The WhatsApp message that broke my heart came at 1.28am on Saturday. The headline, screaming across a banner, read: “Bereavement notice of Zithulele Baldwin Tsielala William Ndaba”.
My former colleague, Baldwin Ndaba, as we knew him, was no more. I did not reply to the message. I was engulfed by silence because suddenly, my thoughts became louder.
I had worked with him across several Independent Media titles for more than a decade. He was not only a colleague but also a friend and brother of mine. Torrents of memories flooded over me. So many thoughts, racing like a runaway truck hurtling towards a cliff.
I tried to move on, but every thought led back to him like a labyrinth with no exit. It was hard to accept that Baldy, as we often fondly called him, had departed the world. The words of William Shakespeare came to mind. “I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins that almost freezes up the heat of life.”
I thought of the many times we chatted the evenings away as we walked together from 47 Sauer Street (now renamed Pixley ka Isaka Seme in downtown Joburg) back home, just behind Constitutional Hill in Braamfontein.
Our residences were a stone’s throw away from each other – only separated by a street. Baldwin at a large block of flats called Empire Gardens in Parktown and I in Clarendon Heights, Hillbrow.
That Hillbrow is a quintessential symbol of urban decay is well documented. But Baldwin and I were not that fazed. “It’s all exaggerated,” he would often tell me. To him, the labels bordered on paranoia.
You could be walking during ghostly hours and still come across Baldwin sauntering the streets. As former colleague Bonile Ngqiyaza put it this week: “He [Baldwin] moved through the city attentively, absorbing its rhythms, anxieties and rumours as part of ordinary daily life.”
Like an emperor surveying his kingdom and allocating sites to ensure that the boundaries were properly marked. He reminded me of that iconic scene from Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith where Anakin Skywalker, fully consumed by the dark side, declares, “I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new empire!”
Down in Bruce Street, between Clarendon Place and Claim Street, lies a popular pub whose name resonates with me because of my ancestral home. Limpopo Inn.
Even there, Baldwin was more popular than me. For all the talk of “fancy pubs in decent suburbs” like Mellville and Rosebank, not once did Baldwin’s love affair with Hillbrow fade. This was the Baldwin I knew. Modest and unassuming.
Beneath that modesty lay a devoted servant of the Fourth Estate. Baldwin mainly covered court and politics stories. I still have this image of him in a lumber jacket and checkered shirt, exiting The Star offices as he walked down the streets until he strode into the Gauteng provincial legislature lobby, where he was loved and loathed because of his sharp pen.
He was an astute and erudite journalist who displayed less than he knew. He had an uncanny way of crafting his story within tight deadlines — a skill an indulgent journo like me struggled with. I couldn’t fathom how he managed with the tiny notebook he always kept in his back pocket.
He was an astute and erudite journalist who displayed less than he knew.
I would watch him as he flipped through the pages to the clatter of the keyboard. Swiftly. I wasn’t even halfway through my story, so I would be growing anxious.
Once I submitted my story, one-time news editor Mthunzi Mbatha would glance at it. Gingerly, he would adjust his reading glasses and ask, “Lebo, another prose?” to which Baldwin would shake his head and laugh. Yet, he would patiently wait for me until we finished before embarking on our customary long walk back home. Our journey meant navigating an uphill slope through the maze of traffic all the way to Constitutional Hill. Yet, it was always effortless because of the lively conversations we had.
In typical journalistic style, our converse ranged from the big stories of the day to politics, sport and the latest office gossip. As our former colleague Kashiefa Ajam reminded us in a social post this week, Baldwin knew the latest gossip. I can attest to that.
If it wasn’t the newsroom movements or who was going to be promoted, it was about who was moving across to another newspaper title within the group or another media house, or who got the latest freebie trip, and so forth.
We often lamented the demands for front-page stories as the standard measure for promotion. “Some of those stories were assigned, not self-generated. It’s like they landed on a journalist’s lap,” he would often say, hinting at favouritism.
There was another side of Baldwin. He wore his PAC love on his sleeve. In typical Pan-Africanist ideology, he had this quixotic obsession with the land question, something that fascinated me because of my family history.
However, for all his love for the PAC, he never allowed that to get into his stories. He strove to report accurately, with the utmost fairness and balance. After the PAC, Kaizer Chiefs was his biggest love. Somehow, there was this oddity about The Star newsroom.
He strove to report accurately, with the utmost fairness and balance.
There were too many Orlando Pirates fans, so I found an ally in Baldwin. I recall how, at every turn, deputy editor Jovial Rantao used to taunt us Chiefs fans. If, for instance, a colleague who was a Chiefs fan resigned, Jovial would say “another one bites the dust”, much to Baldwin’s chagrin.
Much has been said about his love for skopo (sheep’s head). Above all, journalism was his lifeblood. He loved and worshipped it. To him, it was a sacred calling, and he approached every story with unyielding curiosity that made him pursue the facts relentlessly.
He was guided by a deep commitment to holding those in power accountable — all while giving a voice to the voiceless. As former colleague Kevin Ritchie stated this week, Baldwin did not get the recognition he deserved. Yet, he rarely complained. He was always chatting away, ever friendly and assiduously devoting his time to mentoring young reporters.
I had not seen much of my friend in a long time, having spoken over the phone about three months ago. From what I could discern, his experiences in the years leading to his departure from the newsroom had made him feel like a lone voice in the wilderness.
Journalism, to him, had cratered. Bonile Ngqiyaza draws comparisons between Baldwin and Sol Plaatje. And, like Plaatje, Baldwin lived and worked in Kimberley before moving to Johannesburg, where his untimely passing occurred. He too has returned to Kimberley for his last resting place.
The pain was palpable in Thandi Mabuza, our former colleague and office administrative officer. When I broke the news to her, she wept uncontrollably. She was inconsolable. Like a mother crying for her loved son.
Fare thee well, Baldy.
• Seale is a former colleague of Baldwin Ndaba and a communications and media relations specialist at the University of Johannesburg. He is the author of the award-winning book, ‘Hundred Years of Dispossession: My Family’s Quest to Reclaim Our Land’.
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