What does the latest Grammy award mean to you?
It means so much. The American music industry is the biggest and most important in the world. For them to vote our album Shaka Zulu Revisited the Best World Music Album of 2017, making it our fifth Grammy award, says to us that we&#8217;re still doing it right. We&#8217;re still at the top of what we do. Sometimes people ask if winning another Grammy is boring. What? Our group has been doing what we do for over 50 years. So many groups come and go, never to be heard from again. We don&#8217;t want to be that type of group. We plan to be around for decades more.
How do you continue to produce timeless music?
The first thing is to love what you do. We have never lost the love of what we sing. Then, we know it needs to be special. We have this opportunity to share our singing with the world. We must make the recordings important and beautiful. We know we represent our country of South Africa. Every album is like the Olympics for us. We want to make our country proud.
What is the message behind your music? 
Peace, love and harmony. Our message has never changed. We want to bring people together through music. We remember that 20 years ago we were asked to perform in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the first time. That place was still having terrible problems. We thought ‘hey, our country had terrible problems but we changed. We started to respect each other and work together. Sure, it&#8217;s not perfect yet but it&#8217;s getting there’. We thought it was important to sing for people in Belfast to show them that peace and love were the true way to live together. This is what our music is for.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2015/03/01/glittering-prizes-soft-shuffle-feet/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Glittering Prizes To The Soft Shuffle Of Feet</a>
What was the reason behind honoring founding member Joseph Shabalala with Shaka Zulu Revisited?
Joseph taught us everything we know and Ladysmith Black Mambazo continues to be a success because of him. When he retired in 2014 he handed the group to his four sons, who originally joined the group in 1993. He said: &#8220;Boys, it is in your hands now. Take care of it and keep the respect.&#8221; Since 2017 was the 30th Anniversary of the great Shaka Zulu album, we wanted to re-record it to honor what Joseph has accomplished over the past 30 years&#8230; We care for each other and everyone&#8217;s family. We also fully believe in our mission of spreading peace and love through music.
You have maintained a unique African sound without compromise. How?
It&#8217;s who we are. It&#8217;s what Joseph Shabalala wanted his group to be. Staying true to culture; to history; to the origins of this music. We don&#8217;t change with the times, incorporate new styles. Sure, we like to work with other people and integrate our style of singing with others, however, when it comes to our music, we stay true to our roots.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2018/03/02/forbes-five-hip-hops-wealthiest-artists-2018/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Forbes Five: Hip-Hop&#8217;s Wealthiest Artists 2018</a>
What does the future look like for Ladysmith Black Mambazo?
More albums, more concert touring, more singing for peace, love and harmony and dare we say it, more Grammy awards!
Do you believe musicians can change the world with music?
Absolutely, music knows no boundaries, nor borders. Music brings people together. Music heals, music helps. Music flows through all societies and links us as one world.

