The next generation: those who will be at the forefront of their fields in the years to come. In the first of what will hopefully become an annual Mail & Guardian feature, we have captured a snapshot of 100 people, groups and trends that will be leading the pack as South Africa heads for the next millennium.
The people featured here are not necessarily young; rather it is their plans and ideas that are on the ascent. They are the people who are set to influence (and are influenced by) the way we live and the issues which we debate.
M&G reporters have searched and found them across the political terrain, cutting a swathe through each arts discipline, ploughing up land concerns or fashioning a new, homegrown sense of style. From opera stars to soccer heroes, the future could rest in their hands …
Politics
It goes without saying that the new makulu baas of South African politics, 55-year-old Thabo Mbeki, is going to be the central figure in South Africa’s political landscape in the years ahead.
If everything goes according to plan, the enigmatic deputy president will succeed Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s president — Mandela is fond of calling him the de facto president — following his election to the top post in the ruling African National Congress last week.
An astute and highly regarded thinker within ANC circles, Mbeki gleaned his leadership skills in the thoroughly politicised family of Govan Mbeki, one of Mandela’s close friends.
Mbeki has been credited by analysts as a foremost ANC policy-maker. He studied economics and has spent much of his life in exile — primarily in London, where he was the right-hand man of the late ANC president Oliver Tambo. He was head of the ANC’s department of information and international affairs following the organisation’s unbanning and the start of constitutional negotiations. His election as Mandela’s deputy, both in government and the ANC, changed all that.
The mantle of national chair that was placed on the shoulders of Patrick “Terror” Lekota at the ANC’s conference is the third leadership position he has assumed in as many years. This favoured son of the Mass Democratic Movement has served as premier of the Free State and also as chair of the national council of provinces.
The leading role played by Peter Mokaba in the run-up to the ANC conference may herald a new phase of influence for the man who also serves as the government’s deputy minister of environmental affairs and tourism.
Mokaba’s discussion paper for the conference advocated a sea-change in key areas of ANC policy. Many felt that his views on the Tripartite Alliance — a split with the South African Communist Party, a formal shift in economic thinking and the focus of African leadership — had the tacit support of Mbeki.
Pallo Jordan’s paper on embracing cultural diversity has won wide support within the ANC, perhaps indicating a return of this independent intellectual to the centre-stage of party thinking.
Although presidential aide Joel Netshitenze did not put in a big show at this year’s ANC conference — he turned down a nomination for general secretary — he is regarded as deputy president material.
The trade union movement has been the delivery room of many ANC leaders. The ANC’s new general secretary, Kgalema Mothlante, for example, comes to the party straight from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Mothlante (48) served 18 years in prison for terrorism. On his release he was recruited by the NUM and rose through its ranks to succeed Cyril Ramaphosa as general secretary, a post he has held for the past six years.
Mothlante brings to the ANC this trade union experience, an SACP perspective and invaluable administrative experience. Like his boss Mbeki, Motlanthe is a sophisticated yet accessible strategist, a hard worker skilled in negotiation.
Thenjiwe Mtintso has been a guerrilla fighter, journalist, negotiator and a member of Parliament. She now serves as chair of the Commission on Gender Equality and is also completing a masters programme in public policy and management. One of the most senior soldiers of Umkhonto weSizwe, the ANC’s former military wing, Mtintso was active in pre-election negotiations and was voted on to the national executive committee of the ANC in 1994. She is expected to grow in stature as a key thinker in the party.
In the provinces, Zingile Dingale was a comparatively low-profile politician when he scored a surprise victory over current Free State premier Ivy Matsepe-Cassaburi for the vacant ANC Free State provincial chair. Previously chair of Parliament’s National Standing Committee on Finance, he has been described as a high perfomer who is likely to become the next provincial premier. He has been praised for determinedly working to help unite ANC divisions in the Free State.
Ivy Matsepe-Cassaburi, meanwhile, is the only woman in South Africa to head a provincial government. She was appointed ANC Free State premier after Lekota was deposed and has won kudos for clean governance and her Africanist vision.
