Conquering the Poverty of the Mind - MaZwane's Story

From Shipping Container to BUSY CORNER – The Entrepreneurial Journey of the Shisanyama Pioneer

Rita Zwane, Isabella Morris

• Publisher: Tracey McDonald Publishers
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780639992921
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Biographies d'entreprises

'When you see a township resident driving past in their new car, and they wave, and you wave back, it is extremely gratifying to know that they built their chakalaka business based on the small contract you gave them ten years previously, and now they have expanded and provide other companies with products, because they were able to seize the opportunity you offered to them and developed it.' – MaZwane

MaZwane has become a legend in South Africa as a pioneering entrepreneur – and an inspiration for those who ask questions about opportunities in the informal township economy.

Her answer to those who doubt whether they can make it, is that you do it through perseverance, sacrifice, seizing opportunities, and offering superior products and service.

In 1989 Phumlaphi ('Rita') Zwane left KwaZulu-Natal to find work in Johannesburg after becoming a teenage mother. She could count on the love of her family, a matric certificate and her faith, but had no job prospects, and no knowledge of the business world or life in the big cities.

Her memoir takes the reader from the tough times of finding her feet in Johannesburg, through a variety of jobs and life experiences, to finally fighting her way to success as a respected member of the township economy and starting the successful Imbizo Shisanyama business.

MaZwane tells how she progressed from having virtually no income or permanent home to becoming the first person to formalise and commercialise shisanyama in the townships – and provide a comfortable home and legacy for her children.

Along the way, she befriended many people who contributed accommodation, job opportunities, advice, and companionship. With them cheering her on, she learned how to navigate the different and difficult aspects of the hospitality industry – and slowly reach her desired place of independent security.

Conquering the Poverty of the Mind - From Shipping Container to BUSY CORNER shows the true grit of a Zulu girl who believed in herself – and did it against all odds.

CHAPTER 1

Once, my father…

The Zwane family and Zululand are tied together as intimately as the blood of the Zulu nation is to the Ncome River. Our family clan formed part of one of the many Zululand kingdoms that were affected by the Voortrekker Zulu War and the Battle of Blood River in 1838 – kingdoms which were further divided by the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War.

In order to enforce their control over the region, the British authority required each of the powerful Zulu royal houses to swear allegiance to the Crown. However, uZibhebhu, the leader of the Mandlakazi clan, refused to kowtow to the British demands of inter-clan restraint. Instead, he took advantage of a weakened King Cetshwayo and his Royal House of Usuthu and defeated them. Cetshwayo’s son and heir, Dinuzulu, refused to submit to Chief uZibhebhu or the British protectors, and cleverly devised a strategy to outwit both of them. He did so by shrewdly enlisting the help of a group of Transvaal Burghers under the leadership of Lucas Meijer, promising them land if they assisted him in successfully defeating uZibhebhu and the Mandlakazi. It did not take much convincing to persuade the Burghers who had trekked to the Transvaal to escape the oppressive rule of the British. The Zulu-Boer collaborative army was indeed victorious. On the 16th of August 1884, honouring his promise to the Burghers, Dinuzulu handed over the land as promised, and they proclaimed it the Nieuwe Republic, with Vryheid as its capital.

In 1955 my father, 31-year-old Phinela ‘Mgobansimbi’ Zwane, and my mother, 25-year-old Ntombiza Zwane (MaNkosi), lived with their young family in one of the clan’s umuzi (homestead) in the village of eNgoje near Vryheid, northern KwaZulu-Natal. The village lies in a scenic landscape, with wide green valleys that fall between the folds of low, dark, distant mountains. In these valleys you can watch the seasons unfold in all their dramatic glory. In summer, when the low, heavy clouds blow in white with rain, you can track their slow, menacing advance across the violet skies that carry the accompanying thunder and lightning. The unrestrained beauty of eNgoje invigorates me every time I return to it.

Vryheid (an Afrikaans word that means freedom) is a small town that lies at the source of the White and Black Umfolozi, and the Mkhuze and Pongolo rivers, and the landscape is populated with mountains, timber forests, cattle ranches, and maize, soya and groundnut plantations. I often wonder if the bitter irony of the town’s name and the growing stronghold of apartheid in rural towns was what prompted my father to consider leaving the small village of his birth.

