By Zubeida Jaffer
I arrived early at the District Six Homecoming Centre for the launch of lawyer Linda Zama’s book. The room was quiet; the stage still, the smell of coffee and paper in the air. In a corner, hunched over a laptop, was Linda. Seeing her felt like finding a familiar beacon — we embraced with the quick, astonished affection of two people surprised by the persistence of a shared past.
“Come, come. Meet my sister and my daughter,” she said, and led me to a table where copies of Beyond the Icon were stacked like small, hopeful gifts.
After greetings and a brief chat, I bought a book and lingered with the young woman beside Linda. Linda laughed softly. “Priscilla is not my own daughter,” she explained. “But she was present in my life sine a baby and remains in my life.”
Priscilla introduced herself: “I’m Priscilla Molefe. My father was on Robben Island.” In the early democracy years, lawyers who defended activists often became something beyond counsel — guardians, godmothers, surrogate parents. I thought of Priscilla Jana adopting Popo Molefe’s daughter. Here, decades later, was another of those quiet, complicated continuities: Linda Zama and the young woman she had helped raise.
“Who was your father?” I asked. Priscilla corrected me gently: “My father was Natu Babenia. Molefe is my married name.” Linda filled in the outline: Babenia had been one of the first MK operatives, serving ten years on Robben Island in the 1960s, and he had cared for Priscilla into adulthood.
I listened while my mind flickered backward to the eighties when I had the privilege of staying at the tiny Durban flat where he father lived in the middle of town.
He’d given up his bedroom so I could sleep comfortably. The next morning he boiled me an egg, laid out newspaper on the table, and placed the egg on a roti – a small, simple ceremony of hospitality. Tea followed. The room had been alive with small domestic noises: a woman moving softly, a baby strapped to her back. There was something in the tenderness between them that lodged in me like a memory that would not be ignored.
I never asked then. In those days such things were private and messy; the politics of the time made people protective. Years later, a Durban activist told me Natu had a daughter in wedlock and no other child. This was the only time I had enquired. I doubted my own recollection and let it lie.
Now, in the bright light of the Homecoming Centre, everything snapped into focus. I blurted the truth across the table: “I met you when you were a baby. I was staying with your dad and your mom came to work that morning. Was your mom a domestic worker then?”
“Yes,” she said.
Excitement rippled through us. We took photos, laughed, and for a moment the room felt impossibly small — as if all the years between us had folded into a single instant. Priscilla smiled and agreed I could write about the encounter.
I slipped out before the formal launch for family reasons, but at home I opened Beyond the Icon. Linda’s book moves past hero worship to explore the values that animated Nelson Mandela — humility, purpose, moral courage — and argues that those values belong as much in kitchens and classrooms as in history books. She insists on financial independence as a pillar of empowerment, especially for women and young people: to stand on your own feet is to make freer choices. The book reads part memoir, part manual — a call to live deliberately, not just to admire.
Back to the baby: I felt a nervous, clenching need to be sure I wasn’t mistaking time and sentiment. I messaged Priscilla and asked for a baby photograph of her with her mother. When the photo arrived a few days later, my pulse raced. The image confirmed everything, snapping the rearward ribbon of memory into place.
So here is the story of the little baby I once saw, the quiet threads of care and history that kept us tethered across decades, and the sudden, impossible way a book launch can unearth the past and reweave a life’s hidden connections.
This article was first published at www.zubeidajaffer.co.za.
