“Wildflower” by Skylark is playing on Lunga Singama’s program on HEART FM:
She’s faced the hardest times, you could imagine
And many times her eyes fought back the tears
It’s Mother’s Day. The lentil curry is cooking on the stove. The onions burnt a little, but like the famous Cape Malay chef Fatima Sydow advises, “gooi maa net ’n skootjie water” so it’s all good. It feels like just a moment ago, Mamma was the one cooking breedies in the kitchen on a Sunday, with music in the background when I was small. Maybe Lunga will play “My Heart” by The Stylistics today… argh, maybe not, just now I thanjk ’n skootjie water with all these tears.
Nothing makes you reflect on succession more than on Mother’s Day. It’s been a year now – 1 year and 3 months – since Mamma’s janaza (funeral). But she’s not the only one I’ve lost in the last year. Our South African community at large has lost a lot of people. Athol Fugard, a celebrated playwright whose work influenced my own playwriting career, died weeks after Mamma did. I got to write a tribute to him in Die Burger. We’ve lost many people in our neighbourhood and community tribes. In February 2026, a memorial was hosted at St. George’s Cathedral for the late, slain Imam Muhsin Hendricks, a faith leader who led marginalised communities with grace, love and dignity.
Then a few months later, my beloved Elizabeth Schutter – Aunty Liz from the Rosa Choir. She would’ve been 70 this weekend. And just as I was catching my breath, Diana Ferus passed away as well. I literally said out loud to her from my room when was in hospital, “Yinne Aunty Di, nog nie kanala, just stay here, just… not yet kanala”. Aunty Di lag sieker vi my vannie hemel af: “Los my nou af, Tasneem, is my tyd”. Well ma ja okay then fine, Aunty Di. Go well. I’m still out here tjanking for you, but its oraait.
Let her cry, for she’s a lady
Let her dream, for she’s a child
Then Mogammad Alexander also maningal’d. Award-winning author of the Dictionary of Loanwords of the Cape Muslim Vernacular, a book of his that was an expression of one of my own dreams: to bring “tramakassie” home to Cape Town after visiting our ancestral Indonesia. I’m not getting a chance to know that the last time I’m ever gonna see these people is the last time I’m ever gonna see them. I didn’t know Boeta M was sick. And I mos would’ve hugged Aunty Di harder had I known the last time I saw her perform in December 2025 would be the last.
“You see this judgmental bird on your shoulder?” Aunty Di said to us young writers at the UWC Dean of Arts boardroom in 2012. “Chase that bird off your shoulder, and write freely,” she added with hand gestures of a mommy who’s used to chasing nagging children away with a washlappie. I laughed leqqa at that one, she saw me laughing and laughed just so with from across that long boardroom table. At 21 years old, I was learning to push past the inner censor, you know, the one we all have as women of colour – it takes a special writer woman to be the one to pass you a permission slip of that kind.
Let her dream, for she’s a child
So I ma did what she said, I chased the bird away, and finished Miela’s Box, my first drama production that debuted collaboratively with the Jakes Gerwel Foundation later in 2020. An unravelling of family secrets – we mos all have them!
A week after Boeta M maningal’d, I got asked to participate in two tributes to him, one on Radio 786’s Barakat programme, a radio programme him and I both got featured on, and one in writing with LitNet, the first media platform to give birth to my Kaaps writing career. Some tributes on storytelling platforms are the real janaza’s of the heart. I got to relive some of the mashallah moments Boeta M and I had travelling to the Arabic Afrikaans workshop in Paarl in 2022. That first blog he started, I will never forget – Ek Soembain Gou Dot Kom – het my klaa gelag vi daai ene!
Let her dream, for she’s a child
Back to me and Aunty Di. We only conversed a few times in person. The rest of the time we exchanged hearty notes on Facebook. Aside from both being writers, we had one very specific thing in common – our attachment to ancestry. More specifically, ancestors with the name “Saartjie”. Of course, Diana was most famous for writing the poem that brought the remains of Saartjie Baartman back to South Africa. And me, just months after my first visit to Indonesia, I was discovering the legacy of Saartjie van de Kaap, the founder of the Al Awaal Mosque in Dorp Street, Bo-Kaap, as recorded in The Mosques of Bo-Kaap by Achmat Davids.
