Maybe this post post is already one day late but on a Tuesday, October
21st in 1958, my mother-to-be, then aged 27, gave birth to the
first-ever male child to my would-be father, Bright.
Would-be elder brother to me was given the name "Vusumuzi" (“he who resurrects the [Phiri]
Father’s House”). And maybe of course, I
who was born some three years after he (my mother had a miscarriage before I
was born hence my to-be-elder brother superseded me with three rather than two
years which was to seem as the norm for my parents’ child-birth patterns) came
to be known as Gcinumuzi Phiri which my Malawian father came to translate into
Goodman Phiri. A goodman is in the Zulu Language a “gcinumuzi”.
I am 52 this year, but my brothr never lived beyond 29. He succumbed to asome weed poisoning called
Amylase.
The assumption (false or true) is that his then lover of
seven previous years (a Xhosa-speaking Nonceba who was a housemaid to some
white family in Hendrina South Africa) poisoned him to death together with
herself.
I would seem from this version that Nonceba had been angered
by the fact that my elder brother had taken for his wife a younger woman of
Zulu stock (nee Macy Mntambo) of Hendrina while treating her as second
fiddle despite the fact that she had been around with him for much much earlier
even through thick and thin.
The proud Xhosawoman then, version goes, chose death (with
her almost hustband-to-be) rather than to be humiliated.
Before I go any much further with this story I need to say
that I query this version of my brother’s demise. My take is: anybody could have murdered the
couple.
I mean, they ingested the poison, both of them, in the house
of some other people (where Nonceba was working as housemaid).
I hope Nonceba was a good woman who never laid eyes on her
male employer. But suppose Nonceba and
her male employers was, to the chagrin of the employers’s wife, a sexual item?
Suppose the wife of Nonceba’s employer was looking for some
revenge and means of getting rid of a housemaid after her husband.
WHAT BETTER OPPORTUNITY EXISTS OF REMOVING NONCEBA BY MEANS
OF POISONING JUST AT THE MOMENT OF THE VISIT BY HER BOYFRIEND VUSUMUZI PHIRI (by
that time already the husband to former Miss Macy Mtambo)?
I asked my Tanzanian aunt about my version and she rejected
me with scorn particularly where I queried just how a suicidal woman, even if
she be of proud Xhosa stock, could enjoy a self-poisoned meal in order to get
rid of an oversexed boyfriend and ipso facto spite the competitor,
former Macy Mntambo.
“Us women are very very tough, My boy” my Tanzania aunt said
in Kiswahili.
“Tunaweza tu!” (which translates to “We do it with ease”).
I sit here today on my late brother’s would-be 55th
birthday and ask: what the heck has the Phiri extended family left me for a
heritage?
I mean: I do not know where Jackson Phiri’s grave is as all
of my younger relatives claim not only to be born-again Christians (an
influence form some auntie I wrote about in a previous post and an apparent
rape victim at the hands or more nether-organ of my my father) THEY RELIGIOUSLY
BELIEVE THAT ONCE DEAD IT IS DEMONIC TO WORRY WHERE YOU ARE BURIED.
Jackson Phiri is survived by his wife, Mrs Macy Phiri (ex-Mntambo)
a woman who was by my siblings stripped of all her material possessions for
refusing to go into automatic remarriage with the next male Phiri available (my
younger brother, Robert), she claims.
They even took her two babies away from her and thereafter
showed her the door out of the Phiri homestead.
Of course, on my arrival back from exile in 1994, I advised
my sister-in-law to make a legal claim over both her children and her property
essentially stolen from her by my clan the Phiris. The poor woman (under-education never to be discounted) failed to get my
drift as she drifted herself more and more away from my clan.
I get occasional messages from her. The last I saw her daughter was some 8 years
ago, a Phiri maiden angry and exasperated by my younger brother, Robert (according
to her claim) for putting her on some educational scheme she had no intention
of pursuing. (Of course I sided with Brother Robert on the principle that ‘any
education is better than none’ but my niece would hear nothing of it and went
into oblivion together with her mother).
