HE IS one of South Africa’s most loved sportscasters with a wealth of knowledge and experience in broadcasting. Robert Marawa is one of the most recognisable voices and faces in the country’s media landscape. He’s launched his eagerly awaited memoir, Gqimm Shelele: The Robert Marawa Story.
It all began when the young him listened to football commentary on the little grey radio back at home. Marawa would go on to imitate the commentary and record family functions. Today, we have an offering based on his life journey. Titled after his famous sign-off phrase and written by award-winning journalist and author, Mandy Wiener, Gqimm Shelele is a personal account of a man who came to fame as a popular soccer sportscaster and who, more recently, has been the respected moderator of in-depth cultural conversations on YouTube.
As a young, soccer-mad boy living in rural KwaZulu-Natal, Robert Marawa listened to the commentary of local football derbies on a small, crackling FM radio. As a teenager, he spent hours practising his presenting skills on his family’s home video recorder, reading from newspaper clippings his mother had carefully kept for him while he was at boarding school in Hilton. Marawa’s dream was to be a sportscaster who would be beamed into the homes of South Africa’s footballing fans.
Robert Marawa’s career has exceeded his wildest imagination. ‘Madluphuthu’ has become arguably South Africa’s most popular and most recognisable sports broadcaster. With his quick turn of phrase, his baritone voice and his direct, no-nonsense approach, he has earned a loyal following on radio and television over the past two decades.
“I wanted to do a memoir of my journey from childhood, pursuing a dream and so on. Mandy had to go to the house in Durban and I hadn’t told her to brace herself because my mother doesn’t know who Robert is. She calls me ‘Themba’ because that’s the name she gave me. My dad gave me Robert,” he said.
The book kicks off with a dramatic prologue where he talks about having one of his heart attacks. For him, that’s where his life almost ended.
Introducing us to his family, in the early chapters, Marawa takes us back to his days of growing up in eNkandla, KwaZulu-Natal as a farm boy.
“Being on the farm, the idea of waking up, and doing the necessary activities, those were the fun things we looked forward to because there was nothing else. You never really yearn for anything because your life began and ended there,” he said.
In 34 chapters, he tells his story unfiltered, taking us through broadcasting anecdotes, experience, truth, passion and opinions. Speaking about a four-hour crisis meeting he had with Irvin Khoza, Chairperson of the Orlando Pirates, Marawa writes that the conversation was frank.
“It was a brutally frank conversation. Instead of it lasting an hour and a half, we ended up speaking for nearly four hours. He had got the message across to me that at no point should I doubt him as a person and as a human being. Over the years, we would exchange very courteous messages with one another, and he was always complimentary of my work. Subsequent to that meeting, I did get fired from SuperSport and from the SABC. The suspicion lingers, but he had stated his case. In my heart, I believed that my repeated firings were motivated by pressure exerted by administrators of multiple sporting codes,” he writes.
He lets in on a one-on-one interview he had with Nelson Mandela, the individuals who were hell-bent on silencing him on the airwaves and more.
Gqimm Shelele: The Robert Marawa Story is published by Pan Macmillan and is available at all major bookstores nationwide.