After their poor showing against the Klitschko brothers—both losing in 12 rounds—British heavyweights Dereck Chisora and David Haye had their day in the sun, when they squared off against each other at Upton Park in London.
Many forces tried to stop the fight going ahead, including the British Boxing Control Board. The reason was that despite both Chisora and Haye being unlicensed in Britain, both men had behaved badly in front of the international media following Chisora’s loss to World Boxing Council (WBC) heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko in Germany. Chisora and Haye were involved in an unsavory brawl at the post-fight conference, culminating in the former being briefly detained by the German authorities and gaining himself an outright ban from boxing in his adopted country of England.
Despite protracted efforts to stop the grudge fight from taking place, the momentum of what happened in Germany at the post-fight conference of the Klitschko-Chisora bout was too much for the fight not to happen. You see, there’s hype to promote fights and there’s just plain hype. With the Chisora-Haye brawl, it was no hype at all. Both boxers got involved in a genuine fight and it seemed Chisora was serious when he threatened to hunt Haye down and shoot him. Such was the animosity between the two pugilists that a German promotional outfit quickly jumped on the bandwagon and signed both boxers to fight each other, not in Germany but in England, where the tournament was guaranteed a 30,000 sell out. However, the promoters had to deal with all the opposition to the fight and after they weathered the storm, the interest was so huge that there was no turning back.
The result was a proper fight in the ring at Upton Park and Haye prevailed courtesy of a 5th round knockout over his tormentor. If anything, the outcome confirmed two things: that Haye is a much better boxer than the one who lost a lopsided bout against Wladimir Klitschko last year, after predicting that he would knock out the WBA/WBO/IBF heavyweight champion; that Chisora is much better off shooting with his mouth than with his fists and that the only reason he went the distance with Vitali Klitschko was because he applied safety-first tactics and never took any chances. Chisora was also exposed as nothing but an overblown cruiserweight.
As expected, Haye made hay while the sun shone on him, following his knockout victory over Chisora. He called for a clash with Vitali because he stopped the man who the Ukrainian went the full distance with. But the truth of the matter is that the only reason Haye managed to knock out Chisora was that the former Zimbabwean threw caution to the wind and engaged with Haye. Had he adopted the same strategy against Vitali, the outcome would have been similar and the knockout probably would have come even sooner. With the Klitschko brothers all but out of credible opponents, Haye will probably get another shot at the heavyweight title, while Chisora will be relegated to the ‘stepping-stone’ heap. He has now lost three times as a pro—Tyson Fury being another loss.
After all is said and done, Haye’s win over Chisora benefitted a leukemia charity to the tune of £20,000. Chisora honored the pre-match bet he made with Haye and made the £20,000 donation to the African-Caribbean Leukemia Trust (ACLT), of which Haye is a patron. The money will be used to support the charity in their work to spread awareness and increase the number of bone marrow, blood and organ donors from ethnic minorities.
Perhaps it would have been magnanimous of Haye to also donate £20,000 of his purse money to the same cause.

