Nkosikhulule Nyembezi
Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, uMntwana wakwaPhindangene, who died at 95 years last Saturday, was certainly no angel and never considered himself one.
Suffice it to say, a Wikipedia page on a lifetime of his public life runs to 25 770 words.
News of his death shook the country and moved millions of South Africans.
Life made him for the 1920s, and the following decades when to be a traditional leader, politician and Christian was as much a chance to live a life of altruistic service to others as a means to build a society that embraces coexistence and tolerance for diversity.
Political controversy about his anti-apartheid Struggle credentials and the remarkable role of a statesman who played a significant role in South African history dotted his public career.
But it was his private father-figure role, his exemplary qualities and his work dedicated to combating HIV/Aids that brought us together more.
We persevered through a deceptively simple formula.
For nearly 25 years, we have met on the steps of Parliament, at the Zulu royal reed dance ceremonies, in election campaign rallies and other social gatherings. We have met alone, then with family members and colleagues, and lately by ourselves again.
His incredible vitality, optimism and sense of humour charged me during our meetings.
Our conversations touched on family, education and health; the dilemmas around fighting HIV/Aids and royal household matters interspersed with our news.
Whatever the issue, his wisdom and deep faith grounded us in perspective and consolation in times of crisis and uncertainty. I saw him vote in Mahlabathini in the 2021 local government elections.
He was the most effusive of his generation’s living leaders that I constantly interacted with.
He liked me but was especially fond of my children. Spotting us at events, he would open the arms that revealed an open heart. Having your parents showering love on your children is one thing, but watching others do it is unique. So, when I heard of his passing, I was saddened.
Despite his advancing age, many perceived him as an immortal figure, something he loved to joke about in Parliament and traditional ceremonies in many royal houses across the country. His death is an irreparable loss and great sorrow.
But it was his father-figure role in the Zulu nation and his work dedicated to combating HIV/Aids that brought him closer to many people.
His HIV/Aids public awareness messages helped to modify the behaviour of many hard-to-convince traditional men who mistakenly believed that having unprotected sex with virgin girls could cure the virus.
The carefully crafted yet unambiguous messages helped to bring momentum to educational programmes promoting safe clinical practices among traditional healers who are still the first point of contact with patients in traditional communities.
They also helped to reach out to violence and Aids orphans by encouraging the use of an expanded social definition of orphans to include children whose both parents have died and those whose HIV-positive parents were too ill to care for them.
Over the years, South Africans came to an age when children born with HIV got older and developed some of the health problems of their parents.
Worrisome predictions turned into actual events, and the inevitable reckoning with the health-care leviathan turned us from confident adults into fretful relatives.
Shenge courageously shared his personal experience of losing his children and family members to Aids to comfort and empower those affected whilst challenging the government and pharmaceutical companies to make treatment available and affordable to all. He saved many lives through his dedication to the cause of fighting stigma and discrimination associated with Aids.
In his memoir called Experience, Martin Amis reflects on the “ordinary miracles and ordinary disasters” of real life. For 95 years of Shenge’s life, the miracles have tumbled in – graduations, births, weddings and other life blessings.
Among the things we never thought to discuss during our time together was how we might cope with a loved one’s death and what to wear to a funeral.
But if there is a season for everything, the next 95 years of those who loved him are bound to contain the rituals of sadness requiring new ways of being a friend or a relative.
I tell myself that if undeterred by our losses, we keep showing up at our posts to do what we set ourselves to do in our lives, we will walk our way through the worst.
The timing of any death is seldom perfect. At some level, everyone grapples with this existential question. My friends and family confronting death ask why now as if to confirm that we are never fully prepared to accept the death of our loved one.
As each of us bargains as if we are before an adjudicator, we constantly tell ourselves that we still need our loved one, no matter the circumstances.
A few years ago, one of my friends told me something about grief, which I assume you cannot appreciate until it happens to you.
She said it was not so much the overwhelming sadness that troubled her; she had been ready for that. What she had not seen coming was the fear, the sheer, gnawing fear, that still gripped her every day after losing a loved one.
I have always feared death. I have always been appalled by the prospect of losing my loved ones and the responsibility of the loss. But I must have been working on the assumption that my fear of losing them died with them.
In other words, when they died, my fear of them dying would stop, and the grieving would start. But no, it turns out that fear has an afterlife. How unfair.
How disappointing. I guess others will feel this way about Prince Buthelezi’s death.
May your soul rest in peace, Shenge.
Nyembezi is a policy analyst, researcher and human rights activist.
Cape Times