Legend has it that heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali was flying into the newly independent Ghana in the 1960s, when he went into the cockpit and saw two black pilots.
“What did you do with the real pilots?” asked Ali.
“We are the real pilots,” one of them replied.
“Back home in Louisville, Kentucky, they don’t let black people drive a bus,” quipped Ali.
When Ernest Kekana was a young boy in South Africa, fascinated with flying, this picture hadn’t changed much.
“I didn’t necessarily want to be a career pilot but wanted to fly airplanes, and the type of airplanes I wanted to fly was obviously anything I could get my hands on, the bigger the better. In order to fly the bigger airplanes, I knew that I would have to pursue a career in aviation as a pilot,” he says.
Kekana saved up the money he made from working at Edgars, a South African clothing retail chain, to attend a flight school in Lanseria Airport. But he quickly learned that if he wanted to succeed he would have to fly more often. He gave up his part-time managerial position at Edgars for a weekend job at the flight school for a tenth of the money.
“This was my opportunity to get my foot in the door in aviation… It’s one of those close-knit industries, and unless you have your foot in somewhere, it’s going to be difficult to actually break into it.”
When one of the operation controllers from the flight school’s charter division took leave, they needed someone to fill in and Kekana grabbed the controls with both hands.
“It was supposed to be a three-month contract but after the first month they offered me a permanent position,” he says.
At the time, Kekana had his private pilot’s license but could no longer afford to continue his training. He remained working at the flight school on weekends and went to work on charter during the week. He flew charter flights and occasionally sat in as co-pilot to build up his flying hours.
After two years in the charter business he was promoted to senior flight operations controller.
One of the managers at the flight school applied to the Aviation Training and Development Foundation to sponsor Kekana in the final phase of his training. Although Kekana had almost finished paying his way through flight school, the non-profit organization was adamant that he join them. They were looking for a role model to promote aviation among black people.
Kekana then worked for SA Express for two years and then South African Airways for five years, where his dream for his future took shape.
“I [had] arrived in terms of what you can achieve as a career pilot for an international carrier. My first conversion was onto a Boeing 747 as the inflight relief pilot so I was already flying 360-seater airplanes on long-range international flights… From there you just move in the ranks but the airplane and the routes and the types of flying you do will not change for the next 30 to 40 years… I thought, ‘We’re here,’ there must be more that I can do or give back.”
This led to the birth of Kekana’s luxury charter service, K5 Aviation. It is one of the only South African aviation companies with international and domestic licenses for all categories of aircraft and helicopters.
Starting an aviation company wasn’t easy. Kekana chuckles as he tells the story of how he got his service license.
Kekana had approached the international and domestic air services in South Africa to apply for his license. His international license was approved but the domestic air service license was rejected. He says the domestic air service wanted to see more money in the bank and more financial security. K5 then approached the Umsobomvu Youth Fund, now known as the National Youth Development Agency, which offered the funding. After that, the air domestic council approved the license.
“The domestic and international councils are independent bodies. The perceived more stringent council had approved my application and given us the license and the domestic hadn’t, it was a bit of a surprise,” says Kekana.
After they got their finances in order, K5 Aviation took off in 2006, and within the first six months they were making a profit.
“After 12 months we were showing a loss,” says Kekana.
Their worst financial period came during the 2010/11 recession. The company went from having weekly flights to receiving no phone calls. The team had to negotiate with their debtors and creditors.
“We’re still standing. We’ve made money, we’ve lost money but we’ve managed to stick it out through the recession and our doors are still open.”
Despite the difficulties—other airlines suffer too—Kekana is confident about the future of the K5 team. He says they would like to fly larger groups of people more regularly.
The advice Kekana gives to emerging entrepreneurs is the same advice he takes.
“Everything is achievable, if you really want something and you work hard towards it you will get it […] If one day, this all shuts down, if I can come on a weekend and take a little flight school airplane and go for a flight around the city, I’ll be happy because I’ll still be in an airplane.”   FL

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Young, Gifted  And Soaring

When the battle against the Portuguese ended, Samora Machel was aware of the importance of image. The first Mozambican president saw strategic power in film and how it helped him promote national unity. His government established the National Institution of Audiovisual and Cinema (INAC), one of its first cultural initiatives, in 1976. It produced more than 300 documentaries the following decade, in an initiative dubbed Kuxa Kanema, which showed how the newborn nation took its first steps. With Machel’s death in 1986, and Mozambique’s turn towards the West, the small industry almost became extinct.
“It is true that there was a decline, especially when the country opened up to the market economy with the arrival of the IMF,” says Djalma Lourenço, director of INAC.
Producers began to emerge in Maputo due to private initiatives. The production of documentaries and advertisements for the innumerable NGOs that work in the country are their bread and butter. While short films are emerging, nobody dares speak of a Mozambican film industry.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31175" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/cine_africa_20121016_9-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cine_africa_20121016_9-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cine_africa_20121016_9-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cine_africa_20121016_9-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cine_africa_20121016_9.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“An industry presupposes a value chain, that we yet to have in Mozambique,” says João Ribeiro, director of The Last Flight of the Flamingo, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010.
Cinematic legislation forces international producers to establish partnerships with local producers, who are often unable to survive on their artistic ambitions.
“The fundamental structure of a Mozambican producer is to produce institutional documentaries and advertisements in order to fundraise to be able to produce their own work,” says Renato Chagas, a Portuguese director, who moved to Mozambique six years ago during the country’s boom years due to American and European investments.
In April 2006, Maputo was brought to a standstill with the filming of Blood Diamond, directed by Edward Zwick. The film, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio, had an estimated budget of $100 million, according to IMDb.
“In four months, eight million dollars was spent in Mozambique in hard cash. Just downtown, in the capital, a million was spent on renting out stores and closing down streets,” says Ribeiro, who worked as executive director on the film.
Yet, the millions Hollywood brought to Mozambique had a perverse effect. The costs of production elevated exponentially once local authorities, such as the Maputo municipality, grossly increased the prices of road rental. Mozambican producers are also all too familiar with excessive bureaucracy as a result.
“Filming in Mozambique is a headache. Before we begin filming, we have to fulfill a series of requirements with the different organizations, like INAC or the Ministry of Interior,” says producer Mickey Fonseca.
“Mozambique is not film friendly,” added his colleague Pipas Forjaz.
The two men, who have won numerous international awards for their documentaries, established a production company, Mahla Filmes, in 2009. Both were recently involved in the production of Caught in a Flight, by Oliver Hirschbiegel. Due to Mozambique’s appeal to cinematographers, the biographical film, which cost $32 million, lends its landscapes to Angola to tell the story of Princess Diana’s final years.
“We have a unique reality: architecture from the ’50s and ’60s that, still today, is hard to find in other cities. Furthermore, we have virgin landscapes and social stability,” says Ribeiro.
The Mozambican Law of Cinema, which will be voted on this year, continues to lack consensus. According to INAC, Mozambique produces around 25 works, either documentaries or films, annually. Finding a way to bring long-term sustainability to these productions is the key to creating a Mozambican film industry. But, how to achieve it?
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31174" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/joao_ribeiro-44-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/joao_ribeiro-44-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/joao_ribeiro-44-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/joao_ribeiro-44-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/joao_ribeiro-44.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Mônica Monteiro of Cinevideo, a Brazilian production company with an annual profit of nearly $23 million, says that Mozambique is a commercial bridge for the rest of Africa because it caters for the Lusophone market, which has close to 250 million speakers. Cinevideo’s aims are to produce films that allow consumers to identify with Mozambican productions. She believes that financing should be sought in Europe.
“The Old World consumes lots of Africa, as a result of their historic relationship.”
A taste of the money available from Europe is the program ACP Cultures+, which is destined to cultural sectors in countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, to the value of €30 million ($40 million). Funds are available until 2013, but with the current financial crisis in the Old World, it is at the brink of extinction, unless someone puts in some legwork, and quick, the diamond could lose its luster.   FL

