MAKHUDU SEFARA | Death’s message: Thabo Masebe became who we must become

It is said the idea of death gives life. The notion that one day our hearts will stop and we, literally, will become unable to do things that give meaning to our being, is a major driving force behind both the minutiae and big-impact activities of our lives.

“Death is the privation of sentience,” wrote ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, “therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an illimitable time but by taking away the yearning after immortality.”

And so it is that it’s not the number of years we live that count but the positive impact we leave behind once we’ve stopped yearning for immortality. The death early this week of Thabo Masebe, the doyen of government communications, has more than demonstrated the point. He hadn’t even reached retirement age and yet his basket is full of testimonies from many people whose lives he touched. 

His short but impactful life has forced many of us to reflect not just on our mortality and the quality of our interactions with fellow humans, but also what we seek to accomplish on borrowed time.

He understood that being believed is more important than winning transient PR battles that, in the fullness of time, erode credibility at great speed.

“Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of Existentialism,” notes Jean-Paul Sartre in Existentialism is a Humanism. The point Sartre was making is simply that while objects, such as a chair used for sitting, have one essence, human beings ought to invent their own essence and purpose. You choose to become a menace to society or a gift to humanity.

Masebe was a gift to journalism, government communications, to the ANC, the country and, of course, his family. Masebe gave me access to former president Kgalema Motlanthe and, from that interview, indirectly helped me understand what lies at the heart of the ANC’s demise. Motlanthe explained to me then that he didn’t need to appoint a fundraiser for his campaign nor use money to convince anyone to make him the ANC and thus the country’s president. He would rather sit it out. That the ANC rejected his principled, some would say idealist, stand meant the link between money and the ANC high office was no longer academic speculation. That interview helped me understand then the ANC’s faultlines and how today’s challenges, therefore the ANC’s degeneracy, could have been anticipated and hopefully nipped in the bud. It wasn’t to be. Alas. 

It became a source of Masebe’s tears. My last encounter with him was at Power 98.7, where premier David Makhura conducted media interviews before addressing the province’s communicators ahead of the state of the province address. In the conversation Masebe, MSG chairperson Given Mkhari and I had, it was clear he was pained by a culture of leaders buying branch delegates to ANC conferences. This, he said, was what would kill the ANC if not stopped. 

Masebe succeeded in becoming what many of us must become — great human beings. Thabo was more than competent at his work. To state that he didn’t spin is to point out the obvious. To say he readily admitted government failures is to state an oft-repeated point.

Masebe was also authentic. He did not impose his views; he simply, but forcefully, put them across. He wasn’t the defensive lot we see in the public relations space. He understood that being believed is more important than winning transient PR battles that, in the fullness of time, erode credibility at great speed. He was in it for the long haul. And over time he became the go-to guy for honest conversations about where our country — not just Gauteng — was. In other words, our conception of challenges and what genuinely was required to overcome them. In this sense, his influence transcended the limitations that come with media statements.

Masebe left you with no doubt that he was a true, honourable patriot. He didn’t have to say so. The putrid stench of corruption holding the country back irked him. He spoke openly against it — without any fear that anyone would call his bluff. 

Masebe was also a unifier. To his last days, he tried to bring media practitioners and government communicators together, fostering honest conversations. He would ask editors to speak openly to communicators about what they were getting wrong while asking editors why government information was hardly making it to news sites and pages. He leaves a big void. He is what many of us must become.

Masebe was not full of himself. While he did many great things, including his gallant fight for freedom, he hardly mentioned it. The younger journalists he interacted with in his last days may not have known that he was part of the ANC Youth League national executive committee that took over from Peter Mokaba at the dawn of democracy and was locked up as Nelson Mandela was released from prison after the unbanning of the ANC. Yet some of the people in parliament, the so-called representatives of the people, have hardly raised a clenched fist, much less thrown a stone, in protest against the lords of apartheid. Masebe was also deeply knowledgeable. He was a voracious reader whose reflections — even on global affairs — were a thing to behold. And so in the end, he was a hell of a nice guy. It’s not often that so many of the country’s editors and senior reporters say the same thing about a leader, especially one serving in government. That says a lot about “that which he (made) of himself”, to borrow once more from Sartre. Masebe became what many of us must still become.

Whether it was the idea or knowledge that one day he would be no more or his heightened sense of duty to humanity, it doesn’t matter any more. It is now about what he made of himself — a leader worthy of emulation.

Some people live and die when they take their last breath. Others, like Masebe, never die, for they live in our hearts and wherever they have planted the good seeds that their lives represent.