Going to the Mountain Read online

  I’m convinced that was Mama Xoli’s secret ingredient as well. Everything she ever cooked for me and my family, from the smallest sandwich to the greatest Christmas dinner, was full of love and stories.

  “My mother made me eat isidudu for ten days after the birth of my children,” she said, dishing up a fragrant pap made of pumpkin, curried cabbage, and liver. “With every spoonful I was receiving the strength and wisdom of all the women in my family.”

  She was always busy, but took time to squeeze my shoulder as she passed by and looked me in the eye when she talked to me, which made me feel like I could talk to her. She was fiercely protective of the Old Man and saw it as her solemn duty to make sure he was well fed and healthy enough to take the burdens of all South Africa on his shoulders.

  “Tata is very, very busy,” she said. “You don’t make any trouble, understand?”

  I nodded, not wanting to speak with my mouth full.

  “He’s a very important man, you know. He’s president of the ANC. Standing for election. You’ll see. Next year, he will be the president of South Africa, which is a very big place. He’s got all kinds of crazy people upset about this and upset about that, so he doesn’t need any trouble from little boys.”

  “Why are they upset?” I asked.

  She sat down at the table, snapping peas into a bowl.

  “Well,” she said, “some people are upset because apartheid is over with. Some people are upset because it didn’t get over with a long time ago. Some people think everything has got to change overnight, and some people think nothing should ever change at all. They get scared, and they blame Madiba.”

  “That’s why you have the gate.”

  She looked at me sharply. “Yes,” she said. But then she softened and added, “My father used to say, ‘The tallest tree catches the harshest wind.’”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means the greatest man gets the most people upset. If nobody’s mad at you, you’re probably not doing anything brave or important.” Mama Xoli took her beans to the sink and ran water over them. “Most people—black and white—they love Madiba. They know it’s hard to make changes, but it’s good. It’s like a little boy who has to go to school and work hard,” she added pointedly, “and eat his vegetables, even if he doesn’t like it.”

  When I was stuffed full of amazing food, Mama Xoli took me upstairs and showed me my room.

  “I get to stay here?” I said.

  She said, “Tata will talk to you about it.”

  She didn’t tell me that a few days earlier, the Old Man had come to her and Mama Gloria and asked if they would be onboard with the idea of helping him care for his grandson. She knew this was more than a temporary arrangement but figured he should be the one to explain that to me. I figured I was going to be here for a few days, and I was completely cool with that. I’d never in my life had a beautiful room like this. I’d never had a room to myself at all, let alone a room with a big bed with posh pillows and blankets. There was a TV on the dresser and a closet like a cavern. Outside the window, flowers and trees blossomed along the high wall that surrounded the house. I flopped down in front of the TV, feeling like I’d died and gone to heaven. I didn’t know how long it would last, but I was going to enjoy myself while it did.

  I was still lying there watching TV later that evening when my grandfather appeared at the door. “Ndaba! Welcome!”

  I scrambled to stand in front of him, feeling very small. I’d almost forgotten how tall he was. In the years since we’d met at the prison, I’d seen him only on TV. He towered over me like that great tree Mama Xoli spoke of, but not in an intimidating or overbearing way. There was always a good feeling that came into the room with him. Like everything was all right now. My impression of my granddad, from the first day to the last, was much the same as the impression he left on the rest of the world—a paternal calm, defined by generosity and warmth. The deep lines at the corners of his eyes showed how much he liked to laugh. He always held himself straight and tall with a dignified posture and civil manners whether he was chatting with a child or a foreign head of state.

  “How are you today?”

  “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  He spoke to me in English, so I answered him in English.

  “Good, good,” he said. “Settling in all right? You have everything you need?”

  I really wasn’t sure, because I still had no idea why I was here or how long I was going to stay, but I didn’t want to be any trouble, so I said, “Yes, Granddad.”

  “Good. Very good. I’m told you speak English very well.”

