In the waning moments of Bob Marley’s weary call to unity, Africa Unite, he ad-libs about ”Africa awaiting its creators”. The statement irked me no end, because I figured it predicted that only a mass exodus from the diaspora would save our pathetic souls here in the mainland. It was not until my high school perusal of Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born that I calmed down a bit, in cognisance of both works’ hopeful timbre amid the resonating disillusionment about the continent’s future and our own ability to rescue it.
In this article, we pay homage to living examples of that hope. The young South Africans featured below represent only a fraction of the growing number of mavericks out there, throwing dirt in the face of conventional wisdom and holding on tightly to their freedom.
Their occupations (in most cases) may not earn them loads of money just yet, but at least they can sleep peacefully, satisfied that they have forced us to think beyond our prolonged euphoria over our young democracy. Through their charisma and skilful combat with the status quo they challenge assumptions and stereotypes.
The effect of their voices cannot always be fully measured within a timeline spanning a mere 365 days, but, in 2005, they certainly made the point that they were here to stay and they would continue their relentless assault on our minds with varying degrees of subtlety.
Ntone Edjabe
”I don’t feel I should defend, or justify why I do what I do. Such apologies would imply that there’s a great authority above us all that determines what needs to be done and how it should be done …”
The quote, from Chimurenga founding editor Ntone Edjabe, was in response to oozebap.org interviewer Didac P Lagarriga’s question about why the literary journal came into existence.
While it lives just because it can, Chimurenga has survived its cash-strapped spells not only because of its sheer fighting spirit, but because its readers continuously demanded their regular fix of exclusives from Yaounde, Maputo, Trenchtown, London and wherever else ”black man dey carry shit”.
At home, the burden was even heavier. While the mainstream press insisted on calling Brenda Fassie ”the Madonna of the townships”, the little black book was the only publication to expose that as ”journalistic bullshit” only emitted by people ”with no cultural references except from the West”.
While its founder shies from highlighting his personal achievements, the ethos behind the quarterly could explain the existence of the Fonk Kong Bantu Soundsystem (a futuristic clubbing initiative) and its on-air cousin Soul Makossa (a courageous ”rebel music” show on Bush Radio started in 1997). On the sports journalism front, there was the seminal Hoops, a now-defunct basketball lifestyle magazine Edjabe founded in 1998.
Lebogang Mashile
When I first spoke to performer Lebo-gang Mashile, in about 2001, I got the sense that her chief priority was not the poetry — for which she was earning unanimous adulation — but the life skills training workshops she was holding with youth around Johannesburg.
After having had a breakthough 2005, in which she starred in a Holly-wood feature (Hotel Rwanda), released an independent CD and an anthology of poetry (In a Ribbon of Rhythm), and presented a whopping 26 episodes of her roving ”youth current affairs show” L’atitudes, she still finds time for the periodic workshop, a vocation, she says, that reveals ”the real value of what I do”.
Although clearly excited about the endless possibilities and the different things she has been able to do with her voice, she remains resolute that fame is not the end in itself, but a vehicle to ”go further into the spaces I want to be in” (that is more books, more TV programmes, more screenplays, more plays).
”I’m an African woman, writing in English, performing in Africa,” she says. ”People wouldn’t think there is a market for what I do but I’ve been able to create platforms for myself in the mainstream. It’s been interesting carving a slice to exist in … while doing something different yet accessible.”
Thandiswa Mazwai
Last year, while the country was preoccupied with the Brenda succession debate, Thandiswa Mazwai was too deep in the throes of a personal and artistic metamorphosis to be playing for the camera. The significance of her transmogrification and its effect on young black girls is probably yet to be fully comprehended. When Zabalaza, her recent solo CD, dropped, it was a flagship record that helped usher in current industry darlings such as Simphiwe Dana, Zamajobe, Zolani Mahola (Freshlyground) and Nosisi Ngakane (Kwani Experience).
Now I’m not saying the above are Thandiswa clones, or that she had a direct bearing on their arrival. All I am saying is that Bongo Maffin’s lead singer, who has been edgy since the early Nineties ”Jacknife” heyday, was a catalyst for her contemporaries’ warm acceptance. Although her image was quite obviously convenient for her record label, one still got the distinct impression that she had considerable control over her representation.
Thanks to her, major record labels are now searching for younger, cross-generational versions of Judith Sephuma and Gloria Bosman with renewed vigour.
Khalo Matabane
When I ask the frantic Khalo Matabane, director of films such as Love in a Time of Sickness and Young Lions, who he makes films for, he thinks for a while and says: ”I don’t know who they’re for. I always say I make films for repressed people around the world, even those that don’t like them. I want to say I make films for black people but most want to watch Tsotsi, something they can relate to in a conventional sense.” When I change tack and ask him who inspired him to take the plunge, he insists it was his grandmother because she made him realise ”that stories are not fables, but a huge part of human progression”.
After the SABC screening of Story of a Beautiful Country, his picturesque shot-in-a-taxi film, was cancelled in July 2004, Matabane was driven further underground, becoming more determined to continue with the improvisational form he calls ”cinema of the dreamers. It’s kind of like the same thing Thierry Henry does with a soccer ball.”
This year, Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon, his first feature film (completed on a budget of less than R80 000), further entrenched his reputation for fearless innovation, especially in the intimate way it examined xenophobia in South Africa. Conversations will be released at Cinema Nouveau early next year.
Bongani Madondo
”I am a culture writer not because I report about the arts, but because I operate and look at the world from the cultural perspective, moving from there to the political, aesthetics and economics,” says Sunday Times arts and culture writer Bongani Madondo.
Although recognised as one of the country’s pre-eminent cultural critics, Madondo considers himself primarily a storyteller.
He immerses himself ruthlessly in his stories, writing with consistent, colourful authority on a range of South African icons, while keeping his finger on the pulse of global trends.
While many may not agree with the end product, this year’s Mondi Magazine Profiles finalist definitely commands his subjects’ respect for his accurate, theatrical fly-on-the-wall approach embellished with feverish quotes that leap out from the page to suck you into his stories.
Madondo currently has virtual carte blanche at Sunday Times’s Lifestyle, and it shows in some of the surprises he can dig up. Earlier this year, he was among the first scribes to lift the veil on Gentleman, a white German reggae singer who has taken the genre by storm, timelessly capturing the rise of the new white negro.
Tired of answering rumours of his authorship of the Brenda biography, Madondo is playing his cards about 2006 close to his chest.