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Corruption is Literally Leaving South Africa Without Any Lights

National electricity provider, Eskom, has now implemented stage 4 load-shedding in the country.

The struggling state-owned enterprise (SOE), Eskom, which is supposed to provide electricity to the entire country, has now implemented stage 4 load-shedding. This means that 10 percent of its generating capacity will be halted, leaving millions of South Africans in darkness.


For years, it has been no secret that SOEs are among the most ill-managed and dysfunctional organisations there are. From Prasa which is in charge of railways, SARS which collects taxes to our national airline, South African Airways (SAA), they have all been run into the ground. Eskom is not an outlier in the SOEs that have and continue to require billions of rands in bailouts from the government owing to maladministration and rampant corruption.

Eskom has seen numerous CEOs come and go in attempts to stop the corruption but all have failed. The government has shown poor political will in reigning in rogue employees from plundering the SOE's funds year after year. As a result, South Africans have had to bear the brunt of increasing electricity tariffs that continuously leave the poor and working class in even worse-off conditions than they already are. It's latest proposed tariff hike has been a crippling 15 percent.

The corruption at Eskom has been so rife that it has not been able to conduct simple maintenance of several coal-fired power stations across the country. As there are fewer and fewer power stations to provide electricity, the frequency of load-shedding increases. In what was stage 2 load-shedding a few days ago, today it has jumped to stage 4 load-shedding.

This announcement comes on the 29th anniversary of the late Nelson Mandela having been released from prison after close to three decades of imprisonment. Four years later, South Africa had it's first democratic elections. And so it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of South Africans who were told that their freedom had finally been won.

In his State of the Nation Address (SONA) a few days ago, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that Eskom would be unbundled into three separate entities so as to better manage it. But time will tell whether this will fix the current situation and get rid of the festering rot. For now, South Africans will become accustomed to the dark.

Infuriated South Africans on social media shared the following.










Photo by Alet Pretorius/Gallo Images via Getty Images

5 Designers to Watch at South African Fashion Week SS23

Here are five designers to watch at South African Fashion Week SS23.

From April 20 to 23, South African Fashion Week will hit Johannesburg for its spring summer 2023 showcase. More than fulfilling the need of a fashion show, SAFW has accelerated the growth of South Africa’s fashion scene, by creating avenues to discover local talents, promoting local craftsmanship, boosting the retail economy, and triggering conversations like sustainability. SAFW is also responsible for launching the labels of prominent homegrown designers like Rich Mnisi, Thebe Magugu, Lukhanyo Mdingi, Reggi Xaba, and Sindiso Khumalo.

As one of Africa’s leading fashion event, SAFW now enters its 26th year. And over three days, it will host 11 shows and showcase 39 collections at Mall of Africa, its official venue partner. The SS23 show will see it join forces with contingents from Mozambique (Chibai, Mabenna, and Cuccla). It’s a first time collaboration, syncing Mozambique Fashion Week with South Africa’s, which will close out the show.

Going strong is SAFW’s New Talent Search, a local-run competition to discover fresh and under-the-radar talents. Returning as a headline sponsor of this segment is fashion retailer Mr Price. From Mmathoo Silika to Sifiso Kunene to Kuhle Phumzile Zondo, this year’s entrants will open proceedings at SAFW and may the best talent win. On the other hand, there are other designers we have on our radar. Not only have they been impressive in the past, we just love the mystery of not knowing what to expect.

Here are five designers to watch at South African Fashion Week SS23.

Thando Ntuli (Munkus)

After winning SAFW’s talent search competition in 2022, Thando Ntuli became a national buzz. Her womenswear brand, Munkus, was created in 2019 and has been a time capsule of '80s and '90s Soweto style influences. From its playful, whimsical silhouettes to bold and daring prints, the brand is bridging wardrobes across generations of women.

Further, a sustainability narrative has governed Ntuli’s approach to making garments. Involving technical details that imbue sentimentality, the brand prides itself on quality over quantity. In doing so, the garment’s shelf life can be extended enough to be passed down. Munkus has also adopted layering cues, allowing customers to style with other pieces. At SAFW SS23, the designer is slated to appear on day one, debuting the brands’s Isikhathi/Time SS23 collection.