7 Questions With… Ladysmith Black Mambazo

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<h4>Oliver Mtukudzi, Zimbabwe</h4>
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Oliver (Tuku) Mtukudzi has 65 albums under his belt — more than Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston.
It’s a remarkable career stretching back 41 years with songs that have enlivened parties all over the world.
“I never decided to be in the music industry. It was in me. My mother said ‘you are a good singer but you will never surpass your birth cry. Your birth cry was so beautiful’,” says Mtukudzi.
Born on September 22, 1952, in Highfield, a suburb in Harare, Zimbabwe; music runs in his blood. Both his parents were musicians. They met at a choir competition and sang a duet for life. It wasn’t long before he found his voice.
“I made a three-string guitar for myself from a tin around 1969 or early 1970s with the help of a [relative]. I was always playing it. My father didn’t like it and he broke the guitar.”
It wasn’t going to stop him. He made up songs as a child and sang everywhere he could.
“One day, I decided to perform for my parents standing on the table and they enjoyed it so much I didn’t get smacked for standing on the table. My mother noticed I had been standing on the table, two or three days later. That’s how good it was,” he chuckles.
Mtukudzi followed his passion.
His Tuku Music album, featuring the smash hit Todii went gold in its first month of release in Zimbabwe.
His skill is appreciated from Angola to Zimbabwe where he sells out concerts. He has millions of views on YouTube, has starred in movies and has over 30 awards.
“I don’t understand Shona but I sing along to his music and buy his albums&#8230;. His music makes me feel alive,” says South African fan Ntuthuko Buthelezi.
There is no stopping him making the world feel alive.
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<h4>Sarkodie, Ghana</h4>
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Born Michael Owusu Addo, Sarkodie has racked up millions of views on YouTube for his music with his debut album and first single, Baby, among the favorites.
He started out as an underground rapper which helped him cross paths with his former manager, Duncan Williams, who helped launch his career.
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Staying true to his identity, he is a big advocate of Azonto, a Ghanaian genre that is said to have been born out of Kpanlogo, a traditional dance.
Mewu, the first single off his fourth album, Mary, sold almost 4,000 copies on the first day of its release in Ghana’s capital Accra.
His hard work does not go unnoticed. Sarkodie was the first Ghanaian to win a BET award and has the most nominations. In 2015, he was ranked the 19th “Most Influential Ghanaian” by e-TV Ghana and in 2013 and 2015, he was ranked 8th on FORBES and Channel O’s list, “Top 10 Richest/Bankable African Artists.”
His ambitions don’t end here. In 2013, he launched his clothing line Sark by Yas, launched Obidi Chief Headphones which endorses, among others, Samsung and telecommunications company, Tigo.  In 2014, he also launched the music label SarkCess to empower other African artists.
2017 promises to be an even more exciting year for Sarkodie.
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<h4>Davido, Nigeria</h4>
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Davido has claimed a high status in just five years. The single Back When planted him firmly in the music business in 2011.
“It was people like [Nigerian music veterans] P-Square and D’Banj who made me believe that all this was possible,” he recalls.
Dami Duro, an unexpected hit, leaked online almost a year prior to its official release, became the crown jewel for his widely acclaimed 2012 debut album, Omo Baba Olowo.
He became the talk of the continent, securing not just the buy-in of African fans by the multitude, but also unanimous media acknowledgement, with accolades including two MTV Africa Music Awards and the BET Award for ‘Best African Act’. He has also worked with MTN, Guinness, Unilever and has millions of views on YouTube.
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“God has been very good and he continues to be. I am very fortunate,” he says.
Last year, he caught the eye of Sony and dissolved his lucrative co-owned HKN record label.
“I had four offers and I went with the one that was going to get my music out there. Right now everybody is trying to grab a piece of Africa. I went with the team that believed and was actually interested in my music.”
Just weeks shy of his 24th birthday, Davido gifted himself with the something money can’t buy. He released Son of Mercy, his very first internationally recorded, produced and released EP; collaborating with R&amp;B It-Girl Tinashe on How Long.
“I could have done an outright R&amp;B record but I decided to take what Tinashe does and fuse that with the culture back at home,” he says.
Davido has collaborated with Young Thug, Future, Trey Songz and Rae Sremmurd, and has toured the world.
No doubt, there is more to come.
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<h4>WizKid, Nigeria</h4>
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WizKid is arguably currently the uncrowned king of African music.
Grammy Award-winning artist, Alicia Keys and husband Swizz Beatz, danced to his songs Ojuelegba and Caro, with Keys posting a video on her Instagram account with the caption, “This song makes me happy” and Kylie Jenner posted a video of herself dancing to Wizkid’s music on snapchat.
The Nigerian singer and songwriter is spreading the Afrobeat sound to the world. He co-wrote and co-produced One Dance, Drake’s Hot 100-topping hit, has signed a multi-album worldwide deal with Sony Music International and is a Pepsi ambassador.
WizKid, born Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, made his mark with Holla At Your Boy in 2010 and has since won many awards, among them the BET Award for Best International Act Africa in 2012 and MTV Europe Music Award for Best Worldwide Act.
His rise to fame started with singing in church at the age of 11 before collaborating with M.I in the award-winning Fast Money Fast Cars in 2009.
He now hangs out with Akon and Chris Brown and has worked with Rihanna, French Montana, Trey Songz, Tinie Tempah and Wale.
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<h4>Jidenna, Nigerian-America</h4>
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By the age of 10, Jidenna Theodore Mobisson knew he wanted to do music but was afraid to tell his father who wanted him to be an engineer. It was just as well that his name means embracing the father.
“Luckily after a few years he came around and said ‘just make sure you are an inventor, innovator in your field and you treat your work like a science’,” he says.
It took years to make the dream a reality. He connected with singer and Wonderland record label founder, Janelle Monáe. With her help, two years ago, he produced the smash hit Classic Man with over 56 million views on YouTube; followed by a remix with Kendrick Lamar.
He never forgot his roots.
“As my father would tell the story, I was conceived in Nigeria and then they went to the US for me to be born there so I could have a blue passport,” he says with a chuckle.
At a few weeks old, his parents took him back to Enugu,  Nigeria, where he spent the next six years of his life before moving back to the US.
Life in the US was tough.
“My accent was a lot thicker than it is now and I was teased a lot… Even though Jidenna is my first name, like many African children in the US, I tried to abbreviate it, make it shorter and make it more of a English sounding name,” he says.
By the time he went to university, he made sure everyone knew him as Jidenna.
Last year, he released his debut album, The Chief, which he promoted, first, in Lagos and Johannesburg.
“I am a Naija boy… I want more publishing and royalties to be available to artists in Africa in the music industry so there can be more money and more job opportunities.”
Jidenna has also been working with former US First Lady, Michelle Obama, on her education initiative, does speaking gigs, private shows and was in the HBO series Insecure.
He leaves us with food for thought.
“I hope we don’t chase the American dream but create our own African dream.”
He is dreaming hard.
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<h4> Tinashe, Zimbabwe-American</h4>
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Twenty-four-year-old Tinashe Kachingwe sang before she could talk. Her Zimbabwean father Michael, and mother Aimie, from Denmark, have always helped.
Tinashe was a child model by the age of three, made her first appearance in 2000 in the film Cora Unashamed and her voice starred in the cartoon feature film The Polar Express alongside Oscar winning actor, Tom Hanks.
Her debut album, Aquarius, drew a tidal wave of acclaim especially with the #1 multi-platinum single 2 On featuring Schoolboy Q.
