SIBLINGS TO FATHER GOODMAN MANYANYA PHIRI

My name is Ethnic-South-African Tanzanian Mr Maziri Phiri, fathered by one Mr Goodman Manyanya Phiri who happened into Tanzania as an anti-European-colonialism fighter in search of arms to fight what was considered evil in his land, in the southernmost tip of Africa: Apartheid at least since the Verwoerdian 1948.

I had thought before my father dies, to ask him about his siblings and he gave them to me in toto warts and all!

Here goes:

AUNT MARY-ANN TIEZGHE PHIRI

Aunt Mrs Mary-Ann Tiezghe Gondwe née Phiri (born Monday, 05 November 1945 or thereabout).

Her father is naturally my grandfather Mr Bright Manyanya Phiri and her mother is a Gondwe maiden, I hear Father Goodman says.

Aunt Mary-Ann Tiezghe was born in Malawi, but she and her children as well as grandchildren  live in Zambia, a country one border away from my Tanzania (albeit two borders away from where Father Goodman lives).

She is in Zambia’s capital: Lusaka, Liwala  stage 4a, House number 1, at Mkeka!  And so you have it all as to how Grandfather Bright Phiri for the very first time (in the presence of that Gondwe Maiden and a grandmother to me) realized he is man enough to create other human beings!

Father Goodman has fond memories of Aunt Tiezghe.

For a start, Father Goodman  says Zambian Aunt Tiezghe’s  picture hung in the lounge of my grannies’ house in South Africa for as long as my father can remember.

Father Goodman  says as a teenager, Tiezghe (of my Aunt Tiezghe as a girl of about 5!) spotted round eyes all accentuated by a white dress with black spots.  Tough luck those pictures were almost inexplicably destroyed in South Africa (you see, Readership, Grandfather Bright was just like Father Goodman, a tireless keeper of family records).

Father Goodman has other very fond memories of Aunt Tiezghe of Zambia:  No sooner did she and her husband (Mr Bright Gondwe) get wind that Father Goodman is exiled (with the both the PAC-Pan Africanist Congress of Azania and the ANC-African National Congress of South Africa) to the United Republic of Tanzania (1985-1994) they flew into Dar es-Salaam from Lusaka like two swallows famished for a flying insect!

My father was pleasantly shocked when, on first sight of a brother of hers, Aunt Tiezghe (even while her husband Bright Gondwe watched while both of them visited Ubungo-Kisiwani Dar es-Salaam in order to meet Father Goodman) not only kissed him…you know that kind of a kiss like M-w-a-a-a-a-Baby-Kiss…but her tongue started probing my father’s mouth!

You must know that Father Goodman is a Hyper Sensitive Person (and he had been groomed into thinking that siblings never give each other French kisses but  emotionally-overwhelmed Aunt Tiezghe disabused him of that notion).

My Father Goodman also appreciated the fact that his eldest brother-in-law, Mr Bright Gondwe, took the trouble of flying from one country (Zambia) to another (Tanzania) and spending lots of money of course in that process IN ORDER TO SEE THE ELDEST SURVIVING BROTHER-IN-LAW (Father Goodman Manyanya Phiri) and something which (we will come to that in detail on other paragraphs or other posts) THE REST OF FATHER GOODMAN’S BROTHERS-IN-LAW AND SISTERS-IN-LAW (possibly except Mrs Swazi Robert Phiri) METHINKS OUT OF DISDAIN FAILED TO DO WITH EVEN WITH  A MERE 300 KM DRIVE BY CAR AND NO EXPENSIVE FLYING AND PASSPORT HASSLE WHATSOEVER!

Aunt Tiezghe is the mother to (among others), Cousin Miss Edna Gondwe [born Tuesday, 03 June 1986] whom my father is still to meet.

Also, Cousin Miss Mailesi  Gondwe [born Saturday, 29 January 1966].  Cousin Mailesi and Father Goodman met several times in Johannesburg as well as Pretoria where, Mailesi, just like her father [Uncle Bright Gondwe] and her mother [Aunt Mary-Ann Tiezghe], took the trouble of an international flight to see Father Goodman who mattered like a relative to her (but then you find a relative who lives in Soweto but not only give excuses for coming over to visit less than 100km away in Mamelodi BUT GOES ABOUT BADMOUTHING FATHER GOODMAN! What kind of blood relative is that?)