djalma_lourenco_20121011_57-Edit-2

Lights,  Camera,  Mozambique

A cold, gusty wind whistles through the branches of hundreds of thousands of dust-weary and bone-dry four-inch high scrub. This is the Karoo, South Africa’s desert, which has changed little in 250 million years. The valley creaks to its own song, carried on the wind through rusted windmills and crags of prehistoric rock.
This new tune is fracking. A thousand kilometers away, big business rubs its hands at the prospect of drawing R1 trillion ($100 billion) revenue, over 30 years, out of this land. On the other side, 3,000 landowners are pledging millions to stop them.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31164 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0455-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0455-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0455-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0455-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0455.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
They call it hydraulic fracturing. The process requires horizontal drilling to create fissures deep within the earth. Pressurized water, sand and fracking fluids are then forced into the well to release the gas buried in porous rock. Extracting shale gas requires a high-volume hydraulic pressure, which uses around 20 million liters of water per fracking incident.
An estimated 485 trillion cubic feet of shale gas could be buried 4.5km below the Karoo, according to Econometrix, South Africa’s largest independent macro-economic consulting firm. The only way to get at it is via an invasive mining method, which has been used for no more than 15 years. Farmers in the Karoo say this will destroy their livelihood.
Derek Light is a small-town lawyer from Graaff-Reinet who sees himself as a defender of his birthplace. When Light first took on the court battle in 2008, he represented one farmer. Five years later, he represents thousands, including Johann Rupert, the second richest man in Africa, who lives on a farm nearby.
“It’s not a debate just in the Karoo. It’s a worldwide debate about a new method targeting unconventional resources in an unconventional way. It’s moving as quickly as the oil and gas companies are allowed to move. And we’ve said no. We didn’t make the same mistake that the United States made. They allowed it to happen and then tried to regulate it,” he says.
Most people in the cities do not understand the impact this will have on the countryside.
“I remember around two years ago, of all the people interviewed in the urban areas, 50% knew about fracking and of them, 15% knew what fracking really was. So ,I think it’s a question of if it doesn’t affect you, nobody cares.”
According to Light, fracking will change the face of the country. It will leave huge well pads every 5km connected by a patchwork of roads.
“The mining industry in the country has a shocking track record. There is a lack of observance of the laws as they are. There is inadequate financial provision made for rehabilitation. Inevitably for this country, the taxpayer has cleaned up the mess. The mining companies will spend money on what earns them money. They are not inclined to spend money on something that doesn’t generate income… No one can really give an answer as to whether we need this resource and if that cost is justified,” he says.
Born in Aberdeen, 50km south-west of Graaff-Reinet, Marlin De-Jager grew up in a colored township under apartheid.
He was raised by a single parent after his father abandoned him at the age of three. After a brawl at a rugby game, while in grade eight, he decided to skip town. He found himself struggling in the Western Cape province digging a train tunnel along the Hex River.
Last year, after 20 years of saving, he bought his own farm—a 3,000 hectare plot—for R4.2 million ($420,000).
“As an emerging farmer, I want to become a commercial farmer. One day, I want to see my son and his children also becoming commercial farmers,” he says.
“I’m only a drop in the ocean. I am trying to convince the colored community about my concerns with fracking. Our people are mostly small farmers. I sat and asked them about fracking. They said ‘we haven’t got land so why must we worry?’ That is their view. I don’t think they understand what will happen,” he laments.
Jean and John Watermeyer were children playing in the dirt of Graaff-Reinet when World War II was declared. Since then they have lived to see their children and grandchildren farm in the Karoo.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31165" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0998-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0998-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0998-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0998-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0998.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“I have been here all my life, it’s a wonderful part of the world to live in. From an agriculture point of view, from a stock point of view, it’s a magnificent resource. You can breed you own stock, you don’t have to go and buy. It’s the perfect environment for farming,” says John.
“We depend entirely upon rain, and we don’t get much of it. If we have a five- or six-year drought after they leave it will be disastrous… If something comes to disturb all the growth, it’s going to break the spirit of an awful lot of farmers… If it’s just going to be used in another country, then why are we destroying this country to support them,” Jean protests.
Doug Stern’s family has lived on their farm, Rietpoort, since 1948. The third-generation famer, who is also chairman of AGRI East Cape, represents 3,000 farmers in the Karoo. Stern has seen the damage of fracking in Pennsylvania, United States.
“You are not only dealing with a water-scarce country, but a particularly water-scarce area. The Karoo is dependent on boreholes for our very existence. If you are going to contaminate the water it’s going to be devastating to our communities. You can do without gas, you can do without electricity but you cannot do without water. It’s the stuff of life,” he says
Stern believes that 20 million liters of water is needed to bore one hole for fracking. One well can drill up to 32 holes, he says.
“The industry to date has not revealed where they are going to access this water. They keep telling us they are going to use sea water, they keep telling us they are going to drill for gas well below the water’s surface. I don’t trust them.”
“I was rather surprised about the lack of knowledge in the cities, such as Johannesburg. What shocked me the most was when people from the corporate world didn’t even know where the Karoo was. That’s a fact. I was horrified. Most of the businessmen I talked to asked why they should care. They were told the value of getting this energy game-breaker was far more important than the value of the Karoo,” claims Stern.
“The amount of energy and effort that has to go into this particular resource, given the estimated lifespan, is disproportionate… we’ve already used up the gold reserves in this country. To take something that has spent millions of years to form and then to extract it in the space of 15-20 years, with no guarantee of leaving the environment in a decent state, is an uneconomical gamble,” says farmer Jeremy Harper. He worked for six years as an exploration geophysicist before moving back to his mother’s farm, SandKraal, 30 years ago.
“One of the aspects in mineral exploration that I was glad to leave behind was the sense that, while one is involved, you are party to the pillaging of the planet. My sense of reality says it ultimately will happen. It would be a sad day and the people in authority of this country should be indicted if they enable it to happen before there are cast iron guarantees,” he declares.
Sandkraal is within the explorative fracking zone targeted by Shell.
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IMG_1343

Not fracking down

The gap between rich and poor is growing in the Premier Soccer League (PSL), Africa’s most expensive league. In the modern game of 2013, it’s the corporate box that rules soccer. Any club that hopes to stand a chance of competing needs cash, as much as a fleet-footed striker.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31161" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7875-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7875-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7875-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7875-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7875.jpg 683w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
In South Africa’s PSL, top dogs Kaizer Chiefs has a squad worth R138 million ($13.8 million). In contrast, newcomers Mpumalanga Black Aces has less than half of that with R62 million ($6.2 million). Striker Mabhuti Khenyeza, Black Aces’ most expensive player, is valued at R5.4 million ($540,000). Chiefs’ most expensive player is South African international, Bernard Parker, worth R14 million ($1.4 million).
The way Black Aces started this season is a sign of desperate times. Until halfway through August, they didn’t have a home stadium. In their first match of the season, when they squared off against Kaizer Chiefs, Black Aces had to rent out the Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit.
Chiefs, who are awash with cash from sponsors and the sale of thousands of shirts, don’t need to think twice about filling a stadium.
The PSL is no place for sissies. The action may be in the corporate boxes, but this is unmistakably an African night. The smoke from the open fires in the township outside reflects light for miles; the waves of yellow and blue shirts undulate as shots flash past the goalpost; the faint echo of taxi hooters floats in from the parking lot. The loudest noise comes when Parker scores the winning goal in the sixth minute. Black Aces fans dream of the day, when they too can swarm into a stadium with thousands of vuvuzelas.
But so goes the story of a few aces among a pack of chiefs. Success is a dream and an expensive one at that.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31163" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7831-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7831-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7831-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7831-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7831.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
A tattered flag bearing a blue ace has seen better days. Holding the flag stubbornly is Njabula Simelane, a die-hard Black Aces fan. Simelane is Mandlesive High School’s art teacher and was so desperate to see his side he brought exam papers with him. He marked them in his seat, shoving them in his backpack just before kick-off.
“I would not have missed this game for anything. Aces playing Chiefs, I’ve waited two years for this,” says an excited Simelane.
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The Money Game

