Cynthia Thanda

Some write notes. Some write poetry. Some write articles. And then there are those who write books. Join the PanAfrikanist family as we welcome another author, Nompendulo Shabangu, who has blessed our table with her new book: Perspective.

As far back as primary school, Nompendulo has always been a woman of a mighty pen. Doing Grade 5 in South Africa, she had a teacher who would have them write poems.

“Writing has always been in me as a child. I honestly don’t know at what particular point I was like, ‘Oh, okay, I can write.’ It was just something that I did naturally. I always say I feel closest to God when I am writing.”

As for her book, Perspective, Nompendulo started writing it in 2019 when she was going through a difficult time. Her phone and laptop became her constant companion as she would write any thought on them. The more she wrote, the more she realized there was consistency in what she was writing for herself.

The writing was for her but over time she realized it could be pieced into a book. She took some of her old notes, some of her old quotes and she glued all the pieces to complete the book. The interesting part was the research about books and just knowing that she was living some of the things she was writing about in the book.

The challenging part was the finish line because she was struggling to put the pen down and wanted to be sure that everything was well-put-together. The genre is not something she chose because she only wanted to inspire people and, in the process, she used bits and pieces of her life in the hope that it would be something meaningful to anyone who reads the book.

Perspective is a book about transcending, going to a higher level, and gaining a different perspective. One of the scriptures that really inspires the book is Isaiah chapter 55:8-9 which talks about God’s ways not being our ways and that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts and the fact that God wants to take us higher so we gain an aerial view of our lives.

“I had gone on a scenic flight and I started to see how things were shrinking beneath us and I was able to get a better view. That is where it inspired everything and so, it is about going higher so that you are not so close to situations that it obscures your perspective, and also that you are not taking things as personally but understanding that life is 10% what happens to you and 90 % how you respond. However, you can only respond well if you have a good perspective,” Nompendulo points out.

People who read Perspective will gain tools that will help them gain perspective and to have a far richer, fuller experience in life.

Nompendulo acknowledges that people go through difficult circumstances and that the way each one of us sees things is going to determine how we live out that experience. Will certain situations completely define the rest of our lives? If so, will it be positive or negative? She believes that her book will help people navigate through life and to be able to take a step back when things get overwhelming.

Her favourite chapter in the book is Chapter 3, Love: Of Smouldering Wicks & Bruised Reeds. The chapter can be summed up with a quote from the late Toni Morrison, author of The Bluest Eye where she says,

“Love is never any better than the lover.

Wicked people love wickedly,

violent people love violently,

weak people love weakly,

stupid people love stupidly,

but the love of a free man is never safe.

There is no gift for the beloved.

The lover alone possesses his gift of love.

The loved one is shorn, neutralized,

 frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye.”

 Basically, the chapter talks about love in so many different ways and Nompendulo believes that love is a beautiful thing, in the sense that no one can truly grasp their mind around love because God is love. It challenges the reader to grow in love and to grow as a result of love, to grow through loving and examine what kind of lovers we are.

How do we extend our love to people? Do we withhold it or do we give it away freely? And that all has to do with the way people view life.

“People like to say, ‘If you want to hide anything from an African put it in a book,’ but I beg to differ. The reading and writing culture in Botswana is very good, the only thing is that we don’t have the best platforms to showcase our work.

“We don’t have centralized locations that will grant our work platforms, other than places like Exclusive Books which are companies that are from foreign countries so the process of getting our work on their shelves is not that easy.

“Nonetheless, we do have platforms such as Poetavango which hold festivals; they have writers’ workshops and they groom a lot of writers. There is Gaborone Book Festival and they do a lot of reading, writing, and promoting authors in Botswana.”

Nompendulo loves Francine Rivers who writes fiction and is a Christian author. Nompendulo loves how she has taken stories and pieces from the Bible and fleshed them out in such a way that the reader is able to gain a deeper understanding of Bible stories.

“She just takes the skeletons that are provided, puts meat on them and she creates full stories. Of recent, a movie called Redeeming Love was released, which is a depiction of Francine Rivers’ book after the same title.

“Her writing is so deep and well researched. I also love Paulo Coelho. He has such an amazing imagination. And, of course, I just love anything that Bishop T. D. Jakes writes.”

Her biggest wish is to process her thoughts and put them on paper so they are not only stuck in her soul and spirit. She also desires to teach and inspire others because she loves teaching other people.

Nevertheless, she primarily writes for herself, to create space in her head, and to better understand herself over time. Nompendulo lives by the saying, “The person who needs to hear your story the most is you.”

Her target reader for her book is anyone who has gone through a challenging time or is going through a challenging time or anyone who will go through a challenging time because even though the book speaks about highs, it still touches quite a bit on the lows.

“I have something I call The Common Thread of Grief and I believe that is what strings us together as humanity. The fact that yes, great times can bring us together but it is really the understanding of another person’s grief, not necessarily the exact same thing but also the fact that we will all go through something life-shattering at some point that will completely transform us. And it is up to us to decide what that thing transforms us into.”

The book is available in Maun and Gaborone. Nompendulo is working to get it online. People can follow Perspective: The Book on Instagram and Facebook to get updates.