FROM PAP AND TEARS TO MANSION AND CAR'S

EPISODE 1 My name is Nthabiseng and I am twenty eight years old. I live in a small RDP house in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, with my husband Sipho and our four year old daughter, Amahle. From the outside, people think we are a normal family, but inside our house there is no love, only fear and begging. I do not have a job. I only have Grade 12. I finished matric in 2016 in a small village in Eastern Cape, and after that I came to Cape Town hoping for a better life. Instead, I met Sipho. Sipho is thirty five years old and he is a taxi driver. He owns two Toyota Quantum taxis that drive every day from Khayelitsha to Bellville and from Bellville to Cape Town Station. People in Khayelitsha respect him because he has taxis, but in our house he is a different person. Every month Sipho gives me five hundred rand for everything. That five hundred rand must cover food, paraffin for the stove, electricity, airtime, and my daughter's creche in Langa. Five hundred rand is not enough for a week, but I must make it last for a month. If I need sanitary pads, I must beg him. If I need roll-on, I must beg. If Amahle needs shoes for creche, I must kneel and beg. I have been begging for five years. Yesterday was the worst day of my life and it is the day that changed everything. Sipho came home late, around seven PM, with three of his friends. They had parked their taxis at the big rank near Cape Town Station and they were already drunk. They were drinking Black Label quarts and laughing loudly. The whole street in Khayelitsha could hear them. I was inside cooking pap and cabbage with the last mealie meal we had. I was wearing my old pink dress that has a small hole at the back. I tried to stay quiet because when Sipho is drunk he looks for someone to insult. Then he shouted, "Nthabi! Nthabiseng! Come here now!" My heart started beating fast. I wiped my hands on my dress and went to the small sitting room where they were sitting. The room is so small that their knees were touching each other. The smell of beer was everywhere. Sipho looked at me up and down and he smiled in a cruel way. He put his hand in his pocket and took out two hundred rand. It was two one hundred rand notes that were folded. Then he did something I will never forget in my whole life. He threw the money on the floor. He threw it like I was a dog. He said, "Take it. Go buy meat at Shoprite in Khayelitsha Mall. You are a dependent woman. You are lazy. Without me you will sleep on the street near Table Mountain and eat from dustbins." His friends started laughing so loud. One of them, a man called Bra Joe who also drives taxi to Bellville, said, "Yho, Mrs Lazy is begging again. Sipho, why did you marry a woman who cannot work?" Another one said, "These Eastern Cape girls only know how to eat money." I felt my face burning with shame. I wanted the ground to open and swallow me. My daughter Amahle was standing by the door of the bedroom, watching everything with big eyes. She is only four but she understood that her mother was being insulted. That broke me more than anything. I bent down slowly and picked up the two hundred rand from the dirty floor. My hands were shaking so much that I almost tore the money. I did not say anything because if I talked back, Sipho would beat me. He has never beaten me with fists, but he beats me with words every day. Words can hurt more than fists. I took the money and went to the kitchen and I cried silently while stirring the pap. The pap was burning but I did not care. My friends from Eastern Cape who came to Cape Town are now working at Woolworths, at Clicks, at Canal Walk Mall, but me, I am here begging for two hundred rand. That night, after Sipho and his friends finished eating the meat that I bought with the same two hundred rand he threw on the floor, they left. Sipho came to our bedroom and fell on the bed with his clothes on and started snoring loudly. The whole house smelled of beer. I could not sleep. I sat on the floor next to our bed and I opened my phone. It is a small Samsung phone with a cracked screen. I opened my Capitec app. I had not checked it for months because I knew there was nothing. I typed my pin and waited. The balance showed R0.00. Zero rand, zero cent. After five years of marriage, after cooking every day, washing his clothes with my hands, raising his child, I had zero rand in my own name. If Sipho chased me away tomorrow morning, I would have to go back to Eastern Cape with nothing, or sleep at Cape Town Station with my daughter. I looked through our small window and I could see far away the lights of Table Mountain. Tourists go there every day to take pictures at Table Mountain Cableway, at Signal Hill, at Camps Bay beach. They think Cape Town is beautiful, and it is beautiful, but for me who lives in Khayelitsha, Cape Town is painful. I cried the whole night without making noise. I cried for my mother who trusted Sipho when he paid lobola. I cried for my daughter who saw her mother picking money from the floor. Then at exactly three AM in the morning, while Sipho was still snoring and the taxis outside were already hooting to go to Bellville, I made a decision. I wiped my tears with my dress and I said out loud in the dark, "No more. From today, no more begging. I will change my life even if I die trying. I will show Sipho and Mama Dineo and everyone in Khayelitsha that a dependent woman can become an independent woman." I did not sleep again. I sat until sunrise, planning my life. I had no money, no job, no family in Cape Town, but I had hands, I had a phone, and I had anger. And sometimes anger is enough to start a business. END OF EPISODE 1