The Co-creators of Life and Times of Credo Mutwa in conversation
Thapelo Makhubo:https://www.linkedin.com/in/thapelo-makhubo-51023b45/
To Never Stop Looking, All Around.
By Khulile Nxumalo and Thapelo Makhubo
Cocreators: The Life and Times of Credo Mutwa
(Documentary Series)
PLACE: VARIOUS SPOTS IN DIEPKLOOF, SOWETO
SOUND:
IN: KHULILE NXUMALO
Correct me if I am wrong. The black and white television set
is a Blaupunkt bought from Ellerines, Town Talk or Joshua Door on one of those hire purchase,
[NT1] lay-bye
deals. As the sun was setting on the street and whatever game had us in a full
blown play daze, one of us would be ordered inside. It was time for supper.
Now we feel the darkness creep in, as one by one, we all get
our own brutal puncture that sends our heads hanging down and blows our deflated,
shoe-scuffing selves inside the gates of home, each to our own separate yards.
But around 6.30pm, no matter what, in pelting rain, dusty
wind or submerged under the oily dark
cloak of a smoke-thick winter township evening, or in the warm trail of the
honey-orange resplendent gleam of a DK sunset slinking glamorously behind the
Orlando Power Towers, you would find us bunched up in a tight squirm of elbows
at a window, shoving for a spot to see black and white television images.
Shem’. That family was kind enough to raise the volume for
us to hear. Kind until the day the friction produced by our ceaseless pushing
for a better view led to one shove that was too aggressive. We have broken the
window. I blame my nearest friend, he
turns to blame the next one and this that marks the end of the greyscale images
of white people coming from television.
Now, in my old age, when I think about Baba Credo Mutwa -
and I do that often on this journey to craft a documentary of his life and our times
- these boyhood scenes from Diepkloof Zone 2 burst their scrawny selves into my
mind, their playtrack shouts of blame and joy backs all my thinking about this
project.
As great as
the challenge is to encapsulate the life and thinking of one of our most
enigmatic and potent figures, we have been serializing the life and essence of a luminous central character who was
approaching 100 years on earth and rarely available to interview or consult.
This made the whole endeavor much more complicated than it already was.
(THAPELO sighs and then chuckles. KHULILE strikes a match)
IN: THAPELO
THAPELO
My boyhood was full of horror stories from the church and
their dominions, but I’m also from the generation that thinks with its thumb
and initiated digital platforms for ubungoma.
These twin perversions have wound so tightly around my mind I have no doubt
they get got in the way of me being able to fully comprehend that I have lived
in, and am a product of, and also a
witness of a time of iSanusi Vusamazulu
Credo Mutwa.
His death strikes me as profound moment that must be approached
with absolute solemnity and reverence. It is without a doubt, a big in how we will
lay out the stories in our documentary timeline. Definitely. And for me this mortal
and predictable life-marking event had a soul-tingling mind-sharpening gravity.
I will never forget how it knocked the corona virus lockdown into the area of
routine mundane. It is also perhaps the place in our journey where we stop,
build a fire and decide that this is where the story starts. I mean, all these renewed opportunities to discover, iterate
and recall his philosophies, teachings and magic, in a world that could use making itself
firmer, by using the vEry same neglected and suppressed African knowledge
systems.
I can hear him now:
“…Never child ask why. Ask Jesus Christ, hanging on the
cross, why did they crucify you? Human beings are like that. They kill those
who save them. Ask Buddha, why Lord Buddha of India, why did you die a lonely
death under a tree. Ask, ask the Prophet Mohammed. Prophet, one of your wives
poisoned and murdered you, why did she do that. And even now the pain in my
life has not ended, far from it...”.
- CREDO MUTWA, 30 Years after the burning of his home in
Diepkloof.
Nozipho Mutwa has told us about the time their house was burnt,
how the family scattered after horrific violation. She really is growing in stature.
Really her father’s daughter. Of course, she our guide for the documentary
series, only remaining daughter among Baba Credo Mutwa’s children.
We say Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, but what kind person are
you when your people have been spat on, discarded
and rebuked for your whole existence?
