THE word jiya, for those unfamiliar with township-speak, means "lie".

Similarly, majiyane is someone who earns a living by spinning the truth on behalf of people in conflict with the law. At least that is what township dwellers think lawyers do in order to put food on the table.

Guluva was surprised the other day when the late Sandi Majali's majiyane and family spin doctor, John Ngcebetsha, angrily dismissed reports that portrayed his client as broke, saying the controversial businessman, and Ain't Seen Nothing Yet's benefactor, was in fact a very rich man who owned diverse interests in various sectors of the economy.

The majiyane-cum-family spin doctor claimed that Majali, who returned to the public spotlight towards the end of last year after being accused of hijacking mining company Kalahari Resources, was a billionaire.

This new revelation came as a surprise because only a few months earlier Ngcebetsha had pleaded poverty on behalf of his client in the Johannesburg high court, claiming during a bail application that Majali did not have the cash - meaning he was broke - to pay the R10000 bail the court had set.

Being streetwise majiyane that he is, Ngcebetsha went on to successfully convince the court that the plush Sandton house Majali ostensibly owned - it later turned out that he in fact owned only 25 percent of the property - be posted as bail.

In an unrelated incident a short while later the sheriff of the court swooped on Majali's offices in an upmarket Sandton office complex and removed furniture following an alleged dispute over outstanding rent with the landlord.

This hardly paints a picture of a billionaire businessman with "diverse interests in various sectors of the economy".

What is clear, though, is that being a majiyane is hard, and being a majiyane and a family spin doctor at the same time is even harder.

Hot sticks burnt out

Guluva enjoys it every time legendary musician Sipho "Hotstix" Mabuse pops up on his TV screen - as he did quite often during the festive season - belting out timeless classics such as Jive Soweto and Burn Out.

These two smash hits in particular - from his debut solo album titled Burn Out - earned him international fame as an innovative songwriter. Mabuse's instant success as a solo artist even saw him being lured to the UK to sign a lucrative recording deal with London-based Virgin Records. Here was a man with the world at his feet.

In one recent TV interview Mabuse boasted that it took him less than 15 minutes to write the multiple-award winning hit Burn Out in the mid-1980s.

Guluva had become such a fan that every year he silently hoped "Hotstix" would come up with an even hotter follow-up hit. But, for reasons best-known to Mabuse, the follow-up hit never came.

Now the question is, is "Hotstix" still suffering from burnout after channelling all his energies and creative juices into the Burn Out project all those 25 years ago?

For someone as talented as Mabuse, who can write a hit song in a quarter of an hour, not to release even a single song over a quarter of a century must be a big concern for "Hotstix" and his fans.

But this does not seem to have anything to do with a writer's block. It must definitely have everything to do with witchcraft?

Ba mo loile!

E-mail Guluva on: thatha.guluva@gmail.com