GTZ, who presents the Weekend Overnight Show from 12:00 to 03:00 on Saturdays and Sundays at Rise FM, played for Mbombela United, Thabo All Stars and
Chelsea during his heydays.
“My final destination will be when I join the sports team. But if you ask me about the graveyard show I’m doing on weekends and if I enjoy it, the answer would be yes, I’m enjoying every moment there. Like I said, my brother, I’m a former soccer player so football is a drug. It’s not easy to just quit
and forget about it,” he said.
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Mzwandile Simelane said his love of radio started when he was still in secondary school. “At home we had no TV; the only thing that we had was radio. I would listen to it every day and most of the time I would listen to sports programmes like when Rio ‘Sgalamba’ Mabunda interviewed Mamelodi Sundowns’ Alex ‘Mnaka’ Tshakoane,” he recalled.
GTZ continued, “I said to myself there was no turning back, I will push to get myself on radio one day when I finish school. I still want to see myself being part
of the sports show. It was what I wanted when I joined radio,” he stressed.
The KaNyamazane boy was among the first presenters to go on air when K-Radio plugged in its microphones in August 2010.
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“I was with Zoe Jay on the breakfast show when we first went on air at K-Radio,” he chuckled.
The former Lekazi Central High learner is a graduate in radio production. “Radio taught me a lot of things on how to live life as a public figure and to always be updated about what is happening around the world. On radio you can build and destroy yourself.
Originality on radio is very important – always be on your toes; don’t relax. You must have a lot of ideas when you go to present your show and
don’t be someone else who you are not, just be GTZ, not Madumane, Dumisane Simelane,or T-boTouch (Thabo Molefe).
Remember you are your own brand when you are on radio,” he advised.
GTZ said it was advisable that, if the radio industry wanted to be competitive, it should allow those who are talented to be the ones who sit behind the microphone.
“This thing of taking someone and placing them behind the mic because they have a lot of followers on social media is killing the industry. Also the mainstream radio should help community radio stations pick up because they are the future of radio. I’m saying this because I was lucky to get a chance to study radio production at Nemisa. It was then that I realised there was a huge gap between public broadcasting services and commercial broadcasting services in terms of preparing their shows and broadcasting,” he said
