WeeklySA_AdminTHERAUPETIC:How letting it all out helps him cope with intricacies of life
By Ali Mphaki
When it comes to contentious matters of gender equality, Mbuyiselo Botha can be likened to a champion for such fundamental rights.
Highly opinionated and sometimes brave to a folly, he never shies to talk truth to power, as can be seen via his irreverent columns in several newspapers.
What most do not know, however, is that when his loving wife and children occasionally tease him, they sometimes refer to him as Selallane, a Sesotho word for ‘cry baby.”
Botha, 60, is a Covid-19 virus survivor. The deadly strain pulverized him early this year. Landing him in a hospital ward.
Face to face with death, the Sonke Gender Group media and government liaison officer says he’s never felt so vulnerable.
“I can’t lie and say the thought of dying never crossed my mind,” he recalls as he lay in his ICU bed. But one event would, in addition to all the intricate workings of the doctors and nurses, prove highly theraupetic. And possibly life-saving for him, he says. ‘There was this day in the ward where I just could not help it but cried.’
“I cried incessantly – I think for almost three hours.’
“I thought about my wife, children, grandchildren, family and friends.’
“The thought of dying and leaving them all alone was just too much for me,” he says.
“I just kept on crying and even some of my ward inmates joined me, and we all cried,” he said. But it is what happened afterwards.
“I felt so good.’ “It was like a heavy rock had been removed from my shoulders.
“I think it helped me recover somewhat as I came to accept my own mortality. “It was like the tears were cleansing my eyes to see my life anew,” he recalls.
A father of three, Botha says unlike other men he has no beef shedding a tear in front of his family.
“ I sometimes even cry when making love to my wife,” he says. He thinks it “culturally oppressive” and “emotionally crippling” the notion that men should not cry.
Something he describes as toxic masculinity.
“It denies boys and men of our own humanity. It emasculates us emotionally,” he says.
Though recovered, Botha who prefers walking to driving, stairs to an elevator, says since Covid he had to curtail his walks due to easy fatigue. Something that makes him want to cry!
“I can no longer walk long distances, or climb stairs (sometimes to 19th floors) as I used to.’
“I easily get tired these days.…
“But,” adding a disclaimer, “….not in bed.”
We laughed uproariously at this jibe.
Ending up wiping tears from our eyes.
