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| ANC Founder father to Helen Seme, the chief interviewee |
"HOW NELSON MANDELA STOLE THE LEGACY OF ANC FOUNDER PIXLEY KA ISAKA SEME" marks one is a series of reports by investigative journalist-cum-researcher Blogger Goodman Manyanya Phiri after an eight-year long research into the Mandela lies and the lawless greed with which his self-professed relatives like one Ntombizodwa Zini-Bobelo seek to rise in power at the expense of law-abiding South African citizens.
[The interview starts with Xolani who is
a young political firebrand who encumbered the start of this video shooting
with Pixley Seme’s daughter]
[Xolani is apparently viewing ANC Founder
Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme as his maternal great grandfather. He had been very much opposed to the idea of
a video of Her Royal Highness Helen Seme, the daughter of Pixley Seme.
[His
reasons were based on politics. And being an apparent IFP supporter, Xolani,
just like many people in the ANC (though), apparently laboured under the false
notion that Helen was a member of the Inkatha Freedom Party-IFP. And so I as interviewer Goodman Manyanya
Phiri, was regarded as someone who had ventured into Ulundi, ‘the stronghold of
the IFP for one and only one reason: to poach for the ANC a prominent IFP
member like Helen Seme’.
[Xolani’s familial seniors, as will be shown at the starting
stage of this interview, showed him his faults and he had succumbed to their
wish that the video-shooting continue, nevertheless.
[Even though I as interviewer had wanted
Xolani to speak too, for it would have given my product more colour, when we
finally got down to shooting the video, he had apparently packed his bags and
left in anger from the browbeating he’d received from his seniors.
[As a trained journalist, I have done
many sensitive and potentially dangerous interviews; but nothing came close to
the start in the interview for the daughter of ANC Founder Seme! I mean: I will never forget the look on Xolani’s face as he was challenging me for coming over! Xolani is not the type of young man you would
want to mess around with. And if as
reader you are into the kind of stereotyping people which I as blogger deride,
Xolani came to me like the archetypal
‘Zulu Fighter unleashed’!
[His name “Xolani”, pronounced with a
click-“X”, means “Apologies-due-to-ye!” or “Give-up-for-it-is-not-worth-fighting-for”,
or even “Make Peace among Yourselves”.
[However, Xolani never wanted to give up,
never wanted to be at peace with the fact that someone, once again, “had come
to exploit Her Royal Highness Helen Seme granting him an interview with nothing
in return for the family. Apparently,
many corrupt and self-serving individual ANC politicians, uncharacteristic of
this great organization, habitually exploit the family for campaigning etc and
once they have achieved the aims of their campaigns, the Seme Family is dumped once again...Precisely
what Mandela did to them in the 1940 after getting all the personal support
Seme gave to him, an Eastern-Cape country bumpkin who hitherto had, per own
confession in autobiography, had known absolutely nothing about the ANC!
[In those respects, then, Xolani was firmly
within his rights to get sick and tired of “pro-ANC” journalists like Goodman
Manyanya Phiri knocking on Great Aunt Helen Seme’s door for an interview]
This interview is NOT edited, although it
is translated from the Zulu to the English by Blogger Phiri]
Talking about the onerous and clearly
time-consuming task of translating, I must now detain your attention with
issues that confronted Translator Phiri in the process of producing this work.
THE SCENE:
AT THE HOMESTEAD OF THE ONLY SURVIVING CHILD FOR THE FOUNDER OF THE ANC, HELEN.
SHE IS WITH TWO OF HER NEPHEWS, VEZINDABA AND BHEKUZALO.
RESPECTIVELY, THEY ARE SONS TO PIXLEY SEME’S TWO BOY CHILDREN: SILOSENTABA GODFREY SEME AND PILIDI DOUGLAS SEME.
THE INTERVIEW STARTS AT A STAGE WHEN SHE IS REFUTING SOME FALSE ASSUMPTIONS, SOME MADE BY A CERTAIN COUSIN XOLANI, THAT "HELEN IS A MEMBER OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI'S INKATHA FREEDOM PARTY, RATHER THAN THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS HELEN'S FATHER, WITH SWAZI QUEEN MOTHER LABOTSIBENI (LA-GWAMILE MDLULI WHO IS FIRST COUSIN REMOVED TO WRITER-CUM-BLOGGER PHIRI) ALMOST SINGLEHANDEDLY ORGANIZED BOTH FINANCIAL AND MORAL SUPPORT".
HELEN: ...They will say [Helen] is the daughter of Zulu King Dinuzulu’s first-born child. She’s been brought to your [presence, Zulu Nation] for our purpose of paying homage to her royal family.
VEZINDABA:.. Aunt has
a full traditional right to receive such gifts [from any
political party or entity seeing that her status derives from her royalty]
VEZINDABA: My aunt must have a meeting with President
Zuma for the purpose of registering an age-old complaint by this Seme family [the foremost founder family for the ANC].
VEZINDABA: This is a family concern that was supposed to have been addressed by [South Africa’s first democratic State President Mr] Mandela. Mandela of course turned a deaf ear to this cry. Later, even President Mbeki ignored this cry...
PHIRI: Bear in mind, Xolani, this DVD is not a one-man show with [Her Royal Highness] Auntie here speaking.
PHIRI: And if you harbor any reservations about our political stance in doing this DVD, you are free to come on board and express your own opinion... this is a family project and not a political one. When President Zuma watches this video, you can also appear therein... your concerns and for his attention will be aired too.
VEZINDABA: Phiri, [there is too much dilly-dallying going on here and so tell me now], are we still going on with the video-shooting or not?
PHIRI:
My plea, Brethren, let us get down to the business of shooting this video as we
so intended!
PHIRI: [to Xolani] I am pressed for time. Had I had more time, sure I would have entertained your queries to more detail. For now, though, my plea is we get down to working!
PHIRI:
[in reference to Helen Seme but to Vezindaba Seme]
Can I make this request just before Her Your Royal Highness speaks....
PHIRI: I will start with you, Big Brother Vezi. You say a
few words. I will cue you in via my own self-introduction.
PHIRI:
We are speaking as a family... we must stress in here that we’re discussing
family matters [with State President
Zuma]. Of course we cannot escape our own individual political status since our ancestors were politicians.
Zuma]. Of course we cannot escape our own individual political status since our ancestors were politicians.
PHIRI: Yes, indeed. My plea is that you should all, as you speak, speak free and feel relaxed in this process of telling your family story.
PHIRI: [Of course, after the introductory words from you, Big Brother Vezi], I will then proceed to Her Royal Highness [Helen].
VEZINDABA: I have got
a wish... there is something I wanted included here... just sad that I never
thought of it earlier all because my head is preoccupied. I am thinking about that video I gave to you,
Seme [Aunt Helen and Your Royal Highness]. The video is
titled, Imbabazane. There is one
thing I wish to check in the Imbabazane video first.
PHIRI: Why don’t we finish the primary recording
first..?
VEZINDABA: It is because there is an issue in that Imbabazane
video I want incorporated in my imminent presentation here
PHIRI: Oh? OK! But now, while Our Mother is gone [to
fetch the video], I am pleading with you, Gentlemen, we get started with the video headlines.
VEZINDABA: Like I
explained to you, the Pixley Seme Legacy is not the property of South Africa
only.
PHIRI:
[Seme’s legacy] is the property of all African
nations. Even us Malawians fit snugly [into the Seme legacy].
VEZINDABA: ... He
should be [regarded] as The Father of the African
Renaissance.
PHIRI:
[My Fellow-Child-of-The-House, Vezindaba], I still would have loved that before
we get into deep politics, Fellow-Children-of-The-House, you one-by-one
introduce yourselves “I am so-and-so, the child of so-and-so, my gran is
so-and-so” so that people may know how we interconnect as family, my
Fellow-Child-of-The-House [Vezindaba]
BHEKUZALO: I am quickly off, [Mr Phiri, please]..
PHIRI:
Wherever you are going, please don’t be long.
VEZINDABA: Auntie is
on her way back now...she will be arriving any moment. I was thinking the way Auntie will be
presenting...I am not sure about the methodology.
PHIRI:
I suggest you introduce her first... it is proper when this is done by you as [Seme family heir] in the house of Our Father Silosentaba Godfrey
Seme [elder brother to Helen Seme]. You could for example go: “Mr Phiri, we’re so
grateful you came, Brother. You are the
one who has made the request to interview us, hence our gathering here today in
this home [Ulundi, KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa]”.
PHIRI:
You, [Vezi], can then expatiate on points in any way and
direction as you so wish. Then Auntie, [Her Royal Highness]
will come in with the family history or the two or three of you
collaborate.
VEZINDABA: [You want to hear] stuff like ‘how many
siblings Auntie and them were in all’?
PHIRI:
Yes indeed!
VEZINDABA: I keep.. we
keep on reminding her as she speaks, that is what you want, right?
PHIRI:
Right as rain!
VEZINDABA:
...reminding her what detail is necessary as she points out who is who [in the family]?
PHIRI:
Yes, Fellow-Child-of-The-House!
VEZINDABA: If you ask me, I would maintain: it should be
Auntie who points out who is who.
PHIRI:
Of course, it is going to be she. The
only thing I was asking of you was your favour in introducing her. Even before I direct the camera to her, I
start with you...
VEZINDABA: OK...
PHIRI:
You could start by saying “I am so-and-so and my brother [Phiri] arrived [yesterday] blah blah blah.
PHIRI:
“Phiri came to my house in Durban yesterday” [you could
say] “to
make the request [for a meeting with Auntie] blah
blah”.
PHIRI:
I want you [Vezi] to talk freely, my brother. Don’t get the heebie-jeebies ‘oh because so
many thousands will be watching me on TV for this’. Just imagine yourself as
seen by one man, Nxamalala [the President of the Republic of South
Africa].
PHIRI: [State President Jacob Zuma] will see we are all family. And so you speak on tape: “Brother [Phiri], this is my auntie [Her Royal Highness Helen
Seme]” whereupon I will turn the camera towards Auntie and ask her
questions relevant to her, inclusive of stuff on the Seme Family tree.
VEZINDABA: Oh. The
thing I could say...
PHIRI:
I have got this pole here disturbing my video set-up...
VEZINDABA: Phiri, that
issue you were checking on earlier in relation to your video quality. Aren’t you concerned about possible
overshadowing on your product since time has marched on too much since you last
checked?
PHIRI:
Not at all, thank you. Every lighting
and every positioning is tophole!
VEZINDABA: You
are not worried stuff turns out red on your videos here? How about going to the
other side [of the house, eastwards]? Is it really clear for
you here?
PHIRI:
Chrystal clear, thanks brother. But my
request is we now get down to the business [of shooting the video] and just hit the ground
running with this because, Brothers, time is not on our side [as we still need to drive back from Ulundi to Durban whereupon I as
Phiri still owe myself the drive back to Pretoria]. So, I propose, while Our Mother is...
PHIRI:
I’d like to start now, Brethren. Are you
ready[grunts in expression of readiness as Helen seats herself
to Phiri’s two-o’clock, Vezi at 11 O’ cock and Bhekuzalo at 10 o’clock]
PHIRI:
Also, to make an apology in advance, [Brethren]....
PHIRI:...Although we are conducting this interview in the
IsiZulu language[spoken natively by about 10 million of South
Africa’s about 50 million population, but understood by about 25 million]. I will throw in some other language or two,
English for example.
PHIRI:
Important [to throw in some English] because these English people who are in the
forefront of turning our history into books too often a far cry from what
really transpired [with our ancestors] must
understand where we feel they reflected untruths.
PHIRI:
Now we are starting...
THE INTERVIEW IN EARNEST WITH PIXLEY KA ISAKA SEME’S
ONLY SURVIVING CHILD
PHIRI:
We are met at this homestead, the House of Seme. This is where the children, the issue and
descendants of [Pixley ka Isaka Seme, praisenamed “The Great Tonga”
or in Zulu “Itonga Elikulu”].
PHIRI: We have in our midst here, Her Royal Highness Helen Seme[who is the daughter of Pixley ka Isaka Seme, the prime founder of South
Africa’s ruling African National Congress-ANC].
PHIRI: We have also been joined by a grandson of Our Father Pixley ka
Isaka Seme the ANC Founder and the grandchild in question is Mr Vezindaba Seme
PHIRI:
We have also been privileged with the presence of yet another grandson to
Pixley Seme by Pixley Seme son, Our Father Pilidi Seme, if I have got the
correct names here...but my interviewees here are going to correct me on any
slip of the tongue. This particular
grandson bears a beautiful name whose connotations were explained to me
yesterday but my memory is failing me now... the name of my brother here...
ah.. it is Bhekuzalo [pronounced ‘bay-coo-czar-low’ and
meaning from the Zulu “He who takes care of the descendants”]
[giggles all round]
PHIRI:
But Xolani... where is Xolani now? [Xolani is the young political firebrand
who earlier on encumbered the start of this video shooting]
[There ensues all-round gesticulation
unrecorded though from one or two interviewees signifying that ‘we must make do
without Xolani’.
HELEN: [in reference
to Bhekuzalo and Vezindaba] Their fathers are immediate brothers.
PHIRI:
We will do the family tree... But I, the shooter of this video need to
introduce myself. [As you know], too often viewers will want to know “who are you,
the shooter”, [[asking] very much like the boy [Xolani] had similarly asked.
PHIRI:
My name is Goodman Manyanya Phiri. My father came from Malawi. My mother is a
maiden of the Mavimbela clan...she got married to the Phiri clan. This Mavimbela maiden who is my mother has a
father who came from Swaziland. These
Mavimbelas are traditionally prophets [and also tailors] to
the Swazi King. My maternal grandmother
is a Dlamini maiden. Her father is
Prince Sigeyeza [and one of two princely brothers] who [among many royal others]were pioneers to the [Barberton’s] Emjindini Royal Post.
PHIRI:
Sigeyeza’s father is Prince Khenkana; and Prince Khenkana is a son to a Tfwala
Maiden, a queen among the queens and wives to King Somhlolo a.k.a [His Majesty Swazi King Sobhuza the First and Maternal Third Great
Grandfather to Writer and This writer and blogger].
PHIRI:
In other words, where the Swazi/EmaSwati Nation is concerned, I [Goodman Manyanya Phiri] am neither a fake nor an adoptee. Rather I am part and parcel of a people [with whose royalty sidla sitja sinye “we eat from the
same plate”]
THE HOUSE OF SEME
AND HOW WE CAME TO HAVE THIS INTERVIEW
PHIRI:
Now, I beg to come back to this House of Seme.
You will come to hear about family bonds Pixley Seme created with the
Swazi Nation; but I am not dilating on that point now. I want to take this opportunity to let my
brother Vezindaba introduce Her Royal Highness [Helen]
here...before (before she speaks)...[Vezindaba] to just
introduce how it all happened that we are today assembled here at Ulundi.
