LIFESTYLE - The African Mirror

Apr

16

2022

Grammy star Black Coffee: winning the world, losing at home

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

I first saw Nkosinathi Maphumulo aka Black Coffee perform at Amaros Night Club in Pretoria, South Africa during the late 2000s. Dressed in a casual T-shirt, no one would have guessed he was destined for global glory. Beneath strobe lights, bathed in throbbing house music, clashing voices and perspiration, he could have been just like any other struggling deejay on the make. But he seemed impervious to the spectral faces, shapes and vapours swirling across the ceiling, walls and floors. In the middle of the Pretoria club, Black Coffee manned his throne in a scene where everything hangs in the…

Mar

02

2021

By The African Mirror

How apartheid denied a Black golf champ

LITERATURE

BARRY COHEN SEWSUNKER “Papwa” Sewgolum began playing golf with a syringa stick but went on to win the Dutch Open and several South African tournaments before the apartheid government banned him. Papwa, the early days Papwa Sewgolum’s parents had come to South Africa in 1860 along with many other indentured Indians from North India via Calcutta to work in the sugarcane plantations on the Natal North Coast. They hoped to make a new life in the land of milk and honey, and prosper, and to get away from their grinding poverty and punishing colonial taxes (which would eventually lead to…

Mar

04

2021

By The African Mirror

Botswana’s Kearoma sets her sights on fashion with Che’ri

BEAUTY AND FASHION

AFRICAN MIRROR REPORTER BOTSWANA jazz songbird Kearoma Rantao has made her move into the fashion world. Rantao sat down with The African Mirror on her new venture while managing her successful career during the coronavirus pandemic. She told us that her country going into lockdown along with other Southern African countries is what inspired her to start moving with her new brand Che’ri. “Covid-19 basically stopped all music performances because our lockdown didn’t allow for social gatherings at live performances, so I had to come up with another stream of income, and decided to push up my dream of starting…

Mar

02

2021

By The African Mirror

Tsitsi Dangarembga’s art and activism

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

BARBARA BOSWELL THE artist and activist elaborates on her work and the intricate, necessary relationship between her artistic production and political action in Zimbabwe. The last week of July 2020 was one of extreme paradoxes for Tsitsi Dangarembga. Three days after her novel This Mournable Body was shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize, the Zimbabwean writer, playwright and filmmaker found herself in prison after her arrest in Harare. Dangarembga, part of a two-women protest, was standing next to a highway, silently holding a placard protesting against state corruption and the imprisonment of journalist Hopewell Chin’ono. Dangarembga and her friend, Julie Barnes, were…

Mar

02

2021

By The African Mirror

Golden Globes: All the winners

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

JILL SERJEANT THE king won big at the Golden Globes and his queen made an emotional and powerful speech. The late Chadwick Boseman, known for his role as the "King of Wakanda", was today crowned Best Actor in a motion picture drama at the 78th annual Golden Globes for his role in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. Boseman died in August last year after a battle with cancer. His wife, Taylor Simone, accepted the award on his behalf. Holding back tears, she said: "He would thank God. He would thank his ancestors for their guidance and their sacrifices. He would say…

Mar

01

2021

By The African Mirror

Meet Vogue China’s 27-year-old editor Margaret Zhang

BEAUTY AND FASHION

MPHO RANTAO VOGUE China has made a historic appointment of its youngest ever editor-in-chief, Margaret Zhang. Zhang is an Chinese-Australian fashion blogger who rose to the top of the influencer market with her ingenious looks captured on the streets of Sydney, gaining iconic status for her eclectic, street style in the media. The fashion blogger's new role sees a massive shift in Vogue’s leadership from a generational perspective - as a young editor in a role for Vogue that has been held by veteran fashion figures such as Anna Wintour, the editorial fashion giant’s new announcement follows the shift led…

Mar

23

2021

By The African Mirror

Elsa Majimbo launches a children’s book

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

MPHO RANTAO EVERYONE’S favourite social comedienne is now a published author. Picture: Instagram/majimb.o Elsa Majimbo announced online that she had created a children’s alphabet book with Italian fashion house, Valentino, answering the anticipated question of what Majimbo and Valentino had been cooking since they announced their collaboration. In a chic Instagram video, the camera zooms in on Majimbo holding her new book titled ‘The Alphabet for Kids and Adults’, adding that the published book is another sign of her dreams coming true. Elsa Majimbo wrote that the video was her ‘entry into high fashion’ and thanked Valentino for believing in…

Mar

23

2021

By The African Mirror

Nawal El Saadawi, pioneering Egyptian feminist, in her own words

LITERATURE

Feminists across the Middle East and beyond are mourning the death of trailblazing Egyptian thinker, doctor and writer Nawal El Saadawi who died in Cairo on March 21, 2021. The following interview with El Saadawi was first published on May 24, 2018. EMMA BATHA WHEN the Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi was a young child, she wrote a letter to God challenging him to explain why women were treated differently to men. "He never replied," said El Saadawi, who is still as passionate about women's rights. "I told him, 'if you are not fair, I'm not ready to believe in…

Mar

21

2021

By The African Mirror

With traditional fabrics, Nigerian designers fashion a new aesthetic

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

NNEKA CHILE WEAVING contemporary designs into a traditional West African fabric, Nigerian Tsemaye Binitie is creating fashion he hopes can also bridge the gap between luxury and the everyday. His material of choice is Aso-oke, a hand-woven cloth indigenous to the Yoruba people and historically used on special occasions. Binitie, who cut his teeth as a design assistant with Stella McCartney in 2005, began using the fabric in 2017, and he infuses the yellow dresses that are his signature creations with cottons and silks to give them a post-modern feel. "We started to use contemporary African art and culture within…

Mar

21

2021

By The African Mirror

Widower turned sleuth reflects on old age in Oscar-nominated Chilean documentary

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

LUCILA SIGAL AN 83-year-old widower on a mission to investigate potential abuse at a nursing home reveals telling lessons about the trials of growing old in Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi's Oscar-nominated documentary "The Mole Agent." Although the story rings like the plot of a fiction film, the drama that unfolds is real. The tender and touching feature film, nominated for best documentary, is the only Latin American nominated for an Academy Award. With equal doses of humor and film noir, the 90-minute documentary tells the story of Sergio Chamy, a confounded but enthusiastic sleuth who barely knows how to handle…