Her graceful twists and turns and magical voice have earned her respect among the who’s who of the industry. She has collaborated with the likes of Nick Jonas, Future, Chance The Rapper, A$AP Rocky, Calvin Harris, Usher, Chris Brown and Britney Spears. Her voice has also earned opening spots on tours with Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry and Maroon 5. She also wrote That’s My Girl for Fifth Harmony, was announced as Pepsi’s newest Sound Drop artist and her Britney Spears collaboration, Slumber Party, reached the #1 position on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart.
This is a solid foundation for her dream to be an R&amp;B star. Tinashe has taken her career to the next level featuring on the hit comedy Two and a Half Men and will play herself in a multi-episode storyline, on the Fox drama series, Empire, alongside Taraji P Henson and Terrence Howard.
Where there is talent, there is opportunity and money.
<div id="attachment_5603" style="width: 253px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5603" class="size-medium wp-image-5603" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-501051350-243x300.jpg" alt="" width="243" height="300" />Tinashe attends the Z100&#8217;s iHeartRadio Jingle Ball 2015 at Madison Square Garden on December 11, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Jim Spellman/WireImage)</div>
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Tinashe is a brand ambassador for various multinational brands and has relationships with the likes of Alexander Wang, Ralph Lauren and MAC Cosmetics.
That’s not all.
She is the face and owner of her own lifestyle brand, Svu Svu, was honoured as one of 2015’s ELLE Women in Music and was hand-picked by Janet Jackson to perform a tribute to her at the 2015 BET Awards.
Money pours in for Tinashe and she is only 24.
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<h4>Don Jazzy, Nigeria</h4>
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Like many artists, Don Jazzy, real name Michael Collins Ajereh, started playing music as a child in church before moving to the UK to pursue his career.
“I worked as a security guard in the UK, and after a while I realized I could make some money playing the bass guitar. A friend of mine helped me and took me with their band to play at restaurants and different venues,” he says.
At the time, he would make £150 or £200 for playing for about five hours in London.
“The band got popular that I could make £500 per gig. I grew to the point that I played at a wedding for the President’s daughter at the time.”
This steered him to music production.
Two years later, with then partner D’banj, he decided to move back to Nigeria to make Afrobeats.
“We worked on the album in the UK, so that when we got home we would have something to present. As soon as we got home people accepted us and loved the music.”
It was upward movement from then on. Don Jazzy is a multi-award winning artist, was MTN brand ambassador and is running a successful record label which is home to stars like Dr.SID and Tiwa Savage, is in real estate and launched Flobyt, a company that provides free Wi-Fi in Nigeria.
“With Flobyt we make money from advertising because the people watch like a 10-second video before logging on.”
There is no turning back for Don Jazzy.
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<h4>Hugh Masekela, South Africa</h4>
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Born in Witbank, east of Johannesburg, Hugh Masekela is committed to restoring African heritage. This world-renowned flugelhornist, trumpeter, bandleader, composer and singer has released more than 43 albums and performed with Marvin Gaye, Dizzy Gillespie, The Byrds, Fela Kuti, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and Miriam Makeba.
“The music I make, I don’t call it my music. It is based on my township and indigenous rural roots in South Africa. That’s what brought me fame all over the world,” he says.
At the age of 14, he got his first trumpet and developed his signature sound in the late 1950s, melding jazz with African music.
His first album, Trumpet Africaine, was released in 1962.
In the ensuing decades, he became an international star and an outspoken political voice with songs such as Stimela, with over a million YouTube views, Soweto Blues and Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela), which became an anti-apartheid anthem.
His music did not whither with the apartheid government.
In 2010, he opened the FIFA World Cup Kick-Off Concert; South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma honored him with the highest order in the country given for achievements in arts, culture, literature, music, journalism, and sports, and the US Virgin Islands proclaimed ‘Hugh Masekela Day’, not long after he joined U2 on stage during the Johannesburg leg of their world tour.
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Masekela, who also owns a studio and record label, has numerous awards, honorary doctorates and was nominated for a Grammy for his 2010 album Jabulani in the best world music category, alongside Jay-Z, Kanye West, Frank Ocean and Mumford &amp; Sons. He is insurance company Assupol’s brand ambassador since 2012
Masekela maintains a busy international tour schedule as his fan base around the world continues to grow. He shows no signs of slowing down. Between April and November, he will perform in London, South Africa and three shows in the US for up to $125 to admit one. His music is also sold online for about $10, and reports claim it would cost about $20,000 for a live performance from the star.
Accolades, sold out concerts and smash hits are Masekela’s way of life.
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<h4>black coffee, South Africa</h4>
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Black Coffee, real name Nkosinathi Maphumulo, has not only raised the bar for South African house music, but has put it on the world map.
The multi-award-winning artist was born in South Africa’s house music province, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), raised in the Eastern Cape province, where struggle stalwart Nelson Mandela hailed from, before moving back to KZN to study music. It was worth it.
In 2003, he was chosen as one of two South African participants in the Red Bull Music Academy steering him into the South African DJ scene. He never looked back.
The DJ founded Soulistic Music, a leading management and record company, and introduced himself to the world through a self-titled album.
The year 2008 marked a very fruitful year in Black Coffee’s career. Soulistic Music signed releases from Culoe De Song, Tumelo and Zakes Bantwini, all achieving gold and platinum sales.
Black Coffee took his career a step further to collaborating with international artists. He worked with Alicia Keys on a remix of In Common, released a Superman remix with Drake and even R&amp;B superstars Usher and John Legend want to do songs with him.
One of his Pieces of Me album favorites, We Dance Again became part of a worldwide dance challenge with people taking videos of themselves dancing outside a car.
“This new Black Coffee album is crazy,” said rapper Swizz Beatz on his Instagram jamming to the album.
His work has been recognized all over the world. Last year, he was the first South African to win a BET Award. He also won three South African Music Awards and a DJ Award for Best Deep House, and does sold-out tours.
When in the US, Black Coffee hangs with P Diddy. He has earned the seat at the high table.
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<h4>Akon, Senegalese-American</h4>
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With over 35 million albums sold worldwide, numerous awards, five Grammy Award nominations, 45 Billboard Hot 100 songs under his belt and over 51 million likes on his Facebook page, Akon is not only bankable but also unstoppable.
He has had chart-dominating singles like Smack That and Lonely, he’s made more than 300 guest appearances for the likes of Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Gwen Stefani, Lil Wayne, R. Kelly and Eminem. That’s not all.
The singer and producer was not only listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the #1 selling artist for master ringtones in the world, but also became the first solo artist in history to lock down both the number one and number two spots on the Billboard Hot 100.
The Senegalese-American isn’t showing signs of slowing down. With a new album on deck for 2017, he has set his sights on breaking into Hollywood and is already well on his way to making his mark landing his first major movie in indie action thriller American Heist, a remake of the 1959 Steve McQueen movie The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery.
He is also a friend of corporates, cashing in on the Pepsi soccer ad campaign and was in FORBES’ Celebrity 100 list in 2010.
His unquestionable musical talent aside, Akon is a formidable entrepreneur and humanitarian.
He owns two thriving record labels which helped jumpstart the careers of both Lady Gaga and T-Pain and is founder of Konvict clothing.
With a heart even bigger than his resume, Akon also created The Konfidence Foundation, a youth charity organization, and in February 2014, he launched a partnership to bring solar energy to half a billion African households with the Akon Lighting Africa and, most recently, Akon Lighting Asia projects.

