THE COLLECTIVE THAT I AM

By Dumisani Tembe

I find Identifying myself as a continuous journey of my spiritual awakening and self-consciousness.  It is an ongoing journey of myselfdiscovery. Defining myself, at any given moment, is not the sum-totaled box, complete with all the elements of my being. My identity, does not amount to a one monotonous description of myself. I am the sum of several interdependent collectives. I am a manifestation of various physical, spiritual, environment, and circumstantial attributes in and around me.  I am as much of what I originate, respond to, and interact with. This is the collective that I am.

My Source

My primary source is God, or the spirit of God. I use these interchangeably. I believe God is more spiritual than physical. I see God as a spiritual life and the manifestation of all that’s positive, compassionate, positive energy, love, and alignment of all that’s material and metaphysical in the universe. I choose to see God in the spiritual form because this enables me to internalize God within me, and in how I relate to the world.

Those that preceded me in our family, are also a culmination of the spirit of God. They too, owe their existence to God as the source of their earthly life. I see my spiritual ancestry as an integral part of God’s life. Thus, I am part of them, as they are also an integral part of me.

As I nourish my spiritual relationship with God the Creator of the Universe, I acknowledge my spiritual ancestry as a critical factor in my continuous discovery of my being. These are my sources of spiritual existence. They are an essential part of the collective that I am.

My spiritual being assumed its physical manifestation through the womb of Salminah Mandlati. Ifirst cried in this physical world out of the loins of Mother Salminah Mandlati – the daughter of Mafunjwa and Mzam’sani Mandlati. I happened to be the last child that she ever gave birth to.

I also owe my physical being to the seed of Pedro Dabulanyezi Tembe. He was a descended of the Thonga/Rhonga people of modern-day Maputo. This is the son of Mmango Tembe and Smangele Tembe.

Interestingly, my grandmother’s maiden surname is Mandlati. That means, my father married within the same surname as his own mother. It was not necessarily in the same family. The Mandlati’s just happen to be a widespread community in one part of the Gaza province in Mozambique. Just like the Dlaminis in ESwatini – not all of them are necessarily related. 

My mother was my father’s second wife. It’s not that Dabulanyezi was a polygamist, but his first wife, Esther Mashava, past away. They had several daughters that still today, the rest of us from mother Salminah Mandlati affectionately relate to them as siblings.

This is an important reference because it partly explains why I was named Dumisani. After Dabulanyezi had started his family with a set of daughters, including Salminah’s first born, who was ably named Ntombizodwa, he prayed very hard for boy children. They were then blessed with five sons, and I happened to be the last one. Hence, the name Dumisani – “praise the Lord”.

This was an expression of gratitude by my parents to the God Almighty for responding positively to their prayers for sons. Then I was also named Samuel, after my uncle, Samuel Mandlati. This was after my mother had “protested” that out of the eight children that they had, none was named from the Mandlati family. Given the closeness that uncle Samuel and mum Salminah were, uncle Samuel got to name me after himself. And here I was born and named: Dumisani Samuel Tembe.

I am also the son of Isaiah Mhlupheki Hlophe. Together with other children, we affectionately call him, Brah Ike! Together with Mother Asslinah Makhanya, they raised me up from my early teens throughout to my early adult life. In the process, I emerged as Dumisani Samuel Hlophe - a loved Hlophe child, and person. Iso lovingly blended into Hlophe, Mabhengu, Khonkhosi family that unless one is taken into confidence about my background, one could never pick up that there was a biological difference among us the children.

So, who am I?

I am a manifestation of various spiritual and physical interrelated dependencies.  Beyond God, my existence and being is dependent on various sources. I am a child of a series of spiritual and physical interactions from my parental ancestry; their own relationship; and their own engagement with their physical environment; my own worldview, and interaction with it. Spiritually, I am a collective set of experiences, and divine consciousness.

As indicated above, biologically, I am a product of Dabulanyezi and Salminah Tembe. My paternal grandmother was a healer, and many from that family were aligned to the practice of traditional healing. Yet, my father chose to detach himself from traditional healingpractices and became a Christian.

I suppose for my dad, the two could not coexist – Jesus was the way, and that’s it. So, I was raised with Christian values within a colonial context. That is, a Christianity value system that denigrated the worthiness and value of African spiritual traditional identities and value systems.

As a young man in Maputo, he joined the African Pentecostal Church. But as it was common with young men, he then moved to work in the mines in Johannesburg, where he joined the Dutch Reformed Church. It was whilst ministering in South Africa that myself and my seven siblings were born.

Interestingly, my dad acknowledged his ancestral lineage from a descendance aspect. That is, in identifying himself, he acknowledged his forefathers/mothers. But did not engage in any traditional practices in that regard. This was my early childhood parental influence, experience, and consciousness.

Meanwhile, Hlophe was also a Christian preacher, but he periodically held traditional sessions. Call it ‘Thanks Giving”, in honour of Hlophe ancestry. The family would slaughter a goat or cow, and make traditional beer, umcombotsi. Then at some point of the day, Hlophe would stand at the same spot in the yard, and call upon all ancestors, or most of them, acknowledge them and thank them for protection, support and guidance.

Thus, brah Ike did not see a conflict between being a Christian and practicing African spiritual belief system. Growing up as a Hlophe therefore, impacted on my life experiences, and consciousness of being African in relation to external practices that have become part of African life – Christianity.

So, I am a spiritual fusion of African, Christian practices, or some of it, and my own continuous journey of awakening and consciousness. I am a spiritual being that manifests itself in various dynamics. At the heart of my spiritual being and consciousness, is to manifest positive energies, love, compassion, and the actualization of the positive human potential – at least with those that I get to interact and engage with.