Fikile Sokhulu

A 2021 WWD profile had spotlighted Fikile Sokhulu as a designer to watch. Indeed, the Durban-based designer finished as a finalist at the 2018 SAFW talent search contest. Launched in 2018, Sokhulu’s eponymous brand was among the selected few for the Fashion Bridges project in 2021. A collaboration between South Africa and Italy, the cultural exchange initiative saw Sokhulu unveil a new collection during Milan Fashion Week.

The brand’s romantic aesthetic (ruffles, frills, pleats, ruching) and feminine tailoring tap into soft sensibilities. When the brand started out, it had heavily featured white, which can still be found in recent collections.

Sipho Mbuto

Durban-based Sipho Mbuto created his self-named, androgynous brand in 2018. A finalist at the 2021 SAFW New Talent Search, Mbutho also participated in the Fashion Bridges project. And this is only a few of the recognitions he has. The brand’s aesthetic tows the line between understated and dramatic, mix matching and clean monochromatic lines.

In Mbuto’s world, he has been sustaining a dialogue around the gender question of clothes, prioritizing self-expression, functionality, movement, and durability. At SAFW 2021, he showcased a collection made out of upcycled denim, second hand jeans sourced from street markets and then deconstructed. At the core of the brand are zero-waste measures informing its production method.

Ntando Ngwenya (Ntando XV)

Photo by Oupa Bopape/Gallo Images via Getty Images

Ntando Ngwenya isn’t a new name in South African fashion. A self-taught designer, he showcased his debut capsule collection in 2015 at the Johannesburg Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. In 2017, he became the winner of David Tlale’s The Intern, a South African reality show with contestants competing to be Tlale’s next assistant designer.

In the years that have followed, Ngwenye has found a niche in menswear with Ntando XV, created in 2015. The experimental label has been inclusive nonetheless, combining wardrobe essentials with postmodern techniques. A visual signature is the contrasting white piping that wreathe around garments. In the SS23 SAFW designer lineup, Ngwenya showcases on the last day, and we look forward to it.

Gugu Peteni (Gugu by Gugu)

A finalist in the 2020 and 2022 SAFW’s Scouting Menswear competition, Gugu Peteni established Gugu by Gugu in 2019 as a streetwear label. Her experience designing for Mohair South Africa for three years helped the designer to navigate Gugu by Gugu in the streetwear market. It also explains her love for mohair, and how the material has crept into her own label.
From colorful knits, denim, velvet dungarees, mohair coats, jumpers to bomber jackets, embossed logos and hand-painted essentials, Peteni has created a wide range of streetwear pieces. For SAFW’s AW22 showcase, she collaborated with South African artist Moagi Letseki to render paintwork on some offerings. It was also a collection that used sustainable techniques and materials used in Peteni’s home. Gugu by Gugu will showcase on April 22, the last day of SAFW.



Film
Photo courtesy of Prime Video.

The 10 Best Horror Movies to Stream in South Africa

It doesn’t take much to make a good horror film – often the most thrilling of scares come from the simplest of ideas. Here are our picks for 10 of the best horror movies to stream in South Africa.

As far as African cinema is concerned, no one does horror quite like the South Africans. OkayAfrica crawled through the major streaming platforms to bring you a list of some of the finest horror titles, plus where to watch them.

From survivalist screamers to ecological horrors, these titles are guaranteed to scare your socks off.

'African Folktales Reimagined' (2023)

Netflix partners with UNESCO to present a potentially exciting initiative, a lore anthology series from six different African countries (Kenya, Mauritania, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda), each one reinventing a familiar folktale through the filmmaker’s unique lens. Covering a range of genres from romance to horror, the project is Netflix’s attempt to support the next generation of storytellers, arming them with resources including mentorship and a healthy budget of $90,000 following a competitive process. Dive in and get your scare on.

Where to stream: Netflix

'Beast' (2022)

Idris Elba versus a rampaging CGI lion in a duel to the death – what’s not to love? Baltasar Kormákur's high-concept thriller is a classic man vs. nature survival fable that delivers exactly what it promises, nothing more or less. Shot in the provinces of Limpopo, Northern Cape and the city of Cape Town, Beast also features South African star Sharlto Copley in a supporting role. Elba plays Nate Samuels, a widowed surgeon who meets his worst nightmare — a rogue man-killing lion — when he visits a game reserve with his family.