Grudge Match Of  The Century

We all know the one they call the Blade Runner or 400m-sensation Oscar Pistorius. He’s transformed the Paralympics into a global showpiece. Now, a new generation of disabled people dreams of competing at the Paralympics.
Golf has been included in the Olympic Games for 2016. Disabled golfers have set their sights on Paralympic inclusion in Rio in the same year. There’s just one problem—there’s no international disabled golfing body. The South African Disabled Golf Association (SAGDA) is fighting to get this code included on the world stage.
And SAGDA has one very powerful asset. His name is Daniel Slabbert.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1207" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_0136-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
He wanted to be a professional golfer—he was young and talented. But when he was 14, a playful afternoon jumping on a trampoline ended in devastation. He caught the trampoline off balance and severed the tendons and major arteries in his left leg above the knee. His leg was amputated.
The accident would have left many an individual pondering a bleak future, but Slabbert—he was back swinging a golf club in little over 12 weeks—recalls the brief transition from recovery to playing again.
“Three months later, I came home with a prosthetic. Not long after that, I dusted off my clubs. It was a pretty slow process, but soon I was hitting it as well as ever. Being able to pick up a club and play competitive golf again not only saved my sanity, it gave me purpose,” says Slabbert.
Well, the purpose Slabbert speaks of has gained much greater significance. Last year, he won his maiden Nedbank SA Disabled Open by two strokes. This year, he defended his title; this time, by a whopping 17 shots. The victory is significant, but the margin of his win is even more important. In Slabbert, South Africa possesses a potential world champion.
The head of SAGDA, Eugene Vorster, echoes this sentiment.
“I’m talking to him [Slabbert] regularly and the guys at the high performance program at Tuks [University of Pretoria] are saying he’s showing great promise on an amateur level to reach the highest level, which in South Africa is quite tough.”
Vorster explains how Slabbert’s new prosthetic has made a huge difference to his game, but ultimately his attitude will determine his success.
“With technology, with a better leg, it will help. What is exciting about Daniel is that his heart is in the right place and so is his head.”
One of the major barriers, says Vorster, to getting disabled golf to the Paralympics is money.
“Especially for us, as South Africans, for us to become international players is going to be a long journey. Compare our costs with players overseas—it costs our guys a lot more. There are a few challenges, but as is the case with able-bodied golfers, disabled South African golfers are close to the best in the world.”
One of the first showcase events for SAGDA will come at the R2 million ISPS HANDA South African Match Play Championship at Zwartkop Country Club in October. Disabled golfers and able-bodied professionals will play at the same event.
The point of such an event, says Midori Miyazaki, the executive director of international affairs for ISPS, is exposure.
“Paralympics is a big, big mission. To get golf in there is a long way to go, but I think one of the things we can do is to let people know that golf can be played by the disabled and actually change their lives. The exposure through the Sunshine Tour, through the professional golfers, their backing, it helps a huge amount,” says Miyazaki.
Vorster says the tournament will act as a stepping stone.
“We’re aiming first at getting that lucrative international professional tour and then Paralympic inclusion. Wouldn’t it be great, like the wheelchair basketball players, to have an international professional tour.”

