My father was a lorry driver, very rarely at home. The house was run by my mother, and because there were 10 or so kids, there was no time for individual attention. It was about survival. It was about where the next meal was coming from.
People think that I popped out of my mother’s womb singing ‘Chasing Pavements’.
Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.
By the grace of God, my parents were fantastic. We were a very normal family, and we have had a very middle-class Indian upbringing. We were never made to realise who we were or that my father and mother were huge stars – it was a very normal house, and I’d like my daughter to…
I believe strongly in the rights of women… my mother is a woman, my sister is a woman, my daughter is a woman, my wife is a woman.
Why am I not feminist? Maybe because I come from a country where my mother ruled my life. I never felt in any way that I couldn’t achieve what I want.
I had a very difficult relationship with my mother. She used to wake me up in the middle of the night if I wasn’t sleeping straight and was messing up the sheets. Now when I stay in hotels I sleep so straight they don’t even think I’ve used the bed.
My mother and father had a terrible marriage. They celebrated their wedding anniversary one year with their friends. Why did they celebrate? Maybe because they had lasted so many years without killing each other.
My mother was a member of the Cape Coloured community. ‘Coloured’ is the South African word for the half-caste community that was a by-product of the early contact between black and white.
Joseph and his mother come from the black kings who were before the white man.
