Tag: South Africa

From farm girl to city brat

I called my mom a few days ago. Our conversation went from how business was doing to my daughter, and closed with an invite to Nyanyadu, Dundee in northern KwaZulu-Natal. This small town is full of culture and history, and boasts the Blood River heritage site, where the Boers and the Zulus battled, as one of its main tourist attractions.

My mother grew up here. She left the village when she went to varsity in the late 80s and worked her butt off to make sure she did not have to return permanently.

I too spent the first four to five years of my life in Nyanyadu but it’s been years since I’ve returned. My last stay was in 2004, for about a month. My parents would ship my siblings and me down to Dundee twice or thrice a year – depending on how much we had pissed them off – so they could have a break.

The five-hour ride (sometimes it took eight or nine hours) was uncomfortable and always overcrowded by at least 40 people (this is how people die!). We would take our seats and wave goodbye to our parents but by the time we got to the third pick-up spot, before even exiting Johannesburg, somebody would have told us to “give a seat to your uncle” and we’d find ourselves standing the rest of the way.

Being a kid, these trips, although mostly disastrous, were opportunities for adventure for my siblings and me. We would enjoy seeing something strange happen because it meant we had endless stories to tell when we were back home.

Years later and now grown up, I’m looking forward to going back to my roots and seeing my sweet grandmother but the discomforts of rural life are too real to ignore. Discomforts like walking a kilometre to get water from the well, another two to visit family, and dare you run out of airtime, it’s another 500m walk to the tuck shop. That’s not all though. Everything else is just a process. One has to think long and hard before making decisions about simple things like breakfast.

Several things must happen for my full English breakfast to materialise. First I must wrestle the hens to get some eggs, and then risk a kick to the chin from the cow for some fresh milk. The night before, I need to make sure that bread is bought or baked by my gran. I have to pick veggies from the garden and make sure there is enough water. By the time I get around to actually enjoying breakfast I am exhausted!

I had to consider this trip carefully. I am now, although not always proud of the fact, a thoroughbred urban woman. I no longer enjoy endless cow herding and long works to the stream. I want my technology working all the time; I want proper roads and shopping experiences. Simply put, I cannot survive where I come from anymore.

Not wanting to lose family contact, we have tried to get my grandmother to move to Jo’burg and join the rest of our family. “The farm is far too big for you to be on, gran; you’re old and have no one to take care of you.” Her response is always the same: “The farm is my home, why do you think your grandfather left it to me?”

I suppose everyone has that one place they end up calling home. For a young, urban African girl like me, that home has been redefined as somewhere with comfort, working technology and a vibrant economy. Until Nyanyadu, Dundee can offer me these things, I am staying a city brat.

Ntokozo Khumalo is a business writer, reporter, and producer. She is also the director of Hot Content Media. Connect with her on Twitter. 

Cirkafrika: The continent’s got talent

The Parisian audience is like a petulant child: very hard to please. So when French spectators and critics waxed eloquent over Cirkafrika, a show by an all-African circus troupe, I was intrigued, but pursed my lips à la française.

“Pfft!” I thought to myself, “What do they know? Yet another ho-hum repeat of contortionists and jugglers and human pyramids and dancers and unicyclists that are typical in plush resort hotels that line the Kenyan coast. Seen one, seen them all.”

A friend from Benin, also sceptical, went with his son to watch Cirkafrika and came away singing a new tune. “Mesmerising,” was his text message. That gave me food for thought.

So tickets were bought for an adult and three children for the show, which runs for over two hours. The children were to be the jury, with the main judge being my three-year-old whose attention span is pretty good – 30-40 minutes tops.

The French circus, Cirque Phénix, produced Cirkafrika. Cirque Phénix’s aim is to present novel artistic creations each new season. Having no proper circus tradition to speak of in Africa – we have  only four big tops: one based in Egypt, two in South Africa and one in Tanzania – unlike the Chinese and Eastern Europe circus heavyweights, it is not surprising that Paris sat up and paid attention to Africa coming to town.