VEZINDABA [an inaudible mumble]
PHIRI:
[to Vezindaba] You will have to raise your voice, Brother so as to be
audibly captured!
VEZINDABA: [to Helen] Sister-to-my-father and Dear Aunt. You of course already know Mr Phiri...Mr
Manyanya Phiri. It was out of the blue
when he phoned me very early yesterday... a Saturday.
VEZINDABA: It was quite early and [Phiri] said to me: “Gosh”, [saying]he could the previous night hardly fall asleep.
VEZINDABA: [Phiri said]
he had been thinking non-stop about the issues around you, Auntie. [And so], Phiri asked[me over the
phone] : ”How is auntie getting along? Still alive and kicking, that old
lady? There is something that is
bothering me. When I looked at the
matter from my personal perspective only, it should turn out a huge mistake if
I went on with the project I have in my mind minus the House of Seme”.
VEZINDABA: [Phiri said]: “My [mission] will remain incomplete without the an input from the House of Seme”.
PHIRI:
[in a whisper]Yes....
VEZINDABA: Well, I then took the decision to phone you,
Auntie and asking: “Do you still remember that bloke [Phiri]?”.
VEZINDABA: And Auntie
said: “How can I forget [Phiri]? He is my boy! So, he too is still alive and
kicking then? I [Helen Seme]was always crying in my heart
‘when am I going to hear from [Phiri] again’.”
VEZINDABA: So I
proceeded to tell Auntie that: Well, then, your precious Phiri is coming to see
you again. But even before I phoned
Auntie, I preceded everything else by phoning my paternal first cousin[here], Mr Bhekuzalo Seme because I had feared maybe the phoning
to Auntie may be too early for [an elderly lady’s] sleeping
patterns.
VEZINDABA: [On taking my call, my
cousin] Bhekuzalo
told me: “Fear not. Auntie (and you should be knowing this) is an habitual
early bird.”
VEZINDABA: And [so my cousin Bhekuzalo] proceeded to give the phone over to Auntie.
VEZINDABA: As you see us here, [Your Royal Highness, Auntie], we are coming all the way from Durban and as we speak, we are in Ulundi.
PHIRI: Sinono! [a praisename for the Seme clan. Sinono was an anti-colonialist war hero at (among others) the Anglo-Zulu Battle of Isandlwana. Sinono Seme is the paternal grandfather to ANC Founder, Pixley ka Isaka Seme and it is customary to native Africans in South Africa to sing praises to you by naming your grandfather or an earlier ancestor].
PHIRI:
[to Vezindaba] Thank you, Sinono! I am just grateful for having made it
successfully to this homestead.
ANC FOUNDER’S
DAUGHTER AND HER MANDELA-SHADOWING TOUR
DE FORCE
PHIRI: [to Helen] Your Royal Highness! The Nation of South Africa. The Nation of Africa. Yes, the Nation has now firmly reconnected with the Great Ancestor. The Nation has reconnected with The Great Tonga, with Sinono, with Khuwana. And Your Royal Highness are the one and only connexion we have at this moment[with The Great Tonga].
PHIRI: I have put time aside to once again come and see Your Royal
Highness. It was long overdue,
considering that it is already about more than three years I’d last seen
you. Yet today I desired once again to get your views and
hear your voice.
PHIRI: I’d like to know, Your Royal Highness,
about the Seme family. The family
tree. I need this because too many
people know next to nothing about Seme.
PHIRI: I need to hear you expatiate on this family tree. Maybe we should start with Pixley ka Isaka Seme and let’s be clear as to who his parents are? Give us that history please, as a harbinger to our larger talk. Your Royal Highness!
PIXLEY KA ISAKA
SEME’S PARENTAGE
That, then, is how Pixley did his entire education
VEZINDABA: It could
have been a kind of a night school they attended...
The place where he got his B.A. Degree is Oxford University.
VEZINDABA: At
Columbia, Auntie...Columbia in America, [, rather than at Oxford.]
VEZINDABA: Yes, Columbia which is where they arrived to study.
PHIRI: [to Vezindaba] Auntie is talking about England, now because Seme was well-travelled in his efforts to study further.
PHIRI:
Let’s settle this with one word. History
is very clear that Pixley went to both countries. All that we need to do now is to consolidate
and sequence these countries accordingly.
PHIRI:
Your Royal Highness, allow me to ask for clarification. There was [in your
presentation earlier] this point where Pixley decides he is not entirely
happy with priesthood. But whose
original idea had it been that he should become a priest when he grew up?
PHIRI:
How does Sinono, I mean Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme come to be with the American
Board of Missionaries in the first place?
Give us that background picture, please.
PHIRI: It’s important to know this because, as we hear, it is the mercy of the American Board of Missionaries that came to the rescue of an intelligent child whose future would have been doomed without their assistance.
PHIRI: Where are you [the Seme multitudes] originated from?
PHIRI: Your grandfather now being the demised Mr
Isaka Seme, gone missing in action in the battles of King Cetshwayo?
PHIRI:
Hold it [Your Royal Highness]! You have left me behind already. If you say the Mkhwanazi Maiden and Mr Isaka
Seme survived...does it mean then that Mr Isaka is....?
PHIRI:
But then who is this grand man who fathered...
PHIRI:
Oh! It is then Mr Sinono who sired Mr Isaka?
PHIRI:
Finally it is clear again for me!
PHIRI: Is this now the same person I overheard you
once talking about as family members you still owe some traditional ceremony
after his demise at war?
PHIRI:
I see! Coz, for us soldiers: it goes with the territory and it is nothing to go
missing in action. But culture demands there must a ceremony performed to get
your spirit back home from the mountains where you died. But I do not want to go too deep with that.
PHIRI:
So, the long and short is, the survivor here is [Mr Isaka
Seme]... with [his father] Mr Sinono having met
his war-time death in the mountains... like the Zulu saying that “a true man’s
grave lies by the mountainside rather than at home”.
PHIRI:
We are with you indeed, Mother.
PHIRI:
While you are still with the family tree, Your Royal Highness, here is
something I remember... and sorry that I am fast-forwarding a bit..
HOW JOHN LANGALIBALELE DUBE CAME TO BE THE FIRST
PRESIDENT OF THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS 100 YEARS AGO
PHIRI: ...When this dream, [31-year-old Pixley Seme’s tour-de-force
in succeeding to unite under one roof all the tribes of southern Africa: Tembu,
Zulu, Tonga, Pedi, Swazi etc who agreed with him the anti-tribal and unifying
ANC should be formed...and of course we know that Seme was doing something that
no other human being before had done in colonial South Africa] founding
the ANC had come true... Pixley then decides to appeal to someone and says:
“Uncle, [I’m culturally still too young to lead these nations as
President and ] the Zulu culture [anyway] demands that the
hunter boy must hand over his first passerine kill to seniors (“inyon'
ishayelwa abakulu”) and I have got this bird in the hand called ANC for
you, Uncle”.
PHIRI: I want to know now: How is your consanguinity and relationship with the Dube clan?... particularly with this particular man.. a teacher or a priest called [John Langalibalele] Dube?
PHIRI: I must ask because I read he Dube was
a relative [to you] with Seme apparently calling him
“Uncle”. Give me that picture, will
you? This if of course about the first
president of the ANC John Langalibalele Dube.
PIXLEY KA ISAKA
SEME’S FIRST MARRIAGE WAS ENGLISH AND IN ENGLAND WITH A BRITON FOR HIS WIFE.
PHIRI:
Thank you very much. But now let us come to... and I ‘m grateful you have
answered that query...but I’d want us now to come to...I want us to look at the
children of Our Father, Pixley ka Isaka Seme.
Give us that picture where you still have it.
PHIRI:
All of them indeed, as long as you remember[continue to give them to me]
HELEN: You would in this regard also
want to get his history when he was still in England... although this comes as
not my express intention that you should publicize it
PHIRI:
Be free Mother [I will publish what I think is fit for national
consumption, inclusive of your reservations]
And so, my father...[to Phiri] what is the
other thing you wanted to find out again?
PHIRI:
You have just said there is a big question mark if there was a child from the
Seme-Glasgow conjugation. But now I want
to know what other children did Pixley Seme beget?
CAPE TOWN’S
MULTI-CULTURAL FANFARE IN RECEIVING HIGHLY EDUCATED PIXLEY SEME BACK TO AFRICA
PIXLEY SEME’S
SECOND MARRIAGE WAS ‘XHOSA’, WITH A XHOSA-SPEAKING XINIWE MAIDEN
PHIRI: Who is the Maiden accompanying him all this while? And who are the children, if any already?
This is the time now when my father left Cape Town for
Johannesburg.
PHIRI:
Before you come to that point, Your Royal Highness. Let us dwell on our Father , Mr Quentin
Seme. I mean, if there are children of
his you recall..let’s kill two birds with one stone and you tell us who Mr
Quentin begot?
ZUMA’S LUTHULI
HOUSE, THE ANC HQ, STANDING CLOSE TO SEME OFFICES AND HOME BUT CONSPIRATORIALLY
SILENT TO THE FACT
PHIRI:
[but if Quentin’s house was in Soweto] where was
your father’s[Pixley Seme’s] own house situated while you
guys were still in Johannesburg?
HELEN: Right in the heart of Johannesburg! This was between Commissioner street... it was along Commissioner street. A place called Robinson’s Arcade and this place name still exists.
PHIRI:
You really mean the place to this day still goes by the same name?
PHIRI:
This would be around Commissioner Street
meeting what other street?
PHIRI:
I hear you, Mother. So this is where you
used to call home, right?
HELEN: That’s home indeed! But you listen a little bit more here, [Father Phiri]!This place is where my father had his practice[as a lawyer].
PHIRI:
Maybe the authorities were circumspect with their approach to home-owners who were also
lawyers. Anyway, I do hear you, Your Royal Highness. You have talked about the children of Mr
Quentin Seme.
PHIRI:
So where exactly is Enkonjeni, Mother?
PHIRI:
Thank you very much.
NELSON
MANDELA’S ONLY GOOD WORD, TIGHT-FISTED WORD, ABOUT HIS ARCH-MENTOR PIXLEY SEME
“Long Walk To Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela” Edition published by Abacus in 1994, reprinted in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
Page 110-114 Walter [Sisulu’s] house in Orlando [Soweto is where I met Anton Lembede]...then one of a handful of African lawyers in the whole of South Africa and was the legal partner of the venerable Dr Pixley ka Seme, one of the founders of the ANC.
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
NELSON MANDELA’S MOST UNFAIRLY DAMAGING STATEMENT AGAINST HIS ARCH-MENTOR,
PIXLEY SEME
In
1943 a delegation including Lembede,
Mda, Sisulu, Tambo, Nkomo and I went to see Dr Xuma, who was head of the ANC,
at his rather grand house in Sophiatown. Dr Xuma had...roused [the ANC] from its slumbering state
under Dr Seme, when the organization
had shrunk in size and importance. When he assumed the presidency, the ANC had 17s in 6d
in its treasury, and he had boosted the amount to 4000 Pounds.
[In all fairness, even though Seme was no angel with Mandela being least angelic with his 2012 family members apparently becoming millionaires in most inexplicable ways and the Goodman Manyanya Phiris victimized when they report Mandela-relative Ntobizodwa Bobelo-Zini’s workplace sex-for-promotion corruption SOMEBODY SHOULD HAVE WARNED THIRD-CLASS PROPAGANDIST MANDELA OF THE STARK-NAKED FACT THAT PIXLEY SEME’S PRESIDENCY WAS DEFINITELY NOT FOLLOWED BY MANDELA’S FELLOW-XHOSA-SPEAKING DR XUMA. RATHER, XUMA WAS FOLLOWED BY A VERY BRIGHT (AND PROBABLY THE BRIGHTEST AFTER SEME, AND DEFINITELY THE ONLY ANC PRESIDENT TO DEMOCRATICALLY HOLD THE POSITION TWICE AND AT STAGGERED PERIODS FOR THAT MATTER), Reverend Zaccheus Mahabane.
Xuma may have had the calibre to
raise whatever amounts he did for the ANC, maybe even from his collaboration
with white racist cabinet ministers, to which over-cosiness Mandela admits in
his book, but whatever little amount of money Xuma found in ANC coffers on
assumption of office, can rather be blamed on Reverend Zaccheus Mahabane rather
than on Seme (unless Mr Mandela suggests that Mahabane, a Sotho-speaker, was
just as “daft” as Seme, the Zulu speaker the former followed in the
presidency). Now was Xuma any brighter
than Mahabane? DEFINITELY NOT FROM WHAT WE READ IN HISTORY!]
PHIRI: That’s good. But now, Your Royal Highness are also busy
with your growing-up process all this time. However, there is an aspect I
fancied to hear in this history because Enters now Our Father, Father Nelson
Mandela as a Johannesburg newcomer who previously absolutely knew
nothing about the ANC when in his early twenties he’d arrived in Johannesburg
for employment as night-watchman...he knew absolutely nothing despite the fact
that he was brought up at the Tembu Royal Palace, by the son or half-brother of
the very Tembu King Dalindyebo who’s is today falsely suggested by
Mandela-worshiping Mr Jacob Zuma as “the greatest material contributor to the
founding of the ANC back in 1912 with tens of cattle donated for feast
slaughter”.
More Mandela inadvertent confessions that
the Tembu Royal House was ignorant of even the existence of the ANC when the
latter was formed by among others, Blogger’s First and Second Cousins
Queenmother Labotsibeni and Zulu Pixley Seme, respectively
“Long Walk To Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela” Edition
published by Abacus in 1994, reprinted in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2006,
2007, 2008, 2009
“PART ONE: A COUNTRY CHILDHOOD”. Mandela at about Age 20, studying in
Fort Hare University, Page 58
...Even though we supported smuts’
position, his visit provoked much discussion.
During one session, a contemporary of mine, Nyathi Khongisa, who was considered an extremely clever fellow,
condemned Smuts as a racist. He said
that we might consider ourselves ‘black Englishmen’, but the English had
oppressed us at the same time that they tried to ‘civilize’ us. Whatever the mutual antagonism between Boer
and British, he said, the two white groups would unite to confront the black
threat. Khongisa’s views stunned us and
seemed dangerously radical. A fellow
student whispered to me that Nyathi was a member of the African
National Congress, an organization that I had vaguely heard of but knew very
little about....During my second year at Fort Hare, I invited my
friend Paul Mahabane to spend the
winter holidays with me in the Transkei.
Paul was from Bloemfontein
and was well known on campus because his father, the Reverend Zaccheus
Mahabane, had twice been president-general of the African National
Congress. His connection with this
organization, about which I still knew very little, gave him the reputation of
a rebel.
PHIRI: What is your memory, if any, on [Nelson Mandela’s] arrival [in Johannesburg] and
his learning process... any role, if any, that [Pixley Seme]
Sinono played in Mandela’s life? Please
go to that area: how do you know Father Nelson Mandela?
