Hlumelo Biko - Black Consciousness: A Love Story

Living with loss

On an overcast morning at the beginning of the summer of 2019, I hurriedly left my home in Cape Town at 5 am, caught an Uber and headed to the airport. As I settled into my seat on the plane, I recognised several passengers who were joining me on the journey to East London. Matters that had seemed urgent and important a few days ago now faded into the background. My beloved Aunt Nobandile Biko had passed away ten days earlier, at the age of 70.

At the time of her death she lived in Cape Town, but, in keeping with family custom, she wanted to be buried next to her brother, Steve, in eQonce. I had attended the memorial service earlier that week, yet for reasons that took me some time to understand, it had still not sunk in that Aunt Bandi was no more. I felt completely at sea after losing my aunt, as she was my last direct connection to my father. She had been a constant source of family oral history and inside jokes and insights; she had created a sense of continuity with my fathers life that had suddenly come to an end.

A few weeks before her untimely death, Aunt Bandi had told me how she had never got over the pain of losing Bantu Biko at such an early age. On that occasion we had held, in the Biko tradition, what we jokingly call a meat meeting. This is where we share a good bottle of wine or two over some braaied meat and plenty of boisterous conversation. Aunt Bandi was particularly reflective that night, and had regaled me with stories about my parents that, at the age of 41, I was hearing for the first time.

She was always so proud of the fact that my parents were alike in that they never let themselves be defined by how much money they had in their pockets or what someone thought of them. Her favourite stories were about how my father had stood up to policemen or other figures of authority who had tried to bully him or people around him. He would be polite in telling them what line they couldnt cross while firmly assuring them of his ability to match the level of violence they were threatening to inflict. It was the calm delivery of these warnings that shook the confidence of would-be bullies.

In retelling these stories, Aunt Bandi communicated what she thought was a missing trait in many young black South Africans she had encountered since the end of apartheid: she couldnt get over how unwilling they were to stand up for themselves against clear abuses of power.

My ponderings on my last meeting with my aunt were interrupted as we approached East London. Because of low cloud cover, it took the pilot three attempts to put the plane on the tarmac. The first two were abandoned at the last second when, in both instances, the pilot realised he was flying over buildings instead of the runway. I was quite relieved when I could finally feel the ground beneath my feet again, and was soon in a taxi on my way to eQonce.

My driver was a chatty Afrikaner gentleman called Frikkie who had lived in Pretoria for most of his life but had in recent years moved to the Eastern Cape. He had married a Xhosa woman and wholly embraced the Eastern Cape version of African culture. Children had been born of the union, and Frikkie told me about the stares his multi-ethnic family would get from racists whenever they were in a shopping mall.

Frikkies kill them with kindness approach to these people initially struck me as a mature and conscious approach to his new life. However, the longer we spoke, the more I got the sense that Frikkie carried his marriage as a badge of honour for which he craved acknowledgement. He seemed slightly uncomfortable with the nonchalant way most people reacted. What he was experiencing is something that people who spend time in the Eastern Cape quickly learn: it takes a lot to draw praise from amaXhosa. They will certainly not hand out brownie points simply because you have fallen in love with one of their own.

Eastern Cape people are genuinely of the salt-of-the-earth variety. There is something special about this part of the world, where rural meets urban and township meets suburb without the harsh boundaries set up in the rest of the country. The rolling hills that are so typical of the regions topography are as gentle as the even-keeled approach to life of its inhabitants. This relaxed, easy-going culture masks a stubborn determination, displayed by the amaXhosa throughout the Eastern Capes long history of resistance to any assault on their way of life.

Aunt Bandi was born on 21 February 1949, just a year after the National Party came to power. In many ways, her life was emblematic of the professional and emotional cost of apartheid borne by black families across the country. She lost her father at a young age to an avoidable death caused by a disease that was not treated because he was black. Aunt Bandi would lose one of her brothers because of apartheid state-sponsored terrorism, and another because of alcohol abuse, which was an almost inevitable consequence of the lack of intellectual stimulation in the township he had to live in. She also lost a husband because of mental illness triggered by trauma suffered when he was tortured by the security police.

My aunt was systematically denied education opportunities from early in life, and only through sheer tenacity and willpower was she able to complete her graduate qualification, focusing on youth leadership development, in the United Kingdom. After receiving her masters degree in the early 2000s, she returned to South Africa. However, her unwillingness to yield to white superiority made it difficult for her to get or keep a job. When she died, she was working as an estate agent, severely underpaid and hopelessly underappreciated.

Aunt Bandi found comfort in her ever-growing faith in God. This allowed her to bring a serene and jovial demeanour to any interaction. The life I had come to eQonce to celebrate was characterised by a series of triumphs over adversity.

When I arrived at the church, the ceremony was already under way. The choir was singing at the high-octane levels African choristers reach so effortlessly. The priest gave a moving sermon that displayed both his grasp of scripture and his in-depth knowledge of Aunt Bandis life. My elder brother Nkosinathi was expertly playing the role of family patriarch, comforting those who needed it with a hug and coordinating the efforts of those who were composed enough to perform key tasks. Nkosinathi has always performed this role well; when we were growing up, it meant that my siblings Samora, Malusi, Bulie and I had the luxury of acting our age. The cost to Nkosinathi was that he did not have much of an opportunity just to be a child or a goofy teenager.

African funerals serve a social purpose that is not well understood in the Western world. A funeral is an occasion to both mourn together and rejuvenate one another with love. Through their presence at a funeral, family and friends get to display their solidarity anew. For this reason, Uncle Barney Pityanas face was one that I had expected to see at Aunt Bandis funeral but didnt. Even before I heard that he had had an emergency in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) on the same day as the funeral, I knew there had to be a logical explanation for his absence. But his younger brother, Uncle Sipho Pityana, was there, and the two of us spent a few moments catching up.