Metro fm’s new station manager, Romeo Khumalo, is broadcasting’s most eligible bachelor. Janet Smith met him at The Museum Store
The Museum Store in Raedene, Johannesburg, is a sinful place. It inspires one to break at least three of the 10 commandments. Lying, stealing and taking the Lord’s name in vain are irresistible in this antique store-cross-memorabilia mecca where you are guaranteed to covet at least 10 things at first glance. And with price-tags to make you go weak at the knees, coveting is about the safest emotion to have.
Romeo Khumalo, media celebrity, is also liable to make one wish to break at least two commandments. Khumalo is, ladies and gentleman, one elegantly pleated man. At 26, he is South Africa’s most eligible TV bachelor, the host of SABC2’s new music show Soul Sounds (Sundays at 8.30pm) and the station manager of Metro fm. His success is enough to make a lot of other young professionals run outside and kick what’s left of their eight-year-old Mazdas.
The link between The Museum Store and Romeo Khumalo is purely decorative – Soul Sounds uses the taste emporium’s fine goods on set. But the unusual bond is only one of the interesting ways in which Khumalo is grooming his most attractive image to date. As a cocky, talented young Radio Metro DJ, he turned the airwaves on in 1994, getting hotter as the success of the TV music show Ezimtoti turned him into an idol.
He’s still charmed by the SABC’s decision to make him manager of the country’s second-most popular radio station. It’s like nobody ever told him how good he was. Soul Sounds, meanwhile, is like the nutmeg in the pudding: it rounds things off very pleasantly – for now.
Khumalo has no difficulty talking about his new life as a boss, which is really a lot closer to his old life as a DJ than it is to boot-licker and ass-kicker. He says he’s not going to fire anyone at Metro, but he’s looking for fresh voices.
He’s looking for a fluid but eclectic team that can show off the station’s new, younger body since it took a bit of a bruising in the past few months after a poorly handled relaunch. Now, with greater access to transmitters, Metro is easing into its facelift, and Khumalo could well prove to be one of its most attractive features.
He’s saleable. Advertisers like to know who they’re dealing with behind the shopfront, and Khumalo believes he has some understanding of what they’re looking for, having once worked in the advertising and marketing industry, and dreaming of one day owning his own agency. He cuts a superb profile of smooth, a touch older than Metro’s perfect listener perhaps, but young enough to be the kind of decision-maker whose ideas we would emulate. Titillating gossip about his relationship with smart’n’sexy Caroline Fassie, his longtime co-host on Ezimtoti, has only added to the glamour.
Khumalo denies the briefest kiss of romance between them almost regretfully, saying their playfulness with each other on air gave the show a different angle to others offering similar content. Besides, they ejoyed each other’s company. He knew everything about her boyfriends; she knew the name of his girlfriends’ favourite perfumes. He’s proud they brought each other fame, but he says he had reached burnout on Ezimtoti, which is now in the capable hands of national music wizard Arthur Mafokate.
“Enough kwaito,” he says, not without affection. “I was beginning to think I couldn’t take it anymore. Something that had started so beautifully, at exactly the right moment, was starting to sound dull on my ear. I needed to do something else, not something entirely different, but something that would better represent where I was in my own life and career.”
Soul Sounds represents Khumalo quite well. Not lacking in confidence, the show is not arrogant either. It presumes we all like the same things: good conversation, great music, a comfortable seat and a handsome host.
Each week, a different musician is interviewed in a surprising setting (Sibongile Khumalo was caught doing her ablutions at the Market Theatre in last Sunday’s show), with Romeo asking questions in the studio.
The music ranges from early 1980s Billy Joel to the cool of Cape Town’s D Low. Vintage stuff that always goes down well with thirtysomethings who can remember their first lovebite. Contemporary colours. Hit parade singles. It’s got loads of potential for the generation that feels slightly alienated by the lack of cellulite in Boom Shaka.
“I now know exactly what it means to be on a learning curve,” Khumalo says. “This show has to have everything. The best make-up, the best set, the right styling. We are presenting people between the ages of 25 and 35 with a place where they can belong. It has to be relaxed, offering a view into the private side of famous people.”
As Metro’s station manager, Khumalo is going to have to keep his private life squeaky- clean. Radio has become one of the most competitive entertainment sources in the country. The stunning first results shown by Yfm, Gauteng’s youth music source, offer Khumalo an extraordinary challenge. He says he also sees Gauteng’s Kaya as a serious contender. And, perhaps surprisingly, 5fm and Good Hope.
“I see all media as competition, including magazines. Adspend is the issue, and Metro is going to see a lot of changes take place in order to attract more of it to ourselves. Aggressive marketing, a creative public relations strategy, a motivated team of DJs … these are all plans that will come to fruition over the next few months. We’ve got to keep looking good.”
Khumalo’s got a lot on his mind in terms of social conscience broadcasting, too. He wants his station to set the tone for healthy young adult behaviour and partnerships with interested parties in the public and private sector will all be seriously considered. Khumalo insists that destructive boozing, unsafe sex and drug abuse will all wind into the station’s commercial plot against dangerous behaviour. It could work.
He feels a keen need to keep hope pumping in the townships like the one in which he grew up in Soweto. And while he’s adamant there is no such thing as a lost generation – mildly insulted, perhaps, by the term itself – Khumalo wants to give disadvantaged teenagers a good image of themselves.
“I would be happy if Metro could reach out to young people with the message that power is important, but you can only get it if you go to school, work hard and make a contribution. You’ve got to give people a reason to aspire. It makes them feel good. But we also need to be aware of the things that are holding them back.”
He feels quite sentimental about his own childhood in Mofolo Park, and remarks that his current lifestyle in the community of forts that makes up Sandton is not a happy one.
Soweto, Khumalo smiles, is where he feels most at home. He knows his way around, he knows lots of people, he has a destination. As a high school pupil trying to study and pass during two successive States of Emergency in the late 1980s, Khumalo says his memories of growing up are influenced by his overwhelming desire to succeed.
“Even as a child, I wanted to make enough money. I heard that accountants made money, so I decided I wanted to be an accountant. I stumbled into this career, luckily, and it’s been amazing. I like to think that if I could do it, as a member of that so-called lost generation, so can many other people. I just wake up every day and am thrilled because I am alive.”