If you’re looking for a good man who can’t be kept down, then Mathole Motshekga should be the name on your lips. Gauteng premier as of January 1998, Motshekga is almost certainly going to be taking centre stage in provincial politics next year. He defied all odds, and the national leadership, when he refused to step aside in the highly publicised contest for this plum political office earlier in the year.
Bantu Holomisa and Roelf Meyer and their fledgling United Demcratic Movement are beginning to notch up both rural and urban gains.
Holomisa’s political chutzpah is working for him again (this is the same man who unbanned organisations, including the ANC, when he served as leader of the Transkei homeland) as he strives to capture sizeable pockets of Eastern Cape support.
Meyer, for his part, remains one of the country’s great verligtes. He helped shape the new Constitution before becoming the first constitutional affairs minister of the democratic government. He appears to have a suitably bright political future ahead since abandoning his original political home, the steadily limping National Party, to form the UDM with Holomisa.
Malusi Gigaba is the 26-year-old president of the ANC Youth League. A darling of the party’s top brass — he has twice been sent fire-fighting for them, most visibly in the Free State — Gigaba is an extremely efficient administrator.
However, other ANC-allied organisations like the South African Students’ Congress, the Congress of South African Students and Young Christian Students blame the sociologist for failing to find a role for the ailing youth league, which, they say, is just a job-creation organ for its office bearers and an easy route to senior positions for favoured ANCmembers.
Long regarded as the toothless stepsister to the big guns in national government, municipal governance is coming into its own in South Africa.
The delivery of everything from houses to water and even newspapers depends on the effective functioning of this tier of government. There are three municipal fundis to watch in 1998. =0BColin Matjila is chair of the South African Local Government Association, the meeting point of all local authorities, and was instrumental in drawing up the Green Paper on local government. Matjila also heads up the executive committee of the Johannesburg Metropolitan Council and it is his task to steer the Golden City into the black.
Matjila’s deputy, Kenny Fihla, chairs the 10-member task team which is specificially charged with saving Johannesburg from bankruptcy. His equally dynamic counterpart in the Cape Town Metropolitan Council is Nomaindia Mfeketo.
Finance, trade and labour
Perhaps the most weighty responsibility in the government rests on the shoulders of those who control the economy.
Not everyone has welcomed the ANC’s capitalist-inspired economic policies, but even critics would be hard-pressed to deny that those who are attempting to woo foreign investors and who talk the language of “growth”, “fiscal restraint” and “export” will find themselves at the cutting edge.
Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel will still be walking the tightrope of selling the government’s growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) strategy’s fiscal policy to foreign investors, while simultaneously keeping Gear’s detractors in labour and to the left happy.
The primary focus for Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin, on the other hand, is the development of his Spatial Development Initiatives, which are generally at the forefront of new development thinking in South Africa.
Articulate, feisty and “gives new meaning to the term no-nonsense” are some of the ways to describe Department of Finance Director General Maria Ramos. She is Manuel’s quietly confident and extremely efficient right-hand helper. Some have even touted Ramos to take over the helm at the Reserve Bank. After the holidays, however, she will be applying all her energies to the development of Manuel’s three-year Budget plan.
Another of 1998’s big economic challenges will be the jobs summit, and the likes of Jayendra Naidoo, executive director of the National Economic Development and Labour Council, will have his work cut out for him. With election fever setting in, all eyes will be on the government’s proposals, and it will be Naidoo’s job to keep labour and business issues at the discussion table.
Mbuyi Ngwenda, general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), is a rising star in the labour movement. At 36, he is also regarded within the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) as a strong thinker and one of the foremost negotiators on the restructuring of the labour market. Ngwenda belongs to the “second generation” of the union movement, a term derived to denote former students and youth leaders emergent in the mid-1980s.
When Eastern Cape Premier Makhenkesi Stofile took over the province this year, one of the first things he did was to bring in Enoch Godongwana, Numsa’s former general secretary, to head up the troublesome provincial Department of Economic Affairs, Environment and Tourism.
A few months later and Godongwana is said to have deserted some of his unionist passions for an intense interest in enterprise, and in the formulation of a path to prosperity for one of the country’s poorest provinces.
