Behind Every Successful Man Read online

  However, when he knocked on Nqobisa’s door, he got no response. Worried, he opened the door and walked into her room.

  She wasn’t there.

  Just as he was about to withdraw and put the whole silly idea off for another more appropriate time, he heard a yell coming from her bathroom. What now?

  He went and knocked on the door. “Nqo, are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes, Dad, I’ll be out just now,” she answered.

  When she emerged from the bathroom, she was embarrassed to find him standing by her bedroom door. “What has happened now, princess?” he asked her, trying to make her more comfortable. “Do you have pains? Do you want me to get you some painkillers?”

  “No, Daddy, I just . . .” Then she mumbled something he couldn’t hear.

  “Sorry, sweetie, Daddy didn’t hear you. You just what?” he asked.

  When Nqobisa told him it was all he could do not to laugh. Apparently his sometimes grown but oh-so-little girl had – figuring pads were like bandages – placed the sticky side of the pad on certain parts of her anatomy and now, when removing it, had experienced excruciating pain.

  He tried to get serious and tell her the correct way to use them.

  “Duh, Dad,” she said. “I’ve figured that out already.”

  The spunk was back. At least this was a Nqobisa he could talk to.

  “Good,” he replied and took a deep breath. “Now, let’s talk about what has just happened to you.”

  “What, Dad? My period? What’s there to talk about?”

  Hell, if he had to hear that word one more time today he might just die, but he soldiered on. “Well, sweetie,” he began slowly, “although you are still a young girl, the fact that you have had it means you have in some way become a woman. You should not . . .”

  “Dad. If you are about to tell me not to have sex with boys because I will get pregnant, or get some disease, I already know that,” she said, interrupting him. “We were told about all that in sex ed classes.”

  Phew! That had been much easier than he had expected.

  He stood up to leave. “So these nuns at your school taught you that if you have sex with a boy after, you-know, you get pregnant,” he asked, pausing at the door with a big smile on his face, “but they didn’t teach you how to use a pad?”

  He heard a pillow crashing against the door as he closed it.

  * * *

  He would call his mother-in-law. He needed to talk to her and get her to help him get Nobantu back home.

  “What’s going on there? Is your wife back home yet?” his mother-in-law asked as soon as she heard his voice.

  “Cha, Mama, she does come to get the children, but says . . .” He told her just where he and Nobantu were disagreeing.

  “Don’t worry, my baby, ndizakube ndipaya next weekend, neh? I will go and see this wife of yours and hopefully she will see reason. I don’t know why you have taken this long to ask for my intervention. I know she is staying with that immoral woman that I saw at the party. How you can allow it is beyond me. What type of husband are you, wena? Don’t you care what people will say?”

  “But, Mama,” he answered, a little offended, “it was her choice. I can’t force her to see things the way I want her to.”

  “Hhayi bo, and this is the boy who went to the bush and came out saying ‘ndiyindoda’? Okay, if you don’t know how to sort this out, or you are too proud, I will come ndizoilungisa myself. I know you are busy, so tell Ntsiki to come and pick me up at the airport on Friday. I will call her as soon as I land.”

  They said their goodbyes and she hung up.

  Knowing his mother-in-law, the chances were that by this time next week Nobantu would be back home with her family. Not for the first time, he wondered why his wife didn’t realise, as her mother obviously did, just what a great husband she had in Andile Makana.

  He decided to call Anant and see whether he could go over for a drink and a chat. He needed some advice from someone who wouldn’t pussyfoot around him. He just wasn’t sure he could do this parenting thing all by himself. Within the last twenty-four hours he had dealt with a son on drugs and a daughter having her first . . . yeah, that word.

  Chapter 14

  14

  Nobantu drove to her offices in the Deep with Mxolisi. She was unsure which of them was the more nervous. Although it was her plan, she had delegated different parts of it to her employees.

