Sad tribute to an ailing wife
Husband pens letter on 40th anniversary
IN A time of good cheer and reconnecting, a husband who fears his wife probably won’t remember another anniversary penned a poignant tribute to her on their 40th year of marriage yesterday.
In it, Thembekile Ndlovu, 62, tells Bukelwa, 60: “The greatest thing we have ever learnt in these four decades is to love and be loved in return.
“We hope and wish that the Almighty will keep us beyond our golden anniversary”.
Bukelwa, one of the first black speech therapists in the Eastern Cape, suffered a brain tumour in 2010, and despite neurosurgery, it returned in 2011 and required surgery again.
She has lost some movement in her right hand and leg and took early retirement.
Thembekile, who was a journalist before entering the teaching profession, is now retired and takes care of her.
His father-in-law, Mfanelo James Henenga-Phike, who worked as a messenger for the Daily Dispatch for much of his life, would answer his son-in-law’s academic, political and history questions by reading stories from the paper.
The couple met in Zwelitsha at the teacher training college in 1973, were married in Mdantsane’s Assemblies of God church and then went to Soweto for their honeymoon. It was 1976 and shortly after the Soweto student uprising and massacre.
In his tribute, Ndlovu says he knows it was odd, but the newlyweds – she was 19, he was 21 – were given a tour of the area.
The sense of destruction and loss of lives never left them.
“We took a serious decision that we would be husband and wife for keeps. We would be life partners and lasting friends regardless of the challenges which lay ahead.
“We vowed to embrace the idea of family,” he said.
Ndlovu rose through the amalgamated SABC of the 90s to become the government’s chief director of communications in charge of broadcast policy, while Bukelwa worked as a speech therapist and chief education specialist (support services) for the Eastern Cape education department’s Rubusana office until her first tumour took her away from work.
The couple abided by the lesson from their parents: “You do not go to bed angry with each other.”
Other lessons for a “fantastic relationship in marriage” that they put into practice were: “The family that prays together, stays together” and “Giving your all demands every husband and wife to be ethical, honest and courageous.”
He thanked her for their two daughters, Melisa, 36, and Amanda, 21, and for being blessed with a four-year-old grandson. —