better family and my parents deserve a Lifetime Achievement Award for being such champion role models to all of their children. Looking back now, and raising a child of my own, I can truly appreciate that I had the most extraordinary parents. They were exceptional forward-thinkers, especially my father. He invested a lot of his personal time grooming us to be excellent in whatever we did. He taught us from a young age that nothing was impossible.

I don’t know how they got it right, or figured out how to do better by us than what their own childhood had been. But my parents did it. My father grew up in an abusive family with a dominant father but somehow he managed to undo his past and be the cool, calm, collected and stable counsel in our lives. He never resorted to corporal punishment as a form of discipline; he never made that our reality even though this was how his childhood was defined. My mother did all the shouting and screaming; they had an excellent good cop bad cop routine.

My parents gave us the tools to life and equipped us with the knowledge and understanding of how each tool would be applied, and I owe my entire being to them.

EARLY CHILDHOOD

It turns out that I have always been quite bold and assertive, going for what I wanted, and displaying immense bravery in the process. Even at a tender age I showed signs of being spirited, and added a few exciting mix-masala spices to our ‘not so ordinary’ home life.

When my older brother (who is three years older than me) started school in the township at the age of six, I refused to stay at home without him. I convinced him, and my parents, that it would be best if I accompanied him to school so I could also get going with my studies and be ready for when my turn eventually came. The family agreed, thinking it would, at best, be a day or two before I got tired of waking up so early in the morning and spending an entire day at big school.

But my mom tells me that this went on for months! I would get ready every morning with the rest of the family, put on my best outfit and set off to school with my highly inconvenienced sibling.

His classmates and teachers were amazed at this and my mom asked them to just bear with me as I figured it all out in my head, and that she was sure I would return to my senses soon and head back home.

But I never did. I sat through every class and when the big kids started laughing at this odd scene of me tagging along with my brother, it didn’t bother me much because I knew I was there for a greater purpose, and that was to learn and to show my brother that I was ready and could do this! I remember his protective hand going around my shoulder and us walking side-by-side to each class, through all the giggles and whispers.

I believe I was one of the reasons that the school finally decided to start a preschool so that I could continue walking to school with my brother, but now head off to my own age group and grade and allow my sibling to continue with his studies without having to chaperone me everywhere.

I do recall countless meetings and negotiations trying to persuade me not to go to school with my brother anymore, and to rather wait for him, and enjoy my time, at home. But all I knew was that I was bored at home and whatever he was learning, I could learn too and that he was my best friend and I wanted to play with him whenever I could.

That was me then and still a little today. My family still laughs at the fact that I have displayed this strong will and character since the tender age of three.

With the support and encouragement of my parents and seeing both of them tackle life, parenting and work with equal gusto, I have never defined myself on my social limitations such as being a girl, too young, or black and previously disadvantaged, because my parents never allowed that to define them and definitely never allowed that to define us.

From a young age we were taught that whatever we wanted to see manifest in our lives, we simply had to go for it. We grew up with living examples of parents who made that happen for themselves.

I was not wired to think otherwise. School had practically reorganised itself around me since I was three years old, so how else was I to face the world? I knew no other way and my parents never discouraged such thinking and bravery from their little princess. So I marched boldly forward through life, determined to learn more and go for gold at all times.

CREATIVE LEGACY

I remember details of our home, when we lived with my grandparents in Rockville, Soweto, in the early 70s. There was burgundy wallpaper in our lounge with a gorgeous flocking pattern and parquet flooring in a herringbone design that was always buffed and polished to high-gloss perfection. I remember the beautiful deep buttoned leather sofas with a piping detail that folded over my grandfather’s armrest.

There was an elegant and intricate chandelier with white, smoky, glass-looking petals around each individual globe and my grandfather being too tall to stand under it.

I remember a centre island in our kitchen, and making a pact with myself that I would have that in my own home one day too. It was so practical and functional and brought the entire family together over meals. My parents were incredible in the kitchen, and still are. Mom was the master chef and dad was the dessert extraordinaire. He always had the coolest gadgets to make stuff! I remember the day he brought home a waffle machine and for months we were alternating between his delicious pancakes or waffles for our weekend treat.