An article by Cape Town journalist Shafiq Morton put these two women under one spotlight, titled “The story of the two Sarahs – Saartjie Baartman and Saartjie van de Kaap”. The article says, “In every way, I would suggest that Saartjie Baartman and Saartjie van de Kaap are kindred sisters, spirits of our unrecognised history – one an icon, one a pioneer.” I can’t help but wonder if me and Aunty Di, two writers who held these two women steadily in our hearts, were joint like this.
I’ve started to examine, though, how deeply I carry ancestry, just like Diana did, and to hold myself accountable to how healthy and productive that is – most importantly, am I pointing it toward the future, or only getting stuck on the past? Is my job to be burdened or inspired by it? Do I become scared of my own success because I’m supposed to remain as shackled as the Muslim slaves from Indonesia were when they first came here (i.e., the artist’s struggle), or do I acknowledge their strife, thank them for their sacrifice, and redirect myself toward the big life I deserve?
And when her youthful world, was about to fall in
Each time her slender shoulders
Bore the weight of all her fears
It’s easy to agree with the former, neh? Ja! Until you start calling out stultifying cultural practices, elders with toxic traits who propel intergenerational trauma, and to call out community members who try to save face at the expense of succession. Survivors of apartheid don’t realise that this is also what apartheid’s segregation laws have done to them – it has made them protective of their own communities, but also so loyal to them that going beyond the limitations of these communities can feel like a betrayal. The Gender-Based Violence pandemic is rooted in this kind of dysfunctional behaviour and cultural silence. It’s not just a narrative of a perpetrator and a victim – we all participate collectively in the continuation of this pandemic.
That’s the dark side, neh, of being a millennial born in the new South Africa. Born and chosen to break toxic generational cycles, you might also say. No one likes this girl. She’s not the one washing dishes and running to the kettle to make tea when the male elders arrive unannounced. She’s not the subservient one. Or maybe she is, but you’ve chosen to validate her only for her subservient behaviour and not the deeper truth she’s speaking.
Each time her slender shoulders
Bore the weight of all her fears
There’s that poll that goes, “if you could have dinner with one person, dead or alive, who would it be?” I always answer that poll with names of the late greats, Taliep Petersen, Freddie Mercury, perhaps Sameda Van De Kaap, co-founder of the Palm Tree Mosque in Long Street. I would love to break my pwaasa with all of them! But lately, I’m like, nah. It’s cool. Let the buried ones rest in peace, and blue tick my dinner invitation. Let their success stories pave the way for your future, I tell myself, and be okay with leaving behind parts of their story if it doesn’t fit for where you’re headed.
We mos now not supposed to talk out of the manee room, the place where you wash the one who maningal’d before the janaza takes place. The toekammannie, the person who oversees the washing of the dead, would skell me leqqa out if she reads this! But I believe we must speak out of the house if it helps us find clarity and truth. We were done washing Mamma, and she was wrapped in white cloth. I looked down at her face, and suwalla kasam, she was smiling!
Be careful how you touch her, for she’ll awaken
And sleep’s the only freedom that she knows
How she looked right then, compared to how she looked when she was dying in hospital, was radically different. Right then I knew she was happy where she landed. When the one who maningal’s dies with such content, who are we to mourn in a way where we withhold our content for them? When I dream of her, she is light, and she even looks younger. Alhamdulilah. Mamma is free where she is now, away from burdens, responsibilities and anyone who blamed her or obligated her toward anything. Maybe she’s even reunited with her own late parents.
Let her cry, for she’s a lady
Let her dream, for she’s a child
Let the rain fall down upon her
She’s a free and gentle flower, growing wild
But ja, I’m not the only one tjanking for Aunty Di and Boeta M. I reminded another poet this week to focus on succession. This Aunty and Boeta left written work behind. Read their words and take them forward with your own written words, I said to her. We must build our own legacy as well, and celebrate ourselves when we achieve things. We must not be shackled by our grief the way our slave ancestors were shackled, especially if they maningal’d triumphantly. It’s not a love letter to them to remain shackled, but to keep doing what they did, and also do it better if we can – a better lentil curry included.