Top 10 most bankable artists in Africa

There is not much to do in the quiet village of Simon’s Town, Cape Town, best known as where South Africa’s naval fleet lies. It is the sort of home where you go fishing, walking on the beach, or else watching the penguins waddle onshore. It’s the sort of place where a news headline is a handful of break-ins over Christmas.
That’s just the way journalist Claire Robertson, 2014 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and a South African Literary Award author of The Spiral House and The Magistrate of Gower, likes it.
“It feels like you are hiding away from life here, but then you write a book and you get dragged back into life,” she says.
“It shocked me rigid with all the attention&#8230; I thought I am not selling my writing to anyone anymore. I am writing for myself. I started doing that in my journalism, instead of writing the news story.
“A news story is Nelson Mandela made his long-awaited return to Robben Island yesterday, this time surrounded by a company of international news media. The real story is we trailed him around the island, and when we got to the quarry that had damaged his eyesight, where he worked for so many years breaking stones and the reporters yelled out ‘dance for us’. You saw him sigh and sink slightly and then he started his shuffle into this expected shosholoza dance. That is actually what happened. When you get old enough you start writing it.”
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Meeting Robertson at her home, on the slopes of Jackson Road, is a real treat. We sit under the shade of a grape vine with sunbirds flitting through the leaves to the sounds of dustbin men at work.
For the 54-year-old, standing at the edge of the gentle lapping shoreline of Waters Edge Beach, a few hundred meters downhill from here, was the defining moment that led her to abandon the stressful urban streets of Melville, Johannesburg, five years ago.
“[Melville] was getting tough to go walk around at any time of the day or night, which is what I like to do. It was getting less and less safe. You know that feeling when your freedom is being curtailed in South Africa. Certainly everyone has a bloody minded moment and you can’t bear being hemmed in. I thought I wanted to find a place that I can walk at any time of the day, and it was here.”
The quiet life here is a world away from the height of Robertson’s career as a hard news political journalist in the 1980s.
“To be a reporter during the height of the dying days of apartheid in South Africa was the greatest privilege in my personal profession. There was nothing like it. Every story mattered,” she says.
Some stories where harder to write than others, one of them being the reclassification of races which under The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and the Immorality Act, had denied families living together.
“Already as a young person you are trembling at the injustices of the world. Meanwhile you are working in a society where this is just being thrown at you all the time. Following that through to watching a country talk about how it is going to shape itself,” she says.
“Then you are reporting something like the Dutch Reformed Church not allowing black people to join in a service. They would open the [priest’s] garage for the services and shove the old tyres aside as a Christian duty.”
Other stories send a chill down Robertson’s spine on this hot Simon’s Town morning.
“I remember meeting with the commandant in the Pretoria Central prison and hearing this unearthly singing. And he said ‘oh, that it was condemned men singing on the night before they are due to be hanged’. I remember shaking.”
Robertson lived the reshaping of South Africa; she cradled her firstborn daughter the day Nelson Mandela walked out of prison; she also covered the negotiations at Kempton Park which led to South Africa’s Constitution.
These days, it’s the calm of Simon’s Town. Robertson, the novelist, has just come back from a walk on the beach with her Scottish terrier, Henry, and a family breakfast. Her mind is more focused on her third book. The Magistrate of Gower (2015) – a prisoner of war in the South African War, disgraced in an illicit affair, who is now forced to confront his past as a magistrate 30 years later – is sold out and is now in its second edition.
“It’s about the rise of nationalism and what is the response when you see it rearing its head again. It’s very seductive. It takes the good that people have, in this instance the noble suffering during the Boer War and heroes of the Great Trek, it takes part of that and twists it into something else, which is what happened in Afrikaner Nationalism.”
It is rare to find an award-winning author who doesn’t punt their novel with pride. But Robertson’s pride is a small wooden chair in her lounge, finished by her own hand.
“It’’s quite comfortable actually and it’s made from some very cheap wood. I wanted to test out the design before I made one from oak. I am quite happy to say that no one has broken it yet either.”
She points to a wall of saws and power tools, glinting in the skylight, where the chair, two book shelves and a wardrobe were crafted by her from lumps of wood; a hobby she picked up at her parents’ knee.
Included in this home of self-made furniture is a portable writing board; filled with scribbles and doodles, one reading ‘push towards the problem’, and a sticker of a porcupine.
“It’s something prickly, that’s low slung who is just determinately going about on his way.”
Only a journalist would feel the need to say they write their stories longhand, like it’s a bad habit picked up after years of writing shorthand.
“I get lovely notebooks and sit down and write it in longhand. If you start by typing it out you are going to keep correcting yourself, you lose all your momentum and you have no record of your ideas. Things have to be aesthetically pleasing.”
“What I do is start with an idea. With The Spiral House, what was it like on a South Africa slave plantation when these two ideas of science and enlightenment are clashing. It was told through a French naturalist in my head, but what it became was a young female freed slave, whose voice spoke out.”
Robertson has always gone for the road less traveled. She was one of the first South Africans to go to Soviet Russia on a South African passport in 1988. The trip came after one of Robertson’s stories published in The Washington Post. She asked American teenagers what they thought Russia looked like, and Russian teens, in Moscow, what they thought America looked like. The newspaper liked the story so much they nominated it for a Pulitzer.
“You could see the world was changing. You could see that the ANC was starting to talk to people in South Africa. We thought lets just try it.”
“One thing that stuck, was in Leningrad, on one of the big roads, there was a department store. There in this glass case, enfolded in red satin, was a single disposible razor. It loooked like it had been carved out of a lump of Bakelite.
<div id="attachment_31637" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31637" class="wp-image-31637 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5547-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5547.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5547-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5547-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5547-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />&#8221;it shocked me rigid with all the attention&#8230; I thought I am not selling my writing to anyone anymore. I am writing for myself&#8221;</div>
“They could build space rockets, and amazing awful armaments, but they could not bring a milk Glut and the cereal Glut to the market at the same time. Everything was just screwed up. It was that kind of economy. People wanted consumerist stuff so badly they would spend a fortune on American jeans and sneakers.”
Her journey through the Siberian tundra also foreshadowed where she would end up.
“I found recently an old diary from the late 80s. I said what do I want to do? I want to live by the sea, sub-edit and then write. I had completely forgotten about that. Having got down, unpacked my books to discover I wrote this blissful thing. Clearly I was working this through my system.”
Working on her first novel, through the night at her brother’s home overlooking the sea in Kalk Bay was also an existential moment.
“I remember the book going so well and being so wrapped up in the book. It was suddenly four in the morning. I was working furiously away at my laptop and I heard this guguguggugug, it was the fishing boats heading out before dawn. When you have made a big change in life, and things are uncertain, and you don’t know how things go, it feels like you are getting some form of confirmation. If you are working and the fishermen are working.”
It has been a long journey to a favorite chair in Simon’s Town, from the raging streets of Africa, to walking with Mandela, to a razor in Leningrad.

