YOUNG GUNS
Who kicked butt in 2015?
“BLACK excellence.” The phrase has gained a lot of traction on social media in 2015. It’s a popular hashtag, yet it represents two words that many of us were taught do not sit well next to other.
That couldn’t be further from the truth, and 2015 has been the year many black people across South Africa not only chose to showcase, but to own, being young, gifted and black.
A great example of black excellence is Nompendulo Mkatshwa. Although the #FeesMustFall protest was not about her, the incoming University of the Witwatersrand SRC president quickly gained attention.
Affectionately called “Ulo” for short, Mkatshwa’s image became synonymous with the movement — and with a new wave of feminism in South Africa. The 22-year-old featured as a Twitter profile picture and Facebook cover picture for many when the protest was at its height.
And it’s easy to see why. Some have said she has the spirit of a young Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and she told Redi Tlhabi on 702 she and the other students “were guided by the spirits of Hani, Sobukwe, Ngoyi, Maxeke, Baard” during the protests.
Forget the fact that she’s obviously photogenic, what with her lithe frame and signature head wrap. Yes, she — alongside the other leaders of the student-protest movement — made for great pictures, standing in front of crowds of students as they made history, debunking the myth that today’s youth are lazy and apathetic.
Mkatshwa’s popularity was as a result of something richer than aesthetics. Her words, conviction, strength and grace were incredible to witness during the march to Luthuli House, something no one who saw it on television or firsthand will soon forget.
Standing on a stage and addressing the thousands she had marched with, Mkatshwa showed she was the kind of leader who commanded respect. She didn’t need to shout to be heard, she didn’t need to lose her temper to be listened to, she made no outrageous statements.
Calling herself a “gladiator” on her Twitter and Instagram bios, Mkatshwa has shown a different kind of strength recently, following the intense criticism that greeted her Destiny magazine cover and the implication that she alone was taking the credit for #FeesMustFall. She didn’t once lose her cool, not even when she was accused of selling out to the ANC. The fury of youth should never be underestimated, but Mkatshwa knows when to use it for a good cause and when to step back.
And with a name like Nompendulo (“the answer” in isiXhosa), it’s clear she was born for greatness. Here’s hoping 2015 was just the beginning. — Pearl Boshamane JULIUS MALEMA JULIUS Malema and his EFF are the ones South Africans should thank if President Jacob Zuma finally decides to pay back a portion of the R246million spent on his Nkandla homestead.
In the process of trying to achieve this, they turned parliament upside down. Before Malema’s arrival, parliamentary proceedings were dull, with MPs known for taking naps in between speeches. Now National Assembly sittings compete with popular TV soapies for viewers.
Malema, 34, and his red-beret brigade insisted that Zuma was liable for the cost of nonsecurity features at his Nkandla homestead, and made sure the issue remained topical — even coining the famous phrase, “Pay back the money.”
They were thrown out of the National Assembly and assaulted by the police in February after they disrupted Zuma’s state of the nation address — insisting Zuma tell the nation when he planned to reimburse the Treasury.
They continued with their unrelenting campaign to disrupt Zuma in parliament even though some of their voters seemed to have had enough of their antics. Malema remained defiant. “If there are people who are annoyed by our campaign, then they don’t know what they were voting for when they voted for the EFF,” he said.
Malema took his campaign a step further and approached the Constitutional Court, asking the court to force Zuma to pay back the money. — Sibongakonke Shoba
MMUSI MAIMANE
IT’S been about seven months since Mmusi Maimane earned the title of the first black leader of the official opposition, the DA, a title that has earned him huge scrutiny for the greater part of this year.
Maimane, 35, has come under sustained attack in public and in the National Assembly for being perceived as just being the black face of a predominantly white party.
He has also taken flak after failing to declare donations he received while campaigning to be the party’s leader. That means he will make history as the first leader of the opposition in South African history to appear before the ethics committee and be charged with unethical conduct. So it has clearly not been an easy year for the man.
Where he has made a difference was during the fallout over Dianne Kohler Barnard, which presented him with the perfect opportunity to stamp his authority as leader of the party.
Kohler Barnard is now appealing her expulsion from the party and as an MP for sharing a Facebook status expressing nostalgia for apartheid leader PW Botha.
Maimane has also been at the centre of a motion of noconfidence against Zuma, as well as an impeachment motion against him, both of which failed.
