I come from the storms, the winds, the frost, the piercing thorns, the thundering skies of the Eastern Cape. I am the product of the deaths and separations that have left deep scars on my heart. Marriage and children have lightened my spirit, though, and I have come to realise that life’s ups and downs grow and strengthen us.

I also come from love – my mother’s love, my father’s love, the love of my brothers and sisters. I come from the love and trust of my husband, my children, my family and my friends. Above all, love is the key. Let us try to give love and do what we do, with love. That is the most important ingredient for success.

Once you are able to trust, you are on your way towards a long-lasting relationship, whether with your children or your husband. The trust Sol and I had carried us through challenging times. Trust was the impetus we needed to achieve our ambitions.

Self-knowledge and self-respect are also important. Regularly evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, then face the problems that need to be solved instead of running away or shifting the blame to others. If you endeavour to be honest about who you are and the situation you are in, you may be able to accommodate the present and the future.

Let prayer be an important source of strength for your family. In days gone by, we Africans began and ended the day with prayer. That was our solace and our strength.

If you are a mother or a father, cultivate strong family roots. Make your home a haven of love for your partner and your offspring. Teach your children strong moral values so that they will be able to reach higher.

Learn to listen to your children. Sometimes when our children speak to us, our minds are far away, worrying about work deadlines or bond repayments. Yes, they will always argue with us but it is not for us to ignore what they are saying. Remember, children today live a stressful life. The social pressures to conform are tremendous. Drugs are easily available. They are also attracted to the virtual world of Facebook and Twitter, which is appealing, but is really no cure for the emptiness and pain caused by absent parents.

Equally, people should learn to be involved with their communities. Duncan Village used to be the home of many prominent people, professionals such as lawyers, doctors and successful businesspeople. Where are they today? They are contributing their services elsewhere, where life is more lucrative. A pity, but life has to go on. It bothers me, though. Why it is that we African people no longer have our own prestigious schools? Our children go to schools like Hilton and St David’s. Are our children being taught to honour who they are and where they come from?

We must never forget our roots, especially our rural backgrounds. Those who can, owe it to families back home to help with the upkeep of the family home. It was always my husband’s greatest wish to renovate his rural home. As his partner and his wife, I encouraged him to do so. After many years, the house was complete. When his mother retired, she was able to do so with dignity in a comfortable home. His sister and her children were able to live there too. To this day, when I have the time, I thoroughly enjoy going back to this home, even for a few days.

After living in Duncan Village for thirty-two years, Sol and I moved to Gompo township a few kilometres away. Later, we took out a mortgage bond and bought ourselves a bigger, nicer home at Amalinda that would be able to accommodate all our children and grandchildren when they came to visit. Many African people view a move to the suburbs negatively. My only response is that we should all accept that change comes with new opportunities and responsibilities. Where we could not buy land or own our own home before, now we could. And why not? My seventieth birthday was celebrated in this new home, and five of my grandsons were welcomed from traditional school there. As a family, we hold regular family workshops there. It has been the venue of much love, laughter and joy.

It is the express duty and responsibility of parents to engender in their children a passion for education as a vehicle for stability and prosperity. Our country is short of critical skills, especially technological skills.   I get discouraged when I ask a child, “What are you studying at university?” Almost invariably the answer is some or other soft skill. There are very few children who take up challenging careers where maths, science and physics are central. Why should parents go through the pain of educating their children, only to have their children sit at home vegetating because the area of work is oversubscribed?

Our society is burdened by extreme inequality. Yes, this is a legacy of the apartheid years, but the government now has the power to correct these problems. We need to come together as a nation to find ways to overcome the land question in particular. This is going to be the source of a lot of destabilisation in the country.

We have seen the service-delivery protests. It is unacceptable that twenty years after independence, there are still some communities that use the bucket system, that not everyone has running water in their homes, that schools don’t have textbooks and children still have to cross rivers to go to school. Something must be done. We need  to build a world in which our children and their children can live peacefully.

In closing, I would like to emphasise the values of accountability and responsibility. We are accountable to the Creator for our lives and we are responsible to Him for how our lives work out. So life is a continuous process of change and choice – choice about how you conduct yourself and who you associate with. Someone once said, “If you run with the wolves, you will learn how to howl, but if you associate with eagles, you will learn how to soar.”

MaAfrika, let us soar like eagles to greater and greater heights.