The story of Wonderboy Peters compels all of us to invest time and effort in deepening our understanding  of mental illness, and to equip ourselves with tools and techniques required to be capable of service to those affected by the epidemic within our families, communities and friendship circles. His has been an over-two-decade battle with bipolar disorder, first diagnosed in London, where he was teaching and doing postgraduate studies after winning a scholarship as a top academic achiever at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Born in the early 1970s in the farms of Mpumalanga province, his life attracted drama from the very beginning as his grandmother moved from farm to farm, evading harassment from whites who wanted to know how and why a black family of domestic servants was raising what looked like a white baby, almost five decades since the first Immorality Act (1927) prohibited all forms of sexual liaisons, and by extension romantic relationships, between whites and ‘non-whites’, because, as far as white South Africa was concerned, it mattered not what they were, but only that they did not meet the standard for dignity, freedom and ultimately humanity, i.e. whiteness.

Wonderboy ascribes his first head-on collision with bipolar to the impact of a deeply painful incident which occurred in 1998. His brother in-law, himself probably possessed by some form of mental ailment, one day picked up a pickaxe, headed to the cemetery and demolished to shreds Wonderboy’s mother’s tombstone, which the latter had recently erected after months of putting money aside. Robbed of a meaningful deed, which not only outwardly symbolized his internally-felt eternal affections for his deceased mother but had also entailed taxing personal austerity measures, a part of Wonderboy faded into permanent obscurity together with the pieces of stone that had once stood together and depicted the memory of the life of his mother.

Years later in the neatly swept, paved streets and cosy coffee shops of London, Wonderboy was busy with a manuscript of what would have been his literary debut, an autobiographical novel poignantly titled The Unveiling. It was precisely during this period of conducting research for the (still outstanding) novel, which for obvious reasons entailed going deep into himself and searching for answers pertaining to his life, family history, heritage, identity and future prospects, that mental stability challenges first emerged for Wonderboy. Failing to reconcile the proud family history of wealth and prosperity acquired through access to vast tracks of land and countless cattle ownership in the era of his great grandfather, to the abject misery and grinding poverty into which he was born and raised, where his mother was a domestic and his uncles mineworkers, farmworkers and security guards. Wonderboy plunged into anguish, despair and melancholy, and was diagnosed with a bipolar disorder which brought to an abrupt end what had promised to be a thriving academic life and literary career in the native land of one William Butler Yeats (he was actually Irish but English colonization happened) who had once written, “It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield.” For Wonderboy, exercising such Yeatsian courage and enacting a comprehensive retrospective self-examination - what Antonio Gramsci defined  as “an historical, critical self-inventory” - produced, evidently, nearly tragic personal repercussions. He relocated back home, had a relapse, and was admitted to Helen Joseph Hospital’s psychiatric ward where, for months, he languished as a mental illness patient receiving treatment.    

Western medical science and its incessant overreliance on drugs, produced by profit-driven pharmaceutical companies proved inadequate for Wonderboy’s condition. He looked elsewhere for help. He looked within, and thus began his journey of finding himself through the medium of African spirituality. It was an African healer (Isangoma) that succeeded in reuniting Wonderboy Peters with the spirits of his ancestors from which he had long been alienated as a ‘detribalized urban native,’ highly proficient and actively indulging in all the trappings of the culture and civilization of the European settler-colonizers of South Africa. While he takes antidepressant medication, he still believes a great part of his healing comes from a good knowledge of bipolar, meditating, African spirituality, and sharing his story.

Karl Marx, flabbergasted by the crushing excesses of industrial capitalism on the lives of the Western proletariat, formulated the theory of alienation (1844 Philosophical Manuscripts) to explain the workers’ estrangement from most aspects of their human-essence, as the demands of capitalist production expropriated from them their time, physical and mental labour and above all redirected proceeds thereof to the capitalist class as surplus value. Marx thus concluded that workers were being robbed of the true essence, significance, joys, leisure and experience of life. Frantz Fanon modified and expanded the theory of alienation and used it to illuminate the arch evil of colonialism and resultant complete alienation of the colonized which ultimately places her, “outside humanity”, in Fanon’s own words. Wonderboy’s personal experience somewhat warrants, perhaps, that we (the erstwhile colonized) consciously embark on a process of “historical critical self-inventory” or, to borrow from Cornel West,  that we ask ourselves: “what kind of human beings are we; what has gone into the shaping and moulding of who we are; what kind of intellectual, moral, spiritual and political resources do we have at our disposal?” and (might I add) are they effective in propelling us to racial self-discovery and actualization or are they its active negation?

