Obituary: Gugu Zulu, motorsport's celebrated and respected 'fastest brother in Africa'

24 July 2016 - 02:00 By Chris Barron
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Champion rally driver and all-round motorsport celebrity Gugu Zulu in 2011.
Champion rally driver and all-round motorsport celebrity Gugu Zulu in 2011.
Image: JACKIE CLAUSEN

Gugu Zulu, who died at the age of 38 on Monday while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, was one of South Africa's most accomplished and exciting rally drivers.

He was also the first black driver to succeed in a previously all-white sport, earning him the title of "the fastest brother in Africa".

Born in Soweto on May 13 1978, Zulu decided at the age of six that he was going to be a driver.

When he broke the news to his mother, she assumed he meant a taxi driver, bus driver or truck driver, perhaps the only reasonable assumption to make for the mother of a black child growing up in '80s Soweto.

But of course this wasn't what he had in mind at all. He was going to be a racing driver. The fact that there was not a single black racing driver in South Africa that he knew of had nothing to do with it.

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Children hatch and despatch dreams every day, but Zulu wasn't like that. He collected car magazines until the piles were higher than he was, and followed motorsport on TV. He nursed his dream through his school years at Parktown Boys' High without quite knowing how he would make it happen.

Then in 1997 on a family holiday in Springs on the East Rand, he saw a white Afrikaans woman reading the Sowetan newspaper, which made him think nothing in the new South Africa was impossible. This was confirmed when he saw a headline in the paper saying "Motorsport wants blacks".

He phoned the number given and joined the Isondo Racing Academy, where he was introduced to different aspects of motorsport such as marshalling, go-karting and administration, and taken to watch racing at Kyalami.

He graduated from the academy and when the Isondo Sports 2000 Series started in 1999 was one of more than 500 young hopefuls to sign up. Only 17 got through the trials and he made sure he was one of them.

He won the Vodacom Isondo Sports 2000 national championship, winning 13 out of 16 races and placing second in two. His hero and future mentor, ace rally driver Sarel van der Merwe, took him under his wing and got him participating in the V8s, the fastest formula in the country at the time.

Within a couple of years his lap times were as fast as Van der Merwe's.

Did he want to try rally driving, the old pro asked him. Silly question. A test was organised for him with VW Motorsport for its Junior Works Driver Programme. He never forgot it.

"Supervan" took him out in an old Polo at Longmore Forest in the Eastern Cape. Zulu in the co-driver's seat watched goggle-eyed but with a growing conviction that this was what he wanted to do, as Van der Merwe flung the car around "like it was a toy".

They swapped seats and Zulu promptly beached the car on a sand heap while trying to negotiate a bend.

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"You f**ked that up," remarked Van der Merwe, dryly. "Let's do it again and get it right."

Far from being offended, Zulu found his response "too priceless" and they became firm friends.

When they got back, Van der Merwe asked him: "Do you want a rally car?"

"Naturally, my answer was yes," Zulu recalled.

A few days later he was told he'd be competing in the rally championships for VW in 2003. During the course of the season he came within a point of the championship leader. He went on to win three national class championships for the VW BP rally team, in 2007, 2009 and 2010.

His aggressive driving style did not go unnoticed and he was hired to do the car stunts in the 2005 movie Lord of War, about the illegal arms trade and starring Nicolas Cage.

In 2004, he was invited to the US to test cars for the Lenny Miller Nascar Team. During two weeks of intensive driving, he outpaced the likes of Marco Andretti and Sergio Perez.

He competed in the Skip Barber Dodge Racing Series in a car so underpowered that it felt like he was "driving a pregnant donkey against the others".

He was unable to secure enough sponsorship to stay in the US and returned to South Africa.

In 2009, he competed in the Indy500 in the US, consistently doing laps at more than 300km/h and coming within inches of the wall. The Indy made anything in South Africa "look like we are pretending", he said.

Zulu, who studied sports management at what is now the Midrand Graduate Institute, was critical of the way motorsport in South Africa was run.

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There was too little sponsorship, which he blamed on maladministration of the sport and "abuse of the sponsors by many sharks in the game".

He also felt local drivers did not do enough to promote themselves. He grabbed every opportunity that came his way to build his brand and "stay relevant", including three years as a presenter on SABC's Car Torque.

If the opportunities did not come his way, he went out and found them, whether as a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing or a participant in regular sporting adventures such as the Cape Epic mountain bike race and Two Oceans marathon or, indeed, the Trek4Mandela expedition up Kilimanjaro.

He became one of the most popular sporting celebrities in South Africa and used his fame to raise the profile of motorsport and attract more sponsorship.

Zulu was charming, modest and hugely likeable. He took what he felt was every celebrity's responsibility to be a role model and inspiration for young South Africans very seriously.

He is survived by his wife, Letshego, and daughter, Lelethu.

1978-2016

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