Between my two siblings (Miss Tamara Phiri and Mercedes-Thoko on one hand and all cousins born of Aunt Tiezghe on the other, ENTERPRISING COUSIN MAILESI IS ALSO THE ONLY ONE FORTUNATE TO HAVE CLAPPED HER EYES ON GRANDFATHER BRIGHT MANYANYA PHIRI BEFORE HE DIED BECAUSE SHE EVEN TOOK THE TROUBLE OF TRAVELLING ALL THE WAY TO MPUMALANGA PROVINCE WHERE MY GRAN'S HOMESTEAD LIES.

At four, I Maziri am still very and even TOO small; but I believe relatives like Cousin Mailesi are worth their weight in gold and are people to be cherished for true relatives unencumbered by the petty jealousies seemingly afflicting the Phiri extended family!

There is a picture somewhere in Mayflower, the Phiri Homestead, of Zambian Cousin Mailesi Gondwe.  But talking of people (like she) being 'only grandchildren' to clap eyes on grandfathers before the death of the latter, Father Goodman would like me to record the fact that of all of his own siblings (Monica, Jackson, Robert, Peter, Grace, Soneni-Phethile and BaXolisiwe-baka-Phiri) he is the only one who has ever seen Great-grandfather Jacob Phiri of Chilumba Malawi BECAUSE IN 1982 FATHER GOODMAN TOOK THE TROUBLE OF FLYING FROM JOHANNESBURG SOUTH AFRICA TO BLANTYRE MALAWI IN ORDER TO SEE HIS PATERNAL RELATIVES!

Now if anybody reading also wondered what Father Goodman's greatest secret is, I AM LETTING IT OUT NOW ON THIS PARAGRAPH: Great-Gran Jacob Phiri was so pleased to see his South African erstwhile 21-year-old grandson, that he not only slaughtered a beast to thank the Phiri ancestry out of sheer wonderment...pity my father never enjoyed the meat as he immediately went through his first bout ever of the debilitating malaria disease...BUT GREAT GRAN JACOB ORDERED HIS SON BRIGHT TO SAIL FATHER GOODMAN FROM COASTAL CHILUMBA TO COASTAL USISYA FOR BLESSINGS WITH MALAWI'S ERSTWHILE MOST FAMOUS PROPHET.  His name was Dekapose.

It is nothing strange for the Family that Great-Gran Jacob Phiri believed in the divine of such personalities as Prophet Dekapose.  Jacob's own great-grandfather, Pikamalaza Phiri can easily be said to be sothern Africa's greatest-ever Warrior Prophet.  His grave lies in north-eastern Zambia but history books will tell you he was not only the commander of the forces that swept from South Africa conquering all and sundry in the nineteenth century, he was also the surgeon general of the forces who could call to order Ngoni leader Zwangendaba every so often he so wished, thus reinventing himself as the de facto leader of that revolution known as Mfecane/Difaqane initiated around King Shaka Zulu who had, among other KwaZulu-Natal peoples, had ejected the recalcitrant Matanje Dynasty from whith I, Maziri and my forebears like Goodman, Bright, Jacob and Pikamalaza descend. (You can read more about our ancestral resistance to Shaka Zulu if you access South African archives on the 'Matanje People' and if that is too daunting for you, get a glimpse thereof if you lay hands on Brenda Sullivan's 'Africa Through the Mists of Time': Covos Day Books, 2001 where you may find Chapter 8, and particularly page 168 very useful in that regard over and above the insight therein for native African understanding of God or the Deity prior to the arrival of the colonists).

Now to give you an idea of what divine powers Prophet Dekapose had, think first about the fear of God Malawian dictator Hastings Kamuzu Banda could put into the hearts of opposing citizenry under his regime.  Suspecting that Prophet Dekapose was making millions out of his fame (which for sure stretched right into neighbouring Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique) taxmen would regularly knock on the door of the Prophet who apparently never either denied the fact that he was 'living comfortably' nor denied the taxmen any of his four fingers to take along for the benefit of a dictator who may have been fond of sticking things into his own body.