Closing the no-confidence debate, Maimane had challenged the ANC benches to break ranks and said the vote came down to a simple choice.
“They can vote ‘Yes’ if they believe the president is a thief or ‘No, the president is not a thief,’ ” said Maimane.
The true measure of Maimane’s contribution will be next year’s local government election results. Considering the political instability of the last few weeks during Zuma’s jittery cabinet reshuffles, the elections could present the perfect chance for the DA under Maimane to capitalise and grow its base across the country, especially in big metros. — Babalo Ndenze
KOLEKA PUTUMA
WHEN your biggest challenge is to get a “bank of babies” to test the value of your work, you must be doing something unusual.
For the past year, slam poet Koleka Putuma, 22, has been working on theatre for audiences aged one year or less. Her play Scoop, the first of its kind in South Africa, debuted in Cape Town recently.
What brings this innovative theatre maker from Port Elizabeth to be conversing in baby talk? “At the end of my drama degree at the University of Cape Town last year,” said Putuma, “I was offered an eight-month residency by Magnet Theatre, under Mark Fleishman and Jennie Reznek. It was focused on new work for under-sevens.” She ramped up the project to accommodate an audience of real babies.
“In working with ‘consulting babies’ in the audience, I learned what they like, what frightens them and how to work with their attention span. Another challenge has been getting the buy-in of the clinics and hospitals where the show was performed. Theatre for babies is brand new in this country. “No one knows what it is, yet. “Each play engages the babies on a sophisticated level. We cannot play down to them. We use our resources to awaken their stimuli. Observers emerge from this experience wordless. You can’t easily describe how the work engages the child.”
The plays are 25 minutes long. They don’t use language conventionally because the audience has not yet learnt to speak, and audience participation comes with the territory.
The genre began in London in 1978 and has proven to be of value for a child’s growing sense of self and his or her tools to fire the imagination and face the world. — Robyn Sassen
TIM CONIBEAR
SURFING is fun. And it’s also a way to build confidence, respect and self-awareness. This is the philosophy behind Waves for Change, a non-profit organisation in Cape Town that uses surfing to promote emotional and physical wellbeing among vulnerable youngsters. For several days each week, the beach at Muizenberg becomes a healing haven for more than 100 children sporting glistening wetsuits and winning grins.
Tim Conibear, 33, a surfer from Oxford in the UK , started the organisation in 2011 with the help of community members Apish Tshetsha, 26, and Bongani Ndlovu, 21, from Masiphumelele, Cape Town.
Conibear, who himself had experienced the positive powers of surfing after a traumatic car crash in his youth, had initially come to South Africa in 2007 to work at the Klein Constantia wine farm during the harvest, cleaning barrels. He started surfing with youngsters from Masiphumelele and said, “Basically, I saw a bunch of volatile young kids — there was violence, promiscuity, drug abuse, all stemming from tough backgrounds.” Research has shown that many young South Africans suffer from acute emotional and psychological stress, due to continued exposure to violence and poverty. Surfing, said Conibear, offers genuine therapeutic benefits and improves feelings of well-being. He put together a programme which offered regular surf lessons. The project grew to integrate trained healthcare professionals, who in turn have been training local community members. It has also expanded to include youth from Khayelitsha and Lavender Hill.
Now, 16 coaches work with around 250 children every week, in a holistic programme that includes surf lessons, home and parent visits, and counselling.
“We have plans for Durban in the near future,” said Conibear, who has now settled in South Africa.
The organisation is supported by the Laureus Foundation which assists sporting charities, and has received global recognition and won several awards this year, including the Beyond Sport Award for Best Sport and Health Programme, and the Jack Cheetham Memorial Award for outstanding development work in Cape Town. — Karen Rutter
WAYDE VAN NIEKERK
TO me he is the Bloemfontein Bullet. He calls himself the Wayde Dreamer.
To the athletics universe, he’s simply a world champion. A very fast, 400m world champion. In fact, the fastest African and fourth fastest man in the history of the event.
It is a crown befitting the 23year-old University of the Free State BA marketing student, a star status he claimed in sensational style when he blazed the trail at the IAAF World Championship in Beijing to win the 400m.
In a race which marked the first time three men had finished in under 44 seconds, the South African stormed to victory in 43.48 seconds.
His scintillating sprint in a super race — South Africa’s first sprint gold at a major championship in more than a century — sent the country into high octane.
Van Niekerk’s performance was a major highlight of the year in sports.
