Man-to-Man with Dr. Musa Manzi (Part 3)

We are concluding the 3-Part interview with Dr. Musa Manzi who has been extremely generous, opening up to us and in the process, impacting so many lives - mine, certainly. In case you missed them, here are Part 1 and Part 2.

I know you have to go now Musa – but we must talk about you being one of Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans for 2014. Is that a big title for you? Having gone through all this, was that an affirmation of whatever God had done for you?

To tell you the truth, to me it didn’t mean much.

Really?

Yeah. It only meant a lot when people would talk about it. It’s probably the same as other achievements – it means a lot to me only when it changes someone else’ life. I mean, just like being the first black Geophysicist, PhD, in South Africa - it didn’t mean a lot when I was graduating. But when people started saying things like “I look up to you, you are my role model”, that’s when I was like, “Oh, so this is important”. I think the way I’ve always wanted to live my life is – if it doesn’t have an impact on someone else’ life, it’s not worth it. It means nothing to me.

There are many other people that I might never meet but who might be challenged by this and they might have changed the way they live because of what we did, or because of what I did. So that’s when it means a lot to me that "wow" - so if it can change someone else’ life, then it’s worth sharing. And maybe then can they model their lives after it.

So it probably meant a lot within that context.

I hear you. Moving on to the next thing, which I can’t leave out. Being a parent or a guardian to your nieces, how has that impacted on your romantic relationships, if ever you were in any, after the loss of your sister and mother? Has that being a factor in terms of who you get in a relationship with?

For me, being like a father and mother to my nieces, you know, I think it defined my relationship life in terms of who I get in a relationship with and what kind of a woman I’d love to be romantically involved with.

One of the things I’ve realized about relationships is (and probably your dad will tell you this as well about marrying your step-mom) it‘s not just about love. You need a woman who will love your kids as well. So basically, you’ve got a base – no matter how much you love me, you need love my nieces. So it’s becoming very difficult to you as a person and the person you love. I mean you meet someone who’s never had kids and they have this dream about marriage, having their first kid. Now you get involved with a man who already has 5 kids, or 2 kids as in my case.

The men I know, who have raised their kids on their own, they are very much attached to them. They can lose the whole world, but they hold on to their kids because of the struggles they’ve gone through.

For me, if you asked me what my biggest achievement is – for me, it is raising my kids. That’s the only thing that stands out. I mean, against everything we’ve gone through, and seeing them as older ladies now – to me, that’s the biggest achievement. And so I’m attached to them emotionally, you know. Even in instances where they are wrong, it’s something you don’t want to hear from another person.

I was in a relationship that unfortunately didn’t work out. Being a single parent defines you and the relationships you have. No doubt about that.

But having raised my nieces, you learn to develop a soft spot for your woman because you learn of the different emotions that women go through. I have learned through my nieces that the best thing you can ever do for them is to love them, continuously. I can’t say much about males. So I’ve learned that and with the relationships I’ve been through, that something that women need is for you to love them, and they respond. If you don’t love your woman, there is no way she will respect you.

So I’ve seen that with my nieces – that no matter what I do, if they know and have been told that they are important, that I love them….. I mean I had a chat with my niece about 3 days ago, and she said “it took me about 10 years to believe that you love me, though I stayed with you. Because of what happened in my life, I never believed love existed, I never believed that God existed. But with time, and with you telling me every single day how much you love me – it’s only now that I realized that it’s possible to love”.

And that is why she started writing these letters expressing love because she never believed that it existed, because she was like “if love exists, why did all these things happen to me? If God exists, why did he allow for all these things to happen? But through your life and everything that you do, you just involve me. It took 10 years, but I’m glad I’ve come to a point where I know that if there’s anyone who loves me – it’s you! ”

So this has taught me a lot on how to love a woman, because I’m raising 2 young women. When you shout at them, they switch off. But when you speak to them in a nice, caring, polite way, they will respond positively.

