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Jay Z and Beyoncé, arguably one of the most talked about couples, released a collabo in 2003 titled Crazy in Love, which starts with words to the effect: “It’s so crazy right now ...” and “Your love got me looking so crazy right now.”
Indeed, many will agree that whatever love thing is going on between this incredibly beautiful and intelligent woman, Dr Nandi Magudumana, and her killer-rapist lover, Thabo Bester, has got Dr Nandi looking so crazy right now.
As she tried, in vain, to hide behind a Covid mask (and she chose one that almost covered her entire face) and a hoodie as she appeared before the Mangaung magistrate’s court on Thursday, many wondered what would get such an accomplished a woman to fall for so lowly a bandit who killed and used Facebook to pry on other women he raped.
Could it be that she is, like many others, attracted to danger? The idea that he might kill her perhaps gives her some perverted sort of thrill. Or perhaps the sex is so bad-ass she is willing to do anything, including to kill, to be with him?
The truth is people get attracted to many strange things. The allure of living with a Houdini can give some a feeling of attracting what others fear, or dread. Some people, men and women, simply want anything but a boring, bespectacled partner stuck in routine. That, for them, feels like death. For others, the same bespectacled partner might represent security of tenure, stability and dependability — traits they need in a partner.
Love, stripped of the commercialisation we’ve attached to it, is a beautiful thing. Life’s greatest pursuits, for good or bad, have at their core, love.
When young Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo are given an opportunity to practise law in the Joburg inner city, make money and try to live peacefully in spite of the tumult unleashed by apartheid in the country, they, motivated by a deep, crazy love for their country, for fellow humans, choose an unpredictable life of struggle for freedom. It sends them to jail and exile for decades. For some, their decisions are crazy.
On social media, of course, they said if your woman doesn’t love you as crazily as Magudumana, then she’s not the one.
If you think too of the love of God and what people sacrifice, others facing persecutions they could have avoided, it is a deep-seated love that appears crazy to observers. It is a love that defies understanding. It is intoxicating. It strips us of our measured rationality. Love takes away our autonomy and sense of self. You become one with, in Magudumana’s case, a criminal — something that perhaps explains why Magudumana isn’t thinking merely about herself. Love makes you physically, emotionally, psychologically one with another.
It also makes you blind to their rights and wrongs, introducing moral hazards. Most of us look at Magudumana and see her beauty, her career, her position in society when, perhaps, she is more than her physical form and accomplishments. She’s a woman intoxicated. The Aristotelian view of love is selflessness, doing good for the other’s sake and, for Magudumana, even if this subverts established societal norms. So, perhaps, doing good, and being crazy in love, means forgetting her physical form and accomplishments but crossing the border illegally — for love. It means risking everything “for the other’s sake”.
As Magudumana appeared in court, some in our newsroom wondered aloud if love, indeed, made people as crazy as she looked. On social media, of course, they said if your woman doesn’t love you as crazily as Magudumana, then she’s not the one. But such is love, isn’t it, unexplainable. In the aforementioned song, Beyoncé, blurting out her obsession with her man, sings: “such a funny thing (love) for me to try to explain ...” Sitting in that court, I am certain Magudumana might agree, it will be a Herculean task for her to try to explain.
She might say she didn’t invent “thug love”. She might say Tupac, whose music is loved across the globe, was, at his core, a thug. Yet many would have killed, excuse the pun, for a life, if not a night with him. Books too have been written about Jay Z and his entanglements with drugs. And yet one of the globe’s most beautiful women, Beyoncé, has tamed him.
Truth is until Magudumana speaks for herself, we will wonder whether those who are crazy in love are truly without their own agency. Whether it’s just crazy, intoxicating love or a pursuit of thug love or whether there is some other rational explanation, this love, if indeed it is love, has got Dr Nandi looking so crazy right now.
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