Posted on April 18, 2011

Buthelezi izithakazelo (kinship group praises). printed in a T-shirt. Photo credit: Mbongiseni Buthelezi

Buthelezi izithakazelo (kinship group praises). printed in a T-shirt. Photo credit: Mbongiseni Buthelezi

Last month I wrote about the meeting a group of Buthelezi people held in Newtown, Johannesburg in preparation for a larger public get-together. The public get-together took place on Sunday, April 3rd at the Zoo Lake. I happened to be in town, so I went along. It was farcical, annoying and, in the end, fun. It was meant to start at 10:30. Here is how it unfolded.

10:00: I arrive at Zoo Lake. I don't know where in the park the meeting is supposed to take place. Before coming I didn't even know what the park looked like. I imagined it would be a small place where people could find one another easily since there was no designated meeting area. But I thought I would be early just in case I had to do look for the meeting place. In any case, Thabathaba Buthelezi, the leading figure behind these meetings, has just posted on his Facebook page a few minutes ago that he is running late. (It will turn out that he is running over 2 hours late.) I have chosen to experiment with this Facebook thing: I want to see how successfully a meeting of migrants from KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State who work in Johannesburg and have only ever met online can be organised. I don't have a phone number for any of the local committee members. Will an event communicated through Facebook alone be pulled off? If entire revolutions can thus be organised to bring down governments in Egypt and Tunisia, then there must be something to this business of social networks.

10:30am: I have walked around the park looking for people. I decide to kill more time watching birds either minding their own business by the lake or being fed by families and friends as more and more people start arriving to play, picnic, jog, loiter in the park.

At 11:00am I send a message to some of the committee members - Thabathaba, Mthokza, Themba, Lihle and Gugu aka Diva - to ask them where the event is meant to take place. An hour goes by and there is no response. Just after midday I get a call comes from Nkanyiso Buthelezi. He is in the park. He and several other people are wandering round and round the park trying to find where the get-together is. We arrange a meeting spot. Thabathaba calls soon after to say he has given Nkanyiso my number. Will I field questions from other people who want to know where to meet and post on his Facebook wall where we are? I do so. I have been thrust into the anchor role when I thought I was just coming along to be an onlooker. Themba calls at 12:41 to say he is lost, where is the event supposed to be? I ask him the same as he is one of the organisers before directing him to where we are.

By 13:00 there are 21 people. Nkanyiso is in the South African National Defence Force based in Bloemfontein. He needs to catch a taxi back to Bloem in order to go to work on Monday morning. I have to get somewhere else for 15:00. We keep wondering whether anything is going to happen before we leave. By this time we are sitting around under a tree chatting, snacking, drinking. Thabathaba has arrived. Mcebo collects R20 from each of us to buy meat to braai. Amos has brought suitcases full of t-shirts to sell. They are printed 'Buthelezi' in the front and at the back they have the surname again and a list of Buthelezi izithakazelo (kinship group praises). Above, clouds start gathering. At about 13:20 there is a shower. We huddle near the trunk of the the tree we've been sitting under. The shower passes after about 15 minutes. We spread out again and continue chatting, snacking, drinking. We tell one another bits and pieces about who we are, where we are from, what we do. We assume formal introductions will happen when the organisers take charge of the event. The Diva arrived just before the shower started. She is said to have promised at the last meeting the committee held in Newtown a week ago to bring charcoal. She has forgotten. Almost 3 hours ago she had posted on her Facebook wall that she was leaving home 20 minutes ago for the Zoo Lake.

After the shower Mcebo and Jabulani drive off to buy the meat and charcoal round the corner. They are gone for over an hour. They apparently got lost trying to make their way back. Around 14:30 the heavens open. Under the tree a few hasty speeches are made: the event is about building a network of Buthelezi people who can help each other find jobs, get educated, open up business opportunities. It is about finding people to host one when travelling to other parts of the country; it is also about knowing ourselves - the history of the Buthelezi chiefdom, group praises and ancestral ceremony. I scamper off to my next as the group is trying to figure out who lives nearby whose home that it can descend on.

Front the photographic report and comments that are posted on Facebook afterwards, at least five more people joined when the group had moved to Mthokza's flat in Berea. Much meat was eaten and booze drunk. The comments from those present are gloating. Those who were not there are wistful. In Richard's Bay they are organising their own get-together. Durban will also see an event of the same kind. Nonkululeko and Mbali had gone up from Durban, so they are being thrust into the organising role. This Facebook thing does seem to work after all even as people are casual about keeping to the advertised time.

Mbongiseni Buthelezi is the Archival Platform Ancestral Stories coordinator