ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT - The African Mirror

Jun

17

2026

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,…

May

23

2026

By BONFACE ORUCHO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

African filmmakers are experimenting with AI as Hollywood debates its risks

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

WHEN 17-year-old Zara Sodangi earns admission to Nigeria’s most prestigious fictional tech academy, Makemation, her world suddenly shifts from survival in a poor Lagos neighborhood to the demanding universe of artificial intelligence, product design, and data analytics. The coming-of-age feature film follows the brilliant but financially struggling teenager as she navigates elite technology education, class barriers, and self-doubt while trying to transform her family's fortunes through innovation. But beyond the emotional storyline, 'Makemation' itself represents something larger now unfolding across African cinema. As filmmakers gathered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival to debate whether generative artificial intelligence threatens the future…

May

20

2026

By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

South Africa throws a party for its soul – and the ancestors showed up too

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THERE is something wonderfully, gloriously South African about a national honours ceremony where the living share the stage - and the citation scrolls - with the dead. At Sefako Makgatho Guest House in Tshwane on Tuesday morning, President Cyril Ramaphosa presided over what amounted to a national reckoning with the country's creative conscience. Part investiture, part séance, part jazz festival in absentia, the 2026 presentation of National Orders reminded South Africans of something they periodically forget: this is a country of staggering, embarrassing, almost unreasonable cultural wealth. The ancestors, it must be said, were the stars of the show. Kippie…

May

19

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

From the studio to the stage of nation-building: Zakes Bantwini’s foundation is a gift to South Africa’s future

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THERE is a particular kind of greatness that does not rest at the summit. It turns around, looks down the mountain, and extends a hand. That is the image conjured by the official launch of the Zakes Bantwini Foundation - an event held last weekend at the Saxon Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg, that was years in the making but felt, in the moment, both urgent and overdue. Zakes Bantwini - Grammy Award-winning artist, producer, entrepreneur, and one of the defining architects of South African Amapiano and Afro-House on the global stage - has done something remarkable. He has chosen, at…