If the rumour that Cosatu general secretary Sam Shilowa will be leaving the union movement for a senior position in government is to be believed, then it should also come to pass that his deputy, Zwelinzima Vavi, will succeed him. Vavi almost single-handedly led the federation’s protest action on the Basic Conditions of Employment Bill, and was not shy to engage in a heated argument with Mandela over the same Bill. At once articulate and emotional, he has a tendency to shoot from the hip.
Another leading light expected to rise within Cosatu ranks is clothing worker Connie September, given the tasked of drawing up proposals to take the union federation into the third millennium. She currently serves as Cosatu’s first vice-president.
Business
The Director General of Trade and Industry, Zav Rustomjee, is a man charged with many tasks: trade talks with the European Union, South African Development Community negotiations, development corridors, tariff cuts. No wonder he works a 15-hour day. The EU trade deal is almost resolved, but as a man in the engine room of the economy, Rustomjee will be kept just as busy with industrial policy and export promotion.
There is simply no stopping Mashudu Ramano, head of African Harvest, a financial services group formed in a joint venture with the National Empowerment Corporation. After a highly successful stock exchange listing in September, Ramano (44) believes the time is right for expansion northward — particularly into Botswana and Tanzania. In addition to African Harvest, Ramano runs his own business and is chair of a consultancy that is advising the government on pensions.
Murphy Morobe, chair of the finance and fiscal commission, is a modest and unassuming man, but there is no doubt that we will be seeing a lot more of him in 1998. With the Department of Finance, Morobe worked on the new medium-term Budget plan; the trick now is to make it stick. With the commission, he’ll be investigating ways to make the provinces more accountable — and more efficient.
Former head of Msele Investments, Thebe’s financial arm now called Futurebank Corporation, Loren Braithwaite is about to launch Pontso, a women’s investment company with four significant deals already on the cards for the company. It is the latest fad, investment companies for women, and the time has come for the sisters to step into the limelight.
Pioneer of the concept is Salukazi Dakile-Hlongwane, a director of Johnnic and assistant general manager at BoE NatWest. Dakile-Hlongwane also heads up Nozala, an investment company run by women for women. Cash-rich, the group invests in media, tourism and financial services; significant deals are on the cards for 1998.
Louisa Mojela and Wendy Luhabe are the directors of Women’s Investment Portfolio Holdings, a company which was listed this year and designed a share offer in which women were given a buy-one-get-one-free option. With plenty of cash on hand, the company seeks to =0Bempower professional women, building managerial and operational capacity.
Manazi Makhela is a Northern Province horticulturalist who was voted the National African Farmers Union’s most successful emerging black farmer. Makhela’s nursery is a major supplier of subtropical lychee and palm tree seedlings to farmers and landscaping plants to Johannesburg gardeners. On the cutting edge of the niche agricultural market, Makhela plans an exchange programme with Danish colleagues in 1998.
Bobby Godsell, the new head of Anglogold, pulled off a remarkable coup in 1997 by creating the world’s largest gold producer. But the upheaval in South Africa’s gold industry is far from over. Don Ncube’s partnership with Sanlam combines the biggest of black and Afrikaner capital.
Tumelo Motsisi, head of Cosatu’s investment arm, Kopano ke Matla, is the man workers trust with their pensions and other funds. He has already engineered deals to the value of R150-million on their behalf.
Science and technology
President of the Foundation for Research Development (FRD), Dr Khotso Mokhele is also tipped to head the new National Research Foundation, which will control much of the funding for academic research in the sciences and humanities. Outspoken and passionate about science, Mokhele has been at the forefront of transforming the FRD into a streamlined body that rates scientists and gives them research grants according to distinct and measurable criteria.
Making it clear that he has not slunk into the shadows despite the bruising “battle of Wits” is William Makgoba. Makgoba is beginning to show his mettle in another area: the sciences. As chair of the board of the Medical Research Council, he has presided over the transformation of the council into an organisation more responsive to the medical needs of disadvantaged communities. He is also a founder member of the newly formed Science and Technology Forum.
Younger scientists to keep an eye on in 1998 include chemistry graduate Dr Codelia Chinake, winner of the FRD’s first President’s Award, and Dr Molapho Qhobela, a highly respected young scientist at the University of Cape Town, who has been appointed chair of the Agricultural Research Council.