  Mxolisi, with his connections among musicians and other artists, had done a few samples of jeans and T-shirts for the young celebrities. He also knew someone who knew someone who could arrange it so that the young presenters of Yo-TV would be seen by young South Africa wearing Soweto Uprising.

  Today, however, for the first time, she would present the marketing plan to Ntsiki and Dave – two individuals who, unbeknown to them, formed an integral part of her international marketing strategy. From now on, Soweto Uprising’s success would be up to Ntsiki and Dave.

  They were the first to arrive.

  Thanks to Dave her working premises were none too shabby, in spite of the close vicinity to the dumpsite. With permission from her landlord she had tiled the place with the most expensive Italian tiles she could find. The reception room was brightened by a Monte Carlo couch in orange and cream, and to give it the casual air that he felt a fashion house needed, Dave had thrown in a few leather stools in brown and cream.

  The masterpiece of her premises, however, was the showroom. Here rows and rows of metal panes were hung from the ceiling with just enough space to walk between them. The outfits were displayed against the metal panes according to age – babies’ clothes as you entered the showroom, those for older children at the back.

  As she entered now, her face shone with pride as she looked at the rows of clothes that she and her employees had spent yesterday hanging – each outfit was covered by a satin sash with Soweto Uprising printed across it in bold black cursive with a cute little black fist at both ends. Presentation was everything and she knew any mother who could afford it would proudly pay top rand to get her child in an outfit presented thus.

  Dave and Ntsiki arrived within minutes of each other. She went to welcome them, but decided to wait until the girls arrived before she showed them the showroom. She wanted all her employees to share in what she hoped would be the delight of the two parties whose opinion and assistance she sought.

  “Nobantu, darling,” Dave started, before she had time to even greet them, “I know it’s been ages since your splendid party, and that I bitch about it every time I see you, but I have to tell you again that I am still upset that you made sure that I wasn’t in town when you had it. I hope you won’t do the same when you finally launch this label of yours.”

  Ntsiki looked at him with her eyebrows raised. “Dave, please, enough already. You know that Nobantu wasn’t the one who organised it. Besides, even if you had been around, I doubt Andile would have invited you. There were too many VIPs for him to risk inviting a queen like you.”

  Dave clicked his fingers in a queen-like fashion. Nobantu laughed. He was far too masculine to make it convincing.

  “Excuse me, Nobantu, while I get this bitch off my back,” Dave said before turning to Ntsiki. “You know, Ntsiki, sometimes you remind me of my father. We were having a conversation the other day and when I disagreed with him, he yelled at me: ‘Son. You are everything that’s wrong with democracy. A gay white liberal. You make me miss apartheid.’ ”

  Nobantu and Ntsiki broke out laughing.

  “Thanks, Dave,” Ntsiki said, “I always wanted to be compared to an old white man. But don’t stress, at least your father talks to you. The only time I hear from my mother is when there is a crisis at home and she needs money, otherwise I might as well be dead to her. She always reminds me that she will continue to pray that I see the error of my ways and find a good husband. And don’t even get me started on this madam’s mother,” she said, pointing at Nobantu.

  “Tsk tsk. Poor you.” Nobantu s
aid, jumping in before the conversation got out of hand. “However, lady and gentleman, fascinating as your issues with your family members are, I have heard it all before. Today, you are here for my label and not for a gay rights meeting.”

  Dave smirked. “No? Isn’t part of your job description as a fag hag to listen to us moan and groan about how society doesn’t understand us?”

  They laughed again, bringing Mxolisi, who had been in the kitchen making some sandwiches, to the room.

  For a straight man, he was oddly comfortable with Dave and they greeted each other with one of those male hugs that lie somewhere between a hug and a handshake. Maybe it was the artist in him. Nobantu remembered that Andile and Oupa liked to say that all male artists had effeminate tendencies.

  “Hey, Ntsiki, how are you doing?” he asked, hugging her.

  “Fine, babes,” she replied. “How’s the art coming along?”