And I treat them differently from each other. I’ve learned their different love languages. The other one, no matter what you do for her, even if it means buying her gifts, she doesn’t care. Because, you HAVE TO sit down with her and apologize verbally. Whereas the other one, if I walked out, buy her flowers or a dress, she’s like “oh okay, you’re forgiven.” You know, it’s their different love languages.

I’m thinking, you and I were classmates in first year. And later on we were members of the same Christian organization on campus. Yet you know don’t know that a person is going through so much, like when you speak of how your mother would deposit just R50, which is all that she could afford. It’s only when you interact privately with a person that you get to see what they go through. Even for me as a man, one who’s conscious about the type of male-to-male relationships we should have in building each other up, I feel it’s important that we harness these relationships.

I fully agree. It has so much impact. I always talk to my friends about this. It's very rare that you would spend time with your male friends and you speak about real issues. Most times we talk about girls and cars. We don’t really tackle real issues. That’s the problem we have in South Africa. Just think about how things would be if we spoke about these issues regularly.

I’ve also noticed how when you ask a male friend, “how are you doing, like really, how are you doing?” You find that people start to open up and tell you like, “actually, things are not going so great” and they open up and open their hearts, and you realize that there’s a lot going on there. But you HAD to ask, and ask deeply, like, “what do you do? Where do you stay? Where’s your mother?”

And you find this with people who have been friends for years, but they don’t know each other. The next thing is you get a call saying your friend has committed suicide. As you try to unravel the story, you then realize that “I didn’t know all these things”.

So you’re right – think there’s a gap that needs to be closed.

I had an interview with a journalist, and we ended up talking. And she asked me about my dream. Normally when I get asked what my dream is, most people get shocked because as a scientist or a researcher they expect you to talk about your dream being doing something scientific, writing this book, building this big laboratory – you know such things.

She was shocked, when I told her about my dream for what I want to do for the community….

Which is.....? Now I’m curious

No, I was talking to her about the orphanage that I opened up in Durban. You know, it was my dream for many years. You know, I love young people and having to see them struggle is hard you know. So I started this project and the way God has just provided for it, to me that’s a dream coming true because I’ve always dreamt about this.   

When I drive around and seeing kids on the streets that never had an opportunity, I’m like “I could have been one of them but someone decided to love me. Someone took me in and cared for me. Therefore I can do the same”. You can’t change the world, but you can change one soul, and virtually impact the whole world.

And you can’t always defer things to when you have enough money. I could have done that and said let me first be a Geophysicist and then go back to Durban to take care of the girls. It might have been too late. They would probably not have ended up where they are right now. They would probably have been impregnated young.

For them to be safe, I had to take a step of faith and say even if I’m still a student, I will stay with them and in the process, I knew that God would provide. And He did provide because I was doing the right thing. I don’t see myself doing the right thing and God not being there for me. It would be against His Word.

In the white community, they have the privilege that they haven’t gone through the things we have gone through. For them it’s a case of “when I finish my degree, I’m going to get married” and therefore they are able to father their own children. With us, when you finish your degree, you already have people you need to look after. You need to look after this person and support that one...

Earlier on you said you and your nieces spent nights sleeping in the library because you didn't have shelter...?

Yeah. In my honours year we didn’t have a place to stay. My nieces and I, we stayed in this building for the whole year. I was getting around R3000/R4000 from Wits at the time, and I decided to use that money for food and sleep wherever we could.

During my Masters year, we still didn’t have a place to stay. Initially, I was staying at res but I got kicked out because you aren’t allowed to stay with kids.

So we moved into my office – I had an office when I was doing my Masters. And no-one knew about it. I mean, my nieces were going to school in the morning at 6 and they would come back here. You would only notice at 11 late at night that these kids are still here.

The people who were close were the cleaners – they knew that these kids are staying here. And they really loved and respected me because they had their own daughters who had left their kids with them, and they had to work hard to support these kids. Yet here was a man who is working towards his Masters, living in university buildings with his nieces – kids who aren’t even biologically his. To them, this was amazing. I would interact with them and one told me that her daughter did the same thing my sister did with my mom, which was to leave the kids at home and disappear.

