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Bruce Ndlovu
When Sfiso Ncwane called Thembani Mubochwa last Wednesday, the Zimbabwean designer did not know that it would be the last conversation that they would have.
A decade after he designed the outfits Ncwane and his wife donned during their wedding ceremony, Mubochwa was being asked by the man at the other end of the line to put his famed magic touch on a suit that would do Ncwane justice when he came to visit for the Permican Gospel Awards that are set to be held in Harare this weekend.
a�?He called asking me to make a suit for him because we have such a long history and he is someone that always liked to look stylish. When I heard that he had passed away I was almost done with the suit,a�? said Mubochwa in an interview.
a�?If you knew Ncwane you would know that he always wanted to finish every phrase he uttered with a Nigerian accent so he asked for the suit and a convoy of cars he said was fit for an Igwe,a�? he said.
The garment, which Mubochwa was putting the final touches on this Wednesday, the day he was supposed to collect Ncwane from the airport with his convoy, has taken an added significance for the designer. It is no longer a piece of fabric that was made to look good beneath the glare of the camera lens on the red carpet, but a piece both beauty and heartbreak as it is his remaining connection to his number one client and friend.
a�?All I can do now is to finish the outfit and frame it. When we go for his funeral this weekend I will try to present it to his family,a�? he said.
Memories of Ncwane still overwhelm Mubochwa, a man whose rise consequently led to his own, with their fates seemingly entangled until Ncwane breathed his last on Monday.
a�?People might not understand what I am going through because I met Ncwane when he was still a struggling artiste singing on the streets of Durban. I saw firsthand when things were really bad in his career. After he got his break he also helped me rise because he could have used David Tlale or any other great designer but instead he chose me.
When he asked me to design his outfit for the wedding all the inferiorities and pressure I might have felt just went away,a�? he said.
Mubochwa, a runner-up and past winner in the Durban July Classic Racewear Male category, is not shy to admit that he latched on to the gospel stara��s coattails for most of the early part of his career.
a�?I basically followed him wherever he went. When he was in Durban I was in Durban and when he started to gain success and went to Johannesburg I followed him there. He went back again to Durban and I had to follow him again because it was clear to me that this guy was a guardian angel that the Lord had sent to work in my favour,a�? he said.
According to Mubochwa, as Ncwane star rose even higher up, he did not forget to also blaze a trail of success for his creative friends who he had starved with in the early part of his career.
a�?Everything that has come afterwards in my career is all down to him. He would just pop up in my studio one day with someone like Vuyo Mokoena and say Thembani, Vuyo wants a suit done so can you take his measurements so we can get to work. In such simple ways he connected me to the A-list celebrities in South Africa who connected me to even more people as time went along,a�? he said.
Without Ncwanea��s benevolence, the designer says that he thinks he would have been swallowed up by the vices in South Africa.
a�?He showed me another aspect of South Africa. The confidence he showed in me as a foreigner in a country where xenophobia is a problem was just amazing,a�? he said.
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derick.khumalo