“We need to show different models of what it looks like to be a healthy man that is emotionally available for his family,” says Godfrey Mmagawo, who grew up without a father figure in his life. His son, Oyintando, is now eight months old. PHOTO: Jess Holing
Godfrey Mmagawo never knew what it meant to be a man. He was a baby when his father left. His own life was littered with gangsterism, alcohol and confusion. But an encounter with God redefined his narrative of fatherhood forever, leaving a legacy for generations to come.
“Statistics say right now I should be a delinquent. My odds are actually 25% of turning out alright. I should be sitting in jail.”
“I’m Xhosa. I went to an Afrikaans school. My stepfather was Zulu. I studied in English. My wife is Tswana. So it’s a bit of a ‘mengelmoes’ (a jumble). 99% of the time we speak Afrikaans at my workplace,” says Godfrey Mmagawo, who now recognises the value in moving to an Afrikaans coloured township with his mother when he was five years old. He is currently the Teams Operations Leader at Harmonie, a non-profit company empowering Christian leaders around the world. PHOTO: Jess Holing
When Godfrey Mmagawo was in Grade 7, his aunt handed him a beer. It was to celebrate being a young man, she told him. “Little did she know that I was struggling with my identity and what it meant to be a man. When I tasted it, I thought it was a way to actually escape from my confusion.”
Three months into Mmagawo’s life, his father left. No one in his family had finished school. At five years old, he moved to an Afrikaans township in Welkom with his mother, where she worked as a domestic worker.
Decades later, Mmagawo recalls a moment looking down at his three-month-year-old son Oyintando, and celebrating. “I now have the privilege of raising my own son” despite not having a father or healthy parental relationship to look up to, says Mmagawo. “I have the privilege to rewrite my own story.”
Godfrey Mmagawo says that he loves marriage and his family through the redemption that he found again in God, after his childhood experiences turned him away from his faith. “My story is one of different people coming into my life and showing me glimpses of what it means to love your family.” PHOTO: Jess Holing
Gangsterism and God
Mmagawo was sent to an Afrikaans school, having never heard the language in his life. “It was typical township life.” Gangsters, drugs and a two-bedroom shack. “In my primary school years, I was actually being groomed to be a gangster,” he says. “I knew my life was a mess.”
The absence of Mmagawo’s father left him with questions. “My stepfather had a tendency to be abusive,” he says. His concept of what it meant to be a man had been completely distorted. But one normal day in Grade 10, that changed.
Mmagawo smiles as he remembers the moment — he looked at a classmate, and knew deep down that something was different about him. “We had to work through the same things. But I was miserable, and he wasn’t,” he says.
“I’m looking for what you have,” Mmagawo said to his friend, all those years ago. The response he received was an invitation to church.
“I get to bathe my son and kiss him a lot,” says Godfrey Mmagawo, father of eight-month-year-old Oyintando. “I think [Godfrey] is an example to most of us because he models something of the heart of Jesus Christ — he did not come to the world to be served but to serve,” says Godfrey Mmagawo’s wife Boitumelo. “He’s been through a lot,” says his childhood friend Lawrence Baadjies. PHOTO: Jess Holing
A rewritten story
“Church wasn’t my thing,” says Mmagawo. There was too much hurt involved. But somehow, his friend convinced him to go to youth. “The people there loved me, and they didn’t even know who I was,” he remembers. He asked to come back again on Sunday.
That Sunday, as Mmagawo sat in the church service, moulded by the pain of fatherlessness in his life, he heard a new story. “The pastor was preaching about God’s father-heart. I’d never heard of God being a father.” Although he had a mother, Mmagawo felt like he was living as an orphan. “But at that moment, I knew I was a son,” he smiles.
But Mmagawo’s story didn’t end there. “In my Grade 11 year, I was chased out of the house by my stepfather. Mmagawo took up space in his stepfather’s house. He was not allowed to eat his stepfather’s food, or even use his electricity. “I stood up to him, and he told me he’ll teach me what it means to be a man.”
Living on the streets “makes you realise how helpless you are”, Mmagawo says. “We took Godfrey in as a brother,” says Lawrence Baadjies, Mmagawo’s childhood friend. After staying with friends and pastors, Mmagawo’s church was looking for someone to stay in a recently-erected caravan on a new plot. Mmagawo’s hand shot up. “Lawrence’s mom donated a blanket to me,” he recalls. “Godfrey is my blood, my brother,” said Baadjies, who decided to move into the caravan with Mmagawo. From this caravan, Mmagawo finished his schooling.
“Godfrey, you can actually do something with your life,” Mmagawo’s teacher said to him in matric. “I didn’t plan to finish school actually,” says Mmagawo, but his teacher inspired him to apply for an LLB law degree at the University of the Free State (UFS), where he was accepted.