We have witnessed how, as Credo
Mutwa’s physical power waned, the
attraction of his works and the esteem in which he is held grew – especially among young Africans whose lives are
concretized by the spiritual African consciousness that Mutwa made known around
the world. Although it feels like a heavy task, the life and times of Ntate
Mutwa is fabled, tragic and mythic narrative that tells itself with dramatic shamanic
emphasis. It has same giddy, unpredictable and mesmerizing momentum of smoke rushing to fill the air
above a hungry fire and to express aspects of it we use animation, alongside more traditional documentary
elements and ancient forms to communicate the heritage he guarded, invoked and
developed.
Mutwa
believed that Aids was a construction cooked up in a lab to destroy Africans.
What would he have made of the Corona virus? We will never know, because as the
world was plunged into a dystopian nightmare imagined in science fiction, and
as South Africa locked down into self-isolation, Credo Mutwa, 98 years old, evolved
into his next great role, as the great late Sanusi,
Now,
Mutwa’s body is out of the picture, mingling with the mother earth he revered. His funeral was held in Kuruman, where he has
lived most of the last two decades, on a surreal rained-on Saturday morning one
week deep into Covid 19 pandemic lock down. The small, heavily-sanitized
funeral was held at 2am and attended by close family, members of the foundation
set up to manage his legacy (which it turns out, is impossible to control),
representatives of spiritual realms and state.
He was
human, as his funeral reminds us. And a father, and flawed, and maybe given to
bitterness, anger and despair like any human father is. Some of his followers
may object to us showing glimpses of all his dimensions, delusions and demons,
but those less majestic angles are ones we will neither sweep aside, nor
explore exhaustively
.
Baba Credo Mutwa
sprinkled our world view with spiritual gold but how much of that will be monetized
after his death is up for grabs, He certainly made no great material gains
while on earth. What is valuable beyond
measure for us is the wealth of spiritual knowledge and arcane intelligence and
powerful tales he left to all South Africans. He leaves his family a bewildering
set of responsibilities but not much wealth, but for all who seek it, he leaves
a scattered but powerful and very important portfolio of writing and other
words, teachings, and other elements that make up his ,life’s work – this body
lives on and deserves curation into a permanent spiritual archive and repository
of African healing arts, and plant knowledge and extraterrestrial lore.
His art works
alone are a marvelous collection of spellbinding outsider art and the sites in
Kuruman and Soweto where he gave glimpses of the parallel universes, he was able
to explore, are the heritage artefacts that we need to treat as national treasure.
IN: KHULILE
NXUMALO
uBaba Mutwa
did not interact directly with his social media followers. I am not even sure
he was fully aware of growing pull his views are having on young people
today. In these ramshackle times where we stand at edge, always uncertain, the
death of such a shamanic figure further exacerbates paths to collision. People
are increasingly impatient. Fissures and
conflict emerge, tear into what are potentially resplendent, and spiritually
diverse ecosystem.
The vacuum
of his death echoes more, inside this hail and tumult. As we are being hit against walls, no one
knows what future is going to be. The rumours about the death of the social
influencers is welcome news to me.
It is a normal
thing for people to make connections. When we approached the turn of the
millennium in 2000s, the solar eclipse added its own mystifying effects. As it
obscured our world in temporary darkness. As the sun transformed into awesome halo
rotting, for some it was great omen of doom, the wrath of God against his
people who had sinned.
IN: THAPELO
A traditional
healer said it foretold upcoming doom, death, illness drought and incurable
disease. For the Ngoni Zambia , the same was a call to party- it was a stellar ding dong for them to remember
the day they crossed the Zambezi in 1830, escaping Shaka Zulu, to reach their
new homeland. People always make connections. The sun re-appeared to assume its
perch on the curve of the sky.
If you had to ask many a Southern African child born beyond
1990, who Credo Mutwa was or what importance he held in our ecosystem... most
would either describe a mythical misunderstanding about his nature as a sangoma
or they may have a sense of his level of enlightenment but not be fully aware
of all his writings, his sculptors, his paintings, his compositions and his
oral teachings. In school, I was spoon fed to believe that Africans transcended
their knowledge between generations through oral history and that this, somehow
demised the continuity and authenticity of their history and rituals. What if I
was told of Isanusi Vusamazulu Credo
Mutwa’s published books that encapsulate within them, some of the African
stories, songs , myths and mythology.
