TRIBUTE TO REVEREND JABULANI THOMAS GIGABA

TRIBUTE TO REVEREND JABULANI THOMAS GIGABA ON 05 DECEMBER 2014
29 MARCH 1938 – 02 DECEMBER 2014

On behalf of the family, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for having set aside all the important things you could have done today to attend this solemn occasion to lay our father, Reverend Gigaba, to his final resting place.

We are most humbled by your generosity and this gesture of goodwill, for all the prayers we have received this week since we suffered the awful tragedy of the loss of our pillar of strength, the man who was, for our family, our moral compass.

We thank God for the enormous love he has demonstrated to us by giving to us this man as our father, husband to our mother and grandfather to our children.

His union with our mother was to us an inspiration, a blessing and a lesson; together they complemented each other so perfectly – indeed, they were a pair made in heaven itself!

From a marriage, during the past 45 years, theirs grew into a union of equal partners, each one of them playing their roles in making it work and raising their children.

When mom was away at work, either far away from home in between dad changing missions or during her many night-shifts as a nurse, never once did dad complain about her making him do her chores as well as his own; he tended to us, changing our nappies at night and preparing our meals, not always the most delicious, but it came from his purest of hearts as a father the provider, and ensured that when mom returned, our clothes and uniforms would be clean and pressed, we would have something to wear and we would be fed.

On such occasions as these, besides missing mom because she was our mother, rarely did we feel the gap of her absence because dad did all mom would have done.

You shared a love for farming – planting and keeping stock, and fed your children and even used some to send them to school.

Mother never had a husband that simply bought alcohol and newspapers and turned around to demand a full meal even when he knew he had not provided it; hers was a husband who knew his role as a provider and fulfilled it without even blinking.

From the outset, and on behalf of my sisters, let me thank our mom most sincerely today for being not only dad’s wife and partner, but for also being his nurse, loyally keeping to her vows to be with him in good and bad times, for poorer or richer, in sickness and in health, until death them would do part!

Mom had to postpone her own medical needs to prioritise dad’s, so much that we even began to feel guilty, to think dad was selfish and yet she knew the vows they had, the commitment they had to those vows and that, consequently, had she been the more sick, dad would have done exactly the same.

Mom has, in the past few years, taught us invaluable lessons in unconditional love and personal sacrifice for the one you love and assured us, not only that she was not a nurse by mistake, but that we are indeed blessed to have a mother such as you.

Again, in this regard, we could not have asked God for a better mother!

Together with dad, you had a dream about your children which you saw through to the end; and shared in its pursuit no matter what obstacles stood your way!

Where our father was wont to stubbornness and forcefulness in pursuit of this dream; our mother was more serene and caring.

Where our mother was a pleasure to go shopping with, dad was one heck-of-a-guy,

• He would buy us bread and coke or milk when we got hungry,
• He would get irritated with mom’s long and unending shopping, which we, of course, enjoyed thoroughly,
• He would not buy anything for himself until mom either forced him to or just simply bought it for him.

Yet, they both cohered towards the common dream of the education and proper rearing of their children and never compromised in ensuring that their dream about us eventually became our very own dream.

It was also this dream that made him interrogate my wife, Noma, about her educational qualifications when I brought her home to introduce her to the family.

He quizzed her to exhaustion about her education, that of her family as well as her career.

We are eternally-indebted to our parents for this beautiful and immortal dream they singularly shared about us, and are duty-bound to keep it alive among their grandchildren.

We remember fondly,

• when he would be waiting for Gugu and I as we returned with our slates from primary school, to restart all the day’s lessons with us soon after we finished our lunch and jumped out of our uniforms,
• when he would drop us off at school, one by one, at the beginning of every school year and made sure we all had a school, and he knew our class-teachers and principals, and sometimes befriended our principals, which we did not often like,
• when he would drive many times all the way to Greytown to Nozipho and Mqondisi’s school, attending even school events no matter how taxing was the drive, particularly on weekends given his own punishing weekend schedules,
• when he struggled to teach our late brother, Mqondisi, Afrikaans when this was demanded at his school even though he did not know it himself, but still he persevered,
• when he would take Mpume to varsity at the beginning of the school term or to fetch her from varsity when the term ended, or when he made her amasi from miellie-rice and thus stopped her from ever waking him up at midnight claiming to be hungry;
• when he would ensure we had universities to go to and took loans and did everything to get us post-school education,
• when he would ask us politely to go fetch our own preferred cane when we had done something wrong in order to teach us the important relationship between “cause and effect, “action and consequences”,
• when he would reward us for getting good grades in order to encourage us; the joy in his eyes when we brought our mid-year or year-end results to him, and the sheer pleasure he derived from taking us to the next class, and
• how he would forgive us our transgressions and accommodate our viewpoints as we grew up, even as he may himself have been fundamentally opposed to these.

