With her death and burial now behind us, and looking back as we approach the end of this rather emotive month of April, South Africa’s township communities have lost several other bright community members and national stars of note who have also succumbed to death through illness and age.
And although Winnie’s death and burial outshone all the other solemn moments of grief which befell our nation this month, perhaps it was the death and burial of former social minister Zola Skweyiya, which had a profound impact on me personally. Since his death, which happened just days after Winnie’s, I have tried hard to scrub through the cobwebs that shroud my memory about the tragic moment that linked me to the Skweyiya family in Bloemfontein and the subsequent long-distance “trunk-call” from a man who identified himself as “Skweyiya” from the exiled ANC HQ in Zambia.
It was back in the early ’80s when I was a young and highly enthusiastic crime reporter at Drum magazine. I had just written a heart-rending story about a Skweyiya young man, whose first name I cannot recall, who was barely in his teens and had been arrested for a rather bizarre and strange murder mystery in which there had been a stabbing incident and someone had died at local nightclub called the Red Rooster, outside Bloemfontein.
Investigations in the murder case had led to the involvement of the Security Branch in Bloemfontein and the prospects of the young Skweyiya suspect getting deeper into trouble seemed to gather momentum. The case was riddled with political controversy, whose details I cannot retrieve from the depth of my memory because of the time lapse.
I had arrived back from Bloemfontein the previous week and I had already submitted my copy and photos. The story was going to be ready for the next issue of the magazine. Then one early mid-morning the lady at the switchboard, Barbara Khuluse, yelled my name from the newsroom.
As I walked towards her, she covered the telephone mouthpiece with both her hands and whispering very softy, she enquired; “Wenzeni, What have you done?”.
And before I could summon enough energy to ask her what she was talking about, with both her hands still firmly clamped over the mouthpiece, she pushed the phone towards me.
“Abantu base Zambia, bayakufuna” (“It’s the ANC people in Zambia, they’re looking for you”).
“Hold on,” she said to the caller and handed me the telephone.
Before leaving the Skweyiya residence in Bloemfontein, I left the family all my contact details and Drum was a popular and respected national magazine. The publication had a cordial relationship with the ANC in exile and Jim Bailey, the owner, was often hosted by the organisation’s leadership hierarchy in London.
It was a very gentle and calm Zola Skweyiya who, after brief introductory pleasantries, tried to explain to me the negative publicity the story would have on the already traumatised grieving family.
As a young and junior crime reporter, all I could do was to nod my head and sympathise with the family as I listened to him.
The article appeared in the next issue of the magazine.
endit