Where to stream: Prime Video

'The Domestic' (2022)

Bradley Katzen’s single-location chiller stars Thuli Thabethe and Tumisho Masha as an upper-class couple who hire the daughter of their recently deceased housekeeper as their new help. Things soon take a macabre turn when the new help (played by Amanda Du-Pont) seemingly makes it her personal mission to destroy them from within. The Domestic is a suburban horror caper that explores class differences as well as the continuum that links the living with the ancestral plane.

Where to stream: Prime Video

'Fried Barry' (2020)

Barry (Gary Green) is a loser; a heroin addict who has stretched his long-suffering family to their breaking point. Following yet another bender, Barry is abducted by an alien, and he surrenders his body to the visitor who then goes on a joyride through Cape Town, discovering the messy and wonderful world of humankind. Ryan Kruger’s madcap adventure, which has amassed somewhat of a cult following, employs drugs, sex, and violence to comment on human follies and dissatisfactions.

Where to stream: Shudder, Showmax

'Gaia' (2021)

A trippy ecological cautionary tale, Gaia broke through at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in 2021. Directed by Jaco Bouwer, Gaia tracks an injured forest ranger, Gabi (Monique Rockman) who, on a routine mission, is rescued by two off-the-grid survivalists. What starts out as a timely rescue soon grows into a hellish nightmare for Marie as she observes a cultish devotion to the forest among her hosts. Meanwhile, the cabin is also being attacked by a strange presence. Cue the screams.

Where to stream: Showmax, Hulu

'Glasshouse' (2021)

Kelsey Egan’s dystopian debut was a big winner at the South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTAs) following its premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival in 2021. As a dementia-like toxin that has the effect of wiping people's memories spreads, a family of five isolates itself from this devastating pandemic in a dreamy greenhouse. Their ritualistic idyll is endangered when one of the daughters invites a wounded stranger into this sanctuary. Glasshouse recalls Sophia Coppola’s The Beguiled, only with more chills.

Where to stream: Showmax

'His House' (2020)

Written and directed by Remi Weekes, this elegant and eloquent debut which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival stars British actors of Nigerian descent, Wunmi Mosaku and Sope Dirisu as a refugee couple from South Sudan, struggling to adjust to their new life in an English town that appears to have evil lurking beneath the surface. His House is a terrifying look at the refugee experience, situating the indignities and the abuse within the traditional structure of a haunted house horror.

Where to watch: Netflix

'Nanny' (2022)

Sierra Leonean American filmmaker Nikyatu Jusu made her feature debut with Nanny, a visually arresting horror fable about an undocumented Senegalese woman (a convincing Anna Diop), working as a domestic help to a wealthy couple in New York City. Nanny emerged the big winner at Sundance, winning the U.S. Dramatic Competition. The film is a visual delight, with Jusu’s singular vision emerging through the crisp photography and engagement with West African folklore.

Where to stream: Prime Video

'Prey' (2007)

Another (wo)man versus wildlife adventure, Prey directed by the veteran maestro Darrell Roodt (Yesterday, Sarafina!) stars Bridget Moynahan as an American woman trapped by a pack of hungry lions inside a car alongside her two stepchildren, while holidaying at a South African game reserve. The film was inspired by the true story of the Tsavo Man-Eaters during the colonial era, and was filmed on location in Gauteng and Limpopo.

Where to watch: YouTube

'Trees of Peace' (2021)

Trees of Peace contends with a different kind of horror, a not-so-distant example of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. Based on true events, writer-director Alanna Brown makes a fictional account of three Rwandan women and an American who hideout in a tiny underground crawlspace during the 1994 genocide that pitted Hutu and Tutsi sects against one another, leading to the massacre of over 1 million people. Brown’s filmmaking is quite heavy handed but look beyond her reliance on closeups and cliches, and you might find something inspiring about Rwanda’s reconciliation efforts led by women.

Where to watch: Netflix

Music

Mr Eazi Launches New Group ChopLife Soundsystem

Listen to the new 14-song album Chop Life, Vol. 1 Mzansi Chronicles.

Mr Eazi, the acclaimed music superstar, business visionary, and globe-trotter, extends a heartfelt invitation to music enthusiasts to embark on a sonic journey to South Africa with the release of Chop Life, Vol. 1: Mzansi Chronicles (Choplife Limited/emPawa Africa), the inaugural offering from his newly-formed pan-African music collective, ChopLife Soundsystem.

