In a small fishing village on South Africa’s rugged west coast, restaurateur Kobus van der Merwe is struggling to process his meteoric rise to gastronomic stardom. 



He recently got back from Paris, where four days ago his 20-cover Wolfgat was named Restaurant of the Year at the inaugural World Restaurant Awards, also winning the remote location prize.



“In our category, which was for the off-map destination… there are restaurants that we literally hero-worship and we were like, this is insane,” the food-journalist-turned-chef told Reuters TV on Friday in his first interview with foreign media since returning home.



Others on that shortlist included Japanese wild dining sensation Tokuyamazushi.



Of both prizes, he added: “We never dreamed of making the shortlist, let alone winning.”



Situated in Paternoster, about 160 km (100 miles) northwest of Cape Town, Wolfgat’s speciality is seafood.



Van der Merwe’s seven-course tasting menu pays homage to the region’s long-gone indigenous inhabitants, and his signature dishes are flavored and supplemented with ingredients foraged locally, such as seaweed and succulent plants.



They include Rooibos tea-smoked yellowtail with dune spinach and buttermilk rusk, and freshly baked bread served with bokkom (salted dry fish) butter and infused herbs.



Guests at the 130-year-old whitewashed restaurant, nestled above Wolfgat cave within hearing distance of crashing waves, pay 850 rand ($60), or 1400 rand including drinks.



Van der Merwe, who took the plunge into full-time cooking before completing his culinary studies, said he had no wish to expand or replicate Wolfgat in an urban setting.



 “We certainly don’t aspire to be in the city because the west coast is our muse and I can’t see Wolfgat existing anywhere else,” he said.



His clientele is split evenly between foreign tourists visiting the village and well-heeled South Africans.



But those who make the two-hour drive from Cape Town had better be sure of their reservations before they set out &#8211; because he’s fully booked for the next three months. -Reuters



&#8211; Wendell Roelf

RC157F347A10

From Fishing Village To Gastronomic Heaven: Tables Turn For Wolfgat

Nelson Mandela’s centenary brought together headline-grabbing A-listers and pledges of over $7 billion towards pressing global issues. Though for some, it didn’t end well.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



It was exactly 10 years ago when Australian humanitarian
Hugh Evans, along with his friend Simon Moss, launched the Global Poverty
Project, committing to end extreme poverty by 2030.



That dream launched Global Citizen, and with that, an
eponymous festival in 2012.



“Over 5.65 million actions led to 58 commitments and
announcements worth $7,096,996,725, set to affect the lives of 137,368,628
people,” summed up the Global Citizen Festival, held in December 2018 for the
first time in South Africa, hosted at the FNB Stadium, in the historic township
of Soweto, in celebration of Nelson Mandela’s centenary.



On a hot Sunday afternoon that also saw looming rain clouds,
thousands wearing straw hats and shades, trooped into the stadium, some
arriving as early as 5AM for what was billed a mega concert. 



Presidents, delegates, CEOs, activists, musicians and more
gathered for the Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100.



Among them, a galaxy of international and local celebrities
such as Beyoncé, Trevor Noah, Oprah Winfrey, Naomi Campbell, Usher, Danai
Gurira, Bonang Matheba, Nomzamo Mbatha, Tyler Perry, Pharrell Williams, Bob
Geldof, Ed Sheeran, and dignitaries such as South African President Cyril
Ramaphosa, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Amina J. Mohammed,
Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway, President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana,
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, former South African First Lady Graca Machel
and many more were all gathered for the one-day spectacle. 



The Daily Show anchor and host of the event, Noah said:
“This is 2010 all over again,” referring to the euphoria in South Africa when
the country hosted the FIFA World Cup that year.



“Everybody is here in Mzansi to celebrate the work of Nelson
Mandela,” he added.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="407" height="544" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global6.png" alt="" class="wp-image-39091" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global6.png 407w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global6-300x401.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global6-224x300.png 224w" sizes="(max-width: 407px) 100vw, 407px" /><figcaption>Trevor Noah at the Neslon Mandela Global Citizen Festival. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>



More than 75,000 people were in attendance at the stadium.



On stage, dignitaries committed actions taken to end extreme
poverty, achieve gender equality, and ensure food security, education and
global health.



“Everyone is a global citizen and how you want to take
action in helping others using your voice, reaching out to a representative and
holding rallies, coming together, uniting to make a change is wonderful.
Everybody has a voice now today,” model and activist Campbell who was on stage
told FORBES AFRICA on the sidelines.



&nbsp;“To have a 20-year
with the great man, President Nelson Mandela, is something I will treasure for the rest of my life and it’s an honor to be here and see everyone come together, and to see the young generation understand what this man Mandela stood for, what he sacrificed and what he wanted to achieve. And we are still trying to achieve what he wanted to, which is to eradicate poverty by 2030,” added Campbell. 



Nigerian musician Femi Kuti, son of the legendary Fela Kuti,
who performed and got the crowds dancing, told FORBES AFRICA some of the issues
he holds close to his heart are equality, poverty and the importance of
accountability by all leaders worldwide. 



“Every citizen must take responsibility for tackling these
problems,” he said. 



“My father is a really good example of this, Bob Marley is a
good example of this. If musicians did not talk about such issues, we would
probably be naïve.”



One of Nigeria’s best-selling musicians, D’banj, agreed.



He performed his hit song, Oliver Twist, wearing his
hallmark dark shades, a pair of metallic gold pants and jacket.



“Before I went on stage, I was so glad that this is Africa,
I have performed everywhere in the world but this is my home, and my people are
here,” he told FORBES AFRICA.



&nbsp;“Getting out here and
seeing my generation, the next generation, the millennials, and everyone coming
out, I am just so humbled. I can just say that, from here, the future is going
to be bright because the message of us stars coming together will leave a
mark.” 



The Nigerian artiste is not new to the Global Citizen scene.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="923" height="613" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-39092" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global2.png 923w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global2-300x199.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global2-600x398.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global2-768x510.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 923px) 100vw, 923px" /><figcaption> Beyoncé performs at the Neslon Mandela Global Citizen Festival. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure>



In 2015, he performed alongside Usher, Mary J Blige and
Will.i.am at the Global Citizen Earth Day in Washington D.C in the United
States.



“Global Citizen coming to Africa meant a lot for me… Because
after we leave here, we are going to leave a mark that is going to awaken them
and everybody is going to want to challenge our leaders to give us the right
change,” he said. 



Back on stage, the host Noah addressed the crowds about why
Africa should indeed be celebrated.



“When it comes to resources, Africa is the richest place on
earth,” he said.



“We have more booty than any other continent on the planet.
Men and women&#8230; The point is, Africa has a lot of natural wealth. But what’s
crazy is that even with all this wealth, 40% of all children across the continent
are stunted due to lack of access to food. Tonight, we are calling on African
leaders to commit three percent of their countries’ budgets to nutrition by
2020.”



All through the concert, the United Nations’ Sustainable
Development Goals were unraveled. 



The now former president of the World Bank, Dr Jim Yong Kim,
said it was important to contribute to issues related to health because, “the
crisis is much bigger”. As a result, the World Bank Group invested an
additional $1 million to health and education. 



Other celebrities and global leaders not present made their
own pledges through pre-recorded videos screened at the event.



Businessman and philanthropist Richard Branson pledged a
$105 million joint commitment to end the world’s leading cause of preventable
blindness. Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, announced an investment of
$4 billion made at the G7 Summit towards education for vulnerable women and
girls globally.



Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Angela
Merkel, pledged €63 million ($72.2 million) to Global Citizen over the next
three years.



From a South African perspective, the Motsepe Foundation, a
hosting and presenting partner of Global Citizen, committed more than $104.4
million towards education, economic inclusion and equality of women and girls,
as well as the current debate on land reform in South Africa. Entrepreneurs
Patrice Motsepe and his wife Precious received a rapturous applause when they
appeared on stage. 



President Ramaphosa committed R2 billion ($144 million) for
youth in South Africa, and announced the government’s intention to spend R60
billion ($4.3 billion) to provide free access to schools for poor children in
South Africa.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="928" height="609" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global3.png" alt="" class="wp-image-39093" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global3.png 928w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global3-300x197.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global3-600x394.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global3-768x504.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 928px) 100vw, 928px" /><figcaption> Beyoncé and Jay-Z at the Neslon Mandela Global Citizen Festival. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure>



But with all the pledges announced, the biggest question
remained, what next? 



The Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland, who
was in attendance, weighed in on this.



“What I’d really like to see is we coming up with an
integrated action plan so that it is not just raising the money but we
absolutely identify how is this money going to be utilized and how we can work
together better to support one another and to make sure that it is more likely
that these issues will be delivered,” she told FORBES AFRICA.



“What I hope will come out of this is concrete action which
will make a difference to the lives of the people who are so desperately
thirsting for change.”



At the end of the day, what the 75,000-plus in the stadium
had really come for was the culminating act by Beyoncé, one of the world’s
highest-paid musicians listed on FORBES. 



In one of the outfits on stage, Beyoncé wore a sequined body
suit, thigh-high boots, and a dramatic cape that paid tribute to Africa’s 54
countries. It was designed by Mary Katrantzou, who said in an Instagram post:
“Her coat has the 54 countries of Africa mapped out and on each country there
is a different embroidery representing its diversity.” Beyoncé also wore a
colorful beaded mini-dress with an elaborate back-piece, which according to her
mother Tina Lawson, featured “one hundred thousand African beads”.



Some of the other designers the artiste wore during the
visit included South African designers Enhle Mbali Maphumulo of Manual Rossa
Apparel, Rich Mnisi, MmusoMaxwell, Senegalese designer Adama Ndiaye’s label
Adama Paris, Sarah Diouf’s line Tongoro Studio and Ivorian label Yhebe Design.



