my father my monster

Title: My father, my monster

Publisher: Jacana Media

Author: McIntosh Polela

Year 2011

My Father My Monster is the story of pain, child abuse and murder. This is a true story: the memoirs of a South African television journalist, McIntosh Polela.

Polela is the only man I know who has changed his last name three times before he was 40 years old. At first he was Shezi, his mother’s last name. Towards the end of his high school years and as part of dealing with the trauma caused by his own father, he controversially decided to use Nzimande, his father’s last name. In later years, after his father refused to repent, he shed his dad’s last name and chose to name himself after a river…Polela.

The story begins when Polela was five years old. Polela and her sister Zinhle had simply packed up and bussed to Underberg, just a two-hour drive from South Africa’s east coast, the small town lies beneath a majestic mountain range, known as the Drakensberg for its thorny outcroppings resembling on the back of a dragon. They settled in a small town called Pevensey. No one told them the reason for the move or explained why Delisile Edista Shezi, her mother, was not with them.

The first sign that all was not well in the new home was the state of the property. The hut where they were made to pass was made of adobe and mud with a thatched roof. It smelled of wood smoke, moldy grass, dried cow dung, and dried food. The floor was dried manure, but unlike her previous nanny’s house, it was cracked, dusty, and literally littered with food scraps, discarded bones, and a fallen thatched roof. This was a far cry from her Durban home, which had proper modern furnishings, a loving mother, and immaculate lawns. The second surprise for her was that all her clean and ‘new’ clothes were distributed among the children of the farm. And, soon, Polela was told about the division of labor: herding cattle every day was just a new task. She had never encountered cattle before.

Polela’s first day at herding cattle was not really the welcome he had hoped for. The boys played a cruel joke on him. They told him about a special egg of some kind called iqanda lenjelwane. They said that a rare creature dug a small hole and then carefully laid an egg in it. However, to find an egg, the nest had to be quickly raided before the egg disappeared as if by magic. They told him to dig in the place where a special egg had been laid. To his surprise, he found fresh, stinking human feces, and the boy rolled in the grass laughing at his expense.

One day, while I was at home with the other children and the older ones were out, the real nightmare began. It all started innocently enough, as Polela recalls: he and his sister were told to play a special game: march like soldiers. It got nasty fast. They started slapping Zinhle every time his gait in his sight wasn’t good enough. The march went on and on, just like the whipping. It stopped being fun. Tears started for both of them. The taunting and spanking turned into something more sadistic. Zinhle was told to sit on a large wooden bench. Because his legs weren’t long enough and his feet were dangling in the air. They instructed her to keep moving his legs up and down so that the bottom of his stuff hit the bench with each move. She had to keep going until the skin of her things turned bright red, and still they wouldn’t let her stop. Polela was forced to watch her own little sister being abused. Torturers quickly upped the game; Zinhle was pushed towards a red-hot stove with wood burning on it. From physical abuse to psychological warfare. “When they weren’t tormenting us physically, they loved to tell us scary stories,” Polela tells us.

While all the drama was over, no one mentioned anything about his mother and father. However, as she grew older, she realized that her father actually killed his mother. So her mom wasn’t coming back after all. She began to plan her revenge; she learned to make homemade weapons. She sold some to the ANC, which had violent clashes with the IFP in the 1990s. She only kept one, however, to use to shoot her father. The young man was so consumed by hatred and anger that it affected many aspects of his life.

It wasn’t until a chance meeting with a nun named Sister Von Ohr. At that time, the young Polela had dropped out of school. He was a nomad. This encounter changed Polela’s life. The Sister negotiated for him to return to school, and from there so many angels of mercy nurtured him until he became a true man. Zinhle had previously received a lifeline from the other group of nuns who adopted her.

After years of counseling and conversations, Polela finally met her father. Her father refused to acknowledge her dastardly act. Polela forgave him anyway, and so many people who tormented him and his sister.

The book is a devastating account of a boy whose childhood was stolen by a monster, his own father. The story reads like a horror movie except that it has a happy ending, at least for Polela and her sister. It’s a breathtaking, fast-paced barrage of details, dreams, survival sentences narrated with such dry, lucid precision that it calls to mind JM Coetzee’s prose, Alan Paton’s Redemption Theme, and more. It puts into practice the human capacity for pain, for survival and forgiveness. It is an important manuscript in a country still searching for its place in the sun after years of apartheid. She says, it’s possible, if you can dream it, you can achieve it.

Polela is now a spokesperson for South Africa’s elite police unit, the Hawks. He has a Master’s from the London School of Economics. Zinhle completed her studies and is now happily married. Polela’s father is still a monster that torments her new family; he has reached a point of no return.