Dr Kopano Matlwa: Bosadi

Most women endure silence and sacrifice because of societal expectations — but what if that silence is a form of violence? 

Dr. Kopano Matlwa, acclaimed author and public health physician, unpacks the hidden costs of womanhood, the trauma of Gender Based Violence, and the myth of the perfect family in her powerful novel Bosadi. This conversation challenges us to confront uncomfortable truths and rethink the narratives we’ve inherited about gender, resilience, and survival.

You’ll discover how Bosadi explores the architecture of sacrifice and the emotional toll of living in a society that normalises misogyny and violence. Dr. Matlwa shares her insights on the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, the silent wounds of migrant domestic workers, and the dangerous ways community complicity enables abuse. 

We break down the importance of naming, the symbolism behind her titles, and her deliberate choice to speak uncomfortable truths through storytelling.

We delve into the themes of faith and endurance that often silence women, revealing how religious and cultural pressures can act as tools of gaslighting and control. 

Perfect for readers, activists, and anyone committed to ending Gender Based Violence, Bosadi is a mirror held up to society—demanding reflection and action. If you're ready to challenge the status quo and empower women’s voices, this episode will inspire you to start conversations that matter.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Hello Hello, hello cheeky natives. Can I get a whoop-oop? Can I get a whoop? Can I get a whoop-hoop? Can I get a I don't want to reveal my age, so I'm gonna pretend that I don't know how the rest of that goes. But hello, cheeky natives. Welcome to another episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

How are you doing? How are you doing? You know, I just ran, I must tell you, I just ran straight from a hearing into this podcast. So it feels like a bit I might start talking about legal jargon. Just give me a moment to recalibrate. How was your day, Dr. Slay?

SPEAKER_01 0:44

You know, this year I'm rolling with the punches, so I I think I'll leave it at that. I it's okay, it's a Monday. Anyway, into less um upsetting matters. I'm very excited for today's conversation. And I think Latochanolo, would you like to do the honours, or do you want me to do the honours eventually?

SPEAKER_00 1:00

No, I think doctor to doctor, you know, doctor to doctor. You must do the honours, doctor to doctor. You know, doctor to be out here.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

And uh okay, with that, I have the esteemed pleasure of introducing our guest today, who is Dr. Copa Nomaka, who won the 2007 European Union Award for her first novel, Coconuts, which went on to become a bestseller and a classic South African novel, and subsequently jointly won the Warle Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa in 2010. Her successive novels, Spilled Milk and Paired Payne, were also published to Greater Claim, with Paired Payne shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Between them, her novels have been translated to close to a dozen languages. When she is not writing, Copano works as a public health physician. Copano lives in Johannesburg with her husband and three children and is the author of Busadi. Welcome to the Cheeky Natus.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Thank you so much for having me, Alma and Lisa Hololo. It's such a privilege.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

So, Copano, it's really interesting because I kind of want to speak to you about coconut, but I know that like that is not the era in which we're in. So I think it is really interesting. I suppose the first question is Busadi feels different to kind of period pain, spill milk, and coconut. And I wanted to speak a little bit about that. What inspired you to change tracks a little bit from your previous novels?

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Sure. Yeah, I guess, you know, on the other side when you're just writing, you don't realize you're changing track. So it's interesting you say that, Shanala. I guess it's also just I'm evolving and growing and maturing as a person, and I suppose my voice evolves similarly. Yeah, I think I I wrote about a topic that was painting me as a black South African woman, you know, the scourge of GDD on our society, and my own frustration with just like one news report after another and very little change between them. And writing is often how I'm trying to make sense of my own thoughts and emotions and concerns. And yeah, so Busaadi kind of just came together bit by bit in that way.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

I I'm so fascinated by by the title, and and I guess it'll go with with the themes as well, but you know there's there's that saying, and please pardon me if I if I butcher it, but now the title of the book is also called Busadi. And uh I think so much about the architecture of sacrifice, right? And so much of that is also how how the joy and the peace and the things in people's lives are predicated on the silence of women. And so I wanted to speak a little bit about womanhood and the architecture of sacrifice and really what you were trying to explore in the identity of women in writing this book. Yeah, no, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

