Keep family documents safe and secure
There is no doubt that most people are guilty of not doing this.
It was not until I started writing about the 25 mysterious graves of white families at the municipal waste reticulation centre in Vosloorus that I realised how important it was to keep family records and documents safe and secure.
Many of us are familiar with the traumatic stress of not finding these documents when needed urgently and tantrums are often thrown when they are misplaced.
Of course, depending on the situation or the circumstances at hand, such family frustrations can sometimes be highly explosive and often lead to a variety of serious unresolved domestic conflicts which often lead to family break-ups, in the best of families.
Genealogists and family tracing organisations admit they find this problem most prevalent among black families.
Charmaine O’Neale, an expert in genealogy who runs a family-tracing agency, has been working with families of different races for many years and says black families are less likely to keep any form of a written chronological record or form of a storage system of important family events.
O’Neale indicated the importance of record-keeping and believes although there is a great storytelling culture in African homes, most of what is discussed is often left to oral information which often gets lost as older members of the family die.
O’Neale described the contrast in keeping records between different races as a “cultural thing”, which often leads to problems when tracing the genealogy of some families.
Sadly, I also found out that despite the interest shown by a number of genealogy agencies and organisations around the country, many of them suddenly lost interest immediately when they heard the graves in question were in a township. This goes back to the old apartheid system where burial grounds and cemeteries were segregated and records of the dead were kept separately. In fact, most genealogy associations still do not cater to black families.
Because of this and with the advent of democracy after 1994, many of these genealogy agencies and institutions were left to disintegrate. The few that still operate still do not have any records of black families on the databases.
O’Neale insists that families must continue to keep written records of all important events in their families and not only births and deaths. To her, families should be run like a business and all important events in the family must be recorded and the records stored in a safe place.
A sad note to the legendary Dorothy Masuku
I may have been a young teenager when I first heard the music of 83-year-old Dorothy Masuku being played on a gramophone. She was among the country’s top popular female singers besides Miriam Makeba, Thandi Klaasen and a few others who were in the limelight at the time.
Perhaps Sis Dolly’s best song that will be forever cherished by many adults who were around those days was Nontsokolo Goli. The song was recorded several decades ago before the present era, but the cry of the singer’s lyrics about the social ills of the time was no different from what we see happening around us today.
The song decried and lamented the life of struggle and poverty in the townships of Egoli (Joburg) where people were expected to toil from dawn to dusk for survival. In the lyrics, Dolly urged young men and women not to be lured by Joburg’s bright city lights as they risk life and hardship in Egoli.
Sis Dorothy’s death was announced on January 23 and was said to have been linked to complications following a stroke during a concert in the Zambian capital, Lusaka. A family member said the singer was immediately flown back home and rushed to the hospital where she died on Saturday.
Born in Zimbabwe in 1936, Dorothy later migrated to South Africa to seek greener pastures in the then Union of South Africa, alongside then budding local female musicians. Her death is a loss to all who loved her memorable music as well as those who have had the chance of interacting with her in person.
She had followed many of her peers which include fellow Zimbabwean Oliver Mutukudzi, who died last month in Harare, and Hugh Masekela, to name just a few. Even President Cyril Ramaphosa saw it fit to pay his tribute to the great singer.
Lala Ngoxolo Sis Dorothy.