In our home in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, I remember moving furniture around and styling my bedroom with Christmas decorations that lasted the entire year.

I have fond memories of coming back from school with my older brother and pulling myself up on the island chair and placing random lunch orders with him that drove him crazy, as he had strict instructions from my parents to make me whatever I wanted. I would giggle uncontrollably even before placing my order because I could already sense his pre-teen frustration with me. But, in the end, I usually just ordered scrambled eggs on toast or powder milk with lots of powder. I’ve always been a lazy eater, the less chewing the better.

UPBRINGING

My father created an environment for us to be, and do, our best. He would challenge us in our daily discussions and have us resolve issues for ourselves. While my mother would throw a shoe at us, my dad would sit us down and ask how we had come to whatever conclusion and what we believed was the best way forward. He never accepted a yes or no answer, or allowed us to use the words good or nice in our vocabulary.

We were hardly ever allowed to wander around aimlessly during the day – except for the few hours of free-time after school. Most of our days were structured and filled with healthy, stimulating activities.

My father believed that a person was not a product of their environment. Just because we were born in Soweto – a place of segregation, filled with a dark, heavy cloud of inequality – did not mean that our story would end there. He raised us to believe that we were free to dream big, right there in our five-roomed home that we shared with our grandparents and to imagine life leading us to greater pastures.

Schooling in the townships in the 70s was unstable and turbulent. There would be weeks, sometimes months that we would be home because of riots and calls-to-action by the youth and parents to stay away from the schools, whose system of oppression was meant to cripple the young and an entire nation.

Many of us remained disillusioned and directionless, wandering aimlessly around the dusty streets, playing games such as hide-and-seek, skipping rope, hop-scotch and stones until the sun disappeared and we heard the call to come home from our parents.

But my father, bless his breathing soul, decided quite early on in the system shutdown that schooling did not only take place in a classroom, left to the sole responsibility of the teachers. He sat us down one night and gently let us know of the doom we were facing in our country and that it was up to us to do better, right here at home, and to continue learning no matter our circumstance, not waiting for the day when things would become better.

My father came up with a system of continuing our learning at home while we were on our undefined school breaks. He would write short notes for my brother and me to study in four languages, those being Tswana (our home language), Zulu (my mother’s language), English and Afrikaans, which we then had to translate back to him in his language of choice. He also brought home books for us to read in those languages and imposed a TV and radio rule that allowed for only the languages being learned that week to be consumed in whatever medium we were indulging in. So if we were learning Afrikaans that week, we could only watch Afrikaans programmes on TV or tune into the Afrikaans radio stations.

Even when speaking to each other, the language would have to be that of what we were currently studying. There were no half measures with my father, and still to this day a task he gives you must be done properly.

It was his gentle ways that made us all willing followers. Nothing was drilled or imposed; he gave us logic with every lesson and allowed for open question and answer sessions. Maths was handled in much the same way. He would breakdown the formula then we would go off on our own and try to work it out, and if we couldn’t come right we would be able to go back to my father and work through it with him – always calm, never raising his voice, and always with a soft, welcoming smile.

My parents worked an average of three jobs each. My dad was a truck driver then and travelled extensively throughout South Africa and our bordering countries. I remember when he started driving trucks to Botswana and back to South Africa, which resulted in him being away for such long periods of time, and my mother holding it all together, keeping a lioness rule over her pride.

If anyone so much as dared to touch or cause harm to me and my brother in the neighbourhood or at school, my mother was notorious for loading us up in her red Mazda and speeding off in the direction of whoever had messed with her children. She would shout at them like we were eternal saints who deserved nothing but kindness from everyone we interacted with.

The same rule even applied to the school teachers. Corporal punishment was never to be imposed on Fikile’s children. Should she hear that we were hit at school, all anyone would see the next day, as soon as she was able to get a break from work, was my mother’s feisty, red car screeching into the schoolyard, dust clouds everywhere, and her storming out of the car and into our classroom and blasting the said teacher to no end. We were absolutely terrified and thrilled in those moments. No sane teacher wanted that vision to come again, and she set the bar extremely high on how her children would be treated.

