Who's your daddy? Go ask Mom

In the aftermath of the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War, the then British commander in Natal, Garnet Wolseley, assisted by Theophilus Shepstone, secretary of native affairs, carved up the Zulu Kingdom into 13 territories.

One of these fiefdoms was ruled by Zibhebhu kaMaphitha. His grandfather was Sojiyisa, stepson to King Shaka's grandfather, Jama.

The loose translation of Sojiyisa's name is "He who was diluted". This is because when his mother, Nongati, who was a Thonga slave, married Jama, she was already pregnant. When this was pointed out to Jama he shrugged: "I know that she is pregnant but I will dilute the unborn one's genetics with my royal seed."

In jest or not, this is a typical outlook for the delusional wannabe infallible commonly known as the human male.

An uncle of mine who was a court interpreter for 40 years recently enthralled me with a story about a couple who wed some 30 years ago. They couldn't conceive. Five years into their marriage, the husband gave the wife an ultimatum: "Give me children or we're through."

story_article_left1

"Maybe we should get tested to find out what's wrong," she said.

"There couldn't possibly be anything wrong with me. You go get tested."

So she complied with his demand and gave birth to four beautiful children who all looked alike. But they also bore an uncanny resemblance to Botsotso, the unemployed village drunk who was notorious for providing his "services" to widows and the unfulfilled wives of migrant-labourer husbands. When the whispers of the village rumour mill became too loud, the husband surreptitiously acquired his children's DNA samples and had them tested. Not one was his biological kid.

I was recently in conversation with a bunch of friends about a paternity fraud case that a prominent Nelspruit businessman opened against a former lover after he discovered that he'd been paying papgeld for 14 years for a child that wasn't his.

There was a lot of debate among the fellas but we were ultimately in agreement that telling a 14-year-old that Daddy is not actually Daddy was cruel. Someone even said the Nelspruit guy's reaction was "unAfrican".

Back in the day, men regularly raised children they knew full well were not their blood. And it wasn't because we were sans DNA tests. Oh, no. Every homestead in the African village had a DNA test kit in the form of the oldest gogo in the family.

She would give a newborn the once-over, touch its uqukulu (big toe) and proclaim, "Oh my, this child's left uqukulu is identical to Babomncane Bhodlimfino's big toe. He is your paternal uncle, twice removed, from your great-grandfather Sijingi's side. He died during the Battle of Ndodakusuka."

This was code for, "This is not your biological child but just suck it up and raise it."

In the Zulu tradition, when a child cries incessantly, the gogos encourage the mother to take it outside so she can shush it using its biological father's praise name. The Ngcobo clan name, for an example, is Fuze. So if one of my midgets was not really mine, the gogos would encourage Mrs N to go outside and say, "OK, shush now Madiba" if the real father was a Mandela.

Speaking of the Mandelas, who remembers when Mandla Mandela revealed that one of his brothers had fathered a child with his ex-wife? When I discussed this with my uncles over a rack of goat ribs, they chided him, "That's not done. Your brother's child is yours."

story_article_right2

This is because the same gogos often encouraged a brother to "help" his brother out if he couldn't conceive.

When I was eight my elder brother Mazwi managed to almost convince me that I was adopted, just to mess with me. It's only when I was about 17, looking through my folks' wedding pictures, that I saw a black-and-white mirror image of myself in a tux, staring back at me, two years before I was born.

As a society, we're obsessed with the true paternity of people. You would think that at this stage of our cultural evolution we would have figured out by now that it's all really much ado about nothing. This is why I have much respect for former NBA star Shaquille O'Neal, that human Brixton Tower, who released a rap single, Biological Didn't Bother, paying homage to Phil Harris, his stepdad.

There is an unsubstantiated rumour that the Nguni word for a woman, umfazi, is a shortened form of umfaazi - one who goes to the grave with information.

During the notorious lekgotla with the savages I consort with where we discussed misattributed paternity, one of the fellows - who bears an uncanny resemblance to his mother - says he once woke up in the middle of the night with his father standing over his bed just staring at him with a thoughtful, faraway look. I have no DNA evidence to prove this but I suspect the involvement of Botsotso, the village drunk.

• Follow the author of this article, Ndumiso Ngcobo, on Twitter: @NdumisoNgcobo.