As the country is deep in celebrating women's month, it will also be putting names and faces to the women we are specifically celebrating. Some of the women are age equivalents of our parents, grand or otherwise. I am writing this to venerate women that had a profound impact on my life, and celebrate those that still have an impact.
My Mother, Ausi Martha Mathebula
Born a Mashigo, of two Mashigo cousins in Bushbuckridge, and later settled in Alexandra until moved to SOWETO's Central Western Jabavu. Ausi Martha was blessed with five children of which I am the second son of his marriage with Gitsha Mathebula.
She was a daughter of an entrepreneur father, Matthews Mashigo. Her father owned a distribution enterprise that linked Thabazimbi Orange Farms, Hartebees Peach Farms, The Maize Triangle Corn Farms, and the Johannesburg Fresh Produce's commodities with retailers in Soweto. It was this entrepreneurial zeal that defined the Ausi Martha I knew as my mother.
She was a seamstress of note. She bought cloth off cuts at the then vibrant textile conurbation in Croesus, Johannesburg. These off cuts would be transformed into own design clothing and be canvased for sales on a house-to-house basis. Due to the cash reliant nature of her business, its growth was dependent on disposable incomes of her clients after they had disposed of their debts and higher order spend priorities.
The start stop nature of her business resulted in her taking a break to try formal employment by being a furniture shop sales lady. This was a basic salary and commission based post, at the then Railway Furnitures, a Ellerines Group subsidiary. In her first year, she broke the regional sales target at the shop she was employed, a performance that would redefine her career to the end.
At the ceremony to celebrate her performance, she was given an ashtray and glasses as a token of appreciation, as well as her deserved commission. She told the story that her 'aha' moment came on that day, when it dawned to her that her clothing business could grow if she gave clients credit and establishes a distribution network.
In conversation with her no risk, and South African Railways employed husband, my father, they agreed she should rather pursue her passion of creating her own business and destiny. She took the most of her celebrated commission payment and bought new sowing machines and 'start stock', now at Babelegi in Hammanskraal where most Johannesburg based textile factories had relocated to take advantage of the tax benefits associated with supporting the Bantustan system.
Our home was immediately turned into a production centre, when we left for school in the morning, there were ladies we met at the gate coming in to assemble the off-cuts, and later rolls of cloth into various garments she cut into own designs. We left mom at home to find her at home when we returned from school. On weekends, she would take the garments and go to sell them in places as far as Ermelo in Mpumalanga, 'Phiphirus' today Mogalakwena, 'Naspoti' today Mbombela, and Natalspruit.
The clothing business was her core business. Like any other business, it was cyclical and highly responsive to global manufacturing trends. In low sales cycles, Ausi Martha would try many other endeavours, we actually once sold steel wool rolls, giant pillows, bed linens and duvets she knitted, 'marapo' from local abattoirs, oranges she bought from Thabazimbi farms, and many other commodities she would in her wisdom find a reason to sell because of the sales minus costs revenue potential.
At every given opportunity for her to return to the textile business, she would do so. This time she devised a method of being everywhere her clients were without having to be physically there. She established a distribution network she supplied her clothes to. As a result of the self-created nodes through which she sold her merchandise, she expanded her production capacity to 8 straight stitch machines, 3 overlocking machines, and an electric bulk cutting machine. All these in the garage at 12715 Mamelodi East. Her production team would be eight to five, Monday to Friday.
The ladies that worked at our home would bring their kids with. Their children became our extended family. Some returned from school to do homeworks with us whilst waiting for their moms to knock off.
Ausi Martha would at all times imbue upon us the importance of education. This, according to me was a bitter-sweet demand she made on our lives. Like many prolific black business men and women she aspired for us a life on being employable and not of being employers. The entrepreneur DNA we had from her was channeled into academic performance and success which some of her children would later hang on the wall and pursue business. In the spaces I grew up in, I understood the relationship of effort and reward. I understood that you buy to sell in order to buy and eat. I understood that gambling is only profitable if it is about buying inventories to sell later. I understood that the greatest probability to rely upon is the one you create.
Her wisdom, and very reflective of the 'non-lešoboro' she was, would extend to many a life matters, I have had to interact with a myriad of books to say, yes! this she told me. He command of sepulana idioms still shape a lot of my philosophical approaches. Every other time she would experience a morally hazardous occurrence, she would simply say, 'ke bo motlhoka kgoši boneng, tloga', translated to mean just leave those they don't have a king. The most profound lesson I got from her command of sepulana, was when she said to me 'skwetše ga u dyi kamoka, wa khuša'. It was the use of the word khuša from 'morogo wa mokhuša' that still stands out as a philosophical basis to argue that Africans had terminology for banking.
I can pen a lot, and a lot can be penned by others. She was a colossus of an assignment to simply just call MOM.
This is the Mbokoto I am first celebrating in this Women Month. Ke Motau, kgarebe ya Matšorokane le Bašitisang. Such is the person whose breast I was fed from. Mmane.
My next instalment will be my Mom's Mom. A phenomenal woman of Grace. Grace Bašitisang Mashigo
Comments
Post a Comment