We learned very early in our lives that we had strong cheerleaders in our corner who would move mountains for us. My mother never questioned if we were guilty or not when she sped off in her car to fight our fights, which in turn made us more accountable of what we reported to her because we knew she would go into a flying fit should we have been wronged. So we needed to be sure that we were, in fact, certain of what had happened and that we were prepared for her to take the no prisoners approach.

My brother and I would actually review each case after school if we had been in some form of altercation and had not managed to resolve it ourselves. We would weigh up the pros and cons before notifying my mother if someone deserved her wrath. On most occasions we pleaded the fifth, because you see, the tricky part was that my mother made us come along to point out the culprit at each scene – so we had to be damned sure of the charges and of our story, otherwise we would face further wrath on the playgrounds the next day and the cycle of abuse and shouting would be unending. We quickly learned how to play nice, and the other kids learned to play nice with us as they, too, feared the fiery mother in the red car.

Since our schooling was covered by my parents, and in part by the local school we attended, my dad thought that we not only had to be excellent students, but also cultured individuals. He signed us up for tennis on weekends in the ’hood and on the days he was around, my brother and I found these outings an amazing time to bond with our father and show him how much we had learned that week and of course that we were up to the challenge of learning a new sport and ensuring he was impressed with our skills.

I loved tennis from the first time I walked onto the court. I’m not sure if it was because my father was attached to that happy memory but I was hooked. I loved the sound of the ball hitting the racquet, my cute tennis outfits and the presence of my father as he watched us improve every week. There was never a person I wanted to be more proud of me than my dad.

If anything, my older brother and I competed for his attention, but my dad was diplomatic and democratic and I never felt that he preferred my brother more. If you needed him, he always availed himself and some of my best lessons in life were learned from simply being in the presence of my father and watching him take on a day.

Along with tennis, there was also gardening in the early mornings of the weekend. My dad made our little home in the township so beautiful, just from the upkeep of the property, the landscape and the beautiful flowers he would bring home for me and him to plant together. I was a curious child and asked all sorts of questions about the plants, their positioning and colours and my dad would answer them all. He even gave me the responsibility of watering our indoor plants which I took on with the greatest of joy.

Because my parents shared their upbringing of us equally, I never thought of a woman’s role in the house being less important than a man’s. My brother and I both had turns at washing and drying dishes and we were given equal tasks to do around the house. My mom cooked most of the weekday meals because she was the parent most present during those times. But when my father was around, he too could be found busy in the kitchen baking, making new desserts and getting me and my brother involved in the mixing and tasting.

Another skill my dad gave us, all before we reached ten years of age, was creativity. He intuitively knew that academics, sports, home economics and gardening were some of the main ingredients of forming an all-rounder child; but that we also had to be taught the arts so that we could get in touch with our creativity. So, in the true form of the parent who knew no bounds, we had art lessons at home, hosted by my own father.

We would draw, paint, make things, fix old chairs, re-paint the house – all in the name of understanding that we were multifaceted individuals. Our art classes would continue to be taught even when we moved to the KwaZulu-Natal coast, in our make-shift studio that was our garage.

We did not draw on A4 size paper; my dad would go to the local butcher and get sheets of large butcher paper so we could freely express our creativity on big, unrestricted sized surfaces.

School and homework would be followed by free creative play, then an hour or longer of art, followed by reading. We were always encouraged to read. Be it the newspaper or a magazine, my dad was a strong believer in us opening our minds to the bigger world.

All of our biggest and most intense studies happened in our early, formative years. Not only were we hungry and open to knowledge at this age, but we were also open to discipline and routine which steered our minds and life in an orderly manner.

I remember once, when schools were closed yet again and we were aimlessly milling around the house and streets, that my dad decided it was time that we were taught music lessons at home. That’s right, in the deep ’hood of Soweto where you needed to take two to three taxis, and a miracle, to get to our house from the city. My dad managed to convince some sweet Caucasian-looking man to travel once or twice a week to the township to come and teach piano to his kids and a few of the neighbours’ children.

