My late father didn’t give me much direction in life. Sure, he taught me values and a way to be in the world, but when it came to a career, I was pretty much left to my own devices.
A successful physiotherapist, with a thriving practice in Joburg, my dad exemplified the benefits of hard work. For the first seven years of his career, he worked seven days a week. I could have taken over his practice. If I wanted to be a physiotherapist, that is.
His heart was equally hard-working, and prone to occasional failure. At age eight I witnessed his first heart attack. He survived, but wasn’t given long. He outlived another cardiac episode when I was 12 (I discovered him on his bed for that one) and at 18, when we travelled to UCT together for Fresher’s Week. That hot February night, he held onto his life, as I held his hand, en route to hospital again.
My father sold his physio practice, rather than dying and letting it fall to pieces. My mother worked for charities, occasionally. I had recently resigned as a primary school teacher, my sister had finished her Fine Arts degree – only my brother was employed – as a bartender, two nights a week.
It was then that my dad called the first, and most successful, of our family meetings. We sat outside together on a lovely Saturday afternoon. The rules were: no alcohol, and no criticism. (Yes, you’d be right to think that we were a gang of niggly boozehounds.)
We were to take turns, listening to each other. Each of us had as much time as we needed to describe where we were in life, where we wanted to go, and what help we needed in order to get there. It was getting dark when we finished.
Then it was my turn. I had little idea what to say. I had only become a teacher because a bursary had landed in my lap and I thought I may as well use my qualifications. After a few years, I knew that I liked teaching, but didn’t like schools very much. Along the way, I had been commissioned to write a textbook on HIV in the workplace.
I then came across a quote by a Ugandan priest, Reverend Leon Byamugisha, who was living with HIV. He said that AIDS was a great lens, or a prism, to examine relationships – it showed where they were strong or weak, and thus gave us the opportunity to strengthen those relationships, and to mend communities. I became fascinated that AIDS, and the way people reacted to it, became a way for me to understand things too.
My best mate, T., had started a community and industrial theatre company (that is, theatre in the workplace) and was doing theatre on voter education and train violence. I had worked for him occasionally – making props, a bit of stage design, sometimes writing something or finding actors. Now, at the family meeting, with the encouragement of the people around me, I put two and two together. I wanted to make theatre on HIV in the workplace. I would ask T. for help. And my family were behind me.
It felt so good having a clear direction, for once, a sense of purpose. This was something I had engineered, with my family’s help. I’d never really had a goal, perhaps because my father, who I loved so dearly, had such a tenuous hold on life, that I’d always thought – what’s the point? Your life can be taken at any moment. Because of this, he lived life to the full, and was a wonderful person to be around.
At that family meeting, my parents finally decided to move to Cape Town, after we egged them on. It was the best thing they ever did. My dad did locums, and my mother rejuvenated her dormant career as a legal secretary, working as a PA, which she loved, and later gaining a national position. My sister was encouraged to follow her calling as an artist. It’s what she does today. My brother decided to study journalism, did it for a while, and has since moved on to other things.
My first clients – I worked hard to get them – asked me if I could make theatre on other things, and that’s what I do today. I work for myself and I love it. My father eventually died, aged 67 – a beautiful death, he was on the tennis court – during a rehearsal. I’ll never forget that day, nor the decisive Saturday afternoon, years before, when my life’s direction changed.
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