EDITOR’S NOTE
Greatness is a strange thing.
It’s something that everyone is capable of but few have the guts to follow through on. We live in a world where people want to be famous, want to have influence but not many understand the reality of what it means to stand in greatness.
It is so easy to be an armchair critic when you’re not in the ring. The older I get the more I realise that we use the tools we have at the time to make the decision we believe is right, for the time.
Greatness requires grace, patience and risks. People who are riskaverse will never be great. I don’t say that glibly. Being open to taking risks doesn’t mean you have to be like Richard Branson and jump out of planes to be successful, because being a thrill-seeker is not always aligned with taking risks.
Taking a chance on yourself, a dream and an ideal is risky because you might look like a fool to some people. But fear of shame or embarrassment is where greatness goes to die. If Doctor Khumalo had not decided to record Get Funky with his late friend Bob Mabena and Wendy Khumalo we would not have the fond memories we have now whenever that song plays.
I lead with this instead of his football skills, because I’m trying to illustrate how that song could’ve buried his legendary status but instead it stamped his place in our hearts as South Africans. What he did was make us see him in a way new way — a fun Soweto boy. You see, greatness defies stereotypes. People who are great irritate us because they refuse to fit nicely in the boxes we put them in. Besides the immutable fact that Get Funky is a classic, Doctor Khumalo invited us to a fun, silly and intimate moment with a friend and turned it into something we could enjoy with him.
In the past three years we’ve lost so many people — including Mabena in August 2021 — that we’ve had to learn to appreciate people we have around us. We’ve been so focused on reading CVS and bios and impressing people with our talent and accolades that we’ve forgotten the magic of life is in the moments in between, not the highlights.
Carlos Amato writes beautifully about “16V” — the name we gave one of the greatest midfielders from South Africa — mapping out his greatest moments on the pitch. But it is in learning about having his soccer shoes stolen in Orlando, his strict father Pro Khumalo and his mother having to check young women who wanted to see the Doctor (sorry for the corny pun, I couldn’t help it) that we begin to appreciate him.
Where you come from, who raises you and who you surround yourself with are an integral part of reaching greatness.
My father was an Orlando Pirates fan — so much so that when I got my first car, a blue Toyota Tazz, he bought me a sticker that he stuck on the back window — but being from Dube himself, he adored Doctor Khumalo. Like Muhammad Ali, Doctor was popular for his skills as much as he was with the ladies. He was pretty and bad all at once. He knew those boys who stole his shoes would one day buy tickets to watch him play at Orlando Stadium.
Greatness has no doubts. When Ali said, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” he was stating facts. This is the real reason we can’t all reach greatness. To be great, you must have almost delusional self-belief. You must be so sure of the greatness that is inside you that you don’t allow the opinions of others to change what you know to be true about yourself.
When one of the producers of Doctor’s documentary contacted me a year or so ago to ask for details of archivists at a newspaper at which I used work, I had no idea she was putting together a four-part documentary on the legend that is Doctor Khumalo. When I found out about its release, I knew I wanted the story for the cover. Not for the obvious reasons but because I wanted to remind myself and the rest of us about how every now and then the stars align and we witness greatness.
The beauty of life is that those moments and experiences remain evergreen in our hearts. People remember how they felt watching Doctor Khumalo play at Afcon in 1996 as though it was yesterday.
We fall in love with greatness because we admire people who have gone where so few of us dare to go.
There’s a lot more to discover in this issue and I could have dedicated the space to selling you the features. But having watched the greatest of all time, Serena Williams, retire this year, I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to fall in love and be inspired by greatness. Doctor Khumalo is one of one. An icon living.
Ah Mntungwa!
Mantungwa Aluhlaza,
Mantungwa Amahle,
Bantwana benkosi!
We fall in love with greatness because we admire people who have gone where so few of us dare to go