VEZINDABA: He had the
habit of coming over to your home and too often when you were also there
PHIRI:
Ahem! But do Your Royal Highness please, recall the name of the school you went
to in Alexander Township?
HOW PIXLEY SEME
BECAME SECOND COUSIN OF SWAZI-SPEAKING GOODMAN MANYANYA PHIRI: THE BLOGGER
PHIRI:
Mine is then only to thank Your Royal Highness[for your
previous input]. You see, I had
thought it only too proper that we should recall other aspects in that time
space. But now, we have already seen, Mr
Quentin Seme [as Pixley Seme’s child]. Who follows [Mr Quentin
Seme]in that childhood?
PHIRI: Yes.
PHIRI:
There is a challenge here for Your Royal Highness to either desiccate, shrivel,
and dry up. Or simply take your own
well-deserved draught of water right now.
PHIRI: Up till now what has transpired is nothing less than what you, My Brother Mr Vezindaba Seme talked about. [You said ]that great indeed remains our challenge. Here you were addressing our nephew Mr Xolani and highlighting that great is the challenge that lies ahead for us. Here you were even letting us know that you have a thesis in the pipeline [about our grandfather Pixley].
PHIRI:
As it is slowly but surely becoming clear that...
Be it Lesotho Your Sustenance was Seme,
Be it Swaziland Your Sustenance was Seme,
Be it South Africa...how do we begin to downplay...
Be it Swaziland Your Sustenance was Seme,
Be it South Africa...how do we begin to downplay...
... the Seme role which all
points to the fact that there are still many areas, as shown us by Her
Royal Highness today, that we need to read in our search for the Seme
legacy.
PHIRI: My request for now is that we take a break and thus allow Her Royal Highness some water drinking, if for greater steam on return.
VEZINDABA: [Please not this, Cousin Phiri, that Cousin] Bhekuzalo, is off to
get me a picture of [His Majesty Swazi King Sobhuza the Second
and Maternal Third Cousin Once Removed to yourself, Phiri] with Pixley
Seme. This is because we want the mention
of Seme’s Swaziland leg to be accompanied by the picture.
PHIRI: [to Vezi]That, we will definitely do, my Brother. But for now, our duty is only in consideration to the video camera which also needs a little break from the marathon.
BHEKUZALO: When Mr Phiri is done...[to Phiri] How is your airtime there?
PHIRI: And why are you asking?
BHEKUZALO: Don’t tell me even this is still recording....!
PHIRI:
Listen, Gentlemen... there is the thing
called editing... and we’ll edit out what we don’t need at the end.
BHEKUZALO: [lots of
laughter]
PHIRI:
[to Bhekuzalo] Is there anything
you are really pressed for about this? Don’t you think we should first complete
the current task?
VEZINDABA: [on behalf of Bhekuzalo] Bhekuzalo must make immediate contact with some party or
two.
PHIRI: Now? Or afterward...?
BHEKUZALO: After our job here is done.
PHIRI: Let us complete a job first!
BHEKUZALO: That is the most important thing...but now this overdrive shooting going on...
PHIRI:
Let the machine go into overdrive shooting; but we can always edit out what we
don’t need at the end
BHEKUZALO: [hilarious
giggling]
PHIRI:
Just let the video machine run as it pleases; but we can always edit out what
we don’t need! Nothing needs be taken as
is; as there is always the capability to edit out what we do not need.
BHEKUZALO: OK! OK!
PHIRI: My request for now is, before we return to Her Royal Highness... I request that you who are the seed from Her Royal Highness, seeing that this one lady here is your father according to the Zulu culture which refers to her as The She-Father. I am requesting that before we go any further [to Bhekuzalo] I am requesting that you break your silence my Fellow-Child-of-The-House. Say what your take is of what has transpired so far since [Auntie] started the family history. Just say anything to let the video camera to rest on you too, Fellow-Child-of-The-House.
VEZINDABA: If only I could add a little bit something right now...?
PHIRI: Yeah, but I thought I was going to go according to the chronology of my compass clock [Bhekuzalo at 10 O’clock, Vezindaba at 11 O’clock; and finally Her Royal Highness again at my 2 O’ Clock].
VEZINDABA: Just one input please... and input.
PHIRI:
OK, then
VEZINDABA: I am just
curious about the sequence of events in the story so far. She has talked about Our Father Quentin. You then asked “who follows”. I should like to see a maintenance of that
sequence
PHIRI:
We are coming there.. we are coming there
VEZINDABA: But she left off as she was knocking on the
Swaziland door of the story
PHIRI:
We are coming to that leg. We will
exhaust that leg for sure. But I had
wished that before we get there, you as the younger generation participating in
this talk, have a say to complement on the history of the Seme Family tree.
VEZINDABA: You want to
hear something like what?
PHIRI:
ANYTHING! But so if there is something to say.
However, if there is nothing to add, not even one different viewpoint,
of course I will have to return to Auntie for the continuation where she ended.
PHIRI: My intention was to see Her Royal Highness take some sufficient breather while you guys said something to her relief, while you corroborated her story in order to build it into a true family-wide collaboration.
PHIRI:
Yes, Mother!
PHIRI:
But now we need to revise the whole story.
The camera viewership must be kept with us. The last lap of our previous talk concerned
the Swazis people with our Mother here introducing the Swazi leg of this Seme
story.
PHIRI: But now my brother Vezindaba has a picture to share... a picture of the Swazi people.
[ PHIRI:[to Vezindaba]...hold it exactly that way, My Brother...keep it that way...no, your original position was the best since the right angle towards the video camera is the crux.
PHIRI: In this picture [to Helen Seme]... Your Royal Highness, I should like to point out the feature in the portrait denoting Our Father Pixley ka Isaka Seme, and that is the man to the left here.
PHIRI: And then here we can clearly see His
Majesty the King of Swaziland, [His Majesty Swazi King Sobhuza the Second
and my Maternal Third Cousin Once Removed]; and this is the father to... [King Mswati III]
VEZINDABA: Seated
PHIRI:
Yes the King is seated and that is to whom I am pointing now. Maybe we should try to zoom into the
particular section of the picture, a picture taken at the time when Seme was
acting under invitation by the Swazi People.
PHIRI:[to Helen]Thank you, Your Royal Highness! Please resume your story about the invitation... who is getting invited?
PHIRI:
Invited by the Swazi Nation?
VEZINDABA: This, then,
is the picture...is the deputation in question.
PHIRI:
We have already captured the look of the deputation
HELEN: But that then is the team
that Dr Seme took along with him in a meeting with the monarchy of England
PHIRI:
As they appear on this picture, it is the appearance they cut as they were in
England?
PHIRI: [playfully to Helen and
paraphrasing her] “I am the product of a man well-beloved to the weaker
sex!” Remember, Your Royal Highness, you touched upon your well-beloved
paternity. Please come back to that
theme; maybe we can learn some tricks of the trade.
[laughter all around]
PHIRI:
In other words, the girl he fancies [and impregnates] is
the child of [His Majesty Swazi King Ludvonga]?
PHIRI: Surely it will be the child of [His Majesty Swazi King Ludvonga or King Mbandzeni, at least]? Or
is it [any sister] to [His Majesty
Swazi King Sobhuza the Second’s father] Bhunu? Indeed so, if the King
referred to her as “Auntie”!
PHIRI:
This, now, is Her Swazi Royal Highness [and my maternal second cousin
removed] who went by the name of Princess
Lozinja, if my memory serves me well?
PHIRI:
I’d thought I must throw in my penny’s worth here because you will always
excite me on any mention of the EmaSwati because they are my maternal parents,
which signifies from this story just how much of my personal blood is also to
be found among the Seme Clan of today.
PIXLEY SEME’S
THIRD BORN BOY CHILD
PHIRI:
...The entirety of Pixley Seme’s
children.
PHIRI:
This is also the place where the ANC got its first practice session in attaining
land for the native in the face of all odds....
PHIRI:
...even going to the extent of buying land from the Boers, guiding the browner
native in matters of legally acquiring land and flaunting title deed all for the purpose of farming...
PHIRI: It is the girl’s name [this] “Dalida”, isn’t it?
PHIRI:: Her clan name is lost to Your Royal Highness, right?
PHIRI:
Even her first name is lost[to Your Royal Highness]?
VEZINDABA: The maiden
was sired by Pixley.
PHIRI:
And so the maiden begotten by our father Pixley bore the name “Dalida”?
PHIRI:
[She was ]a girl begotten by which mother....?
VEZINDABA: [to Phiri] This all means that my auntie here, Helen, was not
destined to be the only girl child of Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme. They were supposed to have been a pair with
Auntie Dalida if the latter had not died young.
PHIRI:
So, Dalida is a child of Pixley Seme’s?
PHIRI:
But what about the mother [to Dalida]? Have you forgotten
the name?
PHIRI:
But now with the demise of Auntie Dalida... any children that survived her?
PHIRI: But what was my brother here saying [before this interview]. I
had thought I overheard you guys talking about a family grave... it was like
you even knew the grave where she was buried...do you know where the grave
is? Or was that a misunderstanding on my
part?
VEZINDABA: My auntie
says her grave is visible.
BHEKUZALO: Yes, Her Royal Highness
here told me her grave is visible around Daggakraal. You have, Your Royal Highness, even gone to
the extent of pointing out the grave to me.
Do you remember the incident, Your Royal Highness, when you pointed the
graveside out to me saying ‘my kin is lying in that grave’?
VEZINDABA/BHEKUZALO [chorus]
Oh!
BHEKUZALO:
Ahem
PHIRI:
On buying milk from the shops...
VEZINDABA: He hated
the idea of them looking upon themselves as the archetypal smart-ass from
“civilized Sophiatown” [in Johannesburg]
BHEKUZALO: I follow you at last.
PHIRI:
We have amply understood now, Your Royal Highness!
VEZINDABA: A real
Casanova, this grandfather of ours, hey?
BHEKUZALO: [giggles]
VEZINDABA: I swear
this streak runs in the entire blood of the Mbuyazi clan!
PHIRI:
Let us take this matter forward
VEZINDABA: [To Bhekuzalo]You Cousin
and me, are the only Mbuyazis who never sowed wild oats.
BHEKUZALO: [giggles and a
phone rings]
HOW THE PAN
AFRICAN ANC WAS BORN AMONG OTHER CHILDREN OF PIXLEY KA ISAKA SEME VIS-A-VIS
JACOB ZUMA’S MANDELASQUE SOUTH-AFRICANISM WHERE JULIUS MALEMA’S COMMENTS ABOUT
NEIGHBOURING BOTSWANA ELICITS THE UNWARRANTED FIRE AND BRIMSTONE OF DISCIPLINARY
HEARINGS
PHIRI:
We are now taking this matter forward... and we are.. or are we still in
Daggakraal? Or we are simply just looking at the entirety of the issue and
children to Grandfather Pixley ka Isaka
Seme in Daggakraal?
PHIRI: Or are we done with Daggakraal and now
only overeager to place Her Royal Highness [Helen] in her natal
perspective as indeed we have not as yet arrived at the being of Her Royal
Highness. Till now you were relating
very objectively on the children of Father Pixley Seme.
PHIRI:
For the registration
VEZINDABA: At a place
like CIPRO, where companies are registered.
PHIRI:
In all this time, where is Our Father...?
PHIRI::
No, I mean [ANC First President] John Langalibalele Dube [where was he in that while]? Where was he during the
registration? Was he as yet a nonentity?
PHIRI:
But I am looking at the nascent stages here when the ANC was still being
registered! [Pixley Seme a.k.a.] Sinono is still starting this new idea [the ANC]. He is implementing an idea he first mooted with his
fellow advocates [Mangena, Montsioa and Msimang].
VEZINDABA: In fact the
entirety of the British protectorates in southern Africa.
PHIRI:
African National ... or Native Congress.
I know there was a “native” about the name of the organization.
TANZANIA OF PRESIDENTS
JAKAYA MRISHO KIKWETE AND PRESIDENT JULIUS NYERERE’S A SPIRITUAL REPLICA OF
PIXLEY SEME’S DREAM FOR A UNITED AFRICA UNDER THE ANC-AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS
PHIRI:
Please hold it there, Your Very Royal Highness! There is yet another question
mark I should like to saddle Your Highness with, particularly after a mention
was made here of the British Protectorates [and colonies] of Southern Africa.
PHIRI: There is one particular country where
the ANC was wont to training us as her soldiery. One of those countries is the United Republic
of Tanzania[as of this moment governed by His Excellency President
Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete].
PHIRI:
And there is an aspect that leaves me wondering about this particular country [Tanzania]. My wonderment
has hitherto never been expressed before, Brethren, and there are actually two
sources of this wonderment.
PHIRI: One [singing South
African national anthem] “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika...”
PHIRI:...Them the Tanzanians sing this anthem
as it is sung by us. [This is] to
the extent that Tanzania is the only country I know of singing ‘Nkosi Sikelela’
like we do. Of course, when they do sing
their national anthem, they do so in the Kiswahili language[which is continental Africa’s biggest native language with something
like 100 million speakers world-wide].
PHIRI:
Now I want to know from Her Royal Highness here if there is anything she
remembers about Seme’s influence if any...
PHIRI:
Secondly... the second thing that I marvelled on Tanzania about is the fact
that when you get to northern Tanzania, there stands a village bearing the name
“Seme”.
PHIRI: I am asking these questions most
deliberately because there could be some hidden meaning to all of this...
VEZINDABA: Named after
Seme?
PHIRI:
Well, yes...named “Seme”. You will find
this place on a map. Just get a detailed map of Northern Tanzania and you will
see “Seme”, and this geographical place stands in the environs of the
birthplace of Julius Nyerere[post-colonial Tanzania’s first head of
state].
PHIRI:
Now that is why my wonderment never ceases when this is combined with our
national anthem in Tanzania only sung in Kiswahili [humming]
Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika....
PHIRI: In fact I must make the request now
that before I leave today, I play you their rendition done by school
children. I’ve got record of this here
since I had been paying my Tanzania-bound daughter a visit and they are singing
the anthem in that Kiswahili language.
PHIRI:
Your Royal Highness, is there anything you can fill us in about in relation to
Tanzania, to people like [Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere]...
to the times of [Julius Nyerere] all in relation to Our
Father Pixley Seme?
PHIRI:
Were they really close friends?
PHIRI:
Please let’s take one halt there.
VEZINDABA: It is
likely that [grandpa] went to university with [Harold Macmillan].
PHIRI:
Yes, but let’s take a halt just there.
Allow me to highlight in the Kiswahili language the main points of what
has transpired in our discussion till this moment. Because my intention is to enable people of
Tanzania to also know about Pixley Seme.
VEZINDABA:, BHEKUZALO: [giggles]
PHIRI:
(In Kiswahili) Sasa hivi, nilikuwa naongea...
