Both her parents were educated
people, which inspired her to go out and
learn. Her mother was a nurse, and her
father a teacher and librarian. He was
“a man who really taught us to value
reading” she says. The family of eight
lived in a humble abode in KwaMashu
outside of Durban, but there was always
an expectation of the Mbete children
to rise above their circumstances and
equip themselves academically for the
future. Mbete remembers living in a
four-roomed house with no electricity
and only a candle for reading. “You
could only hope for a quiet moment in
the bedroom to do your homework on
your bed,” she says.
Her own forming years shaped
her opinion and sympathies for the
challenges faced by many South African
learners today. She reminds teachers
to be conscious of the living conditions
of their learners and go beyond the call
of duty to shape the future generation.
“Every hour of the day they are
moulding the future South African adult,
the future prospective leader,” she
explains. “So they have to handle their
role very, very sensitively.”
In the short time she taught in
South Africa during the 1970s, she of
course also had to negotiate her role
as teacher very carefully. She recalls
that by the time she started teaching,
she had already been exposed to the
struggle rhetoric to such an extent
that she could not divorce herself from
questions arising about the conditions
black people, and especially her black
learners, were facing in South Africa.
“I would bring [young students] to
meetings after the normal school
programme and talk about how
education was not really very helpful to
the black child, how it was busy dishing
out to the black child that, in fact, we
are an inferior species as opposed
to others,” she says. “The books and
literature we were expected to teach
quickly made me disenchanted with
teaching Bantu education.”
Going into exile
Soon enough her actions caught the
attention of the security police. Some
of her peers were arrested, and her
brother sent her messages from John
Vorster Square prison to alert her to
the fact that she needed to leave the
country. She went into exile on “May
Day” 1976, she says, leaving behind a
four-month-old son and a 16-month-
old daughter. “My heart was heavy
Walking the red carpet for the opening of Parliament
with sadness not knowing when next I
50
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