A forgotten love letter that made its way across the City of Joburg has revealed the softer side of a respected political activist who died less than a month before its discovery. Shain Germaner writes the story of how the missive finally returned home.
Johannesburg - With just two short months before her wedding, Henneli Steyn was searching for some of the final items on her list of decor. One of her plans was to buy old, damaged books and use the pages to create origami flowers and Greymont’s Long Street, with its numerous second-hand and antique shops, seemed the ideal place to find them.
Her soon-to-be husband, Dillon Davie, had picked up an ample supply at Grand Hotel Antiques and Collectables, having raided one of the store’s dusty bookshelves.
As Steyn prepared to start the craft work at her home, she picked up a 1984 textbook, Chemical Principles: Fourth Edition.
Inside was a double-sheet of exam-pad paper, a letter that began: “Dear Pallo”. The two neatly folded yellowing pages revealed details of a conflicted, or perhaps unrequited, love.
The author wrote of his inexplicable adoration, his need for the recipient and hope that his feelings would be returned.
“My love, we both know that we belong together and life without each other is not worth living... I cherish the ideal which advocates our affair as unique and dynamic, and have no reservations on the certainty of it,” the author wrote.
“I will love you till the stars lose their brightness. Hoping to hear from you very soon. Please respond to this letter immediately... Yours in romantic ties, Gerald Sekgothe.”
With no date on the letter, there was no way of telling when it had been written, no way to identify Pallo, and no indication if the letter was ever received.
Steyn said: “I was really touched by it. I thought it was something so romantic to find as you’re preparing for your wedding.”
Speaking to The Star, she theorised that the handwriting’s deterioration on the second page may have been an indication that Sekgothe had become emotional as he wrote it, and the indentations on the second sheet showed how hard he had pressed.
“I thought it was quite sweet, but you also don’t know if his feelings were reciprocated.
“But who was this person, did they ever receive this letter? Was it ever even sent?” asked Steyn.
The mystery behind the letter - or at least its author - was partially solved through a Google search.
Steyn and Davie found the book on June 12, just a month after ANC secretary for Zone 3 in Joburg, Thami Ncokwane, had written an impassioned eulogy to a 42-year-old Gerald Sbusiso Sekgothe on Facebook.
The pair had met at university in the mid-1990s, and Ncokwane had always admired Sekgothe’s deep dedication to youth and student movements.
“Allow me on behalf of the then-Sasco (South African Students Congress) membership and leadership, of which comrade Gerald Sekgothe's name will forever be found in the annals of history...
“He was an advanced ideologue and theoretician who understood that knowledge accumulation for its own sake is of no value if it could not be simplified to mobilise people to take responsibility for their own liberation and freedom,” wrote Ncokwane, a day after Sekgothe’s sudden death in May.
If the recently deceased City of Joburg employee was the Gerald Sekgothe who penned the letter, it had become obvious that determining Pallo’s identity would be significantly more difficult without his help.
When The Star contacted Ncokwane, at first he was unconvinced that his long-time friend had written the letter.
However, he wasn’t willing to discard the idea entirely.
As the author’s identity remained ambiguous, a visit to the address written at the top of the letter proved the only way to confirm his identity.
The property held two small, unremarkable houses and a teenager staying at the property confirmed that Sekgothe had once lived there, but had moved out about two years earlier.
The young woman was Sekgothe’s niece, Puseletso Ralake, and while she said she was affected by her uncle’s recent death, she regretted having not known him very well while he was alive.
The conversation with the niece was all the confirmation Ncokwane needed, and despite the frantic election preparation schedule this week, he was willing to provide The Star with insight into Sekgothe’s personality and activism.
Ncokwane said Sekgothe’s dedication to transformation within higher education had manifested in a campaign to establish student representative councils in high schools, colleges and other tertiary institutions.
He said many forget that SRCs had not always existed, and that there were some who had paid dearly for their creation.
Throughout his life, Sekgothe had worked at numerous government institutions, settling into the finance department at the City of Joburg in recent years.
Yet it was after reading Sekgothe’s letter to Pallo that Ncokwane acknowledged his friend’s creative streak.
“He did have a romantic side. He and his friend, Abner, always competed to be more poetic,” said Ncokwane.
It was Sekgothe’s childhood friend, Francis Lekula, who revealed that Sekgothe had often relied on his letter-writing skills to flirt.
Smiling as he read his old friend’s letter, Lekula immediately said: “This is why I always say he lived his life to the fullest.
“He would always fall in love quickly. Sometimes, he would miss work to spend time with his girlfriends.
“He was such a loving guy, a great listener, a good speaker, politically charged,” said Lekula.
“He was a cat with many lives,” he laughed.
Sekgothe was a lover of debate, not afraid to be verbally brutal if he felt he needed to be and, according to Lekula, he was always educating himself.
Lekula theorised that was why the letter had been found in a chemistry textbook, as Sekgothe would venture into varied areas of interest in his mission to learn more.
When asked why he had chosen to write his love letter in English, Lekula said it was simply something you would do in the apartheid regime.
“We didn’t have books in Setswana - at least the ones we wanted to read. We weren’t taught about Africa, just Western civilisation. Even the ANC (memorandums) would be written in English.
“We weren’t taught to love our African languages,” he said, adding that this attitude could have extended to Sekgothe’s love letters.
But neither Ncokwane or Lekula could identify Pallo.
Sekgothe had had a few long-term relationships, but no one they knew by the name - or nickname - of Pallo.
The only other person who may have known more about Sekgothe’s private life was his mother, Grace, who, still deeply in mourning, was grateful to see a written reminder of her son.
Unable to read the letter herself, she gently smiled as its contents were read to her.
“I never saw anything (letters) like this,” she said.
“He was so secretive. Always worried about politics.”
Sekgothe had moved in with his mother in 2014 and, she said, he had been healthy throughout his time at her immaculate Turffontein home.
But in May this year, he was struck down with flu-like symptoms.
Refusing to go to hospital, his condition worsened, and he died in his bed.
The 75-year-old grandmother explained how her ailing child had promised he wouldn’t miss the unveiling of his brother’s tombstone, but in the end, Sekgothe’s funeral took place on the very same day.
“One moment he was there. The next, he was gone,” she said.
It was at his funeral that Grace learnt of her son’s generosity, after two young men approached her to thank her.
The 42-year-old had paid their university registration fees, and they said they would be forever grateful for his sponsorship.
“He never mentioned it. He never told me about how he would help others,” she said.
Grace said she had no idea who Pallo was or when Sekgothe had written the letter, but that he had never stopped loving the women in his life.
At the beginning of this year, he told her: “I finally found someone I love. She is kind to me and I want to marry her.”
According to Grace, Sekgothe said he wanted to marry, or at the very least, propose to his current girlfriend, Thenjiwe, before the end of the year.
“She was the first girlfriend he ever introduced to me. It was serious,” she said.
While the origins of Sekgothe’s letter, or its intended recipient, may not have been revealed, the double-sheet of paper at least brought some happiness to a grieving mother.
“I will keep this as a reminder of him.
“I didn’t realise he was such a romantic,” said Grace.
And even though Sekgothe’s desire for marital bliss will never be realised, the couple who found his letter said his words inspired them.
Davie said: “When she (Steyn) first showed this to me, I said: We will take this as a good omen.’
“When you’re making decorations for your own wedding, what is more appropriate to find than a love letter?
“We may not know what happened between these two people, but as a letter, it’s beautiful,” he said.
The Star