Publisher: Jacana Media
When Soweto DJ legend Fana Khaba, aka Khabzela, died of Aids three-and-a-half years ago, it was a big story in the weekend papers.
His funeral preparations while he was still alive were also big news. In a bizarre move, a funeral parlour had awarded him a free burial as a prize for winning a nation-building award. Although Khabzela was little more than a name outside Gauteng, the headlines raised national curiosity around his rise to fame, and his untimely death at the age of 34.
Through painstaking research and inter-
views, journalist Liz McGregor seeks to fill in the missing pieces of this charismatic youth icon's life - and his very public, tragic death.
Undeterred by the fact that McGregor had just three interviews with Khabzela before he died, she built up a profile in retrospect through interviews with his friends, DJs and colleagues at the hit youth radio station Yfm.
To eke out the truth about Khabzela's battle with a disease that is so stigmatised and shrouded in myth, McGregor also spent many hours with grieving relatives and loved ones.
The book is as much a story about Khabzela as it is about the development of black youth culture in the freedom years, with Soweto being the birthplace of the kwaito generation. The talented and visionary Khabzela was a symbol of the Y generation.
A shy youngster who, through sheer determination, rose from poverty and a conservative Jehovah's Witness upbringing, to become a cool, confident star. He was the face of Yfm, hosting the prime drive-time show. He was a role model, spreading a message of hope through his Positive Youth of Gauteng show. In this way the book is upbeat and uplifting.
It is not hard to understand how Khabzela got Aids. Within a short time on air, he was treated like a star who could walk on water.
He had become a phenomenon, a brand. His celebrity status - on top of his captivating personality, zest for life and generous spirit - made him a magnet to women. He boasted that he frequently had three women queueing up outside his bedroom door to have sex with him (with no mention of prophylactics).
His friends claimed that he sometimes had five girls a night. He had at least five children from five women, none of them by his fiancée.
What is harder to understand is why, after bravely declaring his HIV status on air in early 2003, he did not try to save his life by taking anti-retrovirals. In Khabzela's last months, as his health and mind deteriorated, he made some frantic attempts to live by consulting faith healers and do-gooder "miracle-peddlers" - many of whom, as McGregor discovered, were raking in profits from the disease.
Khabzela's last moments are relived through chilling, clinical hospital notes that detail his bed sores, diarrhoea, coughing, insomnia, aggression and dementia.
The chapter ends with the last entry, death - at 12.15 on January 14, 2004.
Khabzela, which is in its second release, is a fluid, narrative read. In many ways, the book's strength - its honesty and integrity - is its weakness. The writer does not try to invent a voice for Khabzela, though at times she does try to read his mind.
Although she builds up a thorough portrait of Khabzela the public figure, his private thoughts remain obscure. Instead of resorting to fabrication, McGregor's journalistic voice is a thread throughout the book.
The reader is always aware that this is not an autobiography, but a pieced-together interpretation of an extraordinary person's life, with the unavoidable gaps that come with it. A compelling read.