Glynis O’Hara and Charl Blignaut
Could Mzwakhe Mbuli, charismatic grassroots liberation figure, poet and musician, be leading a double life as a bank robber? Impossible, say several leading South African musicians.
Mbuli’s arrest on Tuesday and his court appearance in Pretoria in connection with charges of robbery and the illegal possession of firearms has provoked shock and disbelief.
Mbuli’s colleagues describe him as a consummate professional and an inspirational cultural figure; an almost fanatical activist always ready to speak out against drug abuse and crime, and unfair employment practices involving musicians. Yet this week the African National Congress did not offer him any support, saying the courts should decide his guilt.
“He’s being paid R20 000 for a festival and R15 000 for an indoor appearance, so why would he go through all that to steal R15 000?” asked a former booking agent.
“He’s one of my role models. I just want to hear it’s not true,” said Tu Nokwe. “It’s absolutely shocking. I don’t believe it,” said kwaito star Arthur Mafokate.
Only a handful of people approached said although it seems uncharacteristic, they had heard rumours of Mbuli being involved in some sort of gangster or guerrilla activity – but stressed these were just rumours following events such as the alleged attempts on Mbuli’s life.
Speaking from a prison cell in Pretoria where he was awaiting his Friday bail hearing, Mbuli dismissed the arrest as a set-up.
“People are trying to set me up in order to divert attention away from the truth about the attempts on my life [on September 3 last year]. Surely I am allowed to carry my own firearm in my own car?” he said in an agitated monologue.
“What the newspapers reported was not true. There was no roadblock or car chase. I was stopped from behind and I co-operated with the police, who already had their firearms pointed at me when they ordered me out of my car. The two people who accompanied me were people I have worked with before on concerts.”
Mbuli says he met Gauteng MEC for Safety and Security Jessie Duarte on Monday to demand that the police conclude their investigation into the alleged assassination attempts. He claims to have passed on ample evidence to the police proving that he was caught in the middle of a drug conspiracy.
“They wanted me out of the way because I was speaking out against drugs. That’s something I will never do again – look what happens when I do.” His arrest, he says, was an attempt to lure police away from the evidence that he had compiled.
Responding to rumours that similar robberies are linked to former members of Umkhonto weSizwe, Mbuli denied any links to the organisation. He said he was in good health and, aside from one humiliating incident when he was strip-searched, was being treated decently. That hasn’t always been the case.
Although Mbuli is today widely known as South Africa’s “people’s poet”, in the mid- 1980s he was on the run, always trying to keep one step ahead of the police. Eventually he was detained. An article in Drum magazine at the time, one of the first of many about him, was headlined “King of the rap”. It was flung in his face as the cops derided him. “King!” they shouted, “Who the hell do you think you are to be a king? Now you’re king of nothing.”
Mbuli rose with an angry, golden voice in a time of political turbulence, and people adored him. A man with a beautifully deep, booming delivery and an energetic dance style, he built himself up as a struggle poet in the era of highly politicised funerals, then about the only legal way for people to protest.
He played the role of “cultural commissar” on the United Democratic Front cultural desk in the late 1980s, ruling on contraventions of the cultural boycott among other issues. He was on the podium in October 1989 when political prisoners were welcomed from Robben Island at a massive rally.
After the 1994 elections, his fame increased. He was called on to deliver a poem at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration and at Joe Slovo’s funeral. He has worked on Peter Gabriel’s Aids album and read a poem to Camille Cosby, wife of Bill Cosby, at Sun City.
Last year, he was a compere at the Prince’s Trust Two Nations Celebrate concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London and he told the magistrate at his bail hearing that he was supposed to help organise this weekend’s Two Nations concert at Johannesburg Stadium. But the trust was quick to distance itself from him this week, saying he had no organisational responsibilities and was not scheduled to perform.
Mbuli has released eight albums, of which six have reached gold. The most recent was this year’s Mzwakhe Ubonge Jehovah, a gospel album that he marketed with bookmarks to be used in bibles. The album has been far less controversial than last year’s KwaZulu- Natal. The Inkatha Freedom Party asked the SABC to ban the first released track from that album, and its video.
Mbuli has frequently been involved in charity work. When he won a R20 000 music award, he said he would donate the money to four charities. But some say that his ego has been overfed by all this public and corporate adulation, that he simply has become too big for his boots.
Whatever the truth about this imposing and intense poet, one thing’s for sure – he’s not an easygoing avuncular liberal, but rather a man burning with a purpose, and frequently with outrage, latterly as a vociferous member of the Musicians’ Union of South Africa. Just last week he was involved in a march to the Union Buildings to protest against the plight of musicians.
Mbuli’s strong sense of persecution and almost soldierly moral purpose have two simultaneous effects – some wonder how much is real and what they can believe, but the rest regard him as an icon and simply cannot believe that he could be involved in common criminal activity.