At that time, when he and my mother lived there, eNgoje was a typical rural umuzi with the iQukwane (traditional round, thatched Zulu dwellings), dotting the landscape, and domestic animals being herded and taken care of by one of my brothers, Mpisendlini. He was already adept with a leather whip to direct the clan’s small herds. As smoke trails snaked out of the huts and the sky only just began to lighten, the women boiled water and prepared breakfast for their families, and men’s heels kicked up the sand on the dirt roads they walked to their jobs.

In the seven years after the National Party had taken power, my father worked as a herdsman at one of the white-owned cattle ranches and he also managed a bit of subsistence farming on his umuzi. His jobs required him to leave the house well before the sun had risen over the Kwofodo mountain, and he returned in the evenings just after the sun had slipped beyond the western horizon.

In the evenings, after my mother had put the children to bed for the night, and after my father had eaten his evening meal, it was customary for my mother to discuss domestic matters with him. But one evening in 1955, my father asked her to leave the chores for a minute.

‘I know you are happy here, Ntombiza, so I’m not going to ask you to leave…,’ he started.

My mother’s hands stopped in the soapy water; my father’s plate slipped through her fingers.

‘Leave? What are you talking about?’ She turned to face my father. She was heavily pregnant with my sister Sibuzani, and the thought of another change to the family came as a shock.

‘Listen to me. We have young children; you’re expecting our next child. The way things are going, it’s starting to look like even if the government did build a school for our children, the education they would receive would be inferior. It hasn’t even been ten years since the National Party came into government, and already you can see they’re erecting all types of legal roadblocks that will keep us from getting ahead. One by one, they’re going to make laws that oppress black people.’

My mother sank heavily onto the floor next to my father, and put her hands over her ears. She did not want the dark shadow of politics falling across the step into her house. She did not want to hear the words that would change her family’s good life – and life was good in eNgoje. During the day she accompanied her sisters and aunts to the river to wash the family’s clothes, and while they gossiped and counselled one another, they watched their children play on the muddy riverbank and splash in the shallows. How could she leave all that behind? How could she leave her family?

Seeing her distress, my father took up her hand in his, and tugged at it.

‘Listen to me, Ntombi...’

But my mother would not meet his eyes; she didn’t want to hear another single word coming from his mouth.

‘Look at me!’ He stood up and lifted his foot in its dusty shoe in demonstration. ‘Look at how far I have to walk to work every day. The only work I can do involves my hands and my body. Everything I know has to do with farming. Neither of us can read.’

Neither of my parents had enjoyed the benefit of an education. My father was right.

‘Is that what we want for our children?’ he asked, his voice gentler now. He knew that my mother’s dreams for her children knew no boundaries. She had visions for them that she couldn’t even begin to articulate.

‘But, how can we leave everyone that we know and trust?’ she asked.

‘I’m not asking that of you,’ my father said, ‘all I am asking is that you let me go and see if there is a better living to be had in Durban. Give us a chance. That’s what we need. It’s what we have to give our children – a fighting chance.’

This time my mother heard in my father’s gentle pleading that he was not asking her to leave, but that he would be the one to go ahead and be the trailblazer. She looked up at him and nodded.

In the months that followed, whenever inquisitive neighbours or visitors questioned my mother about her husband’s absence from the family home, or when she had her own natural insecurities that made her knees shake, her doubts were dispelled when she reminded herself of his words: ‘I’m going to give eThekwini and our family a chance.’

My father’s dream of improving his job prospects were realised to some degree when he managed to find a job at one of the factories in Jacobs, an industrial area just south of Durban. Here, large industrial companies manufactured paper, paint, mineral liquids and detergents, and the like. I imagine that my father regularly thought of his family at home while he walked along Voortrekker Street in Jacobs to his factory job, in the same way that my mother thought of him and remembered him to my siblings as they ate meals without him in eNgoje.

Of course there were visits home over the next nine years – homecomings that involved bringing clothing, groceries, small gifts, and sometimes big gifts, like the sewing machine for my mother.