"Msonkho yai!!! And to these tax demands I say no!" bellowed Prophet Dekapose even right in the midst of his prayers for Father Goodman whose last divine words in the native Tumbuka language were "Dazi lili kucanya a Goodman Manyanya Phiri, just as long as:



"Rule One: Whenever angry with somebody, take it out on him, but never take it into the night which must always find you with a forgiving heart!

"Rule Two: Never go lazy on any life-and-death project for if you do, then you are like a man who sits on the tamer end of a torch."

"Rule Three: Just know this: if you happen for any reason to strike a man, he is most likely to fall dead from your blow.  But if you do not want a murder or blood on your hands, go for his studio and shake him back to life right down there by his two watchamicalls!"

"Rule Four:  Respect your woman's cycles and never force your way or succumb to the vagaries of your desires for every woman is your mother, Man.

"That, then, is how no human being but only God shall have ordained the day of your death, Mr Phiri Junior, when it comes."


Except for the steamer that took them to and fro between Chilumba and Usisya, Father Goodman believes not one cent or Kwacha was paid Prophet Dekapose.  At least there is no recollection of such.  Only endless memories of the clear waters, lapping the shores of Lake Malawi, exposing the glitter and the glory of fish swimming among rocks; and every so often sending a spurt for a wave.  It would once and every so often hit the hut of Prophet Dekapose.

Prophet Dekapose literally ate fire, like chewing embers while dancing on others whenever his prayers were reaching crescendo.

But it is the waters of Lake Malawi that gave him his divine powers.

These are the waters of loving your relatives which should bless Cousin Mailesi Gondwe just as much as they have blest Father Goodman despite all the near-unimaginable hardships he has been going through in what many think is an amazing life for a normal farm boy with a normal father and a normal mother who bring him up around a normal dorpie called Amsterdam in South Africa!

AUNT BIG PHIRI

Big is Tiezghe’s own sister.  Little is known about she who died young and reportedly left no issue.

UNCLE FANYANA MANYANYA

Uncle Fanyana Manyanya is a child adopted by my grandfather from his second, if South African, wife.

But, for some reason (possibly fear for xenophobia where Phiris are invariably, if erroneously, identified as ‘Malawian’ in South Africa) Granny had always used ‘Manyanya’ for his surname.  It is Father Goodman who, after seeing Gran’s Malawian passport in 1975, stopped the charade!

“Papa!” my father had asked. “Your Malawian passport reads ‘Bright Manyanya Phiri’.  How do you now come to use that middle name of yours for the family name, huh?”

“Blah blah blah blah Yaddah yaddah yaddah!” responded Gran.

“Well, if it is no offence: I Goodman want my Phiri surname appearing on my Grade 8 School certificate” said Father Goodman if very ominously.

My father got his wish.  But the entire family changed thereafter from being known as Manyanya to Phiri!  This is one reason why too many residents of South Africa’s Mpumalanga Province no more recognize a famous family who come today forth as ‘Phiri’ when all the grans know a ‘Manyanya’ better!

Now I want to come to Uncle Fanyana!

There is no consanguinity whatsoever between me and Uncle Fanyana.  But guess what? He to this day of his grave carries the Manyanya surname!  His children too, and possibly grandchildren, bear the same surname.

My father recalls uncle Fanyana as a jolly guy who enjoyed his amplifier music system every weekend or every other moneyed day.

His wife was a Nkambule maiden from the Kingdom of Swaziland, a town called Hhohho or thereabout for a spelling (the map would show Hhohho or Hoho as situated in the ulterior north of the Kingdom of Swaziland).

LaNkambule, recalls Father Goodman from his own age at 3 or thereabout, WAS A WONDERFUL AND KIND WOMAN who gave Uncle Fanyana beautiful children some of whose names are Jabulani Manyanya, Zodwa Manyanya, Tamari Manyanya etc.

LaNkambule was lanky, light-skinned and fond of her ‘bottle’ (or to be more precise: ‘her mcombotsi’ which was a local brew on Lion’s Glen Farm in Amsterdam, Mpumalanga, where this family history was unravelling with the growing-up process of Father Goodman then a mere toddler).

Father Goodman’s most-enduring memory of LaNkambule is a drunken drawl from a LaNkambule who was traversing the plains of Amsterdam’s Lion Glen Farm calling possibly for some sexual satisfaction and among the three boys (Father Goodman, Uncles Jackson and Josiah) she called for the eldest:

“Josiah! Josiah! Squeezer-Brother-in-Law! Come to my rescue, will you?!”

