Johannesburg — An woman unknown to the vast majority of South Africans has won hearts and been dubbed the mother of the nation after appearing on a national radio show.
Epainette Mbeki happens to be the mother of the South African president Thabo Mbeki and wife of Govan Mbeki, a veteran comrade-in-arms of Nelson Mandela and fellow political prisoner, who spent almost as many years in jail during the liberation struggle.
The switchboard was jammed after the lady, known simply and affectionately as Ma Mofokeng, featured in an inspiring forty-five minute radio conversation on Women's Day.
But her connections aside, Ma Mofokeng is her own woman, tiny, with large spectacles, a ready smile and an infectious laugh that peppered her long and engaging interview with South African radio talk show host Tim Modise, and brought her out of obscurity and, briefly, into the spotlight.
While her son, Thabo, runs the nation and grapples with the tough task of taking post-apartheid South Africa forward, Mrs Mbeki, who is 84 and little more than four feet tall, is busy with her own work in an impoverished region of the country. But she shuns publicity and attention.
For more than sixty years, the former teacher and South African Communist Party member, has been a passionate community activist in Transkei, in the Eastern Cape, and continues to support and encourage a number of local projects and women's organisations, including Kanyisa, which sponsors Xhosa beadwork, traditional clothing and market gardening.
Epainette Mbeki started community service in 1937, when she qualified as a teacher and was working in Durban, in Natal, before moving to the Eastern Cape. "It was so painful to see the hardships that people were facing...so naturally I had to try and do whatever little bit I could to improve the people's condition".
Ma Mofokeng who calls herself "a real Mosotho from the house of Mofokeng, a proper Moshoeshoe Mosotho", married Govan Mbeki, a fellow teacher and a Xhosa. She became involved, she says, because she felt strongly about the injustice and the effects of apartheid she witnessed. Ma Mofokeng says both she and her husband went into active politics, but "there was a little difference, he said politics first, I say economics first".
She still manages a general store outside Idutywa, a colourless rural town and, although she may be the president's mum, Epainette Mbeki has decided to stay put, with those she has come to know best over more than half a century, rather than head for the capital Pretoria or Cape Town, to enjoy the trappings of power and influence. "I cannot see myself uprooting myself from the environment, and by environment I mean the people I have been with for so long. So, I thought if I left them, I would be leaving a vacuum behind".
Asked how she felt when Thabo Mbeki was sworn in as president in 1999, Mrs Mbeki said: "My son had been away from me for so long. He really doesn't belong to me. The honour was not our honour, it was the people's honour. That's how I took it." She was separated from her family -- her husband and children -- by prison and exile for many years. She says she kept the "home fires burning" and coped "because I really did not feel the strain at the time".
But, Epainette Mbeki acknowledges her life was not her own. "I was harassed left and right by the Special Branch. They would call at any time of the day, call at 12 o'clock midnight". If she refused to open the door, they, 'four whites and three Africans', would threaten to kick it open.
The harassment she accepted, but there was something infinitely more painful. "My husband had friends before he went into active politics...and naturally his friends were my friends. The moment he was condemned to prison, all fizzled out like rats running from a sinking ship, so I was all alone by myself. Nobody called. But I am one who accepts challenges. That was a challenge". She said she was left on her own, but the priority was to protect her husband's name at all costs. "I really cannot say how I managed, but I managed".
Reflecting that if an adult decides on a certain line of action, then she will not stand in the way, Ma Mofokeng adds: "I was open to my children being away from me for years, my husband being away from me for years. But I had in the back of my mind that in some period, we are going to get together". The long absences of her family did not affect her determination or her attitude, insists Mrs Mbeki, and there was no question of her trying to persuade her children not to go into exile or following them.
She keeps herself well informed and confesses to being a lifetime newspaper addict, a habit she says she got from her father, who was an ardent reader. "It's my life. I can't run away from it". And Epainette Mbeki keeps up with politics, though her contribution is low-key. So what is her advice to South Africans. "My attitude now, I refuse to take an active part. I tell them I'm with you, never mind. I'll take the back seat. Carry on. During my lifetime, I'll try and put you straight where I see you go wrong".
Asked by the presenter, Tim Modise, if there had been occasion for her to give advice to the president, her son, she laughed, impishly. "That goes without saying, Tim! And it's a pity we don't live together, because sometimes I feel that if I were near him, not to put him right, I would discuss this and that and the other thing. But he takes advice from me".
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Pushed to add a little more, she said it was not private advice to President Thabo Mbeki and shared another laugh with her host. "First, he should forget about himself, but he should respect, he should have self-respect, but forget about the ego. That's point number one. And be prepared to listen to the next man, no matter whether your ideas and his agree. But be prepared to listen to the next man", followed by another laugh.
Saying goodbye at the end of the conversation, Ma Mofokeng said, simply, she hoped something she had said 'may be useful to everybody'.
Appreciation for the radio interview, on the national broadcaster SABC, with Epainette Mbeki was immediate once the lines were opened to listeners. Callers to the Tim Modise Show (on SAfm 104-107 nationwide) praised the woman they're now calling a 'an unsung hero', whose life, one caller said, has been celebrated and identified.
"She is an example to all of us, especially us younger women. She's not interested in the trappings of power. She is really the salt of the earth. She was articulate, lucid, clear, well-read. The interview warmed my heart".
And from another caller, "I doff my hat to a person I don't know, but who sounds like a fine old lady. And from yet another listener, "She is very wise and humble".