Beyoncé and her husband Jay-Z brought Africa to its feet to
their tunes for the first time. It was a breath-taking, epic production which
saw them perform hit songs like Halo, Perfect, Bonnie &amp; Clyde, Formation
and Forever Young.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="853" height="596" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global5.png" alt="" class="wp-image-39094" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global5.png 853w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global5-300x210.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global5-600x419.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global5-768x537.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 853px) 100vw, 853px" /><figcaption> Naomi Campbell at the Neslon Mandela Global Citizen Festival. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure>



But despite the success of the Global Citizen Festival, it
was a chaotic end to a beautiful night for some.



While heads of state and celebrities were escorted back from
the concert venue, some festival-goers were left stranded in gridlocked traffic
at midnight to face attacks by criminals.



Many took to social media to explain how they were mugged at
gunpoint and were victims to violence. 



One of the attendees, 23-year-old Kayleen Morgan, who
witnessed the attacks, told us: “What was upsetting was for something like this
to happen at an event organized on such a huge scale. People’s experiences were
not taken seriously&#8230;” 



A month after these unfortunate incidents, some suspects
have been arrested and investigations continue. 



It was a night Beyoncé stole, and a night some
audience-goers will never forget, for being stolen from.

Global4

2010 all over again: a musical extravaganza to honor Nelson Mandela

The annual Cairo International Book Fair opened this week in a shiny new venue far away, literally and metaphorically, from the city’s historic book souk &#8211; and many of the old market’s merchants stayed away. 



Marking the prestige of the event, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi inaugurated the fair’s 50th edition at the Egypt International Exhibition Centre in the affluent New Cairo area on the outskirts of the capital.



Back downtown, among the teetering stacks of mostly second hand tomes at Azbakeya, a book market that dates back more than a century, merchants complained they had been sidelined.



Dozens of them used to exhibit at the fair’s former home in Nasr City, a district easily accessed, including by metro. This year only six were allowed to sell books at the fair after agreeing to stringent conditions.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“We did not cancel the Azbakeya wall, but we set a booklet of conditions to participate in the fair which all publishers committed to,” said Haitham al-Haj, head of the General Authority for Books, which organizes the event.</blockquote>



Authorities are keen to prevent the sale of counterfeit books, which were rampant in the Azbakeya section of the fair last year, including best-sellers such as Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House”.



Also at issue for the Azbakeya merchants was the cost &#8211; around 1,200 Egyptian pounds ($67) &#8211; of participating, and rules on how they must display their books &#8211; stacking them up in high, disorderly piles is no longer acceptable.



“When people are selling old used books, they have a thousand titles rather than one, so, they are unable to display them in any other way, unlike a publisher. A publisher has probably a hundred titles,” said Harby Hassan, a 63-year-old Azbakeya bookseller.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="594" height="395" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/gettyimages-1083379846-594x594.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-38827" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/gettyimages-1083379846-594x594.jpg 594w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/gettyimages-1083379846-594x594-300x199.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px" /><figcaption>A woman asks a book vendor for information in Cairo&#8217;s historic al-Azbakeya book market at downtown in Cairo on January 16, 2019. (Photo by Mohamed el-Shahed / AFP) (Photo credit should read MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure>



The Azbakeya merchants announced their own month-long book fair from Jan. 15, competing with the international event that runs from Jan. 23 to Feb. 5.



Attendance at both was sizeable.



&#8216;Fifty Shades&#8217; author is back with a new title



Customers flocked to New Cairo to avoid the crowds and squeeze of downtown, while others preferred Azbakeya for its highly competitive prices. -Reuters



-Sayed Sheasha, Mohamed Abdel Ghany and Yousef Saba

gettyimages-1083380016-594×594

Cairo Book Fair’s Gleaming New Site Opens Far From Historic Market

Musician&nbsp;Oliver Mtukudzi, who died at the age of 66, was a great cultural ambassador for Zimbabwe. Known to his fans as Tuku, he was a cultural icon for the southern African country. His aura and presence had a global resonance with fans around the world, yet the man remained humble and magnanimous.



I once boasted to some international colleagues that he was Zimbabwe’s gift to the world. But on closer scrutiny, he was the perfect gift for Zimbabweans especially during their&nbsp;tumultuous times.



Mtukudzi died in Harare after a long battle with diabetes, ironically enough on exactly the same day as his friend, the musician&nbsp;Hugh Masekela, who passed away on 23 January 2018.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/arts/2019/01/23/zimbabwes-oliver-mtukudzi-dies-at-66/">Zimbabwe’s Oliver Mtukudzi Dies At 66</a>



He was also a businessperson, activist, philanthropist and a goodwill ambassador for Unicef in the southern African region. But it was his innovative music that made him deeply loved. Dubbed “Tuku music”, it was a&nbsp;blend&nbsp;of southern African music traditions, including mbira, mbaqanga, jit and the traditional drumming styles of the Korekore.



Tuku released his debut single in 1975. As a solo artist, Mtukudzi had his first successes shortly after Zimbabwe declared its independence in 1980. His debut solo album, Africa. The prolific Mtukudzi released his 67th album in 2018 –&nbsp;Hanya’Ga (Concern), saying it was “meant to share a message of introspecting and I’m hoping people learn a thing or two from it”.



Celebrated as “the man with the talking guitar”, Mtukudzi&nbsp;learned&nbsp;by experimenting: I looked for a sound the guitar couldn’t make in a guitar – that is how I learned to play the guitar. Professional guitarist at the time use to laugh at me. I used to look for a mbira (music instrument) on the guitar strings. I’ve always been experimental. But it was a blessing in disguise because I went on to pioneer a sound that was later labelled Tuku music.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">A wide canvas</h4>



But Mtukudzi was more than just a popular singer. In his song “Todii” (What shall we do?), Mtukudzi reflects on the challenge faced by communities as a result of the scourge of HIV/AIDS. The song gives cadence and sympathy to those who provide care. At the same time it magnifies how despicable those in positions of authority are for violating their responsibility.



He ends the song with a solemn appeal for help and for ideas in view of this challenge. This is Mtukudzi, the social activist.



In another song “Mabasa” (The works) Mtukudzi paints a dire picture of how young people are the first to die, leaving the elderly to fend for themselves. For me this song attests to Mtukudzi reminding us all to be cognisant about how we live.



Mtukudzi also acknowledged the existence of deity and spoke against the attribution of success to luck or happenstance as he did in the song “Raki” (luck).



Conversely, in “Ndagarwa nhaka” (Inheriting) he brought attention to a Shona cultural practice of a widow being married off to the late husband’s elder or young brother. In this song Mtukudzi, using the voice of the widow, appears to praise the status quo as enabling the widow to get solace and protection given her loss.



A stark contrast, though, is found in the movie “Neria”. Mtukudzi crafted the soundtrack detailing the tribulations of a widow trying to survive past patriarchy in all its forms.



In the song “Dzoka uyamwe” (come and suckle) Mtukudzi bemoans the experiences of a person suffering prejudice based on how they look. Given this sad experience, the mother urges her child to come back home and suckle. The song then becomes philosophically charged, reminding us all that the core of all prejudice emanates from the mind and the heart. This theme of a concerned parent appears to reverberate in the song “Chengetai” meaning “to keep”.



This time, a role reversal: children are being urged to take care of their parents.



Some of Mtukudzi’s songs were sources of contention and deemed anti-establishment. For instance “Wasakara” (You are old) was interpreted by some as a reference to former President Robert Mugabe, given that a character in the song was in denial of age creeping up on them. In later years as a consultant, I would use the song in driving home the importance of succession planning for effectual and efficient organisations.



Mtukudzi also continues to give the same admonition to the elderly in the song “Mkuru mkuru” (the elderly leader).



Mtukudzi would also pen “Mutserendende” (the slide) and draw comparisons between two generations. From the first generation, Mtukudzi idolises how life was easy and pleasurable for children, a stark contrast to his generation’s life of toil and hardship in climbing the mountain. The solace, as argued by the song, is continued perseverance and determination.



In “Magumo” (the end), Mtukudzi raises some poignant life lessons on the importance of ideals such as humility. The most important question we should ask in everything we do, Mtukudzi argues, is: what will be the end of this that I am doing?



In the song “Kunze kwadoka” (the sun has set, it’s dark), Mtukudzi presents the questioning parent and the precarious situation of a child who has stayed out on a date for a long time. Giving advice to the boyfriend, “perekedza mwanasikana, perekedza bhebhi iro zuva ravira kunze kwadoka” translated “accompany the girl, accompany that babe the sun has set, it’s dark out”.



Now the sun has set on Oliver Mtukudzi. He leaves the world his greatest prized possession, the gift of song. Thank you, maestro par excellence.- The Conversation



-Willie Chinyamurindi: Associate Professor, University of Fort Hare



-Chinyamurindi is an avid narrative researcher. This piece was written using Oliver Mtukudzi’s Greatest Hits album – The Tuku Years (1998-2002).



<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110443/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important">

Geoffrey Kent’s Book Launch Celebrating: “Safari: A Memoir Of A Worldwide Travel Pioneer”

Tribute To Oliver Mtukudzi – Zimbabwe’s ‘Man With The Talking Guitar’

Zimbabwean jazz musician Oliver Mtukudzi has died at age 66 after a
month long illness. 



There are reports that Mtukudzi’s record label, Gallo Record Company
confirmed his passing.



Mtukudzi died in Harare on January 23 at Avenues Clinic. His musical
peer, South African jazz artist, Hugh Masekela died on the same day last year.