Were the two regulars on Planet Venus?

God certainly knows!

Tall LaNkambule could hardly walk from her intoxication and her pleas, reports Father Goodman, whereupon Uncle Josiah sweated  from polishing his coveted instrument o so much much polished by handler that  some of its liquid oozed to the grassy earth right in Papa's presence and the presence of Uncle Jackson!

Finally, from the three siblings (Goodman, Jackson and Josiah), Josiah who is a half-brother to Goodman and Jackson, accordingly peeled off, rising as it were to the occasion…chivalry!

Some 100 metres away, Josiah and LaNkambule disappeared among the tall grasses, leaving an Uncle Jackson (whose puberty was beckoning) wondering if his own instrument had as much rage as Uncle Josiah’s lachrymose one!

Most junior Father Goodman had to watch both instrumentations!

Anyway, at some stage, an apparently happier woman finally re-emerged from the foliage and the green grass around and walked away while a knight in some white armour returned only to find a cold shoulder from Uncle Jackson:  “And so you have enjoyed your sex with your woman, huh?” Jackson begrudgingly hooted.

If Father Goodman’s half-brother Josiah had reached puberty during these games, I will not be surprised if I have consanguinity with LaNkambule’s children!

I as Mr Maziri Phiri love them all my extended family members!  I want us one day to connect one way or another if possible.  I cannot be judgmental where both Uncle Fanyana and Uncle Josiah are long dead to account for their deeds or misdeeds, whatever the case may be!  I just cherish the fact that they (Messrs Josiah Wilson Zulu and Fanyana Manyanya) kept the Manyanya/Phiri clan alive by means of their silly instruments!

My name still remains ‘Maziri Phiri, the son to Goodman Manyanya Phiri!’

But now: WHO IS FANYANA’S MOTHER?

She is Gran Bright’s first South African wife (born Elizabeth Nkabinde-Mcusi).

She failed to beget any other child besides Uncle Fanyana and on request, gave Gran Bright permission to marry Second Wife (internationally-third if you consider the Gondwe maiden who begot Aunts Tiezghe and Big in Malawi), the Mavimbela-Maiden 'Belinda Thoko Mavimbela' and biological mother to Father Goodman!

But back to Uncle Fanyana Manyanya’s mother and she who is a child of the Cusi or AmaCusi People…the ‘C’ pronounced with one of those exasperatingly difficult South African clicks…we rarely have such linguistic sounds here in Tanzania, thank God!

But under the ‘clicked’ AmaCusi of the Republic of South Africa and the Kingdom of Swaziland you will, says my father, meet among other great South African surnames such like “Nkabindze/Nkabinde”.

Gran Elizabeth and mother to Uncle Fanyana Manyanya not only hailed from a town called Bronkhorstspruit in South Africa, but was a Nkabinde-Mcusi maiden of whom my father has fond memories like the following:

“I miss the aroma of the breads she baked.” Says Father Goodman. “I miss her jealousy over me!

“There are occasions when my mother would get so tired of my strong headedness she would give me what every time I had thought was the hiding of my life.

“It was during those painful moments that I would run for refuge to Biggest-Mother Elizabeth LaNkabinde-Mcusi’s house (my father had all three houses of his South African wives in a row with the extreme western end occupied by LaNkabinde and the extreme eastern one by LaMavimbela where the middle was occupied by youngest wife LaMaseko)

“The run for shelter from belt-blows from a LaMavimbela my mother was therefore less than 300 metres; and my Big Mother LaNkabinde would greet my teary face with the question: ‘WHAT THE HELL HAS JUST HAPPENED TO YOU, MY DEAR HUSBAND?’ and I would of course reply: ‘SHE BEAT ME UP ONCE AGAIN, THAT WITCH, LAMAVIMBELA! AND PLEASE DON’T ALLOW HER TAKE ME BACK TO HER HOUSE AS SHE WILL KILL ME THE WAY SHE IS GOING ABOUT WITH HER INCESSANT BEATINGS!’

