NDUMISO NGCOBO | Serious guts needed to show family members the door

Our very own uBaba did the unthinkable this week. He banished his favourite daughter from his organisation. That, my amigas and amigos, is what they call cojones in downtown Tijuana. It explains why he’s the only human I know who has appropriated an entire common noun in our common mother tongue of 15-million people and turned it into his own proper noun. There is only one uBaba, and that makes him a superstar. Even Adam didn’t have the guts to banish Cain from the Garden of Eden. He hid behind the Almighty’s robes and let him do his dirty work for him.

About 30 years ago, I was approached by my youngest brother, Nkalipho, to assume the skhulu role in the neighbourhood’s under-15 football team. A skhulu in black township and village lingo is basically the manager, coach, owner, physiotherapist, psychologist, marketing director and publicist of a football team. I agreed to be their skhulu mostly because I didn’t have any hobbies at the time other than abusing my liver.

One Saturday, our team were trailing the Unit 2 Extension team 0-2. My own brother Nkalipho was clearly the weakest link and was missing sitter after sitter as the lone striker in my 4-5-1 formation. As the skhulu’s brother, he felt overly secure about keeping his position in the starting lineup, but I substituted him. He couldn’t believe it. And, no, that didn’t turn the game around for us — we were losing because the coach’s tactics left a lot to be desired. So of course they walloped us 5-0 in the end.

The drive back home was the most awkward six minutes of our sibling relationship. He didn’t talk to me for almost three weeks afterwards, and brotherly love was restored only because, being 14, he required adult accompaniment to watch Die Hard With a Vengeance.

Sanctioning one’s own flesh and blood is a difficult thing to do. Just look at Liz. Boy, did she stick by Chuck’s side. Even when the British tabloids revealed that his favourite conversations were held with delphiniums, she remained resolute that he had to be king.

From as far back as I can remember, I have always been a republican at heart — not the Maga kind, but one of those people who don’t believe anyone should inherit power and privilege based purely on heredity.

I suppose the Queen was a student of history and acutely aware that having a son passed over for the throne was potentially deadly business. Ask the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. He felt that his son Commodus was a degenerate deadbeat and preferred his favourite general, Maximus Decimus Meridius, over him. So Commodus reached out and touched his father’s head — and then smothered him to death in his own bosom.

Yeah, I know I’m talking about the fictional Marcus Aurelius from the movie Gladiator, not the historical Marcus Aurelius who succumbed to smallpox. I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is that the anti-vaxxers in 180AD must have been a significantly more powerful lobby than the current lot lurking on TikTok.

From as far back as I can remember, I have always been a republican at heart — not the Maga kind, but one of those people who don’t believe anyone should inherit power and privilege based purely on heredity. This set me on a collision course with my British royalist mother and Zulu monarchist father. And my grade 6 religious education teacher, Mr Gatsheni, gave me a thrashing for verbalising my opinion that the citizens of Judea only had themselves to blame for their hardships under King Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, because, as I saw it, their whole system of monarchical rule was silly.

I understand I’m in good company alongside Warren Buffett. His will apparently dictates that 99% of his billions will go towards his philanthropic endeavours. To rub salt into the wound, his children will be tasked with running the foundations responsible, in part, for disbursing his riches. It’s the kind of slap in the face Donald Trump jnr deserves to wipe that genetically smug look off his face.

Of course, I’m acutely aware my republican sensibilities are informed by my own material conditions. The task of winding up my father’s estate was one I performed with all the enthusiasm of a chick being loaded into a Rainbow Chicken farm truck. Had there been nine figures’ worth in that estate, I would have confronted the job with my DNA on my sleeve.

Lastly, to all the disgruntled former supporters of the gold-and-black football club who are not fans of one particular heir-apparent to that empire, please sit down. The chair is not about to take a leaf out of uBaba’s book.