"Ohh! Is that S'khonjwa in front... Is he the MC tonight?"
Hushed tones of hung — apprehension, a sense of cautious excitement and perhaps uncertain anxiety grips the air.
Presently, he chuckles gibberish as he mumbles inaudibly into a dangling microphone... Then he cracks an obscurely risqué or brazenly rude, if somewhat sexist, perhaps racist or even blasphemous opening ice-breaker... an ice-breaker that appears to build more ice than it breaks!
That, even before the bastard gets to introduce himself to this, an august, carefully selected, debonair and flamboyantly appointed audience.
And the room freezes!
Fidgeting quietly on the prim exquisite tables, twiddling their manicured fingers rather aimlessly on their phones, hiding their ambushed shame, the quint crowd rehashing and taking in the impromptu backhanded joke, settles in rather uncomfortably for another long ride.
To laugh or not to laugh...Perchance to cry. That is the question!
Mind you, tonight is no mean occasion...a mixed grill of moral paragons, revered culturalists, accomplished academia; elderly in-laws (osebele abamqoka); His Worships too are here,
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Ministers of both the pulpit as well as zvigananda, omamazala labakhwenyana, nascent relations whose very eyeballs are yet to earn the cultural permission to meet ngqo!
Captains of industry too are here; the old school and the ama2ks!
These days are carefully choreographed for absolute chivalry, pomp and ceremony, decorum and etiquette. UMrifithi ruffled every feather!
Silence.
That rip-roaring , unmistakable guffaw follows. And you wonder... Is it with you or at you this motels clown is laughing so liberally! Sheepishly, you join in and tag along laughing.
For a second, this fool, Bobongile Bubbles may turn on you unannounced and simply declare " ... Bonke abangahlekiyo ngakibo bayaloya!" And you’re caught offside.
Laughter, deep sincere laughter, the primary tool of his trade.
The jocund signature laughter rings loud and reverberates through the rafters, instantly infecting the atmosphere like some therapeutic Indian incense, lifting the air and the mood, flapping the curtains and cluttering the cutlery. His infectious laughter bounces off the wall paintings.
It infects all our guarded souls with his raucous candour and raw mirthfulness of spirit.
Once in the groove, whether in merry wedding or sombre funeral, whether Amapiano clubbing or corporate/ sport gala... somehow this lad got the lines between joy and sadness, between hard politics and social banter... the lines between Highlanders tings and the resurgent buoyant Matabele King Mzilikazi revival; between the orthodox, contemporary church and traditional African culture absolutely blurred.
Once in his element, Bubbles got the whole room, the entire people, the whole city and whole village asking themselves one question, even without uttering a word: Who really are we?
Is not laughter, joy and passion our true portion? Is not our proud beauty , our ambience, our Art, culture and great hospitality our best foot forward?
These questions, uMrifithi provoked in our hearts and minds throughout his colourful, if controversial career just as he did in his Swanson dance and tour around the city he had made his personal lounge , right through to his final venue in the cold basement of Emlowezi village in Matshetsheni , Gwanda. Who are we!
You may be excused if you thought I am writing about the ever hilarious Eyeye!
That charming gone- too- soon brilliant young lad Clive Chigubhu, who graced our lungs in his short life.
For he was one such storm brewed in the Bulawayo pot. He too carried the flame of the Queens and embodied the spirit of Mthwakazi. His exit, just as impromptu, just as abrupt.
Asiphelelanga.
You may be excused to imagine I am talking about the late great exuberant, enchanting gigolo of Mthwakazi, Sihlangu Dlodlo, aka Qhube Elingela Qhwala!
For he too was one such unabashed, fearless warrior of all- things Bulawayo.
For he too loved us and taught us to laugh with abandon... as much at them as at ourselves. He graced and embellished our stage.
His wit on steroids, his tongue coarse and ever forked, Mpangazitha too, taught us there is neither prize, pride nor glory in playing low and humble to inflate the egos of our enemies...
To be bold and beautiful and always, to be proud, unapologetic ambassadors of being Matabele. He too never warned us. His candle was out in a flash.
Asiphelelanga.
You would be equally excused if you imagined I'm talking here about the enigmatic Ndebele hip-hop rap genius from outa Lobengula, Cal-vin, aka Banjal' Abantu.
For he too captured our hearts and promised so much from deep, creative repertoire. And boom! Cal_Vin never bad us farewell. We just woke up to a blank.
Asiphelelanga.