“My Big Mother LaNkabinde-Mcusi would respond: ‘Of course there is no way I can allow LaMavimbela to kill my one and only husband! You sleep here with me tonight and you are going nowhere near LaMavimbela!’

“I would enjoy her confectionery and before I know, I am in bed!

“The following day my biological mother would come and personally plead for my return to her house.  ‘What for?’ I would ask her. ‘For another beating? NO THANK YOU, MA’AM!’

“Talking of which beatings, there were too many things that I used to be beaten up for where there was no sense whatsoever why I was beaten up by either my biological mother and my father.

“I say as your child DO BEAT ME UP AND SPANK ME, BUT DO BREAK IT DOWN SUFFICIENTLY FOR ME TO UNDERSTAND WHY THIS PAIN!

“I still do not understand why my mother used to spank my fundament till kingdom come!

“In later years, my father gave me what is even worse than a physical lash: the tongue lashing!

“Here is the incident of unwarranted tongue-lashing:

“I am about 11 sitting in a lorry and vehicle working for my lumberjack of a father all in wait for the moment both Pa and Lorry driver says ‘We are going home now from Lothair here to Amsterdam’. But Papa crops up now with  this scrawny but sleek-tongued man with a lower lip apparently once greeted most indelibly with a red-hot iron while he would have for sure been in some coma or something.

“'This is Uncle  Click-Click-Click.’ says my father.  'And we are both here for a sip of our favourite Richelieu Brandy, Boy Goodman! And so please remove your ugly knees from near this cubbyhole and let’s quench our thirst!'

"As an aside, I need to mention an unsavoury legend about the relationship between Stone Age King Pharaoh/Phiri and alcohol.  For that matter, the Zulu people of South Africa (said to have ascended or descended from present-day Egypt what with Arabic colonization of Africa ...practically the entirety of Africa was the actual ancient Egypt that ruled the entire Earth...THOSE ZULUS TO THIS DAY REFER EUPHEMISTICALLY TO ALCOHOL AS 'THE POTFULS OF KING PHARAOH'S'= 'IZINKAMBA ZIKAFARO'.

"If the ancient Phiri kings were the inebrients that removed the taboo of a human being looking as drunk as an elephant with a stomachful of fermented amarula fruit, it will not be the first time the royal Phiri interfered with materials for human consumption!

"Southern African legend has it it the southern-African chapter of ancient Phiri kingdom that ordered early man to stop the eating of raw meat whereupon the people asked of the missionary Phiri princes: 'How on earth do your Highnesses the Phiri princes and missionaries to tame the wild fires enought for the cooking of meat?'

"The answer was simple and straightforward: THREE STONES AROUND THE FIREPLACE WILL BALANCE NOT ONLY YOUR COOKING POT, BUT IT WILL ALSO HELP TAME AND LOCALIZE THE FIREPLACE.

"From that time onwards, that branch of the Phiri super-dynasty found in southern Africa were known as "Maseko" because that is the word in the Nguni languages referring to 'the three stones around the fireplace'.  The Masekos ruled what is today present-day Swaziland and portions of South Africa for centuries before the European colonists came.  And they only lost their power when both King Shaka Zulu and his partner, the Swazi potentate, King Sobhuza I rose to power in the 19th century.  They were ejected from 'Nguniland' and went guess where...? THEY WENT BACK TO A PLACE THAT  IS OFTEN REGARDED AS THE ORIGINAL HOME FOR THE CASTLE OF PHIRI, THE STONE-AGE PHARAOH!  And this is where South Africa's present-day Free State Province lies in neighborhood with the Kingdom of Lesotho.  But they were no more pronounced as "Maseko".  They were "Mashego", whatever the etymological meaning lies in the latter

“Modern-day Pharaohnic Prince Bright Manyanya Phiri and his new-found friend now drank and chuckled as they hugged each other having a good time; and I kind of liked my father’s brand-new friend who would, some thirty minutes later, return without my father’s presence!

“’Boy!’ he said. ‘Do you remember where your father and I said put the unfinished nib of Richelieu Brandy?’ Of course I knew and told him as much. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘There is half-a-jack of the same Richelieu in that cubbyhole and your father says to give it to me, Boy.’

“I opened the cubbyhole and handed Uncle Pepepe (red-lipped people are called ‘Pepepe’ along our shores) gentleman his half-a-jack.