  I nodded. I didn’t want to say anything that might be wrong.

  “What about Afrikaans?”

  “No!” I shook my head. Most of the people I knew mocked the ugliness of Afrikaans and said it was the language of the Dutch Imperialists. Why would anyone want to talk Afrikaans instead of Xhosa?

  “You’ll learn Afrikaans,” he said. “It’s very important.”

  It surprised me to hear this. I started to ask, “Why?” but I stopped myself before it came out. I didn’t want to sound impertinent.

  “I studied Afrikaans when I was in school,” said Madiba, “and when I was on the Island, I could write and speak Afrikaans better than the white prison wardens. They started coming to me for help, to translate and transcribe letters and documents. The prison director had to change the guards every six months, because he didn’t want them to form friendships with me. ‘Who’s guarding Mandela? Him? No, he’s too close. Send the one who knows he’s the enemy.’”

  He paused and studied my face to see if I was following. I wasn’t.

  “They were supposed to be my enemies,” he said. “But if you learn your enemy’s language, you have a great power over him. In order to defeat the enemy, you must work with him. He becomes your partner. Maybe even your friend. So you’ll work on this in school. Learning Afrikaans. All right, Ndaba?”

  “Yes, Granddad.”

  He asked me about my friends. He was warm and kind, as he always was, but still, the man was a stranger to me, and I was pretty overwhelmed by the situation, so I didn’t volunteer a whole lot of information.

  He finally said, “All right. We’ll figure it all out as we go. Be in bed at ten o’clock.”

  “Yes, Granddad.”

  He turned to go, but before he went out the door, he cast a critical eye around the room and nodded toward my backpack on the floor by the bed. “I expect you to keep your room clean, Ndaba.”

  “Yes, Granddad.”

  “No matter how humble or grand your surroundings, orderliness is a matter of self-respect.”

  “Yes, Granddad.”

  “All right. Good night, Ndaba.”

  “Good night, Granddad.”

  “You’re sure there’s nothing else you need?”

  “Well…”

  He smiled down at me and said, “If there’s something you need, say so.”

  I smiled up at him and said, “Nintendo.”

  3

  Umntana ngowoluntu.

  “No child belongs to one house.”

  To understand The Story of Ndaba and His Grandfather, you must understand how African families function (or dysfunction) as an extended, inclusive group. Monogamy is relatively new in Xhosa culture. The “traditional” family of husband, wife, two kids, and a dog was not our tradition. That concept arrived with missionaries and colonialism. Polygamy and arranged marriages were more in keeping with the old ways. My great-grandfather, Nkosi Mphakanyiswa Gadla Mandela, principal counselor to the King of the Thembu, had four wives and thirteen children, but my granddad made the conscious decision to marry only one woman at a time, and all three of his marriages were for love.

  Madiba’s first wife was my grandmother, Evelyn. They were married in 1944 and divorced in 1958 as his involvement with the ANC became more and more dangerous. Their first son, my uncle Thembi, who had two children, Ndileka and Nandi, was tragically k
illed in a car accident during the early years of my grandfather’s imprisonment. Their second son, my father, Makgatho, was twelve years old when Madiba went to jail, and Aunt Makaziwe was ten. Madiba had married his second wife, Mama Winnie, in 1958, and they had two daughters, my aunts Zenani and Zindzi, who were not even school age when their father was taken. My older brother Mandla is the son of my father’s first wife, Rose. After Dad and Rose were divorced, he married my mother Zondi, a Zulu, who had me and my two younger brothers, Mbuso and Andile. My cousin Kweku, whose mom is Auntie Maki, is as close as a brother, and I can’t even name all of our great-aunts and great-uncles, cousins, second cousins, in-laws, and current or former spouses and offspring. The point is this: We are all family. Each and every one.