And um, it was it was all of that, right? It's both like the celebrated strength of woman, but also just some of the BS that women have to put up with in the name of strength and sacrifice, and yeah, just some of the stuff that's been normalized in some respects. Um is just the way things are, and you know, this this kind of refrain that um kotella, you know, um persevere. And it doesn't actually translate really well into English, but this notion of it will be well, this is what our mothers went through, this is what our mothers' mothers went through, and this is what you must persist with. And I think Busadi was a little bit of a a rebellion, I think, from some of that in some shape or form. Naladi's a rebellious character, and yeah, just trying to like re-examine some of what we're asked to put up with, right? I'm I've got two daughters. I've got a son as well, but I've got two daughters, and I think of them and I think of some of the things that I don't want them to put up with. Um, so yeah, it's it's an exploration of all of that.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

And it's interesting that you speak about this idea of, you know, I was really quite fascinated in the the radical act of naming. So the idea that, you know, you've got coconut, you've got period pens, and you've got spilled milk. But I think you make a very intentional decision to kind of use a different title, right? A vernacular in order to name this book. And I was wondering why you didn't want to call it womanhood, for instance, or call it an English name. What was the commentary that you're trying to make um around the title?

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Sure, you know, um Litonolo, when I write, often the title is like so important to me as sort of like an anchor that kind of gives me a sense of navigation. And so the title, so to speak, the word in my mind, Busaadi, had been there from the outset. Um and I must say, I think it's credit to the fantastic publishers that I've journeyed with since Kokona for two decades now, Jakarta Media, when we were talking about marketing, because that's often when you're making hard compromises, like will people pick it up and what the cover is? And I was like, maybe we just put womanhood at the bottom, I don't know. No, you know, and so I I'm grateful for that because it was always Busadi to me, and I think I wanted the title to remain in that way, but you always want to make sure that a book gets picked up, right? And so, and it has been, and I'm and I'm so glad that it resonates because womanhood doesn't do it justice, right? It doesn't fully capture the weightiness in this concept of Busadi. So it was it was, yeah, I don't want to say a tool, but a way to kind of keep me focused on what I was trying to write about, but also I think with the support of incredible editors and and publishers to see it through to the finish.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

There are some heavy themes in the book, and and I think people often make the mistake of um synonymizing womanhood with motherhood, right? So to be a to be a woman is to be a mother, and to be a mother is to be a woman. But there's a there is a meditation on loss that you do in the book which particularly stood out to me. And it was really around what does it mean to be a childless mother? Naledi is a mother. She's had she's had a child, she's been unfortunate because she's had uh you know child loss. But Naledi is a mother, but she's a mother in a world where she is childless. And so I wanted to speak a little bit about that meditation, why you felt that in speaking about grief and loss, it was really important for you to meditate on this particular kind of transient state of being, right? To be the mother of a child who has passed.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

Yeah. Um, I think I I'm fascinated by the many types of shame that we carry as women, right? I remember as a fourth-year medical student in Cape Town, um, clerking, as we called it back then, a patient, and she was it was a guy in rotation. And she referred to her reproductive system, her vagina, her, you know, her genitals as mescantar. And that never left me. Like I was just like, I'd never heard of somebody refer. Yeah, and and so this concept of like our bodies letting us down, you know, in the sense of like, oh you what is the word? I'm trying to think of the language. Just our reproductive system, menstruation, all these things that we grow up with shame around, right? And then as a woman enters marriage, it's this pressure of having kids and having them soon, and with the shame that comes with miscarriage and struggling. But also I think there's like it's it's sometimes maybe I didn't want to be overly simplistic, Alma, about marriage and relationships and the challenges and how patriarchy affects both women and men, and how men themselves struggle with loss. And so both her struggle with their um many, many child losses, but also that of her partner as well was yeah, just something I, you know, I think my approach is never, I don't presume to have any answers. I just kind of sit in the discomfort of what everyday people go through and and just try and explore that through the lens of a character I care deeply about. Yeah, so so motherhood definitely surfaces, and I think also juxtaposing that with the mother who has left her children behind, the domestic worker in her home, right? Um, who's also a mother, and that's that's common territory for them, but has had to make tough choices for economic reasons to be here, and how these two mothers both can and can't support each other with the class divides.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