Even I was shocked. I had been a willing participant in all of my father’s teachings, but risking the life of an innocent white man was incredulous! When he made this announcement at dinner, we all gasped at the horror of it all. It was one thing to be taught English and Afrikaans at home, far from the prying eyes of our neighbours, but what would they think now about a white man coming to teach us piano? My brother and I were completely mortified, not because of the lessons but because of the complete social misfits we would become. I mean, not being in school was beginning to be seen as ‘cool’; we were non-conforming, standing in solidarity with our fellow brothers and sisters, fighting for one cause.

At that young age, I already knew that the white man was the enemy even though we learned his language in our home. But in the streets my brother and I were fighting to be seen as the tough kids, unified in our struggle. Now my father wanted to rat us out and show up our overqualified, bourgeois selves to everyone! Our protests were legendary; we tried everything to discourage him from going ahead with this suicide mission and told him, in no uncertain terms, that he was endangering our street cred. But one thing my father taught us is that when he sets his mind on something, he commits to it and accomplishes it.

Soon the piano was delivered to our house and my brother and I looked at it from a safe distance, wondering what this new musical instrument would open us up to.

Many neighbourhood meetings were held, my father always suggesting to other parents what they could do to improve the fate of their children. The next course he was suggesting would be an intro­duction to music, and he was rallying for everyone to sign up so we could all share the cost of the music teacher. My father would lay out the biggest investment, that of the piano, then the rest of the parents could share the cost of the lessons.

Maybe three or four families signed up, the rest were far from interested.

On the day that the piano teacher would first come to our house and start our lessons my dad put together a suggested roster of who would go first and what order we should stick to. The minute we were left to our own devices, there were shouts and further negotiations as each child tried to convince the other that they should not go first. None of us wanted to be seen dead in the presence of this white man.

News soon spread around the neighbourhood and by the expectant time of the piano man’s arrival everyone, including the cats and stray dogs, were out in their front yard waiting to see him.

Seeing that white man walking down the red, dusty street in his grey suit with his old leather briefcase at his side was like watching a western movie of a lone cowboy entering a new town, not knowing where the first gunshot would come from.

I made a silent wish that he would not see our house number and would walk straight past until he reached the end of the road where he would then surrender and take the first taxi out of there.

We watched him walk slowly and carefully, silently admiring his bravery. He neither looked left nor right, but just kept walking and then quietly turned into our driveway.

As soon as the brave and sweaty man was settled at the piano, ready for his first student, there was not a single child in sight, except for my brother. We had all run in various directions, petrified of going first. My brother, bless him for this invaluable lesson, sweetly volunteered to go first as we sat hidden in our corners in amazement and counted every minute until we would be called up next.

There would be much shuffling and pushing for months to come, until my brother gently explained his reason for always offering to go first. He said in that way he could get it over and done with quickly and have more time to play. I remember having a ‘note-to-self’ moment when he shared his method with us, and the next time the piano teacher came there was much shuffling and pushing between a few of us as we were all desperate to go first and get it over and done with.

[Note: It was only during writing this book that my dad corrected me and brought to my attention that the piano teacher was in fact mixed race and not white. He reminded me that during those days whites were not allowed in the townships and neither were blacks allowed in the suburbs. But as far as I can recall, he looked scarily white.]

PRIVATE SCHOOLING

The streets were on fire; tear gas was being thrown around like confetti by the police as they tried to diffuse mass meetings and gatherings of disgruntled students and township residents. Tyres were being burned and used by students to block streets; blocking out police and local municipality services. The streets were a mess and it was mayhem.

The townships were shut off from the city and from the rest of the world. Chaos was rising in the time of this confusion, disillusionment, hatred and anger. We were all burning in hell.

Cars were being searched by self-formed kangaroo courts. We were not allowed to buy from the white man, or go work for the white man. Most importantly, under no circumstances, could we go and school with the white child.

But my parents did not stop trying; their goal was to pave a better way for their children. My dad said he saw that in the midst of the riots and shutdown we did not stand a chance. If he did not get us out of there, we were doomed for a life no better than his own childhood and upbringing, and that was not what he had signed up for as a parent. And if it meant he would die trying for his children, then so be it.

The situation with our schooling in the late seventies worsened. Between 1976 and 1979, many schools were burned down in the townships as students took to violence against the degrading Bantu Education system and against being taught their entire school syllabus in Afrikaans.

