Segale Mogotsi: ‘Housemaster’ of radio who set the party alight
1969-2016
SEGALE Aldrin Mogotsi, who has died at the age of 47, was a hugely popular, controversial and sometimes eccentric radio broadcaster.
His career spanned almost 30 years.
He was called the Housemaster because of the house music he loved to play and was the reason people young and old listened to radio.
A party-time person, he was famous for his party-time shows. People planned their parties and weekends around his shows.
When he was on air they didn’t need to hire a DJ. They knew they would be in safe hands for the three or four hours of his show.
He knew his music, house music and South African music, which he loved, and knew exactly what type of songs to play for what occasion and for what day of the week.
You were never going to get from him on a Friday night what you got on a Saturday afternoon — and certainly not on a Sunday.
When he was at Kaya FM, a Gauteng station, he had half a million listeners on a Sunday afternoon, which was unheard of. Only a superstar could pull those kind of numbers.
He was, above all, the ultimate entertainer.
He did speciality shows where he was the presenter as well as the producer. He planned the format and did the execution. This was just as well because he always knew exactly what he wanted, and always wanted things done his way.
Not many DJs can pull that off. He would plan the sequence of his songs very carefully. He might have sounded relaxed and laid-back on air — indeed, there were those who criticised him for it — but this hid the serious amount of work that went into each show he did.
He was obsessed with the rules of radio and regarded as one of the last true radio practitioners.
Mogotsi was born in Mahikeng on October 5 1969 and grew up in Mabopane, north of Pretoria.
He always had a passion for music and radio and went straight into radio after he left school.
His first job was on Bop Radio. While there he had an unscheduled meeting with a mob from the militant extreme right-wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, who were not his greatest fans, and was involved in an accident while trying to get away.
After Bop Radio he worked for Metro FM as a programme manager where he went big with the audience for his The House Hold Show. He had stints with public broadcasting service radio stations including Motsweding FM and Alex FM.
At the time of his death he was working for North West FM, where he hosted the Platinum Network Café on Fridays between 8pm and midnight and Saturdays between 3pm and 6pm.
He was given two slots because of his experience and because the station wanted someone who could en- tertain people. And he was doing just that. When he wasn’t on air he was running an events company he started.
For all his popularity, Mogotsi precipitated a furious backlash on social media when he posted that he hoped one of his sons was not gay.
He was very much a ladies’ man himself. One of the many women he had a relationship with was Zindzi Mandela. He reportedly moved out of their home after they had a screaming match.
Something Mogotsi was reluctant to talk about was his calling as a traditional healer, or sangoma.
He said he felt the calling in 1992 but resisted until 2007.
“I got sick and I tried running to the Zion Christian Church, and on three occasions they told me to try the bones. And in my head I was, like, ‘I’m Model C and can’t be doing bones’.”
He said he was helped to come to terms with his calling by Mandela’s ex-husband, himself a healer. Following his guidance he went to healing school.
Mogotsi is survived by four children. — Chris Barron
People planned their parties and weekends around his shows