The above questions are of crucial importance if we take seriously Fanon’s concept of alienation that colonialism immerses the colonized into. Siphiwe Ndlovu, in his brilliant Phd thesis on Fanon, summarises the tenets of Fanonian alienation to include cultural alienation; psychological alienation; and socio-economic alienation. I would add that these derive mainly from six historical traumas that most black Africans have suffered, and are yet to heal from, as a result of their encounter with Europeans:

a) the trauma of foreign invasion;

b) the trauma of the violence of the wars of dispossession;

c) the trauma of the pain of actual land dispossession (forced removals, demolitions);

d) the trauma of the forced peasantization and proletarianzation of formerly proud and self-sufficient practitioners of communalist agrarian economy;

e) the trauma of violent destruction of the African political system and all its institutions and political disenfranchisement and social ostracization under white colonial rule;

f) the trauma of criminalization and vicious demonization of African spiritual practice and imposition of Christianity.

Some may wonder how one’s man battle with mental illness leads to exposition of social theory and political history. To which the simple answer would be that mental illness is fast assuming a crisis dimension in contemporary, post-apartheid South Africa in terms of various media reports and the frequency of tragic senseless killings, rape, abduction, mutilation and suicide rates especially among young people. The poor, rural, less educated African majority is disproportionately affected. Stubborn unemployment, further retrenchments, stagnant economy and rising inflation in the economy are exacerbating an already terribly bad situation. The phenomenon of crass materialism and conspicuous consumption promoted even by politicians who profess socialism and revolution, through their playboy-mansion, debauched lifestyles, throw the highly impressionable young activists who take them at their empty slogans into serious anxiety, self-doubt and anger as they are left behind in the orgy super consumerism widely circulated throughout social media platforms. Add charismatic churches with their prosperity doctrine and the incorrigibly rogue motivational speakers/business coaches to the equation and only then do you begin to appreciate the gravity of the South African situation - the world’s most unequal society in terms of wealth and income gaps.

Thankfully, Wonderboy Peters has defied all odds to remain a productive citizen and that has, to their credit, long caught the attention of government leaders. It started with former Premier of KwaZulu-Natal, Sbu Ndebele, who was the first to recognize his intellectual capacity and special talent for the written word and hired him as a researcher and speechwriter when he was Minister of Correctional Services. Not long after that Wonderboy was in the Presidency at the Union Buildings, writing speeches for deputy president David Mabuza and President Cyril Ramaphosa. He drafted speeches for current President Ramaphosa for more than three years, starting in January 2015.

It was in the Presidency where he has made his most significant career contribution to date - he is the man behind the Thuma Mina concept in President Ramaphosa’s 2018 State of the Nation Address which immediately earned a rousing standing ovation from the entire audience of members of parliament as well as guests seated in the gallery. That moment still remains the most promising, inspirational and hopeful of Ramaphosa’s presidency.  For nearly two years, Wonderboy has been in KZN with current Premier, Sihle Zikalala, and it looks like they are on to big things. Relatively young, progressive and dynamic, there is no doubt Zikalala will put Wonderboy’s talents to most effective and efficient use. Above all Wonderboy has not allowed mental illness to make him degenerate into a toxic, violent or abusive person. He is a loving husband and involved father to their four adorable children.

His commitment to raising mental-illness consciousness and fighting against the stigma attached to it has seen him, together with his wife Jennifer, establish the Mind and Dignity Foundation. This is a vehicle through which they aim to partner with public and private players and spread the word that mentally-ill people are human like all of us and they too deserve all the love, respect and dignity.

Written by By Jackie Shandu in his private capacity