Phumlani Pikoli’s death a mystery

Writer, filmmaker and multimedia artist Phumlani Pikoli has been found dead in an apartment in Johannesburg.

The circumstances surrounding his death are unknown, save that he was reportedly off the grid since last Friday.

The 33-year-old is the son of former National Prosecuting Authority head Vusi Pikoli who, along with his mother Girlie, discovered Phumlani’ s body on Sunday.

According to reports, Phumlani was looking after his brother’s apartment and animals.

Phumlani was born in Zimbabwe when his parents were in exile in 1988 and published his debut novel, Born Freeloaders, in 2019.

It tells the story of a set of teens, like him, born on the cusp of democracy in South Africa. It is a story of drinking, partying and coming of age during the most formative years of the country’s fledgling democracy.

He was awarded the K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award for authors under 40 at last year’s South African literary awards for the work.

The novel followed his celebrated 2016 collection of short stories, The Fatuous State of Severity. Last year, during lockdown, Phumlani returned to the pen in an online opus of the social, political and personal angst impact of the pandemic.

He highlighted sustained social inequalities, using the pandemic as the fibre of a parable where deep scars continue to lurk on the surfer and between the subtexts.

An extract of the online piece, published last October, reads: “For black people who are in constant crisis, this new world remains in its modality. As labourers their world has experienced little change when it comes to new front-facing terms of engagement – not unlike the concept of cryptocurrency.

“The outcome is always the same, Work. Crisis of external geopolitical curricula has little bearing on their focus to earn ways to live. This is Survival.

“While the panic spread in the suburbs, many lost their minds at the impending end of the world. But, and this is the proverbial kicker, the labour fields of townships and poor communities carried on right around a world that is unable to recognise that the concept of social distance was a threat to their daily bread.”

A memorial service is tentatively planned for tomorrow with the funeral set for Friday.