VEZINDABA: BHEKUZALO: [more giggles albeit subdued this time round]
PHIRI:
Ignore them now, Mother... Ignore them now, Mother... and give me a chance to talk to the people of
Tanzania: [In the Kiswahili language]
PHIRI: Hapa naongea na mtoto wake mwanzilishi wa chama cha African National
Congress ambae alikuwa Dakta Pixley ka Isaka Seme.
PHIRI: Huyu ni mwanae ambae kabakia. Wengine ndio tayari marehemu. Nae anaitwa
Princess Helen Seme.
PHIRI: Anaitwa “Princess” kwa sababu yeye ni
mjukuu (kwa upande wa mama yake sasa) katika Ufalme wa Wazulu, Mfalme
Cetshwayo. Mtoto wake Mfalme Cetshwayo [yaani Mfalme Dinuzulu] ndie huyu mjukuu wake.
PHIRI: Kwa hiyo, ni baba kwa Pixley ka Isaka
[lakini] kwa mama [yake] ni [Mfalme wa Wazulu, na ndio sababu
tunamuita “Princess”].
PHIRI: Nilikuwa nimemuulizaje? Je, upo
uhusiano katika mwanzilishi wa chama cha ANC, huyo Pixley ka Isaka Seme (ambae
hapa Afrika Kusini amesahaulika, hawamthamini) na Tanzania
PHIRI: Anaeleza kwamba maishani mwa baba
yake, alikuwa anasema sana kama [watu wa maana
sana kwake]: Kiongozi Julius
Nyerere. [Alikuwa
anasema kuhusu Kwame Nkrumah]. Alikuwa anasema tena... [kwamba] mwingine alikuwa [Harold Macmillan]
wa Wingereza.
PHIRI: Kwa
hiyo hapa tunayo historia ambao Mama alikuwa kama vile amehifadhi. Sasa tumeshukuru sana.
PHIRI:
[to Helen in English] Mamma, I was just explaining
to the people of Tanzania, especially [the President of the United
Republic of Tanzania]...
PHIRI:
[to Vezindaba, still in English] ...My brother, I
also want not only [President Zuma] to see this
video, as the President of South Africa and of the ANC, but I also want the
President of the Republic of Tanzania to see it because, [Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme] wanted to unite the entire Africa.
PHIRI:
[in English] And that is why I was just explaining
in Kiswahili so that the Tanzanian people
can understand that His Excellency Zuma has got the message, as well as
His Excellency [Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete] of Tanzania.
PHIRI:
[back to IsiZulu, and to Helen]
Please, forge forward, Mother. I had
taken the detour to make others as well understand our content...
ON THE FORMATION
OF THE ANC IN 1912
WE INVITE ALL BROWN NATIONS;
REGARDLESS OF INDIVIDUAL TONGUE TWIST;
THE CLARION CALL IS THE ASSEMBLY IN BLOEMFONTEIN;
WHERE OUR UNITY SHALL BE CEMENTED IN the ANTI-COLONIAL STRUGGLE;
REGARDLESS OF INDIVIDUAL TONGUE TWIST;
THE CLARION CALL IS THE ASSEMBLY IN BLOEMFONTEIN;
WHERE OUR UNITY SHALL BE CEMENTED IN the ANTI-COLONIAL STRUGGLE;
The ANTI-COLONIAL
FREEDOM STRUGGLES AND SACRIFICES OF SEME’S FUTURE FATHER-IN-LAW, THE ZULU KING
PHIRI:
I hear Your Royal Highness. But let us
come back to a point... about children.
We ended our talk with the birth
of whom...? ...in Daggakraal...?
VEZINDABA: St Helena
Island.
VEZINDABA:
Kwatengisangaye.
PHIRI: [mixture of Zulu and English]
So they were saddling the king with a “house arrest”, in other words?
PHIRI:
It is in the Transvaal..., this particular farm...?
PHIRI: Just as a matter of revision for the benefit
of those uninitiated in the broad subject of Zulu royal lineage, [we’re talking] here “Dinuzulu” who is the son to King Who?
PHIRI:
Your Royal Highness!
PHIRI:
So the king decides to summon the lawyer, right?
HOW MR SEME SAW
MRS SEME
PIXLEY KA ISAKA
SEME BEGETS HIS LAST FOUR CHILDREN WITH ZULU ROYAL BLOOD
PHIRI:
Where do all of these [ex-Princess Pikisile Zulu]
children first come to see the world? Say, the birth-place for the first-born
child to [Princess Pikisile ka Dinuzulu]?
PHIRI:
OK! I hear you clearly, your Royal Highness.
So, the entirety of Princess Pikisile’s children have now come into the
world
PHIRI:
Of course that[non-discrimination] is very proper!
VEZINDABA: This in other words means that our
grandfather...
PHIRI:
[to Vezindaba]If you could raise your voice,
please..
VEZINDABA: In other words our grandfather, Pixley ka
Isaka married twice. Firstly with the
Xiniwe Maiden. And then of course with
Princess..
VEZINDABA: I see!
THE ROLE OF CONSANGUINEOUS MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI IN THE SEME FAMILY
CHARACTERIZED BY THE ZULU NATION’S
HISTORY IN STRUGGLE AGAINST SETTLER COLONIALISM
PHIRI:
Now you as the Seme household naturally have various family bonds... and this
is the other point I died to see us broaching... you naturally boast your own
family ties...the extended family etc.
These will be quite various and you will even find them in various
political organizations.
PHIRI:
I say this because I realize within this Zulu Kingdom, you as Semes are well
steeped and this is in your blood. But in this self-same Zulu kingdom there is
one very eminent person ranking among South Africa’s political notables... this
one is similar to yourselves here for having the same Zulu royal blood coursing
through his veins....
PHIRI:...I
am talking here about Umntwana Wakwa Pindangene [with
“Pindangene” spelled “Phindangene”, the title translates to “The Crown Prince
of the Pindangene Royal House” and all of this is the Zulu traditional status
to Dr Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the leader of South Africa’s Inkatha Freedom Party
which is often regarded as an all-Zulu political organization whose survival
alongside an expressly anti-tribal ANC largely depended on its fierceness in
opposition to a Mandela-led ANC that was for all intent and purposes out to
annihilate the former especially in the
late eighties and early nineties where an estimated 10 000 lives were
claimed by inter-party turf wars in the provinces of KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng
in particular]
PHIRI:
I ask because my reading of history tells me [Dr Buthelezi]
does refer to Dr Seme as “Uncle”.
PHIRI:
What, exactly is your blood relationship with the Crown Prince of kwa
Pindangene? I want that area thrashed
out because even though this video is targeted for Nxamalala [Mr Zuma] but we are also doing it in such a way that if His
Royal Highness [Buthelezi] were to see it, he must know that
he is not locked out for our sense of appreciation.
PHIRI:
We want to thank His Royal Highness [Buthelezi] for the
role he has been playing to heed the hardships of his family relatives [even those who are out of his own political party]. [We thank him because] where you
share consanguinity, politics only ranks second.
PHIRI:
So [Your Royal Highness Helen Seme], you are related
with His Royal Highness [Mangosuthu Buthelezi] through the
Zulu royal House... but how so? I need that picture, albeit briefly, Your
Highness.
PHIRI:
Your Highness, sorry for this interruption, but King Cetshwayo too did meet the
fate of a banishment to St Helena...Cetshwayo the father to King Dinuzulu, that
is. He too was banished...?
PHIRI:
...Even he to the self-same St Helena.. which translates to two successive
generations of Zulu monarchy... both the father and the son being visited with
the same penalty of being banished to St Helena?
PHIRI:
But the British came back for another round of fights [against Zulu
King Cetshwayo].
PHIRI:
It would seem like they came back again after their previous and very
humiliating defeat [at the hands of Zulu military might in the
Battle of Isandlwana] and it was after their own round of victory that
the King was banished, do I know my history well?
PHIRI:
Well, stick to King Dinuzulu then[your maternal grandfather].
PHIRI:[You are saying]And so the Nation anxiously
"inquisitioned" and quizzed
their King: “You are [really determined to] ultimately go and leave
us behind empty-handed for an heir to your throne...?”
PHIRI:
I hear you, Auntie!
PHIRI:
I follow you! I really do. And this now must be in reference to Zwide Langa (“uZwide
kaLanga”)?
PHIRI: VEZINDABA: BHEKUZALO: [in simultaneity] In St Helena!
PHIRI:
Your Very Royal Highness!
PHIRI: [in a
semi-whisper] So clear at last!
PHIRI:
I have grasped it; I have the gist fully grasped!
PHIRI:
What I am driving at here is that Our Father, Pixley Seme who gave birth to Our
Mother, Yourself, is the ancestor and the founder of the ANC. Far be it, then, that just because of your
consanguinity with the Crown Prince
of the Pindangene Royal House, then some
political lowlifers find their sordid portal to say “We are going to leave [Her Royal Highness Helen Seme] to her own devices [with Buthelezi our enemy] since the two are relatives”
PHIRI: I mean, your blood relative
is your blood relative
PHIRI:
And this is now the reason, isn’t it, that even some political functions
concerning the Inkatha Freedom Party have been being graced by the presence of
Your Very Royal Highness just because the IFP is led by your blood relative
PHIRI:
Even out of sheer respect on the part of Your Very Royal Highness, when you
should be attending per invitation those IFP functions only to find everybody
else dressed in IFP colours I would expect Your Highness to at least borrow
somewhere an IFP T-shirt just for the occasion as the saying has long gone:
“When you are in Rome do as the Romans do”.
To show respect to other people’s organizations has never been a crime [in any civilized society], especially when everybody should be
knowing by now that Our Mother [Her Royal Highness Helen Seme]
has only one political home, the ANC
PHIRI: Brothers, I had thought I must thrash that
issue out once and for all so that those political lowlifers out to destroy Her
Royal Highness Helen Seme should be left no quarter for leaving Our Mother [Her Royal Highness] destitute in her advanced age, leaving her
bogged down in the grinding poverty of her matchbox four-roomed house [without even sufficient food to eat for herself and her many “great-grandchildren]” .
PHIRI: How can such an attitude be fair when
political lowlifers out there [self-styling themselves as ANC’s most senior members]are
squandering coffers attained [by virtue of their membership to the ANC
Our Father Seme Founded]?
PHIRI: How can this be fair when
the eminent name of Our Father Pixley Seme is exploited left and right by every
shade of political wannabe even going to the extent of paying lip-service by
means of naming municipalities after Seme... this drives me bilious!
PHIRI: They have paid lip-service
by naming some municipality or two after [Pixley ka Isaka Seme],
yet here sits the [greatest African liberator’s]
only surviving child in the most disgraceful of poverty-stricken circumstances!
PHIRI: This, I have decided to voice
it out unequivocally that even I [being a non-Seme] but only a
Phiri, am still deeply galled [by the mistreatment meted out to Her
Royal Highness Seme]. [I disagree totally with the notion that]
Now [in the so-called New South Africa] children of our
heroes to be turned into a laughing stock.
I reject this practice.
PHIRI: But still I must leave the
last word to you, the Venerable Seme House. Speak your minds and let me not be
in the forefront of this.
PHIRI:
Having grasped the family ties with The Crown Prince of the Pindangene
Royal House, I will request that one of my brothers here, should see if
there was a chance to make me an appointment with The Crown Prince [Buthelezi]. And one of
these good days I will on all fours be approaching the eyes of His Royal
Highness Buthelezi to see what comes through those retinas in the shape of the
much-sought legacy of Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme, [Buthelezi’s
maternal uncle by affinity].
THE DISABUSAL OF THE FALSE NOTION THAT MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI GOES
ABOUT ABUSING THE HOUSE OF SEME FOR HIS OWN POLITICAL GAINS
PHIRI:
You are always free to do so, Mother!
PHIRI:
This is a mouthful, Your Royal Highness!
PHIRI:
Your are relatives!
PHIRI:
Besides, Our Father Pixley ka Isaka Seme set out to create unity among all
peoples, he had no discrimination in his designs
PHIRI:
I think you have said a mouthful. Your
Highness.... I’d like my brother Vezindaba to complement your talk. But I don’t want us to dwell too much on this
matter anymore.
PHIRI:
Your weight [particularly with the royalty-conscious IFP]
is understandably very significant since if [your mother],
Princess Pikisile Zulu-Seme had been born a boy...
PHIRI:
In that way [the Zulus who are royalist members of the IFP]
are only in that respect paying you homage.
VEZINDABA:
uhm...mmm
PHIRI:
Feel free to regain your voice, Fellow-Child-of-The-House
NELSON MANDELA’S LONG-WALK-TO-FREEDOM-LIES AND HALF-TRUTHS EXPLODED
RE: THE ORIGINATOR OF THE IDEA OF THE ANC YOUTH LEAGUE FOUNDING, RE: WHICH FIRM
AFFORDED HIM NURTURING AS A LAWYER, THE SO-CALLED LAW ARTICLES etc
Let
me conclude by taking excerpts from a good source (with a note about the part
where Mandela at about 20 year’s
age, confesses to knowing next to nothing about the ANC and has nowhere in the whole book where he mentions Tembu royal cattle slaughtering for the
ANC in neither 1910, nor 1911, nor
1912 when the organization was formalized. Note also that Mandela joins Lembede to
confront Xuma, the drama, pretty
much like the reported drama between Malema
and Zuma, has been toned down by Mandela in the autobiography. Mandela
also does not mention the fact that Seme,
the man who single-handedly inspired South
Africa to found the ANC, was not
only Xuma’s presidential
predecessor, but was still breathing down his neck of course. A stone’s throw from the house where Xuma lived in Sophiatown, stood before that the house of nobody else but the
venerable Pixley Seme (on Bertha
Street), but Mandela does
interestingly not mention that fact in his biography. It is as if he does not want to see the face
of Seme in his own history. Mandela
also visited Seme’s house
frequently, but he also suppresses that fact in his biography. Mandela
did some law articles with Dr Seme. But that is also totally absent from Mandela’s autobiography, with only
people from the Eastern Cape and some whites appearing as the ones and only
ones who made him a lawyer. Even today
as Mandela is about to go to a grave
of his own, a sepulchre that will
probably be turned into a shrine by Mr
Zuma who calls him the father of the nation, MANDELA DOES NOT KNOW AND DOES NOT CARE TO KNOW WHERE THE ANCESTOR OF THE ANC, Seme IS BURIED OR
WHETHER Seme’s GRAVE IS DECENT ON
NOT! Interesting, not so?! We know that Mandela has not clapped eyes on
Seme’s grave because Mandela became head of State in 1994 and left that
position some five years later having done nothing to create a South African memory or any serious
monument about Seme, save the naming of some municipality or other geographical
enclave. Seme’s grave, the dilapidated ruins of his house in Volksrust
and many othr areas of South Africa
where Seme lived and worked for the
people of this country to be liberated have been
deliberatedly
deliberately
overlooked. A great and wonderful thank you to Seme from Mandela who came to be famous by means of his once-off leadership to the movement Seme formed. A grand thank you from Mandela to Seme for educating the former both law and politics Instead of Seme’s name being lifted by Mandela, he lifts only one name of a man of British stock and half the stock of Mandela’s own Thembu ethnicity, Walter Sisulu. Further than that, Mandela, with the support of some European governments whose political parties oversaw colonization and exploitation of South Africa, Mandela largely blows his own trumpet. Do you know what you today find next to the place where Seme’s house stood and was frequently visited by Mandela? You find of course, MADIBA LODGE! Madiba is the praise name for Mandela!
deliberatedly
deliberately
overlooked. A great and wonderful thank you to Seme from Mandela who came to be famous by means of his once-off leadership to the movement Seme formed. A grand thank you from Mandela to Seme for educating the former both law and politics Instead of Seme’s name being lifted by Mandela, he lifts only one name of a man of British stock and half the stock of Mandela’s own Thembu ethnicity, Walter Sisulu. Further than that, Mandela, with the support of some European governments whose political parties oversaw colonization and exploitation of South Africa, Mandela largely blows his own trumpet. Do you know what you today find next to the place where Seme’s house stood and was frequently visited by Mandela? You find of course, MADIBA LODGE! Madiba is the praise name for Mandela!
