I recently reconnected with Sibusiso, a very good friend of mine. In the past decade, we have not seen each other but the magic of telecoms has always kept us close, and we are hoping that soon we will get together again and pick up the tempo where we left off.
I have known Sibusiso for 20 years, since I was 19, attending jazz concerts and getting high from intelligent conversations with mature bearded men. I think, to a certain extent, he set the tone for the type of partner I would be attracted to.
Somehow I was thankful that on the day our friendship kicked off he already had metal on his ring finger; else I would have spent all the best years of my youth pregnant with his babies. Being his friend prepared me for many other platonic relationships with great men who would shape my life and strengthen my rejection of patriarchy.
I was young back then. Of course I felt I was much more mature than my peers and felt emboldened by the respect I was afforded by the company I kept. I knew Sibusiso was older than me.
He always had an opinion on the politics of the day, and would pick my mind about things I was not even well read in. He was already paying off bonds, two cars and receiving those eerily uncomfortable phone calls to bring brown bread on his way home while we were at Reunion Park staring at each other, silently communicating how the piano was pulling at the strings of our hearts.
But I was not prepared for discovering just how much older my dear friend was.
A few days ago I was updating my LinkedIn account, adding a few more connections and running through all those notifications. Then I searched for Sibusiso, and for the first time, read through a timeline of his extensive experience and activity.
I had to go back to the photo displayed on the profile to confirm that I was indeed reading up on the right Sibusiso. I mean, Sibusiso my long-time buddy, my boy, the bra I used to hang out with.
Sibusiso was a student activist. Fine, no surprise there, he had always revelled in arguing politics. But he was an activist and held provincial office in the near antique Azanian Students Movement (Azasm) and wrote for the Frank Talk Editorial Collective. Basically, his CV was already earning struggle credentials while my mother was celebrating that I stopped pooping in my pants.
When I was two years old and could sprint off every time I was required to eat, Sibusiso was already yearning for actual freedom from apartheid and hoping to land a good job so he could feed his family. He has been an adult all my life!
I am actually wondering if I should not have been calling him Baba uSibusiso all along. Come to think of it, I was born in a year where he could legally be employed and father a child.
He is even older than my father's younger brother. He is indeed uBaba to me. Yet he and I spoke the same slang once upon a time, grooved to the same jams and had so much in common, you would think we were childhood friends. I guess when two souls connect, they meet as equals!
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