A laugh like lightning striking

This was also Radio Bop’s core audience — and the SABC, flush with apartheid backup capital, was determined to carve a hole into this cultural demographic.

From Metro FM’s immodest beginnings — the station went on air on September 1 1986, with Lucky Ntuli as the first DJ and then-foreign affairs minister Pik Botha smiling approvingly through the window at the spectre of blacks broadcasting in English — it was the clearing house.

Mabena, his exuberant personality and Metro FM were a match made in heaven. Even during the peak era of Alex Jay and Barney Simon at 5FM, black DJs such as the late Boggie Harry, Patrick Bogatsu, Tom Mphatsoe, Treasure Tshabalala and Nomshado Twala were premier DJs.

Those were the days before video killed the DJ. A time when breathless township chanteuses cooed “last night a DJ saved my life”.

Mabena and his brash, outlandishly beautiful cohort of radio boys from the hood — it was almost always boys — such as Vusi Letsoalo, Evidence Kemp, Dube, Ernest Pillay, Romeo Kumalo and Quincy Kekana descended on the scene like a pack of wild cats.

They were faster, livelier, smoother, and reflected the tone of mid-’90s SA in a blast of transformation. They were the New Jack fiends in a New Jack Swing world: edgy and far more crunkful R&B (think of Teddy Riley, R. Kelly, Jodeci and Janet Jackson). They had sharper edges, less greasy hair and tried to, and often succeeded at, out-twanging Americans. Not that they could tell the difference between a Southern drawl and New York’s lexical bounce.

Mabena was at the front of this. At some point, especially in the late ’80s to late ’90s, it felt like Mabena was the culture itself.

His ubiquity not only redefined the ’90s but — just as Brenda Fassie, Hotstix Mabuse and Chicco Twala had done in the ’80s — he became the very needle with which the culture was sewn, embroidered and rendered distinct from pretty much everything prior.

Unlike, say, Shado Twala, who was a goddess on the jazz scene, or Tim Modise, who carved himself the role of a serious political talk host, Mabena was not just black famous, he was famous famous, which is to say he was a bona fide rock star.

Radio in SA has had some truly gifted broadcasters, across the colour line. But black radio had never seen or heard anything like Mabena, not since the very beginning of African radio via imisakazo broadcasts of the pioneer King Edward Masinga, also known as u-Shubane ka Mangethe, in 1941.

Mabena’s biggest gift was the ability to market himself. He collaborated on a kwaito/rap hit Get Funky with Kaiser Chiefs sweetheart star Doctor Kumalo, expended his adrenaline as a racing car competitor, convinced the minister of tourism to sponsor an SA-Dakar race excursion, served as a brand model, hosted television music shows and reigned supreme in clubland.

To suggest he was SA’s first major-league influencer would not be an exaggeration.

Writing an editorial note in Bl!nk magazine, Siphiwe Mpye spoke for many when he recalled: “I didn’t know much about Mabena but the manner in which he was able to grab you right through those speakers was special. You couldn’t quite put your finger on it, but there was something very cool, yet accessible, about him.”

Mpye could not resist adding: “You felt like he could be your friend, but the type you never allow near your woman, for he has no control over the effect he has on women …

“For many years he was like an avalanche: Studio Mix television show on SABC 1, thousands of club gigs, kwaito and rap albums, with awards to boot. In the [early] ’90s, Bob Mabena was arguably the most famous man in the country.”

Nelson Mandela excepted.

Aspiration was everything.

The next decade saw the calmer but now intellectually assured and more rounded Mabena helming Kaya FM’s Breakfast Show between 2003 and 2005.

He was lethal — caring, but suffering no fools. His interviewing skills were of the investigative journalist variety, and his tone ranged between sucking the guest in and mugging them with charm.

If Radio Bop had discovered the uncut gem and Metro FM polished it, Kaya FM was the mind theatre in which the gem sparkled and increased its own value by showing and casting off unexpected colours in all seasons.

He tackled politics, IT, celebrity, corporate shenanigans and complex science issues with the doggedness of a rangy hound determined to extract juicy marrow from a bone.

He was relentless, incorrigible at times, and simply, and quite unexpectedly, the most important, loved and feared morning host of the first term of Thabo Mbeki’s African renaissance era.

That era came festooned with its own ideological and racial burdens, a carry-over from the Mandela years, but Mabena was able to cleave through all the bullshit and speak about what mattered.

He was a hit with both advertisers and listeners, with his show scoring the highest ratings.

Alas, he would not stay too long. By 2005 he was gone. Talk was that he had a falling out with management. He joined William Kirsch’s Primedia, where he was roped into management of Highveld Stereo before once again being lured back to the SABC as group audience development executive for television.

In our interview for the cover profile for the March 2006 issue of Bl!nk magazine, Mabena explained his high mobility in more practical terms: “I’m looking at developing myself, learning from different companies, and seeing how all the rush for new technology can be utilised for the old-school excellent broadcasting quality of, say, anchors performing tough and lonely jobs. I’m no longer a young man. I look back at my racy past and am disgusted.”

Contemporary audiences, though, will associate him with the new Black Consciousness kid on the block, Power 98.7, under the chairmanship of Given Mkhari, no shrinking violet himself.

At Power, Mabena prowled the breakfast slot like a man with all the experience in the world. He was looser in style, more relaxed, and felt like someone who had long vanquished the anxieties of pleasing everyone. For five years, this Bob Mabena also felt like he was an elder statesman, though with a naughty streak.

For me, one of his highlights was how he plucked a 1970s-1980s global disco dance champion, Godfrey Raseroka, from decades of obscurity in his hometown of Ga-Rankuwa and had him moonwalk in the studio. When Bob Mabena laughed, it felt like lightning had struck, and when he stepped off his show, one suddenly felt lonely again.

Mabena suffered cardiac arrest on Monday after a weekend’s stay in hospital. He is survived by his wife, Eucharist Hadebe, who he married in 2015, and eight children. South African radio and the social sphere will not be the same without him.

At some point, especially in the late ’80s to late ’90s, it felt like Mabena was the culture itself