I like that you mentioned that because I think what was really powerful about Busadi was this meditation on xenophobia and migration. We know that Auntie is the domestic worker who's made a very difficult decision to leave her children to come and work so that they can have a better life. But I also think about the ideas of, you know, Alma spoke about this idea of grief and loss in the context of Naledi and her being a childless mother. But I want to talk a little bit about Auntie, right? And about her own invisible wounds of, you know, people like her who are essentially living on the margins of South African society. And I wanted to ask why it was important for you to surface those invisible wounds. One, on the other hand, it's dealing with her own grief and loss around not being able to participate meaningfully in her children's life, but also being ostracized in a society where she's not able to access basic services should she need them.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Yeah, and I, you know, I mean, I'd I'd love to pretend to have come at it with so much sophistication in my writing. But um, I guess what do they say? You don't know what you think until you write it. Um I I just often um with honour to write about the things that I see and experience around me, right? And so, you know, my paternal grandmother worked as a domestic worker, as as is the case with many black women in South Africa, both now and in our recent past. And it's just been fascinating to me, this in very intimate relationship, right? That used to be almost had like a veneer of separation because it was white families that you were working for historically, so that you could other yourself, you know, you could almost have a distance. But the intimacy of sometimes being the same age, separated only by economic circumstance, right? But otherwise, very similar hopes, right? For motherhood, for health of children, for marriage, for being able to give your children what you can't, and yet also just some very real class divides. So I think this relationship, the the madam and auntie kind of relationship, in the in the black South African sense, right? To two black women, whether one be South African or one be Zimbabwe Namalam, whatever the case be, living in the same homes, and the again the intimacy of what auntie see in your home, the the shame again, the things you try to hide, the soiled sheets, the the shouts in the nights, you know, the the messiness of family life that we can we can hide from the gram social media, but you can't hide from the people who live so intimately with you. So I think it just fascinated me. And then of course, I think it's a it's a common theme that started in period pain and and one I grapple with is the theme of xenophobia, the sense of our own self-hate, I think sometimes and how we project that on others. Yeah, and and the scapegoating, I guess, to the most vulnerable. But also I think the courage, you know, um, to live in the homes of others and to be at their mercy, but doing that for your children. Yeah. So it was just kind of braiding these questions, these curiosities, these C themes together into the lives of people.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

I think it's so interesting that you're spoken about the class divide, right? So because there is a sisterhood and a solidarity that exists between Naledi and Auntie, right? So they have completely different backgrounds. They're also different places in their lives, right? But there is a tender bond that develops between Naledi and Auntie. And I'm I'm so interested in how and how women find each other in these tender, complicated ways, despite what the expected social ideas may be around class, around positioning, around nationality, etc. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

And I think for me it's as well as that sometimes we find sisterhood in the unexpected places, right? You know, you'll um hear people saying, Oh, don't don't get too close. Don't be too nice. And yet Naledi's quite isolated a little bit in her world. And and here's um, I suppose in our the the tidiness of how social our society should operate and unlikely and who cares for her as well, right? I mean, how can you not form some kind of bond when you when you live with people daily and you see them suffer? So yeah, it was this this sense of sisterhood um that that is found in unlikely, unlikely spaces.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

