Living as a failure

A Story by artie

The struggles of a boy who grow up in rural South Africa. The is no dialogue as of yet but I will continually update the story.

The first memory I have as a child, is probably about when I was seven years old playing street soccer with my cousins. Perhaps my lack of memory is due the fact that the years prior to turning seven were traumatic for me. The most traumatic thing for me was probably losing my father at the tender age of three, but the most painful thing about this is not being able to remember the man I often see in my mother's picture album, my own father. My mother often recites tales of the time my father would spend with his only son, even though he had a daughter he would spend most of his time with me.

Now before I can progress with my story, I first have to give details about my parents. My mother was born in Cape town in 1965, but was raised by her paternal grandmother in the Eastern Cape in one of the Transkie's many villages. The way she describes growing up, it was not easy at all but I shall not drench up her past in this story. I know very little of my father's past but, what I know is that at some he decided to work as miner to support his family, meaning his mother and siblings as is expected of any Xhosa man. More than that he was a man of God, going to the Zion church where he was considered a prophet and he was well respected as such.

At some point in time my father met my mother in Welkom, a town in the Free State province of South Africa, where they were both working. My mother was a shop attendant at the time for a shop in the townships, anyway their relationship developed to such an extent that they got married and had two children together. The first child a boy born in 1993, the called Bulelani which means' be grateful'. In 1994 December a daughter was born and she was named Sikelelwa which means 'blessed'.

In the year 1995 in September tragedy struck the family when the was an accident where my father worked, he died that month. He had already picked out a spot in the village where his mother lived, where he was going to build our home, he even had the foundation laid out. Prior to marrying my father, my mother had three kids who were leaving with her grandmother in Transkie, my father knew of this and in his life insurance included them as his kids. His life insurance would make sure that his children were covered till the age of eighteen and his wife for life.

My mother was left with the responsibility of raising four children on her own, as her first born son was living with his paternal aunt in Cape Town at the time. Due to having lived in the township for a long time, she knew the fate that usually befell children there especially male children. She decided to go to the village where my father had planned to build a house. She wanted to avoid raising children in an environment where they would be involved in gangsterism and the many criminal acts that were ever present in the township called Thabong. Little did she know that the move would introduce to a lot of suffering while she was still grieving the death of her husband.

After moving to the village called Prudhoe, where she lived with my paternal grandmother, my aunts and uncle . She decided to finish the house my father started and at the same time she build my grandmother a house as well and gave her all the furniture she had at the time. However things started getting heated straight after her two children arrived, at this point the house was built and fully furnitured. My older sister was probably fifteen at the time and we used to play with our cousins at the time. It soon became apparent from our cousins that my paternal family did not like the fact that my mother was receiving the insurance money. Soon they started making demands of my mother saying that the money was meant to cover me, my sister and my two cousins.

Upon hearing these claims my mother brought the insurance papers, the papers had my older sister and brother's names written there. When they saw they could not get the money this way, they started trying to chase my mother away from the village, claiming that house that we were living in belonged to my father's younger brother. At the time I was probably seven and I remember at one point my grandmother coming over throwing insults, accusing my mother of using witchcraft to kill my father. At that point my mother had all our belongings packed and outside ready to leave, it took the involvement of community leaders to get her to stay and to reprimand my grandmother. To ensure that the whole debacle stopped she took my grandmother to court, after a stern warning from the judge my grandmother stopped her tirades but, the family was already separated. Of course due to how young and naïve I was not really aware of what was happening but, that would soon change.