ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT - The African Mirror

Jun

18

2026

The Nollywood plot nobody wrote: a Nigerian artist, the Obamas, and a wall that lasts forever

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

LET’S get the obvious joke out of the way first: somewhere in Lagos right now, a Nollywood scriptwriter is kicking themselves for not thinking of this plot first. Nigerian girl, daughter of a formidable public servant, grows up, moves to Los Angeles, becomes one of the most sought-after painters on the planet, and then gets handed the single most coveted commission in contemporary American portraiture - immortalising Barack and Michelle Obama, forever, in their own museum, for free entry, for everyone. Fiction couldn't have written it better. Reality, this week, did. On June 14th in Chicago, Njideka Akunyili Crosby -…

Jun

19

2026

By BONFACE ORUCHO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

After Showmax, MTN tests telecom-led distribution as Africa’s streaming wars intensify

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THE battle for Africa’s streaming market is increasingly being fought beyond content libraries and into distribution systems and payment infrastructure. MTN Group has recently launched MTN One TV, a new entertainment proposition combining live television, local storytelling, international programming, and flexible viewing models across African markets. “MTN One TV is more than just another streaming platform entering a competitive market,” Chomba Victoria Mkasanga, founder of AFRO Magazine, said in an exchange with bird story agency. It represents a broader shift in how African companies are approaching content ownership, distribution, and digital ecosystems,” she added. She also noted the entry of…

Jun

19

2026

By FINLEY MARANGA, BIRD STORY AGENCY

She left TV to build an animation dream

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

ON Saturday mornings growing up in Kenya, Mary Wanjiku would settle in front of the television to watch cartoons such as Johnny Bravo and Ed, Edd n Eddy. Like many children, she was captivated by the stories unfolding on screen. Unusually, perhaps, she also spent years wondering how they were made. The universe that made up her cartoon world seemed distant and unattainable. "It seemed like magic," she says. "I didn't know how people made cartoons. It felt like a dream that was very far away." Today, Wanjiku is one of the people creating that magic. The 30-year-old producer is…

Jun

17

2026

By HENNING MELBER

Pianist Abdullah Ibrahim crafted a magnificent new culture for South Africa

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

ADOLPH Johannes Brand was born on 9 October 1934 in Cape Town. He would become better known as Dollar Brand and then Abdullah Ibrahim, an artist of mixed ethnic descent who personified the city’s multiculturalism and represented it on the world’s stages. He went to school in District Six, a municipal inner city area with residents of diverse backgrounds. Due to the enforcement of apartheid it was declared a “white area” in 1966 and the community was removed by force in 1982. It was the creative ambience in which he started to play piano aged seven. A bebop-inspired jazz musician…

Jun

15

2026

By GWEN ANSELL

The story behind Soweto Blues, Miriam Makeba’s famous song about the June 16 uprising

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

MIRIAM Makeba sang a famous song about the 16 June 1976 uprising in her birthplace, South Africa. The protest was a pivotal point in the fight against apartheid and white minority rule in the country. The song was called Soweto Blues and its opening lines go: The children got a letter from the Master. It said no more Xhosa, Sotho, no more Zulu Refusing to comply they sent an answer That’s when the policemen came… The song recalls the events of that day when South African schoolchildren, marching peacefully in Soweto to protest the imposition of Afrikaans as an official…

Jun

13

2026

By JOVIAL RANTAO

Netflix’s Winnie Mandela documentary is a reckoning – with a life, a nation, and the machinery that tried to break them both

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THERE is a principle that should govern every society that has lived through fire: a nation that does not record its own history is condemned to forget it — or worse, to have it written for them by those with an interest in distortion. The Netflix documentary on Winnie Madikizela-Mandela - The Trials of Winnie Mandela - does not merely record history. It insists upon it. It demands that we sit with it, wrestle with it, and emerge from it changed. Let this reviewer state plainly, from the outset: this is one of the most important pieces of documentary filmmaking…

Jun

12

2026

By DEBORAH KERUBO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

This filmmaker is shifting our views on trash

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THE lights dim inside Alliance Française in Nairobi as the audience settles into their seats. On screen, a documentary's poster shows piles of discarded clothing, plastic, and household waste, telling a story that many people prefer not to see. As the documentary unfolds, it becomes clear that waste is not only an environmental problem, it is also a story about people, livelihoods and the shared responsibility of caring for the environment. For filmmaker Sally Ngoiri, the premiere of Afterlife of Waste marks more than the release of a film. It represents years of using storytelling to explore the issues she…

Jun

04

2026

By JOVIAL RANTAO

The voice that carried Africa to a whole new world

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THERE are voices that entertain you, and then there are voices that become part of you - that inhabit the intimate chambers of your memory so completely that you cannot separate their sound from the sound of your own heartbeat. Peabo Bryson had such a voice. He did not merely sing. He presided over love. On the evening of Tuesday, 2 June 2026, that voice fell silent. Robert Peapo Bryson, born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1951, died at seventy-five years of age, surrounded by family and those who loved him, following a stroke. But if silence is the word…

May

29

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Daughter of the soil rules the world: Tyla makes history as only African to win at the 2026 American Music Awards – taking home two

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THEY came to celebrate the biggest names in the music universe. They left talking about a girl from Durban. At the 52nd Annual American Music Awards - the world's largest fan-voted music honours - South Africa's Tyla etched her name into the firmament of global music history, becoming the only African artist to win at the star-studded Las Vegas ceremony, doing so not once, but twice in a single breathtaking night. The 52nd edition of the AMAs, held on 25 May 2026 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena and hosted by the legendary Queen Latifah, saw Tyla — born Tyla…

May

25

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Ashes, vines & vows: Gabrielle Union’s mission of love to the Mother City

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

SHE flew from Omaha, Nebraska - across oceans and time zones and hemispheres - not for a premiere, not for a deal, not for the cameras. Gabrielle Union, one of Hollywood's most luminous talents, crossed continents to do something so human it stops you cold: to bring her father home. Home, in this instance, was Cape Town. Specifically: a quiet corner of Klein Goederust, Cape Town's only Black-owned wine farm, where Union and her late father had together planted a vine during a previous visit. Union's father, Sylvester "Cully" Union Jr., a U.S. military veteran, passed away on April 3,…