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Claire And Her Chair

He is two hours late for the interview. As we contemplate calling it quits, he speeds in with his Volkswagen Scirocco. Dressed in black pants and camouflage coat, he dashes into the changing room to prepare for the photoshoot. King. Genius. Irritating. Self-obsessed. Arrogant. Jerk. All words that have been used to describe the self-proclaimed South African “prince” of hip hop, Kiernan Jordan Forbes, alternatively known as AKA.
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“A publication wrote an article about me with a headline ‘SA’s crowned prince’ and I thought it has a nice ring to it. What I learned in this industry is that you are what you say you are. If you say something enough times, eventually people pick up on it. So I started calling myself the prince of hip hop and now a lot of people do too,” he says.
In July, he had just become a father; his eyes are slightly puffy from sleepless nights yet he shrugs it off for the shoot and interview. He doesn’t come across as the self-obsessed, arrogant jerk some fans make him out to be. Showing his humble side he adds that he doesn’t call himself the king of hip hop, out of respect for more experienced artists.
“Wait until I get another two albums and more wins under my belt, then I might start calling myself the King.”
“Competition dead and buried in the dust I’m like the legendary Brenda Fassie…” The lyrics to his hit All Eyes On Me is a salvo full of intent.
AKA has the confidence of a superstar and success to match. His personal life, just like every other celebrity, is daily bread for South African tabloid newspapers. The buzz is more than justified. He did not break the internet, but, five years into his career, he has awards from Channel O, Metro FM, MTV African Music Awards (MAMA) and South African Music Awards (SAMA); including a coveted Black Entertainment Television (BET) nomination for the Best International Act: Africa category, and many more.
“I don’t belong exclusively to South Africa anymore. I am making a transition to belonging to the continent. I was so excited about the BET nomination because we have been working hard. Yes, we have won the SAMAs, yes we have won Metro FM awards, yes, we have won the Channel O awards, but the one thing we hadn’t done was get a nomination for a BET. We have done a lot of good work on the continent and it was great to get recognition for it.”
The rapper has more than 777,000 followers on Twitter.
“We are excited about AKA’s growth prospects in Africa and beyond. His unique approach to producing hits sets him apart from the average rap artist; this is an artist with not only innovative creative sense but with the ambition for international stardom,” Zakes Bantwini, Executive Head of A&amp;R for Sound African recordings, reportedly said when AKA signed the deal with Sony.
Born in Cape Town, he moved to Johannesburg when he was six. As a child, he developed a love for music while listening to records with his father, whom he says gave him a broad appreciation.
He started out in a teenage hip hop crew called Entity in 2002 which was nominated in 2005 for Best African Hip Hop in the KORA Awards. As Entity disbanded in 2006; AKA went off to study sound engineering only to drop out so he could brand himself as a legend. He ventured into a solo career with early hits like Mistakes, In My Walk and Do It; the latter making it to number one on the South African 5FM Top 40.
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“I love AKA. He is the king of rap. His style is international, making it easy for him to collaborate with any international artist if he ever wishes to. His flaws are also massive but he has mega talent,” says South African fan, Mthokozisi Dumani.
Public relations company owner, Allegro Dinkwanyane, says, “AKA is a very talented artist that&#8217;s contributing to the growth of South African hip hop internationally. Personally, I think Kiernan is a much nicer person than AKA. I guess it&#8217;s a persona that works well for him as a rapper. Arrogance aside, I&#8217;d definitely rank him in my top three South African hip hop artists, but still an album or two away from being ‘the prince of South African hip hop’.”
“I like his music but I don’t understand the guy. His character is weird. Sometimes you would think he has some sort of disorder because he never lets things go. When something happens, he always wants to have a say. He needs to learn to be humble and let things go,” says Zimbabwean fan, Mercy Sibanda.
“I think AKA is the prince of African rap but his arrogance takes away from his talent. Yes, he’s good at what he does but he doesn’t need to constantly toot his own horn,” adds hip hop fan, Lebogang Mathebula.
Little has changed in his character. The 27-year-old says he has always been a show-off who speaks his mind. Fans scolded him for his Twitter rants and controversial views. At the coveted annual Durban July horse racing event, AKA kicked a fan off stage; on a separate occasion he said he will not take a photo with anyone who calls themselves a fan, yet don’t own his album; he does not open for international acts in South Africa and the list goes on.
“I don’t like it when people call it a rant. It’s not a rant, I am just expressing myself. If I wasn’t me and my personality wasn’t what it is, my music wouldn’t be what it is. You can’t separate my music from my personality. Without the personality my music wouldn’t exist,” he says.
He claims he has never tried to be controversial, as the truth is controversial enough.
“I have always been like this, before the fame and money; I have always been someone who speaks the truth. I told myself that when I make it, I will do things on my own terms. I try to be myself as much as possible. Most of the time it works for me and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“If you don’t own my album, how can you be a fan? You can afford a smartphone to take a photo with but you can’t afford R100 ($7.50) for my album? Real fans support the artists. If you come to me, you want a piece of me or my time, so why can’t you buy my album?” he says.
“The country has never seen anything like me; someone as expressive, as blunt, as honest and dedicated as I am. Everything with me is intense,” he says.
According to AKA, thinking success is easy can be dangerous.
“When you start out, you work hard and say you can’t wait for the day when you are successful. When you finally get there, you realize getting there is not hard, staying there is.”
African hip hop and Afrobeats are everywhere on the radio these days. Much of that is attributed to African artists touring the world and making their presence known. AKA has toured some parts of Europe and has worked with Nigerian stars Ice Prince and Burna Boy, from whom he has learned a thing or two.
“Nigerians work much harder than the average South African artist. They are much more unapologetic, that’s why sometimes I feel like I belong there. [In] Nigeria, artists are encouraged to be superstars, yet in South Africa being a superstar is frowned upon.”
“We love to be humble people, and there is nothing wrong with being humble. Humility is the greatest source of our strength, but also, the great source of our weakness. In Nigeria and the US they are told to be great and in South Africa we are told to be humble which makes us meek, subservient and easily taken advantage of,” he says.
Although he has opened for Kanye West, Snoop Lion, Rick Ross, 2 Chainz, Big Sean and Kendrick Lamar on tour, AKA swears he will never open for an international artist in South Africa.
“Promoters treat us differently from Kanye West and all these other artists. They get better sound, better money and better treatment, yet we would be performing in our own cities. Promoters say we should do it for exposure but exposure to whom? These are our people who know us, so why should we tolerate being ill-treated?”
According to AKA, South Africa needs to redress legacies of apartheid. He believes African artists should be respected like international artists.
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“We still have that mentality of saying ‘how can AKA and Drake be on the same stage?’ We need to address our own self-worth. Apartheid left in us the idea that we are not worth more and we need to change that,” he says.
AKA is not a hugely sentimental man, but a glimpse of his softer side shines on social media when he talks of his daughter Kairo.
“It took a while for me to figure out how to change a nappy as Kiernan insisted on doing it himself all the time. He would wake up at night during our stay at the hospital and get up to change the baby’s nappy. I remember thinking that I really needed to learn, but it felt good knowing that he was so hands on,” says Kairo’s mother, DJ Zinhle, on her blog.
When Zinhle had her baby shower she says AKA “popped in to say hi to the ladies, he walked in carrying the most adorable Melissa and Doug Giraffe, with a big pink satin bow tied around her neck”.
Since the baby, AKA says he only sleeps for three to four hours a day; instead of six.
“There is no balance in my life. I still need to find it. I am mentally tired, physically tired, I need a holiday, I need a break but there is just no time. My life is exploding, I am having a baby; I’m on tour and have interviews.”
Although reluctant to share his net worth, the 27-year-old divulges that he makes more than R100,000 ($7,500) from performing each month. He also has income from TV shows, and various business ventures. He designed a range of headphones, Bluetooth speakers and clothing items which are sold nationwide.
“I want to make sure my future is secure. By the time I hang the mic I should be able to provide a great life for my children and their children and children’s children.”
As the saying goes, “the man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones”. You could argue AKA is doing this. You can also argue he has had more than his fair share of stones thrown at him. No matter, AKA wants to be the king of African hip hop.

‘Why Should We Tolerate Being Ill-Treated?’

It was around two years ago when I found myself on one of those musty and cramped overnight buses headed from Cuzco to Lima in Peru. Tired of watching B-grade Spanish movies and eating Pringles to pass the time, I went online to Google my mom: Michelle Meyjes.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30037 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Moving-to-France_2012-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Moving-to-France_2012-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Moving-to-France_2012-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Moving-to-France_2012-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Moving-to-France_2012.jpg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
All the expected results came up: CEO, award-winning South African businesswoman, media mogul, a ‘proven leader’ and her face on a few magazine covers. There was even an article that declared her one of ‘South Africa’s top 30 wonder women’ alongside Graça Machel, Ferial Haffajee and Thuli Madonsela.
And there I was, slouching in that seat on a musty and cramped bus, the only child of this superwoman, the only hope of carrying forth the great business genes; now on my last pennies, eating Pringles and on a bus to nowhere.
We laugh about it now but it took me a good few years to learn that a shadow is no great place for the daughter of a businesswoman.
Mom and I have always been wonderfully close – we share everything (except underwear) and we’ve always celebrated our differences: she is humble as chips, I’m showy as a peacock; she’s astute with money, I never have any of it; she’s strategic, I’m creative. And she comes from the generation where you start work and you stay there your whole life whether you like it or not. It’s all you know, it’s what you’re good at, so just put your head down and shoulder the storm, dear woman!
For a while, I tried to play in the same work place, riding off the coat-tails of a phenomenal mother and industry role-model. I moved to Johannesburg to ‘pursue a career’ because that’s what the city promised our young, educated and ambitious professionals: work, money, commodity, stuff. I was groomed to ‘be MD in two years’ and told ‘you’re going to be just like your mother’.
And then one day, I couldn’t face getting out of bed. My phone was stealing my life – ting, ting, ting, beep, beep. Emails and text messages and phone calls from clients and the boss and my co-workers and more emails&#8230; I put my duvet over my head and tried to block it all out. At 24, I was sick from stress, burnt out and uninspired.
That night, I made the decision to pack it all in – leave the job, the boyfriend, the title and the money and head in the direction of goodness knows where. And the best thing of all was that mom remained my biggest supporter. Often she said, “Don’t do what I did, my baby.”
So I decided to live for living. I moved to France, I worked on a few super yachts and was fired once or twice. I met my future husband while taking out the rubbish and I learned to speak Swedish (he’s Swedish). I got a casual job in Tanzania and I backpacked through parts of South America. I studied as a Pilates instructor in Italy and moved to the outskirts of Monaco, where it’s okay not to have much money and eat cheap Indian curry. I don’t own a Louis Vuitton bag. And until further notice, we won’t own a car. I started writing again and mustered up a community of South African expatriates who were also trying to figure out why Europe still didn’t feel like home.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30039 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Leaving-the-desk-for-the-deck_France-2012-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Leaving-the-desk-for-the-deck_France-2012-300x300.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Leaving-the-desk-for-the-deck_France-2012-100x100.jpg 100w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Leaving-the-desk-for-the-deck_France-2012-600x600.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Leaving-the-desk-for-the-deck_France-2012-150x150.jpg 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Leaving-the-desk-for-the-deck_France-2012-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Leaving-the-desk-for-the-deck_France-2012.jpg 843w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
And I spent time repairing, re-gathering and listening to the stories of other people. Whether it was a lesson from my homeless friend John or a moment spent making a bed for Arabic royalty, I came to learn that life has so many different angles and that success can mean so many different things.
I learned things about success that a career would never have taught me.
And in the end, I have come to terms with the fact that we have chosen different lives – my mom and I.
It’s a sad thing that success has become about money and things and a frantic, hard slog to the top, often in tough and abusive work environments that are especially hard on our women. For us women, success should be about time: spending time, having a good time, or simply having the time. Success should be about time with the right people, time with ourselves; or doing what we love while we still have the time to do it. Time makes us richer.
I may have walked away from a well-paved career but I never believed packing up meant giving up. I still admire those women who have the guts to survive in that world. And I thank my supermom for giving me the courage to choose differently.
The writer studied radio journalism and landed a desk job in South Africa before packing it all up for the more interesting life.

