Letepe Maisela
FIRST a disclaimer. I am not good at writing obituaries, as they have an air of nonchalance and haughtiness about them. Sometimes, they are lame in their insincerity, akin to what is often described as “crocodile tears”.
That's how I felt on Thursday morning when I woke up to the shattering news that Nomakula Roberts was no more.
You can blame social media for that as it brazenly preceded the news in the mainstream media.
I was readying myself to later listen to the State of Nation address by our incumbent President Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa, while secretly hoping that no one out there was getting ready to sabotage our state electricity grid and plunge the country into darkness of the Middle Ages before our president could utter “my fellow South Africans’ or whatever was going to be his opening line of this sixth address. It was his second address under the persistent cloud of Covid19 and continuous lockdowns, but I digress.
At the time of Nomakula’s demise, no official word was heard about the cause of her untimely death but social media, true to tradition, was speculating. A source said her death was caused by an overdose of drugs viz sleeping pills, which I had heard from a reliable source she was heavily reliant upon.
Until the truth is announced, I shall hold my breath but sincerely believe that it’s possible she took her own life.
The reason is that, in recent years, things had been pretty bad for her, aggravated by her inability to hold on to a job to earn a regular income. The last straw was when she lost her recently found job at Sunday World. There, she had reincarnated her previous gossip column at the same paper which she wrote for from the mid-2000s to 2012.
This was during the tenure of then Sunday World editor Charles Mogale (now deceased), whom I knew earlier as a neighbour during our teens in Evaton Township in the Vaal.
This was the upteenth time she had been fired from the publication. What made it worse was the reason for her dismissal. She was accused of flouting the rag’s editorial policy on not getting involved in mainstream politics as that posed a conflict of interest. Thus her action was seen as bringing the reputation of the publication into disrepute.
Bad news comes in pairs. As soon as she was fired from Sunday World, the political party she was accused of naively fraternising with, which comes under the name of a famous machine dubbed ATM and is associated with a certain Mzwanele Manyi, denied having any dealings with her.
With that Pharaoh-like absolvement disappeared Nomakula’s wild dreams of becoming a councillor of Ward 65 in the Tshwane Metro and earning a consistent reasonable income.
This was double jeopardy and the last straw that even the sassy, nonchalant, boisterous and cantankerous Kuli Roberts could not survive. That’s probably what death is like, respecting no boundaries. All of us on Mother Earth are ultimately heading towards that eventual sunset.
My first encounter with Nomakula was when she was a columnist for Sunday World, penning a column, “Bitches Brew”, alongside “Shwashi”. Both showed scant respect for holy cows.
As a University of Cape Town graduate who majored in politics and history, I found most of her columns hilarious and brutally incisive and mean. This was a columnist one dare cross swords with as she could wield her poison pen as much as she could her sharp tongue.
As a result, she was fired in 2011 when some readers took offence to a column she wrote titled: “Jou ma se kinders”, which was judged as having derogatory and racial undertone references to coloured people.
Nomakula did not keel over and die as she was soon back at the same publication slaying more holy cows.
I had also seen her in action as a television interviewer and presenter for a show called The Real Goboza. This was at the Durban July of 2009. As usual, she struck me as haughty, daring and someone who took no prisoners. She did so in a manner that did not interfere with her professional demeanour.
That’s why it makes it so difficult to believe that such a lively personality could die in the way it is suspected she did – by her own hand.
Not that she was a helpless soul. Far from it as she could brazenly stand her own against any bullying. That is how she rubbed the frail egos of many a male boss, full of what is being described as toxic masculinity in the media and film Industries and, much later, during her brief flirtations with mainstream politics.
Nomakula was also a published author. Her debut fiction novel, aptly named Siren, is a quintessential Kuli Roberts. It was published in January 2020, a few months before Covid-19 and the oppressive lockdowns. On its cover, it depicts full luscious lips of a woman who did not spare the lipstick. It’s red hot and full of sex, with the main character hopping from bed to bed.
Amid all this, Nomakula remained a good mother to her children – her daughter Tembela and son Leaun, a product of her short marriage to Beyers Robert in 1990. In 2017, Tembela gave birth to Nomakula’s first grandchild, also a daughter, Isabella. Nomakula’s other equally famous relative is sister and actor Hlubi Mboya.
I guess, as a developing and slightly maturing democracy, we have to learn how to protect our rough diamonds of the type of the late Nomakula.
We have to nurture the art of embracing different opinions while appreciating talent inherent in those younger than us but under our radar of influence. We, men in particular, need to stop viewing assertiveness on the part of our female counterparts as aggression and/or insubordination.
Without casting a net of judgement on any particular man, I somewhat believe that the last straw that broke Nomakula’s back was administered wittingly or unwittingly by her male bosses in the media and film Industry. Being fired from her last job as lifestyle editor and subsequently, being dumped by the political party that was supposed to be her career saviour are, in my guarded opinion, the phenomena that led to her finally breaking her resilient spirit.
I expect the usual crocodile tears to continue flowing, especially on social media, as is our tradition in the aftermath of such an unmitigated tragedy.
That, however, should not absolve most of us of culpability in Nomakula’s untimely death. In a moment when a single mom like her had lost her job and any potential to be rehired in these Covid19 days, there was no visible help forthcoming from friend and kin. We thus all share the collective guilt for the premature demise of such a brilliant brain and talent.
I wish her close surviving family, especially her children and grandchild, to cope vigorously without their colourful forebear, in the knowledge that when it mattered most in the past, she did enjoy her life to the full and made a huge difference in media, film and broadcasting in Mzansi.
Letepe Maisela is a published author and management consultant.
Sunday Independent