THE INCOMPARABLE SHO MADJOZI
A FEW weeks after we’ve had the following interview, I’m talking to Sho Madjozi behind the stage at the Global Citizen press conference, where Beyoncé has been announced as the headliner for the concert.
A girl who looks barely out of her teens interrupts our conversation to say: “I love you so much. You are my biggest inspiration.”
Her arms are already around Sho Madjozi’s waist and her ponytail rests on Sho Madjozi’s chest when the girl remembers to ask: “Can I hug you? Let me tell you my story.”
Sure, the girl has no boundaries and needs to be taught about consent, but the way that Sho Madjozi embraces her reminds me that the rapper who has taken the nation by storm by simply being herself is giving others – particularly women who are younger than she is – permission to be themselves too.
A few weeks before this press conference – where she makes it clear that African youth are tired of being portrayed as poor and needy and that they also deserve nice things – we are sitting in the sun at a table outside a Melville eatery.
She’s telling me: “I’ve never been to Oppi and the first time I go is as a performer and it’s in Limpopo; how lit is that?”
Sporting a T-shirt featuring African barbershop-style drawings of her face in her many popular hairstyles, the Dumi Hi Phone star is in a good mood despite being “in that second part of the hangover… after you think you are fine but you’re not”. She’s just come back from a shoot with a major brand that she stays mum about.
A couple of weeks later, we find out that she was shooting with Trace as she is the music television channel’s new mobile ambassador.
Sho Madjozi is getting paid extremely well for bringing XiTsonga tradition to pop culture through her raps and inspiring many in the process. She has found and is allowed a freedom reserved for rock stars.
The 26-year-old was born Maya Wegerif to a Tsonga mother and a white father, and has lived in places like Limpopo and Tanzania. She then became Maya The Poet, but that ceased to feed her artistically.
“I’m not going to bash the medium,” she starts.
“But for me, it was only able to cater to my identity issues and socio-political commentary and it wasn’t really catering to the fact that while I am somebody who does think a lot about social justice and issues of that nature, I am also a young person who spends a lot of time drinking and partying. A lot.
“So, in a way, I wouldn’t say it was disengenious but poetry was only showcasing that side of me but Sho Madjozi showcases the other side which is a little more carefree. I think it’s important, politically in itself, because so often, as black creatives, we spend all of our creativity trying to fight to be heard and respected and treated as equal instead of just being creative.”
Sho Madjozi’s style is humorous, flippant even. But she also peppers some seriousness in songs like Wanlov the Kubolor’s No
Borders and parts of pH’s A Mi Ku Yini.