My Dear Brother, Problem, Hamba Kahle!

This segment is dedicated to those instructive lessons one comes across travelling around, be it in-country or elsewhere. There is a treasure trove of education, wisdom and humour, and though some of the experiences are bitter when we experience them, many come back as enjoyable experiences when we look back at them years later.

The expression UKUHAMBA UKUBONA (literally “To Travel is To See”, in the Zulu language) I learned from someone I met when I was a very young man, in 1974. In Algiers, Algeria, where I had gone to work at the headquarters of the Pan African Youth Movement, and where I came into contact with many African liberation fighters.

The African National Congress (ANC) was represented in Algiers and had a spacious headquarters at no 5 Larbi ben M’hidi in downtown Algiers, a prestigious address denoting the importance and respect the Algerian state, under the FLN party, attached to the liberation struggle on the African continent. Several other liberation movements, including the PAIGC (of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde), SWAPO (Namibia) ZAPU
(Zimbabwe) Front Polisario (Western Sahara), also had their presence there and enjoyed the solidarity of the FLN and the Algerian government.

Now, within the ANC delegation at Algiers, I found Johnnie Makhatini, chief representative, though shortly he was transferred to Lusaka, where he played the role of chief diplomatic rep of the ANC and was often travelling between Lusaka, Addis Ababa for the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and New York (for the United Nations).

I got to learn a lot from “Johnnie” as a gracious old man whose commitment to the cause of his country’s liberation he embraced with something close to possession. He would forget it was time for lunch or supper when he got into the mood for discussing the latest reports from the frontline down south, or when it was about new contacts he wanted to explore, or when he wanted you to open links with someone interesting in the furtherance of the anti-apartheid struggle for the liberation of his dear South Africa.

For me, Johnnie presented a learning curve, and I was very eager to learn at his feet. He presented me with books and magazines. I got to learn about the history of South Africa and the ANC, the various periods and phases of the struggle, including such episodes as I knew very little about beforehand but was now at the feet of a man who knew the stories from the source.

In the same office at 5, Larbi ben M’hidi was a staff that helped Johnnie in his work, especially Thamsandla (Thami) Sindelo) (political duties) John Ngessi (administration) and a man who was introduced to me as “Problem.” However hard I tried to tease his name out, he remained adamant that that was his real name, till one day, when the President of the ANC, O. R. Tambo, was in town and we were having a dinner and a
relaxed conversation at 5, Larbi ben M’hidi, I asked OR the real name of the man, and OR answered that that was the only name he knew of the man. Occasionally, when I pressed “Problem,” and he was in his finest mood after a little irrigation of the throat, he would break into a Zulu song, and at the end, which he would declare his name as “Makale-Mpongo, Mpini- Zulu, the Man from Amaanzi-u-Mtoti in Kwazulu Natal! He was
my local version of Niko

It was “Problem” who taught me “Ukuhamba Ukubona,” and many other things, including insights into the Zulu language and culture. This was a man who had hardly had any schooling but was a philosopher in his own right. Plus, he was a fighter who never forgot what i-Kongress (the ANC) had done for him. “What would I have become without i-Kongress? I was a tsotsi in KwaZulu-Natal, playing the “three cards” and handling the
pen knife like an artist. What would have become of me?

He was also more than ample protection against the little Algerian “tsotsis” trying to be funny.” Like in any big town, chances are that when you are new and are perceived by the “local boys” as being too clever for your boots, especially with the local girls, you surely needed someone of Problem’s talents, being built like a small tank and with fists like the talons of a bird of prey. The local boys even found a local rendition for his name,
They called him “Mushkila”, and that was apt. To me, he evoked mental images of Nikos Kazantsakis’s extraordinary novel, “Zorba the Greek.”

It was thus that I got out of some tricky situations unscathed, and it was something he used to pass off as “nothing” compared to what he had gone through in Lusaka, in Kalingalinga, where the “boys there they don’t joke, when they have garnered you and you are alone, tomorrow your friend will find you after they have “panelbeated” you next door to death.”

“Problem” left Algiers, lived in Tanzania for a while before going back to South Africa,
after 1994. I hope he got back to Amanzi-Umtooti. Hamba kahle, u-Problem!