Whilst living here in my office, when my nieces would use the bathroom and not clean up, the cleaners would always tell me about it and would also cover up for us. When we had no food, they would provide. When I had some, I would share with them. You know, we were kind of a family. And now they look at me being a lecturer in the same environment – that has done a lot for them mentally. 

For me I always say that the process you go through is more important than reaching your goal because even if you don’t reach your goal, the process shapes you to be a man so that even if you don’t get what you wanted, you would have made good decisions.

It’s just like saying “I want to get a PhD”. If you get to that stage without having being moulded by the process – it’s a problem.

I am happy about one thing, and that’s what I concentrated on was the now, the present, because that was the only thing I was sure of. I was not sure of what would happen in 10 years, so I didn’t pay attention to that. I paid attention to being present with my nieces and I would say “I want to be a good father today”. When I wake up in the morning I always tell my niece, I want to be a good father today, I want to love you today because I am not sure of tomorrow. When she calls and says “Malume, can you come home now?” I always say “yes I am going to come home now and take you to the hospital now because I don’t have tomorrow.” 

She asks me “where does this (mentality) come from?” And I tell her, that I wanted to finish my degree so that I could help my mother out, but she died that year. That opportunity never came. I wanted to build a house for her, I wanted to provide for her financially, I wanted to get her medical aid, but did it come? It was always tomorrow, tomorrow. You know, I could have done quite lot as a student. Like seeing her more often. Bringing her flowers telling her how much I loved her. I didn’t do that because I wanted to finish my degree first.

I learned the hard way but I can’t repeat the same mistake. So I tell my niece that “when I see you in the morning, it’s a blessing. So I have to give you a hug and a kiss and tell you I love you. You go to school knowing that you are loved and are supported". I can’t say “tomorrow”. If she’s sick, I drop everything. If I do that now, I’m going to develop a woman who’s going to love her kids the way I’ve loved her. We are sure of only today and not tomorrow.

As you fetched me from the entrance of this building and we approached your office door and I saw your name written there – “Dr. Musa Manzi”, a question rushed through my mind and I held back from asking. We used to attend lectures in this very building, did you ever think one day a door upstairs would bear your name?

You know, I do think about it a lot and I NEVER, EVER imagined. You know, when they talk about “The Impossible Dream”…. The funny thing is that this very lab we are sitting in, this is where I used to sleep during my Honours year. My nieces and I would spend nights here. But today, this is my lab. 4-6 years ago, this is where I used to sleep.

So when I finally had money and was working for the university, I took this room and said this would be my lab! At the time when I did that, I didn’t realize that this was the same place I used to sleep in. It was only after a while when they were installing software in the computers here and I was teaching students that it hit me that “wow, this is the place I used to sleep in”. And thinking about it, I was a bit emotional.

I was talking to a friend yesterday and she was asking if I would ever leave Wits, and I said yes, one day eventually I will leave Wits. But for now, I know that this is the one place God has chosen for me. When I wake up in the morning, I have no doubt that I have to be at Wits. For what reasons? I don’t know. When Wits offered me a job, I had many, many offers. But it was never difficult to take up Wits’ offer. It was the least paying job on the list, among overseas universities. I was going through with interviews at the time and Wits had not even made an offer, but I knew that I was going to go with Wits anyway. I went to France, to the US, to Cape Town – they all offered me positions, and at the last minute, I got the Wits offer.

The same university where I was chased out of res, and had no place to go to, is the same place where I am now a lecturer. The same place where I now sit down and have coffee with the Vice-Chancellor.

Musa, thank you so much for spending the time with me. We can spend the whole day talking about these things. Thank you for who you are, and for for being open. I think I speak on behalf of a lot of people that I thank you for being an example. You didn’t take in your nieces with a mind that you were doing it for glory. You just stepped in and became a father to them.

 Thanks for coming over to chat, you know and thank you for what you are doing.

I just hope that God opens up an opportunity that we can have a gathering of men, you know. To just sit and talk about these things.

I would love that.

(You can watch Musa's feature on Against All Odds with Mpho Lakaje here).