The
last point as you read the excerpts hereunder, note that Mandela mentions not the fact that the Youth League formation was an idea of Blogger’s maternal second
cousin Pixley Seme either (we
already know why). Nor does Mandela put Anton Lembede in the
forefront and the leadership of the founding of the organization. Lembede seems to be elected President
of the Youth League only by virtue
of his “verbosity” which Mandela
accuses of being [woolly and idealistic] sometimes, which very appositely
observed, ARE THE SAME ACCUSATIONS LEVELLED AGAINST JULIUS SELLO MALEMA TODAY!. As you read that part slowly, you will
tend to get the feeling that Mandela
is pulling down Lembede’s
intellectual force and with the fulcrum of his thrusts, catapults A.P. Mda as the real brain practical brain
behind Lembede. From there, as the boys proceed to Xuma’s house with a draft of the Youth League Constitution, you will
make your own instinctive conclusion that the driving force here was A.P. Mda although this becomes patently
false as you read and interview other sources of what took place in those
months and few years of the founding of the Youth League. The fact of the matter is that the founding of the Youth League was a brainchild of
President Xuma’s predecessor and
founder of the ANC, Pixley ka Isaka Seme.
We
know this fact today because Seme’s
daughter, Helen (then a teenager
attending school at Holy Cross Institution in Alexander), was there when her
father lectured Lembede next-door to
Xuma’s house (they were neighbours,
remember): “Listen, Boy! And listen very
carefully! Just go out there and found the
Youth League for this
organization. Nobody has a right to stop you! Without a Youth League, there is no future for the people of this country as
a liberated nation”.
It
is also Helen who is a witness that Mandela frequented her father’s house and, particularly, Seme’s office in Johannesburg, and very much in the environs that Mandela’s excerpts show the Youth League founding took place.
“He
is doing his law articles, my child.” Helen
would be told by her father Pixley
when the girl, seated upstairs (where Mandela
unfortunately never noticed her) in the offices of her father’s practice along
President and Commissioner.
We
also know from Helen that Mandela never imagined anybody is still
alive today who could refute some of the understatements he makes about the Seme contribution to the struggle, in
his autobiography. Mandela
definitely never thought evidence of his own disservice to Seme would ever surface; and that is why, when he was bidding
farewell to the presidency in front of Zulu
King Goodwill Zwelithini Zulu, he was shocked to hear from the
king that the daughter of ANC
Founder Pixley ka Isaka Seme is alive.
So,
on the arrival of Helen per orders
of the King, Mandela went almost dry in the throat repeating:
“Really...really... really? Are you really the daughter of Pixley Seme?!”
It
is also on the same occasion that Mandela
inadvertently confessed to caring nothing about the grave and heritage of
probably the greatest man (after King
Shaka Zulu) Africa has ever
produced when he asked:
“WHERE, MY DEAR HELEN, IS YOUR FATHER
BURIED?”
There was subsequent frequent exchange
of letters between Mandela and Helen Seme where Mandela was promising to take
the responsibility of building the heritage of the founder of the ANC,
Pixley. Ultimately Mandela, like his
student Mr Zuma promise Phiri to attend to issues of workplace tribalism, had
his promises ending with in the dustbin where his writing cartridge ended when
ink tank got exhausted wring false promises to the daughter of the founder of
the ANC.
I have said earlier that Mandela tries
in his autobiography to surreptitiously give to fellow-Eastern-caper Peter Mda
credit for the drafting of the first Youth League constitution. I have made an understatement of an act of
Eastern-Cape regionalism! Indeed,
I have underestimated Mandela’s
massacre of the historical facts that brought about the founding of the ANC Youth League! Mandela
is not giving credit to even A.P. Mda
for this idea (let alone Seme who of
course does not exist in the memory of Mandela
anymore) he gives it to a character he calls Dr Majombozi and Easterncaper like himself, I presume. This of course is a sheer and absolute
invention by a Mr Mandela and
Eastern-Cape company who clearly want to
present KwaZulu-Natal fathers of the
ANC and the Youth League as idealists who were not practical whereas
fellow-Easterncapers like the Mda’s
and the Majombozi’s, were the
“go-getters”. Majombozi is an act of fiction for the founding of the ANC Youth League for Pixley Seme had this habit of striking
the table with his fist to drive a point
home and this frequently happened when
Seme was ramming ideas down the juvenile but intellectually spacious throat of Lembede. It is exactly that fist that
used to make teenager Helen Seme to
quickly rush and see what point her father was making this time round to Lembede: and one of those points was
THAT LEMBEDE MUST GO OUT AS A YOUTH
HIMSELF, TO ESTABLISH THE YOUTH LEAGUE. I do not know whether Mr Mandela is trying to
inform the world that his Dr Majombozi
is the one who gave this idea to an African
giant (Pixley Seme) who would subsequently be roundly quoted around the
world and in Africa itself by other
lesser giants like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah. Mandela’s
point (whoever else who can support most probably speaking his own language,
has done irreparable but remediable harm to the history of the ANC by sanctioning an untruth, parroted since by every other parrot. A website in point (http://www.ANCyl.org.za/docs/hlomelang/2007/vol3_38p.pdf
http://www.ANCyl.org.za/docs/hlomelang/2007/vol3_38p.pdf) starts the Majombozi
parochialism in the following manner:
It
is public knowledge that the idea to
form a Youth League of the ANC was first mooted in 1942 by Dr. Mxolisi Lionel Majombozi who shared the
idea with a fellow medical student, Dr.
William Nkomo and others, it was after the 1943 Annual Conference of the ANC that concrete steps were taken that
resulted in the formation of a Provisional Youth Committee led by Dr. Nkomo as
its Chairman and Dr. Majombozi as
its Secretary. In that Provisional Youth Committee were eminent
youth such as Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, Anton Lembede, AP Mda and
others.
The
science of propaganda teaches us that a lie repeated over and over again ends
up being the truth. But you had better
do a good job on your propaganda project and make sure little girls like Helen Seme were not around when the
real truth, diametrically opposite to your propaganda product, was happening.
And this, my dear reader, is the fatal mistake that Mr Nelson Mandela
probably with some fellow-Easterncapers (and colonialist Europeans who wanted to kill and finish the Zulu giant Seme) made by
starting a propaganda project without knowing the fact that others know
differently. I mean, Mandela in his book suggests that it
was in a discussion that he participated in that “Majombozi came up with the brainwave”. Yet the quoted website, featuring yet another
person speaking Mandela’s language,
suggests that, no, it was not there, but in a surgery with a fellow-doctor!!!
Guys! Guys! Guys! Thank you very much!
There
is one redeeming fact though about Prince Nelson
Mandela’s biography where these
particular matters are concerned, and he must get credit for that: he
effectively describes Seme’s
“presidential follower” (Xuma) as [a
supercilious puppet of the erstwhile oppressive local colonial masters of South
Africa and a man who had incredibly befriended just about every white racist
cabinet minister of the time]. I
hope the replacement of an “X” by a “Z” should take heed and not smile too much
with foreign governments who plan nieu-colonialist strategies for our
land. History will judge the Zuma clan very harshly if that were to
happen; and I guess this is the reason why the foundation standing for the
venerable Mandela has cautioned Zuma against this dastardly tribalistic law that is trying to be born
in the new year flowing from Zuma’s
pen, bearing the misnomer of
Protector of State Secrets when in fact it will be protecting secrets of
the state busy Zulu-tribalizing
South-African government institutions for easy access to our
mineral resources by foreign governments!
And if I were to give 2011’s embattled
Youth League president Julius Sello Malema a piece of advice in order to defeat
you, Mr Zuma, it would be:
Julius, Sonny! I hear
you are driving a Range Rover If you are genuine to the struggle of the people
of this country, take your expensive car as.
Go to Croesus Cemetery in Sophiatown Johannesburg and look for the grave
of the man who inspired the formation of both the ANC and the Youth League your opponent and you are
respectively leading. Have a talk with
Moroka (which is the praisename of my cousin Pixley Seme or “Itonga
Elikulu”
in Zulu) and you will see
wonders! If he will not inspire you for political solutions
to your problems with Zuma, he
definitely will advise you on your new farming venture as Seme was not only a
lawyer, but he was also an ardent farmer.
Drive to Volksrust, if you will please take any advice in your trying
times; look for Daggakraal there, it will not be easy to find and the road is
full of potholes with each of which is fit to swallow an elephant, but I guess
that is why Range Rovers were designed to be stronger than elephants meaning
your vehicle will easily climb out of such pitfalls. Take two days off for the search as it
definitely won’t be easy; but finally you will find the ruins of Pixley Seme’s
house there, not far from a God-fearing Mkholo Family, if they are still there
and I remember them by name since the Mkholos are part of an ancient Tonga/Moroka clan from whom descend my
mother Belinda, herself a Mavimbela-Mkholo. It is another way, Mr Malema Sir, of talking to Seme if
you should find talking to graves too offensive to your religious
persuasions. Those who are destined to
liberate the people of Zion or Azania (which are other names for South Africa) cannot get their true
inspirations from men who have used their superior role in political struggle
to amass themselves, their family members and their fellow-tribesmen and –women
otherwise inexplicably-attained fabulous wealth. These characters cannot inspire you Malema
while the very people Seme wanted to liberate still live in the grinding
poverty of his grave, the forlornness of his ruins, and the impecuniosities of
his daughter and only surviving child whom you can also visit anytime you so
wish. She lives in a god-forsaken
four-roomed house in Ulundi, KwaZulu
Natal. Wake up, Malema! Or else your
grave will not only be early, but it will be turned receptacle for the spittle
for the imperialists whose mouths are not only watering for our gold, platinum,
uranium and you name it, BUT THEIR POCKETS ARE ALREADY BULGING WITH THEIR
PUPPETS WHO MAY WELL BE MEMBERS OF YOUR ANC!
Remember
this, Mr Malema, 250 000 years ago (that is a quarter of a million) and
very long before human beings were known to be civilized enough to have
societies, let alone technology for mining, but there was still mining going on
here for the deposits in the bowels
under our earth, evidence shows. What
happened to those beings that were doing mining here in South Africa so far
back in the history of life on earth? Or
what happened to the product of their mining? So far nobody knows; but
disappear totally with their history and technologies, they did disappear. The
moral of this story is: Do not get too fond of South African gold or else you
will disappear together with them and all these modern pseudo-leaders who are
stuck with issues of gold forgetting the gold in the human spirit are destined
for a painful disappearance starting with the year 2012. Minerals of South Africa have a way of
becoming a curse because this is God’s real holy land where the Garden of Eden
stood in those first seven days of The Creation.
“Long Walk To Freedom: The Autobiography
of Nelson Mandela” Edition published by Abacus in 1994, reprinted in 1995,
1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
“PART ONE: A COUNTRY CHILDHOOD”. Mandela
at about Age 20, studying in Fort Hare University, Page 58
...Even
though we supported smuts’ position, his visit provoked much discussion. During one session, a contemporary of mine, Nyathi Khongisa, who was considered an
extremely clever fellow, condemned Smuts as a racist. He said that we might consider ourselves
‘black Englishmen’, but the English had oppressed us at the same time that they
tried to ‘civilize’ us. Whatever the
mutual antagonism between Boer and British, he said, the two white groups would
unite to confront the black threat.
Khongisa’s views stunned us and seemed dangerously radical. A fellow student whispered to me that Nyathi
was a member of the African National Congress, an organization that I had
vaguely heard of but knew very little about....During my second year at
Fort Hare, I invited my friend Paul
Mahabane to spend the winter holidays with me in the Transkei. Paul was
from Bloemfontein and was well known on campus because his father, the Reverend Zaccheus
Mahabane, had twice been president-general of the African National
Congress. His connection with this
organization, about which I still knew very little, gave him the reputation of
a rebel.
“PART
THREE: BIRTH OF A FREEDOM FIGHTER” Mandela
meets Anton Lembede for the first time in Soweto at Sisulu’s, well inspired by Pixley
Seme to Found the Youth League. Mandela,
among others, then accompanies Lembede
to ANC President Xuma to demand (“demand” toned down in Mandela’s rendition of the occasion)
the acceptance of the Seme-Lembede-draft of the proposed Youth
League constitution. Yet Seme’s hand nowhere appears in this Mandela narration. Lembede
was to be poisoned to death soon after he had founded the ANC Youth League. So the
stage was firmly set to hide from posterity the crucial role played herein by Pixley Seme who was frequently overheard
by his teenage daughter Helen
repeatedly urging Lembede to work on
his idea of a Youth League. The
sequel to Mandela getting to know Lembede from the Sisulu’s house, subsequently sees Mandela frequenting the Practice (office) of Lembede’s mentor (Seme) alongside Lembede to get more instruction on how to found the Youth League, if not to practise law
there! Mandela was not aware all
that time that there was this teenager who was uninvolved with the buzz and
bustle in her father’s office, but had a keen ear on what was being
discussed. And this is the girl, who,
now, in her 80s, has come to embarrass Mandela
and show huge holes of untruths in his autobiography.
Page 110-114 Walter [Sisulu’s]
house in Orlando [Soweto] was a Mecca for activists and ANC members. It was a warm,
welcoming pace and I was often there to sample either a political discussion or
Ma Sisulu’s cooking. One night in 1943 I met Anton Lembede, who held
Master of Arts and Bachelor of Law degrees, and A.P. Mda. From the moment I heard
Lembede speak, I knew I was seeing a
magnetic personality who thought in original and often startling ways. He was then one of a handful of African lawyers in the whole of South Africa and was the legal partner
of the venerable Dr Pixley ka Seme, one of the founders of the ANC.
