Behind Every Successful Man Read online

  Title Page

  ZUKISWA WANNER

  Behind

  every

  successful

  man

  KWELA BOOKS

  Dedication

  To my mom and dad

  Motto

  I have been a woman for too long

  So mind my smile

  It hides my pain

  It hides my scars

  It hides my memories

  So tell me sister

  Where does the breeze begin to blow?

  I need to languish in its breath

  To begin my renewal

  As I renew my soul

  I have learnt to love me unconditionally

  Just as I am

  I have learnt to be proud of this creation

  That is me

  I have learnt to let go of my past hurts

  And live in the present

  I have learnt that I can make all my dreams come true

  I have learnt that I only have God to serve

  That being a woman is okay

  CRISELDA KANANDA

  PART I

  Chapter 1 - HiStory

  1

  HiStory

  As he left the security guard at the gate, after bidding the last guest good night, Andile thanked the ancestors that Nobantu’s birthday was in June. No better way to show potential investors the type of black person that would be leading them when MAPAMO Holdings got listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. He knew that those on Johannesburg’s party circuit would be talking about this midyear party until the holiday season. He smiled the way he figured someone who had just won the Lotto would smile, although he knew he was worth much more than any Lotto prize. He locked the door, walked into his study, and poured himself another cognac, wanting to muse over the evening before going to bed.

  He smiled. The party he had thrown for his wife’s birthday would be hard to match. Sure, it had cost him a little loose change to throw it, but thank heavens for Charlie – the Jaguar had been a lovely touch. Granted, the Americans weren’t making them in the classic tradition since Jag had become part of the Ford stable, but it’s the thought that counts and he had seen the envy on every woman’s face at the party, including that chick, Tau’s wife, Dr Whatever. He was certain that although Tau was one of the five richest men in South Africa, he had never given his wife a present like that. And what was up with him? Loads of money but zero style. What had the man been wearing? Andile had wanted to say something to him about the powder-blue Chinese silk Nehru suit, but he had decided against it. One did not want to antagonise people in business. After all, you never knew when you may want to work with them. Pretty wife, though. Maybe it was true what they said about her plastic surgery. No matter, she was still not as beautiful as his Nobantu.

  He shook his thoughts from the Taus. Sure, some might call it a little mercenary of him to use his wife’s birthday to show his muscle, but what of it? What better way to introduce himself and his partners to potential financiers of future ventures than at a family function that would show him as a well-connected, well-balanced businessman who still loved his wife of fifteen years.

  Fifteen years of marriage.

  Sometimes it felt like he had been married forever, he thought to himself as he took another swig of cognac. Nobantu seemed to have almost always been in his life. In the early years she was the little girl who used to pester him and his then best friend, Nkosinathi, by following them everywhere. “God rest his soul,” he mumbled, pouring some cognac onto the expensive Persian rug at the foot of his desk.

  Looking down, he realised his mistake and regretted the action, then regretted the regret. There were two maids in the household and his wife to supervise them, he was sure that between the three of them they could get the stains out. What was he paying the domestics for otherwise? How many maids had medical?

  He shook his head, catching himself digressing again. He looked at his watch; it was five in the morning. Still dark outside, though. He would sit in here a bit longer and finish his drink, then go to bed. Phew! He hadn’t partied like this since his university days.

  Where was he again?

  He nodded his head as though there was an audience to his musings. Aha. Nkosinathi. Very grounded for a child of royalty. Andile wondered what Nathi would have become if he hadn’t been taken so early in his life. He smiled fondly as he recalled how Nobantu had caught them smoking their first zol together behind her parents’ house. He and Nobantu had both loved Nkosinathi.

  After Nkosinathi’s death – he had been killed in a hit-and-run during the Christmas holidays just after matric – Nobantu was still there in his life, as a blooming high school student who would smile shyly at him when she saw him on those infrequent holidays eCumakala. Slowly, the high school student had evolved into a charming and confident lass, someone he had been honoured to show his Johannesburg when she began her university studies at Wits. Sure, her mother may have initially requested that he take care of her when she got to Joburg, but the way Nobantu carried herself he was certain he would have happily “taken care of her” with or without her mother’s request. At that time, doing articles with Ackerman & Patel, he had been happy to have the type of wallet he knew few university students had. He knew he could show her much more of his Johannesburg than any of those university kids could.

  His Joburg. He always thought of the city with a certain possessiveness. This indeed was HIS Joburg.

  Nobantu had asked him in those early days, when the black world was in the grips of euphoria because Mandela was out of jail and the white world was filled with uncertainty and something akin to fear, “But, Andile, why do you keep referring to it as ‘your Joburg’? You weren’t born here, you didn’t go to school here, you didn’t go to university here, so what’s so special about Joburg?”