  African families are exhausting and noisy, full of love and music, prone to heated arguments and great loyalty. Xhosa and Zulu women are famously strong and beautiful. They’re fiercely protective of their children, and everyone in the family is fiercely protective of the elderly, so it makes sense to be practical about it and agree that you’re welcome at my table, I’m welcome at your table. Your kids are welcome to sleep over and share the room with my kids. Naturally, jealousy or petty differences crop up from time to time, but whatever it is, it’s not as important as family.

  Millennials think they’ve come up with something brand new when they declare “love is love” and say, “There is no single definition of family, or at least not one definition that everyone in the world agrees on, so we must set aside our learned notions of what a family should look like and create families that are the healthiest, most loving environment possible for ourselves and our children.” But this is how African families have operated for dozens of generations. It’s nice that the rest of the world is finally catching up to us.

  Operating as an extended family is very much in keeping with tradition, but beyond that, the Mandela and ANC families had to depend on each other through decades of terrible danger and uncertainty. So despite the extraordinary circumstances, it didn’t strike me as unusual when I was sent to stay with my grandfather. I figured I’d be there for a while, a few days or weeks or even months maybe, but eventually my dad would come fetch me or someone would drive me back to my parents’ house, and life would go on as before. And sure enough, my father did show up at Madiba’s house after only a few days. I don’t recall exactly what I was doing when he got there. Probably playing Sega.

  The Nintendo—that Holy Grail of video games in 1994—was still just out of reach, but the Sega was all mine. “Ask and ye shall receive,” as Grandma Evelyn used to say. During that first week, I saw very little of my grandfather, who was extremely busy, running for president of a country on the brink of civil war and all that, but I had quickly discovered that he was kind and generous and eager to make me feel welcome. Within a day or two, I had been provided with clothes, shoes, socks, underwear—all kinds of brand new things that smelled like the store they came from and had never been worn by my big brother or cousins. I had my own dresser to put all these things in, and if I slopped something on my shirt while I was wolfing down my lunch, I could toss that shirt in a hamper, and someone would come and take it away and wash it, and it would reappear, clean and freshly folded, rather like in The Story of the Zulu Woman and the Accommodating River. This woman tosses a handful of dirt into a magic river and says, “River, give me a clay pot.” Whoosh, a nice clay pot washes up on the shore.

  So a few days after I came to my granddad’s for what I thought was a visit, my dad arrives at the house in Houghton, and I’m thinking, Ah, well, that was fun while it lasted. My only big concern was whether I would be allowed to take the Sega home with me. My dad went into Madiba’s office and closed the door. While they were talking, I went up to my room to stuff my new clothes into my backpack. I was sorry to leave this wonderful place, and I would miss Mama Xoli’s cooking, but I was glad to see my dad and anxious to get home to my mom and baby brother. I was a big boy of eleven and not a mama’s boy at all, but it was strange not hearing her voice in the morning. I felt I should be there to take care of her, because sometimes my parents fought, and things got out of hand. I felt I should be there to care for Mbuso, because sometimes my parents drank too much, and the baby’s crying made me feel nauseous and uneasy. The thought of him crying and me not being there made me feel even worse.

  I was ready to go when my father came in and sat on my bed. He said, “Madiba is a great man. It’s important for his family to accomplish great things. I can still make something of my life. I can still be a lawyer. I have to focus on my education.” He said Madiba was sending him to study law at the university in KwaZulu-Natal. Apparently there was a look on my face like I didn’t understand, so he put it bluntly: “You live here now.”

  He may have hugged me before he left. I don’t recall. I can be certain there was no great show of emotion. That was not our way. I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t cry. I did as I was told. I unpacked my bag and put my things away carefully so my room would be tidy when my grandfather came up to say goodnight.

  I didn’t hear from my mother for a long time. She didn’t call me or write to me, and though no one expressly said anything about it, I got a vibe that I shouldn’t expect her to show up for a visit. My granddad told me later that she was studying social work somewhere. Elsewhere. Somewhere far away from my father and from me. No one explained to me that she and my dad were both struggling with alcoholism. The older generation considered these topics inappropriate for discussion, and they were certainly not to be discussed with children.

  For the next several years, my parents were not part of my story. This is something I struggled with later in my life. When I was old enough to understand how this separation affected their relationship and came to understand the role my grandfather played in that decision, I struggled to forgive him. I tried to cut him some slack, knowing how deeply it had wounded him to come out of prison and realize that he had missed a lifetime of parenting his children. He came into a position of power and wealth, and naturally, he wanted to help them—I know that was his good intention—but I think he was wrong to separate my parents this way. My mother was really left behind, if I’m to be honest. For me at the time, it was as if she just disappeared.

  Rather like the Zulu woman at the river.

  You see, that accommodating river seems like a super deal at first, so the Zulu woman keeps going back. She asks for bigger things, and the river exacts greater and greater sacrifices. The pot for a boat. The boat for a house. Finally she says, “River, give me back the child I lost long ago.” And the river says, “Cut out your heart and give it to me.”

  I suppose the main message of the old story is similar to the Western saying that warns you to “be careful what you wish for,” but now that I have children of my own, I understand on another level what this story says about the preciousness of African children. The mother, without hesitation, cuts out her own heart for her child. There’s no doubt in my mind that my mother loved me that much. I’m certain she believed she was doing the right thing sending me to live with Madiba, and as painful as it is for me to say it, it was the right thing. Sometimes doing the right thing for your child is hard. Sometimes it cuts your heart out. But if my mother had come to fetch me from my granddad’s house, I would have had a very different life, and it would not have been better than the life I’ve had.

  It took me many years to make sense of all this. It wasn’t until I was in college myself, studying political science in Pretoria, that I was able to connect my mother’s broken heart to the big picture of apartheid, a political system that forced black families into this type of situation. When Madiba became president of South Africa, the laws changed, yes—everything changed on paper—but black South Africans had been deprived of educational, social, political, and economic opportunities for several generations; he knew it would take several generations to overcome the legacy of oppression. His own family was a prime example.

  Madi
ba’s own father died when he was young, and then he was deprived of the opportunity to be a father to his own children. Then my dad, who never knew his grandfather, grew up without his father, so that relationship was set back another generation. There was no lack of love or intelligence or ability. These men were totally willing to be there and work hard for their families, but the opportunity to have a father and be a father was taken away from them. So it goes to the next generation and the next one after that: me and my son. This little dude—my Lewanika—I would cut out my heart for him in a second. One hundred percent. But I know from experience that this is not enough. My love for him is not enough; he needs me. My voice. My strong arms. My laughter. My example. He needs to see me stand fully present in my own life and to feel me be fully present in his. That’s where he begins to understand his value: in the family, then in the community, then in the nation, and then in the world. And it’s a challenge, because he and his sister live with their mother, my former girlfriend. I have to mindfully, purposefully choose to spend time with my kids. I have to make it a priority, and I struggle with the logistics of that, so I understand how difficult it can be, but I take the responsibility seriously.

  This generation of African men—my generation—has the power to turn the course of that unforgiving river. We, as fathers, could literally re-create the culture of this continent if we so choose. I’m not minimizing the importance of mothers when I say this. Not at all. I’m just calling out my brothers, speaking from what I know, and asking them to really think about what it means to be good fathers, to have good fathers, and to raise good fathers—to create a culture that values fatherhood and a socioeconomic system that serves families by collectively refusing to place individuals in positions of powerlessness.

  I recognize that I have lived an extraordinarily privileged life. I understand that my grandfather believed that I and my brothers and cousins and all African children would benefit from the example of self-respecting African adults and an elevated international opinion of Africa as a homeland. I believe the same thing myself, but I think there’s a way to achieve those broader goals without leaving families behind. I wish my grandfather had found a way to help my parents move forward together.