We have all heard it all before ÔÇô haven’t we? To take anything that life throws at us, and make do with it. Remember the line from Toni Morrison’s epic novel Song of Solomon ÔÇô “Take advantage, and if you can’t take advantage, take disadvantage.”?
Nowhere does this find better expression than in Keabonye Ntsabane’s life story. The Coordinator of the Botswana office of Gender Links, a southern African NGO committed to foster gender equity in all aspects of public and private life, has weathered many storms: an underprivileged childhood, a rocky career path, and a failed marriage ÔÇô and she is still standing, almost defiant and daring life to throw another sucker punch.
For as long as she could remember, Ntsabane had always known her mother to be blind. The story she heard was that she lost her sight when she was nursing her. Her mother’s handicap led Ntsabane to be raised by some sympathetic relatives.
“I had a very difficult childhood,” she had earlier said.
Unable to proceed with secondary education beyond Junior Certificate, she had to find a job and start earning a living, and find a job she did ÔÇô as a cleaner at the post office. A while later, she was promoted to messenger.
When Bontleng Post Office was opened, she was among the first to be posted (forgive the pun) to the new facility. She had clinched another promotion to a sorter.
But even in the face of what would have seemed like a steady career progression, she was asking herself if this was what she really wanted to do her entire working life.
“Even back then I had the belief that as an individual you had to empower yourself even if your parents had not been able to,” she says.
So when she heard that Gaborone City Council was employing temporary teachers for a number of primary schools, she offered her service, though she had never stood in front of a classroom before. She did time at Ithuteng Primary School, where the headteacher was the venerated educationist Louisa Mmusi.
“Mma-Mmusi noticed my potential and decided to recommend me to train as a professional teacher,” Ntsabane recalls. “That was motivation for me. To enroll at the Teacher Training College, you had
to pass an entrance interview. I failed at the first attempt. But the second time I got it right.”
At the time, she was married to the legendary Radio Botswana personality Fox Ntsabane, and they were raising young children. She had to make a difficult decision to leave behind young children and a not so enthusiastic husband.
“I guess it is never easy for a man to accept being left at home by a wife going to study, but I had to look at my own future,” she says, displaying the steely determination that has propelled her from sweeping floors to the apex of gender politics.
Nothing had prepared her for the challenges on the academic front. Having only gone as far as JC, she found herself in the same lecture rooms with students who had completed senior secondary.
Competition was tough. When she wrote the final examination, she failed the Mathematics paper, which she had to retake.
With the help of a Mathematics lecturer at University of Botswana, who offered her free weekly tutorials, she managed to achieve respectable marks, and qualified as a primary school teacher ÔÇô a major achievement for someone who had been dealt a bad hand since day one.
Having taught in various Gaborone schools such as Ithuteng, Old Naledi, and Tshwaragano as well as being involved in a number of community activities, she soon grew restless once again.
“As a teacher, I got to a point where I felt I needed to move on. I had been a volunteer at Red Cross. As a volunteer, I used to travel around on Red Cross business using my own resources,” she says.
It appears her enthusiasm was not unnoticed as she got a job at Red Cross as a Youth Officer. The backbone of any volunteer-driven organisation like the Red Cross is its unpaid members, and her brief was to mobilise volunteers.
This was around the same time that she gained awareness about gender issues, and she got interested. That interest led her to the Women’s Coalition NGO, where she was employed to work as a Coalition Officer. It was in this job that she got to meet, know, and work with some of the royalty of the women’s movement such as Sheila Tlou, Unity Dow, and Athalia Molokomme.
Through her work at the Women’s Coalition NGO, she managed to acquire a two-year scholarship from the British Council to study for a Higher National Diploma in Multimedia in Britain. For the second time, she found herself having to make a difficult decision to leave behind her children in pursuit of education.
To the question if she ever considered herself selfish, she chews her lower lip and looks at the ceiling, as if sizing the glass ceiling that many trailblazing women have had to break with their bare hands.
“I never considered my decisions selfish, but I was aware that I was in a way putting my children’s welfare at risk,” she answers. “My thinking was that if I acquired good education, then I would be able to make up for the sacrifices that my children had to make.”
The little difference was that this time there was no husband in the picture, having been divorced from the love of his life. I ask her about the man whose voice captivated a generation of radio listeners.
“I loved him,” she states without much sentiment. “He had a good radio voice.”
Silence.
As if feeling the need to break the awkward silence, she adds; “Instead of fighting and killing each other, we parted peacefully. That is what I preach these days. But I was always there for him, even when he was ill ÔÇô till his last day. It’s not easy being single again, but I had to face it. If a relationship does not work, you can’t force it.”
Like their mother many years before, the four boys were left in the care of sympathetic relatives and friends, all the time she was in Britain.
The euphoria of being back at home was short-lived, as inadequate funding led to closure of the Women’s Coalition NGO. Fortunately, Red Cross took take her back, this time as an information officer.
When her predecessor at Gender Links, Pamela Mhlanga, resigned to take up a job outside the country, Ntsabane was recommended as a suitable replacement. She was initially hesitant about stepping into the shoes of a respected lawyer.
“I wasn’t confident that I could manage this office and run the programmes,” she says. “But after much reflection, I decided that since they have trust in me, and somebody has recommended me, let me do it. I suppose the fact that they haven’t terminated my contract so far means they are satisfied with my performance.”
The work brings her face to face with some of the difficulties that women still face, the same challenges that her generation faced over three decades back such as gender inequality and gender-based violence. The organisation commissions a lot of research on gender issues as well as policy reviews. One of the areas of interest is women and the media ÔÇô especially their representation in editorial decision-making, as well as portrayal in news coverage.
“Society has different, sometimes competing, interests and views, and all we are saying is that you need to have all voices represented, whether it is at political level or in the newsroom,” she says. “We are also conscious that gender is a new agenda. So we don’t just blame people. That’s why we train editors and other media practitioners, as well as review policies.”
As I take the last sip of my Coke, I ask her to describe a typical day at work for her.
“I am a driver and a coordinator,” she answers.