In the business of South African flowers the sweet scent of money emanates from plastic-covered greenhouses. It’s a gamble that takes three months to pay off, rewards run into millions. For flower growers across the country this is a journey that begins with getting your hands dirty. It could end with washing those hands with money. This is the story of flower growers Semperflora and the largest flower auction in South Africa, Mulitflora, a R380-million ($37 million)-a-year-business.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31156" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7462-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7462-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7462-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7462-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7462-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7462.jpg 683w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
Thousands of flowers are planted in rows at the flower farm in the Magaliesburg, in the North West Province of South Africa. The mountainous region is chosen because it’s sheltered from the cold highveld winters and has good soil conditions.
With a few rented acres of land, some shade cloth and a few poles in 1986, Dutch-born Willem Slootweg and Cees Vooys began Semperflora. It is now the sixth largest flower grower in South Africa and on the verge of installing automatic climate control and water systems.
<div id="attachment_31157" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31157" class="size-medium wp-image-31157" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7627-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7627-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7627-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7627-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7627.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Shylet Ravenda</div>
“We found out later that guys who just came from Europe and started up, most of them they didn’t make it because they knew nothing about the South African climate.”
Deep in the warehouse is a room with four gigantic clocks. At precisely 7AM, a bell beckons and flowers go on sale. The clocks count down in cash instead of time. Starting at a high price, the hand drops until a buyer, by pressing a button, stops the clock to bid for a crate of flowers. The auction can handle one transaction every four seconds.
Before senior auctioneer Tjaart Kilian started selling daisies, he worked for 20 years as a service technician in a laboratory. He says his passion for plants blossomed at home—through the cultivation of bonsai trees.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31155 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7733-227x300.jpg" alt="" width="227" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7733-227x300.jpg 227w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7733-300x396.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7733-600x793.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7733-768x1015.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_7733.jpg 775w" sizes="(max-width: 227px) 100vw, 227px" />
“First impressions are everything for a flower. When you are classifying flowers you are looking for consistency and for little variation in quality. You check the flower, you check the leaves, you check the stems. The size of the stem is a factor, if you hold a stem outward it must be able to carry the weight of the flower,” says Kilian.
Competition is on the rise. Supermarket chains are bypassing the auction process more and more and have started buying directly from growers.
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The perfect flower crate will be given the letter C. Multiflora inspects sellers’ buds daily. Should your stems be below par, they are re-categorized and suffer the penalty of being sent to the back of the queue.
Flowers that aren’t bought are taken off the auction floor and shipped to a dumpster to be destroyed, this is because too many people resold the flowers when they were given away.

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The Sweet Scent of Millions

The foot soldiers in the war against rhino poaching risk their lives every night. Preventing poachers from wiping the rhino off the face of Africa is a job for unsung heroes. Often, all they have are blisters to show for it.
They face questions from loved ones over the risky lives they lead. Last year, a lion dragged a sleeping anti-poaching officer from his bed under the stars and killed him.
It costs R20,000 ($1,900) a month for one unit, working as a two-man team.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31143" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
They have to be quick. All it takes for a poacher to kill a rhino is an hour. In five hours, the horn can be over the border and on a plane. Anti-poaching officers are on high alert 24/7. All have military training. This is a taste of their hard lives, as private money comes into the game.
Sergeant Tumi Morema
It’s 2AM at the Thorny Bush Game Lodge. The off-road vehicle’s yellow headlights pierce the landscape. Sergeant Thumi Morema is at the wheel looking for poachers. The 33 year old comes from the community in the area surrounding the private big game farms. He remembers the day he made his first arrest.
“We were searching for an old man who was hunting with dogs. If we find poaching dogs we shoot them. We found his snares and set an ambush… we saw his dogs approaching under a tree we were sitting in. The old man stopped beneath us and started fixing the snares. I jumped out of the tree, went around and came up behind him. I touched him on the shoulder, he got such a fright. We tied him and his dogs up. This man had been hunting all his life and had never been caught. I’ve been hunting before. I called it hunting, you called it poaching. I call it poaching now,” he says.
Since then, he has caught more than 50 would-be poachers. Thirty six of them have been sentenced in court. According to Morema, only a few can cut it. Of the 42 men who trained with him, only two made it.
He has spent his adult life supporting his 18 family members after his older brother died. He says his community has ostracized him since going over to what they call ‘the white famers’ side’.
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My family is so scared  i will be eaten by lions”

While most boys his age were playing sports with friends, 13-year-old Ishmael Beah was a professional killing machine, who could fire an AK-47 as though it were an extension of his arm. He was one of around 300,000 children, who are involved in more than 30 global conflicts to this day.
His dream of being an economist was devastated after his immediate family was slain by the Revolutionary United Front rebel group in the early 1990s, during the civil war, which tore through Sierra Leone.
“After almost a year of running, I—along with some friends I met along the way—arrived at an army base in the southeastern region. We thought we were now safe; little did we know what lay ahead.”
Beah was forcefully drafted into the Sierra Leone army, where he fought for three years. The combination of marijuana and ‘brown-brown’—cocaine mixed with gunpowder—made him fearless. The child soldiers repeatedly watched Rambo, which was powered by a car battery, and were initiated by shooting lined-up prisoners. The girls were sex slaves of the commanders.
<div id="attachment_31137" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31137" class="size-medium wp-image-31137" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_4888-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_4888-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_4888-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_4888-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_4888.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Ishmael Beah, UNICEF Advocate for Children Affected by War</div>
He was placed in a rehabilitation center by UNICEF, where he underwent psycho-social therapy for eight months before being introduced to his uncle from Freetown.
In 1996, Beah visited the United Nations, following Graça Machel’s study about the impact of armed conflict on children. That was when he met Laura Simms—a Brooklyn-born, Jewish-American—who would become his adopted mother. She was the emotional support behind his book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. He did not intend to publish it until his university professor encouraged it. But criticism comes with success.
“People started saying, ‘Why are you celebrating this? This is a bad thing that happened.’ And some people even called me a liar and said, ‘How can you remember any of this stuff?’… But I didn’t mind any of these things because since I came from this experience, I’ve always been chastised, whether it’s through stigma or in other ways, people sometimes split on the issue of young people, like me, who fought in a war as a child, whether you’re really a victim or a perpetrator. Some people are always trying to debate that fine line and use you as the pundit for that discussion, so I just ignore some of these things. Once I had really committed to publish the book, I knew that it was a story—even though it was my personal story—that was bigger than myself because this is a very small story about a much larger issue.”
Beah hasn’t stopped the fight for childhood. He is a UNICEF advocate for children affected by conflict, and works on policy level with the UN and governments to implement legislations. During his most-recent visit to the Central African Republic (CAR) where eight armed groups and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) remain at large, he helped release 10 children.
The planning of a rescue mission can take up to six months. Most groups allow UNICEF to interview children and negotiate for their release. The CAR government signed a protocol, which will remove children from armed groups including the government army. When the war ends their sentences will be reduced.
Beah criticized Kony2012—a short film about Joseph Kony that went viral on YouTube in 2012—for being too simplistic, inaccurate and for presenting the situation as “The white man savior mentality”.
<div id="attachment_31138" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31138" class="size-medium wp-image-31138" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_5653-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_5653-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_5653-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_5653-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20120822_SSu_5653.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Ishmael Beah, UNICEF Advocate for Children Affected by War</div>
“… You left a very complex situation to the interpretation of a kid. So there’s a good guy and a bad guy, let’s get the bad guy. Really? This is how you solve the problem of a war?”
So what can we do?
“Look for an issue that you actually care about and find what it is that you can contribute to it, whether it’s financially or skills-wise […] But you can’t bury your head in the sand and expect to lift it up and for everything to be okay again.”
While Beah never became an economist, this year he will begin his PhD at Harvard in Law and Society, with a focus on how to repair collapsed societies. His foundation provides scholarships to children in Sierra Leone to dissuade them from a life of violence.
Today, you wouldn’t pick this 32-year-old—who has saved the world, for some—out of a New York crowd.   FL

