Even those who do not write their autobiographies find themselves resorting to such narratives by checking, remembering and celebrating the man or woman they are at certain stages in their lives. What is missing from my story are juicy anecdotes of the type psychoanalyst and literary scholar Josh Cohen calls ‘the private life’. The reason is that, as he wrote recently, ‘[a]s soon as you put the private on display, the clear distinction between honesty and dishonesty, revelation and dissimulation, dissolves’.5
In this book I tell the story of how I became a psychologist from a number of perspectives. At different times and stages of my writing I wrote as someone steeped in the traditions of academic and applied psychology. For such sections of my work I depended largely on available records, as well as the published work of others.
However, there are sections in which I thrived on the tools and strategies of a creative non-fiction writer. For those sections, which are steeped in ‘imaginative reconstruction’, I relied heavily on autobiographical memory. Throughout the course of writing the autobiography, as I strove to tell the evolving story of my working life as a psychologist over a number of decades, I worked hard to come to terms with what Charles Fernyhough so fittingly describes as the ‘first-person nature of memory’.6
1Early days in Mavambe
When I remember the years gone by, especially the years of my childhood in a place called Mavambe (situated in what is now the Limpopo province), it is often visual images of people and places which come to mind. I remember the sombre darkness of some winter nights, when it was too bitingly cold for anyone to linger outside. I have memories of my mother carrying out everyday household chores in our yard or planting seed for a maize and vegetable harvest in the summer. Such memories are vivid enough. However, they are remarkably difficult to put into words.
I have always known and accepted the family history which says that I was born in Mavambe on 13 March 1940. If you were to insist on concrete evidence of my date of birth, neither my late parents nor I would be able to provide it, but I believe that date to be accurate because, at the beginning of the 1947 school year, when I started attending the one-teacher, one-classroom school across the river from our home, I was believed to be seven years old. With the exception of the year 1948, the most memorable and happiest part of my childhood was spent in Mavambe with my mother.
In 1948 I was sent away to live for a year at the home of my mother’s brother, Jim Manyangi, in Nwamatatani (many kilometres away) to attend the Assemblies of God school at the Caledon Mission, where I completed Standard One. The most visible figure at the school was a short, plumpish white woman called Miss Nash, who appeared to be in charge of everything that happened at both the small mission and the school. At the end of that year I returned home to attend another Assemblies of God school, which had classes up to Standard Six, the national qualification level for entry into high school. At both schools there was much praying and talk about Christianity, Jesus and God – talk which was unheard of at my home and within the chief’s village where we lived.
It was just as well that I was whisked away after only a year at the Caledon Mission. My uncle’s children showed little enthusiasm for learning to read and write and I was fortunate to have been rescued from the prospect of a lifetime of illiteracy and ignorance. Back home I found myself burdened with a daily walk of a few kilometres to and from Shingwedzi Primary School. It was a lonesome journey because, at some point, my cousins from the chief’s family had been allowed to drop out of school.
Over the long years of my adult life I have been unreservedly grateful to my parents: my father had made it clear both to my mother and to me that attending school was an obligation that had to be met. The message was conveyed to me firmly by my mother whenever I showed signs of wanting to play sick in order to stay home. It was under the resolute guidance of my parents and under the watchful eye of dedicated and exemplary teachers – very different from the highly unionised teachers of contemporary South Africa – that I completed primary school at the end of 1954.
That almost did not happen, however. Just before the final Standard Six examination I crossed paths with the head of the primary school, a Mr Mahlale. A short man with a serious turn of mind, he acted decisively when my classmates and I showed signs of boyish delinquency. My father had left his brand-new bicycle at home after his last visit and I thought I could put it to good use by cycling to visit relatives, such as my aunt at Xikundu, some distance away from our home. But this youthful waywardness became costly when I stayed away from school for a whole week. When I returned Mahlale summoned me to his office and proceeded to cane me so hard that the memory is still vivid in my mind.
Looking back at that experience and at the fact that children were dropping out of school at will, without the active intervention of their parents, I realise that what happened in Mahlale’s office was a life-changing event. I say this in all seriousness because even today I still ask myself what would have happened if the principal had spared the cane. After all, I had watched my cousins and others drop out of school without the sky falling from its heavenly heights. It is not difficult to play down the lifetime significance of isolated events of the ‘what if’ variety. But I have accepted the fact that a hiding in a school principal’s office in a small unknown village called Shingwedzi contributed in no small measure to the long and challenging journey that made me the man and the intellectual that I am today.
Mphaphuli High School in Sibasa (now Thohoyandou) looked recently built when I arrived there in January 1955 to begin my high school education. In those days parents did not discuss their choice of schools with their children. Nor had the teachers told those of us in the final year of primary school about the need to apply for admission to the high schools in Elim near Louis Trichardt and Sibasa.
The fact that I had done well in the final examinations was nearly undermined by the fact that I had not applied for admission to any secondary school. I was fortunate to have a distant relative, Constable Maluleke, who was stationed at police headquarters in Sibasa. In all likelihood he had approached the authorities at Mphaphuli High School to secure my admission as a student for the first of the three years of study towards my Junior Certificate. I, together with another boy, Xihala, was to live with Maluleke and his wife in the police compound adjacent to the office of the native affairs commissioner.
Thanks to my good school record in Shingwedzi I experienced no difficulties settling in at school. However, settling in with Constable Maluleke and his wife proved emotionally demanding and the first months of 1955 were nerve-racking. The husband was a friendly, warm, older man who kept out of one’s way. The hassles Xihala and I experienced arose from the demeanour of Maluleke’s wife. She was a heartless, childless woman who treated the two of us as though we were slaves. Thinking back to those days, I wonder about the fate of Xihala, who always looked so sad and subdued.
The Maluleke family left Sibasa long before the end of the 1955 school year as a result of Constable Maluleke’s transfer to a different police jurisdiction, and I was compelled to move on to live with Ramaite, an unmarried clerk employed at the commissioner’s office. At his home I did not have to wake up at dawn to make a fire and boil the hot water for his bath as Xihala and I had done for the Malulekes. Yet it soon turned out that I was destined for a short stay. Ramaite made intolerable demands when he arrived home late at night after his regular drinking sorties in the village. In his state of intoxication he would call for food, though he knew there was often none in the house.
Luckily I did not try to find my way back home when my living conditions became intolerable. Perhaps a greater being was watching over me – I was much happier with the two families I lived with during the second half of the year. Overall, I still relish the fact that, demanding as the first year of high school was, the experiences of that year turned me into a more self-sufficient young man, one who could cook simple meals, iron a policeman’s uniform, and polish his big boots and brass buttons without