My niece’s sibling is her elder brother. I saw him last week (aged around 30 now).
I hear he is married with 2 kids. He does not give me any hope as he looks down
and away whenever I talk to him. But maybe
I am wrong: he may well be the guy to keep the Phiri boat floating when I am
dead. I need to say though that my biggest
trouble with him is his character which can be summed up as follows: drinks, book-phobia,
and blissful ignorance of family traditions.
For that matter, I recall an angry comment by my father after a fight
with this particular grandchild of his and my father said:
“I know you are not my son’s child. I know I accept you as a Phiri just because
my son married your mother who had been impreganated by by this Xhosa-speaking
fellow; but please don’t push your luck too far with me or I will expose you!”
I asked my younger brother Robert about these paternal
comments and he dismissed them to Father’s confusion.
“You see, Brother.” said Robert. Papa is confusing the
ethnicity of the Xhosawoman who poisoned Jackson to death with whatever
frustration he has with this boy. But I
believe this boy is a Phiri through and through.
I must confess on this writing even as I approach its
conclusion: I lived my entire child life with my elder brother, Jackson.
Yes I knew, hated and loved him like no other bigger boy.
Yes he was a very intelligent boy and combined with me in
any school we attended together (Ithole Primary in Amsterdam, Embhuleni/Elukwatini
High School, and Thembeka Senior Secondary School in
Nelspruit-Mbombela-Kanyamazane) WE WOULD HAVE THAT SCHOOL RENDERED INTELLECTUAL
SUBJECTS OF THE PHIRI BROTHERS.
Yes, he had a near unimaginable depravity towards sex and I
watched it as we grew up and reported it in vain with my father who has of late
been blamed by an aunt of mine as ‘a rapist’. My elder brother then aged 11 saw
nothing wrong in having sex with (or raping) one hen whose protesting cackles still
ring in my ear as my brother and age-mate one Mr Justin Maseko got busy with
the bird on some day around 1969 at some place between Amsterdam and neighbouring
Tweepoort Farm where Brother and I attended our early primary school!
Yes I knew my late brother’s features very well, not so
dissimilar to mine (although I have been known by family to be ‘more handsome
than Jackson and probably the most handsome male in the entire extended family’)…
BUT HIS MALE CHILD BEARS NEITHER A TINGE OF LOOKS FROM THE
FATHER, NOR AN IOTA OF HIS INTELLECT! And he is plainly obtuse, methinks!
This bothers me a lot, and I wonder if my father had a point
when he, albeit in anger, disowned his own grandson.
I further wonder if this suggested illegitimacy of my nephew
is the reason why my sister-in-law backed off when I pledged my support for her
in any future law-suit against my younger brother Robert who is supposed to
have grabbed all property that had belonged to my late brother for himself,
stuff like a near-brand-new car, furtniture and money in the bank of the deceased.
Did my brother Robert know too much of his sister-in-law’s supposed infidelity?
Was he justified to claim for the Phiri household everything
that my brother had materially achieved at the expense of the widow who would ‘otherwise
go spend the Phiri inheritance with her Xhosa-speaking boyfriend and biological
father to Goodman’s nephew’?
I suspect I will go with these questions to my own
grave. But even as I move to that grave
I wish on this day 21 October 2013 to say HAPPY WOULD BE 55TH
BIRTHDAY, Mr VUSUMUZI JACKSON PHIRI! YOU
LEFT ME A VERY ONEROUS TASK, MY BROTHER, IN ALL EFFORTS I MIGHT MAKE IN
UNRAVELLING YOUR DEMISE AND THE AFTER-EFFECTS THAT I HAVE HAD TO INHERIT. Here is a piece of advice from your younger
brother who was in any case in political exile with the ANC and the PAC when
you died from poisoning: IN YOUR NEXT LIFE, PLEASE TRY TO BE MORE CIRCUMSPECT (IF NOT RESPONSIBLE)
WITH WOMEN, FOR THEY ARE THE MAKERS AND BREAKERS OF ALL HUMANITY.