Or we can call him Bafo by now. Bafo is one of the last of them. The last of those cats who saw what they were supposed to see post 1976, and is alive to tell about it. Sawubona.
The elder has stories of his bafo Dr.Phillip Tabane slapping the scotch taste out of a racist bloke Engilande. Splif sharing with Gospel music figures whose names should be kept on a shhhhh. Inside information of what went on at the label, MELT2000.
A 74 year old in 2025, but Bafo is without a pinch of that grumpiness that comes with old age, blues, and sighing more often than necessary.
At the recording of the kwaNTU album, he was always swagging out in colourful prints and fresh sneakers -probably the reason he hasn’t been able to grow a wrinkled spirit. He listened. Wise. Funny. Naughty. Had all the time in the world, for all in the world.
Sitting with him, I got so comfortable that I forgot to ask him important work questions. Like, how hard of a decision was having to leave idiski as a player for African Wanderers FC, in favour of music as a young man? Did the first guitar he bought himself when he was 12 have a name?
And most importantly, how did I even forget to ask him how he feels about his Order of Ikhamanga(In gold).
Young Muziwakhe Kunene
Born Muziwakhe to the family of the educated Kunenes, Obhambo lunye ngambili ungayenga ngendaba. The year was 1951, in Umkhumbane(Cator Manor). As a boy, young Muziwakhe refused to go to school, instead chose to go busking in Umkhumbane, Jippercoat Station and Durban Beachfront.
In the Mzansi of that time, when you thought music, you usually thought four places: Sophiatown, Cape Town, Eastern Cape, and Umkhumbune.
That would also be around the time where young Kunene’s band was called Amanikabheni, because the passing audience would throw them pennies for their performance. Some pennies would even fall from the sky, thrown by the audience of top floors in flats. It’s been a long way for Bafo, more than 5 deadly decades.
Their creative band of Amanikabheni had him on a guitar made from a cooking oil tin, a friend on drums made from paint tins covered with tyre tubes and their lids as cymbals, and another friend on string bass made from a tea chest, rope and stick. These types of childled bands, were very common at the time, and usually played Marabi or Kwela.
Unfortutanely, The Group Areas Act that was passed in the country in 1950, finally became a reality to young Muziwakhe in 1959. That’s the year his family was forcefully removed from their home at Umkhumbane, and shoved into one of Ethekwini’s townships, KwaMashu.
In KwaMashu, music was a place of one’s own for the young Kunene boy. When he bought his first professional guitar at age 12, he played what bands like the Beatles were playing, and played in functions such as weddings.
But he got tired of the western shandis. Sometime after that, he went under the wing of a badass Mbaqanga guitarist mnumzane Phuthu.
[Part 1 of 3 Ends]