Go big or go home

SELLO S ALCOCK - Sep 08 2009 11:07

Black Jerusalem by Happy Ntshingila (Umuzi)Sello S Alcock

This a great snack-read, especially in between all that serious daily consumption of newspapers and ... well, blogs.

It is filled with nuggets of interesting stories, mostly from the writer's exploits as one of three founding fathers of South Africa's first black-owned advertising agency: Herdbuoys.

The tales include sheer bravado -- typical of the hero's journey related by a township storyteller -- and testosterone-fuelled defiance, such as the time Happy Ntshingila and co-founders Dimape Serenyane and Peter Vundla told global giant Coca-Cola it never made them and therefore could never break them.

A modern-day memoir would also be incomplete without a bit of vain ranting, such as the serious jab at former South African Airways chief executive Zukile Nomvete for his bad manners.

If Ntshingila had a score to settle with anyone for his time in advertising, he certainly settles it in this "go big or go home" memoir.

The funniest story, though, has to be about the lethargy of corporate juggernaut and Congress of the People member Saki Macozoma.

The book also recounts blunders such as when Ntshingila, with the "King of SAB", Tony van Kralingen, was summoned to KwaZulu-Natal by Zulu monarch Goodwill Zwelithini for not respecting royal protocol. (Former SAB-Miller executive Van Kralingen also wrote the foreword here.)

Ntshingila writes in Drum-era style and gives quick yet shallow glimpses of his journey from being a snazzy-dressing township boy to being the managing director of one of South Africa's leading advertising agencies.

He tells us that we should look to the roots of the word "Jerusalem", or maybe the lyrics of Carly Simon's song for the movie Working Girl, to find out why he chose the title. A quick look for the root meaning of Jerusalem yields peace, completeness or wholeness. At first this is puzzling, but towards the end of the book Ntshingila reveals that Herdbuoys left a "legacy of peace" for the advertising industry. It is still puzzling why a book that at best can be described as a half-baked memoir replete with all the juicy bits that have come to be associated with this genre would have anything to do with a "legacy of peace".

Now, what of Simon's song? The lyrics perhaps offer a clue: "Let the river run/Let all the dreamers/Wake the nation/Come, the New Jerusalem."

Again it is not clear what to make of this, which after all comes from Ntshingila the banking executive who is often referred to as a marketing guru.

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This points to my biggest gripe with Ntshingila's book: the story telling is in that tradition I have already described as the hero's journey of a township lad, which reminds me of that "great" township storyteller -- the storyteller you will find surrounded by a group of people hanging on his every word about his adventurous exploits.

The storyteller, or "the starring" as they say where I come from, always ends up on top.

Often at the end of his tale, after you have pampered him with food and drinks, and after you have been thoroughly entertained, you walk away with the feeling that you have just been conned.

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Go big or go home

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