Zimbabwe’s Oliver Mtukudzi Dies At 66

One of the most commercially successful artists in Kenya, Nani Croze, has lived a life few could dare to <g class="gr_ gr_3 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Punctuation only-del replaceWithoutSep" id="3" data-gr-id="3">imagine,</g> and introduced a new expression supported by her art, philanthropy and entrepreneurship.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



The journey to the Kitengela Glass estate begins like any other from Nairobi. Traffic is often heavy and there is frustration on the roads. But as you pass through the last of it, a different world unfurls. The road is murram (gravelly) and a new settlement is unfolding around it, overlooked by a new railroad track for the high-speed train to Mombasa, recent signs of development consuming the old Maasai plains.



But no less than a mile away, cushioned by the narrow gorges
of the Nairobi National Park, is the entry into a wonderland where the life and
work of German-born artist Nani Croze has concentrated for over the last 40
years. It is an eccentric paradise with a lush covering of indigenous trees and
shrubs, canopies over stunning and colorfully outrageous architecture that
announce the artist in her territory.



However, her life in Kenya was a gift of fate. Croze first
came to East Africa with her first husband, the animal behaviourist, Harvey
Croze, and their children at the end of the 1960s. 



“I came to Africa in 1968 to study elephants in the
Serengeti and four years later, the study was finished and we decided to go
back across the continent back to Europe. I filled a VW van with my three kids,
safely in the back, and we got as far as the Kenyan border. The car broke down
and we stayed&#8230;and that was that,” she tells me in the aviary area outside her
house as birdsong echoes around generous foliage.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="962" height="555" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani31.png" alt="" class="wp-image-38656" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani31.png 962w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani31-300x173.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani31-600x346.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani31-768x443.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 962px) 100vw, 962px" /><figcaption>Glass work by artist Nani Croze. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure>



Mother Nani, or ‘Mama’ to the community of artisans and
their families that also call Kitengela Glass home, is a matriarch in this
setting. Her hair is pinned up in a loose bun revealing tanned cheeks and
piercing blue eyes. 



A formidable painter and muralist, Croze is an artist of
many mediums. However, a little-known fact is her life in science. As a young
woman, she convinced the Nobel Prize-winning biologist and founding father of
the science of animal behavior, Konrad Lorenz, to work under him. Her earlier
works depict this scientific knowledge in lively wildlife motifs.



Nonetheless, she is perhaps most known, these days, for her
work with glass. Her estate is testament to this; colored glass panels of all
shapes and sizes line the structures at the entry of her world. The winding
walkway is flanked by sculptures accented with thick glass. The outdoor seating
is dalle-de-verre. 



The workshop and furnace are open for passersby to see. Its
products, ever-present at every corner of the estate, also decorate the
balustrades of the estate’s gallery, roof to her personal studio, intentionally
constructed around a formidable mogumo (African fig) tree, a souvenir from the
early days. She found it growing on the barren plains of what would become
estate when she arrived in 1979, a genus local legend claims can never die.



By this then, a single mother of three, Croze stumbled in to
the glass arts out of economic necessity.&nbsp;
She had purchased the land from the Maasai community of the area and
was, at the time, a working muralist. 



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="922" height="618" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani11.png" alt="" class="wp-image-38657" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani11.png 922w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani11-300x201.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani11-600x402.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani11-768x515.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 922px) 100vw, 922px" /><figcaption> Glass work by artist Nani Croze. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure>



“My architect [told me] ‘you can’t pay school fees with
murals, you better start something new, what about stained glass?’” she
recalls.



An influx of Christian missions meant that stained glass
windows were crucial for finishing new churches and, as an art, they were more
profitable. This has since expanded to a wide-range of recycled glass products
from blown glass to beads, mosaics, murals, sculpture and, of course, dalle de
verre. However, the stained glass studio, the first on the estate, still
remains, busy and peopled, tucked away in a quiet corner of the gallery
building.



Croze, perhaps one of the most commercially successful
artists in Kenya, is often credited for introducing this new craft to the
region. She herself is self-taught and along with her son, Anslem, trained by
glass-blowers in the South of France and Holland, built the first furnace in
East Africa. He eventually took over the glass-blowing side of the business and
now runs his own studio next door along with an eponymous retail brand in
Nairobi selling decorative glass vessels, furniture and lighting. 



In her own right, Nani is responsible for training the first
Kenyan glass artisans, initially in stained glass and then in glass-blowing and
mosaics.



“We started together, my first [assistant] was a man called
Omondi. We started on stained glass-making and how it works and it’s quite a
process but once you’re in it, like all my guys here&#8230; you get quite good at
it. It’s a traditional and weary process but once you have [the finished
window] you have something beautiful that can never be undone,” she says.



Of the things that cannot be undone is Croze’s legacy not
only within the community of the estate and the industry she has created around
it but in the lives of many in East Africa.



Kitengela Glass is home to more than 50 artisans and their
families, many of whom have gone on to build independent careers in and outside
of glass art. An example is Edith Nyambura, formerly the resident mosaic
artist, who began her career at Kitengela and eventually wrote a book about her
work in 2010. 



There is also the young Patrick Kibe, colloquially known as
‘Mr. Dudu’ (Mr. Insect in Kiswahili), who arrived as a student at the estate
almost a decade ago and is now carving his own niche, creating figures and
sculptures of indigenous flora and fauna from recycled materials.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="810" height="537" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani4.png" alt="" class="wp-image-38658" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani4.png 810w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani4-300x199.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani4-600x398.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani4-768x509.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 810px) 100vw, 810px" /><figcaption> Glass work by artist Nani Croze. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure>



Then there is the school Croze founded, not far from the
estate, often billed as the first of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa. Her
motivation was to introduce to the country the creative education she had
received as a young girl in Germany, which she regretted that her own children
did not have attending local schools.



“We have such terrible schools in Kenya that are so bad for
children! A child should grow up free, they should have music, art, new
movement and environment,” she laments.



The Rudolf Steiner School started with a class of 10 in
Nairobi’s leafy Karen suburb, popularly known as the setting of Out of Africa,
Karen Blixen’s pre-colonial odyssey. 



“It took its time. We had a very good worldwide sponsorship,
especially from Germany. We’ve had our ups and downs but now we have two in
Karen and the other one in Kitale [in western Kenya].”



In addition to her contributions in education, she is also a
key campaigner for young artists across Kenya. She is the founder of the annual
Kenya Arts Diary, a weekly calendar and catalog of up-and-coming contemporary
artists in the country.



The ninth edition was released in November with an exuberant
exhibition at the Nairobi Museum and since its founding has been produced by a
group of passionate volunteers. Every year, she picks up two artists featured
in the diary and invites them to a residency at the estate. The inspiration for
the project, she says, was her father, the acclaimed German woodcut artist HAP
Grieshaber, who also took a similar interest in his students.



“He would always help his students. Art is very expensive
most people can’t buy it so you either make it yourself or you make sure it
happens. The diary is just a venue to make sure people buy it and see it every
week,” she notes.



Although the next issue of the arts diary will be her last,
Croze remains ever passionate about her adopted home and community and hopes to
continue giving back to it while she is still alive.



“I was the first mzungu [Caucasian] in Maasailand&#8230;we had a
really good relationship and we still have with the Maasai community but my Ma
is still not very good, I must say. I feel very much a part of the community,”
she says.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="463" height="616" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani21.png" alt="" class="wp-image-38659" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani21.png 463w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani21-300x399.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani21-225x300.png 225w" sizes="(max-width: 463px) 100vw, 463px" /><figcaption> Glass work by artist Nani Croze. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure></div>



Croze is a focal point at the Nairobi National Museum, from
the dalle-de-verre mural that welcomes museum-goers at the main exhibition
hall, to her mosaic path that snakes through the museum gardens to the goliath
metal and glass sculptures that mark the way through the complex. She remains
one of the few living artists in Kenya to have such a permanent and public
showing.



Even away from the whimsical glass oasis that she has built,
echoes of her are littered across Nairobi. Her commissioned murals on major
commercial buildings such as the American Embassy in the city’s diplomatic district.
She was the first to color the walls of the newly-established United Nations
Environmental Programme, UNEP, in 1972. Her art is also at the Times Tower in
the heart of the old city, home to the tax authority. There are also pieces
dotted across the region, a recent commission at a call center in Eldoret, in
western Kenya, and the windows at the Serena Hotel in Kigali.



“I just want to make sure that it all keeps going.&nbsp; There are always problems here and there, all
the time, but I want to keep it going,” she says.



Croze, true to her word, is still going with plans for a
vocational school to train a larger population of recycled glass artisans in
the nearby township of Tuala. Plans are also underway for a devotional school
to replace her personal chapel that was lost in a land dispute and, of course,
more commissions while she is still able to work on them. 

On the future of the world around her, a life’s
work, she is surprisingly indifferent. “I leave it to the Gods,” she ruminate

nani

IN PICTURES | The glass ceiling is what she makes it

Gracia Bampile’s dislike for African print made her turn it
around into a full-time obsession.



It all began with a pink dress – a present she received a
week before her seventh birthday from her parents. Gracia Bampile put it away
excited for the day she would wear it.&nbsp; 



She recalls going to school and telling everyone about her
new outfit. The enthusiasm, however, was short-lived. She changed her mind
about her gift the moment she wore it and took a closer look at it.&nbsp; 



“I remember thinking I would rather not celebrate my
birthday. I was traumatized… The dress was just horrendous.”



The material felt like plastic, it was ugly, it was not the
right fit, and even for a seven-year-old, she knew the design did not make the
cut. 



“I felt like I was wearing a granny dress. My birthday was
just ruined by that dress,” Bampile recollects.



&nbsp;“I got so angry with
my parents that I couldn’t let go. That’s how my passion for fashion started. I
didn’t want to feel like that again.”