Others who have begun to win peer appraisal in 1997 and should, if they keep it up, find themselves topping next year’s list include Dr Nithaya Chetty from Unisa’s department of physics; Dr Gary Stephens from Wits University’s economic geology research unit; and Dr Morne du Plessis from the University of Cape Town’s department of animal sciences.
Media
Mandla Langa has been tipped for two senior media positions in 1998: he could either head up the government’s revamped news agency, intended to replace the South African Communications Services; or be in the running for the position of chief executive of the SABC, currently held by Zwelakhe Sisulu.
Langa serves on the board of both the SABC and Business Arts South Africa. He lives in Johannesburg, his home since returning from exile in the United Kingdom and Ireland, where he worked as the ANC’s deputy chief representative and cultural attach=E9.
With the freeing up of South Africa’s airwaves, the business of media gets more and more lucrative. Primedia knows this: its acquisition trail has seen it gobble up everything from outdoor advertising companies to film production houses and radio stations. Chief executive officer William Kirsch has turned the company into a R4-billion media powerhouse within just two years.
But providing competition for Kirsch is African Media Entertainment, listed on the stock exchange earlier this month. The company aims to be “the creative hothouse for talented producers of film, television, music events and all forms of entertainment” and is the brainchild of David Dison, a leading media lawyer and broadcasting consultant.
Then there are the 30-something editors who will sharpen their quills in 1998. Nazeem Howa, of the Saturday Star, is tipped as the likely successor to Peter Sullivan who currently edits the daily The Star.
At SABC Television News, Phil Molefe, currently head of news, could find himself stepping into the shoes of Allister Sparks, currently news editor-in-chief on a two-year contract.
Also on the up is Beeld’s 43-year-old deputy editor Tim du Plessis, set to continue the transformation that could make this the country’s top daily. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in the US in 1992.
In radio, young women are increasingly making their mark. Cape-Town-based Farah Moosa, who started at Bush University, has drawn up a blueprint for the future of community radio.
After years of hearing women read radio news bulletins as if it’s merely something they do in their spare time, Kaya FM’s Kutloano Skosana — in the studio every weekday morning for Lawrence Dube’s show — not only sounds like she knows her material, but is involved in news-gathering, editing and writing. Skosana also co-produces and co-hosts The Sunday Mix.
Talk-shows and the odd non-commercial track would give more power to its assault on the ear, but the kwaito, hip-hop and R&B format of YFM has definitely snared the youth of Gauteng.
The most promising DJ of 1998 must surely be YFM’s Paul Mnisi, presenter of The Groove Kamikaze. The live hip-hop and interview session he co-hosts on Wednesdays with Oscar Warona is particularly smooth radio.
On the box, epitomising the sexiness and smart brain of young South Africa, presenter Nkhensani Manganyi of crawling-the-wall SABC3 magazine Options can only heat up to boiling point in 1998. She was the first black stand-up comic to appear on Bobby Heaney’s It’s a Funny Country on M-Net, and we want more. Who can forget the eye-popping T-shirt she wore on SABC1’s hit comedy Going Up III. But the real good news for 1998 is Manganyi’s establishment of Big Foot Productions with her delectable main man, Zam Nkosi of SABC1 game show, Selimathunzi, fame.
New SABC1 boss Eric Nhlapo has already caused a flutter of excitement among staff at the channel who best remember him as a TV magazines proprietor before big business stole him away from broadcasting. He was hauled back, allegedly with promises of carte blanche, to build on the excellent foundations created by Molefe Mokgatle, who turned CCV into a marketing money-spinner.
M-Net took a knock in 1997 as SABC3 enhanced its line-up, but resurfaced with a spunky addition to its satellite line-up in Channel-O, the world’s first-ever African music channel which, at the beginning of 1998, will offer a 24-hour service.
A presenters’ cast of pretty boys and girls, who have a sure shot on their generation, is complemented by channel boss Darren Jordan.
And then, back to newspapers, there is the Mail & Guardian which is planning to report from corners never seen in print, to continue political reporting that gets into politicians’ nose hairs and to break the best investigative stories.
