Andile Gaelesiwe is celebrated across SA as the adored host of Khumbul’ ekhaya on SABC 1. Yet few know that behind the glamour of her public image, there is a vulnerable girl from Meadowlands, Soweto.
"Remembering" is Andile’s fierce, and at times funny, memoir. It touches on serious issues of rape and patriarchy, but also reveals a woman with a will of steel, music in her soul, and a commitment to living to the full.
Andile Gaelesiwe hosts the popular TV shows Uthando Noxolo and Before I Do. Founder of the GBV response NGO, Open Disclosure, she has also been the Amnesty International anti-sexual violence ambassador. Gaelesiwe has released five albums.
BOOK EXTRACT
My biological father’s home was a small, open-plan studio apartment with a bed, a TV and a bathroom. It was in the Joburg CBD.
There I met the woman my father was married to at the time. I remember having more conversations with her than I did with him. He and I did talk, especially about school, when he asked me what I wanted to do after finishing matric.
My father was a quiet man. He did not drink or smoke. He was a church person and became a pastor at some point. Even now, he is an “elder” at the church.
People would say I took after him: with my height and similar stature. Also, I am light skinned, as he is.
It was one of those days when I was fighting with my mother and had run away. I now had a place to go and no one knew I continued to go there. Even my mother thought I would not go back there, especially after she hit the roof when she found out who I was getting my new clothes from after she had told me that my biological father was not kind to her. She had told me that he was an emotionally abusive man who had lots of kids and was also abusive to his partners.
That day, I decided not to go to school but to take a taxi to Hillbrow. When I got to my father’s apartment, he was alone. His wife had given birth and had gone home to her family for 10 days.
For me, this place had become a home. We were talking, having fun and laughing. At some point, I was lying down and he was tickling me. The setting was beautiful, and I was feeling safe. What my mother had told me about him had not sunk in as reality.
The situation became horrific very quickly.
When he was on top of me and pulling down my pants, I froze. At first I did not understand. He had been tickling me. We were laughing about something on TV. Ngangindlale iblanket – I had put a blanket on the floor, a makeshift bed where I usually slept and he would sleep on his bed.
He had called me up to sit on his bed. That is when he was tickling me. Then, he held down both my arms and took off my clothes. I tried to fight, thinking I just needed to free myself, and that we were still playing.
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Nothing could have prepared me for the realisation of what was to come next. That is when I froze.
That freezing was for a moment ... I don’t know for how long. I felt his weight on me. The rest of the time I was kicking and screaming. I was trying to free myself. My father had pinned me down. He was penetrating me.
Nothing could numb the pain of being raped by my biological father. It was the longest moment I had ever endured.
“Why didn’t you bleed?” That is the cruel thing he asked after he had raped me. “You have had sex before,” he accused.
This was confusing to me at the time. I did not understand what it meant. That is when I started swearing at him. Crying. At that point I had never had sex before.
Later, when I spoke to my therapist at school about sex, I could work out that he was implying that my hymen had been broken before. The hymen can and does break in many instances before a girl has sex for the first time. It could be from riding a bicycle or doing similar activities.
I am left with a question that I can’t yet answer. Could my hymen have been violated by that man who lived next door to my house in Meadowlands?
If I could have beaten up my father, made him feel some of the pain that was eating me inside, I would have. I ran and locked myself in the bathroom; I stayed there the whole night.
Some hours after he left his apartment the following morning, I came out of the bathroom and called my grandmother. I ran to her house in Meadowlands. I remember her asking me why I had not gone to school. I told her the whole story.
A day or two after the rape my father called my granny, wanting to know ukuthi ngikuphi – where I was. Of course he did not think that I had told my granny, but she berated him and told him where to get off.
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I begged my granny not to tell anybody. I begged her to keep that secret for me, not knowing that later in life I might need her to testify about the rape.
Many times I came close to telling my mother. My relationship with my mom was so strained that I did not share many things with her. She did not understand what was wrong with me.
When I ran away from home and ended up being raped by my father, in a way I blamed my mother. Yet, I could not even tell her that. I asked myself why we were fighting so much and what had led me to run away. Why were we not close, like a mother and daughter should be? The only person I could share this with immediately after it had happened was my grandmother.
First, it had been that man who lived next door to my home in Meadowlands. Now my biological father.
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After the rape I retreated into my shell. I became a depressed, scared young girl. My outlet had always been my music. I had a Walkman, and a song book where I wrote lyrics.
I also used to keep a diary. One day, my mom found it and we fought about it because she did not like me having a diary where I wrote things down about other people.
After being raped by my father, taking a bath and looking at myself in the mirror was the hardest thing for me. I did it robotically, refusing to pay attention to it. I hated my body.
At the time I was skinny. They gave me the name “Loveystraight” elokishini – in the township. I started thinking there was nothing to like about my body. At the same time men were paying attention to my body. It was a very confusing and upsetting time and space for me.
I remember abangani bomalume – my uncle’s friends, for instance, would make comments and say I was beautiful. Others would try and cosy up to me.
“I should just go to Hillbrow!” That is what I said to myself later, when thinking about the sexual cruelty of some men. I felt as if I should just sell my body. I thought all the men I knew just wanted to bed me and turn me into “iskigi” – piss pot. I was so angry and bitter that when I was about 16, I tried to commit suicide.