(SILENCE: THAPELO CONTINUES…)
IN: THAPELO
MAKHUBO
It’s been
like that. Old World, and the new world. That is why we our astronomy must be
precise, must be in spirit, must be aligned…strong.
IN: THAPELO MAKHUBO
One of the
elements of Ntate Credo Mutwa that first drew me to his existence, was his
creative output, the mystic of his work. There's a vibration, frequency that’s
possibly the most important part of evoking a feeling, a response that is
beyond what is seen or heard. And in music, its something that transcends
beyond rhythmic patterns, melodies and chord progressions.
Ceremonies,
processions and events I grew up around always had sounds that were either sung
or played and most of the participants that were there were never considered
musicians. I've studied music and play
different instruments for more than a decade but I don’t completely consider
myself a musician. I only seek to better interpret messages from a higher
power; to be a better medium in this vessel. My relationship with music has
always made me believe that there’s a bigger existence and connection beyond
the physical, that the mind and body can only do so much for you.
There's
other channels that you need to build a relationship with. In efforts to tap
into these different vibrations and frequencies for the Documentary series, I’ve
travelled across Southern Arica and soon
upper Africa to reunite the sounds of Africa as Ntate Credo would have
reunited its people.
Here is a
man, in some ways like another, born in KwaZulu-Natal early in the 1900, came to Johannesburg, made a family, who can doubt
the luminary that created many artistic wonders none of which belong to
him. You heard how the Foundation that Nozipho
started is in a protracted battle to try win these over to her family and I
guess to future generations.
IN: KHULILE
NXUMALO
One
translation for the word boulder, or monolith kaSiZulu is “idwala”. A word that
you find in many of traditional church hymns- difila. Making this series
has opened my eyes to the vast network of sacred formations and landscapes in
the world filled to brim with sacred stories. In our continent, New Zealand,
South America, Europe, Asia, what story we can tell about time and calendars,
the rituals, the struggle to survive. We are at an end, we are starting another
new beginning.
People were
standing in their gates to see, today, the third day of the ban of alcohol
under the COVIOD 19 lockdown, the cops come down our street.
It was
after they had finally pounded on the hostel to stop the alcohol bootleggers, last
option hole for the drinkers in the township. The hostel in Diepkloof is still the same, if not worse living quarters
described by Bra Hugh Masekela in the opening of the live version of “ Stimela”
OUT:
CONCLUSION
The work
for the Credo Mutwa documentary seeks not to simply honour a complex narrative
of a high Sanusi who spoke his truth, that in turn spoke to a community, a
nation, a people and a world far beyond our comprehension. They say the life of
the stars covers 5 billion years. They also say that the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope is able
to collect information of more than a billion galaxies.
VIDEO: HEALERS
WALK BABA CREDO TO HIS RESTING PLACE.
Nabta in southern
Egypt ,predated the famous site at Stonehenge and other European megaliths, and
Ng'amoritung'a
on the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya where the logic of a 2000 year-old
calendar predates any European influence. Our cosmos, and where we now orbit is
among the Dogon people, the Chinese, the Incas, the Mayans, among what we can
learn from Mapungubwe, the Muhutanga in New Zealand, the Congo Bauer megaliths
and the Senegambian stone circles. The megalith temples of Malts, the Knap of
Howar as the oldest building in the world dating back to around 3600
BCE.
It is this
sojourn that we have set out on, to tell the story of iSanusi Credo Vusamazulu Mutwa, along with
all who have spent time revelling in his
presence and teachings. Our intention is follow all the rich and complicated threads
to take us father and further elaborate on the many facets of Ubuntu bakhe.
Our has been, so far, testing
task, we have shaken in dithered in the wake of its tremors, we have exalted
and have been enlivened to core of our imaginations, by an exploration in
wonder, mysticsm and knowledge beyond young worlds and lifetimes.
/…….ENDS…../
06 APRIL 2020
JOHANNESBURG.
[NT2]Meanwhile the old stones from our
ancient calendars and majestic cities
are silent and await a new generation of pilgrims shown the map by an
African called Credo Mutwa