Rosemary Kesebogile Mangope née Rabothata, who was buried yesterday in Motswedi outside Zeerust in the North West after succumbing to cancer at the age of 65, was a controversial yet respected arts developer, who made a great contribution to the sector.
She was the CEO of the National Arts Council (NAC) when she decades resigned in April 2022 amid allegations of maladministration. But it is the role she played as the founding executive director of the Mmabana Arts, Culture and Sport Foundation in the apartheid bantustan of Bophuthatswana that she will be remembered for.
She was born the eldest of three children in Diepkloof, Soweto, to a nurse mother and a dental mechanic father.She relocated to Bophuthatswana shortly after marrying Kwena Mangope, the son of the homeland’s president Lucas Mangope.
Rosemary passed on the eighth anniversary of the day I interviewed her for the Lucas Mangope book. On the day, she reflected on her career, notably the founding of the Mmabana centre.
Along with other key infrastructure — including the erstwhile University of Bophuthatswana, Radio Bop, Bop TV, Bop Recording Studios, Manpower vocational education centres and Sun City resort, Mmabana is often held aloft by Mangope’s admirers as an example of his reputed genius. But his critics dismiss such facilities as the fruits of the system of apartheid.
The remarkable story of Mmabana, whose star-studded alumni list boasts household names such as thespians Presely Chweneyagae and Bawinile Ntshaba, musicians Bhudaza and the late HHP, and tumbler extraordinaire Tseko Mogotsi, can be traced back to the mid-1980s. At the time, Rosemary was settling in Mmabatho as Mangope’s daughter-in-law and a rookie civil servant when the bantustan government sent her off to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel to study early childhood development.
One day, while busy with her studies, she learnt that Mangope was on an official state visit in Tel Aviv-Yafo, an Israeli city built on the Mediterranean coastline some 60km north-west of Jerusalem. Although the world did not recognise Bophuthatswana’s make-believe sovereignty, it seemingly enjoyed curious relations with Israel. Mangope invited Rosemary to visit him in Tel Aviv-Yafo, keen to find out how her studies were going.
It was while Rosemary was in Tel Aviv-Yafo that the idea of Mmabana came into being. Mangope’s hosts had taken him on an excursion to Kfar Saba, a city in the Sharon region of the central district of Israel, for a performing arts show. Rosemary had tagged along. She would be blown away by the Kfar Saba Cultural Centre, where the show was staged.
Before long, and with Mangope’s blessings, Rosemary had left Israel to spearhead the replication of the Kfar Saba Cultural Centre in Mmabatho. The centre was to be known as Mmabana [Tswana for mother of children]. Offering classes in drawing, sculpture, quilting and sewing, sport, dance, drama, literature and music, Mmabana was to grow steadily, spreading to regions such as Taung, Thaba Nchu, Phokeng and Lehurutshe, churning out hundreds of talented students.
But Rosemary’s stint with the entity came to an end shortly after the collapse of Mangope’s government in 1994. Mangope had been deposed after a popular rebellion spearheaded by students and the bantustan bureaucracy. He had angered many when he refused to have the bantustan reincorporated into SA ahead of the country’s first democratic elections in April that year.
Soon, the succeeding administration of the ANC suspended Rosemary pending an investigation into allegations of mismanagement. She also faced heavy criticism that her appointment had been nepotistic.
During her last days at the helm of Mmabana, angry protesters stormed the entity’s offices, vandalised the premises and torched the building. By this time, she and Kwena, who had been a high-ranking military man in Bophuthatswana, moved to Gauteng, where he joined the South African National Defence Force.
When Kwena was posted to India as SA’s military attaché, they spent three years in New Delhi. While in India, then president Thabo Mbeki arrived for a state visit, accompanied by Prof Itumeleng Mosala, who was the department of arts & culture director-general. Mosala asked her to to start a division in the department for social development for youth and women, which she did.
Rosemary later served as an executive at the Development Bank of SA, before taking on the role of CEO at NAC in 2013. She parted ways with NAC during a disciplinary hearing after the entity’s controversial disbursement of Covid-19 relief funds for artists. She had previously served a suspension over allegations of maladministration.
In retirement, Rosemary joined Kwena, who is ActionSA chairperson in the North West and its solitary representative in the provincial legislature, to build Herman Mashaba’s fledging party’s structures in the province.
* Segalwe is the author of Lucas Mangope — A life
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