Cover Story
We’re taking note of these 10 African greats in the arts, literature, and architecture
A bunch of extraordinarily talented South Africans, and one Nigerian, enthusing audiences in Mzansi and abroad
Cinga Samson - visual artist
Cape Town-born painter Cinga Samson, who grew up in the Eastern Cape, smashed records recently when his work Two Piece 1 sold for $300 000 at auction house Phillips’ 20th century and contemporary sale in New York. It’s the culmination of a run of acclaim and international attention that the 34-year-old artist has been enjoying over the last few years. He held his first solo show in New York past year, earned a significant interview in The New York Times. Known for his striking, ethereal, and coolly elegant portraits of white-pupiled figures against surreal backgrounds, Samson’s work is deeply influenced by his upbringing near Mthatha in the Eastern Cape.
Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha - opera singer
Rangwanasha is 27 years old and the latest in a long line of South African-born performers to blow the socks off the international opera world after she was announced as the winner of this year’s Song Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition. It’s the culmination of an award-winning and eventful few years for Rangwanasha, who started singing at school and church at a young age Is’thunzibefore honing her craft at University of Cape Town and the Tshwane University of Technology. After winning several awards at competitions in South Africa and abroad, Rangwanasha returned to South Africa, where she sang soprano solo in Verdi’s Requiem with the Oude Libertas Choir in Stellenbosch in 2019 and was nominated for Best Singer in the category at the Woordfees in the same year.
John Gilhooly, chair of the judges of the Singer of the World, says that while the competition was characterised by outstanding performances from all the finalists, “sadly there could be only one winner and Masabane performed with such assured technique and emotional power that the jury was unanimous in naming her the winner”. She will now go on to join the ensemble of the prestigious Bern Staatsoper for two years. If her performance in Cardiff is anything to go by, opera fans are guaranteed to be hearing a lot more from the talented singer in the coming seasons.
Thuso Mbedu - actress
Thuso Mbedu grew up in the suburb of Pelham in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal. As a young girl afflicted with allergies, Mbedu thought she might like to grow up to become the first member of her family to practise as a doctor. Her mother died when she was only four years old, and Mbedu and her sister were raised by their grandmother who would have loved nothing better than for her granddaughter to go into medicine.
But Mbedu’s fate would be different, as the acting bug bit while she was in high school. She eventually convinced her grandmother that acting was her destiny, and off she went to Johannesburg to study drama at Wits. While still a student, Mbedu began landing television roles in series such as Isibaya, the teen drama Snake Park, and then a major role in Is’thunzi, for which she earned two International Emmy nominations, in 2017 and 2018.
While in the United States for the International Emmy Awards show in 2018, Mbedu was encouraged by her agent to submit an audition tape for what turned out to be Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins’ epic miniseries The Underground Railroad. The rest is history as Mbedu went on to land the starring role in Jenkins’ adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead that tells the story of her character Cora’s treacherous journey from bondage to freedom in the antebellum South. Critically acclaimed as one of the most significant and singular television events in recent memory, and for the emotional complexity of Mbedu’s lead performance, the show unfortunately did not secure Mbedu the Emmy nomination many felt she deserved. That hasn’t stopped her though, as she’s now busy preparing to star alongside Oscar-winner Viola Davis in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s epic drama about the legendary women warriors of the Dahomey Kingdom.
Busisiwe Ntintili - film and television writer and producer
The child of South African exiles, Busisiwe Ntintili grew up in New Jersey, where she would watch hours of television to entertain herself while her busy parents were pursuing their academic careers. She was still young when she started writing poems and plays, and it was through her exposure to US television classics such as The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy and the burgeoning African-American talent of performers in shows including In Living Colour and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air that Ntintili discovered her love of the medium and her calling.
Sumayya Vally - architect
She grew up in the Pretoria suburb of Laudium, but it’s the pull, push, and history of Johannesburg that’s provided the inspiration for the multi-disciplinary and celebrated work of 31-year-old architect Sumayya Vally. Introduced to the bustle of Johannesburg during childhood visits to her grandfather’s inner-city store, Vally developed a keen interest in the contradictions between the city’s grand colonial architectural projections and the realities of the life of informal traders and workers carrying on in its streets.
After studying architecture at the University of Pretoria and Wits, Vally and a group of her peers established the architectural practice Counterspace. These young architects had grown disillusioned with the disconnect between the first-world ideas they’d been taught and the more complex realities evident in the urban areas of a post-apartheid South Africa coming to terms with the effects of apartheid’s brutal segregationist city planning.
