Lungani Zungu
Professor James Mzilikazi Khumalo composed the first African opera and played a major role in creating the South African national anthem.
Khumalo, who passed away on Tuesday after a long illness, had a passion for music and languages.
His opera, Princess Magogo, and his oratorio, Ushaka, are major compositional milestones in classical music in South Africa and the opera was performed at the Ravinia festival in Chicago.
While his peers left their rural village near Vryheid, KZN, to work on the mines, Khumalo went to the City of Gold to pursue his music and languages career.
At age 37, in 1969, he was already a languages and music tutor at Wits University.
Despite his friends making more money than him, Khumalo continued teaching music and languages at a low stipend and in 1986 he conducted the ceremony where Desmond Tutu was officially ordained as Archbishop.
A devout Christian himself, Khumalo composed some of the songs that were sung at Tutu’s ceremony. Khumalo obtained his PhD from Wits in 1988.
Six years later, in 1994, Nelson Mandela insisted that Khumalo should be part of the team that blended the national anthem, which has IsiZulu, Sesotho, English and Afrikaans parts.
Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, 92, who witnessed Tutu’s ceremony and the historical moment when Mandela became the president in 1994, described Khumalo’s passing as a terrible loss.
“For me, his greatest achievement was composing the first African opera which was performed to such acclaim that it was invited to Europe and the United States,” said Buthelezi.
Buthelezi said that Princess Magogo was based on the life of his mother, Princess Magogo kaDinuzulu, who was a singer and composer and recognised internationally.
“Khumalo skillfully adapted my mother’s songs to be sung to the accompaniment of an orchestra.”
In 2015, Wits awarded Khumalo with an honorary doctorate.
Khumalo passed away on Tuesday after a long illness. The family has yet to announce the date of the funeral.
Image source: SAMRO
