SA, seize the day, as Bob has urged

The last time I saw Kgomotso Bob Mabena was on October 24 2018. We had been having a lot of meetings prior to that one, but that one would be our last.

He was late to that, as he had been for all the times we had met, I had gotten used to it, somewhat.

As I wait for him inside the Life Grande Café at the Waterfall Shopping Centre, he sends me a message: “Squeezing out the last few words of Tito’s speech, I am parked, coming through now.”

I forgive him as I always did and sip on the gin and tonic that I had just ordered.

It wasn’t a normal day, on that day I had needed the drink. Earlier, pulling into the parking lot, the news bulletin had just announced that Jabulani “HHP” Tsambo was no more. It’s just difficult to imagine some people dead, not that it suits anyone, but some death announcements are more shocking than others.

By the time Bob arrives, he is visibly shaken as I am by the HHP news. He gives me a hug and says “hello my friend.”

Now Bob and I weren’t friends. Ours was a working relationship, I was to publish his autobiography, the reason for our many meetings. I suppose he called me “friend” because what else do you call someone you have divulged your family secrets to? And that is the nature of my work, especially with those kinds of books that require one to go into their past trauma and interrogate themselves against those traumas and or lived experiences.

You can never go back to being strangers or indeed have just a “professional” relationship.

What you have lingers awkwardly in between professional acquaintance and a friendship that isn’t really a friendship.

He sits down and orders a glass of water. We immediately launch into the death of HHP, we are both freshly shocked, it just broke. On that day, Bob doesn’t tell me stories like he usually did. There is no “Thabiso, nna ne ke tshwenya!” followed by a roar of laughter. The mood is sombre, it just couldn’t be rescued.

We attempt to talk about the book. There are some things that I was not happy with at that point and I suggest an intervention, which he welcomes. We move back to HHP, we agree to cut the meeting short, we are not making progress and he wants to follow up on the HHP story properly.

And that is the last time I see him, his back turned to me as he walks towards his car.

Bob’s autobiography was meant to have been published last year to not only mark but celebrate his three decades of being a radio champion and legend.

The book never did happen. Bob got busier and busier, he stopped replying to emails and eventually I stopped trying. A shame, on both our parts.

The first thing I thought about when the news of his death broke was “Oh my God, the book.”

I believe firmly that a good book, a good story, is one that allows and indeed pushes society to begin to explain themselves to themselves. Bob’s story, the book we were meant to have brought out, was just that.

With that book, Bob would have been able to give so many South Africans the opportunity to heal. Especially the ones born around the same time as him. A time he described as the momentous year and month of the moon landing.

Bob had an incredible life, one that wasn’t always rosy, but incredible nonetheless. His career created and birthed many a black radio jock’s career.

So today, as I write, rest in peace Kgomotso Bob Mabena, I wanted to tell you that I am burdened at the loss of life but mostly that we had the opportunity to immortalise it and we both failed.

His last Instagram post urged us to “seize the day”, and I hope we all do, despite the darkness we all find ourselves in currently.

A moment of collective mourning is the last thing we need.