In conversation with Redi Tlhabi
The journalist, author, producer, presenter and soothsayer talks to Joy Watson about navigating the pandemic tightrope of our contracted lives
There’s no questioning it – Redi Tlhabi is an incisive thinker. One who has a special ability to gaze into the murky crystal ball of our layered socioeconomic context, the intricacies of our popular culture, and, with razor-sharp skill, succinctly frame ideas that help us make sense of the world.
On the Sunday before lockdown started, Tlhabi was at a friend’s house for a birthday lunch. The day held in its cusp the warmth of that which most soothes — laughter, sunshine, family and friendship. She did not realise that it was to be her last social gathering for a while. “I look back on that Sunday as something to work towards again,” she says, “something we have parked temporarily, not something that is lost. We park it so that those practices of fellowship and being among loved ones will be lived again.”
While this hope is imperative to being able to get up each day and propel ourselves forward, it is confounded by the many losses we see all around us.
“Little did we know that there would be so much loss,” she says. It has been a recurring theme through the pandemic – the loss of loved ones, livelihoods, the things we did, the things we took for granted. Tlhabi reminds us that “on the [other] side of this darkness, we will be there again”.
Her first loss was in April last year, when the poltergeist of the pandemic was just beginning to touch us. Somi Vilakazi, her husband’s cousin, succumbed to Covid-19, the first patient to die from Covid-19 at Charlotte Maxeke hospital. Tlhabi and her husband were unable to go to his funeral.
“It was so heartbreaking,” she says. “At the beginning of the pandemic, the enforcement of the rules was much stricter. As a result, my friend’s send-off felt more like discarding someone rather than celebrating a life. We could not adhere to the ritual of bringing the body home the night before… There wasn’t an observing of anything and it made me sad because he was the kind of person who liked to mark passage.”
One of the positive things about being in a period of sustained grief is that we have developed new ways of marking social rituals: “I have subsequently learnt that the new ways of mourning the dead can be just as moving. Somehow, after the bewilderment of the early days when it was so unfamiliar, so clumsy and cold, we have found ways of doing this. We’ve learnt to bring our hearts to Zoom meetings, memorials and funerals.
“We are able to engage with a virtual world that was initially scary and shocking. We’ve learnt to find ways to celebrate the relationships that were birthed, worked on and crafted before Covid because they are too precious to throw away. Human endeavour is such a fascinating thing.” Tlhabi has worked throughout, but says she misses “a sense of movement, of being busy. I am busy but it’s a funny kind of busy because I’m stuck in the same place – all my Zoom meetings happen here. It can be overwhelming. My kids are small and need me to help with their online learning. But I’m still working. The intensity of the work hasn’t fallen away but the execution has left me unsatisfied. I don’t have that thrill of being in a studio, of being in a different environment.
“Life has become this one-dimensional encounter with my computer screen and it feels unsatisfying.”
All we can do is ride the wave of our current times. “I try not to overthink things. I don’t try to find the wisdom, the fortitude and the right words. Sometimes it feels far more reasonable to yield to time. These unspeakable tragedies – my response is to let time take care of it. I don’t try to solve my trauma – it’s an unnatural and futile exercise, like trying to solve your happiness and joy. When you are joyful and happy, you immerse yourself in it – that is the moment. So I adopt the same strategy when it’s pain and trauma rather than exhaust myself trying to fix it.”
The good news is that Tlhabi has had time to think about her next book, which will explore toxic masculinity and how it manifests across different spaces and life stages. Her plan is to write the personal into the political and she will share insights from her own experiences as well as those of others.
While our accumulative losses over the course of the past year have left deeply etched scars, there are some gains.
“I’ve gained so much,” she explains. “It’s such a funny thing to be in that position where two things can be true at the same time. That we can have both lost and gained. As a family, we gained time…
“We were able to do things that seemed unthinkable to do on a weekday. We’d find that it was a Monday afternoon and we were sitting in bed, reading. That sense of waking up with nothing to do but spend time with your family, reading that book you always wanted to read – sometimes that’s purposeful enough.”