It was little wonder then that when the time came to honour the sporting heroes of 2015 last month, Van Niekerk bagged the biggest prizes at the South African Sports Awards: Sports Star of the Year and the People’s Choice.
The awards came with two Mercedes-Benz C-class luxury vehicles as well as a R1-million cheque, half of which goes to a charity of his choice.
It won’t be a surprise if he is the flag bearer of Team South Africa at the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics, where he will be one of the real deal medal hopefuls. — Bareng-Batho Kortjaas
KHAYELIHLE ‘DOM’ GUMEDE
IT was a welcome pinprick of light in an otherwise tough year for Johannesburg’s Market Theatre: the success of Khayelihle “Dom” Gumede’s Sophiatown-themed play Crepuscule, which played to packed houses in mid-2015.
This is a remarkable feat in a theatre climate where the success of a new drama is not assured. Nor are entertainment
seekers always willing to take a chance on a relative unknown.
But, in adapting Drum writer Can Themba’s autobiographical tale of doomed love across the colour line in 1950s South Africa, rising young actor, director and writer Gumede, 27, struck a chord.
“It was overwhelming to have a show so warmly received, and to see the appetite for the Sophiatown era and its cultural richness,” he said. “But even more fascinating was to see the multiracial, multicultural and multigenerational dialogue it was inspiring, between the 1950s and now.”
This Wits University drama graduate — who has pocketed a Theatre Arts Admin Collective’s emerging director bursary and the Sophie Mgcina prize for best emerging voice at the Naledi Theatre Awards — is among a generation of young pioneers who are developing a sophisticated new South African theatre language that blends style and substance.
They are taking up the struggle theatre baton and elevating it to its next level: crafting visually interesting, three-dimensional stories that allow “the personal to carry the political”.
In other words, the characters’ inner lives and struggles are the main focus, although inevitably influenced by the sociopolitical context. “We are reaching for the sweet spot . . . we want to find out how to speak to audiences who are coming to the theatre for the first time,” said Gumede.
He and 10 other young South African playwrights who took part in the London Royal Court Theatre’s recent writing residency have formed the PlayRiot collective as a playground for creating invigorating theatre. Next up for Gumede in 2016: a maskandi opera, a new musical and a political thriller about restorative justice. We haven’t seen the last of this thoughtful trailblazer. — Christina Kennedy
LEVY SEKGAPANE
GIVEN Levy Sekgapane’s staggering number of international check-ins on Facebook, you’d think he’s a jet-setting global superstar. He isn’t — yet. But this young tenor from Kroonstad is already setting the global opera scene alight with his soul-stirring voice.
A bachelor of music graduate of the University of Cape Town, Sekgapane, who turned 25 this week, is now based in Germany, where he is enrolled in the Semperoper Dresden’s young artist programme.
He made his professional debut last November as Prince Ramiro in Rossini’s La Cenerentola at the Theatre Chemnitz, followed by Wagner’s Parsifal at the same venue. In July, he won the Belvedere International Singing Competition for young opera singers.
In August, he was crowned the winner (in the Western art music category) of the Southern African Music Rights Organisation overseas scholarships competition, pocketing a R170 000 study grant. Soon after that, he won the Montserrat Caballé International Singing Competition, hosted by the revered Spanish soprano, with prize money of à12 000 (about R195 000).
Sekgapane is now donning an Elvis wig as Count Almaviva in the Theatre Krefeld und Mönchengladbach’s innovative production of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville).
Shirley Apthorp, a critic for the Financial Times, wrote: “The evening draws much of its sparkle from Sekgapane . . . [with] an ability not only to deliver both fiendish coloratura and stratospheric high notes flawlessly but also to give every appearance of enjoying himself in the process. As the evening progresses, this becomes a sock-it-to-them glee that sends the audience wild. Add solid musical intelligence and diction rich in communicative nuance, and you have the charisma of a star in the making.”
His rich tenor voice has already thrilled the likes of President Barack Obama and Commonwealth Games audiences in Glasgow. He is juggling La Cenerentola in Chemnitz with Barber in Krefeld, and is preparing for the Rossini festival in Pesaro, Italy, next year, where he will be performing Il Turco in Italia.
Sekgapane was a small-town boy who dreamed big: “I always look back to where I come from and compare with where I am today — and that gives me humility.” — Christina Kennedy
❛ We want to find out how to speak to audiences who are coming to the theatre for the first time