You know, the not the elephant, but the kind of you write the novel, do you know, spanding and thinking about uh the global pandemic that happened that we had, which is COVID-19. The novel also speaks about the Salem pandemic, which is gender-based violence. And you unflinchingly confront both kind of the subtle and the loud forms of violence, particularly when you think about Naledi and her struggle within marriage that turns both physical and abuse and emotionally abusive. And I wanted to speak about why it was important, because you know what's really interesting is that the start of the book kind of starts with a gender violence act, but throughout the book, you kind of are seeing what led Naledi to that moment. And I wanted to speak about why it was important for you to you to speak about gender-based violence, particularly in the context of Naledi, because a person like Naledi, you would hope, right, she would have a wonderful life. But we see behind closed doors, Naledi's life is anything but wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I like your last point, right? A person like Naledi, I think, isn't that just the thing? Is that it's indiscriminate, at least in our context, right? I think we, you know, if you have economic means, you can perhaps pretend and you can try to hide it. But um, we see in our society, right, that GBV kind of crosses between economic divides. Um and at the I think it's just I the so writing for me is like a deeply personal um coping mechanism in my own life. And so through all my novels, it's somewhat self-indulgent, and then the things that I am trying to work out in my own mind, find a way. Writing helps me kind of need through that. And so, I mean, this is probably the case for many people in South Africa, right? But yeah, GBV is pretty insane, and there's there doesn't seem to be a way out. Like, you know, there's commissions and there's this and there's that, and there's, you know, it's on the news, the news cycle changes, and then again, and you can't even remember if it's the same woman because you're getting them confused because just there's just so many stories, right? And so I started writing, I think I started writing this book to incorporate. I'm always writing, so I can't always tell where something starts and where another thing ends. But I I started writing in earnest, I would say then. And as you rightly say, there was also this shadow pandemic, and yeah, this was my way of um confronting it for myself, but also hoping that this is one contribution to the conversation. Um and that sometimes just my hope is that sometimes if we just face or grapple with the tough questions, that's that's a step to some kind of resolution, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:52

I'm struck by by that because I think what goes what is evidence in the book is this communal complicity, right, in in the scourge of DBV. So people in Naledi's life are well aware of what you know Lisetti is doing. In some ways, also he's protected. People's own ideas of why Naledi deserves to have this done to her, also comes through. But the complicity runs throughout the book, and even the people that you would think would protect her, like her own family, participate so deeply in this complicity. And so I wanted to speak a little bit about what the statements around that communal complicity and the responsibility as it relates to to that intimate partner violence that we see in this in this Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

I do think um, you know, I I guess it's like we when something is so normalized in our society, it's a little bit like, but also why I'm not a lady. Why did you speak to him in that way, right? Why did you provoke? Why did you uh yeah, and maybe our mothers and mothers, mothers and mothers, mothers, I mean, you know, there's this sense of this is what we survived for your sake, and Yeah, you know, what makes me so so different or so special. I guess there's one potential way of looking at it. Another is I sometimes think, and and this is the the thing about writing, right? Like you you even as as the author, you you s you see your own words differently when you come back to them. I do sometimes Naledi herself, you know, you as you said, there's a sense that she's brought this on herself. I do wonder if she also thinks she deserves it. You know, a little bit of like self-flagellation, right? That she has failed in doing the one thing that she should do, which is to create this family. And so, um, yeah, it's both the patriarchal society where no, sometimes and oftentimes the enablers, the perpetrators, but also sometimes ourselves, right? Where we are ashamed at our inability to have kids or to hold a happy family life together. Um, and it can feel like, yeah, like GBV is is is your fault. It's failure. Um I think that's what makes it so tough. So I think Naledi is is grappling with all of that.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

I wanted to speak a little bit about this idea of like the sacred versus the secular, which one I'm thinking about the weaponization of patience, right? We know that in many traditional and religious settings in South Africa, as you said, you know, like this idea of enduring and persevering. And I wanted to know: isn't a lady's faith a source of strength? Or is it that very thing that mutes her survival instinct, you know? Because sometimes the church and the family use scripture to tell it to endure because it's a sacred duty, which I feel like kind of effectively gaslight her into staying in an abusive situation. So I wanted to really think about this idea of the weaponization of patience. But then on the other hand, I also wanted to think about this adultering of the nuclear family. It feels like Naledi's rebellion, as you've mentioned earlier, begins when she realizes like this sanctity of marriage has become an idol that demands that she sacrifice her own safety. So I wanted to speak about that, right? Firstly, this idea of the weaponization of patience, but also this idol of the nuclear family.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

