LEGENDARY musician Madala Kunene has been conferred an honorary doctorate by the University of Kwazulu-Natal (UKZN).
The 72-year-old musician was given a doctoral degree in music on Wednesday, 10 May.
Madala said he was grateful and honoured to accept the honorary doctorate.
"I am humbled and full of great appreciation for the recognition that has been expressed by the University management, as well as other role players who saw it fitting to recognise the contributions made by people like myself and give us recognition here at home, which is quite unusual," Madala said.
The musician said he thought it was a joke when told he would get the doctorate.
"I thought Dr Bheki Mthembu was not serious when he expressed his wish and that of his colleagues to ask the university to honour me with a doctor's degree. I couldn't believe it when I received a letter from the university notifying me of the wonderful news of recognising my work at the level of a doctoral degree in music.
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"If I may be honest, I didn't get much sleep that night, thinking there might have been a mistake," he said.
Madala said he called Dr Mthembu, who laughed and assured him that there was no mistake and the university community was proud of his work.
Madala also went down memory lane and shared how he started his journey as a musician when he was seven years old in the 1950s.
"I built myself a guitar with a cooking oil canister and a plank carved into the shape of a guitar and used a fishing line as strings. We used to play with my friend in Mkhumbane, where I was born. We started playing the guitar and were paid with food. As time went on, we started playing in halls where you found that due to apartheid laws, we played behind the curtain, while the other races who were permitted used to be in the front, pretending to be the performers.
"There wasn't much money that artists got which is why even today, artists and actors from our time die poor. However, despite all the hardships we faced, we have never changed. We stood on the mission of developing our craft," he said.
