LIFESTYLE - The African Mirror

Sep

29

2023

Queer film in Africa is rising – even in countries with the harshest anti-LGBTIQ+ laws

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT, LGBTQIA+

A recent book, Queer Bodies in African Films, studies the growing LGBTIQ+ output from filmmakers around the continent, from Morocco to South Africa. In the process, it analyses what queerness is and means within the context of African countries. Its author, Gibson Ncube, is a lecturer and scholar who focuses his research on queerness in African cultural production – from literature to films. We asked him four questions. GIBSON NCUBE, Lecturer, Stellenbosch University Is there a growing queer representation in films from African countries? Yes, the last decade has seen a proliferation of these films. Nigeria’s Nollywood has produced a…

Sep

28

2023

By TATENDA KANENGONI, BIRD STORY AGENCY

This classical musician is using music as a force for life

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

IT'S 48 hours before Thembani Mhambi is due to perform at the Securities Exchange Commission in Harare and the 39-year-old violinist has muted her social media as she mentally prepares for the event. “Every person we communicate with is giving us a part of themselves and taking a part of ours. If I want to give a good performance, where I leave the audience feeling like ‘she made us feel good’ then I have to do that. I cannot have negative energy.” said Mhambi who goes by the name ‘Adora Lee’ on stage. At the age of 13, while in…

Sep

28

2023

By EL TAYEB SIDDIG

Forced to flee war, Sudanese band spreads musical message

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

ON a dusty plot in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, General Kidi and Ganja Farmer perform tracks and rap with hand-held mics as people in the audience clap, dance and ululate. The founders of the "Nuba Mountain Sound" band come from South Kordofan, a southern state long in rebellion against the government, and moved to the capital, Khartoum when former president Omar al-Bashir was overthrown during a popular uprising in 2019. Four years later the musicians, part of a cultural scene that opened up after Bashir was ousted, found themselves on the move again after war erupted in…

Sep

27

2023

By OWEN KONZOLO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

The Kenyan entrepreneur turning fish waste into fashion

BEAUTY AND FASHION

WALKING along the shores of Lake Victoria in his home town of Kisumu, Newton Owino, a chemist, witnessed vast quantities of fish waste dumped by the fishing industry. So, in 2012, he took a leap of faith and established a business. "Every day, tonnes of fish skins were discarded and treated as waste. I saw an opportunity to turn this waste into something valuable and environmentally friendly. That's when I decided to explore the possibilities of fish leather,” the entrepreneur explained. Owino is the holder of a Bachelor of Science in Leather Chemistry from Pantnagar University, India. He also worked…

Sep

27

2023

By The African Mirror

Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s powerful personal journey as a photographer in South Africa

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

LINDOKUHLE Sobekwa has been awarded South Africa’s 2023 FNB Art Prize. He becomes the first artist using documentary photography as his primary medium to win the prestigious competition. Born in Katlehong in 1995, Sobekwa began learning photography skills in 2012, through the Of Soul and Joy photography education programme in Thokoza township, where his family had moved. He knew, as a young boy, that he thought in images, visualising what he experienced. Encountering cameras, he realised there was equipment – a small machine, a perforated roll of clear plastic, and a chemical reaction – able to externalise his thought processes.…

Sep

27

2023

By The African Mirror

The power of needlework: how embroidery is helping South African women tell unspeakable stories

BEAUTY AND FASHION

IN June 2020, three months after South Africa entered the first of a series of hard lockdowns to slow the spread of COVID, the country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa described men’s violence against women as a “second pandemic”. In the first three weeks of that lockdown the Gender Based Violence Command Centre, designed to support victims of gender-based violence (GBV), recorded more than 120,000 victims. Also in its 2019/2020 crimes statistics, the South African Police Services indicated that an average of 116 rape cases were reported each day. PULENG SEGALO, Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair, University of South Africa While South…

Sep

27

2023

By The African Mirror

African Literature in the Digital Age: new book traces the role of the internet, queers and class

LITERATURE

THE first book-length study of digital literature in Africa has attracted a lot of academic attention. African Literature in the Digital Age: Class and Sexual Politics in New Writing from Kenya and Nigeria considers the role of the Internet and new media in finding and shaping new audiences for literature. We asked its author, former journalist, literature scholar, publishing editor of The New Black Magazine and associate professor of African studies, Shola Adenekan, about the book. SHOLA ADENEKAN, Associate Professor of African Literature, Ghent University What prompted you to write this? The book came out of my own experience of…

Sep

27

2023

By The African Mirror

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s new novel is a modern Nigerian tragedy about the rich and the poor

LITERATURE

NIGERIAN writer Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀` took the literary world by storm with her debut novel Stay With Me in 2017. Six years later, she has followed up with an equally brilliant second novel, A Spell of Good Things, which has been longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023. SAKIRU ADEBAYO, Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia Just as with her first novel, A Spell of Good Things delves masterfully into the complexities of polygamy and problems with patriarchy while also exploring the corrosive effects of Nigeria’s political corruption on ordinary and, especially, poor Nigerians. As someone who studies Nigerian literature, I hold…

Sep

27

2023

By The African Mirror

Kole Omotoso, the Nigerian writer, scholar and actor who inspired a continent

LITERATURE

BANKOLE Ajibabi Omotoso, better known as Kole Omotoso, the Nigerian novelist, playwright, journalist, scholar and actor, died on 19 July 2023. His son Akin Omotoso, a filmmaker, announced the death of the writer on Instagram. It came at a time when Nigeria was celebrating the 89th birthday of Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel laureate in literature and Omotoso’s colleague at the then-University of Ife. Both were so prominent nationwide that everyone wanted to go to Ife and study at their feet, especially those aspiring to a career in the arts or humanities. OLAYINKA OYEGBILE, Journalist and Communications scholar, Trinity University,…

Sep

23

2023

By The African Mirror

Zimbabwean names are still haunted by the ghosts of colonialism

CULTURE

IN African cultures, the names given to children play an important role because they are often laden with meanings. As a team of professors of literature, linguistics and onomastics (the scientific study of names and naming practices) we have shown in our research that the names parents give their children at birth can help us make sense of many things, including a family’s heritage and events in history. TENDAI MANGENA, Professor of African Studies, University of Leeds Our most recent research paper analyses naming practices in Zimbabwe. It shows that Zimbabweans in the former British colony in southern Africa still…