Everyday Zulu’s Melusi on talking to kids about race, his new book and creating spaces for black dads

Most of us are struggling, to be honest, when it comes to parenthood.

The struggles author and advertising exec Melusi Tshabalala faces are not so much about how to be a good baba, as they are about how to be a good parent.

“One of the things I’ve tried to do for myself is not focus so much on issues of manhood, as such, in that I try to live my life being a human being first, then a man second. And I find that makes life much easier to navigate, including parenting. I see myself as a parent that just happened to be a father.

“So I don’t focus too much on the challenges of being a father, I focus on the challenges of parenting. And when you start doing that, you start to see that kuyafana nje (it’s all the same).”

One of his biggest challenges, he jokes, is helping his kids with homework.

There are challenges that are specific to fatherhood, he admits, which is why he’s in Facebook and WhatsApp groups that create communities of support for fathers. He’s found this helps him to be more self-reflective about his relationship with his kids.

One of the Facebook groups he’s in is Black Dads Are Cool Dads, an open group with about 15 000 members, that has dads from different walks of life sharing their ups and downs with other black fathers, young and old.

The father of three, a 19-year-old son, eight-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl, sits down with Drum on a cold Joburg winter day, wrapped in a blanket, to talk about his latest book, a kiddies’ book titled Gogo Magic and her Magic Food Truck.

His previous books, Melusi’s everyday Zulu: There is um’Zulu in all of Us (published by Jonathan Ball Publishers) and Magenge We Need to Talk (Melinda Ferguson Books) are both non-fiction works. And his latest title, a children’s book, is not a major departure from that.

All the characters in the story are based on real-life people, including himself, in this story told by an 18-year-old narrator whose younger siblings set out on a mission: sharing their Gogo Magic with their friends whose grannies live too far away from them to visit often.

It's a story told with moving compassion and crackling wit. But the lessons are very clear to learn – children born in the new South Africa still grapple with a racist society, the sense of family in many black communities is fractured, and our history is important to keep recalling and retelling in order to make sense of the present.

The topics sound heavy for the tween and early teens market for which Melusi has written this book. “For me, with my writing, what I like to do is help people understand each other’s lives. Let’s say you’re a white kid reading this book – this is completely foreign to you. And I noticed this when I was in Cape Town earlier this year.

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“As we were standing at the beach, I could see complete families where there was grandad, grandma, mother, father and kids walking along the beach. And I was, like, ‘We don’t have that because of the nature of this economy.’

“Black people are forced to break up their families so that somebody goes off to work. And I find that the more we start to understand each other’s lives across the various siloes as South Africans, the more we’ll be in a better position to make the most of this country and to get along better.

“So for me to bring up that theme, it’s about saying to kids that when you’re in school, you don’t know what the other kids you’re at school with are going through. Your lives are not necessarily the same, and this is something I repeat a lot in the book even when I speak about racial issues to say, ‘Don’t allow your parents to say no they don’t want to talk about race or this or that,’ because if you don’t confront these things you perpetuate things like, ‘My family is well off because we are hard workers.’

“Whereas, there are reasons why certain families [are better off] and it’s broken along the race line.

“We need to have these conversations with our kids across the board so that those ones who come from a section of the population with systems in place that continue to benefit them understand that they are benefiting from systems which were always there and have empathy for their fellow people.

“And those who have been handicapped by those systems need to understand and not feel too bad about themselves. Yes you need to uplift yourself, you need to do better for yourself but you have to understand where this comes from.”

Melusi says he borrowed experiences from his life when writing this book, the main characters have his kids’ names and Gogo Magic is his own mom’s name, and together with his mom, they run a food truck that’s currently based in Fourways at the Cedar Square Shopping Centre. It’s not accidental that the advertising exec and author has merged the aspects of his life together into a book to tell his family’s story.

Melusi shares that as a single dad who’s going through a divorce it’s been weird for him that, on the one hand, at the only places he could go out to for a meal in Fourways that were kid-friendly there was not much on the menu that actually appealed to his taste. On the other hand, the kinds of places that boast a bill of fare with the type of food he enjoys just weren’t kid-friendly.

So, with his mom, he decided to set up the food truck, which he says is most often frequented by dads and their kids, and their biggest seller is sheep’s head. “I thought why don’t I set up an eatery that serves the kind of food that I want to eat, and then have it be family-centric, be child-friendly because izindawo zethu (our places) that sell the sort of of food that someone like me – I wouldn’t say all black people like the same food, but I’m going to speak for myself – that sells the kind of food that I want are not family-friendly.

“You know, it’s either ziyawa, amagish-gish, kusematshwaleni (it’s an outlet that sells liquor), and if it’s not, it’s just boring. You just sit there, and you eat and the kids don’t enjoy themselves.

“So the genesis for Gogo Magic and her Magic Food Truck was me trying to solve a problem that I have and a problem that others around me have.”

The success of his food truck made Melusi think it would make for a great kiddies’ story, and so he wrote it and self-published it this year. Given the prominence of kids as the main characters in this book, Drum asks him about fatherhood and his parenting style.

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He doesn’t have a parenting style as such, he says, but he just wants his kids to feel safe, knowing he is there for them.

“I wouldn’t be able to define my parenting style. I just believe ukuthi my children, yabona (you see) when you’re on the road and you’re driving kunama-guardrail? But the road is for you to drive? So mina I see myself as those guardrails. I’m not driving that car for you, I’m just here so that you don’t go over the cliff, but kudrayva wena (you’re driving).

“I have no particular ambitions for my kids, I have no map ukuthi ngifuna benzeni (of what I want them to do). They’ll do what they want to do, and I’ll guide them where I can. And the kind of environment I try to create for them is a happy home, a playful home, where they can feel free.”

The author, who had his first child at the age of 26, is candid when he talks about his journey of fatherhood. “With my first kid, it was tricky because I was in my 20s, bengidla ubusha bami (I was enjoying youth). So I really wasn’t the best father. I was a gallivanter, ngihlala ngisestradini (always on the streets) – I’m gonna be frank.

“But I grew into it. And sometimes I feel bad that my youngest ones, from an early age, got a better version of me than my firstborn. But I can’t go back and fix it. All I can do is do my best now, and my son and I have a great friendship.”

You can buy the e-version of Gogo Magic and her Magic Food Truck on Kindle or kobo.com. The hard copy is available for purchase at the Gogo Magic eatery in Fourways.