By PHAKAMISA MAYABA
How does one pin down a DIY tour guide who’s constantly out of town mingling with cabinet ministers and pitching ideas to potential funders? This when he’s not at a gala to receive an award, or been invited to promote the Northern Cape province at some tourism imbizo. Or when it’s a Saturday, but as a devout Seventh Day Adventist his day is mostly allocated to God?
The answer is that it’s a mission which makes one appreciate those mortal stupidities like WhatsApp and Facebook — or else we might never get to speak to Mbulelo Kafi, our associate at Toverview/eParkeni. and owner and CEO of Sakhisizwe Tours.
Mbulelo Kafi out and about in KZN. Image: Supplied.
After weeks of working the phones, he almost slips through our fingers. Again. This time he’s just landed from KwaZulu-Natal, has a jacket strapped over his shoulder, a stick in one hand, and is off to the homecoming ceremony of a cultural initiate.
In KZN, he says, he spent a week setting up a tourist route. ‘Destination promotion’ he calls it, where he arranges for signage and putting up GPS to the various tourism sites on those hallowed grounds of Zulu heritage. The place is riddled with historical sites dear to the South African history book, not least because Shaka, amongst a host of other illustrious names, once did some of his business there.
The Khuzumuntu Farmhouse, built in a rural village in the Eshowe area, approached Kafi with a pressing gripe: ‘So many things to see here, but why aren’t enough feet coming through the gates?’
Lunchtime at the Khuzumuntu Farmhouse.
‘I mean just a stone throw away we have isiHlahla saMagwala (Coward’s Bush) where Shaka would have those ‘cowards’ who’d not shown satisfactory valour on the battlefield dispatched to a hideous death,’ lamented the despairing owner,Mr Mbongi Khuzwayo.
Says Khuzwayo: How about that monument over there in memory of Mzilikazi, King of the Matebele, forced to flee to what would become the city of Bulawayo in the former Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) following a bloody battle with the pioneering voortrekkers Hendrik Potgieter, Gerrit Maritz and Piet Uys?
In between are storied albeit brutal tales of conquest including the King’s encounters with the missionary Robert Moffat and William Cornwallis Harris whose Narrative of an Expedition into Southern Africa during the years 1836 and 1837 are prized Africana. So, you see, this is supposed to be a multicultural tourism haven.
At Mzilikazi’s monument at the Kwabulawayo Cultural Centre. Image: Supplied.
Kafi scratched his head, smiled, and said he thought he knew exactly why. A few years ago he’d confronted a similar matter in the Northern Cape. He was charged with developing the Karoo ANC route which starts off in Colesberg and runs through Hanover and Victoria West all the way to Williston. The goal was to put up signage, call a GPS company to put up the necessary technology, and ‘develop’ the road so that tourists would be aware of the history of the road they were driving on. Khuzumuntu Farmhouse, he thought, was faced with a similar hurdle.
As a colleague, one must resign oneself to the reality that Kafi is not the sort of guy who’ll be there to answer your questions. Always on this mission or that, and a popular figure in the provincial tourism space, he is one of those people which local government has on speed dial when there’s a tourism endeavour to get to.
Like most freelancers, he is often swamped, and there is too much happening to get every detail down. Added to this, he is one of a handful of local tour guides, and his tours uniquely straddle the gulf between black Kuyasa with white Colesberg. He is an indispensable middleman to those who seek the big picture.
One day he’s out taking a group of German pensioners on an adventure through the township. The next he takes a busload of soldiers to view the battle sites of the South African War.
Be that as it may, he’s been here from the start, when our respective publications were mostly nothing but dreams in our collective minds. Over the years, we’ve written about some of his exploits which include his tours through Colesberg, the play he once wrote, and got a team to rehearse but, sadly, seemingly never got to perform.
Film crews have come down to record his story. Some have come down because they’d heard he was the man who could take them to the locales they needed to shoot. He has enough pictures of himself with tourism minister Patricia de Lille to say she truly lives up to her nickname, Auntie Pat, as far as our man is concerned.
He recently bagged a provincial tourism award, the Northern Cape acknowledging the man’s selfless talents. Perhaps the one truly striking thing about Ndi (as he’s affectionately known down here in the boondocks) is how he embodies the spirit of the Toverview/eParkeni ethos: that spirit to just go ahead, don’t wait, sometimes death comes only because you’re just not moving around enough.
And through it all, he has never forgotten that he grew up in the church. As such, God remains a constant presence in his life, and sometimes features regularly even in conversations with heathens like Yours Truly. To that we say Amen.
FEATURED IMAGE: Mbulelo Kafi with a fascinated tourist.
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on Phakamisa Mayaba’s website, eParkeni. Used with permission.