In Conversation with Trevor : Chaka Chaka: I could have married my dad

Popular South African singer Yvonne Chaka Chaka has spoken of her struggles while growing up and why she ended up being a musician and not a lawyer.

Yvonne Chaka Chaka (real name Yvonne Machaka (YM) told Alpha Media Holdings chairman Trevor Ncube on the platform In Conversation with Trevor that even though she lost her father at a young age, she got a lot of life skills from him.

The singer, songwriter, actress and entrepreneur also spoke about the positive impact her mother, who was a domestic worker, had on her.

Below are excerpts from the interview.

TN: Yvonne, welcome to In Conversation With Trevor.

YM: Thank you for having me Trevor.

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TN: You are our first guest on our South Africa Series, and I am so delighted that you found the time to say yes let’s do this.

YM: Who says no to Trevor?

TN: Hahahahaha! Yvonne as I was working on this conversation, this is what was playing in my mind, in the townships in Zimbabwe a young guy, and all you are hearing is Mbaqanga, and all the songs that you have sung.

• You are a legend, you are an icon.
• You have spent 35 years doing this and you are doing more. What has the journey been like?

YM: Well, thank you very much. Thirty five years ago I was meant to go to university to study law.

Let me just backtrack.

Growing up in the townships of Soweto was something that made me question life, question how we live as human beings.

My father died when I was 11 years old, and my mother worked as a domestic worker.

At that instant the government took my mother’s house because she was a black single woman and she was not meant to have that house.

So we ended up staying in the madam’s backyard. That made me ask questions.

I used to ask the madam, “Why can I not go with Louise to school, Which was just across the road.

Why was I supposed to wake up at five in the morning, get into the bus, go to Soweto, come back and my mother used to beat me up for asking that and telling me I would get her fired for talking too much.

For me I just wanted to know, why was it not possible for me to just go across the road and things like that.

So when I was given, because I never take things for granted, when I was given this platform to air my views, I thought what better way to do it than doing it in a song.

TN: You have described that music is love, music is a rainbow, and it has no colour.

• Listening to your music, listening to the meaning of the lyrics, very empowering and very encouraging.
• Talk to me about your creative process as you put together a song?

YM: When I found myself at the then SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation), in 1985 trying to hustle for a job I had just completed my matric and I was due to go to university the following year something happened which I am not going to say, but I had to correct all the wrongs.

My first song was written for me by Herbert Ngulu and Artie Van Wane.

The song had already been written and I think they were just looking for somebody (to sing it).

So I was at the right place at the right time thanks to Phil Hollis, who the recorded “I Am In Love With The DJ”.

Everybody constantly asks me who was the DJ? There was no DJ!

So I made every DJ fall in love with me because I thanked them, I put them in the spotlight and I made them feel very good about themselves.

As we continued I said to Artie, Phil and Herbert, the guys that I worked with, it is good to sing I am in love with the DJ, and I am burning up, and Thank you Mr DJ and all those songs, but I want to sing about things that I see around me, because I thought this was a platform to air my views, to educate people, because people want to be entertained and still be educated.

When you sing you have to have something that people can hold onto, or say this resonates with me.

Songs like I Cry For Freedom, yes I was crying for freedom, but at that time I saw men beating up women, I saw women being beaten up.

So it was women empowerment at that very early stage.

To be what I want to be and to do what I want to do I needed my independence more than I need you.

We as women, it is not that we do not need men. Every woman needs a man, and every man needs a woman.

TN: Don’t you have a song like that?

YM: I do.

TN: Hahaha. Right.

YM: It is exactly that. We do need each other, but I think it is important that a man knows that a woman was taken out of his rib to be loved, not to be trampled upon and not to be abused.

TN: You lost your father when you were 13 years old?

YM: 11 years old.

TN: 11 years old. Your Mom raised the three  of you on a domestic salary of R40 at that time?

Talk to me about the lessons that you experienced from that tough upbringing with you and your mom and two siblings?

YM: You know after my father’s death things were very difficult.

Dad was a driver for a company and every Friday the white people would give him a car to come back with then.

I and my friends would be happy to be in this car, knowing at home there was this car.

