May His Soul Rest In Peace, and may his widow and children and the Amahlubi be consoled for this sad loss.
The Amahlubi leader is no more. Chief Madoda Zibi was planted on the 14th of April at his seat of power in Khayakhulu in the North West province. The Amahlubi and the nation mourned.
My journey to meet him was not a straight road, but once he was in my life, he stayed.
More than 40 years ago, on September, 30,1982, I escaped from Lesotho and ended up in Mmabatho, Bophuthatswana, where it became the home for my family for the next 13 years.
After a month without a job, I secured one at the Statistics Office under Economic Affairs. My immediate task was to plan for a population census of Bophuthatswana. A step in that direction would cause me to visit every corner of the homeland, as well as plan and run household surveys.
The opportunity to traverse the geography of Bophuthatswana exposed me to a good part of South Africa long before I became the Statistician-General.
On one Sunday morning, I started on a journey to Khayakhulu in the Madikwe District in the North West province as my ultimate destination.
But on this trip, I had to meet Chief Kgosi Moilwa in Dinokana as my first port of call. On the map of previous censuses, it showed what appeared to be Matjiesvlei. However, in the end, I had to ask villagers to direct me there. And I ultimately met Chief Moilwa.
I then proceeded to meet Chieftain Gopane of Gopane village. I paid my respects and asked permission to go to her sub-village of Motlhabe. But the Chieftain protested bitterly about what she has seen as a perpetual selection of Motlhabe by government programmes over the seat of chieftaincy in Gopane.
It was practically impossible to force the science of survey sampling. The Chieftain would have none of it and would not allow Motlhabe to be selected over Gopane. But I would not substitute Motlhabe village for Gopane village either when it did not fall in the sample I had selected.
This led to both villages being excluded. This was the collision of authorities – one political and the other scientific. When these collide, progress suffers. It was a lesson that played itself out throughout my career, both indirectly and directly, in South Africa and over the globe.
By the afternoon, I arrived at the next stop, which was Mmasebudule village. Young children in their birthday suits were jumping up and down in the dusty surroundings. One of them had a load at the back that was unsightly, and despite the protestations by the mother to wipe off the backside, he carried on as though nothing had happened.
I was thirsty, but my thirst just transformed into nausea. I had totally lost my appetite for quenching my thirst. As it happened, the meeting had to be relatively shorter lest I threw up.
We then asked for directions to Khayakhulu. Traveling on a gravel road was extremely challenging. It was too hot to keep the windows shut and too dusty to keep the windows open. By almost sunset we arrived in Khayakhulu, and I asked for directions to the Chief’s place. The light green painting of the houses that you witnessed in the Eastern Cape left me without a doubt that this was Khayakulu, and we were led to the Chief’s place.
It was already late to travel back to Mafikeng, and it was important to greet, say what the mission was and leave well before the sun disappeared. But beating a hasty retreat was not on the cards.
The Chief was not around, but was on his way, and we were asked to relax and wait. After half an hour, Chief Madoda Zibi arrived in his blue colt.
Greetings were exchanged in a relaxed fashion, which implied that we were not going to leave soon. Supper was prepared as we had an engaging discussion ranging from health, economics, statistics to politics. The Chieftain was a nurse, and the Chief was a Germany-trained economist. What a humble man.
He would, with all humility, narrate how he was working as a teller in Rustenburg and how he was digesting the meaning of all these in conjunction with the heavy responsibilities of leading his community. The time to leave arrived, and it was at least 8.30pm, but despite the insistence that we should sleep over, we resisted the kind offer.
Chieftain Zibi would later come to Mafikeng, where she extended her training as a nurse, and the relationship between our families grew. And subsequently, our lives have criss-crossed with that of Chief Madoda Zibi up to the pre-Covid pandemic period.
Upon his departure, I am reminded of my formative years in my career. His humility in adversity remained an exemplary feature of his work life and his stature in work life never removed him from Khayakhulu and the Amahlubi that he loved so much.
May His Soul Rest In Peace, and may his widow and children and the Amahlubi be consoled for this sad loss.
Dr Pali Lehohla is the director of the Economic Modelling Academy, a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.
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