Ishmael Beah, UNICEF Advocate for Children Affected by War

Easing the killing machines out of the dark

Sierra Leone is slowly getting over its long and brutal civil war. That’s what the World Bank statistics tell you anyway. In 2003, Sierra Leoneans, on average, could expect to live for a miserably short 42 years.  It’s now 48 years and rising. Gross National Income, or GNI, is also rising, up from $220  per year to $340. But, two-thirds of the population of six million still live below the poverty line.
In 2013, Sierra Leone finds itself in economic transition, no longer entirely dependent on external aid but still without a vibrant local economy. Although the war officially ended in 2002, it left a legacy of grinding poverty. Thousands of young people are homeless, mainly because of the poverty that high unemployment brings. Eleven years after the war ended, you still find orphans or war-damaged people who are unable to pick up their previous lives.
Hazel Chandler first visited Sierra Leone and neighboring Liberia in 2005 to make a film about the Liberian child rights activist Kimmie Weeks. Chandler is an experienced filmmaker, with an interest in making documentary films about challenging topics.
“I still find there are pockets of young men, alienated and angry, ready to go back to war. As soldiers they had money, a purpose, camaraderie and power. On the streets or in the provinces they have nothing.”
Chandler began filming with a dangerous street gang in Kenema, a large regional city North-East of the capital Freetown. When she gave the gang leader, Yumyum or Bad Man, as he is known, a hand-held camera to document his own life on the streets, an extraordinary thing happened.
“I fully expected him to film for a couple of days and then sell the camera. Yet, even when Yumyum went to prison and endured the most difficult of circumstances, he chose not to sell it for bail money. The camera became an expression of his identity and self-worth. He held on to it at all costs.”
The filmmaker quickly realized she was on to something.
“‘Yumyum’, my film, focused on the lives of three young men. Yumyum had briefly been a combatant. A-Class had lost his parents in the war, and KKDog had run away from an abusive uncle. Teaching these young guys to film and edit their own films, to document their own lives, gave them a purpose and a self-worth, which had been missing.”
After two years of filming the soon-to-be released documentary, she did what filmmakers are never supposed to do. She kept filming but stepped into the story and started to help her characters find schooling, jobs and a place to live.
From there, Chandler began to train homeless and poor people of all ages to film and edit, initially working in the offices of other charities.
“I found Sierra Leoneans living on the streets to be a talented and determined bunch, with a hunger for knowledge. They are pulling themselves up with grit and modesty and are a delight to teach. They have been the making of me, not the other way round,” the filmmaker explains.
Four years ago, alongside her son, Michael, she took the plunge to set up WAYout Arts, a charity dedicated to working with the street youth of Sierra Leone. In 2012, the WAYout Arts Hub finally opened in the center of Freetown. A music studio formed part of the Hub.
However, in tough economic times, charities worldwide were not being funded and were closing down projects.
“I think it was a happy coincidence of timing. I wrote to Strummerville, the Joe Strummer Music Foundation, when they were looking to donate outside the UK. They gave us the funds, equipment and the services to set up a music studio and taught our guys to be sound engineers,” she says.
Today, WAYout are recording street artists such as the Black Street Family. Previously, the 200-strong group was known as the Black Street Gang— among the most feared criminals in Freetown. Now, they have released an album, utilizing one of the few professional recording studios in the country.
As Chandler explains: “We won two out of the five film and music awards at Sierra Leone’s recent Human Rights Festival, and our reputation is growing. Our recorded music is regularly played on the radio and we have trained 600 young people, some of whom now work in the mainstream media. I am privileged to be a small part of that.”
In a final twist worthy of Nigeria’s Nollywood, the former gang leader Yumyum, who inspired both a documentary and then the WAYout Arts project has become Chandler’s adopted son. Yumyum is now known by his real name Amara and is regarded as family by both Hazel and Michael.
“Amara was the inspiration for everything, and he has changed my life. In Sierra Leone I am known as Mama Hazel; I fought the age and motherhood thing at first, but now I have accepted the role and I have a real sense of belonging.
“WAYout is helping people’s lives change, not least of all my own. When I’m in Sierra Leone I like who I am, which is a really nice feeling and which isn’t always true when I’m back in Britain.”   FL

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THe brit in sierra leone  turning gangs into film crews

