Big Ears heard the Pied Piper … and they clicked
● To the world he was known as the White Zulu, but to Sipho Mchunu he was Madlebe. Together they started Juluka and toured the world. But when Johnny Clegg and Mchunu met in 1969 it was an unlikely friendship.
Mchunu had left his Zululand home to work as a gardener in Houghton, Johannesburg. He was just 17 years old and had heard about a white boy who wanted to learn how to play Zulu music. “I said I’d like to meet him because I’m a king of Zulu music, I wanted to make a competition with that guy,” he said.
Speaking to the Sunday Times a day after Clegg’s death on Tuesday, an emotional Mchunu said their first meeting was a Pied Piper moment that would forever be etched in his memory.
Mchunu was walking down the street playing his guitar and singing. Having heard the music, a 16-yearold Clegg — wearing his khaki school uniform — followed the music and when he got close enough he whistled to get Mchunu’s attention.
“It was my day off. I was walking down the street just playing my music and singing. I walked past his house but I didn’t know he was behind me. I just heard somebody whistling. I turned back and asked if he was talking to me. He was coming back from school. He came to me and said, ‘hello mfowethu [brother], where are you from?’ He was speaking fanagalo. I had already been told about him, so I asked him, is it you? He had a Zulu name, Madlebe, that means Big Ears.”
Clegg invited Mchunu to his house; he wanted him to meet his mother and play for her. “We went into the house, I met his mother, she spoke a little bit of Zulu. He asked me to sit down on the couch. I refused and said I’d sit on the floor. He said no, I mustn’t worry, it was his house, I could sit on the couch. Then he showed me that he could play a little bit. I was very surprised because he was a white guy. I couldn’t sleep that night thinking about where he could have learnt how to play like that,” he said.
The duo would secretly meet to practise. Mchunu had to sneak Clegg into the Houghton house where he worked. A defiant Clegg continued to reassure Mchunu that despite the police questioning their activity or their secret rehearsals they weren’t doing anything wrong.
“He told me what we are doing is just for ourselves and we are having fun, don’t worry about the police,” he said.
They formed their first band, Juluka, at the height of apartheid. It was Mchunu who took Clegg to hostels, where he met Zuluspeaking migrant workers, and to his home in KwaZulu-Natal, where he learnt to dance.
Over the years the two remained friends and Clegg invited Mchunu to join him on his final tour in 2017.
“He came to me and said, ‘I feel like I’ve done a lot, I’m tired and I’m getting old. I have to think about my family, I have been travelling a lot and it’s time to go back home and be with my family.’ He said it’s time. But he said before he goes that he wants to do a journey to say goodbye to the countries. He said he wants to do that with me. I was so happy to do it with him, we’ve been together for such a long time,” Mchunu said.
“I will miss laughing with him. We were always laughing. We would just look at each other and start laughing. I don’t believe what’s happened.”