While looking for African talent comparable to circus chefs-d’oeuvre from Moscow and Peking, Alain M. Pacherie, the founder and director of Cirque Phénix, turned to the Zip Zap Circus (South Africa) and Circus Mama Africa (Tanzania). What was once a germ of an idea – an African show, unlike any other, in Paris – became a reality a few years later.

This was the reality we went to discover on a recent wintry Saturday afternoon in Paris.

The artists from South Africa, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana, the Congo and Guinea; the costumes; the stage decor; the giant 3D animal and bird marionettes; the music – Lion King, move over! – were all made in Africa.

Forget clichéd African folklore and dancers garbed in traditional attire welcoming an African president or some other dignitary; forget the cold disciplined professionalism of Chinese acrobats and the aloof masterful excellence of trapeze artists from eastern Europe; forget the crisp, pasted smiles of chorus-line girls dancing the French cancan.

How could one not stand up, from the word go, and dance to Miriam Makeba, Youssou N’Dour or Touré Kunda numbers sang by three African musicians accompanied by a Big Live all-African band?

I felt Pata Pata.

The splash of colours from the costumes, decor and music reminded me of an African marketplace with its pyramid arrangement of colourful fruits and vegetables, and people talking, gossiping, haggling and laughing with music blaring from a nearby stall.

Cirkafrika is oh so cheerful, the music vibrant and the artists generous. The children couldn’t get bored even if they’d wanted to.

The artists – all very professional, focused and elegant in their performances – made their acts look so easy. They were genuinely having fun, their joy so contagious that I longed to join them on stage even though I have no circus skills.

Large, colourful plastic wash basins that can be found in African households replaced plates and bowls in the plate-spinning contortionist’s act. The artist spun five of them at a dizzying speed – one per limb and the fifth was spun using his mouth. The act was accompanied by vibrant dancing.

Pic: cirquephenix.com
Pic: cirquephenix.com

The colourful basins took me back to Saturday mornings in Kenya: tending to household chores after breakfast using similar kinds of basins, the same ones that hold grain and spices sold at the market. Cirkafrika was a ray of warm tropical sunshine in the middle of a European winter.

The Ethiopian hoop artist made me forget that she was manipulating hula hoops. What I saw was a Samburu woman beautifully adorned with handmade beaded ornaments.

Cirque Phénix never presents animal acts as a matter of principle, but what would Africa be without her rich fauna and award-worthy costumed artists on stilts? The children saw an animal parade of graceful giraffes, tropical birds, crocodiles and a life-size elephant. And the frog! Oh the lithe green human frog, padded feet, croaking and all. How on earth did he manage to fit into that little transparent box?

Pic: cirquephenix.com
Pic: cirquephenix.com

South Africa’s gumboot dancers made us long for more. So we asked for one encore and a second encore and yet another encore. We danced and we celebrated Africa. We saw the other face of the continent that has potential and talent and that can adapt and excel while preserving its Africanness.

Cirkafrika whispered that we can dare to dream and to believe in Africa because Africa’s got talent!

My children’s verdict? If Cirkafrika comes to a big top near you, drop whatever you are doing and run, don’t walk, to see it.

I agree.

The show, now on the road in Switzerland, Belgium and Ukraine, will be back in France/Europe in Winter 2013.

Jean Thévenet, a work-at-home mum, was born and raised in Kenya. She now lives in France and blogs at http://hearthmother.blogspot.com.

Recovering from my own financial crisis

In 2007, I landed my first ever job as an accounts clerk at a printing company. I hated it. It paid the minimum wage and cost me more than I earned just to travel to and from work, but I was proud of the fact that I was employed.

After I got my first payslip, my ever-cautious dad began to badger me: “Ntoks, you should bring your salary slip and bank statement so we can go through it on a Saturday afternoon. I’ll help you manage your finances.”

Hell no! I kept my books away from him because they were badly kept ones which would reveal some questionable wastage – a McDonald’s treat for my friends, an extravagant dinner date, the occasional pair of shoes, and, uhm, splurges on a certain illegal green substance. (You’d be amazed at how active dealers’ bank accounts are.)

