Johannesburg - During our time at the then University of the North (now the University of Limpopo) there was a rather eccentric student from Soweto, who due to my respect for the deceased, I will not name.
As a top economics student at an institution where such subjects were seen by the administration as being above the majority of students’ intellectual capacity – the deceased displayed a very cantankerous and condescending attitude towards his co-students.
His behaviour led to him becoming a social pariah excluded from most social activities on campus. In one such incident, the deceased was kicked out of a party organised by a group of popular students.
Seething from the embarrassment of being kicked out by a group of what he referred to as “academic midgets”, the deceased came to my room to relate his planned payback. He had identified one of the most popular students on campus as the ringleader and vowed to visit upon him the most vicious attack.
“The phenomenon (that’s himself) is going to set his door on fire and then go stand outside his window armed to the teeth. He will have to choose between the fire and the phenomenon.”
According to the deceased, the victim would burn to death because he would not choose to jump through the window where the “fully armed phenomenon” was stationed.
When the deceased left my room – I immediately looked for the definition of the word “phenomenon.”
One of the definitions in the dictionary which caught my eye was “nonpareil”. This, according to the Oxford Dictionary, means “having no match or unequal, unrivalled.
This week, following the passing of poet, author, journalist, humanitarian and revolutionary Don “BraZinga” Mattera, this definition came to mind. This happened when I recalled how earlier this year – during the Don Mattera Inaugural Lecture hosted by the Don Mattera Legacy Foundation - educationist extraordinaire Prof Jonathan Jansen described him as “Unbowed and Unbought.”
According to Prof Jansen, Bra Zinga was unbowed by any limitations of, for example, any racial classification because he was born of an Italian father and a Khoisan woman. He was also unbought by “the colonial crumbs of comfort” that have stripped some of our current leaders of any semblance of revolutionary morality.
Recalling what Professor Jansen said about Bra Zinga during the inaugural lecture, I have no reason to doubt that he was the kind of “phenomenon” that my deceased fellow student spoke about.
This is because, as Professor Jansen avers, only a ‘nonpareil’ can in the early stages become a violent gangster and in his later life, win an international Peace Prize for brokering peace among warring groups.
Only a ‘nonpareil’ can receive a banning order under one government and then receive a national order (Order of Ikhamanga) in another, and only a ‘nonpareil’ can use a sharp knife in a reign of terror and later use sharp words to fight for the freedom of those he used to terrorise.
The sharpness and timelessness of his words are captured in the many inward-looking and inspiring poems he wrote capturing the trials and tribulations of a people robbed of their humanity by the system of apartheid and colonialism.
In his poem “Remember” Mattera writes:
“Remember to call at my grave
When freedom finally
Walks the land ...
As we continue to pay tribute to this icon of the struggle, a non-racist and Pan-Africanist who never allowed political allegiance and affiliation to taint his commitment and contribution to the liberation of this country, we must take stock of the untenable situation that South Africa finds itself in.
We must introspect and ask ourselves what we should do to redress the untenable situation wherein those who continue to declare themselves as leaders have, as the Zondo Commission Report states, become “bowed and bought” by the lure of what the late Mattera has described as “the colonial crumbs of comfort” and sold the family trove to the highest bidder.
It is only when we do this and come up with ways of changing that we can attain the freedom Mattera dreamt about and hoped for. Only then can we fulfil his wish and “call at his grave when freedom finally walks the land”.
Lekota is a former political editor of Sowetan.