Theresa Bossert

Only when you are aware of your privilege, acknowledge it and the consequences of the lack of said privilege on others, can you put yours to good use.
This is the story of Theresa Bossert.

Once upon a time I proposed an admin workshop for my partner organizations to run concurrently with HTS training that we were mandated to do for our HCBC cadres. It got hijacked and we ended up having to travel to 5 venues in 5 weeks and boy was this stressful!
I remember how we were told that there was no accommodation for Mnakile and I at Mariatrost (Mashishing) & Ave Maria (Tzaneen) but they had reserved a place for Theresa. I had done the bookings myself and made sure that deposits were paid but I couldn't be accommodated.
Theresa had her standard response "if you don't have a place for my colleagues to sleep, I am also not staying". She literally had to threaten them to give us rooms, which were there of course.
We stopped at Harry's pancakes on our way to Mashishing and the waiters wouldn't talk to us. She had to order on our behalf and they told her that she was very kind and good for taking her helpers out to lunch. She tried to explain that she was not our boss, to no avail.
The same happened when we stopped at Sunland Baobab, and she began to ask us how we are navigating this life of white people's assumptions of us and we advised her to keep her ears and eyes open at all times, especially at work.
It was like the curtain was suddenly pulled back and she could see clearly what we were subjected to, simply because we are black.
When we went back to the office, our lunch claims were rejected but hers paid in full, no questions asked. She took our rejected claims and resubmitted them under her name, lo and behold they were paid. For the rest of our country-wide 5 weeks training marathon, she assumed that responsibility of submitting claims for us. Now that's what I call using your white privilege to help black people.
If the privileged were to spend enough time with us look at life objectively without making excuses for the disparities, we can turn the tide on racism. She later confessed to us about all the things that white kids are taught about black people.

I am here for a purpose

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My mom’s at that age where she repeats stories over and over. She tells me stories of my childhood and what a sickly child I was.
She was once isolated in a packed bus bringing me back from hospital. They had discharged me but I looked like I was about to die, many assumed that I was dead already. They wouldn’t sit next to a woman carrying a dead baby, so she sat like a VIP(minus the curious onlookers’ stares and harsh, hurtful words).
Things got so desperate that my grandmother uFrancisca herself had to move in with us.
My mother and MaMkhulu uWillo even went to the sangoma to consult with the ancestors and I’m not sure if they paid for their consultation coz she says they came out running and didn’t stop until they reached home. The sangoma had told them that I would be dead by the time they reach the house.
Sometimes I wonder if I am really alive#matrix.
All these stories tell me that I am alive for a purpose and that I am not going anywhere until I have fulfilled it.
Part of the story is that because I spent so much time in hospital, I wouldn’t take the breast anymore and I refused the bottle, so I grew up using sippy cups. My mom say one day when she visited me in hospital she saw that one of the moms had been feeding me cheese curls, so that became a staple food for me since I wasn’t interested in her breast milk anymore.
Formula and cheese curls sounds like a cool combo.
Isn’t it ironic that the cheese curls contributed to the excessive weight gain when I had unlimited access to the stuff.
Listen, I could eat any junk food and drink any amount of fizzy cold drink I wanted when my dad opened his shop in 1989. Often I was left in charge whilst my parents attended to other things.
I digress.
Unfortunately a cousin who was the same age, (and suffered the same symptoms as me) didn’t make it. May her innocent soul rest in peace.
My mother pushed against popular beliefs and prevailing practices to seek medical care for her children, much to the annoyance of certain individuals who sarcastically commented on ‘how precious’ we were. “Igugu bo lezngane”- Shane Msomi
Our neighbors rallied around my mom and helped to care for us, & for that we are forever grateful

Healing of Memories Part 3

 I praise God for his grace and mercy. I am still standing. I can smile. Despite all of it, I can still smile.

 “My soul magnifies the Lord,
47     and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
    For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
    and holy is his name.
50 And his mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
52 he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
    and exalted those of humble estate;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
    and the rich he has sent away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
55 as he spoke to our fathers,
    to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

I had to start with this preface. This story still evokes bad memories.

I am finding that when I write these stories and publish them I can let the feelings associated with them go and move on. Or at least try to move on.

