City Desk

'Zulu Summer' makes its Butte debut

Photo by Paula Canfield. From left to right: Nkokhelo Nhlaka Msomi, Joeseph Litzinger, Dark Sevier, Mokai Schux Malope, Sbo Zulu, and Eric Michael Schraeder

by Jim Larson
ButteNews.net
May 17, 2019

A delightfully improbable documentary makes its Butte premiere tomorrow at the Mother Lode. It involves a Zulu prince, his pals and the rugged mining town that fell in love with them.

In the summer of 2017, three men traveled from Nongoma, South Africa to Butte, Montana. They came to expose America to their culture and to learn something of a place “on the other side of the world,” as Prince Siboniso Zulu put it.

In a phone interview, the prince noted that he embarked on the final leg of his trip to Butte full of trepidation and excitement.

He and his two companions had followed national news reports from America, and those reports weren’t encouraging. The men from Nongoma came any though. They wanted to share their culture with a community on the opposite side of the globe,, and they were on their way to Butte to make that happen.

“When we landed in Salt Lake City, when we were about to fly to Butte, I was very much nervous, because I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know the kind of people I was going to meet. I was so scared, but a part of me was so happy because I could actually see that this is happening,” the prince said in a phone interview.

The reception that Butte gave the Zulus at Bert Mooney Airport allayed the prince’s anxiety.

A crowd had gathered to welcome the South African visitors, and it was a warm reception.

“We could see that the place that we had landed, we could call our second home,” the prince said.

Describing the genuine warmth that waited for the Zulu, the Prince said, “It was from the bottom of their hearts.Their were no fake smiles. There were no fake hugs.”

Their journey was set in motion when Butte’s low power radio station, KBMF, first made contact with the Zulu. Program Director Dark Sevier was highly skeptical. Internet scams originating from Africa have become the stuff of cliche.

But with persistence, the radio men from Nongoma convinced their Butte counterparts that their desire to meet was real. As Siboniso Zulu put it without a hint of guile or pretense,  “This is just a normal guy. This is just a prince from South Africa.” He was just who he said he was.

“Once we realized they weren’t Nigerian scammers, we had a radio show in South Africa,” Dark Sevier said. Sevier was KBMF’s programming director at the time.

The weekly program helped the relationship develop further, he noted. When the time approached for a visit from the Zulu, Sevier thought that their time in Butte should be documented.”You can’t have a Zulu prince and his two other friends come to America and not have a camera on them,” he said during an interview in the Thornton Building.

Meanwhile, Don Andrews, who became a producer on the project, had been in contact with a producer in New York, Havva Eisenbaum. She would be the one to bring in filmmaker Joseph Litzinger.

At the time that she told Andrews that she wanted to go forward with a film regarding the Zulu-Butte story, Andrews was living above the Silver Dollar Saloon, he said during a breakfast interview.

Andrews said that after the phone call with New York, he went down to the bar. There was Sevier, who mentioned that he felt the story should be documented. Andrews replied, “Boy do I have an idea for you.”

The project was taken on by Interesting Human Media out of Los Angeles where Litzinger works as executive producer.

According to a story by reporter Susan Dunlap, filmmaker Litzinger had a crew filming the Zulu delegation even before they left South Africa.

The Human Media crew arrived in Butte in May of 2017, and Sevier took on the role of “soccer mom to the Zulu,” he said. He became their guide and scheduler.

As the project progressed, Butte emerged as the star of film, Sevier noted. During their time in Butte, race was not an issue for the Zulu.

The takeaway was, “What the f___k is this town. It’s in a red state. This is not supposed to be happening,” he added.

Sevier noted that after one woman saw the film, she said that it renewed her faith in America.

The documentary that resulted from the visit of Sbo Zulu, Nkokhelo Msomi, and Mokai Malope is called "Zulu Summer," and you can catch it tomorrow, May 18, at 7 pm.

Sevier noted that there will be a question and answer session after the film shows, and  he teased that there will be a special surprise at the Butte premiere as well.

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