Contemporary artist Kudzanai Chiurai is no stranger to controversy. When he drew a picture of Robert Mugabe’s face in flames, after the contested results of the 2008 Zimbabwean elections, he received calls asking him everything from who he was to the meaning and message of his artwork. Chiurai is now in self-imposed exile, he hasn’t been home since 2003, when he was 22.
Now, Chiurai lives in an inner-city loft apartment in east Johannesburg. It’s open-plan, except for the bedroom. His clothes are drying on top of tables and chairs, and vinyl music records are stacked up near the lit fireplace. Art and history books line the shelves.
The softly-spoken 32-year-old is reserved but his work speaks volumes. It caught the eye of British singer Elton John, who bought seven photographs from his Black President collection. But the quiet Chiurai doesn’t seem fazed by the hype that surrounded the purchase.
“It is cool. It’s not like I’ll ever meet Elton John. It’s nice that he bought photographs, but it’s nice that some of my friends bought my posters and have been collecting posters that I’ve made,” says Chiurai.
He was thrilled with the invitation to exhibit at the world-famous documenta exhibition in Germany last year.
“It’s an amazing invitation,” says Chiurai.
This was the 13th exhibition since 1955. It only takes place every five years and a mere 100 artists are invited from around the world. Chiurai was invited along with South Africa’s most celebrated artist William Kentridge and Zanele Muholi, a photographer and visual activist.
<div id="attachment_31128" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31128" class="size-medium wp-image-31128" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1.jpg 683w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />Artist Kudzanai Chiurai  </div>
“It’s huge… If you show at documenta you’re made as an artist,” says Londi Nzimande-Modiko from the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg.
Chiurai uses different media like posters, sculptures, short films, drawing and paintings in his work.
His latest work, Conflict Resolution, was shown at documenta as well as in Johannesburg. It was a collection that was easier to admire than to describe. It contained posters of his own identification document, another of a half-naked woman wearing nothing but her bra, and another of a log with Chiurai’s own face embedded in it with five machetes wedged into it. Yet another is a poster of him with a flaming tyre around his neck.
His supporters are twenty-somethings; you can spot them at the arty Thesis Social Jam sessions on Sunday afternoons or at exhibitions, music festivals and fashion shows. They wear clothes that your grandmother used to wear paired with anything from Dr. Martens boots to high heels. The men wear fedoras and many of the women have the sides of their heads shaved; there are turbans and pierced noses everywhere in a vibrant crowd that prefers to call the artist “Kudzi”.
It has been a long road for the first black student to graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Pretoria. His love for art stemmed from primary school, and now he makes a living from it. His cheapest work sold was R200 ($20) and the most expensive went for R200,000 ($20,000).
“It’s sustainable if you work with a good gallery. There is a sense of independence within all institutions. The relationship between [you] and the broker you work with is not always a perfect relationship. We are all sort of part of some institution whether we like it or not,” says Chiurai.
Chiurai is very confident when he talks about his work. His latest achievement is having his short film Iyeza, an allegory of the Last Supper depicting the establishment of a new nation-state, exploring the African condition by juxtaposing the past and the present of a continent in the grip of violent civil wars. It was selected for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
Multimedia is the name of the game and Chiurai is playing it. His previous exhibition, State of the Nation—of which Iyeza was part—received a lot attention. It referenced “child soldiers, African liberation movements, and civil wars. He tracks the similarities in the societal, political and ideological fabric of states in tumultuous times of transition,” according to the Goodman Gallery.
Aside from multimedia, Chiurai is always looking for a different way to tell stories. His first exhibition had a twist to it. He used multimedia and the viewing public.
“I made a couple of short films that I projected onto screens and I made four drawings and then I left them in people’s apartments… so they completed them. Then I collected all of them, [and] then the people who lived in those apartments came to the exhibition…  It was fun and interesting.”
“I was never trained in making film or photography… they were kind of like the leading mediums that grab our attention and it’s always interesting, how you can use them,” he says.
Soon he’ll be taking part in an exhibition that will tour the United States and Europe and end in Harare in 2016. So, it seems Chiurai’s art will be making noise in his mother country once again. It will be interesting to see what the authorities will think this time.   FL

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The Man Who Painted Flames On Mugabe’s Face

The seven members of music group Freshlyground are young, hip, charming, funny and, mostly, good looking, with band members hailing from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Even their musical style is a vibrant fusion of Afro-pop, indie, jazz and electronic.
Freshlyground is South Africa’s dream of the ‘Rainbow Nation’ personified. It’s a dream they now want to take overseas. In March, the band, for the first time, released an album in the United States, a major feat that they celebrated with a five-stop tour along the country’s east coast.
Releasing an album in the United States in CD format, not only digitally, is a huge career move for any musician, giving access to 315 million potential listeners.
“Of course, a break into the American market is the top prize for every band. But it’s also a notoriously difficult market to penetrate, one that is largely controlled by giant record labels,” says bassist Josh Hawks.
There is one hitch, though: the support of a major record label is exactly what Freshlyground doesn’t have, since it parted ways with Sony a couple of years ago. Sony BMG Africa had signed the seven-piece-band in 2004 after coming across the catchy, feel-good lyrics of their song ‘Doo Be Doo’. Sony released Freshlyground’s album Nomvula later that year, which sold 400,000 units and achieved double platinum status in South Africa.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31126 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/lead-singers-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/lead-singers-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/lead-singers-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/lead-singers-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/lead-singers.jpg 683w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
In 2005, Freshlyground was nominated for three South African Music Awards (SAMAs) for Nomvula, although they didn’t win any. A year later, MTV Europe honored them as Best African Act and in 2008 the band won the Best Group SAMA as well as Album of the Year for their third album ‘Ma’ Cheri’, and Best English Adult Contemporary Album.
But it has been difficult to keep up the initial success. Ma’ Cheri sold 87,000 units and in 2010 album number four, Radio Africa, was purchased by a mere 27,000 listeners.
Then came a major stroke of luck. International football association FIFA selected ‘Waka Waka’, a song produced by Freshlyground in collaboration with international pop icon Shakira, as the official anthem for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
“We were in New York to mix our album Radio Africa, when our producer [Fabrice Dupont] ran into Shakira’s producer and heard she was looking to collaborate with an African band for the World Cup song,” says lead singer Zolani Mahola.
‘Waka Waka’ became a worldwide hit and with more than four million copies—the best-selling World Cup anthem in the digital age. Nonetheless, outside of South Africa, ‘Waka Waka’ has mainly only been associated with the Colombian pop icon. Freshlyground’s CD sales remained sluggish.
To those in the industry it was little surprise that when Freshlyground’s contract with Sony came to an end, it was not renewed.
“We were tired of the traditional model where the record company takes a big slice of the pie for little work,” says violinist and backing vocalist Kyla-Rose Smith.
Since their departure from Sony, the band produced their fifth album, Take me to the Dance, out of their own pockets, enlisting Grammy award-winning producer Steve Berlin.
“This time we wanted to retain as many rights as possible,” says Smith.
They struck a deal with retailer Pick ’n Pay to distribute the CD to its stores nationwide. But after putting out the first 5,000 units in this way and managing the back-end of the distribution themselves, the band quickly understood that they had bitten off more than they could chew.
Freshlyground enlisted Johannesburg-based media entertainment company Electromode to get Take me to the Dance into music stores. The move helped sales somewhat but a good four months after being released in South Africa, it had only sold a meager 10,000 units.
On the upside, drummer Peter Cohen says that going independent has opened up opportunities to negotiate releases on the international market, removing a lot of red tape, since distributors won’t have to negotiate with Sony.
“When we still were with Sony, we tried to
&nbsp;
break into the US market several times, but for various different reasons, it never worked out. So we tried to re-position ourselves and identify new platforms for sales,” says Simon Attwell, the band’s flautist.
Freshlyground signed with Word of Mouth Music (Wommusic), a small Scandinavian “boutique label”, which managed to take Take Me to the Dance to the United States and Canada within a short space of time. There was also interest for a European distribution deal, says Smith.
It all comes down to the old question of whether you prefer to be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond. Indie labels, such as Wommusic, have far less money to fund records, airplay and tours but give artists a lot more attention than a behemoth like Sony. But in the end, only major labels have the means to turn a band into an international success.
Freshlyground definitely have one thing going for them. When they landed their—at least for now—only major hit ‘Doo Be Doo’ and their album went double platinum, they didn’t get carried away or lead a wild, expensive rock star life. The band decided to remain financially prudent and agreed to pay each member a fixed, monthly salary.
“Running the band like a business has contributed to our longevity. Having a salary at the end of every month means we can work as musicians, with [financial] security,” says Attwell.
And that has worked for them for more than a decade.   FL

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The Gold At The End Of The Rainbow

