Special Hearings — Women's Hearings — 1997-07-28

SHEILA MASOTE: I think I've always known deep down that my mother loved me, but I was always confused.  Outside she was very warm.  I mean outside when we were outside home, with everybody.  All the children would run to her.  She would take even my best dress to look at the neighbour's child who was needy and she would give.  And sometimes consulting, sometimes, most of the time not even consulting with me;  she takes my best. Maybe I do it now and again with my children.  But what I'm saying, she was very warm outside.  But I knew deep down she loves me, because like I said, I was the best dressed.  Bamakukushi and their Tandikukushis couldn't come close to me.  They tried to compete, you know like young mothers and nobody could touch my mother in as far as dressing up her little girl.
 But then at the same time, why I so hated church was, I was always in stiffening.  It's those days of stiffening and those nice body and oh, then I dare not;  she's a very neat woman.  You can see even at eighty she walks tall.  She's a strong pillar.  She's well dressed.  
 I dare not sit down then and play like other children.  I would feel it if there's something wrong.  I would feel something and then I look towards at where mother sit, I would find here gloating at me.  And I would slowly look at what's happening and I would see my nice dresses touching the soil or somebody sitting on it.  And I would have to be standing, or when other children are playing - that was the kind of obsession. 
 She had an obsession.  She wants to - it was as though my mother was cleansing something.  What's wrong with me?  Why did my husband leave me? I'm talking now as an adult, looking back, but I always knew that she loved me.  She wanted the best for me.
 I'm doing this for your beauty and all that.  She took me to ballet, but there was no warmth.  There was no closeness.  There was, there wasn't.  There was times when she broke down and she would do what I did to Glukano.  I loved Glukano and I love all my children.
 So I knew deep down that she loves me, but there was something I missed and I then resorted to going outwards.  She would chase me away from home, for having gone to a ballroom dance function, for three solid nights.  In that, I didn't use a bra, because my breasts was beautiful.  In that dress and a panty, she would say to me I don't care and maybe she care and I know now she did.  
 She would say I don't go care where you go out;  go, and I still say bravo Sheila.  I never went to boys.  I never went to the partners I danced with.  I went to a granny somewhere. I would pick up on a granny and I stayed and you dare go and talk to mom.  (... indistinct) you'd get it my friend.
 That was my mother at that time.  She wouldn't allow anybody to intervene, but I'm saying I knew she loved me, because at the end she would take me in, because maybe other people talked to her and maybe she feels no, it's enough.
 And when I look back and even on my father's deathbed, because I've grown up to that point;  asking myself what is it that I've done to my mother?  I asked my father;  daddy, in your presence, can you intervene, can I speak, can I ask my mom so that I ask for forgiveness.  
 Then my one statement that has made me really soften towards my mother as that she said, I also was abused as a child.  And that for the first time;  and this is about six years, seven years ago, for the first time I started really to crumble this wall.  
 Because for me it was real.  For me it was real war against my mother.  It was.  Even my grandchildren, my children, I didn't allow to them to go to my mother.  She knows.  And I'm sorry for that.  I didn't know - even she speaks to them even now, I still have that - she speaks to my brother's children who stay with her.
 I want to intervene and I know sometimes it is horrible,  because I see her, I think it's coming, it's coming soon and then I get surprised she's not hitting them like she used to hit me.
 I still have that, but it was broken when she told me, she suffered as a child.  And she suffered more going through this.  Those things were evoked by what the system has been doing to her.
 Then I began to understand my mother.  But I would say there was nobody, nobody to hear, nobody I could turn to, nobody she could turn to.  Maybe she did and she couldn't be ready to listen or to change.
 I hope she is now as I'm talking, because I'm ready.  I've been working at it to say, let go.  You know she's used to holding onto the family, that she doesn't know when to let go.

MS SEROKE: Ma'am Mathopeng, I know you made a statement.  I wonder if you wouldn't want to share and react to what Sheeia has said about your bitterness and your anguish and how she felt unloved in the process?