Boy! Did we not all laugh that dad was stingy, except when it came to education and building us a home he would leave us when he departed this world!

Dad demanded his change, no matter what he gave you money for, you had to bring change back, until Mqondisi in a stroke of genius started bringing back 1c, 2c, or 5c coins as change, which finally ended the demands for change – he had met his match!

We are eternally and profoundly grateful to this union between our father and mother, “his friend”, as he fondly called her, who remains now with the responsibility to provide us alone the parental guide we got from both of them with such aplomb over the past decades.

Since we were born, we have shared in their dreams, their joys and laughter, their human weaknesses, their industriousness and enjoyed the joyful, close-knit and religious family unit they created for us.

Indeed, it was a privilege for us to share the last many decades with him, having been married to my mom for 45 years, father to Gugu for 44 years, me, 43 years, Nozipho, 39 years, and grandfather to Lerato for almost 15 years, Sonwabo, 13 years, Nkanyezi, three-and-a-half years and Mvelo, almost two years.

We can today say it with no fear of contradiction that our family knew of no better man than this man who today lies in front of silent, cold and without a voice.

He was to us the best man there could ever be!

For so long as we have known him and had the privilege to call him “DAD”, he played his role to each one and all of us to the full; being a husband to our mother that worked hard to provide and protect and father to us that taught us through his work and force of example, guided us through life’s challenges and led us to where he wanted us to be, even when because of childhood, we did not know we needed to get there.

Since he passed on, we have had time to reflect, albeit in pain and tears, about his life and what he meant to us.

We have appreciated the little things and the big things he did for us; the jokes he made to make us laugh even through difficult moments, just to lighten up our moments and the big decisions about our lives he took without even flinching to take us a step further in future.

We have appreciated what he sought us to learn and to accomplish; all the lessons he taught us and direction towards which he led us, sometimes forcefully against our better wishes and judgement, in order to prepare us for this moment when he will no longer be amongst us physically, but when he will carry on being with us in spirit and through eternally-cherished memories of good times shared, and the bad times.

Here lies before us the silent, cold and voiceless remains of the man who gave to his wife, his children, grandchildren and all his family and neighbours his very best and his all.

He meant the world to us.

Father taught us to love and fear God; to try our best to live by his injunctions and yet to know we are human, we live among humans, we can and will falter, but must learn from our mistakes.

His own human deficiencies were but a lesson in the deficiencies of imperfect humans.

Amongst the many values he taught us, as well as an unyielding love and dedication to education, he taught us to love, respect and honour all human beings, regardless of their station in life and, accordingly, to be humble and value humans, young and old, rich or poor, powerful or meek.

Dad loved his family and loved his wife and grandchildren even more.

The day he received the news of the birth of each of his grandchildren was always like the first time he had a grandchild, and insisted we brought them home to him at the soonest possible moment, particularly for baptism:

• He loved Lerato, his only grand-daughter, whom he named Qhakazile;
• He loved Sonwabo, Mthandeni, his eldest grandson;
• He shed a tear when he met Nkanyezi, having prayed hard for him because he did not want to leave me without a helper – he called him my brother!; and
• He prayed to God to give me another son, and Mvelo was born, whom he named Ntsikayezwe, and he thanked God and said, now he could take him.

Yet, he shifted the goal-posts with God again because he did not want to leave me unmarried.

He loved his daughter-in-law, Nomachule, for loving his son, loving her in-laws, giving his son a family and helper and for giving him, Mkhulu, grandsons, and asked God to keep him until the wedding in order to witness his son’s family begin.

God granted him his wish; after the wedding, he always prayed that he had no more requests to make and God could now take him anytime.

When the family was dispersing after the wedding, he quipped that we would next come together as a family to attend his own wedding; and here we are!

We are profusely grateful to his doctors and nurses who tried everything to provide him the best medical care our country could offer, for the professionalism, love, respect and dedication with which they went about their duty, always moving mountains and transcending the call of duty to ensure he has good health, returning him to us, more promising each time.