Takun J and his entourage weave their way between the unfinished concrete buildings, through the sandy alleyways of Monrovia’s largest slum, West Point.
“That not small star,” a young man says, as Takun, aka the ‘King of Hipco,’ Liberia’s unique take on hip-hop, passes.
Market women, teenage girls, men, young and old, and gaggles of children trail behind the tall rapper. Wearing a cap flipped backwards and punctuated with a ‘T’ and a black tank top, bracketed by his muscular arms tattooed with the word, Hipco, and a crucifix, Takun J walks into a throng of people cheering his name.
Today, his fans have opened a chapter of Code 146, a small club the Hipco star recently set up in downtown Monrovia. Takun’s club is a place for musicians to meet, jam and perform, a rarity in a country where live music is only just emerging, a decade after the civil war.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31122 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/20130518_TakunJ_305-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130518_TakunJ_305-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130518_TakunJ_305-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130518_TakunJ_305-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130518_TakunJ_305.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Back in West Point, the stage is set: a slab of concrete covered with a silver tarpaulin, a crowd barrier made of a thin piece of rope strung between two sticks and an amplifier that is heavy and scratchy. While TakunJ has established himself as Liberia’s leading rapper and now plays at small nightclubs, entertainment centers and NGO gigs, he started his career performing on makeshift stages in places like this. The people who live here, Monrovia’s masses—the ‘living-on-less-than-a-dollar-a-day’ Liberians—are whom he makes his music for and identifies with most.
“I speak to the youth: the street guys, gronna boys, thugs,” he tells me, back at the small wooden bar inside his club that is painted in Liberian colors—red, white and blue.
In Liberian English, gronna is a pejorative term meaning a person who was raised on the street and leads a life of drug abuse and crime. But TakunJ has reappropriated the word and used it to reflect the everyday hustle of young Liberians, many of who are unemployed and with uncertain futures.
“It’s the same thug life that we all go through. You suffer like a gronna person when you don’t have money, when you don’t have the support of your mother and father, that’s a thug life, that’s a gronna life,” he says.
Hipco is a mixture of rap and Liberian English—also known as colloqui—and has been around since the 1990s, but has only taken off in recent years. Colloqui is incomprehensible to outsiders, but it is a patois, a leveling language spoken across Liberia’s tribes and classes. While most sound systems across the country blast out Ghanaian and Nigerian music, Hipco has steadily been making its way across the nation’s airwaves, onto dance floors and drinking spots and the little boom boxes of motor taxis or pehn-pehn boys.
The rapper was born with the name Jonathan Koffa but dubbed himself Takun J because he sees himself as one of the founding fathers, or pioneers of this music form.
“It’s not the T-Y-C-O-O-N, no it’s not that business tycoon Takun in our own vernacular means big brother, a giant, a strong person who been into something for a long time,” he says.
Hipco is political in nature and often critical of Liberia’s ruling establishment. Takun arrived on the Liberian music scene back in 2005, with a tune attacking the transitional government of Gyude Bryant that was accused of graft. The song titled ‘We’ll Spay You,’ meaning ‘we will expose all of your dirty deeds,’ echoed throughout the streets of a shell-shocked Monrovia. ‘Police Man,’ which spoke about police corruption and brutality, was his next big hit and landed him a beating at the hands of the Liberian National Police before a gig. Most recently he became Liberia’s anti-rape ambassador. During his performances he splices in songs condemning violence against women.
One of his biggest hits, ‘The Pot Boiling Remix’, a song about hardship and scarcity that uses a Liberian saying—‘my pot can’t boil’—has become an anthem throughout the city.
Everybody pot boiling, my pot can’t boil.
The only time my pot can boil when a car kill the dog.
The government breaking, so the youth is still jerking.
School fees got me sent from school cuz my pot not boiling.
Corruption in the city got me kicking some dust cuz my pot not boiling.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31120 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/20130518_TakunJ_059-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130518_TakunJ_059-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130518_TakunJ_059-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130518_TakunJ_059-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130518_TakunJ_059-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130518_TakunJ_059.jpg 683w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
Tita Nagbe, a 20-year-old fruit seller, with a pretty round face, stands barefoot on a grave in the middle of the yard with a group of women and listens to the performance.
“I like his singing, he is active. His music is fair; everything he says is true,” she claims.
For Jacob Weah, a 25-year-old tailor, the appeal of Takun J’s music is its themes and messages.
“He delivers a lot of messages and says that we should believe in ourselves,” Weah tells me as he leans up against a wall dressed in flip-flops and a Real Madrid soccer kit. “He sings about oppression we suffer in our society; we are not receiving our basic needs.”
The lack of an established music industry in Liberia makes it difficult for artists to make money, says Takun J’s manager Nora Rahimian. Unlike neighboring Ghana or Nigeria, there are no production teams, just small studios or spaces where artists can record their tracks on old equipment and collaborate with engineers. With slow internet speeds, Hipco artists have limited possibilities for expanding their audiences beyond Liberia’s borders. As a consequence, Takun J’s music has had limited play outside of the country, and can be heard in a few clubs in neighboring Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Ghana.
Music piracy and lack of legal protection poses the greatest challenge for Liberian musicians, making it difficult even for artists as well known as Takun J to make money. But for now Rahimian says piracy is a positive thing.
“At this point, piracy is great. We will encourage the gronna boys—take the song and pirate the song because there is no other way to distribute the song. Let music reach the people. It’s not about being exclusive… If you can afford to pay for it pay for it.”
Despite the challenges, thousands showed up to the first Hipco music festival held last October, with another to be held this December. Takun J will be touring West Africa and then the United States.
Back at Code 146 on Carey Street, we talk about the future of his career and the future of Hipco in Liberia. The bar is set in a sand pit under a zinc roof, with a pool table, mixing deck and flat-screen TV mounted in the corner. In front of the small concrete stage is a weight bench alongside a bar with heavy metal axels attached on either side. It is rainy season and the stage is slicked wet, but come summer, Takun J expects the place to be packed.
While being a musician in Liberia is a hustle, Takun J is optimistic about the future. ‘God Sent’ is tattooed across his chest.
“I believe that I was sent to carry on this mission and I believe that God sent me to accomplish this mission.”
The mission: to take Hipco to audiences outside of Liberia.
“We are fighting a revolution now. Hipco will take the world,” Takun declares.   FL

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The Face of the Revolution

It’s 4AM and another golden dawn breaks over California. Mark Tonderai is already awake typing up a script in his home office. He is surrounded by film: his favorite film scores fill the air, to his right is a poster of the movie that brought him a taste of success, House at the End of the Street, and scrawled on three whiteboards are writing assignments, ideas and production schedules for his next projects.
When inspiration is lacking, Tonderai doesn’t have to look far. He simply turns and glances out the window. There, on Mount Lee, stands a symbol that can taunt as the years wear on: HOLLYWOOD.
Tonderai was born to a British father and a Zimbabwean mother, in Hammersmith, London. His parents sent him to Zimbabwe where he completed his education at Peterhouse, arguably one of the most prestigious schools in the country, located near Marondera. After high school he headed back England where he studied architecture, but he knew there was something missing in his life.
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“[Growing up] I was always drawing or typing on my father’s type writer. Looking back, I guess I’ve always been creative.”
Back in England, Tonderai applied for numerous jobs in the entertainment industry and landed a trainee-presenter job at the BBC. Three months later, he had his own radio show, The Mark Tonderai Show. It played a variety of music—hip-hop, R&amp;B, classic soul and reggae—to a fairly conservative British audience in the early 90s.
Tonderai wanted more and went into TV. One of his proud acting credits was a role in the highly-acclaimed 2002 action drama, The Four Feathers, starring the late Heath Ledger, Djimon Hounsou and Kate Hudson. Tonderai played an Egyptian orderly.
It didn’t get any easier behind the camera. A frustrated Tonderai felt he was fighting a losing battle and began making plans to go to Hong Kong where he would teach English, earn a solid income and figure out what to do with his life. Overnight, his luck changed.
“My wife picked up one of my pitches, read it and sent it to a competition… before I knew it, I was in production.”
In 2005, Tonderai’s film Dog Eat Dog brought him back to his mother’s land for the Zimbabwe Film Festival. His light skin and British accent puzzled many.
“Many people questioned whether or not I was really Zimbabwean because of the way I look. I had to defend myself… it was quite amusing.”
His road-film-thriller, Hush, which he wrote and directed, came three years later. The film did not do well at the box office but Tonderai was not discouraged. He worked harder, burning the midnight oil, to churn out what was to be his big break, House at the End of the Street. The film starred 23-year-old Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence and grossed over $44 million.
“It was really good for us… Suddenly so many things changed. The film was shown on over 3,000 screens in America and I had to pinch myself.”
Tonderai may be settled in the United States but he dreams of making films in Africa.
“I want to do a film set in Cape Town, based on Roger Smith’s book, Wake Up Dead… It’s is a film I was born to do. I would really like to kick it off early [next year],” says Tonderai.
For the man born in England, raised in Zimbabwe and living in the States he still considers Africa home.
“I always tell people I’m from Zimbabwe, even though I haven’t been there in a long time.”
One of the most important lessons Tonderai has learned on his journey is to leave no room for regret.
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“Life is short, you have to get up and attack it. You have to make things happen because very soon you’ll realize that half your life is gone, then three quarters or your life is gone and then it’ll be too late. You’ll think back and remember all the things you wish you had done but never did.”
Things could’ve turned out very differently for Tonderai. He could have been an architect, he could have taught English in Hong Kong, but he took the road less traveled and that has made all the difference. Now he sits in the director’s chair yelling “Cut! Take two,” but he remembers that in life there are no second takes.   FL