Academics
This is going to be one of the most scrutinised academic appointment of 1998: on January 6, Colin Bundy (44) dons his cloak as vice-chancellor of the troubled University of the Witwatersrand. The historian and academic must unite a campus divided: between worker and academic; black and white; liberal and radical.
Bundy was most recently vice-rector of the University of the Western Cape and over the years he has bagged 11 coveted awards and scholarships and published widely, combining this with extra-mural work for a range of progressive organisations.
Lee Berger walked off with the National Geographic Society’s first Research and Exploration Prize — an international award. Earlier, the 32-year-old palaeoanthropologist, working with Derek Roberts, discovered evidence of the oldest known footprints of an anatomically modern human. In 1998 he will begin to spend his $100 000 prize money by continuing his work piecing together the puzzle of the natural environment that produced early man.
Civil society/watchdogs
It has become evident that the state of opposition politics in South Africa is not quite the vigorous, champing-at-the-bit type of creature a true opposition could be.
So rather watch how “civil society” — an umbrella term which includes everything from churches to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to trade unions — takes over the role of a true opposition. It’s the sector to observe for a cogent critique of government policy as well as for social campaigns.
Set to become the most important voice of the poor in South Africa, in 1998 the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Njongonkulu Ndungane, will chair hearings into poverty. He is proving an adept successor to Desmond Tutu and has shown himself to be more than willing to tackle the thorny issues. He has spoken out about apartheid debt and warned against developing a draconian prison system.
Next year he’s likely to play a leading role at the Lambeth Conference, a meeting of Anglican bishops from around the world, where sexuality and the church will be the burning issue.
Following a close second as the country’s official watchdog is Selby Baqwa, the national public protector. This lawyer won more than 75% of the parliamentary votes cast for the post, and 1998 should be the year in which he will shine.
Baqwa’s 1998 will begin with investigations into the Strategic Fuel Fund and the controversy surrounding the appointment of Emanuel Shaw II to the Central Energy Fund.
The public protector’s office — which has indeed taken too long getting off the ground — is likely to join the auditor general’s office as location number one for fearless scrutiny. Baqwa is firmly independent. Previously he ran his own law firm and served as general secretary and president of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers. He is a board member of the International Movement Against Discrimination and Racism.
Kumi Naidoo, the 33-year-old executive director of the South African NGO Coalition, will take this huge sector into the next millennium. In 1998, he will also be at the forefront of the hearings into poverty and apartheid debt.
At the Women’s National Coalition, the articulate Mohau Peko is giving a fresh voice to gender issues. Next year, she will host a Women’s Economic Summit to teach women about the Budget, balance of payments and deficits.
Education
The brightest kid on the education block is Naseema Badsha. A prot=E9g=E9 of Franklin Sonn at the University of the Western Cape, she is now deputy director general for higher education. Badsha will need nerves of steel to see higher education through one of its toughest years.
Nineteen ninety-eight is the year of implementation; the Higher Education Act has just been passed and she must run the gauntlet of universities and institutions which will suffer budget cuts.
Naledi Pandor is a politician with a passion for education. A member of Parliament already tipped for the highest spot in the education ministry, she has shown a keen understanding of the issues facing education. Pandor is the head of higher education in the portfolio committee on education.
Curriculum 2005, the symbol of a new education system, is the baby of Ihron Rensburg, the Department of Education’s deputy director general. The curriculum’s implementation and a plan to answer its detractors falls on Rensburg’s shoulders.
Land
Thandiwe Kgosidinsti is the Department of Land Affairs’s chief director of corporate services. This means she is the government’s chief affirmative action guru, credited with rapidly transforming the Free State public service, and the department she joined in early 1997, from their white male preserves into representative services.
Abie Ditlhake (33) is the National Land Committee’s land-rights and advocacy manager and the formidable force that government land reformists will have to reckon with in 1998. A former peanut farmworker and land-rights fieldworker, Ditlhake, a paralegal, joined the committee in February 1997. He put labour tenants rights on the agenda of the transitional executive council in 1994.