Crafted amidst the vibrant locales of Cape Town and Johannesburg, this 14-track album serves as an exuberant tribute to amapiano, the electrifying dance music genre that has burst forth from South Africa and garnered international recognition. Joining forces with an excellent lineup of South African music luminaries such as Moonchild Sanelly, Focalistic, Nkosazana Daughter, Ami Faku, and Major League Djz, alongside a host of emerging talents, Mr Eazi presents his interpretation of the scene's captivating elements.

Mzansi Chronicles is an ode to the amapiano sound that has been the soundtrack to my parties and me going to clubs,” Mr Eazi said of the project. “It’s me working with some of my favorite artists and capturing my interpretation of elements I love from the scene.”

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Film
Photo courtesy Directors’ Fortnight.

Rosine Mbakam on the Power of Family and Returning Home in Filmmaking

The Cameroonian filmmaker uses her documentary skills to create her first fictional feature, Mambar Pierrette, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this week.

After a critically lauded career as a documentary filmmaker, writer/director Rosine Mbakam arrives at the Cannes Film Festival in the Directors’ Fortnight program with her first narrative feature: Mambar Pierrette. The film sees Mbakam returning to her homeland of Cameroon to tell the story of a dressmaker — Pierrette (Pierrette Aboheu Njeuthat) — as she deals with mounting financial calamities that threaten her children’s school year and the health of her business.

It’s a conceit that feels familiar to Vittorio De Sica’s film, but with a different, uniquely African touch. While Mbakam has switched mediums for this film, the story, and its translation is similar to the director’s previous films, such as Chez Jolie Coiffure, Delphin’s Prayer, and The Two Faces of a Bamileke Woman in their focus on Black women who use their respective craft to cope with the hurdles they encounter. For Mambar Pierrette, Mbakam retools these familiar themes for Cameroon. The result indicates a change of direction for the filmmaker with regard to mood and tone, switching from ruminative to joyous, from staid to colorful and vibrant. Because all around Pierrette is life: It’s her children, it’s her village; it’s her vivid customers and the lively dresses she designs.

With Mambar Pierrette, Mbakam offers the unique cultural lens she’s spent nearly a decade crafting to give viewers a vision of radical empathy and a change in perspective. After having spent several years working in television, she attended film school in Belgium, where she is now based, before going on to create her first trio of feature-length documentaries that shared stories of Cameroonian women.

She talks to OkayAfrica about wanting to show a different Africa, making a film with her family, and subverting the traditions of Western filmmaking.

The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve spent your career doing documentaries, but this is your first fictional film. Why did you feel you needed to switch for this particular story?

Fictional features were my first desire. I discovered documentaries when I was in film school. But my desire when I wanted to do cinema was to do features because it was what I was seeing on television in Cameroon. It was not documentaries. When I was in film school I really didn't know what kind of fiction I wanted to do. And when I discovered the documentary [form], it gave me a lot of freedom to be myself, to really experience what I wanted to, because I didn't want an intermediary between me and the people that I wanted to film.

Because of all the legacy of colonialism — I was in Belgium — I didn't want to use a white person or a person that didn't know what I wanted to question. But the documentary really helped me to deconstruct my gaze, and to just find my way and really see what kind of fiction I could do. Because the fiction that I learned in film school was Western fiction, and it was difficult for me to apply it in my reality in Cameroon. I'm really happy to come to my first desire of cinema, of doing fiction and really the fiction that I want to do with all the knowledge that I had from documentaries.

An image of the filmmaker, Rosine Mabakam, holding a microphone.Rosine Mabakam speaks at the premiere of her film in the Directors’ Fortnight program at the Cannes Film Festival.Photo courtesy Directors’ Fortnight / Delphine Pincet.

Your previous films are set in Belgium, but for this one you returned to Cameroon. Why did it make sense to return now?

Because when I was in Belgium I was there in the context of the legacy of colonialism. And I was confronting it every day. I wanted to really find my position there because I chose to live there, even though my inspiration was Cameroon. I wanted to deconstruct that and find my way because I knew that when I was deconstructing it that it would help me to see my reality differently. Because when I was in Cameroon, I was colonized. I didn't know I was reproducing all the things that I was seeing from the films I was watching in Cameroon. I wanted to discover how the rest of the world saw people like me in Belgium. It was important for me to deconstruct that first and to go back to Cameroon afterwards because I didn't want to reproduce the power of Western cinema on people that I wanted to film in Cameroon.

