JOHANNESBURG – A discerning art collector walks into a gallery and, more often than not, when he steps out, his piece is wrapped in plastic bubble under his arm or, size being the issue, the item is being readied for shipment later to his address.
If you agonise over its merit or the price tag for days on end, you either lack the requisite eye or the item does not belong on your wall.
I walked into the newsroom of Sunday World on Commando Road one day and when I left a gem called Louis Mazibuko was in the bag – I had a sidekick, muse, confidant, sounding board, friend that I could come to work to all rolled into one.
Sports reporting is rarely creative. One match report is eerily similar to the previous one. That is why the prose of one Sy Lerman is a matter of such legend among scribes.
It is this dreariness that riled Figo, as Mazibuko was affectionately known among those who knew him. He’d honed his writing skills as a young reporter at the feet of Doc Bikitsha, the renowned arts scribe of old at both The Rand Daily Mail and later The Sunday Times.
To breathe the same newsroom air as Bikitsha is to have been highly favoured by the gods. Any impressionable young hack who saw Bikitsha at the typewriter knows what magic is made of.
This is the spectacle that greeted the young Figo when he left an unfulfilling job at the bank to join the enchanting world of words.
Figo would mock the cliché-ridden previews, especially one trademark line that said “the mood in the camp is high”. These banal offerings won awards and in those days “award-winning sports reporter” referred to almost anyone writing about the game.
Figo always put in an effort, the Bikitsha touch.
I entered the newsroom aeons after Bikitsha had made his gracious exit. But I’m ready to contribute a chapter to the story of his life because I had his protégé, Figo, to regale me with stories of the old hack’s eccentricity, especially his penchant for wine, women and song.
Figo was a raconteur. In his life he told stories: isn’t this what journalism is about, in the final analysis?
His nickname derived from Portuguese great Luis Figo but he was not capable of knocking together a paragraph about his own talents as a footballer.
His best attempts in the field of play happened at Meadowlands High School as a defender – and they are not memorable.
One night before an awards function, the late Solomon Sticks Morewa says to him: get properly dressed and come collect your thing – Figo had a heads-up on being on the list of award winners.
This is how Figo got his news – by sleight of hand. In his business, it is called the scoop, and he had many of these. Figo was colourful just as the characters that peopled the game, those he wrote about from Jack Sello at The Dube Birds to John Mabaso at the Buccaneers.
Did I tell you he wrote acres of newspaper copy on boxing with such stalwarts as Harold Pongolo, Joe Moahloli and Ali Ncana at the same time as Gabu Tugwana was writing about Witbank Black Aces?
He wrote about Norman Pangaman Sekgapane and Aladin Stevens. When Money came on the scene – Figo had the boxing writer’s eye to see the pugilistic worth of Floyd Mayweather.
When cash-flush Pat Malabela exploded onto the scene as a club owner, Figo had already established a pedigree writing about the forebears of club runners like Petrus Molemela. When young Theophilus Doctor Khumalo became a soccer sensation, Figo had long documented the rise – and sometimes fall – of those like Vincent Tanti Julius and Jackie Asinamali Masike.
That is why he was able to write with such empathy when young upstarts like Junior Khanye self-destructed at Kaizer Chiefs.
Like any man after my own heart, Figo was a petrolhead.
He was buddies with Ali Mphaki, who had a stint as a motoring journalist at City Press.
There is an Mphaki legend as news editor. He screams at a journalist who has delivered sub-standard copy from across the open-plan of the newsroom and says: the only thing that is correct in this story is your byline.
This is the humour that fuelled Figo’s engines.
Besides cars, Figo loved music – old school R&B. He could play My Love Is Free by Double Exposure on repeat ad infinitum.
But there are things he hated too, like his second name, Desmond. He did not like it. Figo had one child, a daughter he doted on, who works for the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD). Zozo has already spoken about the perfect specimen her dad was.
In this era of Covid-19 and wanton GBV, when a grown woman says her dad was a special man, you really need to doff your hat off to the man.
Figo was an uxorious man – he loved his wife, Monica. For his family, only prime-cut Woolies meat would do.
When Monica died, somehow dark thoughts filled my head and I feared for his sanity and mortality.
When people are married for as long as Figo and Monica had been, from 1976, they become one.
Without his wife, Figo was never the same.
The laughing Diepkloof Tycoon had no business dying, though.
He will be buried on Wednesday.