Black Jerusalem, by Happy Ntshingila

Black Jerusalem, by Happy Ntshingila. ISBN 9781415200964 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0096-4

Black Jerusalem tracks the events and people who shaped the growth of the HerdBuoys and Happy Ntshingila's advertising agency through successful and sometimes not-so-successful new business solicitation.

Happy Ntshingila  

The privilege of my name: Happy Ntshingila. If I were to apply the same set of marketing rules to myself that I've applied to the many brands to whose growth I've hopefully contributed, I would never be in a bad mood, I'd always see the positive in everything and my general sense of wellbeing would infect everyone around me. Such was the blessing my parents bestowed on me with the name 'Happy'. I concede that they were actually expressing their own joy upon my arrival as their firstborn. But this action conferred upon me a behavioural responsibility that I hope and pray I have, for the most part, lived up to. Besides, I'd hate to think I was so named because Dushy (my father) and Meisie (obviously, my mom) had just seen Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and it had made a favourable impression on them. Soweto in 1960 was not a particularly charmed place or time to be born in South Africa. Not that one has a choice in the matter. Yet the feeling of being blessed outweighed and outlasted the immoral barriers erected to keep us away from material wealth. I thank my parents and grandparents for this. For despite a lively and pretty robust upbringing in a ghetto, my heart and soul were cocooned in love and protection. My mother was very beautiful. This is not the soft-focused memory of childhood; my father accumulated enough bumps and bruises and inflicted many more in brawls initiated by my mom's looks. Being an athletic man with a natural talent for boxing, my father got into a lot of scrapes, to be honest. The drink', as the Irish would say, competed with his wife's honour for the best reason to start a fight. Sometimes not competing against, but conspiring together. Okay, most times conspiring together. Dushy was what was known as 'township clever', which meant he had all the attributes of being street smart with some extra features thrown in. For example, although he never received a great education, he was in possession of the all-important 'Standard six' certificate, which meant he was taught right into his early teens! He was something of a fashion icon and as you know, it's a universal truth that the poorer the neighbourhood the more important the style. And he had a beautiful handwriting, which surely qualified him for a desk job rather than the factory gig he was compelled to pursue. He was also very connected. He knew everybody. Everybody knew him. Disturbingly, all the cops knew him too. It sometimes seems like there was an endless parade of black and white policemen from the Brixton Murder and Robbery squad coming into our home looking for guns. They never found any. They were always too well hidden in our nappies. No, I'm just kidding. My father never gave any indication that he was involved with that element of society. Mind you, living in those times under those conditions, 'that element of society' embraced pretty much all of us. As much of a mystery as the law's interest in my father was, so too was his sudden change of lifestyle. He stopped drinking; he stayed at home. He started focusing on his jazz collection, which was pretty famous in the hood. He even started to take my education seriously. I'm not sure if I welcomed that little incursion in my life. His interest in cars, particularly Volvos, turned me into a de facto mechanic. The by-product of this was that I started hanging out with other young car mechanics. Dushy didn't like this one bit. [...]

This is an excerpt from the book: Black Jerusalem, by Happy Ntshingila.

Title: Black Jerusalem
Author: Happy Ntshingila
Type: Autobiography
Imprint: Umuzi
Publisher: Randomhouse Struik
Cape Town, South Africa 2009
ISBN 9781415200964 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0096-4
Softcover, 16x22 cm, 104 pages