I love that you see it as a deconstruction of the image white people have of people from Cameroon or really any African country. You always get to the inner lives of the people you capture by looking at their craft. With Chez Jolie Coiffure, for instance, you focus on hairdressers. What draws you to a person's relationship with their craft, and why did you choose a dressmaker for this film?

In Cameroon, in my culture, all of those small spaces are where people come and drop stories and drop pain and also reconstruct their mental health. And I want to underline those spaces that sometimes people neglect because for them, maybe, it's not important. For me, for Chez Jolie Coiffure, with the hairdressers, it's the same thing. It's the space where women, and some men, come to just drop something and or take something.

I want to make people understand that sometimes it's not big spaces or important spaces that make us feel confident or that make us feel fine. I grew up in those smaller spaces. My mother was a dressmaker and my grand sister was her hairdresser. I really know those spaces and I know how it's built my imagery for stories of strong women. I wanted to show that.

I love the designs of the dresses; they’re so vibrant and vivid. What do they represent to you and to the character of Peirrette?

It's the dresses and how people can rebuild themselves through them. It's the space where your life can change with the world, with solidarity and also with love that people have brought to you through those spaces. You are surrounded not only by one woman, but by all these people who are coming. And yes, I really like fashion and also the colors.

In Cameroon, we don't have enough confidence in what we have. Even in fashion, we’re always looking at the West and how the West dresses without taking into account what we have. I wanted to show that it's beautiful and our story is important by just talking to ordinary people to show that even if we are ordinary, we have something important to say.


A still from the film of a group of women outside a rural dress shop.Rosine Mbakam’s first narrative feature is set in Cameroon.Photo courtesy Directors’ Fortnight.

The actress who plays Pierrette is your first cousin, correct? And it’s her first time acting?

It's not only my cousin. All of the cast are members of my family except for two people. But the rest are my mother, my aunts, my cousins, my sisters, my grand sisters.

Did you find it challenging directing people who you're not only related to but are in a situation where they’ve probably never acted before?

It's more challenging. There is a power in cinema and we know how that power has been used to stereotype Africans. I know the consequences of that power. And even more so with my family. Because they didn't really don't know what is the cinema, and how that power can be destructive. It's easy to take that power and to make them do what I want. It's important for me to be more vigilant and to give them the space to express themselves. That was really challenging because I had to be more careful about that.

With all of the travesties that befall Pierrette, a woman on an economic edge, I was really reminded of Vittorio De Sica’s films like Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D. And yet, you don’t remain on a track toward heartbreak like those films do. It’s almost like a De Sica film would be impossible to pull off because the idea of community is so present here?

I didn't feel it was possible to end like that because, usually, it doesn’t end like that in my family. With every problem you have people going together to resolve something, to bring joy, even if there is something very painful. For me, it was a perspective that I wanted to give to that story. And I wanted to give the perspective of that power that I can see in Pierrette and all of the members of my family. I wanted to show that power is higher than the difficulty. That was the intention behind that ending with the mannequin, and of all the neocolonialism that exists. Our power can overtake those problems.

A still from the film, 'Mambar Pierrette,' of a woman walking next to a girl carrying a bucket on her head.In ‘Mambar Pierrette,’ Rosine Mbakam enlisted family members for the film.Photo courtesy Directors’ Fortnight.

Her shop is also very small, yet open. Whenever Pierrette is making dresses, in the background you can see the street and you can see the life of her neighborhood. Could you talk a bit about why you framed her in that way as opposed, to say, close-ups?

If you see my film Chez Jolie Coiffure, you’ll notice it's really close. But if I close the perspective, here, it's not how we live in Cameroon. There is always a door open somewhere or someone can open the door to give you something, to give you help, to give a testimony. But in Chez Jolie Coiffure, in the West, Black people are closed into their space. In Cameroon it's different. There is always a perspective, there is always a solution. And I wanted to show that, to open that place, even if it's small. In Chez Jolie Coiffure, in the salon there is no door open anywhere. It's really close. It's like a prison. It's really close. In this film, it’s different. You can see the life of the earth coming, you can see light coming.

What do you hope people take away from this film when they’re finished?

I hope people will see another Africa and another way of filming Africa, another way to imagine Africa, and how we can look at Africa differently. I don't think we usually see that perspective, to be in the position of someone in Africa. I want people to be with these people and to help them understand what they want to say. I hope that people will watch the film and will remember the images and the words of this Black woman.

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