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Nothing Like A Businesswoman

Winnifred Selby was only 17 when she founded Afrocentric Bamboo Limited in Ghana, to make bikes out of bamboo. As its 19-year-old CEO, she now manufactures and sells her eco-friendly, socially-relevant products in the UK, US, the Netherlands and the rest of Africa.
We meet her in Johannesburg, where she is a finalist for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards. For a person who completed high school only last year, her confidence is unbelievable. The numbers roll off her tongue.
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“I employ 42 girls, have sold 2,000 bikes and have impacted over 2,000 people. I am proud of what I have achieved.”
Wearing an African print dress and beaded jewelry, her body language – and corporate speak – could well be that of a businesswoman in her 30s. She says she has been an entrepreneur since the age of six.
“It’s in my DNA, being able to see a problem and find a solution for it. When I was young, we were very poor, and my mother had no food to give me or my four siblings. I had to devise ways to make money.”
Pain made her creative. “The kids in class would be eating and I would cry. When my friend’s mother gave me money to eat, I thought I should do something with it. I kept it safe in a small box, and kept adding to it, by selling toffees,” says Selby.  In 2005, she happened to hear about the designer Craig Calfee in the United States, who came up with the idea of using bamboo to make errand bikes. Bamboo is ubiquitous in Ghana, and Selby had her light bulb moment.
“I would see girls walking eight kilometers to school, and thought why not empower them? When I started making the bikes, people asked if I was in the right frame of mind.”
She embarked on the business with $5,000 from her savings. Today, she has her own bamboo plantation and sells 100 bikes a month. In the international market, they fetch her $350 apiece. While the frame is bamboo, she imports the metal spare parts for the bikes from China.
“I realize I am impacting my generation. We women can do more no matter what our age.” Right now, she has some turning 20 to do.
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Unable to focus your mind on the jobs at hand? Not able to fully savor the present? Fret not. The Mindful Revolution, which is becoming popular the world-over and is now gaining ground in South Africa, might be the answer.
“Stress causes an escalation of self-doubt, and many women then turn to maladaptive ways of coping. Our aim with introducing mindfulness includes exploring and demonstrating how to develop skilful acceptance of whatever is arising at the present moment; settling the habitually-distracted mind; and dispeling the myth that we always have to get it ‘right’ or ‘perfect’,” says Capetonian Zo Hoka Dashati, a practitioner who imparts mindfulness, particularly for women in the corporate sector.
The long-term goals of this practice include higher emotional intelligence, improved attention and focus with an attitude of acceptance and greater levels of compassion at work for self and others.
“Our approach is a radical departure – we are not striving, seeking goals or new preferred states. Instead, we are profoundly doing the opposite – we are allowing ourselves to be where we are – resilient and flexible, even when the present moment is uncomfortable,” says Dashati, whose own first experience of a stress-reduction program in the workplace came courtesy of weekly-seated massages at her office in London ten years ago.
“The clear benefits of these mini-treatments eventually inspired me to learn more about the body’s self-healing capabilities.” In the years since, learning and sharing mindful techniques have become Dashati’s quest.
“We are often like headless chickens, we are not connected to our bodies. Our breath allows us to connect with our bellies and bodies. Say yes to now!” she says.

The Eco-Princess

How did your journey into fashion begin?
I never was one of those kids who grew up dreaming of becoming a fashion designer. Those would be fancy dreams for a kid in Cameroon. However, I always had deep interests in fashion but it came to a point where I wanted to be more active in the fashion scene. When I moved to the United States and started struggling with identifying myself, my first refuge was to be able to do so through fashion.
In the summer of 2009, I traveled to Cameroon and came up with method of modernizing the traditional regalia of my home town. This led to me creating a little black dress with the toghu embroidery over it. The toghu is an intricate and colorful embroidery done on garments worn by the royalty and on special occasions by the Tikar and Bamileke people of the Northwest and Western regions of Cameroon. This dress became a hit when I wore it and several people asked me about it. They then asked me to make it for them. Before long, I had done a handful of pieces which I loved and eventually decided to transport my creativity into a more formal venture.
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What are some of your career highlights?
Being nominated under the category Emerging Designer of the Year 2013 by Africa Fashion International Awards was really an amazing moment for me. I felt like I am doing something right and it is being recognized. Also, I had Precious Moloi-Motsepe wear my dress in 2012 and she totally loved it.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31338" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5379_Kibonen-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5379_Kibonen-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5379_Kibonen-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5379_Kibonen-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5379_Kibonen-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5379_Kibonen.jpg 683w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31336" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5213_Kibonen-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5213_Kibonen-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5213_Kibonen-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5213_Kibonen-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5213_Kibonen-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5213_Kibonen.jpg 683w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
What’s the philosophy behind the
KibonenNY brand?
I am very passionate about soft transportation of culture as well as ethical fashion. To me, modernizing the traditional Cameroonian toghu in its finest form so that it appeals to a wide range of consumers is key. Staying true to my dream of creating jobs for the people in Cameroon is very important to me hence KibonenNY is an ethical fashion brand. Cameroon is a country with abundant talent, unbelievable design aesthetics, amazing and beautiful people, yet over 49% of the population live below the poverty line. This urged the formation of my brand, using the business of fashion to help create employment in Cameroon.
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Where do you draw inspiration for your collections?
Different events in life and natural happenings help me get inspiration as well as visiting different parts of the world. When I am in a new place, the first thing I start doing is thinking of what aspects of their culture I can get and add to my work.
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What can be done to improve the local fashion industry?
The fashion industry needs schools. Young people have to be trained in these fields. I should have studied fashion in college but we do not have those facilities in Cameroon. Today, after a few years in fashion, I decided to go back to the Art Institute of New York City to get a deeper knowledge of how the industry really works. You can start fashion as a hobby but when money has to be really made it has to be done right. Right now, my team and I started a non-profit Cameroon Fashion Association of America which is helping with a couple of projects to develop fashion in Cameroon.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31337" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5342_Kibonen-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5342_Kibonen-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5342_Kibonen-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5342_Kibonen-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5342_Kibonen-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1310_MBFWA_SDR_5342_Kibonen.jpg 683w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
Having lived in New York, how
different are the industries compared to your home country?
I do not think we have a fashion industry in Cameroon. It is still at its early growth stage. However, the industry in South Africa has really grown, the very high standards provide a conducive environment for the designers to grow. In New York, where I live, the competition is very intense. The gap between emerging designers and established designers is too great. However it forces you to raise your bar and work really hard, which I love.
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What can we expect from KibonenNY in the year ahead?
Loads of great things and I am excited. We are finalizing negotiations with some stores in South Africa who will be carrying our brand in 2014. Also we are looking at getting financing and more staff on board.