Consumer
Advocate Matilsa Masipa is a member of the Gauteng Consumer Court. A passionate former public interest lawyer and consumer journalist, she is expected to take a hard line on the burgeoning loan-shark industry and lend the country’s first consumer court significant enthusiasm for the protection of pensioners, commuters and other consumers when it opens its doors early in 1998.
Diane Terreblanche is the =0BNational Consumer Forum’s chair and will be leading a veritable crescendo of consumer-awareness campaigns throughout the coming year.
And telling a few home truths will be Jabu Dlamini, the chairperson of Gauteng’s Home Truths Commission. All the pressure will be on this Germiston lawyer who must deal sharply and swiftly with those found guilty of defrauding state housing consumers of their rights during the dark days of apartheid.
Sports
After only a year in the professional rank, plans are afoot for boxer Masibulele “Hawk” Makepula to take a crack at a world title before June 1998. Makepula, who was South Africa’s flag-bearer at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, has not lost once in ten paid fights– a feat which earned him the nickname “knockout specialist”.
He was also the first ever South African boxer to sign a contract with the SABC — a four-fight deal ending in January. After that fight, Makepula will shift his campaign in the United States.
Before joining AmaZulu from Orlando Pirates at the begining of the season, Naughty Mokoena was a virtual “unknown” in football circles. Now the blonde-haired, Johannesburg-born midfielder is one of the most famous footballers in KwaZulu-Natal.
Mokoena has scored vital goals for the Durban side and his vision and ability to organise from the midfield has caught the eye of the national selectors. There can be no doubt that if he maintains the form that has made him one of the finest midfielders in South Africa, he will sooner, rather than later, get to don the coveted Bafana Bafana jersey.
Benedict McCarthy is a name that local soccer fans love to hear. McCarthy (20), who plies his trade with Dutch football giants Ajax Amsterdam, is fast becoming a reliable goalpoacher. He is strong, fast and can take on the best defence sent his way. His willingness to learn and his hunger for goals will surely make him one of the deadliest strikers around.
In rugby all eyes are on national coach Nick Mallett. The affable frontman must turn the sport back from the foul field it has found itself on this year. The Springbok team that returned in triumph from its European tour looks like a fairly settled unit, but young Western Province flanker Bobby Skinstadt is bound to feature in Mallett’s plans. His speed and handling skills are exactly what the coach is looking for in a player, no matter what position.
Many believed Makhaya Ntini was included in the South African cricket squad for the current tour of Australia merely to boost the profile of the sport’s development programme. But he is a class fast bowler with the talent to make it in the international arena. The search for a replacement for the evergreen, but ageing, South African wicketkeeper Dave Richardson has seen several candidates come and go, with Mark Boucher, the current understudy, on tour in Australia.
Music
The South African music revolution continues, with more and more local artists heading for international recognition and new sounds brewing that should break through even bigger in 1998. The most progressive edge of local music can undoubtedly be found on the jazz and dance music scenes.
Of the former, the finest releases of the year, with another clutch planned for 1998, have come from Johannesburg-based independent label Sheer Sounds headed by Damon Forbes. His label has blown away the cobwebs of nostalgia and given commercial profile to the country’s new generation of jazzers, from Busi Mhlongo to McCoy Mrubata, Sipho Gumede to Zim Ngqawana.
Of the year’s endeavours, sophisticate Paul Hanmer has topped all of the label’s sales expectations with his swish piano release Trains to Taung. And 1998 could also be the year of modern traditionalist Pops Mohamed, who has finally begun to find the recognition he deserves. Ngqawana has also matured enormously as a performer and also looks set to take homegrown sounds to the world in 1998.
Although we’re tired of holding our breath for the new release — recorded in London this year — from pianist Moses Taiwa Molelekwa, the man is clearly the future sound of drum’n’bass. His strength is in his ability to reframe traditional South African drum sounds in a contemporary framework and there can be no other more eagerly awaited 1998 release than this.
Another local star gradually emerging on centre stage is Gloria Bosman, the opera-trained songstress with an ability to improvise a jazz tune the likes of which we have seldom heard before. Bosman has a packed diary for 1998.
On a sustained operatic note, the future is looking exceedingly bright for emerging opera star Sibongile Mngoma, recipient of the 1997 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music. She’s getting ready to share some of the limelight worked loose by diva Sibongile Khumalo and the emerging Estelle Kruger.
