LIFESTYLE - The African Mirror

Jul

16

2024

An African in Tokyo: Navigating the world’s most populous city

CULTURE

I moved to Tokyo five years ago, after graduating with a PhD in Information Science from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, a specialised research graduate school, in western Japan. I received a job offer from one of Japan’s top companies and I was happy to move to the big city, having spent close to 5 years in rural Japan. My path to Japan is followed by many fellow Africans. Many of us come to Japan on scholarships to pursue higher education. In 2013, I received the prestigious Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEXT) scholarship. The following…

Jul

13

2024

By MBALI MAZIBUKO

Brenda Fassie’s 1997 hit song Vulindlela still raises questions about South Africa as a nation

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

IN 1997, South Africa’s most famous music star had a huge hit. Brenda Fassie’s Vulindlela became a national pop anthem, played especially at weddings and celebrations. Vulindlela can be loosely translated from the Zulu language as an instruction to “make way” or, if you like, “clear the path”. The song is about making way for the groom (and bride) at their wedding. In 1997 South Africa was emerging from the racist apartheid system and was celebrating its own “wedding” across the colour bar after democratic elections in 1994. Apartheid and its policy of separate development for different ethnic groups made…

Jul

03

2024

By CHIGOZIE OBIOMA

The Road to the Country: novelist Chigozie Obioma on Nigeria’s brutal civil war, love and redemption

LITERATURE

CHIGOZIE Obioma is the Nigerian author of the novels The Fishermen (2015) and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019), both shortlisted for the Booker Prize for their unique, folkloric tales of Nigerian life in decades past. Like them, his 2024 novel The Road to the Country is “tinged with fable and prophecy”. It’s set in the brutal Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1960, fought between Nigeria and the Republic of Biafra, a secessionist state which had declared its independence. This epic story of “a young man seeking redemption in a country on fire” is about a shy Lagos student whose brother disappears…

Jun

29

2024

By BETH LE ROUX

Peter Randall: a pioneering publisher who established the radical Ravan Press in South Africa

LIFESTYLE

PETER Randall, a pioneering South African activist publisher and educator, passed away on 5 June 2024 in Johannesburg. He was the co-founder of Ravan Press, which published books critical of the racist apartheid state. Randall was born in Durban in 1935. He was a gifted scholar but was at odds with the country’s political environment. From 1948 onwards, the white minority government passed a series of highly repressive laws to entrench apartheid’s “separate development” policies. Randall believed in the innate equality of all and his moral objections to racially segregated classrooms led him to leave teaching to raise awareness about…

Jun

28

2024

By PHENDU KUTA, BIRD STORY AGENCY

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…