Lembede said that Africa
was a black man’s continent, and it was up to Africans to reassert themselves and reclaim what was rightfully
theirs. He hated the idea of the black
inferiority complex and castigated what he called the worship and idolization
of the West and its ideas. The
inferiority complex, he affirmed, was the greatest barrier to liberation. He noted that wherever the African had been given the opportunity,
he was capable of developing to the same extent as the white man, citing such African heroes as Marcus Garvey, W.E.B.
Du Bois and Haile Selassie. ‘The colour
of my skin is beautiful,’ he said, ‘like the black soil of Mother Africa.’ He believed blacks had to improve their own
self-image before they could initiate successful mass action. He preached self-reliance and
self-determination, and called his philosophy Africanism. We
took it for granted that one day he would lead the ANC.
Lembede declared that a new spirit was stirring among the
people, that ethnic differences were melting away, that young men and women
thought of themselves as Africans
first and foremost, not as Xhosas or Ndebeles or Tswanas. Lembede,
whose father was an illiterate Zulu
peasant from Natal, had trained as a teacher at Adam’s College, an
American Board of Missions institution.
He had taught for years in the
Orange Free State, learned Afrikaans, and had come to see Afrikaner
nationalism as a prototype of African nationalism.
As
Lembede later wrote in the newspaper
Inkundla
Yabantu, an African
newspaper in Natal:
The
history of modern times is the history of nationalism. Nationalism has been tested in the people’s
struggles and the fires of battle and found to be the only antidote against
foreign rule and modern imperialism. It
is for that reason that the great imperialistic powers feverishly endeavour
with all their might to discourage and eradicate all nationalistic tendencies
among their alien subjects; for that purpose huge and enormous sums of money
are lavishly expended on propaganda against nationalism which is dismissed as
‘narrow’, ‘barbarous’, ‘uncultured’,
‘devilish’ etc. Some alien subjects
become dupes of this sinister propaganda and consequently become tools or
instruments of imperialism, for which great service they are highly praised by
the imperialistic power and showered with such epithets as ‘culture’,
‘liberal’, ‘progressive’, ‘broadminded’, etc.
Lembede’s views struck a chord in me. I, too, had been susceptible to paternalistic
British colonialism and the appeal of being perceived by whites as ‘cultured’,
and ‘progressive’. I was already on my
way to being drawn into the black elite that Britain sought to create in Africa.
That is what everyone from the regent to Mr Sidelsky had wanted for me.
But it was an illusion. Like Lembede, I came to see the antidote as
militant African nationalism.
Lembede’s
friend and partner was Peter Mda, better known as A.P. While Lembede tended to
imprecision and was inclined to be verbose, Mda was controlled and exact.
Lembede could be vague and mystical; Mda was specific and scientific. Mda’s practicality was a perfect foil for
Lemede’s idealism.
Other
young men were thinking along the same lines and we would all meet to discuss
these ideas. In addition to Lembede and Mda, these men included Walter
Sisulu; Oliver Tambo; Dr Lionel Majombozi; Victor Mbobo, my former
teacher at Healdltown; William Nkomo, a medical student who was a member of the
[Communist
Party]; Jordan Ngubane, a journalist from Natal who worked for Inkundla as well as Bantu World, the largest
selling African newspaper, David
Bopape, secretary of the ANC in the Transvaal and a member of the
Communist Party and many others. Many
felt, perhaps unfairly, that the ANC
as a whole had become the preserve of a tired, unmilitant, privileged African elite more concerned with
protecting their own rights than those of the masses. The general consensus was that some action
must be taken, and Dr Majombozi proposed forming a Youth League as a way of lighting a
fire under the leadership of the ANC.
In
1943 a delegation including Lembede,
Mda, Sisulu, Tambo, Nkomo and I went to see Dr Xuma, who was head of the ANC,
at his rather grand house in Sophiatown. Dr Xuma had a surgery at his
home in addition to a small farm. He had
performed a great service to the ANC. He had roused it from its slumbering state
under Dr Seme, when the organization
had shrunk in size and importance. When he assumed the presidency, the ANC had 17s in 6d
in its treasury, and he had boosted the amount to 4000 Pounds. He was admired by
traditional leaders, had relationships with cabinet ministers and exuded a
sense of security and confidence. But he
also carried himself with an air of superciliousness that did not befit the
leader of a mass organization. Devoted
as he was to the ANC, his medical
practice took precedence. Xuma presided over the ea of
delegations, deputations, letters and telegrams. Everything was done in the English manner,
the idea being that despite our disagreements we were all gentlemen. He enjoyed the relationships he had formed with the white
establishment and did not want to jeopardize them with political action.
At
our meeting, we told him that we intended to organize a Youth League and a campaign of action designed to mobilize mass
support. We had brought a copy of the
draft constitution and manifesto with us.
We told Dr Xuma that the ANC was in danger of becoming
marginalized unless it stirred itself and took up new methods. Dr
Xuma felt threatened by our delegation and strongly objected to a Youth League constitution. He thought the league should be a more
loosely organized group and act mainly as a recruiting committee for the ANC.
In a paternalistic way, Dr Xuma
went on to tell us that Africans as
a group were too unorganized and undisciplined to participate in a mass
campaign and that such a campaign would be rash and dangerous.
Shortly
after the meeting with Dr Xuma, a
provisional committee of the Youth
League was formed under the leadership of William Nkomo. The members of the committee journeyed to the
ANC annual conference in
Bloemfontein in December 1943, where they proposed the formation of a Youth League to help recruit new
members to the organization. The
proposal was accepted.
The
actual formation of the Youth League
took place on Easter Sunday 1944 at the Bantu
Men’s Social Centre in Eloff Street. There were about a hundred men there, some
coming from as far away as Pretoria. It was a select group, an elite group, a
great number of us being Fort Hare graduates; we were far from a mass
moment. Lembede gave a lecture on the history of nations, a tour of the
horizon from ancient Greece to medieval Europe
to the age of colonization. He emphasized the historical achievements of Africa and Africans, and noted how foolish it was for whites to see themselves
as a chosen people and an intrinsically superior race.
VEZINDABA:
What I should like to add is this: the
Chief of the Buthelezi Clan [Mangosuthu Buthelezi], the Crown
Prince of the Pindangene Royal House. He
grew up together with the Seme children. They shared together Zulu children’s
favourite food of unflavoured yoghurt and sour milk. They could have been any
number of them children around the milk gourd, but they would, because of their
mutual love for one another, would in every meal and without any tinge of
biliousness, have used in turns one and only one spoon.
VEZINDABA: They were herd boys together at
Osutu [the royal place of their royal grandfather, King
Dinuzulu] and these were boys like [Mangosuthu],
Silosentaba, Pilidi... and if you still do not follow this bond with Buthelezi,
look deeper into the name “Silosentaba”, loosely translated to “The Leonine
Outcast” for the mere fact that had Pikisile been a boy child she would not
only have grown to be the Zulu King, but her first-born child Silosentaba too,
would most likely have been the King after Pikisile.
VEZINDABA: You see,
the Zulu nation is a far cry from the British.
We do not have a queen ruling this nation like the British will often
do. We are not like the people of
somewhere in the north of South Africa where you have a Rain Queen. Not here in KwaZulu Natal!
VEZINDABA: What I
should like to focus on though is the fact that, our fathers, Pilidi for my
cousin Bhekuzalo and Silosentaba for myself...they grew up together like own
siblings, playing hide and seek together and later graduating to herdboyship
together!
PHIRI:
Why should this then be allowed as a perpetual source of contention for [South Africa’s]
political lowlifers?
VEZINDABA: They would
enjoy their amasi yoghurt together, to the extent that many pictures we have today of them as youths, are pictures
of them together.
PHIRI:
Whatever [the level of blood relationship with Buthelezi]
translates to, let it still not be lowlifer licence to politically ostracize
Her Royal Highness Helen Seme. These people are blood relatives who grew up together,
period!
j
VEZINDABA:
There is yet another aspect which should not be lost here:
VEZINDABA: the Crown Prince of the House of Pindangene was actually reared
by nobody else but Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme himself. This is because [Buthelezi]
was as a youth very studious [and in that respect not dissimilar to
Pixley, which created the bond between the uncle and nephew]. There is no question whatsoever today about
the very high level of education attained by His Royal Highness Buthelezi...
PHIRI:
I take it he has a doctorate behind his name? If my memory still serves me, his
name is preceded with:“Dr. ...”
VEZINDABA:
... To such an extent that... and this I was apprised of by my paternal uncle
His Royal Highness Zwangendaba George Seme, that the time death caught up with
my grandfather, he was still seized with the idea of erecting in Vryheid a law
office whose head was going to be nobody
else but The Crown Prince. This is
important to mention because too many people do not realize that among The
Crown Prince’s academic achievements, the law faculty features prominently.
VEZINDABA:
Realize also that when the Crown Prince was born, he had no other cradle than
the ANC. It is from this background that
he used also to be a member of the ANC Youth League alongside the likes of
Nelson Mandela [Anton Lembede, Lionel Majombozi, Oliver Tambo].
But all of them youth leaguers were mere disciples of Mzwake Anton Lembede
[Zulu spelling of first-name with an “h”: "Mzwakhe"]
VEZINDABA:
It is Mzwake Lembede who first came up with the idea of the formation of the
youth league...
Lembede was getting this
instruction straight from Dr Seme’s mouth!
PHIRI:
Your Royal Highnesses, am I understanding you well to say you see Our Father
Mandela, Our Father [Buthelezi], also Mzwake
Lembede... all of them are protégés to Dr Pixley Seme, disciples he had elected
to select and to train on his own?
VEZINDABA:
[unintelligible]
[I as blogger
have objectively looked at both Mr Nelson Mandela and Me Helen Seme’s clashing
views on what transpired in the 1940s and I have difficulty in believing the
Mandela version for the following reasons:
1. When
Mandela settled down to publish "Long Walk to Freedom", he had
already told himself "there is no-one who could challenge him on his
version over the happenings of the 1940s hence he gets perplexed in the
presence of King Goodwill Zwelithini Zulu to hear that in fact such a one,
Seme’s own daughter, only some ten years younger than he, is still alive and
kicking to shorten his "long walk to freedom".
2. The woman,
Helen Seme, has not given any indication for reason to lie against Nelson
Mandela on tribal basis. Rather, and
despite being against white colonialism, she could reveal to blogger that she
was non-tribalistic as she cried “for the traces of the blood of Seme if indeed
he begot a baby with his first wife, a white Glasgow lady somewhere around
London”. On the contrary, Mandela’s
biography reveals the severe opprobrium from his won Tembu tribe for having a
love relationship with a non-Eastern-Cape e.g. Mandela’s relationship with a
Swazi lady in Johannesburg’s Alexander township, and a relationship which was apparently
nipped in the bud by Mandela’s fellow tribesmen.
Helen Seme
also was not afraid to point out that her eldest brother, Quentin, spoke the
language Nelson Mandela spoke: Xhosa. Mandela, on the other hand, shows us
clearly of his proclivity to tribalism when he claps non-stop to clearly
tribalistic “Xhosa Poet Mqhayi” who put [Xhosa to the pinnacle of all tribes of
Africa, with is morning star]. If as
reader you want to forgive “Xhosa Poet Mqhayi, consider the fact that he went
on with his tribal fulminations when Pixley Seme had already said ‘We Africans
are one’ ostensibly in the presence of Nelson Mandela’s Cousin, Tembu King
Dalindyebo of whom we hear today from the Zumas, inflated estimates of what he
contributed to the founding of the ANC in the parlance and attitudes of Mr
Jacob Zuma to even outdo, it would seem, the ANC’s arch-contributor, Blogger’s
Maternal First Cousin and Swazi Queenmother Labotsibeni”
Furthermore,
Mandela shows his dislike for Seme for sitting through and over and entire South
African administration initiated in 1994 without bothering to know what memento
is built over Pixley Seme’s former houses [Blogger has been to untended ruins
of some of Seme’s houses] or graveside.
In fact, Mandela inadvertently confesses to Seme’s daughter around 1998
that he has no clue (no cares) where ANC Founder Seme is buried!
3. Mandela has
clearly made it his life-time mission to avoid the daughter of Pixley Seme
instead of scientifically confronting her versions of what happened in the
1940s on particularly the founding of the ANC Youth League. Letters to him from her promised lies of
coming back to her all in vain.
4. Mandela is
nowhere in his autobiography stating that Pixley Seme did nothing for Mandela’s
advancement as a lawyer. This means that
it could well be that Mandela mentions those that he mentions as a firm that
assisted him in law articles... but that was possibly after his dismal failure
as an articled law clerk with Seme’s firm, which could be the reason why he
would rather forget his articling stunt with the Seme firm
5. From the days of Xuma, the ANC, till its
exile of the 1960s was filled with Eastern-Cape regionalism and tribalism. It is under this cloud of Eastern-Cape
tribalism that both Zulus Anton Lembede and Albert Luthuli are inexplicably
murdered! Blogger’s experience is evidence of this tribalism in exile and in
all administrations to date as initiated by Mr Nelson Mandela in 1994
6. Reading
Mandela’s autobiography as a child and a young man first come to Johannesburg,
Mandela has essentially confessed to being an habitual liar. Mandela’s untenable version of one “Lionel Majombozi as brainwave behind
the formation of the ANC Youth League”
is a case in point
7. It is just
inconceivable that a rising star like Mandela could have sprouted from the
heavens and blossomed without someone like most influential ANC elder like
Pixley Seme taking notice and giving a hand.
PHIRI:
Your Royal Highness, here is something else that reached my ears in the
past. I hear you had occasion to meet
with [His Royal Highness] Nelson Mandela. I can’t remember exactly where the two of you
met.
PHIRI: But now it would sound
like, during that meeting, Mr Mandela has lost memory of the fact that there
used to be a young girl, yourself, watching his ups and down and his
lucubrations in Dr Pixley Seme’s office.
Simply put, Mr Mandela fails to recognize you. Please explain to us: what on earth could be
going on with Mr Mandela’s mind where you and the Seme household are concerned?
[For him today
people who might have been there are long dead e.g. my father and Anton Mzwake Lembede]. Nelson Mandela never even once cast his eyes
on me. It is only I who had him under my
focus.
PHIRI:
So this, right in the middle of the two [parallel] streets,
stood the office for senior lawyers, advocates?
PHIRI:
[a sigh of amazement] Give me a moment to return to
my own senses here, Father... sorry, Mother!
