Dear Zenzi,
Hey, you beaut. Say, how are you doing? But of course Dear, it has been a moon and a few sun rays since we last connected!
Oh, Zenzi. Truth is this is all a dream. As an old folk expression has it: now you done gone and left me alone, Zenzi! And that's the blue-black truth. See Zenzi, you might be here in spirit. But what's the use?I can't quite call you, text you. Visit you. Provoke you. Snoop around for some harmless gossip about you. God, how I loved provoking you.
On the outside, millions of Africans knew you to be a headstrong Mama Afrika and indeed you were and still are wherever you are. In private though, you were more than the sum of all continental burdens, cultural burdens, female burdens, and social burdens, heaped on your shoulders.
When you were here with us, in flesh and blood, I took particular pride in niggling you with all sorts of things, often about something Miles Davis was reported to have said about you.
I know he once asked you: "Hey Makeebah, where's that husband of yours?" To which you responded, "Which one?" And Miles would crack up, wondering, "Woman, how many husbands d'ya have at any given time?"
You two would collapse in a torrent of tears. Tears of laughter. That's the relationship you had with Miles. I am not Miles.
Love Supreme
I did not share such intimacy, not even the age or space you two might have as the most happening acts on Greenwich Village's beatnik circuit.
I was just a journalist you had invited into your home and who basically never left. Not really, at least not emotionally. I mean I did go home, what do I take your home for - a homeless artists' colony?
I would call you and ask about something intensely personal, sit back and watch as you took the bait. Head on.
Or I would ask you about something I read in Hughie Masekela's autobiography in which you inevitably, as his former patron, teacher, friend, flame, lover, and so on, played some starring role. Usually, drama.
Yes, in your own quiet way, all of Africa and New York City brimmed with news of your drama queen and no-prisoners-taken temper, Zenzi.
You brooked no bullshit. It was either you felt something passionately or you didn't, diplomacy be damned.
Y'see Zenzi, you were a friend, granny, teacher, neighbour, and what the late columnist Doc "Carcass" Bikitsha once naughtily hinted at, one sweltering day on a shared junket, the "Oedipal 1950s lover" I never had. I couldn't have.
I never lived in the 1950s. And besides, Carcass was an overblown adult miscreant.
Still, dare I impose: Zenzi you were this giant Love Supreme whose every move and speech, especially in your days in exile, were regarded as giant steps in aid of "The Liberation" cause, and often in conflict with the state or some paternalistic liberation movement leaders who dared instruct you who to associate with or not.
You were the titanic and alert energy we South Africans were so intimidated by, to an extent that we sort of, at least in the media, resolved to do what South Africa does best to its icons.
We embalm them in our memories, and neatly tuck them in the archival drawers of our minds, our imaginary but on-cue national museum. Which is to say on the fringes of what is current and matters on any given day.
We are famous for that. If we don't know what to do with you. We push you aside, convince ourselves of the implausibility of even forgetting about you, and proceed to lull ourselves to sleep, willing ourselves to forget you on the real.
Never again, never again
But if you are too big to just simply hide behind the scullery, we throw you some tribute concert and invite your truly shabbier-looking friends for finger snacks and 15 minutes of flash-out-your-bad-teeth-for-the-cameras, and quickly move on to the next "hot stuff". Which invariably is the current hottie with neon undies festooned with jingle-jangling sequins creating music off of her gym butt, before, of course, her boobs droop too, and she is knocked off the charts for an even more pre-pubescent "new jack" in town.
Sorry, Zenzi. That's how we have been rolling for some many moons in your absence in exile and, perhaps you were not taking notice, the greater part of your last 20 years back home.
Eish!
Well, now you are gone for real, Zenzi. Never to return. Or wink back at me or scream obscenities when I say something you find inappropriate. How I miss you, Zenzi, Miriam, "Nutbrown Baby" Makeba, otherwise known to bosom friends and family simply as Mazi.
Like the prodigious bassist Johnny Mbizo Dyani, you too collapsed on stage in Europe. While Mbizo surrendered his last breath on a Berlin stage 22 years earlier, never to return from exile alive, you checked out rather regally, like an army general, leading your charges from the front, doing what you loved doing most, on stage in the south of Italy.
Never again will we hear your disruptive laughter, never again will your wide, round eyes light up our televisions, except as archival material.
And never shall we witness that sexy, self-deprecating gait as you cat-walked, even at your august age, on to the stage to sing us a song. Sing us a love song, Zenzi.
Young B..