First published in the Daily Maverick on 16 October 2024
by Prof Tinyiko Maluleke, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of TUT
Tito realised a long time ago that political rhetoric would neither lull nor dull the pain of oppression and economic exclusion. From the time when he served as Reserve Bank governor, through the years when he was Finance Minister, Tito tirelessly orchestrated a policy framework aimed at the creation of an inclusive economy.
The late Tito Mboweni
On those rainy days when the N’waveti River swelled and threatened to burst its banks, Titus “Makhakhamela” Mboweni and his schoolmates had to skip school lest they drowned. The dancing waters of the N’waveti were as vigorous as they were sometimes treacherous. Mooing cattle, bleating goats, hissing cats and squawking chickens were often swept away by the angry river.
Titus, better known as Tito Mboweni, was born in the small village of Bordeaux, below the Marhovoni mountain, outside Tzaneen in Limpopo. Set on a piece of fertile and arable land, the sparsely populated hamlet of Bordeaux was wrapped around the N’waveti River. Bordeaux Primary, where Mboweni started school, was on the other side of the river.
Like the adults of the village, the youngsters of Bordeaux were as patient as they were feisty. For days, they would wait for the furious river to relent, but soon enough they would be back in the classroom. Sometimes the older kids would precariously wade through the leaping waters while carrying the younger kids on their backs. Tito was the last of three children born to Nelson and Peggy Mboweni.
From Bordeaux to Bodweni – undoing the naming violence
Unable to cope with the foreign spelling and silent letters in the pronunciation of the Francophone name “Bordeaux”, locals rechristened it Bodweni – which means “in the pot” or “from the pot”. With this act, they began the process of decolonising Bordeaux from a space that mimicked a colonial city into a pot in which a new and resistant generation was being “cooked”. That way, villagers not only protested, but took back the power to name themselves, their villages and their own destinies from the colonisers. Thus, was Tito thrust into the pot from which he was launched into the fire of student activism, exile, military training, economic schooling and several leadership roles.
The impact of the “naming violence” to which Bodweni and its neighbouring villages were subjected during Tito’s youthful years cannot be underestimated. A quick glance over the greater area within which Bodweni is located will reveal a string of Euro-American place names sitting unnaturally in the land of Chief Muhlaba and the Nkuna people. In fact, if place names were the only thing to go by, one would think this part of South Africa belonged to a foreign country.
Consider this sample of the names of places located in that vicinity. Julesburg, named after a town in Colorado, in the US. Koblenz, named after a city that is near Bonn, in Germany. Ofcolaco, an acronym for Officers Colonial Land Company and a name given to a piece of real estate gifted to former World War 1 British soldiers. Bordeaux itself was named after a city in France.
Technically, therefore, Tito was alienated at birth. He was not born in “South Africa”, but he was born in “some foreign city” belonging to a “foreign country”. Not even the gallant efforts of Chief Mohlaba, to buy back from the colonisers some pieces of the land they had grabbed, could remove the sense of dispossession and massive landlessness of black life in those days.
Reminiscent of the famous opening paragraph in Sol Plaatje’s Native Life in South Africa, Tito was born “not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth”. It was not lost on Tito and the residents of Bordeaux that, by virtue of the over-the-top foreign name of their village at least, they were rendered alien in the land of their birth. The rolling out of the homeland system in the early ’70s, made it clear to the young Tito Mboweni that he was living in a dystopia rather than a utopia.
There was, therefore, a real sense for Tito that the struggle against apartheid was also a search for full citizenship and a quest for home and belonging. From a young age, Tito knew that the country into which he was born did not belong to him, any more than he to it. He knew from a young age that the village in which he was born was as foreign as the country in which he was born. For him, therefore, the struggle for citizenship and belonging was a lifelong quest.
Instead of the illusionary, exotic and politically numbing effect that the place name “Bordeaux” was supposed to engender, in the very act of renaming it e-Bodweni, the villagers transformed a potential slave castle into a “pot” in which they and their offspring were being oriented, initiated and “cooked” into a life of struggle for liberation.
Tito was thoroughly soaked inside the pot known as Bodweni. His cousins, agemates and teachers tell the story of a young, fiercely curious, fearless and brilliant Tito – from his time at Bordeaux Primary School whose principal was Mr SD Shingwenyana, through to Mr Gilbert Machimana’s Dumela High School and DZJ Mtebule’s Bankuna High School, where he matriculated. His high school peers speak of a young man who was their after-school teacher and instructor, especially in the subjects of mathematics and English.
Many of his teachers remember a young man whose leadership qualities and intellectual talents were so abundant; they were hard to miss. But he was also a young man in search of a country in which he would be a full citizen and where he would fully belong. This is the quest that sent him off into exile. It is also the quest that explained young Tito’s tremendous and life-long hunger for knowledge.
Tito Mboweni – fiercely curious, fearless and simply brilliant
It is not possible to understand Tito’s pivotal role in the building of a framework for just relations between employers and employees, with a bias for employees, without an appreciation for his search for a country in which all can be full and equal citizens. His crystal-clear ideas for employment equity, at a time when the very notion did not exist in South Africa, may never be understood outside Tito’s quest for inclusive democracy.
Similarly, Tito’s foresight in creating platforms and instruments for consultation and consensus building – such as the National Economic Development and Labour Council – could only be understood once we appreciate the pain and joy of being born and bred in a marginal and forgettable, if not a forgotten village. It is the pain of being born a pariah in one’s own land of birth.
Tito realised a long time ago that political rhetoric would neither lull nor dull the pain of oppression and economic exclusion. From the time he served as Reserve Bank governor, through the years when he was finance minister, Tito tirelessly orchestrated a policy framework aimed at the creation of an inclusive economy. The hallmark of that economy would be that of cushioning the poorest of the poor from the vagaries of inflation rates and related issues.
To understand the making of Tito, we should start by travelling back in time to the banks of the swollen N’waveti River, facing the mountain of Marhovoni in the Bordeaux village of the late ’60s and early ’70s. There we shall find the teenage grandson of Makhakhamela Mboweni, a man who died in 1917 inside the SS Mendi – a World War 1 passenger steamship.
Maybe then we would understand the genetic roots of the bravery that saw Tito skip the country for military training in Angola, the same bravery that saw him tackle his comrades and foes alike on matters of principle.
There must have been something special in the water of the N’waveti – so let’s go taste, savour and gulp down the water. How else do we explain the vast intellect of Titus “Makhakhamela” Mboweni? How else can we explain the tremendous patriotism of this maternal grandson of Sevengwana and Mandlanganana Mthembi?