  “What art? I’ve been busy spray-painting jeans and T-shirts for the last two weeks,” he said gruffly, pretending to be fed up, and probably feeling he was being taken away from doing “real art” so he could have a pay cheque.

  It was at that moment that the girls arrived – without Lerato.

  “Where’s Lerato?” Nobantu enquired. They usually all came to work together.

  “She wanted to come,” Tshepiso answered, “but we thought it would be better if she went to hospital instead. We left her at Bara.”

  “Hospital! What’s wrong with her?” Nobantu enquired, concerned.

  And Tshepiso opened her mouth and told Lerato’s story.

  Lerato, the oldest orphan in a family of children (two of whom were still in school), had made the mistake of many a South African woman: she had an underachiever for a boyfriend. When they met, he had been working, but he had quickly moved in with Lerato and her siblings. Soon after moving in with the family he had quit his job because he felt that the white owners of the company he worked for were abusing his skills as a boilermaker by paying him less than he deserved. However, he had never looked for another job because he knew that between Lerato and her younger sister, who worked at a call centre, there would always be enough money to put food on the table. When Lerato got pregnant, the situation didn’t improve. In spite of the fact that she was the one putting bread on the table, the moegoe kept telling Lerato that she had become pregnant only to trap him – and yet he continued to stay. She gave birth and, in spite of her being a new mother, he still refused to get a job.

  “She even had to take in washing the day after she left hospital,” Thando chimed in, “because he refused to work and she had no money for amanappy.”

  “Not long after,” Tshepiso said, continuing with the narrative, “Lerato got a job as a part-time baggage packer at Bara mall and that’s when he started demanding money from her to drink with his friends whenever she got paid. She refused one time, because she had to buy uniforms for her younger brother and sister, and he bliksemed her so badly that she got three broken ribs. By the time she came out of hospital, she had lost her job. She called her brothers . . .”

  “What brothers?” asked Dave. “I thought she only had one brother, the one who was staying with her.”

  “Her mother’s sister’s sons,” Thando explained to the umlungu. “Her other brothers.”

  Dave nodded in understanding.

  “Since she started working here,” Tshepiso continued, “he has been trying to get back with her. Then, last night, he came by drunk, saying he wanted to see his baby. She has a black eye and marks all over her body. She got burnt on her breast when he pushed her onto the stove.”

  “Has she pressed charges?” Ntsiki, the social activist, enquired angrily. “He deserves to spend his life in jail.”

  Both Tshepiso and Thando shook their heads.

  “No? No? Why not? Why didn’t she press charges?” asked an obviously angry Mxolisi. “What type of animal beats up a woman?”

  “Because the judges never give them long enough sentences, if they do go to jail, and they always seem to come out worse than when they go in,” Tshepiso answered philosophically. “She was scared that if she pressed charges, and he went to prison, he would come back and kill her. Then her child would be without a mother, and her brother and sisters would have no one to take care of them.” She paused. “She is the oldest child.”

  By the end of the narration the anger in the room was palpable.

  It was Nobantu who decided to get practical first. She turned to the girls. “Alright,” she said. “When we leave here, I’ll come with the two of you to her house and we’ll see how she’s doing and what she needs. Dave, Ntsiki, can one of you drop Mxolisi home?”

  “No, Nobantu,” Mxolisi said, before either of them could answer. “I’ll come with you. I want to see how she is doing.”

  Nobantu shook her head. “Better not, Mxo. What if this madman saw you going into the house with us and decided that you were a prospective boyfriend? He’d come back later and attack her again.”

  * * *

  Nobantu started the presentation sombrely. Having made the decision that corporate social responsibility would be the best way to market her label internationally, she had decided on advertising that a percentage of the sales would go to poverty alleviation programmes run by community-based organisations on the African continent.

