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Still taken from livestream on YouTube.

Fists Fly During Chaotic Pan-African Parliament Session

During a recent sitting of the Pan-African Parliament, scuffles erupted between members of parliament over the election of new leadership.

This past Monday, a session of the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) devolved into utter chaos as scuffles erupted between members of parliament (MPs). Disputes over how the leadership of the PAP was going to be elected reportedly resulted in the heated encounter. Chief Whip for the African National Congress (ANC), Pemmy Majodina, was allegedly assaulted by an MP from Senegal while attempting to intervene between him and another MP from Zimbabwe.

READ: France Offers Tepid 'Apology' to Rwanda During Kigali Genocide Memorial Speech

Majodina was initially set to press charges of assault against the Senegalese MP, however, she has since accepted his apology instead saying, "He was really apologetic and very sorry, and I told him this [would be] a serious case of gender-based violence in SA. You don't beat up a woman." Majodina went on to add that, "He has apologised and I have no qualms in accepting an apology, because this was a hot fight and it might happen that I was caught up in that crossfire."

According to News24, the primary conflict was between leaders from the Southern African and West African regions. The latter were in favour of electing a new president for the PAP while the former proposed a rotation policy instead. Speaking at an earlier session, acting President of the PAP, Chief Fortune Charumbira, reportedly said that the African Union (AU) was in favour of the rotation policy.

This latest incident is not the first unfortunately. Just last week, there was a fallout during the PAP which saw Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader, Julius Malema, threatening another MP.

The PAP is an arm of the AU and was established in 2004. The PAP serves as a platform to for all African people to have the opportunity to engage in decision-making as it pertains to the challenges facing the continent. Read more about it here.

Watch the PAP session below:

Election of members of the Bureau of the Pan-African Parliament, 31 May 2021www.youtube.com

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New Research Out of South Africa Brings Us Closer To Understanding Ancient Human Species

The remains left by “Homo Naledi” informs us of their use of burial grounds, tribal paintings, and more.

South African researchers continue their journey to discover the weird and wonderful ways human beings have developed over the last hundred thousand years. Their latest achievement is in the improved understanding of how the hominin “Homo Naledi” existed, thought, and behaved. Scientists have discovered that the ancient human species partook in burial practices, and created rock paintings and carvings -- acts previously believed to be above their level of intelligence.

“It’s a remarkable thing. My mind is blown,” said famed American-South African anthropologist Lee Berger and his team, who unearthed the artifacts and published the latest findings. Homo Naledi was first discovered in 2013, but our understanding of their behaviors has only scratched the surface. The new discoveries have shown evidence of behaviors humans only exhibited 100,000 years later, and the evidence left behind leads us to believe that they were incredibly intelligent - a major blimp to the idea that bigger brains make for smarter brains.

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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.



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Photo by Burak Cingi/Redferns.

Three Takeaways From Burna Boy’s 'Love, Damini' Tour Wardrobe So Far

Wearing back-to-back Robert Wun from Paris La Dèfense to the London Stadium, the Afrofusion superstar has never looked this stylish.

The new leg of Burna Boy’s Love, Damini stadium tour is in full throttle. Done with arena spaces — he’s conquered New York’s Madison Square Garden, London’s O2 Arena, and Atlanta’s State Farm Arena with sold-out shows — the Nigerian heavyweight act is now scaling up tour venues to fit his image. Not surprising, then, to see some thoughtfulness in his outfit choices. Weeks after making his Met Gala debut wearing the new Burberry tartan, he thrilled fans in Paris in the first stop of his Love, Damini tour.

He sold out the 40-000 capacity Paris La Défense venue. Strikingly, he wore custom Robert Wun for a better part of his performance, a black, pleated matching set plucked from Wun’s SS23 “birding” collection. Over the weekend headlining at the London Stadium, home ground of Premier League club, West Ham United, Burna Boy turned to Robert Wun once more.

If he looked like a raven in Paris, he looked like a kingfisher in London. In crisp, autumnal orange, the bursting flare of pants and sleeves, and the glide of the top overlay as he moved about on stage, isn’t only hitting a sartorial tone with high fashion but might suggest a new metaphorical shift in how Burna Boy sees himself.

He’s become the first African to sell out London’s 80,000-capacity stadium, and with more stops in the Netherlands (June 17), Portugal (June 28), Denmark (June 29) and the US (July 8), here are three takeaways from his tour looks so far.

The Robert Wun-Afrobeats star relationship

Before Burna Boy donned his first Robert Wun ensemble in Paris, the London-based Hong Kong designer had Tems as a celebrity client, whom he had put in two custom creations. The first time at her 2022 London show at Koko, wearing a teal, halter neck set with billowing pleats. The second time was at the 2023 Met Gala, her showstopping feather couture in monochrome.

