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Anele and the Club at 947 honor and celebrate veteran newscaster Noxolo Grootboom. Image: Rosetta Msimango
TRENDS
Amid Noxolo Grootboom’s sweet smile at the stunned Thembekile Mrototo, Anele Mdoda leaned past her microphone.
The eponymous star of the 947 breakfast radio show Anele and the Club asked what has been on everyone’s lips since Grootboom resigned this week from being the news face of isiXhosa on SABC television.
How are you going to spend your time now? Mdoda wanted to know.
“Ndizaw’jola nomyeni wam ‘,” Grootboom quickly replied with a mischievous smile.
What she said was that she would start dating her husband, but, like the words she wrote and spoke on the news so eloquently in her native language almost every night of the week for the past 37 years, the words meant more. than that.
It means that you plan to give love your undivided attention – pay great attention to your marriage.
Walking away from being the mother of the nation as a journalist who learned on the job and finally feeling like she is making time for the children she gave birth to, an element of her life, she told Mdoda, that she hadn’t been up to the task when children . they were younger.
The day after President Cyril Ramaphosa delayed his family’s reunion with the nation for half an hour so the family could see the legend read the news for the last time, she was housed in the 947 studio for an interview on the show. breakfasts.
Read: Ramaphosa tightens restrictions on alcohol but eases restrictions on religious gatherings
“I made a conscious decision to end the day at 60,” the pioneer, whose signature signature phrase, Ndin’thanda nonke emakhaya, should be a clue on a 30-second card, told The Club.
Watching Grootboom sit in front of Mdoda and enjoy the showers of love was inspiring, as parts of his life lit up in the chats on and off the air.
It showed us that we could bring who we are to what we do.
Zizo Tshwete
She recalled being a secretary at SABC when, in 1984, she was asked to fill in for an absent announcer at one point. The rest is your story.
For years, the 61-year-old was known as The Undertaker because she had been tasked with respectfully covering the deaths of icons from Chris Hani to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
Yes, many people report the news, but Grootboom delivered it in a way that has made crowds feel like family.
This is because it defended its culture and customs in a world that avoids extolling its roots in favor of Westernization.
As such, it reflected a South Africa that does not appear often on screen. And she was in many homes at dinner time every week, like a relative.
Veteran news anchor Noxolo Grootboom. Image: Rosetta Msimango
Nieces from broadcasts like BBC’s Lerato Mbele, Metro FM’s Melanie Bala, 947’s Hulisani Ravele and Selimathunzi’s Zizo Tshwete were brought into the studio to surprise the veteran, who was left in tears at the end of their tributes to her.
“It showed us that there was enough sun for all of us,” Mbele said with a smile. “It was so much more than the news,” Ravele said through tears.
Tshwete told Grootboom: “You showed us that we could bring who we are to what we do.” Then he added: “When you said ‘Ndin’thanda nonke emakhaya’, for some people, that was the only ‘I love you’ they had ever heard.”
By then, there was not a dry eye in the study. In a long hug as the radio show ended in a song break, Grootboom hugged Tshwete as the young man mouthed “enkosi” over and over and over again.
That gratitude is a sentiment both famous and ordinary have expressed throughout the week.
She is smelling her flowers while she is still alive.
Somizi
Tears of joy came after Mdoda revealed that she had remade a famous image of Grootboom in a white suit, pearl choker, and fluffy hair in a 1994 issue of True Love magazine.
The tears did not stop when Somizi Mhlongo Motaung appeared unannounced because she had heard the farewell on the radio and knew she had to come pay tribute to a broadcast plan.
The Undertaker admitted that she had never felt so alive and loved as she did that morning.
“I am experiencing what I can call a living funeral,” she said between sobs. On isiXhosa, she said that she was going to go home and tell her husband that there should be no speeches at his funeral because, this week, he heard all the things that people often only hear on their deathbed.
“She is smelling her flowers while she’s still alive,” Somizi joked. “This is the most beautiful thing that ever was.”
What are your memories of Noxolo Grootboom’s time on your television screens?
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