<ul class="wp-block-gallery columns-1 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex"><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="409" height="618" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/dress6.png" alt="" data-id="38682" data-link="https://www.forbesafrica.com/?attachment_id=38682" class="wp-image-38682" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/dress6.png 409w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/dress6-300x453.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/dress6-199x300.png 199w" sizes="(max-width: 409px) 100vw, 409px" /><figcaption> Model Reitumetse Mokutu in a Gracia Bampile creation. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla </figcaption></figure></li></ul>



That was her epiphany, the start of a fashion journey,
disliking African print as a result of a bitter experience. She thought it was
too bright and stayed as far from it as she could.



&nbsp;Today, Bampile is a
fashion entrepreneur setting the standard for African print. She is the founder
of Haute Afrika, a contemporary brand that prides itself in affordability and
class.



She was born in a small town called Goma in the east coast
of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 1991 – on the border line of
the DRC and Rwanda. At the age of six, Bampile and her family left the DRC,
leaving her seamstress-grandmother behind. They moved to East Africa and lived
in Uganda for about seven years, then Kenya, then arrived in South Africa when
she was 19. They left due to the conflict in the DRC that still rages on. 



“My granny was a tailor. At some point, she stopped making
clothes. My gran didn’t teach me to sew on purpose… [Yet], on holidays, we
would go visit her in Rwanda and I would be her assistant,” says Bampile.



Just two years later, her aging grandmother saw her
resourcefulness and promoted Bampile to crafting complete garments. 



That is how her style evolved, through her grandmother’s
experience in sewing. She was big on quality and passed it down to the next
generation.&nbsp; 



<ul class="wp-block-gallery columns-1 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-2 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex"><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="414" height="617" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/dress1.png" alt="" data-id="38683" data-link="https://www.forbesafrica.com/?attachment_id=38683" class="wp-image-38683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/dress1.png 414w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/dress1-300x447.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/dress1-201x300.png 201w" sizes="(max-width: 414px) 100vw, 414px" /><figcaption> Model Reitumetse Mokutu in a Gracia Bampile creation. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla </figcaption></figure></li></ul>



“That is something that is seen in Haute Afrika’s designs
today. My garments are not constructed to sell, we are big on quality and our
sewing is impeccable,” says Bampile.



Her complicated relationship with African fashion changed,
the more she interacted with patterns and the creation of garments. 



“When I got to the age of 15, I thought maybe it’s not the
African print [that’s the problem], it was probably the way it was presented to
me. I went on a journey of rediscovering African print and design. My love for
it was revived,” she says.



When she was a teenager, African print was not readily
available. Her mind-set then was not to be a designer, she simply wanted to
look good and got her clothes made by a tailor.



By 2012, when Bampile was 21, African print was rising in
popularity – people started wearing it and it was easily accessible. 



This was also a time when Bampile was in varsity and
experimenting with African patterns. She says people would stop her and ask
about her garments, and the idea of Haute Afrika began simmering in her mind. 



“It started as an African fashion blog; I started an
Instagram account, opened a Facebook page and reposted other people’s designs
because I didn’t have my own stuff. I never saw this as an actual thing, it was
just for fun,” she says.



“Clearly, it’s not the material or the tradition or the
culture [that’s the problem], it’s just the way it was presented. And that’s
what I’m big on – presenting African print as your normal everyday wear. 



“I want to you to be able to wear this dress to church,
work, a birthday party, a baby-shower or to a wedding.”



In her new collection, she aims to simplify African print as
much as possible. There is less extravagance and the ordinary bright colors
persist, to attract the everyday person who wants to represent Africa. 



The brand was launched in 2016 after she started taking it
seriously as a profession. She went back to her grandmother for design advice.
She started doing research and did a short course in fashion to enhance her
credentials. 



Importing material from Nigeria, Congo, Ghana and Turkey,
Bampile intends to expand her reach to other parts of the globe. 



“The next step for the brand actually scares me. Sometimes I
feel like my dreams are crazy. The name haute itself means height/high in
French, so in fashion, haute couture means high fashion, but for me it’s Haute
Afrika because this is Africa, I want Africa to have a brand that is big on its
own and emphasize quality. 



<ul class="wp-block-gallery columns-1 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-3 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex"><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="412" height="616" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Dress3.png" alt="" data-id="38684" data-link="https://www.forbesafrica.com/?attachment_id=38684" class="wp-image-38684" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Dress3.png 412w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Dress3-300x449.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Dress3-201x300.png 201w" sizes="(max-width: 412px) 100vw, 412px" /><figcaption> Model Reitumetse Mokutu in a Gracia Bampile creation. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla </figcaption></figure></li></ul>



“This means taking Africa out of Africa. European brands are
coming into Africa, but why aren’t African brands going out?” she says.



Haute Afrika mostly sells online, to clients outside South
Africa. She says her biggest clients are in Europe and America. Her most recent
buyer was from Indonesia.



Speaking about her progress in the industry, Bampile adds:
“I previewed my stuff at the Free State Fashion Week and it was super-awesome. 



“The reaction was just unbelievable. Some designers take
years to showcase at a fashion week and I took two.



“Last year, I was really surprised. I did 10 weddings –
three white and the other seven were traditional. I couldn’t believe people
trusted me with their weddings when they haven’t seen [enough of] my work.”



In 2018, she scaled up, doing about 15 weddings. 



“I am also proud of myself this year because I have more
people buying Haute Afrika for everyday wear,” she says.



The requests from her clients have also diversified. 



“A gentleman came in and he wanted a transformation of his
wardrobe. We made 10 pants for him. That’s what he’s probably going to wear
next year. I’m also proud of the fact that I’m not only attracting people that
have events, but also the everyday person, which is what I wanted to do with my
collection.” 



Bampile employs two full-time and two part-time workers at
her studio in Sandton, miles away from that first garment that wrecked her
seventh birthday but made her whole life.&nbsp;




<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<ul class="wp-block-gallery columns-1 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-4 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex"><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="410" height="617" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/dress4.png" alt="" data-id="38685" data-link="https://www.forbesafrica.com/?attachment_id=38685" class="wp-image-38685" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/dress4.png 410w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/dress4-300x451.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/dress4-199x300.png 199w" sizes="(max-width: 410px) 100vw, 410px" /><figcaption> Model Reitumetse Mokutu in a Gracia Bampile creation. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla </figcaption></figure></li></ul>

dress7

IN PICTURES | The ugly dress that made this designer

His beginnings were in a two-bedroom apartment in a South
London estate he shared with his mother, aunt and cousins.



That’s all Zimbabwe-born Percelle Ascott had, besides a
childhood filled with beautiful memories.



“I remember riding my bike everywhere, playing football and
making treehouses. All the kids who grew up on my estate knew each other, and
it was probably where my love for acting grew from. 



“I had a wild imagination for all the things I didn’t have.
I would make something out of nothing.”



Such mental calisthenics obviously helped. Today, the
25-year-old Ascott is a British actor with a plum role on the Netflix sci-fi
romance series The Innocents.



His family moved to London when he was three. His
recollections are a mixed bag – struggles and triumphs, and a mother who is his
role model and motivation. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“I’m sure every family has struggles, especially financially, when you live in London, but I was blessed to have a hard-working mum and aunt who always provided for me and my cousins,” he says.</blockquote>



There are an estimated 700,000 Zimbabweans in the United
Kingdom (UK). Most jokingly call the UK ‘Harare North’. 



Ascott didn’t need much coercion to take to acting; his
first stint was at the age of 11, in a school play.



“I played Mowgli in Jungle Book. My mum told me how I would
recite everyone’s lines if they forgot them. But it wasn’t until I went to
secondary school where I came across an exceptional drama teacher who instilled
so much confidence in me.”



He dreams to be a part of some exceptional storytelling. 



“We only remember the stories that shaped us, shaped our
perspective on the way we view the world. I hope I can create meaningful real
characters people can relate to; [they] can laugh with me, cry with me and go
through a journey together.



&nbsp;“I remember watching
the film Philadelphia starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington and couldn’t
help but think about Denzel’s character. The journey his character goes through
is so powerful given the timing of the film. At the start, he has this
ignorance toward HIV/AIDS which is shaped differently when he meets Tom and
becomes his lawyer fighting his case. I’m sure it must’ve informed the opinion
of audiences who had the same perspective on HIV/AIDS.”



Ascott’s new role in The Innocents has been since June
2018.&nbsp; 



“The casting was a lengthy process that required me to do a
few rounds plus chemistry tapes with different actresses, but I guess that’s
what it takes when you’re trying to find Harry and June [the lead
protagonists]. Their romance being so crucial to the story, that energy between
them being something that just has to fit,” he says.



&nbsp;Ascott proudly
represents a country many wish they didn’t come from.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“Since the launch of the show on Netflix, I’ve had a huge number of fellow Zimbabweans reach out to me. I find that special because it’s not something a kid from Zimbabwe has as their career trajectory, to be a lead on a Netflix show.”</blockquote>



In the future, he plans to lead film projects in Zimbabwe. 



“There are more and more projects being funded in Africa as
a whole. South Africa has a fast-established industry growing there. Why not
Zimbabwe? I told my dad already we’re going to build a film studio in Zimbabwe
one day. There are so many stories from Zimbabwe because of its vast history.
Let’s show the world what the real Zimbabwe looks like&#8230;”



Other than acting, Ascott produces, writes and directs
films. He is also co-owner of The Wall of Comedy, a platform on social media
with a following of eight million people. 



For young African aspiring actors, he also has some advice.



“Hard work, determination, and perseverance. Ultimately, I
would say love. A love of what you do. A love of why you do it and to always
use that as a compass for the choices you make.”

Percelle Ascott

Percelle Ascott, the Zimbabwe-born actor, who’s on a roll on Netflix

Veteran Nigerian artist Nike Davies-Okundaye has made her name innovating the art of her heritage and giving other women hope by paying it forward.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



The best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others,” says Nobel prize-winning Nigerian novelist Wole Soyinka on pursuing a life in the arts.