Both Burna Boy and Tems owe their stylists — Romani Ogulu and Dunsin Wright respectively — for tapping their celebrity into the world of designers like Wun. With the crossover of Afrobeats into global markets, its stars are now thrust into new worlds of fans, media, and public engagements. Wun is filling an opportunity gap where Afrobeats A-listers are making fashion statements on bigger stages. And we have a feeling this is a symbiotic relationship that will spring more surprises.

Breaking the Afrobeats male wardrobe ceiling

Due to gendered notions ingrained in music artistry, there are often low expectations for male artists regarding wardrobe and style choices when performing live. In Nigeria, where Afrobeats is situated as a nerve center, male artists arrive at their shows or concerts wearing streetwear or wardrobe basics. In some cases, they take off their tops in the throes of excitement or passion. This isn’t the case with female Afrobeat acts.

Asake has been of the male artists who have pushed the envelope, causing a stir online when he wore a black denim skirt repurposed as a top to one of his shows. While Burna Boy has performed topless (one time he stripped to his underwear in Nigeria), his Love, Damini tour outfits show male artists can straddle the line between stage performance and stylish wardrobe.

A new Burna Boy iconography

Robert Wun’s avian-inspired garments honor his late grandmother, who liked the swallow bird. But seen on Burna Boy, they take a different meaning. His crossover stardom was accompanied by a nonstop supply of confidence on his part. Some might argue that it’s cockiness, so much so that he earned his name as the “African Giant” after the 2019 Coachella fiasco.

As time went on, he likened himself to the fearlessness of a gorilla, meshing with his persona in a way that has produced an emoji, merchandise, and more. His ongoing tour staged in stadiums demonstrates that he’s in a gigantic world of his own. Robert Wun’s avian motif in his designs seemingly codes for Burna Boy’s appetite for more space to dominate, more records to be broken. Even if it means launching himself into the sky like a bird.

Interview
Image courtesy of the artist.

Meet Andre Vibez, the Producer Behind Rema's 'Calm Down'

We caught up with the Nigerian producer who’s been cranking out record-breaking hits on the story behind Rema’s "Calm Down" and more.

Before "Calm Down" was gifted to the world, producer Andre Vibez and Remahad already forged a connection. This was during Rema’s early years in Benin City as a teenager and a budding artist, part of the musical duo RNA. Andre Vibez was well-known in the city for his grasp with unproven talents and his enviable heritage as the son of Sir Victor Uwaifo, a Nigerian music legend.

But Andre, who journeyed into the music world first as a rapper before being nudged by his Dad to master music production, sought for more outside Benin. Thus, a move to Lagos, the nation’s creative hotspot, surfaced. While that phase came with a state of lull, news of Rema being unveiled in 2019 ignited a sense of hunger in Andre Vibez to go harder at music production than ever before.

A meeting with Don Jazzy happened through his cousin in 2020. The partnership with Rema would be struck again and a year later, Andre Vibez would supply the sonic rudiments that morphed to become the most streamed Nigerian song in 2021, “Feeling” by LADIPOE. He and Rema would create “Calm Down” —the monstrous hit that has continued to shatter existing records—that same year, creating new landmarks and pumping in new opportunities both for the producer and the artist, who’s just finished touring India.

We spoke to Andre Vibez below.

You often add elements from other genres to your Afropop beats. What’s your creation process like?

It differs for everybody. But the thing I do is, when I make my beats, I have an artist or similar artists in mind. So if I’m making a certain beat, I can make it thinking Rema will be great on this, Ayra Starr will be great on this. I try to make it in a way that it’s so good that when I play it for that particular artist, they can instantly connect to it.

Another secret is leaving a lot of room on my beats when I start making them so when any of the artists jump on it, I can go back and add other elements or melodies to it. So it all complements what the artist did on that record. There were some beat elements on Mavins' "Won Da Mo" and Crayon’s "Too Correct" that were added after the artist had recorded so it gave me room to experiment and be creative.

Andre VibezAndre VibezPhoto courtesy of the artist.

Your dad Sir Victor Uwaifo was a legend, did he influence your choice to become a music producer?

Yes. Getting into production was quite easy for me. Considering the fact that I grew up in music, my father, the late Sir Victor Uwaifo was like one of the biggest musicians out of Nigeria and Africa in his prime. I just grew up listening to his music, watching him perform, watching him record, rehearse, cut records. I took all of that in but I didn’t realize I was going to do music until I became a teenager.

