Not many are as strong as Reverend Motlalepula Chabaku KUWA AJABU FOUNDATION

Reverend Motlalepula Chabaku’s name means “One who comes with the rain”. Like water, she finds a way, no matter the obstructions; and in her 79 years of life, there have been many.

Born during a Highveld storm in November 1933, Rev. Chabaku overcame poverty, discrimination, oppression and exile to become an influential and outspoken agent for peace, and a champion of human rights. In her own words, “Any human being who upholds the equal rights of all human beings is a feminist, and so am I – the word is misinterpreted.”

She has no desire to achieve equality with men. Their standards are below what she stands for. “But”, she insists, “I’m not against men; I work with them. They have a unique contribution to make.”

The gravel-voiced matriarch, who speaks seven languages, sympathises with Caster Semenya and the gender prejudices she has had to face.

A bout of untreated tonsillitis left the young Rev. Chabaku with a manly voice, which disqualified her from the St. Cyprian’s school choir, one of many disappointments in her life.

However: “Every problem that came to me was not a problem, but a challenge,” she says, summing up her dynamic outlook on life.

The second-oldest of seven children, Rev. Chabaku’s family lived in a two-roomed house in Newclare, near Sophiatown, in Johannesburg. Her father was a clerk and messenger, who received no pension at the end of 25 years of working life. Her mother took in white people’s laundry, barely making back her expenses.

Rev. Chabaku remembers having three sets of clothes a year and no shoes. In the frozen grip of Joburg winters, she recalls defrosting her feet in water culverts on her way to school.

Her parents could not afford to educate her beyond Grade 6. The indomitable Motlalepula recycled pen nibs and turned old magazines into exercise books, which she sold to her classmates to fund her schooling.

Desmond Tutu was one of her classmates.

She proved to be a student of many talents, and was the Transvaal high jump champion for seven years. Her academic efforts resulted in a scholarship from the Episcopal Churches of South Africa, and she trained as a teacher.

Felicia Mabuza-Suttle was one of her elementary school pupils. She describes Rev. Chabaku as “a memorable person in my life”.

Rev. Chabaku was also a professional dancing instructor, and introduced many young people to the joys of chess at the Borolo Youth Club in Central Western Jabavu. She also worked as a social worker and community worker at the Christian Institute of Southern Africa.

Driven by an innate sense of justice and morality, she joined the ANC on 2 February 1949 and co-founded the Black Women’s Federation of South Africa in 1954, along with Ray Simons, Helen Joseph and Lilian Ngoyi.

She went on to become the national secretary of the ANC’s Women’s League and helped to organise the Transvaal’s Women’s March to Pretoria in 1956 in opposition to the pass laws. She led the march to the Bantu Commissioner’s Offices in Braamfontein.

Although she ‘forgot’ to get married, Rev. Chabaku has a daughter, Mamolemo, who she found as an abandoned six-month old in Johannesburg in 1966. “I did not comply with culture and tradition because adversity and experience made me brave enough to choose my own path,” she says.

A committed peacemaker, she has worked with rival gangs in Soweto and skinheads in Kent, where she attained a degree from the Rose Bruford College of Theatre & Performance in 1963.

Rev. Chabaku was in England when her father died in 1973. Upon her return home, she was stopped by the traffic police and was unable to say her goodbyes before the funeral.

She left for the United States in 1976 on a cultural exchange programme and returned to the US in the late 1970s to attend seminary in Pennsylvania.

Rev. Chabaku could not get a scholarship from the United Nations nor the ANC, and she remembers living off discarded food thrown away by Winn-Dixie stores.

Her first Christmas in the States, the Girl Scouts collected cans for the needy and, thanks to them, she says, she had the best Christmas of her life.

“One little girl gave me her life savings so that I could continue my education. I can’t forget that. That is why I believe that we must move away from racist and sexist connotations. I don’t talk about white or black; no one is white as milk or black as coal,” Rev. Chabaku says.

She survived on donations from public speaking engagements. “Because I was from South Africa, and a woman, I had knowledge and experience to share. I am forever thankful for what people gave me in the US,” she says.

Rev. Chabaku received a Masters of Divinity degree from Lancaster Theological Seminary in May 1979. Upon her return to South Africa that year, however, she narrowly escaped arrest and returned to the US where she fought for political asylum and permanent residence.

Stripped of her citizenship by the apartheid government, she became an internationally recognised critic of apartheid and exhorted America to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa.