My parents were still working two to three jobs each, just to afford us a better life in these dire times. My mom worked as a nurse and at night she sold AMC pots, Tupperware or clothes, whatever she could get her hands on to sell. My father started off as a truck driver. He left school when he was in Grade 11 so that he could work and help his parents take care of his younger brothers and pay for their schooling. Years later he would continue driving trucks and attended night school to complete his matric, and worked his way up at the oil company that he was driving trucks for.

Little did we know that during his long-haul trips, my father was also driving around to private schools in the white suburbs and pleading with them to take in his two children as there was no schooling in the townships. It was against the law for black and white children to school together in those days, but my father persisted. He went from school to school begging for our entry, then came home and continued to do all he could to keep us engaged and stimulated. He read to us, kept us well-informed about the political situation in the country, asked us questions and continued to demand that we not give him yes or no answers.

It would be many years later that my father shared with me that once, after he had approached the fifth school and explained and reasoned with them, and their answer was again a firm NO, that he broke down in tears.

It was a priest at an Anglican school who eventually took the time to listen to my dad and promised to see what he could do.

After numerous secret meetings, it was agreed that we could attend the Anglican school, but our presence was off the record; it was not to be reported to the school board, government or even to the higher religious establishment.

But it was also to be off the record to our local neighbourhood and general society, who at that time were anti-white anything.

My father, being the all-inclusive dreamer, once again approached our immediate neighbours (our piano group) and told them of his secret meetings and that he had managed to open the door for the two of us and was willing to persuade the priest at the school to make room for more. Who was interested, my father enquired, only to be met with shock and a bit of disdain as it was felt that this was now close to being a full-out traitor, working with the system that was brainwashing the children.

The concern of the uneducated child was a concern for all parents, and my father made it his personal mission to seek a solution. He had many meetings with the parents in our neighbourhood, trying to convince them that this was a valid and necessary opportunity for all of the children and that we could not be left alone to our own means each day; we had to be in school. My father always said that education was our ticket to freedom and that an idle mind was life’s silent killer.

Finally there was a clear-cut line, some were for it and many were against it.

So, back again he went to the Anglican school, not just for his two children but for the other parents he had convinced as well.

I learned the spirit of togetherness from my father and that when an opportunity comes to better oneself, you must see if there are others who you can open the door for too, so we can all grow, together.

That is what my start to life was all about; I had parents who fought for me. I was taught that my life matters. That in life, always go for what you deserve, not what you are dealt with. My parents taught us discipline, perseverance and the strength to stand up for ourselves. They gave us the keys and tools to knowledge and great cultural understanding. In simple truth, they groomed future leaders. They had a clear picture of a life they wanted together and, most importantly, what they wanted for their children.

I came to understand very early on in life that being born with a silver spoon in the mouth did not only mean that one was born into material wealth. They taught us to ‘hunt’ for what we wanted, so that in our future we could manufacture our own silver spoons.

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED

I was six years old at the time, and my older brother was nine. And, already, we had seen and been exposed to the worst of humankind. We knew and understood our parents were working against all odds. My father had sat us down and made us understand the enormity of each day that went past and we were not in school. To say we were petrified to take the journey to the white private school would be a huge understatement. We feared death, by stoning or burning by the tyres we had become familiar with seeing scattered along the same roads we were to travel in search of a better education, a better life. We feared the hatred in our own neighbours’ eyes too, as many were against such a move.

I did not know my way to school because my brother and I spent most of it hidden in the boot of our parents’ car, or huddled up in fear on the back seat, petrified of being spotted.

And the school we had to attend was so far. Far from our comfort zone, and far from our understanding of the world and our involvement in it. Other than my pseudo-white piano teacher, I cannot say that I remember interacting with white people on a friendly basis.

Why couldn’t we just be home-schooled by my truck-driver father who was so fluent in many languages, and seemed so worldly? But, the reality was, if we all stayed home, or in that situation, we would be broken. My parents needed to work – to take care of us and to take care of their big dreams for us. No one, not even their children, could afford to stay at home as the end result would be even scarier than driving to the unknown.

Understanding the psychology of an angry mob and the near misses that we experienced from being caught out and burned in the streets, my parents soon decided that we should rather wear our civvies in the car ride and sit like normal children on the back seat, pretending that we were merely accompanying our parents to work during that time.