  She was right. He had been born eCumakala, attended high school in King William’s Town and become a university man in Cape Town, but when he arrived in Johannesburg, after having been recruited by Ackerman & Patel, he had known unreservedly that he had found the kind of spiritual home that many spend a lifetime searching for.

  He had paused, thinking about her question. Then he said, “Do you know, I have heard it said that when men are recruited from neighbouring countries to work in the mines their wives always say that their husband is ‘eGoli’, even if he’s in Kimberley?”

  She had looked at him bemused. “So what does that mean?”

  “That, sisi, means this city captures the world’s imagination. No one ever visits South Africa, but people are always visiting eGoli,” he had said triumphantly.

  She had shrugged her shoulders and said in a tone of voice that showed she did not really comprehend, “Okay, but lucky for whoever you are dating that the city isn’t a woman. She would never stand a chance.”

  As he thought about it again, he realised Nobantu had been right in comparing the city to a woman. Every time he arrived in Johannesburg, even from a two-day business trip to Cape Town, he experienced a sense of – there was no other way to put it – homecoming.

  In those early days with Nobantu, he had wanted to possess her in the same way that he had wanted to possess the city. In the beginning, he had tried talking himself out of her – it was crazy, she was like the little sister he never had, and there were plenty of sophisticated young women keen to be with a young lawyer in a Brooks Brothers’ suit. It mattered little, though. She was already in his bloodstream. It was Nobantu he wanted, Nobantu he had to have.

  In those early months, he found himself smiling fondly while busy researching for his bosses, scowling when she told him about some male university student she sounded like she might admire. He found himself
wanting to impress her like he had never wanted to impress any member of the female species. Nobantu was a hunger, a craving, which he could not do without.

  In those days before cellphones, Andile would rush to her residence as soon as he finished work to spend time with her. She was always with her beautiful tomboy of a friend, Nontsikelelo. Ntsiki, who he later found out was a lesbian (although in those days it was a secret told only in the strictest of confidences, because being a lesbian was just not done by Africans!), appeared to compete with him for Nobantu’s time. He remembered with a smile how, in his ignorance about all this sexual preference stuff, he had once asked Nobantu whether she too was planning to become a lesbian.

  She had answered spiritedly with a rhetorical question that had floored him: “And since you are always with Anant Patel,” she had asked, “are you also planning to become an Indian?”

  He had laughed then, but that had been one of his first lessons in living and letting live, a characteristic which he had since noticed came in handy in the business world. Strange that he got it from a country girl and not some streetwise Joburg woman, but then Nobantu had always oozed wisdom beyond her age.

  Andile had been unable to believe that he, the son of a contract worker (who had died when he was so young he could not remember him) and a domestic, could possibly have anything to do with this angel, the only daughter of a schoolteacher and a Rharhabe chief (who was also a lawyer). He was therefore happily surprised when, within a short time of her arrival in Joburg, they were dating.

  It was her naiveté and some form of irresponsibility on his part – protection had not been a big thing when having sex in those days – that led to her getting pregnant in her first year of university.

  “How did it happen?” he had asked stupidly. “Oh, God, Nobantu, I am so sorry. What are your parents going to say?” he had said, slapping his forehead.

  She was, after all, royalty and he was still the child of a domestic worker – he could not get that out of his mind.

  “And your mother is going to think I am trying to trap you because you have a good job and are making it,” she had said, sobbing.

  He remembered how he had kissed the tears from Nobantu’s face, not caring what his mother would say. He loved her, but more importantly, she had the type of demeanour that would make her a great wife for the type of man he knew he wanted to become. He had known then what he would do. He would marry her.

  “But I am too young to get married. Can’t we just have the baby and decide later whether we want to be together?” she had asked defiantly, to Andile’s surprise. He had always thought that any woman who got pregnant by a man she was not married to was, in some way, staking her territory.

  He shook his head vehemently. “No way. There is absolutely no way any child of mine will be born out of wedlock, what would your parents and the community back home think of me?” he had asked angrily.

  Eventually he had managed to convince her, with some help from her mother – who had to be let in on the secret – to marry him. It hadn’t been too difficult to persuade her. Was he not one of the most brilliant young lawyers in South Africa and was her mother not one of the strongest personalities he knew?

  Nobantu’s mother – “a typical schoolteacher” as Nobantu often joked – hadn’t wanted her daughter, married or not, to be without a degree. So, after taking time off to give birth and bond with their son, whom they had named Xolani (named in apology to her parents for disappointing them), Nobantu had returned to Johannesburg to continue with her studies, joining him, this time around, in a rented cottage in Auckland Park. The cottage had, in reality, been the renovated servants’ quarters of an old house belonging to one of those liberal professor types.

  Andile smiled as he opened the bottle and poured more cognac into his glass. “Ha, I am at home, I can have one more,” he excused himself.

