A simple woman, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother is gone.
Betty Seitshokelo, the matriarch of our maternal family, passed away peacefully on Wednesday after a long, painful battle with age and the attendant illnesses.
Her last few days were a source of pain in our hearts. We were traumatised because, with each day passing, we saw, right in front of our eyes, a person who we had grown to love deeply and respect deteriorate and be reduced to a shadow of her former self.
Our hearts ached, our eyes moistened as we watched a woman who had been a pillar all our lives being reduced to a state too awful to describe.
In her time, my grandmother, Betty Seitshokelo, was a super-woman – full of life, with loads of energy.
Despite being the only grandma to almost 10 of us, and a great-grandmother to even more, she spread her love around, making sure she had a hand in the upbringing of the kids.
She was a self-starter, a woman who believed in doing things for herself instead of getting someone else to do things for her.
In the rural hinterland of Dinokana, Zeerust, she would toil in the fields under the hot African sun to make sure her grandchildren did not go to bed with an empty stomach.
Her small backyard subsistence farm was always beautiful and colourful in summer, full of nutritious fruit and vegetables. Chickens ran freely around her yard, and she baked her own bread. Yes, grandma’s hand was everywhere.
Her house was home to everyone. She fed and clothed orphans who didn’t have anyone else to turn to. As a traditional healer, she helped many in need, without asking for anything in return.
In her time she was probably the fittest grandmother I knew. She walked everywhere, most times with something on her head. This could be anything from mealies or a bag of beans to a piece of meat that she had bought from a villager who had slaughtered a cow to raise some funds.
She loved music and football. In the late 1970s, in her red mudhouse in Dinokana, anyone would be in trouble if they touched her beloved Pilot radio. She would never miss a news bulletin.
The only time she ever raised her voice would be when we tampered with the dial while she was listening to Dolly Parton’s It’s Too Late.
“Mme”, as we lovingly called her, also had a special place in her heart for Lucas Mangope. She would have been oblivious to the recent controversy about whether a residence at the University of North West should be allowed to honour the former Bophuthatswana homeland leader.
She spent her life fighting apartheid, but when it came to Mangope, she did not mind being politically incorrect. To her, Mangope was a hero. And this was simply because he had built roads, hospitals and other public amenities.
“The ANC just talk, talk and more talk. They have done nothing,” was her stock answer.
She was crazy about Kaizer Chiefs. In her house, a 1970s team picture hangs proudly. Her last big star at Chiefs was Doctor Khumalo. She adored him like a grandson.
But things changed. My beloved gran changed.
At 88, she couldn’t walk on her own anymore. She couldn’t remember faces.
Every day she would sit on a chair, in a half-bent position, and disappear into her own little world.
When the youngest grandchild emerged and played near her, her motherly instincts would come alive. She would try to play with the child.
Lost in her own world, she would engage in conversations with residents of that world. A large number of these people have passed on. She would call them by their names and the nicknames she used to tease them lovingly.
Every time she did this, our hearts were torn into a million small pieces.
We bled as we watched helplessly how age had caught up with this once powerful and energetic woman.
She is now at peace. She is resting. But she remains our loving gran, whose legacy of love will remain with us forever.