Take a bow, Mandla
Let us vow not to be fair-weather friends, writes Florence Masebe
ANUMBER of lumps sit in my throat as I scramble for the right words to do this tribute justice. I found myself slipping into unavoidable tearful episodes since the early hours of Monday morning when I first heard the news that Mandla Hlatshwayo had been gunned down outside a pub in Pimville, Soweto.
It hurt then and it still hurts, as I write this now. How long had it been since his name got even the smallest mention in the mainstream media? When was the last time he had appeared on any of our screens? Where had he disappeared to after playing “Mr Bat” on Mfundi Vundla’s Generations on SABC1 all those many years ago?
I know some of the answers to these questions, and am trying hard not to make those a focus of this tribute to a young man whose life ended in a most ruthless manner. I am trying not to let the anger over what happened to Mandla overshadow the true spirit of this tribute.
I could easily get triggered by the fact that it was gunfire that ended his life when my own story with guns is one of survival. I just want to say goodbye to one of the nicest human beings I ever got to know and give him the hero’s farewell he so rightly deserves.
In a week when South Africans were battling to come to terms with crimes against young women, Mandla Hlatshwayo and his friend, Oupa Duma, stood up to protect women from armed men who did not think twice before shooting them, to end their lives.
On Monday we woke up to this terrible tragedy that reminded us of the gentle soul many had forgotten since he left daily television.
DJ Mandla from Jozifm, DJ Siphiwe from Generations and the guy from that 1996 SABC1 youth actuality show I co-presented, Electric Workshop, and I met at Urban Brew Studios as presenters for what was then part of the new line-up of shows on the relaunched SABC.
Mandla was a popular DJ from Soweto Community Radio. Electric Workshop was his first big television gig. Mine too, but this isn’t about me. It’s about that guy with whom I caught the Randburg bus from Eloff street to go to our voice-over recording every Tuesday morning. The same guy with whom I had most of my early publicity photo shoots in the old dilapidated Electric Workshop building in Newtown.
Funny, I cannot find any of his images from back then. We got to interview many great South Africans on the show, from politicians to entertainers to sports stars.
Working on a youth entertainment show meant we’d attend our fair share of campus parties and bashes.
He loved music and radio, and this made it easy for him to slip back to his old radio life when his Electric Workshop contract was not renewed.
Having started out in community theatre, his aspirations of cracking a big role in a television drama stayed strong, and he did not stop auditioning when opportunities came up. Fortune would finally find him when he auditioned for the role of Siphiwe on Generations.
Mandla had great fun at Generations and took great pride in his work there. Who wouldn’t? Generations was the best of those times and it was a big deal for an actor to find himself on that cast list. But, as they all say, good things come to an end and so did his role on the soap.
A short stint on e.tv’s Backstage in 2006 to 2007 was the last we would see of him on television. After that, the casting director’s favour seemed to elude him.
Was that the end of Mandla the television man? Did he deliberately move away from the television lights or did he battle to find a new chance on a new show, another opportunity for him to remain a household name?
I’m saddened by the fact that our industry did not give him more of a chance. It was as if he had been packed back to community radio and we forgot about him. We now find ourselves rummaging through old files for pictures and video clips to pay tribute to a talent we decided could not be given too many chances.
Times of bereavement turn many of us into insincere beings. We come through to speak glowingly of artists whose battles we often do not bother to check while desperately looking for ways to give ourselves relevance in their narrative.
I am not in any way excluding myself from this much-needed industry call-out. The truth is I did not even know Mandla was at Jozifm. I had not seen him nor spoken to him in years. I, too, forgot about him once the spotlight had shifted.
I dare not blame those who could not remember who he was. After all I, who worked so closely with him, had allowed his name to fade. I don’t want to join the chorus of those who say our artists are only celebrated once they are gone. I am not here to point an accusatory funder at the audience.
Instead I stand guilty of not celebrating a fellow artist well enough when I had the chance.
Perhaps your passing hurts so deeply because it means staring our own hypocrisy in the face. It hurts this much partly because of this guilt we carry. The guilt of having been your fair-weather friends.
There with you when you still made headlines and cracked the big invites, nowhere to be found when your star seemed to fade.
Yet here we are now giving you praise and sharing our hurt and pain over this loss. We allowed you to be forgotten. What right have we, then, to call you a hero, now when your family has lost you for good?
Of what value is this hero status we decorate your name with today?
For the Hlatshwayos, it means reliving the pain of losing a father to a bullet a few years ago. Now your children are left mourning their father whose life was ended the same way as their grandfather’s.
I find it a little unfair, that it takes this horrible tragedy for us to remember your name or your work.
I shamefully pay tribute to you today with an apology and a disclaimer. Mandla, my brother, my colleague, my forgotten friend... rest. We will not forget you. Nor will we ever make light of this selfless, brave act that ended in such tragedy.
And yes, fellow thespian, we will remember your work as we honour your name. Take a bow. Hamba kahle, Mandla Hlatshwayo.