That's such a beautiful question, um, and a tough question. Yeah, I mean, I I am a person of faith, and I'm a person of faith that grapples a lot. Um, and so you see that in a lot of the characters that I write is arts. Um and I enjoyed writing Auntie, who's done with it, who's just like, eh, this this this male god of yours. Does he not see us, right? So yeah, I think it's tough with Hanono because it's hard to tease out how much is a church that has been built up in a patriarchal society, and how much is a force of great love, right? Um, that has been tainted. And I think these characters grapple with that, which I think reflects the real grappling that m many people go through various seasons of their lives. Um, you know, and a lady on on her knees at the side of her bed with a cut lip, you know, Auntie remarking that gosh, you know, how do you pray to a God that keeps letting you down, right? And so I think in these women you see these tough questions that normal human beings struggle with. There's a there's, you know, um and so yeah, I don't have a good answer other than that I try to, in these characters, showcase that grappling, the sense of knowing a force of love, but also being painfully disappointed by this loud silence, right? Yeah, and I mean, as you rightly say, it is weaponized by the priests of the church and the women's, you know, all these women's groups and church. That are often not the greatest place to go to for advice or guidance when you're going through these things. Because if anything, as you rightly say, some sometimes, not all the time, you you're you're returned back to the unsafe environment. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

And I suppose just to pick up on the second question or the second theme that I wanted us to explore, which is this um adulterying of the nuclear family. You know, Naledi kind of begins her journey from print for a husband and a child, and then moves to this radical realization that her own life is more worth than her marital status. And I wanted to speak about that, right? Like this idea that, you know, in society, I feel like most of us are socialized to believe that haunale moon nalibana, you uh you you've reached it, right? But what is the cost of that? What is the cost of that?

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Absolutely. No, absolutely. And I think um, yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, I think that's exactly the question. Look, she takes to an extreme, right? Yeah, no, I mean you said it. I like ditto to that. It is that is exactly the point, that at what cost, right? Um, and not just for her um interrogating that question, but for the people around her, her mom, her dad, Rahadi, you know. I and in some respect I think it's the courageous voice of Auntie, the most disenfranchised of them all, who is the truth teller in the situation. And maybe because she's there's not much more for her to lose, right? So um, yeah, I think it does beg the question of the things we have been raised to hold dear.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Um I'm so curious about Naledi's relationship with her mother because I I think that we an estimate how how foundational the family is as your first units for understanding relationships and relations with each other and other people, but also for thinking of your place in the world. Naledi is she describes herself as being fat and dark and just never being enough for her mother, and how that then also translates and cut her relationships with other people. And so I wonder if Naledi was always going to land up with a Lisedi because of who her mother is and who she is in the world. And so I wanted us to speak a little bit about writing that kind of complicated, difficult relationship, which one would assume would be one that's filled with love and all of these things we think about mothers and their children.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

Yeah. I'm I'm personally very fascinated about mother-daughter relationships and how complex they are, particularly in the nuclear family setup, right? Um watching mom sacrifice and and maybe not almost wanting her to be a little bit more courageous, to speak up, to stand up for herself, but also understanding in the traditional sense that she's maintaining all of this for you guys, right? Like economically, right? Like ba ba ba ba ba, the father figure, you know. You make sure he is respected and taken care of because he takes care of us. And I've swung between whether Naledi's mother loves her deeply, which I believe she does, and is protecting her in the only way she knows how. So she's not gonna tear down a patriarchal society. This is a system that is, you know, endured through the test of time. And this is how you survive with system Wanaka. And this is how you th thrive in this system. And you you listen to your husband and you don't speak back, and we don't speak like this, Malady, and you don't do this. And that sometimes is love, right? If you don't feel that the system can be changed. Yes, I kind of go between the questions myself as I think back and write, and when I was writing about the characters. I think sometimes we don't see our own blind spots, and as I said, as a mother myself, I'm sure I have many, and and sometimes I think I act out of good intent. Sit properly, you know. How many young girls have been told that on a couch? It's well-meaning, right? But you know, it just reinforces norms. And I think n lady's mom is just um I have empathy for her, I must say. Um, and whether that resulted in a choice of Lassetti, I don't know. And I think that also Alma suggests that it's it's our fault, right? Like we picked the wrong guy, you know? And it shouldn't be like it that shouldn't be the case. Oh, like nah went and you picked the guy with the red flags. Sure, that should be a part of it, but nobody deserves any of that, right? Totally. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