There Are No Second Takes in life

According to her Twitter profile Thando Hopa considers herself, “A down to Earth dreamer with her head in the clouds. A Modelling Prosecutor who sneaks in some poetry here and there. Neva a dull moment. lil too bright for that”.
Gert-Johan Coetzee, a South African fashion designer, was due to show his collection at Vancouver Fashion Week but was stuck in a rut. Hopa was just the inspiration he needed.
“As I walked past her, it was almost like a light was shining in my eyes from the side,” says Coetzee.
Hopa had turned down modeling offers before and was indifferent to this one, but took Coetzee’s business card with the promise to find out who he was. The rest, as they say, is history.
Before this, Hopa never considered modeling and never wanted anything to do with it. It was her sister’s words of encouragement shortly before her chance meeting with Coetzee that persuaded her to take his card.
Hopa grew up in Lenasia South and later moved to Walkerville, both situated in the south of Johannesburg. She attended the private St Martin’s High School and acquired an LLB from the University of Witwatersrand.
Two years later she became a prosecutor with the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), the youngest in her Johannesburg group of recruits. Hopa says her biggest challenge was not only to learn to deal with people, but also to set aside her prejudices and stereotypes.
Hopa has albinism, a genetic condition that results in a partial or complete lack of pigmentation in the skin, hair and eyes that affects one in 20,000 people worldwide. The prevalence is much higher in Africa, with an estimated one in 2,000 affected. A recessive gene needs to be present in both parents for their child to be born with albinism.
Hopa was four years old when her brother was also born with albinism. As one of four children, she recalls not being happy because she was used to special treatment and attention, which she had to suddenly share with him. Their bond was strengthened by their ability to relate to each other better than  their other family members simply because they faced the same problems. Hopa feels her presence made things, to some extent, a little easier for him but acknowledges that they had to face different social experiences.
Those with the condition are vulnerable to sun exposure and bright light, almost all people with albinism are visually impaired, and the majority are classified as legally blind.  Hopa is no exception. She is very short-sighted and has trouble seeing street signs, causing her to rely on cabs most of the time.
She had a very happy childhood and was protected from the sometimes cruel world by her family. She recalls the first time her difference was made obvious. The  first day of school provided more than just education for little Hopa. The other children refused to sit next to her or touch her.
“I never felt the burden of being different because every time I went home I was loved, and I never looked different from anyone else. That’s the way they treated me. I never actually saw color,” she says.
Hopa spent her adolescent years questioning beauty and trying to figure out where she fitted . There were no role models that looked like her; she felt she was too different to be beautiful.
“I found myself wanting. Because in terms of media, in terms of everything, the responses I got from friends, from guys, I just didn’t feel like I was beautiful,” she says.
It was only in her university days that Hopa decided to redefine beauty. The determined Hopa set out on a mission to look hot, by her own definition, every day and to work on her confidence. She says she went through many style phases, including rock and Rastafarian.
There is no contractual agreement between Hopa and Coetzee, following her entry into fashion. The two have a friendship that Hopa says was fortified by last year’s South Africa Fashion Week.
Two weeks after meeting Coetzee, Hopa was scheduled to walk in his show for the event as the face of his collection. The only problem was that Hopa didn’t know how to walk in heels. The designer gave her a pair and told her to practice. Hopa says this was an emotionally confusing time for her. Her biggest fear was falling, but she says the support from the team and her family cushioned her.
“Gert must have checked up on me a thousand times that day,” she laughs.
In the end, Hopa felt triumphant.
Hopa’s goal for her modeling career is to stop being uncomfortable with albinism and reject the superstition and prejudice around albinism. She says that people are either in awe or repelled by it.
“We just want to make it another shade of normal,” she says.
People with albinism face harsher circumstances and social experiences in Africa, most severely in east Africa. The persecution of people with albinism is based on the superstition that certain body parts of albinos have magical powers that bring prosperity, while another says they are cursed.
Albinos are abducted, mutilated and their body parts sold.
A report by Canadian charity organization, Under The Same Sun, for the United Nations states that there were 155 attacks, including deaths, documented in Africa between 2006 and 2012.
Hopa says the problem is cultural and that she’s never had to worry about her life  because she’s different. All she can do is deal with the social circumstances she’s used to and understands.
Albinism is not new to the international modeling industry; top models include Stephen Thompson, Diandra Forrest and Shaun Ross. The world’s first albino model was Connie Chiu from Hong Kong. She got her first big break with Jean Paul Gaultier in Paris.
Hopa is at ease in front of both the judge and the camera. Her two worlds do not demand too much to require her to choose. So in the meantime, Hopa will remain a prosecutor during the week and a model on weekends.
Hopa’s dignity is her greatest asset and that’s all the NPA asks of her.   FL

