WeeklySA_AdminINDIGENOUS: Widely known as Mocholoko, the well-travelled academic leaves a legacy of lifelong intellectual exploration and pioneering scholarly accomplishments…
By WSAM Reporter
South Africa’s renowned writer and linguist Dr Zulumathabo Vusumuzi Lefalamang Zulu Mocholoko has passed on, at the age of 62.
Zulu, who was born in Johannesburg on 17 August 17 1961 in Johannesburg and affectionately known as Mocholoko, passed away last Sunday. He leaves behind a daughter and son. An organising committee is currently finalising arrangements for the burial. Further announcements will be made during the course of the week. A family spokesperson,
Nume Mashinini said Mocholoko had a deep love for writing and a profound intellectual fascination with the functioning of the human body, indigenous mathematics, physics, science, and African cosmology. Mashinini said this led Mocholoko to a lifelong journey of intellectual exploration and pioneering scholarly accomplishments.
Over the years, Zulu’s intellectual and scholarly endeavours, earned him a number of titles, including journalist, computer software scientist, patent holder, author, teacher, mentor, doctoral practitioner, research scientist, metaphysical scientist, cosmologist and custodian of indigenous medicine.
From an early age, he had a deep love for writing and a profound intellectual fascination with the functioning of the human body, indigenous mathematics, physics, science, and Afrikan cosmology.
This led him to a lifelong journey of intellectual exploration and pioneering scholarly accomplishments. Over the years, his intellectual and scholarly endeavours earned him a number of titles, including journalist, computer software scientist, patent holder, author, teacher, mentor, doctoral practitioner, research scientist, metaphysical scientist, cosmologist and custodian of indigenous medicine.
Mocholoko was also a natural linguist who was fascinated by words and their link to Afrikan cosmology and the transfer of traditional art forms of storytelling, all inspired by the ancients.
Owing to his scholarly accomplishments, Mocholoko held various academic positions at various academic institutions on the continent and other parts of the world.
Through this, he contributed to the development of academic curricula and literature in a number of fields. This included such fields as indigenous knowledge systems and climate change, African indigenous architecture and design, African metallurgy: materials science and engineering, historiography of African science and technology, African ethno-mathematics.
Inspired by his commitment to afrocentric epistemology and pedagogy, Mocholoko founded Madisebo University, whose mission was to train teachers as griot professors and knowledge engineers who teach and model the sacrosanct principles of the African origins of knowledge.
In essence, Madisebo University is a new paradigm case intended to emancipate and to empower Thari (Bana Ba Thari / Abantwana Be Mbeleko / the descendants of the Melanin) to be free from miseducation; free from conflict; free from immorality; free from poverty and free from pestilence.
Mocholoko has published more than eight books and produced hundreds of unpublished manuscripts. These include ‘Sesotho Dictionary of Mathematics,’ ‘A Woman in The Bush’, ‘African Origin of Mathematics’ and scholarly papers like ‘African Origin of Mathematical Teaching and Learning’.
This list of publications also includes ‘African Drum Telegraphy and Indigenous Innovation: African Contribution To Communication Science’, ‘African Metaphysical Science and Decolonisation and Africography Research Framework: African Metaphysics of Research’.
Mocholoko’s inventions include the Thekwini Visual Canvas. This is a visual stimulus processing engine for therapeutics based on the knowledge disciplines of Cryptography, Digital Forensics, Mood Diagnostics.
Arising from this, he was awarded the intellectual property certificates by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office for Visual Processing and Africography. In addition to his monumental scholarly and intellectual work, Mocholoko also made an immeasurable contribution to the liberation struggle in Azania. This includes serving in Black Sash organisation as a field worker in the small town of Botshabelo.
In 1987, he was forced to flee from the murderous claws of the apartheid regime. This was after he delivered revolutionary poetry at the Women’s Liberation Conference at the University of Witwatersrand. This resulted in him being exiled to Botswana.
Owing to his immeasurable intellectual and scholarly contribution, across a vast number of areas of human endeavour, Mocholoko, Dr Zulumathabo Vusimuzi Lefalamang Zulu is without doubt the Imhotep of our time.
“On behalf of the Zulu family, we wish to express our heartfelt appreciation for the outpour of love and support we have received from Azania, Afrika and the world,” Mashinini said.
