They started off as friends and years later, they simply became family.
Although they are both musicians, the love they shared had nothing to do with the industry, but more about who they were to each other.
Musician Vusi Nova is in mourning.
He speaks to Drum exclusively just days after the country woke up to the sad news that multi-platinum selling artist Zahara, real name Bulelwa Mkutukana, died in hospital.
“Her brother called me to be with them in the hospital on the day she died,” he shares.
“She was in hospital for two and a half weeks and I was there every morning to see her. It was a helpless situation to sit there and talk to her and hope for some kind of response. I also sang to her a lot because I did not know what it would take to get her to respond.
“One day I arrived for one of my visits and she was miraculously sitting up on chair and I was so happy. She had had pipes in her throat for so long that her speaking voice was affected. She spoke softly but she was her usual praat machine self, and I was like ‘ja, my girl is back’. I was filled with so much hope when I left there. But unfortunately, later that night I got a call that she had deteriorated.”
Asked if death ever crossed his mind, Vusi says not initially.
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“Towards the end, maybe three days before she passed, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I should prepare myself because things were really not looking good. And even though I had had that talk with myself, when she did pass, I wept like a baby.”
South Africans knew Zahara the musician with a guitar, but Vusi knew Bulelwa the person, and he says she was amazing to be around.
“She was ball of fun. She was also very funny and even though she was a sensitive person, she loved to make jokes. I spent most of our time together laughing. She was animated and she may have been a woman in her 30s, but the truth is that she was a child at heart. She was playful and really just like a kid. She wore her emotions and heart on her sleeve.
“She and I celebrated our wins together and when we went through hard times, we could lean on each other. There are things that she shared with me that I would never dare to repeat and the same goes for Somizi and I know that the feelings are mutual.
“Ours was not a friendship based on fame or being from the Eastern Cape. We genuinely just loved each other. We had great times together. She was fun. Yho but she would ramble and talk too much. She had verbal diarrea, yessess! There would be times when I would tell her to keep quiet because she had been talking so much and of course she would ignore me and go on. Now I miss that. I’ll never get to hear her talk about everything and nothing all at the same time ever again.
“We could rely on each other for anything. If she or I was going through a hard time, she would call even as early as 6am or even late at night to say, ‘I’m coming over’. Then she would come into my room, get into my room and get under the covers and we would cuddle. Sometimes we would be going through so much pain that we did not even want to talk but cuddling and being in each other’s presence was enough.
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“I have lost my mother and two uncles, I understand death. But something about her death has hit something so deep inside of me that I cannot even explain the pain I am in. Only time will tell.”
Often when someone dies some people want to sanitize their images and portray them as saintly, others want to remind the public of how flawed the deceased was.
Vusi is now calling people to be considerate.
“When all has been said and done, a family has lost someone they loved dearly. They have lost a breadwinner. I hate fame. I wanted it, I got it and now I hate it because I have seen the flip side of it. People are not mindful of the things they say, no matter how hurtful they are.
“She was a considerate person. She was loving and genuine and now as we remember her, I hope we can also be those things."