PHIRI: ARE YOU NOW BUSY TELLING ME THAT OUR
PRACTICE OF LEAVING SOUTH AFRICA ILLEGALLY IN OUR HUNGER TO GAIN KNOWLEDGE,
TRAINING AND ENLIGHTENMENT FROM FELLOW
AFRICAN COUNTRIES AS WELL AS FROM OTHER CONTINENTS OF THE WORLD IS NOT A NEW
PHENOMENON THAT STARTED WITH THE BANNING OF POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS [IN THE EARLY 60s]? YOU ARE TELLING ME THE PHENOMENON IS A LOT
OLDER?
VEZINDABA:
[to Phiri] I do not know if you will recognize the
Durban street named after the struggle stalwart Masabalala...
PHIRI:
[to Vezindaba who frowned deeply as his aunt uttered those
words of Seme’s reported derision for
communism] There was that small ideological tiff along the way,
Fellow-Child-of-The-House; but it is subject to my editing as time goes on as I
am fully versed with South Africa’s various schools of thought. What we’re trying to capture here is a
home-fresh assessment of [Seme’s thinking processes].
And now we seem to be hearing Seme as saying, [even as you
seek assistance internationally], keep your eyes skinned or else you
might get taken advantage of, my children.
PHIRI:
Did they now scatter throughout the world?
PHIRI:
I hear, Your Royal Highness. But in all
that while Mr Nelson Mandela was also getting to be a common feature around
your father’s offices.
PHIRI:
Now you tell us he can’t see you but you see him.
PHIRI:
Now [some 50 years down the line] Nelson Mandela once
again, as it were, explodes into your life when he arrives in KwaZulu-Natal on
a mission to bid presidential farewell...
PHIRI: Are these now the reservations expressed by
His Majesty King Goodwill Zwelithini Zulu?
PHIRI:
This is the instruction of the King that you should be brought in?
PHIRI:[inspecting a portrait of Mandela’s farewell function with the King of
the Zulus in the presence of Helen Seme]
this picture... and please my brother Vezindaba hold it tight and
still... it shows Indeed! If I see well that is the picture of the King to the
left. But who is there in the background
in a tie?
PHIRI:
I am dying to see from this picture the portrait of The Royal Highness here.
PHIRI:
No, Her Royal Highness, Helen!
PHIRI:
We have got just one challenge the portrait is not reflecting well on video
here. But still we can clearly see here
close to the head of His Majesty King Goodwill Zwelithini Zulu
PHIRI:
Mandela? Oh yes indeed! There stands, Mandela! What is this praisename for Mr
Mandela? Or am I playing too presumptuous to think traditionalists like
yourselves will bail me out here?
VEZINDABA:
Madiba!
PHIRI:
Madiba! Oh yes. So we see Madiba here![in English] Indeed,
this is the picture where Princess Helen Seme, the one we are interviewing, is
meeting Madiba. And there is also King
Goodwill Zwelithini. This is on the
occasion when His Excellency, Former President Nelson Mandela was saying
“Good-bye”, was paying his homage too,
to the king of the Zulus.
PHIRI: And on that occasion, [Her Royal Highness] tells me that His Majesty informed Mandela
that the daughter of the Founder of the ANC, [Pixley Seme]
is around here. So they organized a
vehicle to bring the princess Seme to the function
“Where is your father [ANC Founder Pixley ka Isaka Seme] buried?”
PHIRI:
Is this now really the question from [Nelson Mandela]?
PHIRI:
But before Nelson Mandela asks those questions, he had trouble recognizing you
because you [had been]still al little girl when he was
still [frequenting your father’s office].
VEZINDABA:
[Praisenaming the Aunt] Mbuyazi, there is stuff I
gathered from one of those present with you during your gathering with Mandela,
one Mxolisi, where it is like... and Mxolisi was just telling me what had
transpired there with Mr Mandela who apparently said to Mbuyazi, Your Royal
Highness My aunt [Vezindaba squeaking his own voice like
Mandela spoke]:
“Are you REALLY, REALLY, the
daughter of Dr Pixley Seme?”
Was it that by any chance that Mr
Mandela was in doubt of the fact?
VEZINDABA:
Maybe he was unpleasantly surprised to learn that [contrary to
his earlier beliefs],the
Seme seed still exists?
VEZINDABA:
Or had he all the previous years laboured under the falsehood that Pixley Seme
never had issue...[neither family responsibilities nor
children coming from such familial unions]?
PHIRI:
Besides, you were only a girl child.
PHIRI:
Whose letters now?
PHIRI:
Yes, but what kind of letters?
PHIRI:
You mean “books”?
PHIRI:
Written to whom?
PHIRI:
Basically, what was Mr Mandela talking about in those letters?
PHIRI:
Those are the words now of Mandela?
PHIRI:
And then he used to respond to you, Mandela did.
PHIRI:
So Madiba was promising to attend to that matter?
PHIRI:
But why let us not have some water drinking now, Brethren. Let’s take a breather!
[THERE
IS A SIZEABLE BREAK, AND PRESENTLY A RESUMPTION WITH THE VOICE OF PHIRI,
THE MAIN FEATURE]
PHIRI:
You are still listening to a first-hand presentation of the history of the Seme
Family Tree. This constitutes a great name in the history of
South Africa; people who have immeasurably contributed to the greatness of our
nationhood; people who have even contributed to forming various political
organizations for us. However, today we
are inspecting the root or the nuclear family from its head: Pixley Seme.
PHIRI:
[To Bhekuzalo and for Bhekuzalo’s
response
PHIRI: [From the descendants of Pixley Seme] we have with us a
gentleman here we’d like to now interview and hear him give us highlights of
his own immediate family tree wherefrom he will tell us what little he can
share with us in relation to the recognition required... he must tell us in his
view what status the [Pixley] Seme name occupies...
tell where in his view, patriotic national political leaders [of the ruling party ANC] whom we so much love and support...
leaders belonging even to other national political organizations
VEZINDABA:
A veritable phalanx that constitutes our dear government of the people.
PHIRI:
[repeating Vezindaba] A phalanx and verily one that
constitutes our dear government of the people! Indeed, a government where all
political parties have a role to play... and it is about them that we now ask:
“What are they doing in order that Dr Pixley Seme can occupy his rightful
place, very much away from the current situation where you observe The Old Man
Seme’s children treated as...what is the Zulu word for it...”izimpabanga”/
“orphans”? His children treated like
nonentities! We are rightly trying now
to elevate that stature
BHEKUZALO:
[to Phiri] Please bear with me as I quickly leave
my seat to pick up something from the drawer inside the house...
VEZINDABA: The other thing that he is asking is just why
Pixley Seme is being marginalized...asking from his own basic knowledge that
this particular one is a child of Pixley Seme’s. I will also add my penny’ worth, a piece of
experience with someone from Xhosaland, the issue of Patekile Holomisa whom I
met at the Exclusive Books...you know, whenever I get serious about
book-hunting I get to Exclusive Books... and that is how I met him...
PHIRI: [respectfully
interjecting with VEZINDABA]
Sinono! Sinono! I fear you are busy
asphyxiating us now! Please allow the air to come in through the right
channels! I want to move clock-wise from
younger Brother Bhekuzalo here [and then to yourself and maybe to Her
Royal Highness again]. Or are you
now insisting I should commence with Big Brother?
VEZINDABA: No! No! No! You are at complete liberty to
start as per your plan.
PHIRI:
[to Vezindaba] You just keep your points in mind [for raising when your turn comes]
NELSON MANDELA IS LEFT COLD OVER
SEME LEGACY EVEN THOUGH HIS FELLOW-XHOSA-SPEAKERS INCLUSIVE OF OWN GRANDCHILD
ARE SHOCKED BY THE NEGLECT OF THE SEME NAME
PHIRI:
[to Bhekuzalo] Self-introduction,
Fellow-Child-of-The-House
BHEKUZALO:
My name is Bhekuzalo ka Seme, the child of Prince [Pilidi
Douglas Seme]. This is well in
accordance with the explanations made by my she-father.[a lot
of distracting voices and sounds as chairs are apparently shifted around]
PHIRI:
Go on, Brother. You were still
mentioning your own roots
BHEKUZALO:
My mother is a Xulu Maiden, born in Mtubatuba at Gunjaneni. I am the last-born
child to the Xulu Maiden. I have elder
sisters. One of them got married to the
Dlomo Clan.
BHEKUZALO:
Another elder sister: Nozipo, another one Sindi, then one Zimizodwa, then
Qhamukile, then Mtunzi and then I came as the last-born[to complete
the tally]even though the family lost two from the entirety
BHEKUZALO:
The two deceased are Ntombiyeqiniso and Ndudu.
BHEKUZALO:
Well, I am here at Ulundi because of employment. I am employed at the office of The Crown
Prince of the Pindangene Royal House.
The Crown Prince of the Pindangene Royal House is my father* [*since first maternal cousins Their Royal Highnesses Messrs Pilidi Douglas
Seme and Mangosuthu Buthelezi in Zulu traditional culture and understanding referred to each
other as “Brothers”; to Bhekuzalo, Buthelezi is nothing else than a replica again
‘of his own father, Pilidi’. This
Zulu-ethnological elucidation is contained in my introductory explanation on
how the Nguni/Ngoni around here relate to one another consanguineously, and
very much unlike the English]
BHEKUZALO: Whenever I am fortunate, then I am only
fortunate to bump into [Prince Buthelezi] around the offices
because you will never find a man any busier than this man [Buthelezi], he will in greeting only coo my name in
passing together with the words “My Son*!” [*actually “My maternal first
cousin-once-removed”].
BHEKUZALO:
I will then respond: “Ndabezita!” But one day we had a special clapping of the
eyes. It was on an occasion when I had
something to do at home* [* “at home” now refers to the House and
the Palace of the Crown Prince all because, in keeping with Zulu culture,
Bhekuzalo views his senior first cousin once removed Buthelezi’s house as his
home not different from where he was born.]
BHEKUZALO:
[after a distraction when Her Royal Highness
was calling children to order of silence] Then His Royal Highness passed the comment to
me. His Royal Highness was indicating to me that he had had occasion to bump
into Mandla Mandela...
PHIRI:
[clearly previously distracted, now interjects] You
were still telling us just how close you are to The Crown Prince of the
Pindangene Royal House... but now there is this day when you get this special
talk with him... and I must tell you these children have really broken our span
of concentration...so please return to the aspect of your closeness to His
Royal Highness
BHEKUZALO:
By virtue of my employment, I am employed at the office of Crown Prince of the
Pindangene Royal House. That is where I
work; and I have an open door to his office. And when I am not at the office, I
simply go home* which is the Pindangene Palace.
BHEKUZALO:
But it is on this particular day when he strongly concentrated on talking to me
with the words: “My child, I was at the airport where I bumped into Mandla
Mandela who is the grandson to [our father Mr Nelson Mandela]
“So His Royal Highness Mandla
Mandela and the grandson to the great Nelson Mandela, respectfully approaches
me by my praisename and goes ‘Shenge!’
“And on my paying of attention to
Mandla [among all the other dignitaries milling around with me at
the Airport]
“Mandla Mandela asks me: ‘WHAT IS
THIS DEAFENING SILENCE ABOUT THE SEME NAME? WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN OF DR PIXLEY
KA ISAKA SEME? HAS INDEED EVERYBODY DIED OUT BEARING THAT NAME?’
PHIRI:
Is that now the query from [Mandla Mandela]?
BHEKUZALO:
That, yes, is the question asked by Mandla Mandela from His Royal Highness [Buthelezi]. And His
Highness said ‘O the Semes are alive and well.
Even Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme’s very own daughter, is alive and kicking’.
VEZINDABA:
Mandla Mandela is no lightweight in Xhosaland.
He is very senior and royal material there; and so he is the one asking
this question!
BHEKUZALO:
Yes, His Royal Highness Mandla Mandela the kumkane* from that part of the world
[*”kumkane”, a Xhosa word in modern
nieu-colonialist context meaning very loosely “a traditional chief” or “a king”,
though in ancient times Blogger believes the word was reserved for solely kings]
BHEKUZALO:
...the kumkane is asking His Royal Highness Buthelezi as to why
everybody seems to be swearing themselves to silence over the well-being of [Pixley ka Isaka Seme’s] children? ‘WHERE ARE THEY?’
PHIRI:
‘...[where is the Pixley Seme posterity] If you, as
Buthelezi, say that these Semes are your blood relatives and they come like
yourself from KwaZulu? Where are they?’ and the Question is directed to His
Royal Highness Buthelezi?
BHEKUZALO:
[Mandla Mandela] is asking this question because he
knows very well that His Highness Buthelezi is coming from the same province
where Seme had his roots; and so he asks: “Where, if any survive, are the Seme
family? Where are the children of Pixley ka Isaka Seme?”
BHEKUZALO:
All of this, His Royal Highness, my father* [Buthelezi],
was a comment he shared in passing with me.
I noted this and even came home to share it with Her Royal Highness my
She-Father* here [*Aunt]. I even shared this with Vezindaba, my
brother* [*in this case and context, Vezindaba would for an
Englishman have been “my paternal second cousin”].
BHEKUZALO: I told them that I was sharing the amazement
gripping His Royal Highness Buthelezi that it had to take a comparatively very
junior and far-flung individual like Mandla Mandela [when there
are numerous more senior people who had proximity with Pixley ka Seme]
TO ASK THE QUESTION OF RAISON D’ÊTRE OVER OBVIOUS MARGINALIZATION OF THE MAN
(SEME) WHO IN THE FIRST PLACE ORIGINATED THIS MILKING COW OF THEIRS CALLED THE
AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS.
PHIRI:
But at the long last, [in relation to the whereabouts and
welfare of the Seme House], The Crown Prince of the Pindangene Royal
House does give a response to Mandla Mandela that...
PHIRI:, BHEKUZALO:
[together like a chorus] ...Bakhona! They are alive
and kicking!
PHIRI:
But then, what does Mandla Mandela have thereafter for a follow-up comment?
BHEKUZALO:
It would seem like Mandla Mandela rested his case on hearing that the
Pixley-Seme progeny still survives.
VEZINDABA:
He must have been left deeply disturbed by this [obvious
burial-alive of the Seme legacy].
BHEKUZALO:
He must have been really driven by genuine concern to ask this question. But I think his fears [the
Seme legacy will possibly be lost to eternity] were allayed when [His Royal Highness Buthelezi] responded there is hope as there
are still descendants around of the Old Man Seme.
BHEKUZALO:
His Royal Highness Buthelezi clarified to him that Seme descendants are not
only alive, ‘but I as Buthelezi live with them, inclusive of Dr Pixley ka Isaka
Seme’s daughter Helen herself’.
PHIRI:
I am immensely grateful. I thank you for
that contribution.
PHIRI:
[to Vezindaba], Sinono! Before Her Royal Highness
returns to the picture, let me have a talk with you.
BHEKUZALO:
[If my Elder Brother will allow me to finish another
point] I need to express my strong reservations in the way some ANC
leaders are treating this family of my grandfather, Pixley.