This observation is perhaps most true when applied to the
life and work of fellow citizen and internationally-renowned batik artist,
Chief Nike Davies-Okundaye. 



Born in 1951 in Ogidi-Ijumu, a small village in western
Nigeria known for its spectacular rock formations and traditional art industry,
Davies-Okundaye has reached the pinnacle of her career thanks to an enduring
dedication to preserve and innovate the culture of her people.&nbsp; 



The daughter of impoverished traditional artisans, she did
not, like many artists of her stature, receive any formal education in art or
preparatory schooling. The poverty of her childhood led her to leave school
after the sixth grade. Instead, she was trained informally in the traditional
crafts of her people through methods practised by women in her family for
generations.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="411" height="616" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike.png" alt="" class="wp-image-38525" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike.png 411w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike-300x450.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike-200x300.png 200w" sizes="(max-width: 411px) 100vw, 411px" /><figcaption>Veteran Nigerian artist Nike Davies-Okundaye. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>



Yet, over a career spanning five decades, Davies-Okundaye
has gone on to educate generations of artists, at no cost to them, through a
network of art centers across Nigeria. A far cry from the girl shaped by
tragedy very early in life. 



“I lost my mother when I was six and I lost my grandmother
when I was seven. The knowledge was passed on to me by my great-grandmother who
was the head of all the weavers in our village,” she recounts.



Following the death of both her mother and grandmother, she
was taken in by her great grandmother, an established adire, a specialist in
the traditional art of fabric dyeing of southwest Nigeria. From her,
Davies-Okundaye learned to weave fabric on traditional looms beginning the
family’s fifth generation in the craft.&nbsp; 



Her father, too, was a practitioner of the traditional arts.
An accomplished basket weaver, he also practised embroidery and leather work
and was a known musician in the community. 



In Ogidi, parents passed on their skills to their children
in a form of vocational training concentrated within the household.
Davies-Okundaye started as early as seven.



“Once in a week, they taught me crafts. This craft they [taught] is for [us] to be able know how to do handwork&#8230; so that’s how I was learning.” she recalls. 



An adept student, drawing from her family’s many artisanal
specializations, she quickly developed her own style and technique in textile
weaving and painting. 



Unfortunately, the young woman wasn’t allowed to nurture her
talents for long. Her family made the controversial decision to marry her off
when she was just 14 years old, an event that would impact the course of her
life very powerfully.



“They married me to a minister who already had four wives!
This is why I ran away from home and joined a traveling theater,” she says.



It was the traveling theater that took her to Osogbo, the
Nigerian town where she first established herself as an adire in her own right.
Historically, it was the source of beautiful handmade indigo textiles and, in
the 1960s, it became a nucleus of contemporary African art in the country.&nbsp; 



Indigo to the Yoruba people is the color of love. The
process of adire-making is therefore a labor of love. It involves extracting
indigo from the indigenous elu plant using labor-intensive techniques followed
by painting and resist-dyeing the fabric with a homemade cassava emulsion. 



As she became better versed in adire, Davies-Okundaye
decided to sell her work in what would be her very first gallery, out of her
bedroom, in 1968. This was her entry into a formal career in art.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="501" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike4-1024x501.png" alt="" class="wp-image-38526" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike4-1024x501.png 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike4-300x147.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike4-600x293.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike4-768x375.png 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike4.png 1262w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption> Batik art by Chief Nike Davies-Okundaye. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure>



‘I called it African Art Number One Shop and I noticed that
it was only expatriates that would come to my shop and buy the pieces,” she
says.



During this time, she matured as an artist, experimenting
with fabric design and painting as well as teaching herself a new language,
English, to communicate with her foreign buyers. 



One of them was Alan Donovan, the acclaimed American
gallerist and collector of African artifacts. Arriving on the continent in 1967
as an aid worker during the Biafra War, Donovan took every opportunity to
travel around West Africa discovering the art and culture of the region.



When he stumbled upon Osogbo, it was inevitable that he
would end up at the door of the African Art Number One. Now living in Kenya,
Donovan became a repeat customer. He would return time and again, encouraging
her to make more work, which he would take to Nairobi. 



Her work would be distributed to discerning collectors like
Donovan. Among them was Joseph Murumbi, Kenya’s first Vice-President and one of
Africa’s most recognized private art collectors. From that one-room gallery,
Davies-Okundaye reportedly sent over 100 pieces of her work and that of other
Osogbo artists to Nairobi.&nbsp; 



In 1972, Donovan organized the Nigerian Festival, part of a
pan-African trade fair, in Nairobi. This was officially Davies-Okundaye’s
international debut at the gallery of the African Heritage House, founded by
Donovan and Murumbi’s wife, Sheila, the same year. The partnership continued
for decades, returning Nike numerously to Nairobi for East African exhibitions
of her Adire.



Interest in Kenya led to her first international tour,
taking her to the United States at the invitation of the American government,
along with 10 other established artists from across the continent. The
experience, she insists, was a catalyst for the founding of her art centers and
business in Nigeria.



“We were privileged to be the first artists from Africa to
travel to America in 1974. They asked us to bring something back that would
benefit our people. They took us to galleries and museums and they allowed us
to see their craft,” she remembers.



What she brought back was an even greater passion and
understanding of art, one that has led to philanthropy via her eponymous art
centers. The first opened in 1983, where she worked with disenfranchised women
on the streets of Osogbo. There, much like her own informal education, she
shared with them her skills in adire, weaving, painting and other traditional
arts for free. The centers have since grown to three in other Nigerian cities:
Abuja, Lagos and her hometown, Ogidi.



The Lagos center also houses Davies-Okundaye’s monumental
art gallery, said to be the largest in West Africa with over 8,000 pieces from
artists across Nigeria. The gallery, which opened in 1996, was a direct influence
of her American tour in the 1970s.



“The gallery that had in Osogbo was nothing compared to what
I saw [in the US] and I [wanted] to build a gallery where everyone’s voice
would be heard,” she says.



True to form, the gallery has achieved all that and more.
She has been responsible for discovering new talent in the country and actively
takes on an up-and-coming artist every month, building her collection and
diversity of voices piece by piece. 



Any one of these young artists may look at her career and
wonder where her secret to success lies. She is honest about the obstacles in
an industry that in many parts of the continent remains largely unrecognized.



“I always know my work. So whatever you do, you need to do
it very well and I tell people don’t rush, you will get there at the end of the
day. Have peace in your heart,” is her advice.



However, the patience that has carried her through has been
fueled by careful financial planning. As an entrepreneur, Davies-Okundaye has
endured because of this. She reinvests at least two-thirds of her income in her
business and art centers. 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="402" height="612" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike5.png" alt="" class="wp-image-38527" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike5.png 402w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike5-300x457.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nike5-197x300.png 197w" sizes="(max-width: 402px) 100vw, 402px" /><figcaption> Batik art by Chief Nike Davies-Okundaye. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure></div>



“Always plan ahead because if you make money today, you may
not make any for several months. I keep working. Even if I can’t sell any
pieces, I’ll find other work to pay for the materials,” she says.



This earnest combination of hard work, frugality and
philanthropy has made Davies-Okundaye a veteran artist of not only Nigeria but
of Africa. She has had pieces on permanent display at the Smithsonian
Institution’s National Museum of African Art in Washington DC for the past six
years.



The Gallery of African Art in London held a month and a half
retrospective of her work in 2014. Next year, she will return to the
Smithsonian for a celebration of her 50-year-career. Her work is cherished in
private collections all over with world. 



That doesn’t stop her from adding to her repertoire. Aside
from adire and textile painting, she recently began working with beads,
producing intricate portraits depicting life across Nigeria, completing a
single piece over the course of a year.



Even at 67, Davies-Okundaye has no plans to retire. 



“I still make time for my own work&#8230; and I still manage to cook for my husband,” she laughs.



