The many lives of an old guard

EXILE KITCHENS TO CHROME EMPIRES: STORY STITCHED WITH SERVICE, STRUGGLE, SELF-RELIANCE

- Eric Mthobeli Naki

It might surprise many to learn that Mathews Phosa businessman, lawyer and former ANC treasurer-general once flew high as a karate green belt, guarded goals on the soccer field, boxed with promise and cooked with pride.

At 73, he still dons his apron with the same conviction he brings to boardrooms and political debates, preparing curry, fish, and prawns with a vadoek slung over his shoulder - a gesture rooted in memory, tradition and self-reliance.

"I loved catching and kicking the ball. I enjoyed karate; I used to fly high with my kicks. But my father forced me to stop boxing, telling me, 'you have to stop that boxing because I need your brain in future'," he says.

He is grateful to his grandmother who taught him how to cook pap; and to his industrious father who taught him baking, cooking and even coffin-making.

"Don't rely on a woman to cook for you," Phosa said his granny told him.

Born in the old Mbombela township on the outskirts of Nelspruit (now called Mbombela, named after the former township), upon reaching schoolgoing age, Phosa lived with his grandparents to follow a Bapedi tradition for boys to go and look after their grandparents and run errands for them.

As his newly published autobiography Witness To Power: A Political Memoir states, his parents were caught in the quagmire of land dispossession when their farm in Botlokwa in the Eastern Transvaal was confiscated and turned into a communal trust soon after the DF Malan-led National Party came to power in 1948.

Phosa witnessed his parents' forced removal from their land.

Two of his siblings became teachers, following in their father's footsteps.