The ManicaPost
EDWARD Tsumele has just completed reading the novel Hamba Sugar Daddy and has some advice for young women heading to university.
I do not normally like writing open letters to anybody as in most cases, such letters increasingly tend to be patronising and self-indulgent, if not outrightly arrogant. However, this time around, I felt perhaps I should, especially in light of the fact that the 19-year-olds who have just passed matric and are now headed to university, and in some cases, are going to be away from home and will be living independent lives.
Under such circumstances, these young people become vulnerable, particularly female students. Another reason I am doing so is because I have just completed reading the novel Hamba Sugar Daddy, by well-known Pretoria author Nape ‘a Motana.
This novel is a gripping tale of how young women in general, and female students in particular, become vulnerable and fall prey to rich, almost always married older men with loads of cash to dish out to young trophy girls desperate for material things such as expensive cellphones, tablets and labels just to fit in a society that increasingly has become materialistic.
Some of the young girls are simply vulnerable as they come from poor backgrounds, and will do anything simply to survive in a rough world that is not kind to such souls any more.
These men used to be called sugar daddies. They are now calling themselves by what I suppose they believe is a more socially acceptable word, “blessers” and their younger lovers, “blessees”, as opposed to calling them sugar babes. More about Hamba Sugar Daddy later.
By now you are probably one of the most anxious and yet happiest people to be at university in your first year. Happy, you definitely have to be, and anxious also, yes, it is understandable. Why should you be happy? One, you must, first of all, be happy in that you found a place at university as many others who have also passed could not because South African universities cannot accommodate everyone as there are simply more deserving candidates than there are places at our universities.
Yet, others were offered places but could not make it due to a number of reasons ranging from sheer misfortune and also because of the lack of resources such as when parents cannot even afford registration fees. All these reasons must indeed give you the reason to be one of the happiest students right now.
But why anxious? This is because this is your first time at university, and you are probably away from home for the first time, and you now have freedom to be away from family and make the sort of decisions that you could ever only dream of. For example, where you would like to live while you are at university, whom you invite into your space as friends, what kind of decor you want in your abode, and where and when you want to hang out.
This is one of the most crucial stages of your life, and the sort of decisions and choices you make will have a bearing on the kind of future you will have. They will determine whether you become a success or not in future life.
Choose your friends carefully, preferring to hang around more often with those whose lifestyles, behaviour, deeds and attitudes are aligned to your goals at university, than those who are destructive and distract you from crafting the path of your future. Remember, you are at university to do one, and only one thing – and that is to study and pass your courses. Other things come secondary to this one. The good thing is that at university you will find all sorts of friends, the disruptive and the focused and ambitious ones – and if you are as smart as I think you should be because you could not have gone this far if you did not – then choose the right friends.
If you cannot find the right friends right away, bide your time, and you will eventually connect, even if you must be a nerd, it is okay to be a nerd in order for you to be successful sometimes.
The right friends will come, and that is how nature operates.
And please, do not get me wrong, this is a great time to be adventurous, learn new things in life, have an exciting lifestyle and all that. It is even okay to party with friends in new exciting hot spots. But if you have to party hard, remember also to apply the same energy, time and enthusiasm to your studies.
Remember this is university, and not high school. University lecturers are not high school teachers. They come to class, present their lectures, give you the assignment and leave you do the rest. They are not going to spoon-feed you, and that I can assure you.
Now, back to Hamba Sugar Daddy. This is a novel that is so relevant, especially in the lives of female first-year students at university as it deals with issues they will almost always face, the blessers that scour our university campuses and other places. The main character in Hamba Sugar Daddy, which is set at a high school called Solomon Mahlangu High in Pretoria, dealing with the phenomenon of blessers among matric pupils, is called Rolivhuwa Ramabulana. She is from a poor family, raised by a single mother struggling to put bread on the table, barely managing to give her only daughter pocket money.
Rolivhuwa relies on her friend Kedibone for lunch money, a flashy blessee. Tired of Rolivhuwa’s dependence on her, Kedibone eventually introduces her friend to a rich, married blesser called Bigvy, who owns a thriving café in Pretoria. As it often happens in such relationships, the vulnerable Rolivhuwa becomes the businessman’s trophy lover, taken to expensive hotels, dined at some of the most expensive eateries in town, and showered with gifts. This was in return for sex, which she never really enjoyed, by the way.
But that was before things took a downturn as her 50-year-old lover became jealous, abusive and made Rolivhuwa’s life a living hell. The younger lover, rightly so, decided to extricate herself from the toxic relationship.
But then it was not easy. By this time, her mother was already sucked into her daughter’s affair. This is because the whole family was already benefiting from this relationship as the blesser was taking care of things such as buying groceries and furniture for them. Because of this dependence on Bigvy, Rolivhuwa’s mother took the side of the blesser. Rolivhuwa, however, stuck to her guns and broke out of the grip of the blesser.
And as it were, she made a success of her life without the blessing of the blesser, through sheer determination, and passed matric and landed herself a place at UCT to study accounting through a Patrice Motsepe Foundation scholarship.
The rest, as they say, is history. Hamba Sugar Daddy is published by Jacana Media, and is available at bookshops nationwide.– The Sunday Independent