“The hour-later’s drive from Lothair to Amsterdam’s Lion’s Glen Farm by the lorry made me see my error as my father was rummaging the cubbyhole for his Richelieu half-a-jack but my error was not my fault when Africa teaches you to respect adults and particularly ‘uncles’ and ‘aunts’ introduced to you by your very own parents!  And of course I told my father where his half-a-jack had gone to… AND HOW HE SKINNED ME ALIVE FOR MY ‘IDIOCY’ IN GIVING ‘RED LIP AKA PEPEPE’ HIS LIQUOR!

“My question to this day is: WHY MUST I CARRY THE CAN TO THE EXTENT OF GETTING CHILDHOOD PUNISHMENT FOR INFORMATION THAT MY VERY OWN PARENTS FAILED TO REGISTER TO ME IN A PROPER MANNER?

“Such, were my Biological Mother LaMavimbela spankings which invariably drove me to the lap of Big Mother LaNkabinde, the mother to Brother Fanyana Manyanya!

“Of course I would finally return to my own Biological Mother’s, probably with some help from what reduction I faced in the most-loved confectionery Big Mother LaNkabinde periodically dished out to me when I visited her out of refuge.”

EX-AUNT MONICA ZAMEKILE MONICA PHIRI (HITHERTO MRS MONICA MASANGO CLAIMING ‘BORN NGWENYA’)

Now, fasten your seat-belts as readership, for this is for my father the strangest woman that ever existed for a sibling.

Here is the story!

My grandfather Bright, says my father, finally gets permission from LaNkabinde to marry a second wife and he meets a girl from the Mavimbela-Mkholo clan of South Africa and Swaziland.

Her name is Belinda Thokozile Mavimbela, the first ever girl child of Great Grandfather William Mavimbela with his two wives (LaMBhele and LaDlamini, a Swazi Princess).

“‘I am looking for babies like Goodman to beget, Lady, are you game?’ says Father Goodman could have been the words from Gran Bright as he proposed love and marriage with Paternal Grandmother Maiden Belinda Thokozile Mavimbela.

“ ‘Mr Malawian Boy, I live here in Lake-Chrissie-Chrissiesmeer Msukaligwa with my parents made up of Two Mothers LaShabangu-Bhele and LaMavimbela-Mkholo and-Their-Swaziland-born-Husband William Mavimbela!

“ ‘But if you Mr Phiri are looking for a baby-making machine, you have in me found such a one as will give you Children:

‘Female Monica Zamekile (as of this writing disowned by Blog Author)

‘Male Jackson Vusumuzi (as of this writing, already deceased)

‘Male Goodman Gcinumuzi (Blog Author)

‘Male Robert Sitholeni

‘Male Peter Pitani Hambani (as of this writing, already deceased)

‘Female Siphiwe Manyanya Grace (as of this writing, already deceased)

‘Female Constance Phethile Soneni

‘and Female baXolisiwe-baka-Phiri Rose Phiri’.

Granny Belinda Thokozile Mavimbela-Phiri (from whose first name my elder sister Mercedes-Thoko Phiri got her second barrel in her first name) not only kept her promises, but also apparently went into cahoots with Big Granny LaNkabinde-Mcusi towards allowing a well-appetized oldman towards his fourth wife, one Mr Adam Maseko’s and wife LaShabangu’s daughter and a formerly Miss Tina Maseko who bore Father Goodman the following siblings:

Delisile Phiri (a few months older than Grace)

Thakasile Phiri and

Mona Phiri (as of this writing, already deceased)

UNCLE JOSIAH WILSON MAVIMBELA AND LATER ‘ZULU’ (FATHER TO COUSIN MDUDUZI AND NTOMBI AMONG OTHERS)

 As reader you might have already come across Uncle Josiah already. He is Gran Belinda’s lovechild with a Mr Zulu of Nhlazatje/Elukwatini, Mpumalanga Province of South Africa, belief goes; and father ranks him below ex-Aunt Monica not because of age but because he was save for months or years of residence with us the Phiris, Father says, he was never like Monica raised by the Phiris.

Outside of coitus, the father had absolutely nothing to do with the upbringing of Uncle Josiah, I understand.  And as such, the latter grew up bearing her mother’s maiden name, 'Mavimbela'.