How my parents explained it to the angry street mobs was to say that we had no helper to look after us at home, so they were taking us to work with them in order to keep a safe eye on us. My mother, in her nurse’s uniform, helped the situation greatly, as nurses were needed to deal with all the casualties during those days. My dad said he was self-employed and was driving somewhere to collect stock and would be back soon.

I remember one incident when a certain mobster asked us, directly, to confirm our parents’ story (as the saying goes, children never lie). I kept my head rested on my hand and gave this bored, ‘whatever, yes’ response because I was already street-wise and understood that if I showed even a little of my fear and unconvincing back-up of my parents’ story, we would all be crucified. We were all part of the lie to survive and there was no way I was going to let my parents and my sibling down.

In time we got so good at the lie, we were waved off with not much care every time we came across a road block.

So the trips to school with my parents were our Russian Roulette moments, we never knew if a gunshot was going to go off that morning and if we would be dead before even making our way out of the township.

And every day, facing our biggest fears together, made us even stronger as a family.

A SILENT PROMISE

Soon there were enough of us going in the same direction, heading to those private schools. My ever-entrepreneurial parents thought it would be a very good and safe idea for my grandfather, a retired ex-cop and private investigator for the old government, to drive us to school. He was bought a happy yellow VW combi that could seat 14 children and was given the task of driving us all to school in the morning, then collecting us in the afternoon, and driving us back to the township, together – safety in numbers I presume.

At first my brother and I were thrilled, we thought it was a fantastic idea because now we were not alone and my grandfather could protect us from anything. He was a tall strong man, and just his presence commanded respect and attention. But what I soon learned was that he could not protect us from the cold winter Johannesburg mornings.

Because we lived at my grandparents’ home at that time, and the yellow combi ‘lived’ there too, it meant that my brother and I were the first passengers every morning, and we would travel with my grand­father to collect everyone else.

In summer it was not so bad, but in the dead of winter it was pure torture. We had to be up by 4 am, bathed and ready to leave at 5 am, then we would sit huddled together, holding onto each other, as we froze in the empty 14-seater, that took forever to warm up inside.

I would cry because I was still so sleepy, and so cold. My brother would try and squeeze me into his blazer, but the cold still travelled from the ground, through the combi and right through my little body. We would hold onto each other for dear life trying to keep each other warm.

It was in that yellow combi that I made my first promise to myself, that one day, should I ever have children, I would NEVER let them go through the daily torture my brother and I were subjected to. My children would wake up when the sun came out and their school would not be more than five minutes away from home.

If one of the children we had to pick up was late I would silently rage in my mind at them, telling them how dare they be so selfish and insensitive as some of us had been in that cold combi for more than an hour already, frozen to the seat!

It was extremely hard, and I hated every minute of it.

SURVIVING THE JUNGLE

I think I was able to handle the bullying and mockery at the all-white school because I had already been through hell just to get to school every morning. I didn’t pay much attention to the snide comments by the entitled kids who had woken up just a few minutes earlier, had breakfast as the sun came up and travelled a few kilometres to school.

Every day that we showed up was a small victory for our family.

My mother says I was supposed to have been the first black girl at the school but two weeks before school was to commence for my brother and me, I suffered terrible, debilitating headaches that had me screaming and clutching my head in agony. I remember feeling like my head was about to explode and I could not explain the level of pain to anyone. Luckily, with my mother being a nurse, she rushed me to Baragwanath Hospital and pulled a few strings for me to be attended to by the best doctors in the local township hospital.

I was diagnosed as suffering from Hydrocephalus. It’s a condition where there is an accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid (CFS) in the brain, which causes increased pressure inside the skull and results in headaches, double vision, urinary incontinence, vomiting, seizures and droopy eyes. Oh, and what my brother would remind me of, for the rest of my childhood, a rapid increase in head size!

We were never quite sure what caused this sudden attack, but I think I know why. One of the houses in our neighbourhood had become an abandoned building site and my brother and I used to go over with the other kids from our street and play there. We made it our fortress, our private playground. It had exposed rafters that we used to climb and