Sex, suicide, scandal and defecation on the Big Brother set. It’s been business as unusual in the cultural industries this year February 14: Piano genius Moses”Taiwa” Molelekwa is found hanging from a beam near his wife and business partner Florence Mthoba, also dead but without visible injuries. Friends and associates reflect how”he could not conquer his demons”. From the streets of Thembisa in the East Rand, the prodigy rose to grace the world stages alongside peers like Jimmy Dludlu and legends Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba. His two albums, Finding One Self and Genes and Spirits, yielded compositions like Itumeleng and Ntate Moholo.
March 12: The year’s most outstanding TV series, Yizo Yizo 2, stirs the nation’s hormones, and its homophobia, with a sex scene between jailbird Chester and a fellow inmate. Although driven largely by sound effects through its 16 seconds, with about two seconds of suggestive visuals, the scene sparked an outcry that was led by an African National Congress MP who called for the series to be scrapped. April 20: The Performing Arts Network of South Africa (Pansa) is launched. At the helm is cultural activist and journalist Mike van Graan. In the ensuing months Pansa will hold meetings with disgruntled theatre practitioners in Gauteng, Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Kwa-Zulu-Natal to lobby for more efficient funding channels and better administration of the country’s venues. July 8: Brenda Fassie continues to embody the best and the worst on the South African music scene in the past two decades. In July, during a performance in Washington DC, she whipped out a breast on stage, shouting:”I’m an African woman. I’m not shy.” Her fans whom she kept waiting for over an hour were treated to a repetition of one song for 10 minutes.
On November 11, her back-up singer Deborah Frassier accused Fassie of using her voice in her last three hit albums. She claimed Fassie’s voice never recovered from drug abuse and that she sang some of Fassie’s hits. In response to the allegations, the queen of pop said:”Deborah is only a session artist. Maybe it’s jealousy because she doesn’t go far in life and in her career. She mustn’t make me angry and say things that are not true. But that’s my voice.” August 20: The cabaret ends for Johannesburg’s premiere drag artist, Baroness Leoness von Cleef, who commits suicide at the age of 30 in her flat in Auckland Park. Born Rafieq Isaacs,”The Leoness” was booked to launch designer Marianne Fassler’s collection at South African Fashion Week on August 28, probably one of the most mainstream appearances she would have made in her working life. At her cremation on August 23 her coffin was adorned with her feather boa and glittering platform shoes. Members of the gay community came out to salute her, but her religious family apparently stayed away. August 25: R’n’B star Aaliyah Haughton dies in a plane crash after shooting a video in the Bahamas. The 22-year-old starlet from Brooklyn was already an established solo performer with three albums to her credit. She captured the world’s attention at 15 and notched seven chart toppers before she was 18. She then ventured into acting with an appearance in Romeo Must Die and The Queen Of The Damned. Her death means that she misses a chance to appear in sequels to The Matrix and leaves behind rumours that she was married to R Kelly, the man who discovered and produced her debut. September 1: A hastily organised Arts Alive festival opens in Johannesburg. In its build-up, the festival was plagued by withdrawal of associated events the Joy of Jazz and the Black August hip-hop tour and poor publicity. During its month-long run, the festival lacks organisational vision but is saved by brilliant individual performances. September 6: Big Brother housemate Ferdinand shits in the garden after a drunken binge.”There’s nothing I can do about it,” he tells Big Brother.”It happened … I know I can deal with it.” Psychologist Vivien Suttner who’s employed to explain the animal behaviour on the Big Brother set proclaims that the housemate, who would ultimately succeed in winning the million rand challenge,”may not be coping that well … he may be marking his territory, or symbolically’crapping’ on Big Brother”. September 7: The organisers of Cape Town’s prized live art event YDETAG art night at the South African National Gallery stand accused of”racism, sexism and nepotism”, as well as the more arcane crime of using a domestic worker without her consent, by a collective called Anarchic Harmony. The collective is kicked off the show after getting into a fight about intellectual property with another contributor. Anarchic Harmony’s spokesperson, Veronique Malherbe, whose press release proudly proclaims her as one of the five artists of the millennium (as nominated by heavyweight art magazine Femina), has claimed that”the attitudes of the executive committee have shown them up to be immature, white males”. Malherbe’s fellow Harmonising Anarchist, David Robert Lewis, asked the trenchant question:”Where are all the tribes from Cape Town’s townships?” Where indeed. September 11: The day the earth comes to a standstill when members of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network fly airplanes into the World Trade Centre in New York. Of relevance to the South African music industry is the fact that expatriate South African musician Dan Heymann, co-composer of the hit tune Weeping, arrived late for work at the North Tower of the World Trade Centre to find his office under rubble. September 24: The country’s legendary drag personality, the late Granny Lee, killed in a car crash on her way to Durban at the age of 70, gets a gravestone more than a decade after her death. An award-winning documentary on the life of Malcolm Christiaan du Plooy, called Metamorphosis, reveals that this white woman was in fact a coloured man who was mistakenly buried in a whites-only cemetery in 1989. The documentary’s producers, Underdog Entertainment, SABC3 and generous individuals bankroll the pink marble tombstone, ensuring recognition for Jo’burg’s original disco diva who partied every night of her life. September 25: The Market Theatre turns 25 with a busy programme that gives the precinct a buzz that has not been heard for a while. The celebrations include a lifetime achievement award for the doyen of South African theatre Gibson Kente, which he later threatens