It was during his visit to eNgoje in April over that Easter weekend in 1968 that he tentatively broached the subject of finally moving my mother and the family to join him.

‘I want you to think carefully about bringing the children and joining me in Umlazi. I’ve found a small plot and I’m building us a house. I’m tired of living a bachelor life.’

While my mother made no firm decision that holiday, my father kept on pressing her, urging her to make the move.

‘If we remain here, I will never earn enough to build a foundation for our children. It scares me that if we don’t, their futures will be limited. The government doesn’t want an educated black community. It means our children will have no future. If they don’t learn to read and write and study, they will be poor for the rest of their lives. We owe them more than that, Ntombiza. We’re going to take them to eThekwini where they can be educated and become strong, independent citizens.’

During the same holiday visit, my mother fell pregnant with me.

When my mother learned that she was expecting for the sixth time, she finally gave in to my father’s stubborn urging, and she and my siblings duly made the move to Umlazi, the township that lies 18 kilometres to the south of Durban. Although it is now the fourth-largest township in South Africa, and the only township to have its own number plate (NUZ), back in 1968 Umlazi was barely a year old. It was inhabited predominantly by displaced Cato Manor residents and black labourers like my father, who had come from the rural areas to work in the industrial areas south of Durban. In those early days, Umlazi was a green, hilly township, and it rapidly grew into a settlement of informal homes that clung to the hillside in uneven terraces and that were made out of wood, corrugated iron, and other cheap building materials.

It must have taken tremendous courage for my parents at different times to leave behind their family and friends and head south to eThekwini, the bustling township where life’s pace would be very different from the quiet life they had known in eNgoje. When my father had moved to Umlazi the year before, he had arrived in the chaos of a brand new informal settlement, staked his claim amid banana, avocado, and mango trees, and built the four-roomed dwelling to house his growing family.

When my mother arrived in the township, she had to hit the ground running, even though she was well into her pregnancy. Five children meant finding five ways to feed them. My father had bought my mother the sewing machine, as she was an accomplished needlewoman who had learned the skill as a maiden in eNgoje. My father also bought her a bolt of fabric and she wasted no time in putting her head down over the machine and turning out expertly-stitched garments to sell. She stood up every now and then and walked about the house to relieve the aches and pains associated with her sixth pregnancy. I am sure that my impending arrival must have put pressure on my parents, even though they felt honoured to have been blessed with another child.

My parents were God-fearing people and regular church attendees. They were devoted to their families and their children, and they saw as their lives’ purpose the responsibility of raising healthy children with a strong moral foundation and a sound work ethic. Everyone in the new house in Umlazi was responsible for contributing to its efficient management. In the same way that my older sister Sibuzani and my brothers Mpisendlini, Mnikeni, Sengathi, and Siphabani had carried out chores in eNgoje, new domestic chores were allocated in Umlazi to ensure that my parents were assisted in their bid to build a new life for our family. My father paid for the fabric, my mother stitched it into garments, and my sister or brothers would go door to door in the township, selling them to other homemakers.

As the spring of 1968 approached, my mother found herself settling into communal life in the burgeoning township. She made new acquain...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Imprint page
• Dedication and acknowledgements
• Foreword by Dr Judy Dlamini
• Foreword by Steven Zwane
• CHAPTER 1: Once, my father…
• CHAPTER 2: A mother’s love
• CHAPTER 3: A son is born and left behind
• CHAPTER 4: Bright Joburg with a dark side
• CHAPTER 5: Busi and Nompi on the scene
• CHAPTER 6: The kindness of true friends
• CHAPTER 7: I can feel it in my veins
• CHAPTER 8: Imbizo Shisanyama and Busy Corner
• CHAPTER 9: Land tenure and becoming legal
• CHAPTER 10: Growing the business; obtaining a liquor licence
• CHAPTER 11: From plan to a place of tradition celebrated
• CHAPTER 12: Open for business
• CHAPTER 13: Soaring higher in the townships
• CHAPTER 14: Entrepreneurship – and giving back
• CHAPTER 15: A long-term perspective
• CHAPTER 16: A new trajectory
• Stay in touch with Rita zwane
• Photo section