Young Cape Town tenor Andy Cloete is the most exciting lyric tenor to emerge in recent years, comparable only to Johan Botha, who can’t be properly judged as we have yet to hear him on an opera stage in Africa. Cloete will sing the title role in a new production of Wagner’s Lohengrin for the Metropolitan Opera in New York next year.
And clarinettist Robert Pickup must be tired of hearing that he is South Africa’s great classical hope of the new generation. Pickup left for the world stage this year and we eagerly await reports of his triumphs.
Local dance music, commonly labelled kwaito or d’gong, has in 1997 begun to turn over the lion’s share of the market — and of the new school, everyone who knows says to look out for TKZee. The T is for Tokollo, formerly of Mashamplani; the K is for Kabelo; and the Z for Zwai, a former Drakensberg Boys’ Choir member.
If their poker-hot 1997 single, Palafala, is anything to go by then their 1998 album Halloween, with sounds that are a bit kwaito, a touch hip-hop and a dash R&B and different to the standard stuff, should be damn popular.
Bongo Maffin, consisting of =0BApple Seed, Speedy, Stoan and 1997 addition Thandiswa, lit up the local scene in late 1997 with their versions of Hotel California and Pata Pata (on the album Final Entry) which even impressed Miriam Makeba, who originally recorded Pata Pata.
Big talent going solo with their first albums in 1998 are Skeem, Prophets of da City’s Ishmael and Queen from Aba Shante. Both have been the mainstays of their extremely hip bands and now Ishmael is moving in an R&B direction, while Queen’s album will add some R&B to the kwaito mix.
Finally, the world of white rock is continuing the momentum gathered over the past two years — and gratefully beginning to diversify and get beyond the middle-of-the-road muck that has polluted our airwaves.
Fetish is the new name on everyone’s lips as the rock band most likely to make it in 1998. Lush keyboard sounds and lead vocalist Michelle’s trippy, over-the-top voice add up to one of the most exciting acts to emerge since Plum. Their debut CD Fetish is crammed chockfull of phat hooks and choruses just waiting to find a nationwide distributor.
Theatre
South African theatre is beginning to find its feet again after the depressing post-protest slump — and the young playwright whose name is on everybody’s lips is Cape Town’s Brett Bailey. Bailey’s method involves working inside communities to uncover true African tales of the bizarre — such as the saga around the Eastern Cape village and its living dead that featured in Zombie, or the tale of King Hintsa’s skull told by sangomas in iMumbo Jumbo.
Of the stalwarts, Duma Ka Ndlovu had a hit on his hands with the women’s-prison musical drama The Game, and William Kentridge with Ubu and the Truth Commission. They should continue leading the pack over the next few years.
Ka Ndlovu also makes the list for the raging success of his SABC television series Muvhango — South Africa’s first Venda-language drama that was so big he is currently filming Muvhango II. And Kentridge also makes the fine-art list for being the first South African to exhibit at Dokumenta X, the world’s most prestigious exhibition. Everything the man touches turns to gold and he has a full year ahead.
Cultural politics
As chair of the National Arts Council, the most powerful arts body ever established in South Africa, John Kani has become the foremost arts administrator in the country. Nineteen-ninety-eight is the year that the council’s policies will become practice, and one wonders where this famous actor — who has had honorary doctorates showered upon him in 1997 — will find the time to serve as co-chair of the Pact board and as head of the world-class Market Theatre in Johannesburg.
Playwright, leader of the cultural opposition, editor of the incisive cultural-political monitor The Cultural Weapon, founder of the advisory company Article 27 and adviser to the arts ministry during the formative policy-making years, Mike van Graan has another busy year ahead. Article 27 intends expanding its umbrella to initiate a national regulatory body and his award-winning play Dinner Talk will get a Johannesburg run.
Design
Cha-cha, indhlamu, gumboot and the poetry of South Indian dance meld together blissfully in Ijusi, the visionary magazine from Orange Juice Design in Durban — a company which understands the psychedelia of the elephant god Ganesh and appreciates the beauty of a Zulu warrior in a lime-green choker. You’d be hard-pressed to find more scintillating cultural reference material.