Kibonen

Culture, Ethics and a Needle

It was a caucus about transformation and we were going to appoint a committee, almost like a task-team, to deal with certain issues. I was the only woman at the meeting and when it came to electing the members, the men started appointing each other. Eventually, one of them realized that they did not have any female members, so they said to me, ‘Come and sit on the panel so we can have a woman.’ I said no.’”
Despite repeated requests from her colleagues, Ntambi Ravele declined adamantly. She made it clear that she would stick to her decision.
“I wasn’t going to be part of something just because I was a woman. Especially because I had experience on my side,” she says.
At the time of the convention, Ravele had served as national co-ordinator for Women and Sport South Africa, represented the country at the International Olympic Committee, chaired the Supreme Council for Sport in South Africa’s zone VI Women and Sport Committee, and won the president’s Sport Administrator of the Year title. She had credentials many people in the room could only dream of and she was not going to allow them to be undermined by a politically-correct, gender-based appointment.
“When those types of things happen, you get to a point where you can’t even feel offended. You can only sit back and laugh.”
Ravele had the last laugh as the team that was set up turned out to be nothing more than a talking shop.
“Nothing ever happened after that,” she says.
But much has happened for Ravele. She has served as president of Netball South Africa in the mid-2000s, during which she obtained a television rights deal with the public broadcaster, the SABC, and corporate sponsorship worth R10 million ($913,000). In April 2013, she got into the boxing ring with BSA. It is her most challenging role yet, but she has already packed a serious punch.
When Ravele was appointed, she identified the most pressing issue in boxing to be that of compliance. Mismanagement, be it from administrators or promoters, resulted in embarrassment. Veteran super middleweight boxer Dingaan ‘The Rose of Soweto’ Thobela had his license revoked because he was over the age limit and did not fight actively for the stipulated period. And Noni Tenge, South Africa’s first female world champion, was stripped of her IBF title for not competing often enough.
“We really needed to clean up the industry. We had to change our image by looking at licenses and payments. We had situations where licenses were not issued properly, others where fighters were not paid within a certain time and fights were being canceled.”
To address these issues, Ravele had to reach a consensus with boxing promoters, whom she met at the National Sports Indaba early in her tenure. She extracted commitments from them that would pay greater attention to playing by the rules.
“We put systems in place and now we have to make sure we work within these systems. Money must be paid within a certain time frame and the promoters must have registered companies that operate properly. For example, they must all have a tax clearance. We will be making sure all these things are abided by,” says Ravele.
Her first step towards reviving South African boxing was to find a common ground regarding television rights for fights. Broadcast deals are one of the largest revenue streams for sports, who controls them has major implications for how the game is run.
During Ngconde Balfour’s tenure, Ravele’s predecessor, BSA had no control over which matches were televised on the public broadcaster and which were sold to pay television.
When boxing promoters Golden Gloves reached an exclusive deal with satellite service SuperSport to broadcast its fights, BSA could do nothing. Similarly, BSA was powerless when the SABC decided it would no longer televise matches.
At the recent Boxing Indaba, all promoters agreed that BSA could negotiate dates with broadcasters for fights. While it does not solve the problem it is a step in the right direction.
Now, BSA will hold discussions with SABC, SuperSport and e.tv to decide which one will commit to showing live matches. Ravele will also discuss SuperSport’s Golden Gloves deal to see if they are willing to adjust the terms when the contact comes up for renewal. Promoters will then bid to have their fights televised on the dates BSA agrees on. She has also guaranteed smaller promoters, who develop boxing by giving unknown fighters a chance, that they will get their fights on air for a minimum fee.
In this way, Ravele hopes that boxing can reach the masses rather than only be accessible to the elite.
“We want to move away from the monopolies and make sure that we have television channels that give us coverage at prime time, so that we can promote the sport,” says Ravele.
Her reasons for wanting more coverage are two-fold. On the one hand, it will be financially beneficial to BSA and everyone involved in the sport, and on the other, her goal is to restore boxing to the prominence it once enjoyed, in terms of results and among its fans.
“We used to have a lot of world champions and we need to get back to that level. At the moment, we are not there. If you think back to the days when Baby Jake Matlala was in his prime, everybody knew who he was.”
Because of the relative anonymity of IBO super middleweight champions Thomas ‘Tommy Gun’ Oosthuizen and junior lightweight title-holder Kaizer Mabuza, South Africans may see boxing as a sport in decline. That is not the case, of the 122 titles that South African male boxers have won, 32 were earned in the last five years.
What is concerning is that many of these titles are with the smaller federations, Ravele vows to change that. She also hopes that female fighters, who are known almost exclusively as Tenge, can start making headlines. Ravele was part of the committee that paved the way for women to participate in boxing in South Africa. Today, she wants to be the driving force behind making champions of the fairer sex.
“South Africa has not been involved in women’s boxing for that long and because it’s quite new, we need to support female boxers and the set-up they work in. At the moment, there are very few women promoters and trainers and we have to create a system where more of them can come through. I’d like to see more women trainers, especially because they understand the challenges facing women in the sport and they allow women to prepare in way that is comfortable for them,” she says.
But what about the challenges Ravele will face as she aims to lift BSA off the ropes and into the center of the boxing ring?
“I have been in the industry for a long time and the only thing I want is to do my job to the best of my ability.”
While she continues fighting to put boxing back on track, after she ends her tenure with the pugilists, she will concentrate on her business and work as a consultant for various sports federations.
“I think I will enjoy that kind of work because people respect me for who I am. In the early days during meetings, some of the men may have expected me to make tea during the breaks or something like that. I never did that and I never will.”

