Tenjiwe Tutu
I had met my husband when I was in Standard Four. The first day we talked was not a success. A few of us girls were having a study session at break time and were concentrating hard on our arithmetic books. Some boys were walking around and came and tried to disturb us.
I shouted at them, 'Even if you don't want to pass your exams, I do, so go away because we're working at our books.' I told one of them, Mzwandile Tutu, that he was over the school-going age and he should go and work for his parents. I was joking but he was really angry and wanted to hit me.
Later I was very sorry, because I realised that life hadn't been good to him either. His problems were very similar to mine. So I went to him and said I was sorry. He said it was alright. 'I wasn't really trying to disturb you, I was only playing,' he said. And then I started liking him. He was such a handsome boy.
I was from Cape Town, and Cape Town boys are disrespectful, but I saw that he was not like that. He was full of respect for others. He worked nearby and came past my house on his way home. He started to make jokes as he went past.
My head was flat on top, so he would greet me by saying, 'Hello, Miss Pannekoek.' 'Why do you say I'm a pannekoek?' I asked indignantly. 'Pannekoeks are nice,' he said. 'I like pannekoeks, that's why I call you pannekoek.' Then he wrote me a letter telling me he loved me.
He gave it to me when I was with my friends. I wrote back to tell him that I loved him too, and that was that. We wanted to marry, but first he had to go and work in the mines in Johannesburg for two years, to earn the money for lobola. I used to write to him there, at Earthworks. Eventually, in 1964, we were married. We were finally together.
Alicia Mdaka
I met my husband, my darling Zolile Edwin Mdaka, when my mother and I still lived in Upper Constitution Street in District Six. Sometimes after work I would walk down Orange Street to the Girls Union at our local church, and on one of these days a handsome young man came up to me and said, 'Can I please talk with you?' He was smiling, and what a handsome smile it was!
I realised immediately that this could be trouble. 'Sorry, I'm late, I've got to go,' I said to him over my shoulder as I rushed off. 'Okay,' he said, 'but maybe we can talk on your way back.' I carried on fobbing off Zolile, and he carried on talking to me. Sometimes he would walk with me, making small talk.
Then, one day, he really surprised me. I was only 19, after all. 'Alicia, I love you,' he said. 'And I promise you, I'm not going to mess you around. I want to marry you.' Day after day he kept on giving me the same assurances of his love and faithfulness. I started to feel his eyes on my back as I walked down the road, and began to realise I was falling deeply in love with this man.
His persistence had paid off. Zolile asked his eldest brother to speak to my mother about marriage. And so we got married, and I had to leave my mother's house and live without her. But life felt just right. In those years of my marriage I was very happy and Zolile looked after me.
If I was in the Eastern Cape without him, he would send me money and letters, asking how I and the children were, and if we could not all come back to him. He really loved me. And he was not one for the girlfriends, only for his wife.
By Jo-Anne Smetherham