When Sbona and I started our new jobs on the 3rd August 2010, we were the butt of every joke in the office. You'd be walking to make tea downstairs and be bombarded with questions about the project and how we might be let go if it doesn't materialize. We laughed it off and focused on making a success of it.
Finance people wouldn't even attend our meetings with the donor, they would pop in for like a quick 5 minutes and then disappear. Our work wasn't important enough.
This changed when another donor was changing direction and there was gonna be less money coming in. A lot of people were suddenly interested in our work. Some wer even instructed to make sure that we fail, so that they could take over our project.
I'm summarizing here because I am trying to tell only my side of the story.
There was suddenly a lot of talk about us being both Zulus and from KZN. Regardless, we got rated A+ by the donor and got to help out other partners with reporting tools and training.
When time came for phase 2 negotiations with our donor, Njandini aka Fakazile was all over it.
She knew dangerously little about the project, the beneficiaries and the HIV and OVC situation in South Africa and would make us all cringe as she made ill-informed statements and demands to the donors who were too polite to call her to order, (unlike the Dept of Health people, a story for another day).
On our way back from one of these negotiations Mnakza and I were asked to go and badmouth a fellow team member to the then director.

In my view, asking us to help her kick a colleague out and us refusing to do it was what started this never-ending war against  my colleagues and I.
I will only mention what I was subjected to, the other people involved can tell their stories if they so wish.
I remember saying 'in my culture we live by the values of Ubuntu, I will never contribute to the demise of a colleague', to which she replied "that's just stupidity, so you don't want to secure your position! People are going to be let go, we are downsizing".
My hell started with a barrage of emails, (which I still have) where I was told that I was incompetent and that I couldn't count. Nevermind that I did differential calculus at varsity and actually passed. The then director accused me of being unprofessional by responding to the emails and defending myself. Very telling.
I disproved that narrative a thousand times over.
It didn't help that a group of people joined us from another organization and I was enemy #1 automatically. They critisized everything I did and said and personalized EVERYTHING.I touched on it when I wrote about Johan. I was the one at fault by default because I had brown skin & they had blue eyes.
New rules started being enforced, petty rules like I couldn't buy water or coffee unless I am buying breakfast & then breakfast was disallowed altogether. This only applied to me for years.
I had to submit my family members' contact details to be checked against my phone bill (they had done the same to Sappie). Meanwhile some people were making international calls to friends using company phones.
I am the only PM who has had to report directly to the Sec General of the organization! She had the audacity to tell me that I report with an uppity attitude, that's why the Director and FM don't understand the program, when she'd never seen/heard me give a report. So, I reported to her & in turn she would report to Voroso and Njandini🤷
And I was denied a raise when the entire organization got salary increases. They then decided that they would give me an unsolicited revolving loan instead. I wonder what creative accounting was being played here.
I already told the story of being called a racist.
Sometimes I would be set up to react, just so they can prove that I was problematic, an angry black woman🙄.
I resolved to retain a lawyer when things got too technical. After 8 years of working for the organization as a 'permanent' employee, I was told that in order to continue working there I would have to forfeit the medical aid, retirement annuity and severance pay. Oh also, I had to agree to a 3 month probationary period.

These people knew about my ongoing health issues and how much I needed my medical aid.
These are church people by the way, so I was really confused as to where God fitted into this whole unsavory sham of an operation. I could not bring myself to attend Mass and pray with people who would have danced on my grave, had I died from all their taunting and abuse. My faith is in God but I started to question if we were talking about the same being when we referred to God. My relationship with God was definitely shaken. Maybe it was shallow and not strong enough to begin with as some people have insinuated, implied and said it outright.
Let me cry about this a bit, maybe I will finish the story someday.
I am definitely not ready to be done with this.

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Healing of Memories Part 2

It's no secret that I didn't enjoy school, ok maybe I enjoyed the 8th grade at Gobume High School. A public school built on Goba's private land..

Taken in grade 11, organizing committee for the matric farewell of that year. 

 I absolutely hated this photo, I think I still do. None of them were my friends at the time this photo was taken. Joyful sort of became a friend at varsity but very briefly.

My eyes were closed because that was and still is my reaction to flashlight. Over the years I have mastered the art of keeping my eyes open when taking photos.👏

I was put into this committee against my will.