It was very tough for Godfrey Mmagawo’s mother when he was kicked out of the house by his stepfather in Grade 11. He battled to understand why his mother didn’t leave him. “But as I grew up, I understood that’s actually the plight of many women in South Africa that find themselves in abusive relationships and abusive homes. It stops with us,” he says. PHOTO: Jess Holing
Building bridges
In his first year of studies at UFS, his mother passed away. Mmagawo was living in Heidedal, a community in Bloemfontein, forcing him to walk 12 to 15 kms to classes daily. His mind reeled with questions — “Why am I here? I don’t have parents.” But in the midst of his questioning, he felt God tell him: ‘I want you to work with people. I want you to empower others.’ Soon after this realisation, Mmagawo switched to a degree in social sciences.
A few distinctions later, Mmagawo was given a bursary that allowed him to move into a residence on campus called Karee. “It was as Afrikaans as could be,” he says. Mmagawo, oblivious to the residence’s history of racial separation, arrived there with a blanket and a bag. They turned him away, “but my papers said I need to live here,” he says.
Eventually, they paired him up with a boy from a majority-white Afrikaans school. “His name was Werner van Zyl.” As soon as Mmagawo heard this name, derogatory names he was called by the ‘boer’ his grandfather worked for flashed across his mind again. “I saw the rotten food he would make us eat, and how he would beat people on the farm up.”
“We live in a community where people that do not look like us live in our streets. But we know that God has called us here for a specific reason: to be bridge-builders and facilitate reconciliation,” says Godfrey Mmagawo about his family life in Stellenbosch. Mmagawo and his wife Boitumelo spent time together dreaming about creating a “warm, loving space” for their son Oyintando to be born into. “I’m going to be a man that’s present for my children,” he added. PHOTO: Jess Holing
“In a split second, I had to make the decision to move in with a guy who was going to challenge everything in me. The residence leaders would come in every five minutes to check that we hadn’t held each other against a wall,” Mmagawo says. “You could cut the tension with a knife.” But he felt God telling him that his healing would take a long time if he didn’t take this opportunity.
“We got so tight that year,” Mmagawo says. Even after moving into single rooms the following year, Van Zyl still used to come and sleep in his bed. “We told our story to others,” he says, “and that’s where my journey of being a bridge-builder was really formed”.
Godfrey Mmagawo loves listening to music, singing and playing his guitar, and plays in Joshua Generation Church’s (JoshGen) worship band. When Mmagawo heard the story of how JoshGen started in 2016, something in his heart gave itself to the vision of the church. He now preaches sermons there and has joined the eldership team at JoshGen. VIDEO: Supplied/Godfrey Mmagawo.
‘It stops with us’
“I grew up poor, but I struggled because I was exposed to people with a lot of financial resources. Mmagawo realised his role was to connect these two worlds, “facilitating spaces where people who wouldn’t otherwise sit at the table can sit there together.” He has a “natural ability to connect incredibly well with different types of people,” says his wife Boitumelo.
Healthy men have healthy, functioning families.
“Godfrey is one proud dad,” she says. He changes nappies, baths and feeds their son and plays the guitar for him to watch his reaction. Music is a big part of Mmagawo’s life, and he plays in the worship band at Joshua Generation Church in Stellenbosch, where he also preaches sermons and was ordained as an elder two years ago. “He is a servant leader,” Boitumelo says.
“They laugh at me at daycare because I kiss my son like a thousand times,” Mmagawo laughs. A lot of boys don’t see that example of having a loving, present father who is emotionally available, “but it stops with us”, he says. If we spend time working with young men in this country, a lot will change, because “healthy men have healthy, functioning families”, he says.
“It doesn’t make sense, the reality of what I’m experiencing,” Mmagawo says. “We are simply there to accept God’s invitation to heal and restore us, to help us live a life that we haven’t experienced ourselves.”
“There’s something special about this girl.” Godfrey Mmagawo met his wife, Boitumelo Mmagawo, at the University of the Free State (UFS), but “couldn’t gather the guts to talk to her for a year”, he says. Eventually he invited her to his residence ‘huis dans’ (house dance), and “I think we both realized that evening that we are perfectly compatible”, says Boitumelo. They were married at the end of 2017. PHOTO: Jess Holing
Godfrey Mmagawo is passionate about sport. “I want to provide other children with a similar background to my own with the same opportunities I received,” says Mmagawo, who participated in the Calling Academy extreme triathlon challenge, raising funds for quality education for low-income learners. He also loves trail running, and getting lost in the mountains of Stellenbosch, he says. PHOTO: Supplied/Calling Cape Town