Uncle Josiah (in the erstwhile puerile view of Father Goodman) used to be one of the closest siblings to the latter.

For an example, when Father Goodman suffered as from age 11 from haemorrhoids, it is Uncle Josiah who shunted him from one doctor to another.  In that respect is also ex-Aunt Monica who would perhaps come over to ask after Father Goodman’s health.

In all that meanwhile, Elder Father (Uncle) Jackson Phiri, was disliked by both ex-Aunt Monica for he symbolized what was this feisty defender of what standing and respect the Phiri Homestead had any claim to.  His name was ‘Vusumuzi-waka-Phiri=The-Raiser-of-The-Phiri-Homestead’ he, at least in the eyes of his detractor half-siblings, personally took for no mere epithet!

My Uncle Josiah and ex-Aunt Monica, reckons my father now 2014, were using him to stand against his own elder brother while Josh and Monie were advancing interests of those men (“Zulu” and “Ngwenya”) they imagined or were told (by either their aunts and uncles, or their own mother, Granmother Mrs Belinda Thokozile Mavimbela Phiri or even by Great-Grandfather William Mavimbela) as their biological fathers in a fully-wedded Phiri family that was (and still to this day is) undermined by Gran Bright Phiri’s in-laws for no other obvious reason except SHEER XENOPHOBIA!

He is the uncle Father Goodman informed on his departure for exile to Swaziland then Mozambique then Angola, then Zambia and then Tanzania.

Prior to departure for political exile, Father Goodman knew Uncle Josiah as a born-again Christian married to a stunning beauty of the Ntimeni clan.  She hailed from Nelspruit, Kanyamazane.

While Uncle Josiah already had kids Mduduzi and Ntombi from his childhood shenanigans, LaNtimeni had (to Father Goodman's recollections) no kid with Uncle Josiah.

LaNtimeni was a very bright woman who most probably ended up as a policewoman in her Nelspruit town after what divorce she had, if any, with Uncle Josiah.

You ask perhaps: ‘Why is Josiah important for this narration?’.

He becomes super-important in very many ways!

One of those ways is the narration perhaps later over the birth of the last-born Phiri child, viz. Aunt BaXolisiwe-baka-Phiri Rose Phiri.

Father Goodman sees red on hearing from Aunt Siphiwe Manyanya Grace that Gran Thoko has borne child Xoli (the short for BaXolisiwe-baka-Phiri) IN THE ABSENCE OF GRAN BRIGHT who was now living in Malawi after a deportation in Apartheid South Africa’s 1981.

Father Goodman asks Aunt Grace to request for entry into the sanctuary where Gran Thoko and Neonate Aunt Xoli were, and the plan succeeds.

Father Goodman enters the room, pats Gran Thoko lightly on the shoulder and requests her very kindly to leave the Phiri homestead for her own Mavimbela’s people TOGETHER WITH HER ‘ILLEGITIMATE’ CHILD, XOLI.

“What right or authority have you, Goodman, got?” Asked Great Uncle (and brother to Gran Thoko) “to chuck off my sister for having borne a baby in the absence of Brother-in-law Bright Phiri, huh?”

“Every right!” Father Goodman relates as having been his response.   “This woman treats herself like a whore, Uncle, can’t you see?  Why didn’t she first marry the man who now fathered this neonate, huh?

“Uncle Norman Mavimbela, you may not fathom my circumstances: but I am a school teacher, highly moral, in Mayflowers’s Khutsala Primary School and one of my favourite subjects is to teach girl and boy children the meaning of chastity.  HOW ON EARTH DO THESE CHILDREN GET MY MESSAGE IF MY OWN MOTHER THOKO GETS IMPREGNATED BY ANY TOM DICK AND HARRY OF THE MAYFLOWER NEIGHBOURHOOD?”

The fists started flying with one side being the Mavimbelas championed by Great Uncles Norman and Samuel, the latter a renowned fighter who had at least had  one person killed by his own hands while both of them are grandchildren of fierce and fearless Swazi Warrior Mashoma Mavimbela who went missing in action for his King Mswati II or another Rex just in the wake of Mfecane/Difaqane, the self-annihilation us southern African peoples started immediately after consuming a hitherto-unknown-starch: maize or corn.