You did not fail in your duties; God’s time had just simply come!

Your kind hearts, Godly spirits and professional conduct has endeared you to our family; we have not the words strong enough to thank you.

God will answer for us and bless you abundantly!

On our part as his family, we are comfortable that we did not neglect his needs and did what we could, trying our very best, to have him receive the best medical care we could afford and to show him our undying love.

He appreciated it, and was at peace with his impending fate.

That is why when his final moment came, as peacefully he departed this to the world beyond the comprehension of the living in the same manner and home that his own mother did 31 years ago, in 1983.

At this moment, as his only remaining biological son and the person to whom he has now passed on his baton, which I accept willing and bravely, allow me to strike a personal note.

He made me the man I have become and through his persistent and yet quiet ways, prepared me for the journey I would have to chart when he departed.

In a way, my father knew this day would come when he would depart this world and leave me to pick up his baton and carry on this journey that is like an unending relay that has been passed on from one generation of my forebears to the next, for millions of years.

In his certain ways, he knew that the birth of your children signal the beginning of your own end, of your demise, and accordingly one must do what and whatever they must to prepare them for a future they will live, on their own, for no generation lives its own future as well as that of its successors, nor accomplishes its own tasks and yet pursues those of their successors.

Through his teachings and force of example, long ago when I was young and he took me to work with him, whether when going to various branches of the many parishes at which he was a Rector or on his tractor as he went to plough virgin fields, when he woke me up to accompany the workers at Groutville to the canefields on cold winter mornings during school vacations, or when he demanded I look after my sisters even when I did not always understand why, when he insisted I come home early, never after sunset, even when I thought at the time that this was draconian, or when he kept pushing me to study harder, everything he taught and demonstrated to me comes back today as in a flash, saying to me in an unequivocal manner that I was being prepared for my future role by the best teacher there could ever be.

You taught me to drive, first the tractor and then the car, and took me on those long, totally enjoyable drives to the branches of our parish and even sent me to buy milk at the farms in Dundee so I could drive some more.

I adored and admired him unconditionally and I do so even more today.

I am currently weak and in sorrow, but in time I shall be strong.

I am ready for the tasks entrusted upon me now by the hand of fate and will prove more than equal to the burden on my shoulders.

I learned as we grew up that my father made mistakes like everyone else, sometimes big and sometimes small, but all that this said to me was that he was as human as we all are and his weaknesses and mistakes are a lesson to us that as humans we are bound to error and weakness, and that the issue is not these, but your ability to overcome them and shine in spite of them so that it is your strengths and accomplishments that remain your indelible legacy.

Our family will know of no other Jabulani Thomas Gigaba; but his teachings will live on.

I am a better man and servant to God and our people because of him and all he taught me.

He believed in me and gave me the weapons with which to face life’s challenges.

I remember him returning home all the time with food and groceries, and how he insisted we till the fields and care for animals, teaching me about a man’s duty to work and provide for his family – a lesson I will never forget nor abandon!

For that, I am profoundly grateful; I thank him unreservedly and am proud to be called his son!

Coming home will never be the same again; all that we have known for the past forty-four years since Gugu – our eldest sister – was born has changed and shall never be the same again.

Though hurt and in awful pain; we are profoundly comforted by your prayers, the support you have given us throughout this week since you learned of the news of our father’s passing on.

From far and wide, and across the political spectrum, you have stood with us in our corner and shared in our grief, and thus you have eased our pain and made it all the more bearable.

We are even more comforted by the knowledge that our father is now at a better place, with his God he served throughout his distinguished calling of priesthood; he is at peace.

We know we have earned an angel who will guard over us and his grandchildren, making sure we follow the path he had charted for us to the final days of our own lives.

As we have said, we knew of no better man than him.

As is typical when a mighty tree, a family patriarch, falls, this is a moment for the family to unite in order to carry forward the march in unison.

We shall do exactly that!

We thank God for the blessing that he was; he is now at peace.

God has been gracious to us and to my father and granted him his final wish, to die peacefully at the home he built for his family and that he loved.

We cannot blame the Almighty for calling him to a better place; we are only grateful he lent him to us for seventy-six years to teach us how to be better people and parents to our own children.

We praise God even now, even as we are in pain and sorrow.

Today, and bravely, we commend his soul unto God.

I thank you!