[THE ORIGINAL
TAPE SEEMS DAMAGED, AND THE COPY TAPES SEEM TO ONLY RESUME AS FOLLOWS...]
BHEKUZALO:
[On one of those occasions when this family is taken by
ANC politicians for a ride], there arrived here an ANC-government kombi
coloured yellow and we were all of us bundled into it for the purpose of Ukupendula
isoyi
[which, per Blogger’s understanding, is a
ceremony conducted when some serious institutional or organizational office
space is to be erected]
BHEKUZALO: They said that on this particular site they
were going to build a hospital that would be named after Dr Pixley ka Isaka
Seme. They said their wish was that when the building is finished, the one to
cut the ribbon and do the ceremonial door-opening of the hospital should be my
Auntie here.
BHEKUZALO:
[This is about some five years ago and..] We were
all of us ecstatic. We enjoyed the trip
whose cherry on top was this magnificently titanic tent that finally greeted us
on our arrival at Umlazi Township... sorry.. [KwaMashu
Durban]. But today, as I talk to
you now, nothing ever happened from that fanfare.
PHIRI:
[So your question is] What gain, if any, is there accruing
for the Seme House as you [Seme Children]are being thrown
hither and thither in and out of false inaugurations from this [Ukupendula isoyi to the next Ukupendula
isoyi]
when there is nothing coming out of these?
PHIRI:
What is the gain for the House? Look at Her Royal Highness... look at her
domestic surroundings...! We are not
saying that maybe people should elevate her to the status of “Queen of South
Africa”, not for Her Royal Highness Helen Seme!
PHIRI: All we are saying is that
‘those concerned must remember she is the surviving symbol of the core-founder [and not just a mere “co-founder”] of the present-day African National
Congress [without whose ideas the ANC would never have come into
being]’
PHIRI:
So, you as the House of Seme, and from all these hypes about this or that
institution in the so-called pipe-line [to augment what little is
there of the Seme legacy], what really was there for you?
BHEKUZALO:
The way I see it, these people [who were shunting us the Seme House
around] were in fact into some serious and very cold campaigning project
[and we happened to be their easy and vulnerable child
slave for that purpose]
BHEKUZALO:
They were just abusing the name of Pixley Seme for their own personal gain, [the way I see it].
BHEKUZALO:
I mean, they called people [from all around the Province] and
multitudes did assemble [at the particular tent]. The people were promised [heaven and earth between which two destinations] they were told
‘whenever you are seriously [ill around Durban] Pixley ka
Isaka Seme Memorial Hospital shall be the hospital of choice’.
BHEKUZALO:
These people were into some vote-manufacturing campaign. I mean, no sooner did they win the provincial
election, than deafening silence again enveloped the legacy of Seme! As I am
talking to you now [unlike during those harsh campaigning
times], there is not even one single bill-board....
BHEKUZALO:
... I make it a habit to cast my eyes around whenever I visit Durban... but
there is not one single sign of a future hospital named [after
my grandfather]. And I go “Oh
South Africa, my people! After putting majestic billboards during your
campaigning, some of which advertisements carried pictures of the beds that
were designed for the future Pixley Ka Isaka Seme Memorial Hospital in which
there were supposedly going to be 300 beds...”
VEZINDABA:
But there is now absolutely no indication such a hospital will ever be built,
no such billboard whatsoever stands [anymore]!
BHEKUZALO:
There is absolutely nothing! When you
inquire from them they will tell you the
budget for the Health Department does not allow them to build such a
hospital. But I can tell you now [from the way I see it] they spent millions just preparing and
conducting the fanfare, the hype and the publicity stunt around the fictitious
so-called future Seme Memorial Hospital!
PHIRI:
[while Bhekuzalo laughs in derision to his individual ANC
political leaders who disrespect her Gran Pixley’s Legacy in that fashion]
PHIRI:
My brother, Bhekuzalo: here is something else I should like to find out from
you [Bhekuzalo still succumbing to stitches of self-inspired
giggles] My brother, Bhekuzalo, please allow me to ask something
else.
PHIRI:
You as the Seme House, do you have something called a “Pixley ka Isaka Seme
Foundation”? We know, for example there
is the Mandela Foundation; but do you have a “Seme Foundation”?
BHEKUZALO:
There are characters who once called here. They had been brought along here by
Big Brother Vezindaba here...
PHIRI:
Yes?
BHEKUZALO:
One of them identified himself as a Mr Dimba..[if I remember
well]. He was a legal eagle, or
let me say he passed himself for one heck of a major domo in the legal
field. As to how genuinely a lawyer he
was, I can’t tell, but I remember the surname he used, as a Dimba.
BHEKUZALO:
And they said they want to establish this thing called “The Pixley Seme
Foundation”
PHIRI:
They wanted to establish such a foundation on their own where you the House of
Seme have no word in it?
BHEKUZALO:
They had come to get our viewpoint, maybe, as I am looking at it now.
VEZINDABA:
I don’t know...but I should really love to come into the talk now.
PHIRI:
You are noted, my brother; and among other opportunities, you will have
opportunity to thrash out this point.
But for now, I should want to hear my younger brother out in all
entirety.
BHEKUZALO: Time passed after their visit. And there was absolutely nothing that came of
their visit.
PHIRI:
You should know why I am asking about the Foundation. I am asking because [I believe]
your rights as the House of Seme and from the way I see it...you will muster
great and complete defending powers for your rights once when you have your
Home foundation, a foundation that you will run on your own.
PHIRI:
Now and on that score, I bring you back to this video which we would dearly
love to see attracting [President Zuma’s personal]
audience for it. Now suppose we succeed
to bag Zuma’s eye for this video...WHAT IS YOUR REQUEST TO HIS EXCELLENCY IN
RELATION TO YOUR WISH that one day you as the House of Seme can wield behind
your name the legal power of a foundation?
PHIRI:
That, is what I want to find out from you, the House of Seme. You must know that the foundation will give
you the muscle of legal advice and all that will accrue from the contribution
of your own lawyers behind such a Foundation.
It will also give you, House of Seme, a voice and an ability to respond
to the outer world. [A Seme Foundation will be] your veritable rescue boat from your
current island where all political pirates, coming in all hue and colour, will,
as they please, sail in and sail our for
loot and booty.
PHIRI:
What is your response to that, question, my brother?
BHEKUZALO:
There is no question that we would be utterly grateful if [Mr Jacob Zuma, ANC Party President and Country President] and
company could do something along these lines because, please don’t even once
labour under the wrong impression that Mr Zuma is ignorant of the sorry plight
the Seme name is in. He personally knows
this fact very well. What he is concerned
with right now is to join the age-old political feeding frenzy at the expense
of the House of Seme.
PHIRI:
I remember there is an aspect that I’m sure my brother Vezindaba will highlight
and if I’m not mistaken...
BHEKUZALO:
They are savaging the name of Seme with all the confidence they have derived
from their ride and their suckling from
their brand-new horse [that was not there in South Africa’s 1912],
and this horse of theirs is called “Communism”...
PHIRI:
I have got you.
PHIRI:
[In relation to the issue of obvious full personal
knowledge by Mr Zuma over the vicissitudes faced by the House of Seme] I
recall very well that my brother Vezindaba once showed me a picture with [the self-same Mr Zuma, then an MEC for the KwaZulu-Natal provincial
government where on this occasion he was personally present during one of those
sham functions, to paraphrase you, Bhekuzalo... it was one of those incidents
of Ukupendula
isoyi
for one or another “institution-under-construction-to-honour-Seme” would in
fact never be].
PHIRI: I can’t recall the
detail...but here you are my brother Vezindaba!
You’ve for long wanted to make your contribution on this theme.
PHIRI: But before you self-identify, please
exhaust for us the point of what gains are due to the House of Seme... the point
of what we are requesting from President Jacob Zuma, Party and State. Tell us
the jeremiad of the House of Seme; and your own birth and origins can come
later.
VEZINDABA:
I, for one, should like to add [one thing or two]over and above
what my younger brother has already said in relation to Kumkane* Mandla Mandela’s
concern in that fateful meeting of his with Kumkane* Mangosuthu
Buthelezi. This is now in the aforesaid
Mandla inquiry: “WHAT, IF ANYTHING, IS GOING ON WITH THE SEME LEGACY”.
VEZINDABA:
My own personal brush with a similar expression of [Eastern-Cape]
wonderment, I am now going to relate.
VEZINDABA:
One unsuspecting day found me one day scouring around... I have this habit when
I happen into money for a particular book I will then scour around for places
like Exclusive
Books which is situated [at the King Shaka International Airport,
and incidentally] I do not know why, for Durban Exclusive Books,
tends to be exclusively found at airports.
So the branch of Exclusive Books at this particular
Airport is for me the nearest.
VEZINDABA:
During this particular day’s walk-about at the Airport, a stroke of luck drew
my attention to Me Zanele Mbokazi.
VEZINDABA:[Zanele Mbokazi] works at the South African Broadcasting
Corporation as an announcer.
VEZINDABA:
She was here walking in tow with [Eastern-Cape] Kumkane
Patekile Holomisa. This, you should
know, is Patekile Holomisa, a real kumkane to the Xhosa people [of the Eastern Cape where Mr Nelson Mandela comes from]
BHEKUZALO:
[giggles..]
VEZINDABA:
[But then you should really] know Patekile
Holomisa...a real kumkane to the Xhosa people. I admit I also only know of his
status from the mass media... I know him just from media reports. And so I went to him to pay homage and went:
“Ndabezita!”
He asked me: “How do you do?”
And so I told him ‘I am Seme, the grandson to Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme’
“Ndabezita!”
He asked me: “How do you do?”
And so I told him ‘I am Seme, the grandson to Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme’
VEZINDABA:
On hearing my self-introduction, Kumkane Patekile Holomisa drove
himself into some dramatic brake-failure of the self-control type.
“Hau! Hau!” he went. “Please don’t tell me I am seeing with my own eyes a descendant of the world-famous Pixley ka Isaka Seme!”
“Hau! Hau!” he went. “Please don’t tell me I am seeing with my own eyes a descendant of the world-famous Pixley ka Isaka Seme!”
PHIRI:
Is this ecstatic wonderment expressed by a king...?
VEZINDABA:
A king indeed, going by the name of Patekile Holomisa and we were meeting
face-to-face..
PHIRI:
Yes! This must be the Patekile Holomisa well-connected with national royal
organizations in South Africa... structures like CONTRALESA and you name them
all these traditional organizations...
BHEKUZALO:
[even while Phiri was still speaking but in a
subdued voice] I personally dimly wonder what benefit the South
African nation derives from organizations like CONTRALESA!
VEZINDABA:
So Patekile Holomisa’s hand quickly dove into his jacket pocket. This manual alacrity was as quickly rewarded by what had initially looked
like some conspicuous thumb-sized item.
And flashing it to me [Kumkane Patekile Holomisa]:
“Take it now! Take my business card please!”
VEZINDABA:
They were walking together with Zanele Mbokazi, the radiowoman. And so he said
to me: “Whoever said the House of Seme is no more in existence? What are you
doing?”
PHIRI:
VEZINDABA: [chorusing, almost] “WHAT ARE
YOU DOING...?”
VEZINDABA:
“...about the legacy of Dr Pixley Seme?”
PHIRI:
[The operative word] “Legacy”!
VEZINDABA:
[swearing] My dearest of
brothers, Phiri! But, who is asking me
these deep questions..? Just another fellow [or someone quite big in the
mantelpiece called South Africa’s political who’s who?]
VEZINDABA:
But as I walked home pondering the incident, querying why he, such a faraway
man from the Xhosa Kingdom should be overly concerned about the survival of the
Seme legacy, I discovered something.
VEZINDABA:
You see, my grandfather Dr Pixley Seme was a lawyer, one of the first black
lawyers in South Africa. I discovered somewhere in my thoughts that even Kumkane Patekile Holomisa was by
profession a lawyer. So Patekile
Holomisa is concerned...he is
concerned..
VEZINDABA:
[Resuming his train of thought from Helen’s punctuation]
...Patekile Holomisa is concerned about this leader called Pixley ka Isaka
Seme. Holomisa can see clearly that this
leader Seme is actively being subjected to marginalization. He can see that Seme has been warded off to
the periphery of South African mainstream political heritage.
PHIRI:
The periphery indeed, but ain’t that artificial periphery created for the Seme
name the very sign that Seme is destined for centrality in South African
politics?
PHIRI: Do you remember the
official praises for King Shaka Zulu
where the women at the fountains conferred nothing but slander after slander
about the future Zulu King?
PHIRI: Do you remember they
rubbished Shaka Zulu’s prospects for the throne even when every other sign on
the wall had Shaka Zulu as one destined
to becoming a great king?
PHIRI: [Translating into the Zulu
language as part of imbongi praises for King Shaka Zulu]
“Uteku Lwabafazi bakwaNomgabhi
“Ababetekula behlez’emlovini
“Beti uShaka akay’ukubusa akay’uba Nkosi
“Kanti ngunyakan’ ezonetezeka!
“Uteku Lwabafazi bakwaNomgabhi
“Ababetekula behlez’emlovini
“Beti uShaka akay’ukubusa akay’uba Nkosi
“Kanti ngunyakan’ ezonetezeka!
PHIRI: But please forgive me, Vezindaba, for
my interjection.
VEZINDABA:
[This wantonness in multi-pronged marginalization of the
Pixley Seme legacy] when he is the very man who first came up with the
idea for the founding of South Africa’s present-day ruling party the ANC [turning 100 years old soon].....
VEZINDABA:[in English] It seems as if Pixley Seme does not exist; [it seems as if Pixley Seme] never existed. It seems as though he is just a dinosaur [in its bony remnants if he ever existed]......\\
 |
| interviewer Goodman Manyanya Phiri holding a copy of Mandela's untruthful autobiography |
LENGIBATSANDZAKO: ZINDZI MANDELA A MILLIONAIRESS OR IS THIS A JOKE?:
'via Blog this'
Kwangu hili ni bonge la SHULE Mkuu!
ReplyDeleteNami nimejifunza kwa kubukua, kwa kwenda maktaba, na kuwauliza wananchi kuhusu Shujaa Mandela. Bila hivyo ningeamini tu kile yeye alichekiandika kwenye kitabu chake "Long Walk to Freedom". Kusema ukweli, hamna binadamu aliekamilika, hata akiwa Mandela, Issa/JESUS, Mohammed au binadadamu yoyote yule anayeabudiwa. Sisi sote ni miungu kama wao! Waliekifanikisha nasi binafsi tunakiweza.. ALL WE NEED IS THE KNOWLEDGE THAT THEY HAD IN ORDER TO PLAY GOD TO US!
ReplyDeleteSiyabonga kakhulu, siyabonga siyanconcoza, iwona umlando ekade siwufuna. Siyabonga Mfoka Phiri, ngiyaphinda ngithi siyabonga - Phumlani Mfeka
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