-Marie Shabaya

nike1

The material of life according to textile queen Nike Davies-Okundaye

Shonda Rhimes may have defined Thursday night television, but she&#8217;s now dictating the medium&#8217;s future. When the&nbsp;Grey&#8217;s Anatomy&nbsp;creator signed a nine figure, four-year deal with Netflix last year, she cemented her place&nbsp;at the forefront of entertainment&#8217;s digital future-and pioneered Netflix&#8217;s handsome producer paydays.
Rhimes, who created and executive produced ABC hits including&nbsp;Scandaland&nbsp;How To Get Away with Murder, is now developing eight shows for the streaming service through her production outfit ShondaLand.
&#8220;We are powerful women and when we say we have power, what we are really saying is that we deserve to have power. We deserve whatever good thing it is that we are getting,&#8221; said&nbsp;Rhimes at&nbsp;Elle&nbsp;magazine’s 25th annual Women in Hollywood celebration.
<blockquote>Demanding what you deserve can feel like a radical act.</blockquote>
Worth an estimated $135 million, Rhimes is the wealthiest female showrunner&#8211;the person who oversees writing and production of each TV episode-in&nbsp;Hollywood. She has said that her deal, which&nbsp;reportedly&nbsp;includes a base salary of $150 million with incentives that could bump it much higher, is bigger than the $300 million secured by Ryan Murphy.
Rhimes is just one of the world&#8217;s most powerful women in media and entertainment effecting change and impacting her industry with groundbreaking deals and inclusive storytelling. Take Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who has&nbsp;helped pioneer&nbsp;Star Wars&#8216; most inclusive casting yet.&nbsp;Under Kennedy&#8217;s stewardship, Kelly Marie Tran became the first woman of color to have a lead role in the multi-billion dollar franchise, playing Rose Tico in 2017&#8217;s&nbsp;The Last Jedi.
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Across the lot, Dana Walden has seen her power grow in the studio landscape. Following Disney&#8217;s $71.3 billion acquisition of the majority of&nbsp;21st Century Fox, the former chair and CEO of Fox Television Group will also head up 20th Century Fox TV, ABC Studios, the Freeform network, ABC-owned TV stations, ABC Entertainment and several other divisions.
Walden believes more women need to be in decision-making roles at every level. &#8220;There must be women in the highest ranks of every organization, and meaningful female representation on every corporate board,&#8221; Walden&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2017/11/01/15-most-powerful-women-in-entertainment-and-media-2017-effecting-change-tackling-sexual-harassment/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="InternalLink:https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2017/11/01/15-most-powerful-women-in-entertainment-and-media-2017-effecting-change-tackling-sexual-harassment/">told Forbes last year</a>.
<blockquote>Our recruiting and our training has to be oriented to ensure that we’re identifying and nurturing future generations of female leaders.</blockquote>
Entertainment&#8217;s most powerful&nbsp;span Hollywood, music and publishing. As each segment continues to deal with the fallout of the #MeToo movement, women have taken action. Anna Wintour, who continues to control&nbsp;Vogue,&nbsp;suspended photographers Bruce Weber and Mario Testino amid sexual misconduct charges and set a code of conduct for models and photographers.
Wintour teamed up with music power woman Beyoncé for the September issue of&nbsp;Vogue; she was given creative control over her cover photo and leveraged that power to hire the first African American photographer to shoot the cover in the magazine&#8217;s&nbsp; 126-year history. Another first for Beyoncé: In 2018, she became the first black woman to headline Coachella.
Here&#8217;s the full list of Media and Entertainment power women:
1. Oprah Winfrey, Media mogul
2. Shari Redstone, Vice Chair, CBS &amp; Viacom
3. Bonnie Hammer, Chair, NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment
4. Donna Langley,&nbsp; Chair, Universal Pictures
5. Anna Wintour, Artistic Director, Conde Nast
6. Beyoncé, Singer
7. Dana Walden, Chairman, Disney TV Studios and ABC Entertainment
8. Katharine Viner, Editor-in-Chief, Guardian
9. Taylor Swift, Singer
10. Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief, The Economist
11. Kathleen Kennedy, President, Lucasfilm
12. Shonda Rhimes, Showrunner
13. Arianna Huffington, Founder &amp; CEO, Thrive Global
14. Serena Williams, Tennis player
15. Shobhana Bhartia, Chair, HT&nbsp;Media
16. Priyanka Chopra,&nbsp;Actress
&#8211;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Natalie Robehmed</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">:</a>&nbsp;I&#8217;m an associate editor at Forbes covering media and entertainment, with a focus on the movie business. For the magazine, I&#8217;ve written cover stories on&nbsp;
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READ MORE |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2018/01/09/chef-cooked-beyonce-paris/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Chef Who Cooked For Beyoncé In Paris</a>
READ MORE |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/11/03/lessons-ideas-100-greatest-living-minds/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lessons And Ideas By The 100 Greatest Living Business Minds</a>
READ MORE |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2017/09/27/worlds-highest-paid-tv-actresses-2017-sofia-vergara-leads-41-5-million/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2017/09/27/worlds-highest-paid-tv-actresses-2017-sofia-vergara-leads-41-5-million/</a>
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2018 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival – Weekend 1 – Day 2

From Beyonce To Shonda Rhimes, The Most Powerful Women In Entertainment 2018

Africa Writes, the Royal African Society’s annual literature festival, dwelt on Afrofuturism and where black British artists see themselves in the burgeoning new aesthetic.

June fries itself to an end; London is sticky with the combustible residue of unseasonable heat, lager, and irrational, tabloid-whipped World Cup optimism. It’s too absurd to be an African summer; temperatures above 30 degrees are tearfully embraced, red-raw and half-naked, by the English, with a stunned but gleeful alacrity at the entrance of a jolly, party-starting relative believed long-dead.
A hundred and fourteen years earlier, the Sierra Leonean writer A.B.C. Merriman-Labor, astonished to discover the religious void in the heart of the greatest metropolis on earth, sends a letter home from London in which he decides, with horror and affection, that “the Britons are barbarians and heathens”.
This motif of seeing – by Africans of the British and of British Africans of themselves – is one of the more urgent themes of 2018’s Africa Writes event, the Royal African Society’s annual literature festival. Merriman-Labor’s biographer for An African in Imperial London, Danell Jones, is discussing ‘African Literary Figures in Georgian &amp; Edwardian London’ at the British Library with Ade Solanke, author of the play Phillis in London (about the visit to London in 1773 of the “prodigy, poet, celebrity and slave” Phillis Wheatley), and the writer S.I. Martin, who “works with museums, archives and the education sector to bring diverse histories to wider audiences”.
It’s a crackling and challenging panel, with evocative and haunting subjects as its focus. “Forgotten voices have important things to teach us,” says Jones, echoing Solanke’s entreaty for writers to “exhume these stories” and Martin’s to “not enshrine, but internalize”.
Now no longer forgotten, these are ardent tales, tragic and cautionary. Merriman-Labor’s dazzling deconstruction of the contradictions of Edwardian London – its wretched penury cowering at the feet of its titanic opulence – was published in 1909, for which he achieved a degree of literary eminence, but he was to die in poverty at the age of 41, in a state-run hospital for the poor, his legal and artistic careers eviscerated by racism.
<blockquote>“Forgotten voices have important things to teach us,” &#8211; Danell Jones</blockquote>
Wheatley’s patron in Boston – her ‘owner’ (Wheatley had been abducted in Senegambia at the age of seven) – orchestrates the publication of her poetry in London, and she is “plunged into English high society”, but Wheatley dies shortly after her emancipation, at just 31, too poor to publish the second volume of poems that may have saved her. Both Merriman-Labor and Wheatley have vexing facets to their personalities. Is the former an arriviste, as starry-eyed as any narcissistic creative, with fame and adoration beckoning on the horizon of his mind’s eye? Is the latter a malleable apologist, in her poetry, for cultural and religious imperialism? These human beings are complicated; they are impressive. But they are not always likeable.
Which begs the question: how does a writer ‘exhume these stories’ with both compassion and honesty? How can these voices be reanimated, without committing further violations upon their memory, since we can never know how they ever really felt? Even if, as Solanke quotes from William Faulkner, “the past is never dead – it’s not even past”?
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/sometime-in-africa/2017/09/29/awesome-awkward-african-night/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read more: An Awesome, Awkward, African Night</a>
“You know, I’m against that whole redemptive arc of black literature,” says Martin. “Yes, there has to be redemption, but that comes from the reader, through self-examination, rather than the character.”
Solanke agrees. “I don’t want simple people,” she says. “Phillis is problematic. I came close several times to abandoning her story. She wasn’t the Phillis I expected. But it’s actually been transformative for me as a writer. It’s the drama of facts – and then the drama of imagination.”
In An African in Imperial London, Jones places Merriman-Labor at a political march in London which he may or may not have attended – she has no supporting evidence either way, but argues that the artist is at liberty to fabricate experiences if they support a rational truth. “I can’t prove that he was there,” she says. “But to me, it made sense in the larger story.”

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				 S I Matin
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Merriman-Labor is mesmerized by London’s transport technology – “Overhead and Underfoot, Overground and Underground, Terrestrial and Celestial” – which shuttles me across the city for a second Africa Writes event at Rich Mix in East London. What would Merriman-Labor – or Wheatley – have made of the phone-scrolling throngs queuing for a salt-beef bagel on nearby Brick Lane, or the homeless man outside the restaurant gifting his incredulous dog a polystyrene tray overflowing with chips and ketchup? This is the gristle of the city, the marrow of poetry.
Rachel Long, Theresa Lola and Hibaq Osman, three members of Octavia, “a poetry collective for women of color founded in response to the lack of inclusivity and representation in literature and academia,” are sparing a few minutes to chat before rushing back to rehearsals for the evening’s show. It’s a credit to the Africa Writes programming that the events pull the festival’s central threads long and taught through centuries, across genres. And it’s striking that this collective of young female artists eschews the use of social media to promote its shows. Long, Octavia’s founder member, calls these platforms “unsafe spaces for women of color,” after a successful past event attracted a batch of abusive comments on its Facebook page.
“For me it was just like, how dare you?” she says. “How could you dampen something that was that beautiful?” The event later that evening is indeed exquisite and irresistible, both in execution and atmosphere – the boundaries of performance poetry are stretched and explored across several sets of poems which are by turns funny, tragic and uplifting.
“I feel like because so much of what we do is almost in secret,” says Osman, “that when we’re on stage, it becomes more intimate than other things I’ve been a part of. Everyone’s a bit more likely to take in the words in a way that maybe they weren’t expecting.”
It’s a night about woke female power, and the vibranium-hard Afrofuturism of the black creative economy – a widening path to artistic and financial success that was so cruelly curtailed for trailblazers like Wheatley and Merriman-Labor. Where do these black British artists see themselves in this burgeoning new aesthetic?
“What I think is so beautiful about Afrofuturism is this merging of different cultures,” says Lola. “I feel like before there used to be isolated identities. Afrofuturism will be this space where everything is embraced.”
‘An African in Imperial London’ is out now and published by Hurst Publishers. Ade Solanke’s new play ‘The Court Must Have a Queen’ runs through to September 2 at Hampton Court Palace in the UK.
&#8211; By Alastair Hagger

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Talking African Writing in London

The 33rd edition of the South African fashion week kicked off with a bang this year. Celebrating fashion from the spring and summer collection, we had a look at what some of our local designers brought this year. Forbes Africa’s Karen Mwendera filed this report.