Yes. You would not be too far off the mark if you thought I am still mourning that legendary trailblazer, Mackay Teekay, or the robust, spellbinding Ishmael “Ishuu” of Umkhathi fame...
Or indeed you may think I am extolled the iconic virtues of the doyen himself, the Godfather of the Arts, Continueloving " Cont" Mhlanga. Asiphelelanga.
These supremely talented theatre moguls and cultural warriors are strewn all over the underneath in ignoble gravesites.
Individually and collectively, they conjured all manner of art forms that captured the very essence of who we are and why the world should stop and give a damn..!
And perhaps as a people we were content, in our nonchalant manner to simply watch and enjoy them while their brief candles shone...
But we never really saw or harvested the immense strategic value the artistic assets present as a potential core competence of City of Bulawayo and critical pillar of Mthwakazi, in the bigger scheme of things.
When we lose our laughter, we lose everything.
It is about Bobongile S'khonjwa, the Ndebele Rockstar that Mthwakazi is so grim and crestfallen today.
It is about uMrifithi, Bubbles, Bhanya, the Rule-breaker; It is about saQobo, the Pioneer, the Free Spirit, uMsele... Istandarari sikaMoyo!
Today we lost too much. (Zidonse zitshile!) It seems as if on September 21, we lost all them all over again, wrapped in one.
Yet it is the first I sat through a funeral, routinely lost track of the sadness of the occasion... and sincerely imagined I was in the midst of some mind blowing thriller of a live show. Perhaps it is as it should be.
Very sorry Haslam. The war- horse rests.
Somewhat like the biblical Joseph, Nicholas Moyo sired a boy-child that was never his own.
Virtually from the maternity ward him and Lilian unwittingly donated the child to Bulawayo and the world. Babongile abeThwakazi baba Moyo...
To them you gave a remarkably precious gift. Your son wore Bulawayo around his soul and somehow tattooed that S'khonjwa name indellibly unto every Mthwakazian heart.
In ways only unique to himself, Babongile had insane humanism and the sheer milk of humankindness.
He exuded such phenomenal random relatedness that drew deep connectedness and sincere camaraderie from the young as much as the old, from the saved and pious as much as the avowed heathen; from staunch Zanuiods as much as opposition ideologues, from the wealthy as well as the meek and poor, from the holier- than- thou as much as the scum- of - the -earth. His effortless pull , seamless, humongous! We saw many chasing fame. We saw fame chasing him.
Sorry Qobo, your dad was ours.
It is common cause, for the longest time there's been something deeply broken in the soul of our people.
Something inherently sad embedded in their collective memory, in the Matabele psyche and mental outlook... something defeated and dead, something very angry and resigned in their story.
In Babongile, King Solomon weGagasi, we have just buried one of the angriest , happy Ndebeles to ever have graced our land.
Far from being blind, lukewarm or dismissive of our plight and brand of pain and anger, S'khonjwa would never allowed himself to sink, sulk and wallow under its weight as many of us are wont to. In all his madness, he was the most honest, truthful mirror of our society.
A pillar of social justice to the end, he was particularly alive to the pain and grief enveloping his in sundry spheres of life.
Babongile elected to rock his and his people's struggles and anguish with so much pride and aplomb like some badge of honour, ensuring it was in your face every day everywhere.
So painstakingly did he package his pain and brokenness that turned it around and like balm, used it as the irony, the oil and primary launchpad for deliberate war , a conscious groundswell of hope, affirmation, self- love,
Positivity and laughter for his people and everything Mthwakazi.
Ever the unsung, albeit brilliant think tank behind what often passed as mundane pranks and comic gibberish, Babongile's expert use of comedic relief that he imported into our wedding ceremonies, birthday parties,
Corporate tete-a-tetes and our living rooms thawed immense social tensions...
He employed taboo innuendo and subtle rhetorical wordplay from his huge toolkit of homophones, puns and language-twists to open up hitherto closed spaces and to enrich dialogue and community interaction.
The great Boundary Pusher was a master of double-entendrè, a subtle wordplay technique that can lend some measure of decency and artistry to matters that would ordinarily be seen as outright vulgar or taboo territory.
Thus , Mrifithi used his poetic licence and repeatedly broke the rules, detoxing and un- tensing our knotted hearts, inviting us to relax and to laugh at ourselves.
How much better shall we re- imagine ourselves, communicate and transmit our true beauty!
Here lies the epitome of our ambience, our richness, our heritage, our beauty, our humour and the culture of City of Kings.
Phepha Qobo.
