Remember Fezekile. Oh My God. I have yet to meet another woman who has been so persecuted for her truth in South Africa’s modern history as much as Mam’ Winnie Mandela was.. She was totally dehumanised, vilified and oh-so misunderstood.
After reading her book, the thing about Fezekile is that she was a terrible liar, terrible witness and terrible victim too. Victims are meant to be broken, yet her light refused to die. That alone birthed a lot of suspicion (we tried to kill you, why are you not dead). Fezekile wasn’t calculating, you have to be calculating when facing a rape trial with the most powerful man you’ve ever met, but she wasn’t. She was trusting, honest and unfortunately very human.
I love names. I always believe that they’re somewhat prophetic. Her name was not Khwezi, it was Fezekile. The meaning: It’s Been Concluded.
He got away with so much, even his atrocious betrayal of his comrade by violating his daughter. But when she came, It Was Concluded. Every once in a while, the under-dogs don’t take the abuse lying down, they fight back.
Fezekile was a catalyst, an unlikely heroine and the one who finally drew the line on the sand for the whole world. You’re either on the side of misogyny, rape and patriarchy or you’re on the side of the innocent, the fools the ones who were so very easy to take advantage of. Fezekile was the latter, but she was also no one’s fool. No one’s playing ground and no one’s victim. She’d been a victim when she was 5 years old, again when she was 12 and 13. But as a grown adult, violated by a powerful man, she refused to own the victim label.
There’s so much. So, so much that inspires and breaks me about this story. I’m not even talking politically, but emotionally.
Reading this book resurrected some wounds, highlighted my own prejudice and finally got me out of my ‘silent mode’. I’ve been in silent mode for months. He was so powerful, I was so weak and he won. They stood by whilst he did what he did, then later they came by not to offer their condolences, but to get ‘the scoop’ on what had really happened. Only he and I know what happened, at that level at least. My husband was left to sign papers and commit me into an institution, and watch me as I unraveled before his eyes from day to day.
Powerful men who have no accountability for their actions can be so dangerous. I keep revisiting a friendship I had back in Nairobi, I thought my friend would be there. But he was also very close to him, power is more attractive I guess. He could have spoken up, he saw what was going on, but he didn’t. My friend’s silence hurts more than His betrayal. I never had very high standards for Him, he was always just very self-serving and dare I say, narcissistic. But my friend. I wished my friend could have spoken up or at least reached out. But my friend didn’t.
It’s incredible how my leaving South Africa was enshrined in drama and such pain, but I walked through it foreseeing better times ahead. And then my return was off the back pain of even more pain and betrayal. I don’t regret leaving, or returning home. The universe just happens to have its own sense of humour I guess. But Fezekile’s book has resurrected some wounds, deep ones at that. The thing is, I’ve always had the proof, have always had the evidence to show that what they’d done to me was not right. But I just get defeated sometimes, I know who I am and I know what my weaknesses are, and I know. I know that someone like me doesn’t win such fights.
At this point I wish I could whisper: I’m crazy, no one believes us crazy ones.
There’s a recurring story in my family, the one about me or ‘that one’. She’s made so much money, the world thinks she’s got everything but they don’t know. They don’t know that we know that she’s just crazy. When she gets shipped off into institutions, when she loses jobs because of her madness, the world never gets to hear about it, but siyazi. Uhlanya lwa lay’khaya lolu. Doctors have failed for years to fix her, and when we heard she was getting married we were all worried, ‘useyohlanya emzini yabantu!’
But I wish I had a chance to explain myself. How does one even begin to explain though? How does one even begin to fight the truth, as is the case with Khwezi. It’s so easy to fall victim. I’ve always hated the victim label. After the first rape, one of the 3 things I declared was that, ‘I’m no one’s victim!’. I can own my eccentricities, I can own my madness and if need be, I can own the consequences of how naïve I am.
This afternoon I asked my husband if he would be okay with me writing about him, his response was ‘do you, as long as you don’t mention my name’. I’m okay with that. I won’t mention his name, but I will speak about my journey as someone who’s always had to be sorry. I was sorry when I was so bubbly and friendly and caring that they thought I wanted what they did to me. I was sorry when bills were stacking up and it was all on my shoulders, I was sorry that as heavy as it was, I couldn’t just say: ‘I need a break’.
But this is not about what He did to me, this is about all that reading Redi Tlabi’s book about Fezekile has awoken in me.
I will not walk through my life as a victim, judge what you will but I won’t. I was raised by principled black men, am married to an amazing husband and am raising a Zulu son. The ‘Men Are Trash’ narrative doesn’t resonate with me because we are co-creating this reality with these men and giving birth to them, and marrying them and having them as bosses and siblings. So, if they are trash, so are we. Yes, I said it!
Back to my sister Fezekile. Where do I even begin. We, I failed you so much. It’s no secret that I’m a very proud Zulu. Even when I lived abroad, I resonated more with my Zulu heritage than my South African origins. A ‘proud Zulu’ man did this to you. He saw your flame, your flaws and decided he had the right to devour your fire without your permission. He had his needs, they were more urgent than your dignity to him and he trampled on you with no care for the implications. You were delicious, he was hungry, end of story.
That is our story, I guess. They were hungry, we were delicious at the time. End of story.
I was telling my husband (who will remain unnamed as requested) earlier that reading Fezekile’s book has awoken so much within me, and the only way I know how to process is to write.
This is just a start. I want to write about my own innocence, write about redefining myself after betrayal. I wanna write about being simple, foolish, usable and rapeable. I don’t wanna write about them, they won. This is a loser’s story, and a story that will never make headlines because after all, I’m crazy remember.
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