So I I don't think that it was her fault. What I was really alluding to is how the ways in which our familial relationships shape how we see ourselves, shape what shape the standards of what we think are acceptable for even for other people to do to us. So if you come from an environment where people feel that it's okay to behave in ways that are problematic and traumatic towards you, then it sets the standard for even the kind of ways in which other people feel that they can behave towards you. So I'm not saying that it's Nalady's fault. I'm saying that the way in which her mother treated her and her identity and how so much of who she was is predicated on this, like constantly having to perform. So you grow up as a girl, you're performing for your parents, then you become an adult and you now perform for this man. And you feel that the weight of the success of your relationships, be it with your family or even your romantic relationships, are predicated on you doing this work, right? And I think that kind of setup makes you really vulnerable to like just this narcissistic, abusive kind of man who then preys on that kind of emotional abuse that you've endured, right? So the fact that Naledi's mother just could not, could not see the humanity in her child, I think also then set Naledi up to then be abused by somebody like Elizabeth. Sure. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 28:10

I hear you. Absolutely. And I think one thing I've struggled with, Alma, is this is so pervasive in our society. I almost wish there was like a nice like DSM for I'm gonna use a medical term, or like pathological like combination of conditions of people that would be like, ah, if you're this, this, this, and this in this circumstance, because then we could fix it. But if you look at our society, this is so pervasive. Girls from perfect homes, dad was there, mom was a soother star, and yet she's on the news, you know? And I think that actually makes me despair because there's no rhyme or reason. Like there is no sense to what we are seeing every day, reading about in our newspapers. You cannot like typecast the victims and sometimes not even the perpetrators, right? And I almost wish there was like a type, because then at least we can rally around fixing that. I think what's harder for me and scary is that it's just so pervasive. And yeah, anyway, I agree with you. I'm just like, I yeah, it there's you can find uh an example across any type of woman's education, economic, race, um, and it's relentless, which is the hard part. But I mean, this sounds so depressing. The book is also supposed to be hopeful in some respect. I was deliberate about changing the end of the story because I was so tired of the same ending. And um, I think in a metaphorical way, I do hope we can start to change the ends of the stories in South Africa, not in violent ways, but in ways where we're not just mourning one woman after another, but we can almost shift the needle on this tight GDE.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Before we go, I wanted you to kind of titulate our listeners to just the first page of Bossadi. And I'm wondering if you could brace us with just reading kind of the first three or so paragraphs of the start of your novel. And then I suppose to end the question is just to ask you one thing, right? I often think of Bossadi as kind of a mirror or a hymn. And I I said in a review that I wrote on my Instagram, it feels like a call to action. So I wanted to know what is the one thing you're asking of us to change about how we treat women in our society.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

Yeah, I would say, and um, I guess here we have the choir, but for us not to look away, you know, to sit in the discomfort, and it's so uncomfortable, right? I mean, like how many of us change the channel like again, you know? And that's where it ends, right? So to kind of sit in this discomfort, and as I said, I'm I'm not a prophet or a or an expert, I'm just a humble writer. And so hope that this spurs conversation. I hope women feel seen um in this in this book, not just from the GBB point of view, but just, you know, the the the microaggressions that sometimes are inflicted on on young women um entering marriage and that men too um enjoy it and are enlightened by it and engage in it. So that's my hope.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

