This woman had been taunting me for some time. I was twenty years younger than her. She had been married and divorced with three grown up children and I was into my first child. I was at the peak of my youth, vivacious, bright, well groomed, but a down-to-earth professional, a community-builder and an activist. In her heydays she had been married to a renowned Businessman who was well respected by all in Galeshewe. I had met her on various brief occasions when I would go to see her husband either at their wholesale, their supermarket or their house. All visits would be related to asking for donations to do either clandestine work or open political mobilisation of the masses. Unlike her conscienscious husband who identified with the struggle against poverty, exclusion and exploitation, she was very conceited and full of herself. She always looked down upon me as if I was a begger, or as if I had leprosy whenever I came to collect money from her husband for doing work.. Originally I used to make a case for a donation well in advance, account for money previously donated, then arrange for money to be collected a day before it would be used, then send one or another trusted cadre to fetch the money, but no one was eventually not willing to go to this Donor due to the belittling attitude of this woman who was his wife. So eventually its me had to go every time whenever we needed to fetch a donation from this Businessman. I had decided that our work was too important to be allowed to suffer because of one bourgeois woman who always held her nose up in the sky. I resolved that my allegiance and comradeship remained with her husband, and that I had no time for an empty-headed woman who thought that the money they had was all that mattered in life. So I always was civil with her without showing her any emotion whatsoever. To date I still believe that she is one person on whom I learned and managed to master the art of becoming oblivious and cold towards a person. Whenever I entered her store or house, if she was the first person I would meet, I would greet her coldly and proceed to ask her where her husband was in the same sentence without showing any emotion. I would remain standing even when seldomly she offered me a seat. Her husband would come with a bag, we would greet, shake hands, I would take the loaded bag he gave me, hand him the one I was returning that I would have taken from him the last time he gave us a dination, say Thank you comrade, and leave the store or house without even looking towards her. I had absolutely no relationship with that woman. The only thing I loved about her was her perfume, her bottle-green Mercedes Benz and her bottle green velvet winter suit. Other than those three things of hers there was absolutely nothing else likeable about her, that was in my own opinion at least. And I suspected that she too did not like me at all. So eventually after many years of getting support from her husband, I was arrested, detained, imprisoned many times and so I lost cintact with that family. I was therefore shocked when her husband came to visit me when I was under house arrest to inform me that they were divorcing. According to him the woman had repeatedly cheated on him with younger men, and as if that was not enough, she had abused thousands and thousands of rands in her love relationships to a point that they were almost bankrupt. I listened with shock and comforted the old man who had actually aged very fast since I had last seen him a few years ago. I thanked him profusely for having supported us financially, and asked him whether he believed that donating regularly to us could have also contributed to their eminent bankruptcy. I asked him to answer me very earnestly and truthfully, not knowing what I would do or offer if he could say indeed we had helped to bankrupt his businesses. Luckily for me told me repeatedly that donating to the course had nothing to do with their fall, and blamed everything of his wife. So it was not surprising that when I returned after more than ten years, from working away from Kimberley and from teaching in amongst other schools, St. Matthews Senior Secondary School in Rockville, Soweto, the school of the famous Struggle Church of Regina - Mundi, this woman was still loathing me and resenting me. She had more reason to resent me, I guessed. Her divorce with her rich husband was long done. She lived in a very modest backroom at her family house. She had no car. She had become almost defaced and deformed from plastic surgeries she did too frequently when she still had money. She was bitter and spiteful, and she had come to join the Womens League when she heard that I was back reviving its structures. But she was on a mission! Her joining was not innocent. She had come to fight me! I had worked myself up in my profession, I remained a respected community leader, I was elected into various positions of the movement, and she started a character-assaination campaign against me. She spread rumours that I broke her marriage. She told people that I musused organisational money that they used to give me. It took her estranged husband to clear my name both in the local paper and in our structures. When all that she tried throwing at ne did not hold, she started provoking me in meetings. I had to keep my cool all the time, I was a leader, I had to! But one Saturday morning I was going to a funeral of an old stalwart of the movement, Rre Mampe. I needed cash, so I left early in order to drive past an FNB ATM. I drove to Stockdale Street, and parked on the other side of the road, then crossed over on foot to the ATM. When I arrived thete I saw her, she was dirty, she had slept at the mini casino opposite the bank. She probably needed more money to go and gamble. I looked around, a security was not around, it was only the two of us. I remembered clearly that the ANC constitution prohibits its members from physical fights. But I reasoned that she will have no witness after all. My adrenalin rushed on the thought that I should deal with her quickly before any potential witness came. So I grapped her and only said these words: Today I am going to pay you back for all the malicious rumours you spread about me, and for all the times you provoked me in ANC meetings I unleashed headbutt after headbutt on her.I gave her probably seven of the best. Then I rushed back to my car as she fell on the ground. I drove to Pick &Pay centre where there were public phones. From there I phoned 10111 and an ambulance using a false identity to tell them that a woman was lying injured on Stockdale Street infront of the FNB bank/ATM. From there I went to the funeral as if nothing had happened I got sick worried from that evening that she was going to report me to the ANC.I waited for days, weeks and months and no report was made about the incident. It has now been years, and I narrated this to one comrade only about six years ago. That woman never reported me because she knew that she had wronged me badly on too many occasions. I hope she is still alive today, as I would like to talk to her. The power of a bitter woman! ! ALL COPY RIGHTS RESERVED.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 18:47:38 +0000
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