  “Ntsiki, will you draw up a list of CBOs in the smaller towns of AU member nations? I am talking of the Kitwes, the Kimberlys, the Mmabathos, the Masvingos. We will adopt one organisation from each of the different regions – North, Southern, Central, East and West Africa – and donate three per cent to it annually, fifteen per cent of our profits in total. Per capita income of a country will determine which countries receive help first, so, for instance, we would help out a Somali CBO before a Kenyan one and a Mozambican one before a South African one. Now, I don’t know whether we will be profitable and, if we are, how long we will be profitable for, but if Dave does his job well we should be able to pull it off.”

  Nobantu’s enthusiasm was infectious and, for a while, her audience forgot about Lerato’s predicament.

  “And what will be my job? Tell me, tell me,” Dave demanded, clapping his hands excitedly.

  “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, my darling Dave,” Nobantu answered him in a Mission Impossible-like fashion, “is to utilise your Rolodex. You will be the person in charge of international distribution and therefore the most important part of this business because, as you know, when something goes international, South Africans of all hues and shades happily follow suit. Our models will be celebrity kids, the kids of the Will Smiths of this world, the kids of the Gwyneth Paltrows, the Brad Pitts, the Djimon Hounsous, Elle MacPhersons, Madonnas. I want you to target any celebrity who ever made a noise about poverty alleviation, wore a white band or was seen making some self-righteous speech about ‘the poor in Africa’ during the Live 8 concerts.”

  Dave nodded in agreement.

  “So, how much are we getting paid for this tireless work?” Ntsiki teased.

  “Your rewards, my love, will not only be in heaven. You get to help your best friend realise a long-cherished dream and you will also be able to see the smile on a mother in some backwater village when she finds out her little girl will be able to go to school thanks to your hard work. More fulfilling, yes?” Nobantu asked with raised eyebrows.

  Ntsiki laughed. “You would say something like that. But, madam CEO, as soon as the profits start rolling in, I want a holiday for two to any destination of my choice, deal?”

  Nobantu got serious. “You know that I cannot afford to pay at this moment, but we can work on some kind of profit-sharing scheme. Meanwhile, Thando, Tshepiso and I have to go and see how Lerato is doing.”

  Ntsiki raised her hand like a schoolgirl. “Wait, it’s all well and good to think of the international angle, but what are you doing locally to market Soweto Uprising?”

  “That’s quite simple. Mxolisi is dealing with some young
celebrities and in case you haven’t been reading your tabloids, Plastic Penny has already become a major Soweto Uprising spokeswoman.”

  Dave looked at her. “Penny? Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Yes. Now wait. I know what you think about her, but the print media loves her. I have already started getting calls about when I am planning to launch the label. And then, of course, for the youth market I also have my private school darlings to let the word out on MXit.”

  “Tjhoo! Talk about trying to raise a generation of conscientious youth,” Ntsiki said.

  “Forget conscientious,” Mxo responded cynically. “At this moment, with a lot of money having gone out and none having come in, all we are interested in is raising a generation of youth whose parents have deep pockets.”

  Nobantu looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Ah, looks like we’ll make a businessman of the artist yet, girls,” she said as they all walked to the parking lot.

  Chapter 15

  15

  As he sat in his study thinking over the past twenty-four hours, Andile wondered whether all those people who craved children had any idea that they were not often worth the trouble – particularly when they got to the awkward teenage years. Anant and Nazli didn’t know how lucky they were to be alone. He called Anant.

  “Hey, man, are you at home?” Andile asked casually when Anant answered.

  “Yes, what’s up?” Anant responded.

  “I hear there’s a bottle of single malt with my name on it at your house,” Andile said, avoiding any mention of his troubles. “May I drop by for a drop?”

  “Could you?” He could hear the smile in Anant’s voice. “I was about to phone you. The doctor’s on call, she just left the house and I am dying of boredom. Please, come on up.”

  Andile went to find Xolani – who was busy with a Playstation game – to tell him that he was leaving briefly for Anant’s house. The last thing he said to his son was, “And you’d better not do any of that zol stuff while I’m gone because I will put you in rehab so fast you won’t know what hit you.”