In her speaking engagements, Rev. Chabaku vividly portrayed the unethical nature of America’s economic relations with South Africa. She spoke of Kodak supplying the film for the identification document photos in black people’s pass books, and America selling 2 500 electric shock batons to South Africa for “riot control”.

Her campaign for a free South Africa earned her a number of awards in the US.

Rev. Chabaku’s higher education continued with a Bachelor of Liberal Studies from Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania and two MSc degrees in Guidance, Counselling and Adult Education from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro.

During her sojourn in the US, she worked as a mission interpreter, a church and community worker, an international scholar and adviser in residence, and a United Methodist minister for a number of churches in North Carolina.

Rev. Chabaku travelled extensively, conducting workshops on human relations, and was the keynote speaker at several UN-sponsored women’s conferences.

“I am concerned about the rights of women, the rights of children and, just as equally, the rights of men – because there can never be a community, there can never be a family, there can never be true freedom when any sector of humanity is not free,” she says.

Rev. Chabaku returned to South Africa in 1991 and helped set up churches for displaced people evicted from farms because they wanted to vote for Nelson Mandela.

Under the new political dispensation, her anti-apartheid efforts were rewarded with the position of Speaker of the Free State Legislature under Premier Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota.

However, she was ousted from her position in 1998. The ANC cited ill health, but Rev. Chabaku believed there was a secret agenda behind her removal.

“We live in a male-dominated world – something I abhor and fight against. For this reason, I am not well-received by people in leadership,” she says. “Adam ate the forbidden fruit. Why blame Eve? Even our vocabulary is male-centred.” She cites examples from education, a path she has long travelled: “We talk of a bachelor’s degree, not a spinster’s degree; a master’s degree rather than a mistress’s degree.”

I ask how things have changed for women in the new South Africa she fought so hard to bring about.

“Change is difficult. There have been political changes – not many, but they are there. We have more women in the legislature, in the economy and in professions. However, we still don’t have equal opportunities, and the corruption remains,” Rev. Chabaku notes.

Despite this setback, her political career continued as the Free State delegate to the National Council of Provinces in the National Parliament and as a member of the Gauteng Legislature.

She finally retired from active politics in 2009.

However, she remains a member of the ANC and looks forward to the organisation’s centenary celebrations next year.

When I ask the Reverend what continues to drive her, she replies: “I want to be a better tool. I want to be God’s screwdriver. When a job is well done, it’s not the screwdriver, but the power behind it.”

Of all her contributions to society, she most values the men and women she has guided and who have become contributing members to society. “They dare to stand for something,” she says.

Today, Rev. Chabaku lives in Rockville, Soweto, in a bright pink house with red trim and a garden where she grows organic vegetables in old tyres.

She uses public transport and, while still in demand on the public speaking circuit, she does not ask for payment, but only that her taxi money is refunded. She is paying back to God what God has given her.

Rev. Chabaku describes herself as an “ordinary, simple, humble child of God and servant of the people. It is a miracle what God has done through me.”

While she asserts that she is not a leader, when I ask her what message she has for young women in Africa today, she says: “Leadership is not a male prerogative. In Africa, in the past, women ruled countries and led armies.

The world is waiting for us to continue to lead and share.

“Live joyfully and creatively. Don’t make excuses because of your past; use it as your stepping stone.

“Realise that you are a unique person. No one is like you – a woman – caring, sharing and daring!” Rev. Chabaku concludes.

Laurianne Claase

One of Rev. Chabaku’s latest projects is the non-profit Kuwa Ajabu Foundation. The name means ”be extraordinary” in Swahili. Its flagship project is to identify Africa’s exceptional, unknown women leaders and learn from them in order to find solutions to Africa’s socio-economic and socio-political challenges. Their life stories will be used to create training modules for corporates to implement at an executive level. The Foundation and the UN have identified respondents in key countries whose life stories will be used to better understand the value systems and leadership qualities that drive them to be great leaders within their communities. Rev. Chabaku is one of South Africa’s respondents and is an ambassador for the initiative. The UN Capital Development Fund recognises that ”investing in women is… not only the right thing to do, but also the smart thing to do. Mounting evidence demonstrates that increases in women’s income lead to improvements in children’s health, nutrition and education.” One of Africa’s foremost female leaders, Soukeyna Ndiaye Ba of Senegal, summed it up: ”If you want to develop Africa, you must develop the leadership of African women.”