Thando Hopa

Fashion’s Legal Eagle

It is a chilly Friday morning in New York and I am sitting in the back of a black SUV on its way to pick up supermodel Alek Wek from her brownstone Brooklyn home. It was meant to be a glamor photo shoot in the wide open spaces of upstate New York with the supermodel-turned-businesswoman-turned-activist. The temperamental weather in New York had other ideas and simply would not let us be great outdoor Africans. A weather advisory warning of a snow blizzard had been issued. New Yorkers are overly sensitive about the weather for good reason; Hurricane Sandy had torn at the city earlier in the year. I took the cue from my New York crew and booked a studio close-to-home in Brooklyn to minimize travel and exposure to inclement weather.
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Wek is as much a supermodel as she is the girl-next-door. She commands the runways in the name of fashion designers such as: Chanel, Hermes, Donna Karan, Christian Lacroix and Zac Posen. Her career has thrived in Paris, New York, Milan and London and she has also appeared on the covers of high-end fashion magazines such as Elle, Glamor, Cosmopolitan and Essence. She has also been the face of campaigns for Benetton, Kenzo and Saks Fifth Avenue.
No small feat for an African girl born in Wau, Sudan, now South Sudan, in 1977 to a family of nine. Speaking softly in her British accent, Wek talks of her life, between sips from the coffee cup clasped between her hands.
“Our careers define us to an extent, but then there’s you as a person. You are not born with that career even though you have it already in you. For most of us, and especially us African women, we have to overcome a lot of obstacles to get there. And even when you get there, however you define there for yourself, there is still more to accomplish.”
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Despite the fact that she is one of Africa’s global icons, she has a pleasant disposition and we chat like old friends as the driver deftly drives us through the snowy roads to the studio.
That Wek has defied all beauty standards is obvious. Dressed in skinny jeans, layered tops, winter jacket and her trademark head scarf, she stands at 180cm tall, with short hair. Wek is from the Dinka tribe of South Sudan, with piercing, oval-shaped brown eyes, high cheek bones and teeth whiter than white. It is an understatement to say Wek’s features are striking: very model material in a nouveau kind of way.
“I came into the industry at a time when some people would say: ‘she’s odd, she’s weird, she’s bizarre.’ But I never saw myself that way and the true people, the legends, the talented, saw me.”
As Wek slips into a gown made by fellow African David Tlale, of Johannesburg, she also assumes her professional power. In front of the camera, she epitomizes the confidence of the new generation of African leaders.
Her head wrap is more than a fashion statement. It is a reminder of the place she came from, where her fragile frame survived only through incredible strength and resilience.
“I have gone through the civil war where we were barricaded in our house for three days because of the shootings and bombings. The scariest thing for me was feeling like there is nobody to protect you and nobody’s life is accounted for. I used to have nightmares when we fled to England. It took me some years to get over that.”
Wek has never forgotten these desperate days. As her fame rose, she found her voice to speak for the millions of huddled and vulnerable refugees around the world.
“I know firsthand what it feels like to walk for weeks and weeks. I know what it feels like to eat whatever you can find in the bush. I know what it is like to be voiceless,” she declares as she describes the journey she undertook as her family fled from rebel and government forces, when civil war raged in her hometown in 1985.
Wek arrived in London, aged 14, and was discovered soon after by a Models 1 scout in a South London market and has been a model ever since.
“I model in moderation now. It is not the quantity, but the quality of my work. I also want to make time and space for the next phase of my life. I would love to settle down, get married and have children.”
So much so, that Wek has scaled back her work so she can live a more grounded life. This year, she ended a five-year relationship.
“For him, it was more like a three-year relationship since I traveled a lot. I then realized that I have to live in the same country as the man in order for this marriage thing to happen!” Not one to pine for long, she is back in the dating scene and also dotes on a fox terrier by the name of Lil Bit.
Wek says her mother is a true African mother.
“Whenever I visit mom in England, and we sit down to have supper, the first question is always: ‘The babies?’ So, I get to practice with my Lil Bit,” laughs Wek.
At 36, she is a grown woman—an African woman with a strong sense of self and purpose in life.
“If anything, fashion and modeling has not only given me trips to the most exotic locations around the world, fantastic perks, stays in five-star hotels and expensive gifts. Most importantly, it has given me a platform with which to make a difference on important issues that matter to me.”
This stance earned Wek a position as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in which she travels to war-torn nations.
In 2011, South Sudan split from the Sudan, as part of a 2005 peace agreement that ended decades of protracted war in the continent’s largest country.
“Freedom is so special and so precious,” she speaks cautiously, as if she were reliving her traumatic childhood.
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For the first time, since she fled from the region with her family, the Sudanese refugee-turned-supermodel went back to South Sudan.
“Going back after South Sudan became independent was very emotional for me. I never really thought that we would attain independence. It was a very surreal moment for me,” she says fighting back tears.
She is guarded when I ask her to rate the new president of South Sudan, Salva Kii.
“It would be unfair to try to rate him so soon and I will tell you why. When someone has been in the bush for decades fighting a war and now has to make a considerable switch to lead the country, you have to cut him or her some slack.”
Wek is mindful that South Sudan is a collective effort—a collaboration among stakeholders including the government and citizens.
“I truly believe that it is our generation. Us. You and I and the rest of the continent and diaspora. We are the ones we have been waiting for.”   FL

DONE_3T4A7835

The beauty that tumbled from war

What is it?
A set of reforms to improve regulation, supervision and risk management in the banking sector.
Why do we need it?
The financial system is regulated to protect investors, ensure the solvency and soundness of financial institutions, keep efficiency and transparency in the markets as well as ensure a stable financial system. Regulators are there to reduce the risk of failure and contain any situations that occur. Micro-prudential regulation aims to limit the risks within intermediaries in order to reduce the possibility of an individual institution’s failure. This is the traditional regulation used before the 2007-2009 crisis, but failed to prevent systemic risks.
The financial crisis showed that not all institutions held sufficient capital and that the quality of the capital was sometimes poor and not available to absorb losses as they materialized.
Macro-prudential regulation aims to make institutions internalize the costs that their behavior imposes on others. It is now the focus of global regulators. Capital requirements may vary according to the intermediary’s contribution to systemic risk or with the business cycle—with a higher requirement in upswings to create a capital buffer against shocks. Institutions may also be required to take out extra insurance or to issue contingent convertible bonds. Due to macro-prudential regulation, some progress has been made in moving the world’s over the counter (OTC) derivatives markets to a centralized infrastructure.
Where does it come from? Capital requirements monitor a bank’s balance sheet by requiring that they hold a minimum level of capital and restricting the types of assets a bank can hold. The idea is that the capital buffer will help institutions absorb shocks and losses without going insolvent. Under the risk-based capital requirements of the Basel accord of 1988, minimum capital standards were linked to off-balance-sheet activities such as loan commitments and trading positions in futures and options. The Basel accord required that banks hold capital of at least 8% of their risk-weighted assets (RWA). Basel II tweaked the capital requirement to be based on the assets held by the individual bank. It however didn’t place enough importance on macro-prudential and systemic risk.
What changes does it bring?
The reforms in Basel III include a new definition of capital. The revisions made to raise Tier 1 capital’s quality and quantity (now 6%) should help prevent financial institution insolvency. Those in Tier 2, simplifying and reducing it to 2% of RWA, will help make sure depositors and senior creditors are repaid should failure occur. Tier 3 capital was removed all together. Aside from increased capital requirements, Basel III introduces stressed value-at-risk capital requirements for re-securitization; the introduction of a capital charge for potential mark-to-market losses and higher capital requirements for OTC derivatives.
The introduction of a leverage ratio, to be used in addition to the risk-based capital framework of Basel II, will be up to individual regulatory bodies to apply at their discretion.  The proposed new global liquidity standard entails a liquidity coverage ratio that requires the availability of high-quality and highly-liquid assets to exceed the net cash outflows of the next 30 days. This is to ensure that institutions can survive strain that may last up to 30 days. The other component of the new standard is the net stable funding ratio, requiring long-term financial resources to exceed long-term commitments.
Instability arises when banks have used short-term liabilities to finance long-term assets—resulting in what we call a liquidity and maturity mismatch—and market liquidity dries up due to a shock, such as a sudden reversal in capital flow. Banks will then be forced to sell off assets, leading to downward movements in prices. This places the entire system at risk.
Basel III will also introduce two new capital buffers: a 2.5% capital conservation buffer and a countercyclical buffer of 0-2.5%.
What happens next?
Global regulators have yet to agree on a way to deal with the “too big to fail” institutions. The “too big to fail” concept refers to the largest institutions, who’s failure would surely lead to the entire financial system crumbling. After the recent crisis, some of these banks consolidated to create even bigger ones. Since they know that they will not be allowed to fail they feel like they can take greater risks.
The implementation deadline for Basel III is 2019.   FL

Category: Life

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