Men Expect Me To Make Them Tea, I Never Will

Brand Pretorius attracts awards, nominations and accolades, similar to Kelly Slater collecting world surfing titles and Valentino Rossi world MotoGP championships.
The latest in a long list of awards was an honorary doctor’s degree in marketing, bestowed on him by the Durban University of Technology in April.
This former sales manager of Toyota South Africa, executive chairman of McCarthy Motor Holdings and executive director of the Bidvest Group, became the first member of the South African automotive industry to be inducted into their hall of fame in 2006.
He was also recognized as the most trusted leader in the country’s motor industry in the annual Trust Barometer opinion survey in 2009.
Pretorius’ love affair with cars started when his father brought a new Chevrolet 1956 home when he was a toddler. When his mother got her first car—a 1959 Renault Dauphine—that love affair became an obsession.
Pretorius is well qualified to speak on South Africa’s position as the undisputed ‘wheels’ leader of Africa.
“There are 1.7 million new vehicles sold on the continent per year, and South Africa accounts for 650,000 annually. There is a correlation between the gross domestic product per capita and the vehicle market.
“Obviously, from that point of view, South Africa is standing tall in Africa,” claims Pretorius.
“We have a vibrant manufacturing industry that makes us unique. Only two other African countries, Egypt and Morocco, manufacture a meaningful quantity of vehicles.
“Importing used vehicles is not allowed in South Africa, whereas in other countries it is.
“Used vehicles from Japan and Singapore are flooding the markets and are undermining the viability of manufacturing because the ratio between used and new vehicles could be as high as seven to one,” says Pretorius.
The automotive industry is one of South Africa’s most important sectors, contributing more than 6% to gross domestic product and accounting for more than 12% of manufacturing exports.
Pretorius says this favorable status quo is because the country weathered the global recession well.
The increase in disposable income as well as the explosive growth in black purchasing power has benefited the automotive industry.
The launch of the Motor Industry Development Program (MIDP) led to the dramatic acceleration of exports from an insignificant amount in 1995. More than 350,000 vehicles are expected to be exported in 2013.
“Another positive factor is that major global vehicle manufacturers have made the South African subsidiaries an integral part of their global supply chain,” he added.
Pretorius is widely hailed for his exemplary business leadership.
Probed about his style, he tells FORBES AFRICA: “The major benefit of servant leadership is that through serving, one engages people’s hearts and if you engage their hearts, you get a higher level of engagement, trust and willingness to work together.
“When Nelson Mandela was inaugurated in 1994, he said that he was not here to lead, but to serve.
“South Africans responded to that. They volunteered their goodwill, they joined hands and we saw a high level of commitment to a better future.
Pretorius said he is proud of the constructive and responsible way in which local business leadership is approaching its role of building a better future for all.
“In my opinion, we are setting an excellent example for the rest of the world. However, there is still so much more we can do.”

The Mandela Brand

“And the Oscar goes to&#8230;”.
Five little words that caused writer and director Bryan Buckley to draw a deep breath:
“When you hear those words&#8230; and you happen to be one of the five guys it could possibly go to, it is, in itself, a crazy thought. It simply just doesn’t seem real. All the films could have easily won that night. And mentally you know this going into the evening. If I didn’t think we had put everything we had into our film, perhaps I would have been disappointed in myself and thought about what we didn’t nail in the film when the winner [Curfew] was announced. But I knew this wasn’t the case. It just wasn’t our night,” says Buckley.
<div id="attachment_1690" style="width: 209px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1690" class="size-medium wp-image-1690" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/162620158-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" />Bryan Buckley and Mino Jarjoura with Harun and Ali Mohamed, on the red carpet</div>
He was in Los Angeles, California, at the 85th Academy Awards, where he was nominated for best live action short for ASAD—a tale of refugees, in Somalia. Sitting nervously by his side were the two leads, 14-year-old Harun Mohamed and his 12-year-old brother Ali. The day had flown by, moments before they were walking the red carpet alongside the A-listers—including Ben Affleck, Daniel Day-Lewis and Ang Lee—and doing interviews.
“The BBC was the first to interview the boys. Harun stepped forward to the microphone and began to talk about his journey in English. How far he had come, had never been so apparent. He and Ali were constantly asked what celeb they wanted to meet the most at the ceremony. And without question Harun would say Jackie Chan and Ali would say Jean-Claude Van Damme,” says Buckley.
It was a journey that began with the filming of ASAD in Africa.
Buckley is the last person you would expect to make a film about Somalia. His business is big-budget Super Bowl (American football) commercials for a quarter of a billion dollars with an audience of more than a million. Conversations with Somali refugees motivated him to create the short film with little commercial value or audience.
It all started in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, in 2010, where Buckley was shooting a documentary called No Autographs for the UN Human Right’s Council. He left with that feeling of hope in the face of despair. A year later he wrote ASAD.
The film was set in Somalia and shot in Cape Town. It tells the story of a young boy who must choose between life as a pirate or that of a humble fisherman. The entire cast was made up of refugees who had fled to South Africa.
Buckley says the biggest problem in producing the 18-minute short-film was overcoming the language barrier as both leads, Harun and Ali, were illiterate.
“We knew language, with the whole cast, was going to be a barrier by virtue that we were doing the entire film in Somali and I didn’t speak a single word of it. Right off the bat we enlisted in two Somali translators [who helped the boys memorize the script]&#8230; Both the boys are exceedingly bright. They picked up on things so quickly it was crazy. And then I’d act out some stuff and they would study it and follow. Always bringing their own twist. of course, like any Hollywood star would.”
The filming was taxing and Buckley struggled to shoot scenes with the rebels.
“There was just so much emotion there between them [the rebels] and the boys. It was quite clear this wasn’t the first time these refugees had handled guns. I kept thinking what horrible ghosts were haunting them after every take. And how bizarre [it was that] our cameras were recording every second of this nightmare.”
The international acclaim came with praise from Somali musician K’naan.
“He is truly a man who has supported Somalia and its people’s plight more than anyone I know. He said, ‘ASAD is an important film. It makes human the inaccurate caricature of Somalia, showing real people, a community and life beyond a land of pirates and warlords,’” he says.
The film won numerous awards at various international film festivals, including the Tribeca Film Festival and San Jose Film Festival. The Academy Awards nomination was the cherry on top but the leads almost didn’t make their big moment in Hollywood.
“The fact that they [Harun and Ali] didn’t have travel documents and that they were Somali refugees did not help matters. ASAD’s producer Mino Jarjoura worked around the clock with [South African producer] Rafiq Samsodien to get the kids there. It took government officials from both the US and South Africa, along with UNHCR to pull off the task. And they did so, in dramatic and perfect timing.”
Regardless of the outcome the team celebrated making it to the Oscars with a toast. After the ceremony they attended the prestigious Governor’s Ball.
Buckley may have walked away empty-handed but he and his two young leads stood tall for one of Africa’s untold stories.

Tag: Awards

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA