LIFESTYLE - The African Mirror

Jun

28

2024

Telling African stories through African spaces, Bheki Dube is revolutionising inner-city African hospitality

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

SITUATED in the creative hub of Maboneng and capturing Johannesburg's vibrant urban culture with its bike-friendly outdoor spaces, a pool, a bar, a rooftop and a spacious common area for creative and engaging experiences, it would seem only fitting that Curiocity Joburg, the flagship hotel for Curiocity Africa and one of a chain of city hotels, would provide a hybrid offering to appeal to digital nomads, the local startup scene and local and international tourists, alike. Yet, when founder Bheki Dube created Curiocity Africa, hybrid hotels were virtually unheard of on the continent. Hotels that blend the traditional hotel model…

Jun

25

2024

By VALMONT LAYNE

Goema superstar: how composer Mac McKenzie reshaped the sound of Cape Town

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

GERALD “Mac” McKenzie passed away on 29 April 2024. He will be remembered as a renegade spirit and innovator in South African music. The composer and bassist changed Cape Town’s goema music tradition forever. Growing up in the city’s carnival culture, he helped form The Genuines, combining styles like rock, punk, classical and jazz with the music of his childhood. Valmont Layne has studied Cape Town’s music history, including McKenzie’s contribution. We asked him three questions. Firstly, what is goema? The word describes a musical style from Cape Town that’s linked to the city’s slave heritage and to the drum…

Jun

20

2024

By BONFACE ORUCHO AND FISKE NYIRONGO

bird TenX: Top African skit makers

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THE rise of skit-making in Africa underscores the depth of the continent’s digital revolution. With over 526 million internet users in 2021, Africa has seen a surge in content creators harnessing social media’s vast reach. Platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok serve as stages for skit makers to showcase their talent, in some cases resulting in viral fame and even fortune. Skit-making also adds substantially to the bottom line of Africa’s creative sector. Projected to reach US$12 billion by 2025 in East, West and Southern Africa alone, the sector is increasingly driven by online video content. Skit makers stimulate job…

Jun

20

2024

By IAN-MALCOLM RIJSDIJK

Mother City: a tough, passionate film about the battle for affordable housing in Cape Town

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

A third of the way into Mother City there’s a scene that characterises this tough, passionate film about Cape Town and its paradoxes of beauty and hardship, wealth and poverty, and the way it excludes the working poor. Two women talk in a room, while one has her hair braided in anticipation of a celebration. They are occupants in the former Helen Bowden Nurses Home, an abandoned building near the South African city’s elite Waterfront precinct. The right half of the frame looks through the open window over the sea, where a luxury yacht cruises past. “How can they ever…

Jun

19

2024

By PHENDU KUTA, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Visual artist Bambo Sibiya celebrates everyday women in “Ngemva Kokuqubuka – After Precarity

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

INSPIRED by his single mother, who raised three children while working as a domestic worker, visual artist Bambo Sibiya has framed her as a superhero for his solo exhibition, “Ngemva Kokuqubuka – After Precarity.” Sibiya’s exhibition, currently showing at Circa Gallery in Johannesburg from June 1 to July 27, is an ode to the beauty, dignity, and strength of everyday women, representing them in a regal manner and challenging societal constructs of power and status. The exhibition includes deconstructed garments as part of the overall showcase, adding a tangible dimension to the visual narrative. Before crafting the artwork, Sibiya designed…

Jun

15

2024

By BRETT D. MOLTER

Senegal has a rich history of traditional music – how it lives on in modern music

CULTURE

SENEGAL has a rich history of traditional music – and this lives on as it influences the West African country’s modern music today. As a cultural researcher, I set out to explore the social and cultural significance of both traditional and modern music in Senegal. I was able to interview 20 musicians, a mix of traditional and modern, who live and perform in the capital city of Dakar as well as other smaller cities and villages. I define modern Senegalese music as using modern, more Western instruments such as the electric and bass guitar, keyboard and drum set. Traditional Senegalese…

Jun

15

2024

By Mpho Rantao

South African film ‘Face Deep’ exposes the lies in the hunt for love.

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

The South African thriller film 'Face Deep' delves into the deception and betrayal often found in the pursuit of love. Directed by Vuyani Bila and produced by Mathabo Bila, the independently made movie tackles themes of love, trust, secrets, and family that resonate with audiences both online and in real life. The film introduces us to the picturesque lives of lovebirds Luna (Lerato Makala) and her older partner Noah (Phillip Tindisa), enjoying their bubble of love. When Noah’s estranged daughter Bonnie (Mohau Sonny) arrives and cracks their bubble, and with Bonnie come a lot of secrets as she reconnects with…

Jun

14

2024

By JEN SNOWBALL

South Africa’s biggest arts festival turns 50 – we assess its impact

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THE National Arts Festival was established in 1974 in Grahamstown (now Makhanda) in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. Each year, in winter, the rural town transforms into a hive of theatres, galleries, markets and eating spots. South Africa’s longest-running festival has lived through and reflected a turbulent history: from the height of the racist apartheid system and the advent of democracy to life today in what remains a deeply unequal society. How does one assess the impact of a festival like this? Jen Snowball is a cultural economist who’s set out to answer that question. She’s also the co-founder of…

Jun

11

2024

By TAFADZWA MWANENGURENI, BIRD STORY AGENCY

From “finisher” to artist, this woman sculptor wants more

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THE sounds from Chitungwiza Arts Centre Complex - 24 kilometres southeast of Harare, Zimbabwe's capital - can be heard from a distance as the sound of hammers and chisels busily shaping stone carries across the still air of a late autumn day. Inside the centre, the sculptors behind the hammering are too focused on ensuring that each blow is perfectly angled, to pay much attention to anything outside of their work, much less a visitor walking through the complex. Among them is 52-year-old Simelokuhle Zibengwa, one of just 15 women actively sculpting amongst 150 male sculptors in this well-known art…

Jun

08

2024

By HOPE MUKAMI, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Inspired by a Nigerian influencer, Emily Wangui is crafting success at the Furniture Zoo

LIFESTYLE

A rainbow of brightly coloured furniture fills a showroom on Nairobi's Quarry Road, with the noise of hammers and saws serving as background music for the craftspeople and visitors in the busy space. Sunlight shining through the showroom windows illuminates a massive whiteboard with the word "PROGRESS" written across it. Emily Wangui - who goes by the name of Wakeji Kamore on her social media sites - is a ball of excitement as she moves around from workstation to workstation, adding an extra layer of energy to the already bustling room. “I like to describe myself as a perfect balance…