My dad’s influence is so great on me that if you listen to the beats I make, you’ll hear that there are elements of different genres. That's what my dad created. Also, he was very experimental. My dad wasn’t exactly highlife, he made a highlife hit and people tagged him highlife. And when you hear the instrumentation in his beats—the percussion, the orchestral sounds, horns and the jazz melodies... imagine growing up, listening to that kind of music every day, it’d definitely have a big impact on you.

You produced "Dirty" and "Calm Down" off Rema's Rave and Roses album. How did that connection with Rema begin?

Rema and I go way back to 2014, when I first met him. I mean Rema is Rema. But Rema is like my younger brother. Because when I met him, obviously he was really young, he was 13 or 14 when I first met him, I was the one who made his first record when he was in a group (RNA).

I made about three other records for them. Fast forward to when he was unveiled by Mavin. To be honest, Rema is one of the people who motivated me to get back to doing music production. Because I remember I was in SoundCity at the time. When I saw that, it just sparked something inside of me. It felt like, I came here, to Lagos for something and I’m seeing someone that I know, we have some history together. And he’s here at this level, I can do this as well. So that was what sparked that idea of me just quitting my job and getting back to this.

Once I got into Mavin, Rema and I started working. When he had the time, we would record and the synergy started to come back. I started to understand him and he understood my stuff. Rema is someone who knows exactly what he wants. And once you understand him, then it makes it easy for a relationship to be formed.

So how was "Calm Down" made?

After we recorded "Calm Down," we knew it was a special song. I just didn’t know how big it was going to be. I think it was during the day we recorded the song. So Rema came to the studio, this was sometime in 2021, and I played him a couple of beats. The "Calm Down" beat must have been the third beat I played him that day. As soon as he heard it, he was like I should keep that. I played him another one and he was like let’s go back to the previous one, which is the beat for "Calm Down."

He just told me to keep playing it and he started coming up with the lyrics, the melodies. He came up with the vocal melodies first. And then we started putting in the words and recorded it. After we were done, we listened to it and we knew this song was special.

"Won Da Mo" became a popular hit in December and although produced by you, it spelled out your versatility. How do you infuse elements from other genres into the Afropop records you make?

I mean we can make rock music or metal music in Nigeria. So if you’re going to infuse any of that you have to balance it out with other things.Every Afrobeats song that you hear today regardless of the melody or the rhythm, it's the drums that drive Afrobeats. Because for African music, before we started making contemporary African songs or like what we make today, if you go back in time before we got civilized, you’ll notice that literally every culture in Africa plays drums. They play heavy drums, the percussions, congas and shakers. So African music first of all is drums. And what Afrobeats is using to dominate is firstly the drums and the addition of nice melodies which you can borrow from anywhere else and add to the drums.

How did that happen for "Won Da Mo"?

For "Won Da Mo" we were going for something really fast because it is supposed to feel like it’s an action movie. That was the idea. The idea wasn’t coming from me though. Rema was definitely a heavy part of that process. In fact, the main melody was Rema. That “Tan Dan Tan Dan Tan Dan” you hear at the beginning, Rema is the one who wanted that. Then I started playing the drums, adding like all the other elements, getting a guitarist to come to the studio to play some melodies too, directing him on what to play.

Once I realized that it was a song every artist in Mavin was going to be on, I had to find pockets for each artist to come in which was very difficult because you have eight artists. How do you want to fit eight artists into a song that’s not so long? The most difficult part was the transition from one artist to the next artist. I had to make it work in a seamless format. If you notice, for every time the next person comes in, there’s something that leads into that person’s part.

So those sounds that I added, those things I added to make the record what it is, the whole rock sounds, R&B feel, is just an approach I like. For me, it’s something that makes me stand out. And for you to be recognized, for you to stand out, you need to be able to do something that’s different from what other people are doing.

You also produced Ayra Starr’s "Rush," her biggest record yet which has amassed over 100 million Spotify streams and just went Gold in France. How did that happen?

I just did my own bit. I had made the beat a while back, maybe April last year. So I worked with another producer, Hopp, from the U.S. who’s on the production credits. After we dropped "Calm Down," I had a lot of international producers reaching out, wanting to send samples. So this guy, Hoops sent me samples and loops. I heard one particular loop, loved it instantly and wanted to create around it and then I just worked it my own way. You know, added other things and gave it that Afropop feel.

I then shared it with Mbryo, who co-wrote the song with Ayra Starr. That’s it. I wasn’t even present when it was recorded. I recorded Mbryo but when Ayra recorded I wasn’t there. I just heard the record when she had done it and sent it to me. I was like cool, I love it. And after, I added some other elements to it. There was this particular bassline I included and some little strings and transition sounds I added here and there.

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