New Brighton teenager Sivosethu Ndubela – fondly known as Vovo –was orphaned at 13 and faced the challenges of poverty, crime and a rare heart condition. Vovo fought and triumphed against the odds with the help of British teacher Tony Pearce and his family, and they have collaborated on the inspiring memoir Miracle Girl: Life Stories from a Xhosa Girl of which the text below is an extract.
Chapter 1 - Naughty Girl
I am Vovo and I would like to tell you my story.
Let me introduce myself. My full name is Sivosethu Ndubela and I was a millennium baby, born at Livingstone Hospital, Port Elizabeth in South Africa, on 9 January 2000.
I am a Xhosa girl. My mother’s name is Nonkosazana Ndubela. In our language, Nonkosozana means princess. She was a princess to me; we called her Nkosi. My father, not so much.
He was called Sisa. I do not remember much about him because he was not a major part of my life. He did not live with us and people say that he was a thug. He was murdered by a gang in 2010. I was only ten years old at the time and I am told that he was withdrawing money from an ATM when he was attacked and shot. He suffered ten bullet wounds, so I think that this gang really wanted to be sure that he was dead.
AmaXhosa are my people, but we also have clans, which are important to us. Our traditional culture says that we take our clan from our father, and my father’s clan is Mthembu. Our ceremonies are performed according to the traditions of our clan.
Murder, sickness, poverty and crime are everyday events and a part of life in the townships of South Africa. I do not want to burden you with the long list of people we know who have been killed or died through sickness, but all of my friends and, I am certain everyone living in a township, has such stories to tell.
As I have told you, my father was shot. My grandfather, Kidwell Tsoko, was also robbed and stabbed to death in 2006.
My mother, Nkosi, raised my sister and I in our house in the Red Location of New Brighton, Port Elizabeth. New Brighton, in particular the Red Location, was at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid 20 years ago. We were lucky, we had a small house, part of what is called ‘formal housing’ in South Africa.
Many in our community live in “informal housing”, but I would not call those houses at all; they are shacks made from whatever people could find to put a roof over their children’s heads. The floors are usually bare dirt and there is often no water available; they share communal chemical toilets and standpipes for water.
The dirt floors can turn muddy during a rainstorm which swallows up their few belongings. Our little house has two bedrooms and a living room with a kitchen area at the back. We have hot and cold water, electricity and an outside toilet, but no bathroom.
We bath by pouring water into a large plastic or metal tub, which we call isitya. So I would love a home with a bathroom; what I would not give for a bathroom! A private bath would be a luxury.
My mother was kind and gentle, but she could be tough if she needed to be. She was bringing up me and my sister Vuvu on her own, as best as she could. Vuvu is three years older than me and we have a special relationship, most of the time. Vuvu’s full name is Vuyolwethu Ndubela.
She is called Vuvu, which is why I am called Vovo. I think Vuvu and Vovo are easier to say than Vuyolwethu and Sivosethu, but I always wanted to be called Sethu, for short.
You could say that I am biased, but I believe that Vuvu is beautiful and a very talented singer. But back when we were younger she could be very naughty and so I had a good teacher.
When Vuvu was about four years old, she would throw tantrums.
To get her own way, she would scream and threaten to smash the windows with any weapon she could get her hands on. If Mum tried to pick her up, she would hold onto the handle of a broom, close to a window, shaking it. We could not afford new glass for the windows, so Mama was very careful, and grabbed Vuvu just in time.
Many families beat their children harshly. Even in schools today, whether it’s legal or not, teachers sometimes beat their students for “respect”. My mother had her own way. She would pretend to forgive us.
Come bath time, we would be naked, standing in the tub, waiting to be bathed, when out would come the wet dishcloth! She used to flick it on our bums, and it would hurt! She was a great marksman with that dishcloth and she hardly ever missed. It left red marks on our buttocks, but this was better than what happened to some of our friends, who were often battered and bruised by their families.
In November 2002, my mother gave birth to a third little girl, but I don’t remember much about it as I was just three years of age; my little sister died in February 2003, aged just three months.
I was four years old when my mother found work as a nurse in a Johannesburg hospital. Johannesburg is over 1 000 km from Port Elizabeth, so as happens in many South African families, my sister and I were sent to live with our grandmother, my mother’s mother, so that Mama could leave for work.
Miracle Girl: Life Stories from a Xhosa Girl by Sivosethu Ndubela and Tony Pearce is published by Pan Macmillan