To Mbulelo Mzamane: Farewell Mzala!
Barolong Seboni | Saturday March 1, 2014 18:05
I first met this son of a preacher man when he came to teach at UBLS- Gaborone campus in 1975/76. He was my lecturer for several African Literature classes, including South African poetry. That seemed to be his favourite subject and it soon became mine. But Mzamane was also very keen on African literature and its criticism. As I progressed up to the senior year he became the supervisor of my fourth year dissertation on African poetry.
That was the beginning for me. I suspect that it was the dissertation on African Poetry and the encouragement that I got from Mzamane that helped me decide on my career path. I have to add here that there were various other agents that saw me through this odious process of settling down and focusing on some initially blurry vision.
The paper was not forthcoming and the deadline was getting nearer, so Mzamane firmly reminded me of these deadlines. I, in turn, huddled in consultation with one Thulani Gcabashe, and then proceeded to purchase a one way bus ticket to Lobatse. With a small bundle of books in hand and enough clothes for a week (two t-shirts and one pair of jeans) I alighted at the Cumberland Hotel stop and went right past the cocktail bar straight to MmaKeaikitse’s house in Division Two, where I camped for the week, completed the paper in between bowls of motogo wa mabele and chunks of brown bread with peanut butter, and hiked back to Gabs to have it typed on a stencil by Ausi Vicky Gochani at super speed!
On handing it in to Mzamane, I mumbled what must have sounded like a meek apology for late delivery, and he just said; ‘’it seems that’s how you work best, so don’t worry!’’ I suspect he was referring to a previous incident where we produced the first and for a long time, only Rag magazine, single-handedly the night before the Rag parade hit the streets of Gaborone. He was good in getting the best out of his students and making them feel at ease.
Mbulelo Mzaname had a rip-roarous sense of humour which he used to create effect in his collection of short stories set in the townships of South Africa. It was his mastery of satire that brought his characters to life. Mzamane had a sharp intellect, a keen, critical eye. He was a very committed writer and teacher. He cared for his characters in the same way that he cared for his many students over the years. He had a very profound effect on my career, and indeed also had an influence on the style I was to later adopt in my prose. He was one of the people I consulted in 1983 when I was set on an academic career. His response was simply that I had made an obvious choice. It was what was expected of me.
As we were growing up, Mbulelo surfaced in the various aspects of our lives. When he was Dean of Student Affairs, we approached him for the use of lecture room 212 in the Old Humanities block. He obliged. We had ably convinced him that this thing called “disco”, which Thabani Kgosidintsi had imported from the UK courtesy of his ‘’Afrikan Roots’’, had to have a certain ambience and intimacy that the capacious students’ Dining Hall could not offer. Our instincts were right because on weekends that very same space of intellectual and academic discourse was transformed into a dimly lit ‘night club 212’, where various young professionals from town, who in later life became judges and top civil servants, could be seen dancing cheek-to-cheek with senior Swazi students to the deep baritone of Barry White.
Mzamane was also one of the pillars behind the Writers Workshop of the English Department under Professors Bob Leshoai and John Melamu.
Other important figures in our nurturing and guidance include Leloba Molema and Ntombi Setshwaelo, who were themselves tutored by John Melamu, along with Mbulelo, at UBLS-Roma. Yes, the English Department of the University of Botswana is wonderfully, academically incestuous in that way! And of course the Writers’ Workshop produced many of Botswana’s writers and scholars in the name of Andrew Sesinyi, Seatlholo Tumedi, Alinah Segobye, Tiroentle Pheto, Albert Malikongwa, Barolong Seboni. Cedric Thobega, Tiro Sebina, Ben Janie, Godiramang Mkhaya, Onalenna Selolwane and others.
Mzamane lived and worked in Botswana at a time when the whole of Southern Africa was on fire. Burning against racism and colonialism, deep in the belly of the apartheid beast! I have talked to several Batswana who were students at the time and they all recall how, through our intellectual interaction with bo-Mzamane, Harry Nengwenkhulu, Kwesi Prah, Gabriel Setiloane and others, we became highly conscientised and acutely aware of the socio-political landscape of Southern Africa and the wider world. In fact, there was a strong rumour at the time that some lecturers of the UBLS were declared ‘’personas non grata’’ by the state for precisely that reason. Years later Mbulelo alluded to this when I met him in New York in 1986. It was at an anti-apartheid function headlined by Harry Belafonte and others. Mbulelo was presenting a paper at that event, and he had also graciously organised that my book Images of the Sun, which had just been published in the USA, be displayed. I say “organised” guardedly, when I really mean that he brought a bag full of the books and proceeded to put them alongside other more famous and prestigious titles on the exhibition stands, and then drew the curator’s attention to them!
I was going back to Wisconsin the next day, and before we parted that night we shook hands and bade each other farewell, and then he said; “We shall meet in Botswana soon. When you get back there tell your uncle Wellie Seboni that when they take over government and he becomes Minister of Home Affairs he must facilitate my return!’’
He did return, several times. But now Mbulelo Vizikhungo Mzamane is gone.