LIFESTYLE - The African Mirror

Jun

24

2025

Leleti and Anand receive the prestigious Golden Nymph Award

HEADLINES, ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

SCREEN legends Leleti Khumalo and Anant Singh have once again placed South African storytelling on the global map with their triumphant win of the prestigious Golden Nymph Award at the Monte Carlo Television Festival in Monaco - one of Europe’s most esteemed honours in television and film. This victory marks a significant milestone for the veteran actress and acclaimed producer, whose collaboration on the short film Don’t Give Up powerfully captures the harsh realities faced by a mother living on the streets of Johannesburg. Don’t Give Up tells a deeply moving story without dialogue, using the timeless language of silent…

Jun

19

2025

By VELMA PAMELA, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Kenyan designer transforms beach litter to sustainable fashion

BEAUTY AND FASHION

ENVIRONMENTAL concerns are increasingly shaping the fashion sector across Africa. According to the African Circular Economy Alliance, launched in 2021, over 40 percent of garments in several African countries are imported secondhand, with much of it ending up in landfills due to poor quality or oversupply. According to the United Nations Environment Programme’s 2020 report, Sub-Saharan Africa generates more than 17 million tons of waste annually, with textile and plastic waste accounting for an increasing proportion of this waste. Along sections of the East African coastline, discarded fishing nets lay in knots among the rocks. Plastic bag remnants cling stubbornly…

Jun

18

2025

By KIM GURNEY

5 indie art spaces in African cities worth knowing more about

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

INDEPENDENT art spaces are collectives of artists (and others) who club together to set up a communal space – often in former industrial sites and more affordable parts of the city – to further their practice. These spaces are DIY art institutions, if you like, that operate largely under the radar. In art world lingo, “offspaces”. Designed for purpose over profit, they encourage experimental work and creative risk-taking. They also favour art in public space, which provides an intriguing lens on the city. My Africa-wide research took me to five such spaces, each at least 10 years old, so that…

Jun

16

2025

By BONFACE ORUCHO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Nigeria’s literary spaces are leading civic dialogue

LIFESTYLE

SCROLLING through the Enugu Literary Society’s (ELS) Instagram page reveals a collage of microphones, bold typefaces, book-lined walls, and expressive faces. A flier for the then-upcoming Arts & Literary Festival bursts in gold, featuring a clenched fist rising from a fountain pen. Another post promotes an open mic session, the silver head of a mic gleaming like a spotlight. Post after post reveals a pattern. A growing movement is merging art and argument as young Nigerians carve out space to speak their truths. Each week, in a modest library hall in the southeastern Nigerian city of Enugu, creative energies burst…

Jun

13

2025

By BONGEPHIWE DLAMINI-MYENI

Shaka iLembe: finally, a TV series on the Zulu king that’s true to language and culture

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

SHAKA Zulu is one of the most storied figures in South African history. Believed to have been born around 1787, the man also known as uShaka kaSenzangakhona is regarded as the founder of the country’s Zulu nation. Shaka has been the subject of numerous novels, poems, films and TV series. Many have offered distorted versions of Zulu culture. But the award-winning 2023 drama series Shaka iLembe seemed different. It was lauded by both critics and viewers for its epic storytelling and cultural authenticity. A second season of the series is now set to air. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ald8QvDEgmE As scholars of isiZulu (the…

Jun

06

2025

By BONFACE ORUCHO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Global tourism industry embraces traditional African eco-living and wellness practices

LIFESTYLE

“IT was like earth medicine.” That’s how Sarah Chen, a traveller from Singapore, described her three-day wellness retreat in the Nyanga mountains of eastern Zimbabwe. Guided by a local ‘n’anga’ (traditional healer), she lay on river rocks while birdsong echoed through the forest, according to a memoir she shared on LinkedIn. Steam from crushed ‘mufandichimuka’ leaves (from a medicinal tree) opened her lungs. There were no spa robes or ambient playlists—just the rhythms of nature and rituals passed down for generations. “You don’t have to experience wellness on a massage table,” she wrote. “It’s how you inhabit your body. For…

May

31

2025

By The African Mirror

Cinema’s revolutionary voice falls silent: Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina, Africa’s only Palme d’Or Winner, dies at 91

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THE lights have dimmed forever on one of Africa's greatest cinematic voices as Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina, the legendary Algerian filmmaker who shattered barriers and rewrote the rules of global cinema, died at his home in Algiers at age 91. In a moment of poetic symmetry that would have suited one of his own films, Lakhdar-Hamina's death on May 23 coincided with a special Cannes Classics screening of his masterpiece Chronicles of the Years of Fire—the film that made him the first and only African director to claim the festival's coveted Palme d'Or nearly five decades ago. From Desert Warrior to Cinema's…

May

31

2025

By TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU

Mbare Art Space: a colonial beer hall in Zimbabwe has become a vibrant arts centre

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

IN southern Africa, townships were built as segregated urban zones for black people. They were created under colonial and white minority rule policies that controlled movement, confined opportunity, and kept people apart. I grew up in a different historic black township in Zimbabwe, but Mbare was the first of its kind. It holds a unique place in the nation’s imagination. Mbare was originally named Harare. But in 1982, that name was reassigned to the capital city that houses it. In its storied past, it was once the heartbeat of black urban life. At its centre is Rufaro Stadium, where Bob…

May

31

2025

By RICK DE VILLIERS

Waiting for Godot has been translated into Afrikaans: what took so long

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

AT last, the most infamous latecomer in all of literature has arrived – not in the flesh, but in South Africa’s Afrikaans language. Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s best-known drama, Waiting for Godot, now also lives as Ons Wag vir Godot. Published and staged in 2024, the translation was inspired by the official centenary of Afrikaans in 2025. As a Beckett scholar, I think it’s worth asking why Afrikaans is so late on the scene – and why it matters. Godot in many tongues First written in French, En attendant Godot was published in 1952 and debuted on stage the next…

May

27

2025

By The African Mirror

Avhatakali Afrika Is Fifty!

HEADLINES, LITERATURE, EDITORS CHOICE

Avhatakali Netshisaulu was born on June 03, 1975. He grew up into a bubbly, intelligent, witty and focused individual. He was a goal driven young man, and in whatever he did, whether it was running the long distance races, his academic work, or his businesses, he excelled. When he was brutally taken away from us, the pain was immense. It was a pain shared by a shocked nation that rallied to assist and comfort us. What pained us even more was that in losing him, we also lost, at a public level, who he really was. He became the posterboy…