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Glitz And Glam At The South African Fashion Week

The numbers are in and Black Panther is a monster hit. More than that, it has already earned a place in the box office history books in just its first three-to-four days of release. The movie earned a $201.8 million Fri-Sun weekend and will earn an estimated $235m over the Fri-Mon holiday. So, without further ado, I wanted to take a moment to note the copious big ways that the Ryan Coogler-directed/Chadwick Boseman-starring superhero spectacular has already planted its flag in the sand. Please enjoy eight box office records that Black Panther has already broken and ten more where it came awfully close to the top of the mountain. Let&#8217;s put &#8220;All the Stars&#8221; or &#8220;Opps&#8221; on your music device of choice, open up that Box Office Mojo tab and dive in!
<div id="attachment_35335" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MBA0500_v004.1046.0-1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35335" class="wp-image-35335 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MBA0500_v004.1046.0-1-1024x540.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="540" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MBA0500_v004.1046.0-1-1024x540.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MBA0500_v004.1046.0-1-300x158.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MBA0500_v004.1046.0-1-600x316.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MBA0500_v004.1046.0-1-768x405.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MBA0500_v004.1046.0-1.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>Marvel Studios&#8217; BLACK PANTHER..L to R: Ayo (Florence Kasumba) and Okoye (Danai Gurira)..Ph: Film Frame..©Marvel Studios 2018</div>
Biggest February opening weekend:
The previous high-water mark for a February opening weekend was Deadpool with $132 million over the Fri-Sun frame and $152m over the Fri-Mon Presidents Day weekend. While Black Panther lacked the Valentine’s Day advantage (Feb. 14 fell on a Saturday that year), it also played in 3D and had a PG-13 rating. Either way, it earned around 52% more than Deadpool and 148% more than Fifty Shades of Grey (which also had a Valentine’s Day Saturday advantage).
Point being, February has a new king of the box office. Oh, and it still had a terrific 2.66x weekend multiplier (The Avengers had a 2.58x multiplier without a Monday holiday), which makes sense given the A+ Cinemascore. It’s not the highest multiplier for an MCU opener, but it’s near the top of the food chain alongside their big November openers (Thor 2, Thor 3 and Doctor Strange).
Biggest non-sequel opening weekend:
Unless you want to count The Avengers as a non-sequel (which you should not, since it literally plays as a sequel to Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger), then Black Panther has the second-biggest non-sequel debut of all time. But absent that, Black Panther (an almost entirely stand-alone movie) has the new record for the biggest Fri-Sun launch for a non-sequel/prequel, displacing The Hunger Games which opened with $152m in March of 2012 (in 2D). And yes, it took this record even when accounting for inflation.
Biggest solo superhero launch of all time:
Since it opened above the $174 million opening weekend of Iron Man 3, Black Panther has the new milestone for a solo superhero Fri-Sun debut. Yes, I count Captain America: Civil War as an ensemble film (or at the very least a Captain America/Iron Man two-hander), but since Black Panther topped that film’s $179m Fri-Sun debut that’s somewhat trivial.
The only other bigger comic book superhero launch is The Avengers. If you want to play the inflation game, which is fair, the solo Black Panther adventure would be in fourth-place just behind The Dark Knight ($158 million in 2008 sans 3D, $202.5m adjusted for inflation), Avengers: Age of Ultron ($191m/$203.9m and The Avengers ($207m/$234m). By the way, if Black Panther ends up as frontloaded as Spider-Man 3 ($151m debut in 2007, which could be $201m today, for an eventual $336m domestic cume), it still gets to $445m domestic.
Biggest Fri-Sun opening weekend for a long holiday debut:
This is another one it swiped from Deadpool, as the MCU flick has now earned more money in its Fri-Sun frame than any movie ever that had an extra day before or after its conventional Fri-Sun opening weekend. It goes without saying that the Fri-Sun figure may have been even bigger without Presidents Day soaking up some of the demand. But I think all parties will find a way to cope, and Presidents Day weekend has a long history (Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Kingsman, Deadpool) of comic book movies breaking out.
Biggest long holiday opening weekend:
In terms of all &#8220;long weekend openings,&#8221; be they four days or six days, Black Panther’s estimated $235 million four-day launch (which could go up) is ahead of the $200 million Wed-Sun debut of Paramount/Viacom Inc.&#8217;s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the $180 million six-day Independence Day weekend openings for Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Spider-Man 2 (the latter in 2D way back in 2004), the $158 million Thurs-Sun opening of Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith, the $156 million Fri-Mon Memorial debut of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World&#8217;s End, the $156 million Tuesday-to-Sunday Independence Day weekend debut of the original Transformers and the $152m Fri-Mon opening of Deadpool (in 2D and with an R-rating).
Biggest opening weekend ever for any movie not directed by a white guy:
There is going to be a lot of talk about how the blow-out domestic and international box office triumph disproves conventional wisdom about what kind of folks must be the leads in big movies to make big bucks, but we should have already known that for years now (12 Years a Slave and Moonlight both made more overseas than in North America).
But Black Panther’s boffo opening is the biggest opening ever for any movie not helmed by a white guy, displacing James Wan’s Furious 7 (which earned $1.5 billion worldwide despite/because of a diverse cast). Although I’m sure they are all rooting for each other, I’d like to think that Wan or Patty Jenkins is sitting in a swivel chair right now petting an (evil) cat and plotting his or her revenge.
By the way, since The Force Awakens was sold as a Daisy Ridley/John Boyega two-hander, I would argue that said Star Wars story still counts as the biggest opening for a movie starring a minority actor.
Biggest-grossing movie (in North America) directed by a black filmmaker:
With at least $235 million in four days, it has already passed the (2D) domestic total of F. Gary Gray’s Fate of the Furious. Sure, it has some work to go to catch up with Fate of the Furious’ $1.1 billion global total, but after this weekend, with a $404m+ worldwide launch, that pie-in-the-sky scenario isn’t entirely implausible.
Biggest pre-summer opening weekend:
Black Panther has the fifth-biggest Fri-Sun debut of all time. And since two of the bigger ones were Star Wars movies in mid-December and the other two were summer flicks (Avengers and Jurassic World), Black Panther has dethroned Batman v Superman ($166 million) as the biggest pre-summer opener of all time.
2nd-Biggest comic book superhero opening weekend:
Among all comic book superhero movie opening weekends, the Fri-Sun frame stands behind only The Avengers ($207 million). It snagged a bigger opening weekend than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ($166m), making it “bigger” than any DC movie ever (sans inflation). Heck, if you want to be a jerk about it, Black Panther has already outgrossed Justice League ($228m) in North America.
If we play the inflation card, then Black Panther is just over/under the likes of Spider-Man 3 ($201.6m adjusted), The Dark Knight ($202.5m adjusted) and Avengers: Age of Ultron ($203.9m adjusted). Sure, it’s behind The Avengers ($234.5m adjusted), but it only needed four days to gross that amount, and those flicks didn’t have an extra holiday messing with the Fri-Sun total.
2nd-biggest Sunday gross:
With the final estimates now counted for the Fri-Sun frame, Black Panther’s $60.096 million Sunday gross is down just -8% from Saturday and $9.5m more than the “pure” $50.6m Friday gross. It is the 33rd-biggest single-day gross. But it’s also the second-biggest Sunday gross of all time, behind only Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($60.5m). If you want to play the inflation card, it is the fourth-biggest Sunday behind The Avengers, The Force Awakens and Jurassic World.
3rd-biggest four-day gross:
With at least $235 million in four days, it sits behind only The Last Jedi ($241m) and The Force Awakens ($288m) among the biggest four-day totals. Again, if you play the inflation card, we’re still looking at the fifth spot on this list, with The Dark Knight sneaking past the Black Panther. We’re hearing rumblings of a bigger-than-anticipated Monday, one that could push the MCU movie past The Last Jedi, but I can update quickly enough if the occasion arises.
3rd-biggest non-summer opening weekend:
As of now, Black Panther’s Fri-Sun frame is the fifth-biggest overall launch of all time. And of those four bigger debuts, only two of them (The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi) opened outside of the core summer season. And yeah, if you account for inflation, Black Panther remains the third-biggest non-summer opening weekend of all time and the biggest pre-summer debut of all time.
4th-biggest Saturday gross:
After its boffo opening day, Black Panther earned $65.8 million on Saturday. That was a mere 13% drop from opening day or a 31% jump if you take out the Thursday previews. It’s also the 24th-biggest single-day gross of all time and the fourth-biggest Saturday figure, between Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($63m) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($68.2m), The Avengers ($69.5m) and Jurassic World ($69.4m). If you count inflation, it’s still in eighth place.
5th-biggest opening weekend of all time:
This one pretty much speaks for itself. With a $201.8 million Fri-Sun frame, it sits behind only The Avengers ($207m), Jurassic World ($208m), Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($220m) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($248m).
If you adjust for inflation, Black Panther will end up in seventh place behind only The Dark Knight ($202.3m adjusted), Avengers: Age of Ultron ($203.9m), The Last Jedi ($220m), Jurassic World ($232m), The Avengers ($234m) and The Force Awakens ($261m).
8th-biggest Friday and 8th-biggest single-day gross:
Among single-day grosses, Friday grosses and opening day grosses, Black Panther’s $75.8 million Friday sits behind only The Avengers ($80.8m), Batman v Superman ($81.5m), Jurassic World ($81.9m), Avengers: Age of Ultron ($91m), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($91m), The Last Jedi ($104.6m) and The Force Awakens ($119.1m).
8th-biggest Monday gross:
The estimates could change tomorrow, but as of now, Black Panther has earned $33.2 million on its fourth day of release. That is the 179th-biggest single day ever, just ahead of Justice League’s initial Saturday gross.
And, as of this writing, it is the ninth-biggest Monday gross, behind The Force Awakens ($42.3m), Spider-Man 2 ($40.8m), The Lost World: Jurassic Park ($36m), Shrek 2 ($34.6m on its 13th day of release), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($34.2m) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ($33.5m) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End ($33.45m).But that could go away up once the finals are in. Even an extra $2.8m will make it the third-biggest Monday of all time.
25th-biggest comic book movie of all time:
In just four days, its estimated $235 million gross already makes it the 25th-biggest comic book adaptation of all time, just ahead of X-Men: Days of Future Past ($233.9m) and X-Men: The Last Stand ($234.3m). It will be shooting up said chart every day for the next week or so. By Tuesday or Wednesday, it’ll be past the likes of Men in Black ($250m), Batman ($251m), Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($259m) and The Amazing Spider-Man ($262m).
26th-biggest superhero movie of all time:
In just four days, its estimated $235 million gross already makes it the 26th-biggest superhero movie of all time. Yes, I’m counting The Matrix Reloaded ($271m in 2003) and The Incredibles ($262m in 2004), but that won’t matter in a few days. It will be shooting up said chart every day for the next week or so, which will give me plenty of fodder for daily updates. Just by Tuesday or Wednesday, it’ll be past the (unadjusted) domestic grosses of Men in Black ($250m), Batman ($251m), Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($259m), The Incredibles ($261m) and The Amazing Spider-Man ($262m).
I am sure there are other arbitrary milestones that I left off, such as “fifth-fastest to $200 million domestic alongside the other did-it-in-three-days openers” or “biggest-grossing movie for Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan” or what-have-you. Oh, and it had the fourth-biggest IMAX domestic debut ever behind Jurassic World, The Last Jedi and The Force Awakens. But this is long enough already, and even if that Monday number is underestimated and skews the results even higher, I think you’ve got a pretty clear picture of just how huge this movie turned out to be straight out of the gate. There are going to be plenty more milestones over the next two weeks, so watch this space for daily updates, give or take a fluke on my schedule.
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‘Black Panther’: All The Box Office Records It Broke (And Almost Broke) In Its $235M Debut

