Zwelithini-ka Mvelase
Frankly, if South Africans respected and preserved what’s theirs, with as much jealousy as Americans do, there would be enough greats to fill volumes.
Whether those names were crooks or saints, wouldn’t matter a dime. This flits past my mind as I sit sipping gin with die ouens and – boom! – we hear that one of Soweto’s best known personalities, businessman Godfrey Fanyana Stan Moloi, nicknamed “Louis Luyt”, has passed away.
“Passed away” has vicarish tones to it , with its pretensions of heavenly grief. Moloi was quite a character. To say he was Soweto’s own George Soros would definitely miss the point. He may have been a self-styled philantrophist, but he definitely wasn’t an angel. He didn’t suffer fools, saying he was God’s gift to urban township life.
Originating, we are told, from Kofifi – our own wild west, in one potent amalgam with early Harlem’s jazz and a variety of skelms and creatives - Moloi made his mark in Soweto in the 1950s as a bootlegger, punching holes in the infamous Liquor Act. He went on to become that township’s most known liquor king, gangster, shebeen owner, businessman, actor, writer and philanthropist. His was an all-in-one action packed lifetime.
To those who knew him, which, because of his insatiable lust for publicity, means almost everyone who reads the (black) press, Moloi was a much-needed character.
He rose from virtually nothing, to become a liquor business honcho who made a hell of a lot of enemies, as well as friends. These range from shebeen patrons, to the police, the many students who benefitted from his scholarships and grants, and thousands of athletes who habitually ran in the Soweto marathon, sponsored and named after him.
At his peak, until the moment of his death, Moloi was as fascinating and intriguing a man as Ol’ Blue Eyes. This was because he transformed himself, from a reputable man into a gangster, inspired by his American and Sicilian movie counterparts. He scripted his own life, and lived it.
A decade ago, almost to the day, Drum journalist Sekola Sello wrote of Soweto’s most enigmatic man that he “seemed to have overeached his bizarre self” when he bought himself a coffin and a plot at the Avalon Cemetery, for himself and his family. Moloi’s preoccupation with death, and its grislyness, was well known by scribes, admirers and foes alike. But that did not stop him from giving from his pocket to those who were destitute.
Legend has it that he was one of the best-dressed men-about-town who, even in his late fifties, had women gravitating towards him like bees to honey.
In 1992, National Party politicians made it their business to recruit Moloi to their fading fold, in a frenzied quest to win the much coveted black votes. It was then that the man with the famous bald head suddenly caught the attention of those beyond the township borders. Into unexpected quarters swaggered one of the most popular figures, with the same jitterbug, urban movement that he graced the streets of Soweto.
His fascination with the gangster world saw him playing the television roles of big daddy gangsters in several dramas such as the popular Udeliwe, Circle of Sands and Bayete Yankee, an SABC2 epic.
Perhaps, to sadistically pour scorn over the Ivy League sorts of Soweto, he penned his autobiography My Life, proving that you don’t need a degree to write your story. Low and behold, his memoir was prescribed at the University of Natal .
Musician, jazzman and promoter, he often played with the resident band in his internationally upper crust Mapetla restaurant cum top-of-the-range club, Blue Fountain. Moloi’s life sure reads like a roller coaster of events.
I am tempted to throw in the words lalakahle (rest in peace), to accompany the traditional, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”. But that would be inappropriate to the man. Rather, let me say to him: “Moloi, prank around the world beyond, with the greats. As one of the majitas, God knows, a space is reserved for you in that heavenly township.
Heita Daar!
Zwelithini-ka Mvelase is the nom de plume of shebeen night prowler, short story writer and professional mourner