Books
Poet and journalist Antjie Krog is polishing off Country of My Skull, her account of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission — which she attended from day one — for Random House, due out in April 1998. Judging by the responses (including a prize) for her coverage of the commission in this newspaper, it could well be the definitive book on the subject.
Another poet, Ingrid de Kok, this year made a magnificent return to verse after almost a decade’s gap since her acclaimed debut. Her second volume, Transfer, just published by Snailpress, has to be one of the finest of the decade — and she’s just beginning.
Jann Turner, daughter of murdered activist Rick Turner, returned to South Africa and dashed off a novel which was published within months. She calls Heartland a “biltong western”, and it’s already on the way to becoming a televison miniseries. Turner is riding high on good reviews and sales, and the 1998 M-Net Book Prize should be well within her grasp. To top it all, she’s tipped to direct the movie of Zakes Mda’s multiple prize winner, Ways of Dying.
Cinema
The movie business has been booming this year even if only one local feature, Kaalgat tussen die Daisies, lit up the screen. Part of the renaissance in cinematic optimism has been owing to movers and shakers who are sure to be major power-brokers over the next decade.
Jeremy Nathan and his production arm Catalyst Films co-produced Jump the Gun, together with similar super-trooper Indra de Lanerolle. Nathan also saw Jo’burg Stories, Oliver Schmitz and Brian Tilley’s brilliant local doccie; Marion Hansel’s The Quarry; and the six part Africa Dreaming series on to the screen; with appointments as adviser to the interim film fund set up by the arts and culture department and several other consultancies, Nathan probably needs to clone himself to find more time in the new year.
Palesa Ka Nkosi who has been working in films for the past five years also emerged with her short Mamlambo as part of the Africa Dreaming series, an exquisitely designed romance between a Chinese prostitute and a street kid; it showed that future movie narratives don’t have to be lethargically determined by politics.
Dance
South African contemporary dance is a discipline that has, during the past few years, risen enormously in stature. Virtually every month one of South Africa’s dozen or so leading professional troupes is off on an international tour. In such a rapid growth area, the dance world’s bright young things — like Boyzie Cekwana, Vincent Mantsoe, Jeanette Ginslov, David Matamela, Jazzart and PJ Sabagga — are already becoming mainstream successes.
So, a list of the new school to look out for would have to include the recently formed and instantly acclaimed Durban-based experimental troupe Siwela Sonke. We’re also keeping a close eye on the Jaggard Dance Company and award-winning young choreographer David Gouldie.
Fine art
Capetonian artist Tracey Rose shaved all her hair off and sat naked inside a glass booth for the Cape Town leg of the 1997 Africus Biennale this year. Rose didn’t need to attract extra attention for the art world to sit up and realise that they have a seriously committed and conceptually bright new art star on their hands, but it did help.
With a solo show planned for 1998, Rose should be joining the increasingly large group of local artists who have found themselves on the international biennale circuit and are collecting more air tickets than artworks.
Another growth point in local culture is photography. In a country renowned for its Pulitzer Prize-winning press photographers, it has taken a while to move beyond the political. Undisputed leader of the pack, with a host of curatorial projects and international showings for 1998, is Santu Mofokeng. A brilliant archivist, Mofokeng’s ritual and communal photo essays are astonishingly internalised and he will be the art world’s number one ambassador in years to come.
Fashion
Fashion in South Africa took off with vigour in 1997, with the first ever South African Fashion Week, organised by Estelle Cooper and Lucilla Booysen. More than 50 designers participated, and tips for who will be big in the years to come have to include stalwart Marianne Fassler, Welile Khuzwayo, Ineleeng and Claire Mitchel. This is the crowd who are — at long last — not shy to mix an African flavour into international couture.
Local models have for some time now found favour throughout the world, with 1997 marking the meteoric rise of the likes of Charlize Theron. But 1998 could be the year that our black models follow suit. Of these, the new name on everyone’s lips is Pumila Majola. A shaved-head beauty and finalist in M-Net’s Face of Africa competition, Majola already has her ticket booked to Paris for January 1998.