It was the lack of access to information – the embodiment of the powerlessness of most poor rural communities – that nearly cost me my medical career. I had no idea that to gain entrance to a university you had to apply near the beginning of the second term for the following academic year. By the time I applied to Natal University, the only medical school at the time which took African students without seeking permission from government, it was too late for the 1967 academic year. Mr Gouws advised me to go to the University of the North to do my premedical courses, and then to proceed to Natal in 1968.
I did not have a bursary, nor did I know how to apply for financial assistance. I decided to present myself as I was – penniless. At the University of the North I was advised by the admission officers to fill in forms for a state loan of R100, which was sufficient to cover most of the tuition fees, and permitted me to be registered. I had no money for stationery or set books. I borrowed from friends, and was fortunate enough to have a generous boyfriend, Dick Mmabane, who supported me financially and emotionally during those difficult years. I lived on the hope that somehow the money problem would be resolved even though I did not have the faintest clue how.
A bigger challenge to my plans lay ahead. To qualify for admission to the second year of study at Natal Medical School the following year, I had to pass all four subjects: chemistry, physics, botany and zoology. I had no difficulties with the last three, but chemistry proved to be a problem. Professor De Villiers, then head of the Department of Chemistry, made it plain to our first-year class at the beginning of term that we were going to have a hard time. He made no bones about his displeasure at the size of our class. He told us that it was not possible for 73 ‘Bantus’ to pass Chemistry 1. There was no doubt in his mind that ‘Bantus’ could not master chemistry, and he made it his mission to prove this.
He would breeze into the classroom – his cold blue eyes not making contact with anyone, but emitting sparks of hatred whenever one attracted his attention and dared to ask a question. In his own section of the work, organic chemistry, he made learning almost impossible. He lectured from scraps of notes which were visibly yellowing with age. He wrote some of the difficult formulae on the board, with a duster in one hand, and as soon as he got to the end of a long formula, he would begin to erase what he had written last, relishing the anxiety he read on our faces. He prescribed no textbook, nor suggested any reference works. We relied on notes from senior students who had in turn pieced them together from their seniors’ disjointed notebooks.
A greater anti-educationist you could not find. He was the talk of the university and a law unto himself. There were many students in our class who were attempting Chemistry 1 for the third or fourth time, because it was a compulsory minor for a BSc. He held the key to the successful completion of a university education for all students who wanted to make science a career – a powerful position, which he savoured openly.
I was fortunate to scrape through with a D symbol, the only one with a D among the handful of people who passed the final-year examination at the first attempt in 1967.1 was horrified by this first D symbol in my academic career, but was grateful for small mercies, because failure would have endangered my admission to Natal Medical School. In contrast, I got a B aggregate for the other courses. My good performance in the other three subjects during the first half of the year prompted the Dean of Science to review my matriculation results, and to offer me a full-cost bursary, which solved my financial problems for 1967.
Chapter 7: The death of my father
THE DEATH OF MY FATHER ON 21 MAY 1967 INTRODUCED me to the reality of the pain of loss. The fact that he had been ill since 1963 with cancer of the oesophagus, and that he showed all the signs of suffering from an incurable illness, did not prevent me from praying for a miracle to heal him. I could not see why an omnipotent and loving God could refuse me. It was to be my third major disappointment with God.
Because my father had been a distant parent for most of my childhood, every intimate moment we shared was very special. Our last moment of closeness took place during the Easter holidays of 1967, a few weeks before his death, when I went to visit him at Baragwanath Hospital where he lay dying. My sister was one of the nurses in his ward, which made her pain worse in some ways, but gave her more time with him during his last days. I trimmed his fingernails as we chatted. I listened to him as he talked about his disappointment with his eldest son, Mathabatha, the apple of his eye, who had not once come to see him in hospital. But he still managed to retain his dry sense of humour. He listened with interest to my impressions of the University of the North. I also introduced him to my first serious boyfriend, Dick Mmabane, who was later to become my husband.
Dick was a gentle, stockily built man with a keen sense of humour and great generosity of spirit. He could not be described as handsome in the ordinary sense of the word, but his attractive personality made up for what he lacked in physical looks. He had been my classmate at Setotolwane High School, but our relationship had only developed at the tail end of our matric year. He became a great source of support during the difficult months ahead.
The sense of loss I felt when I heard the news of my father’s death from Mr Renoster, the Chief Warden of Residences at the University of the North, was immense. The train trip from Pietersburg to Mara later that night, the bus ride to Kranspoort the following day, and the sadness of having to deal with anxious questions about the meaning of death from my nine-year-old brother Thomas, who had been put by my mother in the care of a kind neighbour, all left me drained.
Dick generously sent me money by telegraph which I had to cash at the nearest post office, Mara, some fifteen kilometres away. The only form of transport available at the time was my father’s Raleigh bicycle. A young man from the local primary school gave me a ride on its frame to and from Mara. The physical discomfort was nowhere near the emotional pain at the death of my father. If anything, the fact that I had to rely on this primitive means of transport underlined what it meant to lose a provider.
The journey later that week to my father’s natal home in Uitkyk, where he was to be buried, was arranged by his old friend Mr Philip Bekker, who gave Thomas and me a lift in his van on Saturday morning – the day of the funeral. The sight of my grieving mother as she sat with other female relatives near my father’s coffin was a confirmation of the reality of the loss and the finality of death. My father was unreachable – he lay motionless in the coffin. My mother was also unreachable as a nurturing figure to share my grief – she was nursing her own wound and could not comfort even her own children. We had to deal with our pain in our own individual ways. Tears were an inadequate answer; I felt numb in between the streams of tears.
My mother had arrived on Friday evening in the hearse accompanied by a busload of relatives from Johannesburg. The evening service had been held in the large family courtyard, and many locals kept an all-night vigil with singing and preaching. An ox was slaughtered in accordance with custom, to signify the death of a male head of household, as well as to provide meat for the meal after the burial the following day.
The final farewell to my father took place in the local church, where we filed past his open coffin during the funeral service. Dominee Van der Merwe came from Kranspoort to conduct the funeral service – an uncharacteristically generous act much appreciated by my family. My father looked so emaciated from the long-drawn-out illness. His handsome face was but a shadow of its old self. My mother looked frail and was supported by my father’s aunt, Rakgadi Maria, and all seven children stood together. Molepo, the last born, then only six years old, was bewildered. He had travelled with my mother on the many visits to my father in hospital. Morongwa, my sister’s two-year-old daughter, who my mother was looking after at the time, was also confused by the funeral activities.
The material deprivation my mother suffered as a result of my father’s death greatly increased the sense of loss in our family. Her black mourning clothes, a mark of ritual pollution, signified her vulnerability. Her own mother, Koko Mamphela, went to live with her for three months in Kranspoort after the funeral to lend support and companionship. But the gap was too wide to be bridged even by maternal love.
The vulnerability of a widow