When I was physically born into the Tembe family, I inherited the Tembe spiritual world ancestry. I inherited both the Tembe and my maternal (Mandlati) ancestral spirit.  Similarly, when I entered the Hlophe family, I was welcomed both physically and spiritually. Over time, I become an essential part of the Hlophe spiritual ancestry and spiritual world. I became part of the belief system of these two families and their ancestral lineage. I continue to be part of. I am a spiritual continuum of thesefamilies. I continue to embody them, as they continue to protect, and guide me.

I am also a firm believer in the spiritual teachings of Jesus Christ. I think there are great spiritual lessons contained in the bible. However, I am also convinced that there are several spiritual pathways to realise one’s choice of God’s divine life. I believe that since humanity emerged, there has always been divine spiritual life and reverence to God in some form or another. This, partly depended on where collective of people lived, and how they interacted with their physical environment.

I make a distinction between (1) belief in God; and (2) spiritual pathways to pursue a life in accordance to the belief in God. That is, first one chooses to believe in God, then chooses a particular spiritual pathway to practice that belief. Christianity only happens to be one of the available pathways in the pursuit of a Godly life. Interestingly, there are many dimensions, some even conflicting, within Christianity itself. The same applies to quite several other religions. African spiritual, and Christian practices in their own internal multiplicity, are integral elements of building a solid relationship with God.

I personally choose to maximise on a great relationship between myself and God. In this pursuit of a Godly spiritual life, I find no contradiction in the recognition of my family spiritual ancestry and worshipping the Almighty God, the creator of the universe.  In fact, the synergy of this two yields a highly fulfilling spiritual life. 

My Life Purpose/Passion

I am more inclined to think of my “life passion” than “life purpose”. Quite often, individuals are advised to “find their purpose in life”. I personally think what many have defined as their purpose, is actually their passion. 

Frankly, I do not know what my life purpose is. My difficulty in defining and knowing my life purpose, is that I would first have to have a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of what life is in its totality for me to determine my role/purpose in it. I would have to know the source and direction of where life is going.

Without these clear straight dimensions: source; direction; current status; and where life itself is going; I am ill equipped to determine my own purpose in this life. All I know about life, is that it is a complex phenomenon and that whilst broadly we can manage our lives in it, I am not sure if that amounts to a life purpose.

My operational conclusion is that as individuals and collective groups, we maybe particularly passionate about certain life aspects. Then we go all out to do these, and in a typical daily discourse, we refer to these as our/my “life purpose”, when in fact, we are dealing with one’s passion.

For example, liberation fighters, respond to their oppressive environment by fighting system. That environment sparks them the passion to pursue freedom. Other people are touched by abject poverty and begin to pursue charity activities. These, among other noble causes that individuals pursue, are mostly a response to the immediate environmental or socio-economic conditions that, are interpreted as their “life purpose”.  It is the nobility of these acts that lead many to conclude that those pursuing them, are undertaking a life purpose. When, as I see it, they are pursuing their passion. In the same way as a life criminal would pursue his passion, and yet, we would not dare call that a life purpose.

I am passionate about how individuals view or perceive of themselves in a manner that such self-generated identity, leads them to realise their full potential.I am interested in how individuals can germinate and activate their spirituality and thus, germinate energies that elevate their dreams and aspirations to full manifestation.

I am passionate about how individuals on this mother earth, can cushion themselves from pain and suffering. This is not so much that they could be immune from the challenging aspects of life, but how can they respond in a manner that they oversee their navigation over life challenges.

So, I am passionate about issues of self-actualization, particularly on the following dimensions: finding one’s potential and working on it; finding one’s spiritual location and relationship with one’s God; personal thought management and control; and the creation of a balanced alignment from the mind, spirit, God, body and relationship with others and the physical environment. These are personal life actualization issues I am passionate about.Thus, I constantly find myself in such conversations, readings, and writings.

This article is my own journey of self-actualization. It helps me grow in this respect, but it may also help a few readers also find, and actualize themselves.  Is this my purpose? Maybe yes. But it does not stem from a conscious and direct undertaking of what could be my “life purpose”; but comes from the pursuit of my passion that some individuals get to benefit from.

It is not a conscious agenda to change the world. Rather, it is a pursuit of my passion that inadvertently benefits other people. However, in generic speak – it is my life purpose! This is the potential I intend to cultivate through reading, sharing and writing.

Finally

So, the I am in me, is not singular, monotonous, and static. It is multifold and is evolving – both in spirit and physically. I am a South Africa citizen, and a child of Southern Africa by lineage – I am a Thonga/Rhonga; but there is also Swatiness; and a Zuluness in me. As such, I cannot be boxed in one identity since my being is continuous and fluid. I am the part continuous evolution of the Tembe family tree; I am the physical and spiritual descended of the Thonga/Rhonga peoples that once ruled the modern-day Maputo in Mozambique, and what is now Manguzi in the northern parts of KZN. I am the part continuous product of the Hlophes in Motshane, Eswatini. 

I am that soul that constantly seeks a closer relationship with God through the teachings of Christ, African spirituality, Buddhism, my own spiritual ancestry, and various literatures on divinity.

I am my thinking and thoughts. I am a manifestation of my thinking process, and ideas on everything. My thoughts manifest my behavior, conduct, what I do or not, and what I achieved, or not. I am what I think of my family; my thought relationships with other people; what I think about God, and the divine spiritual life.

In short, I am an ongoing awakening and consciousness person. Today I am this collective that I am, but tomorrow I will be more of me.

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