In Finding Purpose, Nkadimeng shares the triumphs and tribulations of her life so far. The book is equal parts a raw confession of her mistakes and a celebration of her victories. 

In this excerpt, she reflects on her school years, made difficult by an almost unbearable home life.

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After having lived with my grandparents for a while, we all moved back in as a family again – Mom, Dad, brother, nanny and me. First, we moved into a white house in Sharonlea, a pretty suburb near Randburg in Johannesburg; a year later, we moved to Sundowner, a few minutes away. The Sundowner house was the home I lived in for the longest, and it was owned by my parents. It resembled our home in Soweto, with a massive backyard. From the outside, it looked like a small compact home, with two separate garages attached to it. In this way, it was a little like myself: small at face value but with huge potential and lots to offer on the inside! 

During those years, my parents would collect me after work, and we would then make our way home together once their day at the office was done. Because I knew I was unable to rush home in the afternoons, I filled them up with sports, gossiping in groups and getting up to mischief, as teenagers do – we were too cool to play general knowledge by this stage – anything to avoid doing homework!  I was the biggest nomad in friendship circles at school: I had ‘friendly’ acquaintances but I never genuinely tried to have deep friendships in high school; I needed to keep a safe distance from the other girls, to prevent them from finding out about the abuse that was continuing to happen at my home. I wanted to be accepted, however, which meant getting just close enough but still keeping everyone secretly at arm’s length. 

My best friend – we had been besties since we were very young – did not attend the same school as me. I think that not going to the same school helped sustain the friendship – if she had attended the same school, I may have pushed her away. We are still besties now, over thirty years later. 

While my drive for women empowerment probably stemmed from watching my mom struggle to be empowered in her home, another factor was that I spent so many of my early years around girls and women, attending an all-girls school where there were women of every shape, colour and size. There were fights and tears (I think there could have been more intentional focus on how we should have been more supportive of each other from that early stage) but there was also love, and first loves, and heartbreaks and gossip, and so much more. 

All that said, I lived the most untruthful truth in my school years. What I mean by this is that, truthfully, I was screaming out for help through my antics and actions in so many ways. I was not subtle about it, but we were children, and nobody could ever understand that I was screaming out because home was unbearable. I do wish my teachers had paid more attention; had they paid attention, they would have noticed that all I needed them to do was to care to ask about my home life. 

One night, Daddy punched me in my stomach for attending a school fireworks event, and coming home an hour later than I said I would. When he punched me, we were standing in our yard – the place that was my home, the place that I should have been able to run to for safety. He punched me so hard that I could not breathe for a few seconds. I was a confused teenager in a situation I was not equipped to handle; I was not sure whether to cry or to start begging for forgiveness. Nothing would come out of my mouth, anyway: I just stood there, in shock, with my hands on my stomach. 

Then, as if nothing had happened, he turned and walked back towards the house, and told me to come inside. It turns out he had had an argument with my mom earlier and I was the perfect stress reliever. 

So the ‘untruth’ was that I used acting as a form of escapism. I felt pressure to come across as perfect because I was compensating for my actual sad reality of a broken home filled with mistreatment. I would create characters and scenarios so I could paint a perfect world that did not exist in real life. I would pretend, for example, that my family and I went on holidays that never really happened. I would create an image of what my home life looked like because nobody knew how I was living or where I stayed – it was a fairy tale of sorts. As a result, I was caught out in lies many times. 

Once, when I was in Grade 10, we were in business economics class and I had scored a B for a particular test. I had never scored anything above a D average before in that subject (although I did get to score As in later years, and even got an A average for business economics in Grade 11). My teacher asked me in front of the entire class what had gone right for me to score such a high mark. Many questions immediately flooded my mind: why was she asking me that now, when I’d scored high marks; why had she not asked me what the problem was when I was scoring low marks? Was she trying to make a public mockery of me? Was she asking because she thought she had done a better job of teaching me the subject than teachers in previous terms and years? 

So, I answered her with an answer that left her super uncomfortable: I explained that my dad had moved out of home to go and live elsewhere, and that this had finally given me the time and space to actually study in peace. (Note to all adults: do not ask a child a question if you are not fully ready for a raw and honest answer from them!) This is how my peers got a glimpse into my actual home life, how they learned that I did not have a perfect life. I found having to share myself in that way uncomfortable. I felt like my privacy had been invaded. Fortunately, nobody asked for any further details, and I did not share any further truthful specifics on that situation in a group setting going forward. DM

Finding Purpose by Thami Nkadimeng is published by Kwela (R295). Visit The Reading List for South African book news, daily – including excerpts!