to return, and a performance of Woza Albert!, the Barney Simon, Mbongeni Ngema and Percy Mtwa classic that had brought the theatre world fame 20 years before. September 27: Big Brother housemate Janine Orderson gives a cucumber a blowjob. The oldest cast member, nicknamed”Mama”, excels in the talent show section of an on-set beauty pageant with her unabashed fellatio demonstration of how to remove the”sherbet from a lollipop.” The behaviour of the teacher from Mitchell’s Plain leads to numerous complaints being lodged with the South African Council of Educators. October 11: The Arts & Culture Trust Awards are dished out to, among others, Mike van Graan (Journalist of the Year), Joyce Levinsohn (Lifetime Achievement) and e.tv’s eNews (Media in Support of the Arts). According to the Sunday Times, e.tv arts anchor Roger Lucey was congratulated by his station with a disciplinary letter for commenting to the Mail & Guardian about the free-to-air station’s news coverage policies. The prize of R10 000 was confiscated from Lucey for redistribution among e.tv staff. October 17: The country’s top talk show host Phat Joe announces that he’ll be pulling his show from e.tv and heading for SABC1, stating”e is worse than Afghanistan”. The move will ensure that his viewership will increase to one million and that, according to reports, he’ll enjoy more creative freedom. E.tv spokesperson Kanthan Pillay tells The Star newspaper that Phat Joe is no loss, but an indication of the station’s ability to develop talent. November 14: Expatriate South African drag artist, bandleader and cultural worker Vuyo Raymond Matinyana aka Miss Thandi dies in Amsterdam at the age of 33. The cause is hepatitis. Matinyana’s outrageous impersonations of Miriam Makeba somewhat masked the fact that he had launched several bands in Europe and was the founder of Afro Vibe, a small organisation promoting cultural exchange between South Africa and the Netherlands, active in the Eastern Cape. Miss Thandi’s final performances in South Africa took place at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, in July. November 15: Ian Von Memerty and Thembi Nyandeni’s colourful but hollow musical, Umoja, hits the Shaftesbury Theatre in London’s West End after surviving financial difficulties and enjoying sold-out stints at Johannesburg’s Victory Theatre, Sandton Convention Centre and the Civic Theatre. Critics can’t help but note an eerie similarity to Ipi Ntombi, in which Nyandeni once starred. November 17: In a contemplative letter to influential world music journalists, the convener of the Kora Awards judges’ panel, Wally Badarou, resigns. A week later the chairperson of the awards, Ernest Adjovi, claims not to have received a resignation letter. The resignation represents a growing litany of problems with the continental awards, including lawsuits from previous award ceremony producers and the suspension of Gulam Mayet, a North West government official, over unauthorised funding by an estimated R4-million of the awards. November 24: Kwaito megastars TKZee lose the plot completely at the Sprite Soul Comedy Jam at the Civic Theatre in Johannesburg. After wrestling the microphone from American comedian Zooman, they started performing material from their new, rather disappointing album Trinity. When there was no audience reaction forthcoming the group resorted to desperate antics, led by Kabelo Mabalane, attempting to incite the audience to shout expletives, something that is uncharacteristic of the group’s kingpin Zwai Bala. November 27: A Boeing 747, owned by MK airlines of Sussex, England, crashes before it can land at Port Harcourt in south-east Nigeria. On board is the body of drag artist Vuyo Raymond Mantiyana aka Miss Thandi who died in Amsterdam on November 14. Matinyana’s body is completely destroyed. His family are turned away from Port Elizabeth airport where they have arrived to fetch his remains for burial. The airplane was the sister aircraft of the ill-fated Helderberg, which had crashed off the coast of Mauritius 14 years before.
November 30: The Apartheid Museum opens its doors in the south of Johannesburg. The privately owned museum is meant to serve”as a powerful reminder of a national disgrace that should never be allowed to happen again”. During the height of the national disgrace, the owners of the museum, the Krok twins Abe and Solly, used to sell skin lightening cream, whose toxicity they deny, claiming theirs was”safe”. The museum features blown-up images of various facets of life under apartheid from job seekers undergoing physical inspection to racial classification documents as well as an installation of 120 nooses, in memory of those for whom the death penalty was scrapped too late. It is also the day that former Beatle, film producer and all-round mystic George Harrison took off for a higher plane.”The quiet Beatle”, the youngest of the four, died of cancer at the age of 58. December 5: Walter Elias Disney posthumously celebrates his 100th birthday. Thirty-five years after his death a controversy rages around the question of whether he concealed his origins. Claims are made that Disney’s birth is as a result of a tryst between a Spanish doctor, Gines Carillo, and a local washerwoman called Isabel Zamora, native of the town of Mojacar. The disgraced washerwoman emigrated to the US where she palmed her neglected offspring on to the Disney family, who denied the story entirely. December 6: For the first time, Leon Schuster is seen sticking his head into an elephant’s anus in the movie Mr Bones, when it premieres on this day nationwide. While many believe that Schuster has his head up his own anus for most of his life, the tacky toilet humour of his latest masterpiece shatters box office records, grossing nearly R3-million in its first week. Unbelievably, it also overtakes ticket sales of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. December 17: President Thabo Mbeki inaugurates the redesign of Mary Fitzgerald Square in the Newtown Cultural Precinct, now reworked by French light-sculptor Patrick Rimoux. Inner city residents turn out in their thousands to dance to the strains of local jazz musicians. Perhaps, with the impending construction of the Nelson Mandela Bridge the new off-ramp from the M1 into Newtown and the housing developments in the area, there is hope for inner city culture after all. Compiled by Thebe Mabanga, Matthew Krouse, Chris Roper and Suzan Chala