For some reason when I look at this photo I am reminded of Hleza. I hope she's well, wherever she is. She wasn't my friend but I feel like we should have supported her better.

I feel like women are taught and expected to betray each other. We had a female principal but you couldn't tell.

I remember how she would swing a wet mop our direction and chase us away from the bathrooms during breaks, because some boys wanted the segregation to end. In her mind, we were responsible for the boys wanting to end 'separation'. I remember how talking to your brother at school would be treated like high treason. That was just messed up to say the least.

They had put 12 of us girls in a class full of boys in my grade (from grade11 to 12) but expected is not to even know their names. (It wasn't an unrealistic expectation because as it turns out, there are classmates I didn't know until I saw pics of them on social media 20 years later😂)

This fascination with separating girls from boys in a co-ed school was more than just weird, it was creepy.

Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to be in the girls-only class. I enjoyed having girls only entrances and walkways. Did it stop boys from calling girls on the shared phone at the girls hostel? NOPE. In fact they hogged the phone so much, you were lucky if you were able to phone your parents once a term.

I eventually found a way to go home at least once during the school term in matric. Oh those permission slips and my mom's phonecalls to the principal's office were sweet! My duty was to clean the principal's office in Matric. I took full advantage of it. It got me into trouble though one time when an anonymous letter was found on the principal's desk, those boys were ready to get me expelled so they could talk to girls. #Hormones #adolescence

Healing of Memories Part 1

 We need to forgive ourselves and those who have hurt us in order to move on. I am not yet ready to forgive Njandini aka Fakazile, I am starting small. Baby steps people. 

Early 2000s at Scottburgh Beach. We were unemployed graduates, harvesting beans and amadumbe at home. My sister @ka_tiyoni would drive mommy to work and I would tag along, just for some fresh air nyana.
The person I was dating had a job(still has a job) and would spoil me with gifts and money to do hair (girlfriend allowance).
He had asked me to choose between a new phone and having my Phillips 3 CD changer sound system repaired for my 22nd birthday. I chose the sound system. I used to love music y'all!

So a few months after fixing the sound system he surprised me with a Nokia 3330 phone at Wimpy in Scottburgh. A date which Jules gate crashed 😂

I was confident enough in that relationship to draw a heart on the beach sand, write his name on it and have my sister snap this pic. Something I could never do again. The harder you love, the harder you will fall when it all comes crashing down. (I am focusing on the things he did right though, on this post.) FYI, To this day, I don't mess with beans. I have planted a 'football field' of amadumbe and getting ready to harvest but beans... Oh hell no!
The best thing I did for myself was to not document my feelings when I was struggling to find a job all those years ago.
I had started journaling in the 10th grade and my mother felt entitled to read my diaries and would occasionally confront me about the contents of my very personal and private journals.
I suppose this is one of the reasons I now publish my diary as a blog.
🤷 #memories #oldpics #deardiary #blogger #girlfriendallowance #cleaningoutmycloset #healing 

So happy I no longer have to tolerate abuse

This photo was taken by Sizakele in Ermelo, Mpumalanga. We had gone there for an introductory meeting to the provincial people and all they wanted was to 'read us for filth'. I remember saying repeatedly that I missed NRASD.

I still don't get why black people in power need to be so nasty, especially in Mpumalanga.

They didn't see NGOs as partners but punching bags. Attending meetings there used to be so stressful and I remember how our coordinators in the province avoided attending those monthly reporting meetings, which felt more like venting sessions for certain people. I was so tired of being dragged and lambasted for over-performance nogal. 🙄

(Even when they had a witch-hunt mission & found every reported patient to be appropriately documented, the bad-mouthing did not stop.) I was so fed up with some people. It seemed we couldn't catch a break, the office was very stressful, the field had its own challenges, and the donor... Oh Don't get me started on that rude, overbearing, arrogant 'donor'.

This made me love Johannesburg even more. The officials were kind and appreciative of the work done by partners. The focus was on the progress made and improving health outcomes, not egos and power-tripping. Anova as the lead partner was doing a stellar job, competent, professional, very helpful and supportive to implementing partners. They went as far as absorbing our field staff at the end of the project. I wish other big organizations would be like Anova.