It was a midsummer morning in the early 1900s when a young Malawian man called Nnaene Nyando went on a journey in search for greener pastures in other parts of Africa. In his mind Africa belonged to those who lived in it so the boarders were not going to stand in the way of his adventurous discovery. He crossed the Zambezi into Zimbabwe then into Seretse Khama’s Botswana where he met a radiant Motswana woman called Maikano. The two fell in love and had children who will later inherit this rich cultural background of how the ‘so-called foreigner’ established himself among the Batswanas and was accepted for who he was.

Maikano  joined Nnaene on his journey  along the Ngotoane Dam into Lekubung, the land of the Bahurutshe. Nyando stepped out and took great risks into destiny.

We are told the Nyandos were the first to dig a well in Lekubung. This well is still known as the ‘Sediba so raNyanto-The Well of the Nyandos’ to this day. Later, they were blessed with a daughter and named her Pauline. She was given to marriage to a handsome Swati man from the Nkosi family. It is to this two that my mother Josephine Nkosi was born. Her brother Motala Nkosi would later join the South African military during World War II as an ambulance driver. Motala stepped out into the most dangerous battlegrounds to volunteer in the most deadly wars in human history. His was not service that was fixed on the price, rather it was inspired by a pressing need at the time. The whole world was at war and somebody had to step out into the front lines. We were told that the black soldiers who served during this war only came back with a bicycle and bag of mielie meal while white soldiers were given farms and houses.

Josephine later met a young Tsonga man called Michael Masangane. They married and settled in White City, Jabavu, in Soweto. Michael, a school teacher fell ill and due to the political unrest in the Johannesburg area, he insisted that Josephine relocates to Zeerust. Here, Josephine lived with her mother Pauline who would help her raise her young children Johannes and Dumazile. In the wake of 1970, she heard of a new location being built west of Zeerust town. She then registered for a house there and succeeded. Single-handedly, she stepped out to raise her two children and the five that would follow.

Things were not that easy for black people in apartheid South Africa as the Group Areas Act attempted to force people into their own tribal geographic area. This system was carried over into the so-called Bantustans or homelands. So my mother struggled with her children in the Bophuthatswana homeland where she was forced to acquire citizenship in order to live in Lehurutshe Townhip. Other Nguni families started changing their surnames to suit the act and the newly established Setswana settlement. The Nkosi (Meaning King in isiZulu & siSwati) surname was changed to Kgosi, which carries the same meaning in Setswana, to resonate with the Setswana dialect. Unfortunately the surname Masangane could not be translated as it carried no meaning. So things became difficult for us as children.

In the wake of 07 January 1975, I was born. My biological father is Simon Mthombeni, however I was raised to be a Masangane. I was named after my uncle Olefile Samuel Nkosi and was called “Malome” as is custom in most African families. They believed that you are disrespecting the original bearer of the name if you call the one named after him by his first name. And so I was raised to be the uncle of everyone in the Lehurutshe Township.

The Story of my family from Nyando to Nkosi, Masangane to Mthombeni, is a story about risk. It is a story of how human beings have the potential to brave the most challenging circumstances to become whatever they want to be.