Dad was an amazing man,  I always say. I could have married my father, he was amazing.

To start with he was very handsome. He was very clean.

Dad woke up every Saturday morning without fail, cleaned the kitchen himself…

TN: Wow. What an example.

YM: …scrubbed it and it was spic and span.

If it was winter he made fire, and put water on the stove and off he went.

My father was a gambler, he played dice.

He would come back with every cent and put it on the table.

He would give my elder sister money for us for the whole week.

So I learned from my dad that gambling was not a good thing, but if you use whatever money for the right reasons it was okay.

You are not stealing it from anybody, and when dad lost we knew, it was hell in the house!

TN: Hahahaha.

YM: On Friday we had fish and chips at home, it was like Christmas.

As I was the baby of the family, it was fish and chips and Russian or a Vienna sausage for me so I always had something extra.

Every Saturday morning, when dad finished cleaning he would go, there was a shopping centre called MaCentre, I mean township business was amazing then, he would go and buy (I do not want to say the brands), he would buy these biscuits for my sisters and he would buy me this other nice brand.

So we knew even though things were tough, dad made things happen for us.

We were not that extremely poor, but we did not get everything that we wanted, we got everything that we needed.

TN: What did you learn from your mother?

YM: So when dad died that was very difficult because then mum was alone, there was no Christmas anymore, Friday was not Christmas anymore, there was no fish and chips.

Dad was gone.

Mum would actually bring her lunch home, her two slices of bread with cheese.

She would probably once or twice a week bring that home so we could have it with my sisters.

Mum was a very good cook, so whatever she cooked for the madam she would then bring home.

What I learned from my mum was that you do not have to sit there and feel sorry for yourself, you make do with the little that you have.

What she instilled in us as three girls was that we had to depend on ourselves and nobody else.

TN: Wow.

YM: Love ourselves first. Respect ourselves. I remember there were some uncles, they would come because they knew dad had died.

They would come, and at that time I did not think it was wrong, you know when men come and do a few off things.

TN: You cannot do that nowadays!

YM: Yes, then you did not think there was anything wrong with it. My mum hated it.

So mum protected us and guarded us. I sit here today and say thank you mum for being there for us, for guarding us, for protecting us, for shielding us and at that time we thought she was too strict and she was ugly.

Now as a 57-year-old, I want to say thank you mum.

TN: I think a lot of us do not realise, at the time when we are being disciplined, when our parents are being tough with us, that this is actually for our good.

• My sense is, you have  four boys, and you have been raising these four boys.
• My sense is that we as parents are not tough on our children as our parents were on us? Is that a fair comment?

YM: It is, it definitely is. I think our children are a totally different breed.

We overcompensate I think, because we say we want to give our children what we did not have, which is correct sometimes and sometimes very wrong; because if it were a girl or boy, you want to say to your child I want to give you everything here you do not need to go out and find a “blesser”, because you are a blessing to this family as a girl.

You are a blessing to this family and you do not need anybody from outside to bless you.

Obviously when it comes to boys, and all children, you want to give them everything that you did not have.

So they think money grows on trees, they do not think they have to work very hard or go an extra mile because everything is there you know.

When they see that life is not what they thought it was, they then go off the rail, and it does really happen.

I mean, not all of my boys are what I want them to be, I want my boys to be what they want to be.

I think every parent wants to see their children succeed and be more than what you are.

My mum was a domestic worker and my elder sister is a nurse, my other sister is a teacher and I am me.

I always say I corrected the wrongs that I did when I was young and I worked very hard for everything that I have, but things have really changed.

The societies that we live in, the peer pressure that our children have as well.

I always told my children that if we go on holiday once or twice a year it is okay.

Do not look at the Joneses, and the Petersons next door to say they go on holiday five times a year, it is okay.

You do not know what they do when we are sleeping and you do not know how they generate their money, so be happy and content with what you have.

So I tell my children not to want to have things that they do not have.

• “In Conversation With Trevor” is a weekly show broadcast on YouTube.com//InConversationWithTrevor. Please get your free YouTube subscription to this channel. The conversations are sponsored by Nyaradzo Group.