  He remembered how it had been when they first got married. When he returned home after a long day’s work, Nobantu would always have dinner ready, take a shower with him and rub his shoulders while listening to stories of how his day had been spent. They had no television then; they had been content with listening to and watching each other. He remembered how sexually passionate she had been, both of them had been, never too tired to make love. He wondered what had happened to them.

  Nowadays, they had both started knocking on the door of their en suite bathroom to make sure that the other was decent – she could not even pee in his presence as she used to do in the early days of their marriage. Yes, they still had sex. No, not as often as they had done back then. He was tired, or she was tired, or she wanted to watch Desperate Housewives, or he wanted to watch Arsenal on Supersport. When they did do it, it was robotic, and immediately afterwards, they would each roll to their own side of the bed and she would continue – if what women’s magazines said was true – with what she had been planning to do during sex, while he nodded off, exhausted. Maybe he just wasn’t as young as he used to be.

  But it wasn’t just the sex. They no longer discussed general affairs as they used to do in the early days of their marriage either. Their talk now centred on how his day had been (him) and what money was needed for the children or some mundane domestic issue (her). She was no longer spirited. No longer sure of herself. Except when she tried to convince him that she wanted to start her little boutique, a silly idea to be sure since he gave her whatever money she needed and he never wanted to have her family think he could not look after her. Fifteen years after getting married to Nobantu, he still sometimes got the feeling that, in spite of all his success, her father didn’t think him good enough for his daughter. What then if she went to work and this became some sort of proof that he couldn’t look after her?

  The last time she had discussed her little boutique idea with him was a few months back when, after he had asked her what people would say, she answered in an almost petulant voice, “I don’t care what people will say. I just know that I don’t want to sit at home any more wondering whether this is all there is to life while other people are making something of themselves.”

  Andile had wondered out loud why – if she wanted to be needed so badly, wanted to feel she was doing something worthwhile – she didn’t just continue with her volunteer work. It would certainly help MAPAMO if his wife was known to be at the forefront of various charity organisations.

  She had looked at him and said, “It would help your business. It won’t make me feel any better. Give me a chance to do this thing with the designs. I know I can do it. What do you say?”

  That night, he wasn’t in the mood to humour her silly notions. She didn’t know when to stop. She just kept pushing and pushing. He had finally ended the conversation by telling her that if she wanted to get into business she could go right ahead, but she should be prepared for a divorce. Then he had rolled over and pretended to sleep. He had known then that he had won. She was too much of a good mother, reared by traditionalist parents, to want to get a divorce.

  He wondered what had changed Nobantu. She no longer debated the finer points of politics with him, or, what used to be their mutual passion, the politics of business. He wondered whether she too, like him, rarely paid attention to what her spouse was saying.

  He had even considered having an affair, but had decided against it. He didn’t have time and, besides, Nobantu was a good woman, she didn’t deserve that.

  Maybe she was going through something. He had been meaning to find out what was eating her for the last few months, but in between the high-level meetings, the parties that couldn’t be missed and his golf games on Sundays, he rarely had time to have a serious conversation with his wife – let alone an affair with another woman.

  Andile yawned and realised how tired he was. Besides, he noted as he looked outside, dawn was breaking. He had to get to bed.

  Before leaving the study, he looked at his PalmPilot to see whether he had an opening to take his wife for dinner, maybe get a hotel suite for the weekend and
try to recapture the magic of the old days. He saw a Friday towards the end of August, two months away, and nodded his head – he would do it. He only hoped that nothing important would come up on that day.

  He walked out of his study, switching off the lights as he went. Today would have been a good day to make love to his wife, he thought, but all that socialising had made him tired. Besides, his wife, who was not much of a drinker, had been drinking at the party and was probably in a vodka-induced dreamland by now. She wouldn’t thank him for waking her up at six in the morning.

  Chapter 2 - HerStory

  2

  HerStory

  Scanning the Sunday papers the weekend after her party, it sure looked like she and Andile had finally “arrived”. By all accounts, her thirty-fifth birthday party was one that many a South African would have killed to attend. And how could it not seem excellent? she thought as she looked back on the night in question with a fond smile. She had been wearing a chic Dior dress and a pair of Jimmy Choos, the cost of which, as she well knew, could have fed an Alex pensioner and her orphaned grandchildren for a year. Head of Quintessentially (South Africa), Charlie Heart, who was one of Andile’s good friends – whatever that meant among South Africa’s rich, super rich, and BEE nouveau riche – had ensured the presence of the who’s who of South African society. Jonas Gwangwa, a personal favourite, had also taken time out from his hectic international schedule to grace her party. He had charmingly blown the Happy Birthday tune on his trumpet just after dinner. The guests were bowled over.

  From the business world there had been the power couple known worldwide as one of a few dollar billionaires, the Manakas, or as menkind wanted to call them, the Taus, looking just as fabulous in person as they did on television and in the society pages of the newspapers. There were a fair share of politicians, possibly Oupa’s connections, and one or two politically connected Durban businessmen.