The Sunday News
Nkosilesisa Ncube, Sunday Life Reporter
Esigodini-BASED poet and praise artiste Zulu Mpofu ended his performing career on a high note at the President’s 93rd birthday celebrations held in Matobo, Matabeleland South last Saturday.
Mpofu’s poem, “Ngixoleleni” called on people to embrace the leadership of President Mugabe and painted the President as a just and humble leader and encouraged people to adopt these values from President Mugabe.
“I performed this particular poem to encourage people to support our President and hold close his teachings. The norm is people scramble for leadership, everyone wants to be on top but as people, we need to understand that leaders are divinely chosen. Moreso, people should learn to emulate the President’s behaviour. He denounces greed, and has a welcoming approach towards his people, we can learn a lot from that,” Mpofu said.
As he nears an early retirement, Mpofu said it was an honour to perform at the President’s bash and highlighted that he was pleasantly overwhelmed by the reception he got from the audience.
“There were a lot of artistes performing on the day and all were generally well received but what I liked most was that even before I started performing people were cheering and clapping for me, by the time I started I had already made a connection with the audience. It was humbling to receive that much appreciation from the audience,” he said.
Mpofu said he will be taking a step back from regular performances to focus on mentoring young and upcoming poets and help them nurture their talents.
“I am getting older and I have to share my experiences with younger generations. My time will be devoted to mentoring young ones as I too learnt from the likes of Albert Nyathi. I cannot be 38 years old and in full force, I need to be preparing the next generation. If I do however, get the chance to perform at national stages, I will, but my core business is mentorship,” Mpofu said.
He will be going into schools and teaching both the performance and criticism of poetry under the new education curriculum. For primary schools, he will be teaching the basics of poetry; rhythm, structure and overall delivery while for secondary and high schools, he will help the students develop critical minds when it comes to receiving poetry.
He said including the arts in the school curriculum would change the mindset that people have always had towards full time artistes.
“Artistes have generally always been viewed as ill-educated with a random approach towards life. However, now that the arts are part of the school curriculum , people will start to appreciate that one can make an honest living out of their God-given talents, after all we can’t all have office jobs,” he said.
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