I mean, before we leave shows, I think you said something so interesting, and I I want to speak a little bit about like this performance of perfection, right? So less the performance of happiness, but more the performance of perfection. So Naledi has this, she begs and she has all these amazing hobbies, but on the surface, she's really a woman that has it together. You know, there's a there's a part in the book that strikes me where they go, they're meant to go away on holiday, and Rachadi's like, oh, you know, my son is just so perfect. This is why he's taking you on holiday. And Naledi just almost lets it lets it slide. And I'm thinking of this particularly this week because there is a woman who is trending on social media because she's spoken about being her family's breadwinner. And people are angry that she shattered the illusion of this man who's also in the public eye being seen to be a, you know, just this high-achieving breadwinner man. So I wanted, before we go to just speak a little bit about why you wanted to write about what it looks like to perform perfection, less happiness, but more the performance of perfection.

SPEAKER_02 32:30

Absolutely. I imagine many people can relate to this, right? Like seeing an event or a lunch or a dinner you were at on social media, and you're like, really? Was that the same? Because that was not it, right? This is the veneer that is put out into the world. And yeah, the sort of happy couple vibes that many of us try and put out there. And I guess it goes back to Little Nolo your question around what makes us worthy, right? And and so we we posture with what we think makes us um worthy. And in some respect, for Nalady anyway, and maybe for many of us, it's the same thing that keeps us hostage is this I'd rather the illusion of happiness than real happiness, right? The value of of people thinking I'm happy is more is more valuable than I think I'm happy in myself. So yeah, I think it it was that, Alma, and and and how that that makes it difficult for us to walk away to leave again shame, right? And the sense of failure.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

Yeah. Thank you so much, Coupon. It's been such an enlightening conversation. I just wanted our listeners to kind of get the start of the book. So I'm wondering if you're able to read. I don't actually know if you have a copy in front of you, but I I imagine you would. So if it's possible to please read for us.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

I'm in my study, I've pulled one. Um I killed him. I sliced his neck open early on Christmas morning while he slept with that pathetic look on his face. I used the knife Rakhadi had given me the night of her niece Mamsi's funeral when she shoved me into a corner with a crate of tomatoes and told me to take care of her favourite knife. This Mabuchadana Matagala, take it everywhere you go. It cuts like a hot knife to butter. And so I did. Took it everywhere I went, had it in my apron when he staggered home drunk on Christmas Eve, threw the plate of dinner I had made for him onto the floor, put his hand into the lemon cake I'd baked for Christmas Day, and ripped out a piece with his dirty paw. Just like Rakhadi said, the Mabuhajana cut cuts like hot knife to butter. I was surprised at how easily the tissue split, did not resist being separated. First epidermis, then dermis, then subcutaneous tissue, then muscles, then blood, then vessels that poured and poured and poured. I remembered all the names from his Atlas of Human Anatomy textbook from when I used to help him study. I was a good girlfriend, a great wife. I called the police right after, of course. Nobody answered the phone. They never do. You must take yourself over there, which is what I did. Locked out bedroom door where he lay on the bed looking like the fool he has always been. I drove myself to the station and spent the night. Well, let me rephrase that. They kept me overnight. They are charging me with murder. Ask me if I want a lawyer. For what? I told you I killed himself. He's on the bed in our main bedroom. Here is the key. I think, they think, I am not of sound mind. If only they knew, my head has never been clearer.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Yeah. Listen, thank you so much, Copano, for writing Bossadi. I think Bossadi, for me at least, has been a really wonderful meditation on womanhood and the struggles of particularly black women. And I think Busadi is unrelenting in its honesty. It really refuses the comfort of euphemism. So thank you really for taking that up. From the Cheeky Natives. As you can, as you can tell, we really love the book.

SPEAKER_02 35:56

Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This has been so fun. Um, thank you for the opportunity. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

This has been an absolutely fabulous conversation. Thank you so much to Dr. Gobamatla, who is the author of Busadi. Do be sure to get your copy and uh don't forget to use the Chi Kinatus um link. We will add it at the bottom where you can get 20% off. And thank you so much once again, Kopanu. This has been such a beautiful conversation. Absolutely loved your book. And uh, we can't wait to see what Busadi does in the world. So until next, Chi Kinat.