Tenacity to Purpose

Over the past few weeks I have been grappling with thoughts around men and the way they were brought up and taught about what a woman is and how to treat a woman. I have invited three men to share their stories and thoughts around this topic, especially considering the recent increase in violence towards women and children. First up is my father, Mr. Matsome Mathibe! At the end of the three weeks I will then give my own comments and thoughts on what they have shared.  Q 1: What did the people around you while you were young (father, mother, friends, teachers), teach you about what a woman is and how a man is to treat a woman? MM: Growing up in the dusty streets of Mabopane, Law and Order was the order of the day. Any child was raised by the community, corporal punishment at school was active and [so was] instilling discipline. I was taught to love myself first, wash twice a day and wear clean clothes daily. I was very close to my Mom from standard 3 to standard 7, and I wa...

Every day she wakes up a nd thanks God for the breath in her lungs. S he feels the warmth Of the water on her skin a nd washes away the insults of yesterday. She unlocks the door a nd steps outside. A security measure that s ometimes doesn’t even feel like much. Because w hat’s a lock compared To muscles and determination? She walks out onto The street, and looks both sides. As if about to cross the road But, she’s just checking the coast b efore heading off. She takes the same route every day, But she still takes a moment to decide i f she should  walk in the middle o f the road or on the sidewalk. The sidewalk might conceal her b ut it could already  be concealing  somebody else. The middle will expose her even more. But at least she’ll see anyone coming from any side. With every step, she utters a word t o God.  Trying to distract herself from t he fear  that is rising up inside of her. She thanks Him for always be...

When she realised that she liked isolation,  she questioned why she even  liked company in the first place. She enjoyed her own company,  because sometimes other’s  voices were too loud. The echoing and stillness  of the walls became  her favourite sound. Hibernation season never came,  and she was craving the comfort of food with the minimal responsibility  to be anywhere or to do anything. Like a bear during winter,  s he just wanted her own existence to be enough for her.  She wanted her own skin to be only comfort that she needed. She wanted her own thoughts to be  the music that caused laughter  and encouraged dancing. It was almost as if she wanted to relearn herself. She wanted to interrogate  the fibres that made her being.  How the power of her coils  could be related to the strength that lied within. How the freckles on her face  we...

Since I was young I’ve had a hard time asking for help from anyone. I sort of just figured stuff out on my own or I waited until the very last minute to admit that I couldn’t do it. And then with every ounce of energy that I could summon up, go and ask someone for help. But over the last few years God has been helping me change my ways. And most times He gets me to ask for help specifically from people I try to get away from but that was before I realised that it was just pride. But that’s a story for another day. Recently, while asking for help I was made aware of the choice of words I would use when doing it. I was about to type out “If it’s not too much to ask” but then I stopped and asked myself “is there an actual scale for how much is too much to ask?” Another example is the comparison between just saying “Can you help me, yes or no?” and “Can you help me, yes or no? If no, then I can ask someone else.” Why do we even say that? Obviously if you thought the person couldn’t do...