Father Goodman was over-careful of those maternal uncles of his.  However, Uncle Robert, who was there when the brawl broke out, was not that circumspect.  And Father Goodman recalls puckered and bulged lips of Uncle Robert’s all from a blow from the late Great-Uncle Sam!

But where is Uncle Josiah Wilson Zulu featuring in all this 1981/2 scene of Mayflower Emageyitini?

He is already resident in ‘Mayflower Proper’ and not far from what you today find the main road to Dundonald-Lothair. He lives there with prim and beautiful LaNtimeni and he pleads every so often with Father Goodman to move house from Khutsala Primary School environs and come ‘cohabit with us here as your sister-in-law LaNtimeni would highly appreciate your company during the many days I am not around here’.  Father Goodman politely declined the offer till the day of his exile in 1983 December 11^th!

But when the fists had flown and subsided; when the extended family had gathered enough sense to talk about the illegitimate child just born by Gran Thoko, Uncle Josiah came to the rescue of Father Goodman and said to their own maternal uncles:

“Goodman is to me a child, hardly 22; but his point on this matter is utterly manly.   How on earth does our mother commit adultery? Why didn’t she marry this new impregnator of hers? How on earth do we teach our own wives (like LaNtimeni) to be chaste when our Mother Thoko behaves like the wench she has thus far displayed herself to be?”

At that moment (Father Goodman relates), Gran Thoko walked in, went on her knees in front of Uncle Josiah and Father Goodman and asked for an APOLOGY.

That, then, is how I Maziri Phiri’s last-born aunt became ‘Xolisiwe’, a word or name that means ‘Apology’.

Aunt Xolisiwe is fully accepted as a Phiri by all and sundry in the nuclear family, troublemakers notwithstanding.  Us Phiris believe fatherhood is the process of bringing up a child; and Aunt Xolisiwe knows no other contribution but the Phiris to her being and bringing-up and from what report the extended Phiri Family gets, Xolisiwe will accept nobody else calling himself as her brother save Gran Bright Manyanya Phiri! At least she takes no rubbish from any wizened old opportunist who had the audacity of playing around with Mr Bright Phiri's wife! (For that matter, there was once an aged idiot who reportedly came to a neighbour's house and asked to send for Xolisiwe 'to come see her Pa' and Xolisiwe went straight to report her elder  sister Soneni Phethile Phiri about 'the expectoratios of a madman nextdoor'!)

EX-AUNT MONICA ZAMEKILE GETS BORN

(Friday, 22 February 1957)

I am told that no sooner had my grannies met than a conception for ex-Aunt Monica happened.

There are various versions, Papa says, as to how ex-Aunt Monica was conceived.

VERSION ONE (and a version paraded by my grandmother’s people and particularly by a great aunt of mine as Maziri [since deceased and a woman who was, nameless as she will remain here, at one stage or another allegedly raped by my Grandfather Bright, statutorily]): “MONICA IS THE CHILD OF ONE Mr SIMON NGWENYA, THE BOYFRIEND TO BELINDA JUST BEFORE GRAN BRIGHT ARRIVED ON THE SCENE”

VERSION TWO: Monica is a biological daughter of Gran Bright’s, and this is the version that Father Goodman learnt from Gran Bright when the former inquired in Chilumba Malawi in 1982 as to what the Monica conundrum was all about)

VERSION THREE: Monica should, according to South African Swazi culture, be the daughter of he who was there when she got born and he who supported her and her mother from Day One of her individual existence on Earth his name being Mr Bright Manyanya Phiri!

According to Father Goodman, the ex-Aunt-Monica paternity controversy never arose during the growing-up process!

It only arose when Gran Bright got deported back to Malawi in 1981!

It only arose when Father Goodman was called to political exile in Tanzania!

 And it only arose when Uncle Jackson succumbed in 1987 to some poisoning in a murder ascribed to a jealous Hendrina Xhosa-speaking lover of his called ‘Nonceba’ (Father Goodman is as yet to be totally sold to this allegation where he would rather toy with the idea that both Uncle Jackson and Girlfriend Nonceba were murdered by some third party who laced their dinner with the weed poison stated in the death certificate or two).

Mr Maziri Phiri, born 10 July 2010: Iringa, United Republic of Tanzania