An art exhibition is a confluence of creative minds and the perfect opportunity to understand the current thinking of a country’s intelligentsia.
Lebohang Kganye and Nandipha Mntambo are two of 13 female artists – from Ethiopia to Egypt to Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa – we meet showcasing their work, at the historic Constitutional Hill in Johannesburg on May 10, for the exhibition, Being her(e): Meditations on African Femininities, examining what it means to be “a female body in contemporary Africa”.
<h2>Searching for mother</h2>
Lebohang Kganye
<div id="attachment_32579" style="width: 296px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32579" class=" wp-image-32579" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Lebohang_Kganye-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="286" height="429" />Lebohang Kganye (Photo supplied)</div>
“I am excited to be part of the exhibition, because it is not a show overseas, about Africa, but it is an exhibition in a historical space in Africa. I have no reservations about the future of women in arts across Africa, and this exhibition emphasizes that,” says South African photographer Kganye.
Her first piece of art, B(l)ack to Fairy Tales, in 2011, explored her memories of a fairy tale world by Walt Disney.
“I identified with fairy tale characters – the white skin, long hair, blue eyes, perfect figure&#8230; My black skin and location became an increasing disjuncture with the fantasies I believed in. Hence, I paint myself excessively black for B(l)ack to Fairy Tales”.
For her collection, Kganye uses photographs from her 2013 series, Ke Lefa Laka, dedicated to her mother.
<blockquote>“Her death sparked the need to trace my ancestral roots. I initially began navigating my history through geographic mapping, attempting to trace where my family originated and how we ended up in these different spaces that we all now call home. I visited the different locations where my family lived in South Africa and found old family photo albums.</blockquote>
“I began looking for pieces of my mother in the house. I found many photos and clothes which had always been there but which I had ignored over the years. There she was smiling and posing in these clothes. My re-connection with her became a visual manipulation of ‘her-our’ histories. I began inserting myself into her pictorial narrative by emulating these snaps.
“I would dress in the exact clothes that she was wearing in these 20-year-old photographs and mimic the same poses. This was my way of marrying the two memories; mine and hers. I later developed digital photomontages where I juxtaposed old photographs of my mother retrieved from the family archives with photographs of a ‘present version of her’ – she is me, I am her, and there remains in this commonality so much difference, and so much distance in space and time,” says Kganye.
In 2011, she completed an Advanced Photography course at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg, where she displays her self-portraits. She is now busy with a new collection of photographs, Reconstruction Of A Family.
<h2>The Cowhide Chick</h2>
Nandipha Mntambo
<div id="attachment_32580" style="width: 296px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32580" class="wp-image-32580" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Nandipha-profile-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="286" height="429" />Nandipha Mntambo (Photo supplied)</div>
It’s a gloomy day in Johannesburg when we meet with South African sculptor, photographer and videographer Nandipha Mntambo at her apartment-cum-studio in New Doornfontein but around her are bursts of color. Mntambo is surrounded by her paintings and sculptures. Art has always been in her blood.
Mntambo was born in Swaziland and grew up in South Africa. She graduated with a master’s degree in Fine Art from the University of Cape Town (UCT), in 2007. Her father was a bishop, so it was a nomadic childhood.
“We moved around the country because of my father’s job and at that time it was still under apartheid because of the neighborhood that we lived in there were certain schools that didn’t accept me so I ended up studying at a Jewish school, then a Catholic and a Methodist school, the different cultures and religion had an influence on how I deal with things,” she says.
Mntambo, 35, wanted to study forensics pathology but couldn’t deal with dead bodies.
“I wanted to be a scientist; the Stellenbosch University had a good department and I was even job-shadowing but then I thought seeing dead people every day wouldn’t necessarily be the best thing for me.
“Luckily, I had a portfolio from high school, I sent it to UCT and then they accepted me into their art program. At the time, I didn’t imagine I would be a full-time practising artist. I was just happy to create work and learn more about art history,” says Mntambo.
In her work, Mntambo focuses on the human body and the organic nature of identity, using natural materials and experimenting with sculptures moulded from cowhide. For this, she is known as the ‘cowhide chick’.
She uses her own body as the mould for these sculptures and does not intend to make statements about femininity.
<blockquote>“One of the challenges I’ve had was to have a language that would help me explain to somebody that because I am a black female within a particular context, the issues of lobola, women, cows and culture are there but it’s not what my work is about,” she says.</blockquote>
One of Mntambo’s favorite materials is the skin of the cow. Her art works explore the similarities and differences between animals and humans; men and women, and attraction and repulsion.
“I was really interested in mythology when I first started and the fact that throughout many civilizations there are stories of animals and humans and how they inter-relate.”
The job wasn’t always easy.
“I work with organic material that gets insects and had to deal with cow fat. Because at first I didn’t understand the material enough, it felt like a bit of self-punishment; dealing with flies and losing studio mates. There was also a time when finances were a problem and the work wasn’t selling,” says Mntambo.
“In South Africa, we have few female black artists and sculptures. It took a long time to be accepted in certain circles in terms of how people interpret my work, and how they view me. You’re not allowed to exist as just as an artist or sculpture, you exist as a black female artist, so there all these preconceived ideas that people either put on you or their interpretation of the work. There are also strange limitations that people put on you,” she says.

The Future Of African Women In Art

“Will people ever remember us for what we stood for 50 years from now Martin?”
So says Malcolm X to Martin Luther King Jr on stage at the Market Theater in Johannesburg.
A profound notion for men who were constantly under government and police scrutiny for the pivotal role they both played for the liberation of black people in America. Their cause might be more poignant today than those 50 years ago.
Malcolm X and Dr Martin Luther King were assassinated three years apart and left black folk bearing the brunt of the price they paid. Fifty years on, the black community all over the world still remembers both great men.
Their blood may have been spilled for black liberation, yet the battle for equality and discrimination is still ongoing. Not only are these two activists still remembered and idolized the world over, their names and ideologies still continue to reverberate throughout the tapestry of history.
Both Malcolm X and King set foot in Africa. In March 1957, King and his wife Coretta Scott went to West Africa, attending Ghana’s independence ceremony, while Malcolm X had been to Nigeria and Accra in April 1964.
Four years before his death, in 1964, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and has since become well-known and respected for his now famous “I have dream” speech, which was heard by a crowd of over 200,000 people.
Earlier this year, as part of Black History Month in February, the Market Theatre, in Newtown, Johannesburg, brought to life a production of the two freedom fighters, who left their huge footprints in the Civil Rights Movement of the United States, and the world over.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2015/12/01/brother-from-another-motherland/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Brother From Another Motherland</a>
The play, titled ‘The Meeting’, moved a big man in the audience to tears. It is a theatrical depiction penned by American writer Jeff Stetson in 1987 and directed by the Market Theatre’s Artistic Director James Ngcobo.
The role of King was performed by South African actor Aubrey Poo, who managed to pull off King’s mannerisms, distinct tone of voice and southern accent.
Another South African actor, Brendon Daniels, played Malcom X, also with a convincing accent, similar facial structure to Malcolm and wearing the distinctive square spectacles of the Muslim minister. Litha Bam acted as Malcolm’s security guard. All three actors were polished in their respective roles.
In early December 1955, King accepted to take the leadership role for the first non-violent demonstration of African Americans in the United States.
Malcolm X is said to have changed his last name from Little to X as “a tribute to the unknown name of his African ancestors”, when he was released from prison in 1952. It was during his incarceration he converted to Islam.
Now, just over 50 years since both died, African Americans filled the streets, and news headlines, with the slogan Black Lives Matter after a neighborhood watch volunteer shot and killed a 17-year-old Trayvon Martin five years ago.
The movement, dubbed #BlackLivesMatter has since escalated as more stories of brutal police killings on black people in the United States have emerged. If they were alive today, the two leaders would be weeping, or perhaps still fighting, for the full liberation of black people in America. &#8211; Written by Thandi Xaba

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