For years, I have had so many unanswered questions synonymous with a mystical mystery of an age-old legend about my father. My predicament was one that is common to many a young and old person. I’m one of the children who grew up not knowing their father.
It was only until December 2002 that I discovered my father after embarking on a vigorous search-and-re-search expedition for his where-abouts. Growing up, the only parent I knew in my life was my mother, Florah Mongwe, who did an excellent job at raising me as a man. However, things suddenly changed when she married into a family in Limpopo. That meant I was going to have a stepfather.
As a child, I thought he was my biological father.
But what surprised me was the inhumane treatment I received from the mother of my stepfather, or my step-grandmother. The grandmother would often sit with all her grandchildren around the fireplace every day to share old legends with us. We would eat our food next to her, and she would always show love to every child except me. She would abuse me verbally, telling me how ugly I was while using all the denigrating words one can find in the dictionary. To add salt to the wound, she would mock me in front of everyone who cared to listen that I didn’t chew food, I would just swallow.
From the level of hatred she had for me, one would think that I owed her billions of rands.
This treatment confused me as a child because I didn’t know what heinous sin I could have committed against her to deserve such treatment. What was apparent was that my head was demanded on the silver platter. I was even discriminated against financially. When my grandmother got her pension money, she would give her legitimate grandchildren R10 each, but she would not give me even one cent. Her diabolical behaviour had a negative impact on my life. This was really too much for a Grade R pupil. Only when my mother got divorced did I learn that I was not a child of that family. After the divorce, my mother went back to her parents’ house, who had already passed on by that time. We stayed with her brothers and their wives.
Although my mother left that former place of torture and abuse, one knew what I had been through. I recall at some point telling my uncles that I would never follow my mother if she got married again. The day a party of my mother’s lobola took place, I decided not to witness it because of the trauma I had experienced from her previous marriage. Her marriage didn’t last, and I never met that man who married my mother.
All these things led me to search for my real father. I met him for the first time in 2002, just briefly, for less than four hours and from there he vanished again. I released my book in April 2019, and while in the process of marketing my book on Facebook, I met my sister, who was buying my book. Through our interactions I realised that we are related. My sister phoned the elders, telling them about me.
The elders called to find out about me and realised that my father hadn’t told them about my existence.
Two weeks ago, we arranged with the elders to visit my father without him knowing that I was visiting. My father was overwhelmed by mixed emotions like shock and happiness at the same time. One could tell how embarrassed he was for not taking up the responsibility for the child he had brought into the world.
The child that he rejected has now started a radio station in Carletonville and wrote a book.
I told my father that I forgive him for what he did to me. I reminded him that there is nothing we can do to change the past. I took him to a Bible scripture which says that God is a father of the fatherless. I shared in length with him how my God became my loyal father in his absence. As his son I freed him from his state of guilt and shame. I encouraged him to use my story to help correct the family.
I requested that he gather all his abandoned kids, in case there were any, and have a group picture taken of all of us. I know it is not easy, but I want challenge you to respond with love to hurtful things that might have happened to you instead of bitterness and hatred.
Forgiveness does better than revenge can ever do. Hate and resentment can turn you into a person that you are not.
Let go!