Akin Omotoso - filmmaker
Born in Nigeria, Akin Omotoso began his long and committed career in the world of film as an actor on South African television shows in the 1990s before directing his debut feature, God is African, a 1999 drama examining the realities of life for African migrants in Johannesburg. Omotoso went on to direct numerous television shows for South African broadcasters and to champion the rights of local filmmakers before earning popular success with his 2010 Maboneng-set romantic comedy Tell Me Sweet Something. Maboneng is of course one of the recently developed trendy spots in the City of Gold.
Koleka Putuma - poet, writer, playwright
There isn’t much in the world of letters that 28-year-old Koleka Putuma hasn’t excelled at in her enviable rise through the ranks of the South African literary establishment. Her 2017 collection of poetry, Collective Amnesia, has sold 8 300 copies (and still counting), with 14 print runs, and is also a prescribed text in several university curricula. Putuma, whose roots lie in performance poetry, first came to mainstream attention when she won the 2014 National Poetry Slam Competition. Her poem Water won the 2016 PEN South Africa Student Writing Prize. Her debut collection the following year earned plaudits both at home and abroad and has been translated into Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, and German — with French, Italian, and Portuguese in the works.
Sibongile Mngoma - vocalist
The face of the recent performance- and music-filled sit-ins to protest the mismanagement of the National Arts Council’s Covid-19-relief fund for the arts, singer Sibongile Mngoma is a versatile vocalist who has performed across a wide range of genres on stages across the globe. Although she initially studied law at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, it was always her destiny to fulfil the “natural diva” tag she’d been given from a young age. In 1993, she began training as an opera singer at the South African College of Music. Since then, she’s studied in Italy, performed on stages there, and also in South Africa and London, where she performed in the Two Nations Celebrate concert for Nelson Mandela and the Queen. Mngoma is the winner of a Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music and FNB Vita Award for Best Opera Female Lead.
The BLK JKS - musicians
When original members — vocalist Linda Buthelezi, guitarist Mpumelelo Mcata, bassist Molefi Makananise, and drummer Tshepang Ramoba — first burst onto the scene as The BLK JKS (pronounced Black Jacks) back in the mid-2000s, their unique blend of art rock, traditionally inspired rhythms, and anguished, haunting vocals caused a sensation on local and international stages. They toured all the coolest festivals on the global circuit, were signed by pioneering record label Secretly Canadian, and produced a critically hailed 2009 debut album, After Robots. Then life seemed to get in the way and, while the band released a few EPs and continued to perform as part of different groups, they never quite seemed to manage to deliver on the promise of their initial whirlwind success. It didn’t help that vocalist Buthelezi departed in 2012 and the rest of the members went on to fulfil ordinary roles in the cycle of life, such as fatherhood and breadwinning.
Loyiso Gola - comedian
The Covid-19 pandemic may have jammed a spanner in the works of Loyiso Gola’s increasingly busy UK and international touring schedule, but he didn’t spend the lockdown idling in depression. Rather, he went to the Zeitz MOCAA museum in Cape Town in the middle of the pandemic to film the first Netflix special by an African comedian — Unlearning — produced under Covid-19 protocols and released on the streaming giant’s platform in March this year.
A familiar and much-loved comedy legend in South Africa for many years thanks to his live shows and appearances in the seminal local TV series The Pure Monate Show and his subsequent role as host of the satirical news show Late Nite News, Gola has always been a smart and ambitious creator of his own career opportunities.
After the end of Late Nite News, he started splitting his time between South Africa and the UK, where he quickly began to make a name for himself, touring regularly and appearing on popular comedy panel and televised comedy shows including QI, Mock the Week, and Live at the Apollo. His success is certainly earned and the result of the kind of dedicated, continual hard work that he’s displayed ever since he first got into the comedy game at the tender age of 17 in his hometown of Cape Town. For his high-school work experience, Gola chose to job shadow comedians from the Cape Town Comedy Collective and soon earned his own spot on stage during the group’s performances. Since then, it’s been all about establishing himself as a global act. With Unlearning’s positive, popular, and critical reception, it shouldn’t be long before he achieves his dream that, as he told The Guardian recently, “If I go to Norway or Chicago or Nairobi, people will buy tickets to see my next hour of standup.” In June he was unveiled as the host of NBA Africa’s Who Got Game? — a YouTube basketball talk show — and in July, he resumed his globetrotting ways, with the 20-date UK tour for his new stand-up show Pop Culture kicking off in September.