A few months later, African Bank offered me R5 000 of credit to be paid back over three years. At R150 a month, the installments were invitingly low. At the time I earned a salary of R3 000 so I was ecstatic about being approved for credit. I felt like a real adult but ironically I ignored the common sense that supposedly comes with growing up.

There I was in downtown Jo’burg in Gandhi Square, licking a R2.50 ice cream, when an over-eager credit sales person from the bank approached me, like a dealer on Oxford Road, and told me he could change my life. I was sold. I took the loan even though I did not need it – I was merely R200 short to top up my bus tag, and all I had to do to sort this out was call my mom.

I paid off my first debt in less than the stipulated three years, before I turned 21. By this time, in 2008, South African banks were over-extending themselves and loaning to people who earned even less than I did. Newspapers ran reports of how bad debts were eroding the South African economy, and the impact of the global economic downturn on our country.

Our economy was sucker punched into a recession, but our banks managed to remain resilient. This made me optimistic. And like a junkie, I went back to credit after being clean for only a couple of months, confident that I could control myself.

But the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, considered one of the worst ones since the Great Depression by economists, had different plans for me. Prices suddenly skyrocketed and I couldn’t afford what I used to. To make matters worse, in 2008 I made the bad decision to move out of home a month before securing an assistant business producer job at CNBC Africa. By then I was broke and pregnant. African Bank came to my rescue, with more than they offered me the last time! I paid rent, bought food, saved for transport, bought work outfits and booked a couple of doctors’ appointments. I even sent some of this money to my grandmother.

This is where the blur and the binge began. First it was one loan, then two then three then four, all from one bank and all with different repayment amounts. I signed up with Capitec Bank who introduced itself as my savior, but I ended up owning them more than I did African Bank. FNB, too, “helped” with the overdraft facility on my cheque card but it took just a few months for them to cut me off.

I survived on the overdraft facility for months - an extra R5 000 here, another R3 000 there - kidding myself that this was the solution. (Flickr/Images Money)
I survived on the overdraft facility for months – an extra R5 000 here, another R3 000 there – kidding myself that this was the solution. (Flickr/Images Money)

It finally dawned on me that I was deep in debt. It took a while for the depression to kick in. I am a business writer by profession; I report on economic issues and tell the world about bad business decisions and deals. I should’ve been smarter, and taken my own advice. At times, paranoia got the better of me. I was worried my financial situation would impact on my professional career and business reporters would gang up on me to say: “Ntokozo, we don’t need you to comment on this, you have bad credit, girl. Goodbye.”

I lay awake at night, eating chocolate chip cookies in bed and watching bad American reality TV shows like Money Chase, where people in huge financial trouble do crazy things to win money to pay off their debts.

This was the worst experience of my life, but it did teach me one valuable lesson: cash is indeed king. The banks usually neglect you once you become a liability to them; the friendly salesperson who helped sign you up for a loan quickly becomes your worst nightmare.

I am now slowly trying to control and erase my debt. I owe a lot of money to one bank, but rather one than three. I’m even being offered discounts on payments now (but I’ve learned this could be just another gimmick.)

My advice to other South Africans being tempted to spend money they don’t have is, simply: don’t. Save your money instead. I would never have said this five years ago, but putting away R100 instead of buying a pizza has made a big difference in my life.

Ntokozo Khumalo is a business writer, reporter, and producer. She is also the director of Hot Content Media. Connect with her on Twitter. 

Google honours Miriam Makeba

The life of Grammy Award-winning South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba was celebrated on Google’s search engine home page today. Born on March 4 1932, she would’ve turned 81. Makeba is regarded as the first artist to put African music on the world map. Her hit songs include the signature track Pata Pata, Aluta Continua, and Qongqothwane (the Click Song). Makeba was an anti-apartheid campaigner – she testified against the South African government at the United Nations in 1963 and had her citizenship revoked. In 1990 she returned home from the US and her career continued to grow. The singer, who was fondly nicknamed Mama Africa, died of a heart attack in November 2008 after performing at a concert in Italy.