Dreams do come true

Dreams do come true

I grew-up with the memories of my grandfather Wilby on fathers’ side having been a wealthy man. His wife, my grandmother was MamGuni (with reference to her clan name) but her registered name was Ann. My grandfather an African under apartheid, having lost his inheritance, two farms in the Groot Karoo between Graaf Reinet and Aberdeen in the western Eastern Cape under the notorious Group Areas Act; established himself as an entrepreneur selling wood having owned ten Bedford trucks and his own spiked wheeled Ford motor car before my birth in 1966.

Same grand parents lived in Green Point, known as the bantu location of the small rural town of Kilpplaat approximately 120 km from Graaf Reinet whereas I lived with my family in the coloured location of Tarka. The white town was opposite both locations behind the train station. Our house 108 Kaapweg, was diagonal in front of my grandmother’s (on mothers’ side) house. Both my grandparents’ had a general shop in their yards of which grandfather Wilby’s was the first and main shop.

My life and that of my siblings rotated between these houses of which again grandfather Wilby’s house was the house we spend most of our free time at. In the latter yard since I could remember were left the old scrap front part of one of my grandfathers’ Bedford trucks. By the time I could now make sense of my being, my grandfather also lost his wood selling business. He was now blind having a long white beard sitting with a Standard Bank cotton bag full of coins in front of the kitchen door which was in line with the big entrance gate used by vehicles coming to park in front of the shop. It was from this bag that he would give us coins to buy sweets.

20 years after those sweet childhood years, I would end-up an apartheid regime prisoner on Robben Island. By that time my grand parents’ Wilby and Ann as well as my father were deceased and my family was emerged in grinding poverty.

I had resolved by the time I could understand the injustice of apartheid that one of my dreams is to rebuild the good name my grandfather had established for his family, which name was eroded by apartheid expropriation. A good name for me then and still now means to be a family that can look well after itself.

Being involved in the struggle against apartheid and the establishment of a free and democratic society in South Africa was one of my first acts in realising a good family name. Second was to obtain an education that would enable me to earn a living through it and thirdly to strive to be the best I can be as a man, living an exemplary life.

Today, at the age of 48 years; I am married with offspring and preside over properties worth cash in millions of Rand in which my family and extended family reside. This I achieved only because of the South African Constitution, the fruit of the struggle against apartheid; my income as a lawyer as well as my strive to live an exemplary life guided by my God fearing upbringing and learning from others I come in contact with as I progress to my ultimate depart from Earth. Dreams do come true.