Golfer Drives Hard For  Paralympic Chance

Ten years is a long wait, especially when you’re 42. It seems even longer when you’re a professional golfer. When you’re one of the former elite golfers in the world, it’s a lifetime. That’s how long it has been since Ernie Els’ last major triumph, in 2002.
It was said he was done, that he should hang up his clubs. It’s a good thing Ernie Els wasn’t listening, or maybe he was.
The birdie, courtesy of a beautiful silky putting stroke at the 72nd hole, was the final flourish. It meant he won by a stroke in the British Open at Royal Lytham &amp; St Annes on July 22 to become a four-time major champion.
The overnight leader, Australian Adam Scott, stole most of the headlines, as he let a four-shot lead slip in the final round, with four consecutive bogies in a stunning collapse. Yet it was Els, who had been on the wrong end of a denouement several times before, who was rewarded for a breath-taking performance.
“In March I looked like an absolute fool,” Els said with hesitation in his voice, alluding to a number of tournaments being thrown away from a winning position earlier in the year.
<div id="attachment_1200" style="width: 195px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1200" class="size-medium wp-image-1200" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/110564455_10-185x300.jpg" alt="" width="185" height="300" />Ernie Els of South Africa with his son Ben who suffers from Autism enjoying time on the course during the Els for Autism Pro-am at The PGA National Golf Club on March 21, 2011 in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)</div>
“People were laughing at me and making jokes about me and really hitting me low, saying I’m done and I should hang it up. So to come through and make a putt like that and make pressure putts on the back nine, that was the whole goal. That was the whole thing. Going through all the different feelings and processes&#8230; So to sit here with it (he points to the trophy) now is quite satisfying.”
Els, in combination with visual skills and performance coach, Sherylle Calder, turned around his game. He had not won anywhere since the South African Open in December 2010 and many thought he had passed his sell-by date.
Together with Calder, Els completely reworked the way he approached his putting—which had been his Achilles’ heel in his winless streak—to produce a confident and winning stroke. Calder has coached everyone from the All Blacks rugby team to the South African cricket team in improving their hand-eye coordination.
“When you’ve been where I was, you have no confidence in putting, you don’t want to have that one coming back. It comes from retraining your whole outlook on putting. And that’s why I started working with Sherylle, just changed the whole thing, mind-set, training, everything. And I was really going from a totally different angle, which I liked, because I tried everything else.”
Els, since winning that last major a decade ago, learned that his young son, Ben, aged 10, has autism. Digesting that news alone seemed to have an effect on his game and the wins dried up after 2010 as Els entered his 40s.
Els said it wasn’t easy to live up to his nickname—The Big Easy.
“Yeah, well, that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? This game is a tough game we play. It’s a physical game. It’s a mental game. You’ve got to have your wits with you, otherwise you have a missing link and it doesn’t quite all come together. So to play the game as long as I have, for 23 years now as a professional, you’re bound to go through every emotion out there and most of the things happen to you.”
The former world-number one believed that his changed attitude was the deciding factor.
“I’ve done what Adam has done before. Just about everything that can happen in the game of golf, I’ve gone through. So to come through all that and sit here and speak to you guys with the Claret Jug is crazy. And it comes from a good attitude, yeah, being a bit more relaxed and believing in yourself.”
Els turns back to his son, and how he thought of him during the final round to help him achieve the win.
“I made a lot of putts with Ben in mind today, because I know Ben’s watching. He loves when I hit golf balls. He’s always there. He comes with me. He loves the flight of the ball and the sound. I know he was watching today, and I was trying to keep him—because he gets really excited. I wanted to keep him excited today, so I made a lot of putts for him today.”
Els admitted he has lost more often in his career than he has won, but that he could always feel the difference all was well&#8230;
“It’s amazing this game, you know. You have a positive feel; you give yourself positive vibes, sometimes positive things happen. And I think I’ve been in such a negative mode for a while, and now that I’m starting to feel more positive, obviously things happen, especially on the back nine where I haven’t really done the job.”
Els also explained how he felt he had to thank former President Nelson Mandela for the encouragement he had given him during his career—especially the early parts of the 1990s.
“If I win, I told myself, I’d better thank President Mandela because I grew up in the era of apartheid and then changing into the democratic era, and President Mandela was right there. And right after the change, I was the first one to win a major.”
“And so there’s a lot of significance there in my life, from the change from that and then President Mandela becoming president and me winning a golf tournament. And then him getting on the telephone with him talking to me when I was in Pittsburgh, Oakmont [the 1994 US Open]. So in a way we intertwined together in a crazy way. And I just felt he’s been so important for us being where we are today as a nation and as sports people.”
Els has now come full-circle, from promising major-winning talent, to the also ran, to the comeback kid. The Big Easy is back and ready to win again.

Ernie, Who Els?

One name was in the head of Cameron van der Burgh amid the lights, screaming and chaos at the poolside—that of his friend, Norwegian world champion swimmer, Alexander Dale Oen. Just a few months before, Dale Oen was altitude training in Arizona, in the States, looking forward to winning gold medals in London. On April 30, the 26-year-old collapsed and died from a rare heart complaint.
“We were friends and I was training to beat him when he died and it almost felt like he left something with me that helped me with my journey. As you can see, at the end of the race there is a picture [of me] pointing to the sky in his honor. It was relief that I was able to achieve what I wanted to do with the help of someone to look after me. I felt I was swimming with him,” says van der Burgh during a visit to FORBES AFRICA in Sandton.
“I would always go fast, so in the second 50 meters, I would fatigue. Alex was always very fast in the second 50 and so was I in this race. I could almost feel maybe this guy was smiling down on me afterwards… When I got home that night I looked at the medal and reflected. It is like you have to study for four years for one final exam, lasting 58 seconds, if you fail you go back to day one. I was very lucky to be on the other end of the scale.”
<div id="attachment_1199" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1199" class="size-medium wp-image-1199" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/149537322_10.jpg.-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Swimming: 2012 Summer Olympics: South Africa Cameron van der Burgh victorious after winning gold with world record time of 58.46 seconds during Men&#8217;s 100M Breaststroke Final at Aquatics Centre. London, United Kingdom 7/29/2012 CREDIT: Peter Read Miller (Photo by Peter Read Miller /Sports Illustrated/Getty Images) (Set Number: X155279 TK5 R1 F131 )</div>
Van der Burgh, born-and-bred in Pretoria, South Africa, is the grandson of a Karoo farmer and probably one of the most polite and unassuming world champions you will ever meet. You wouldn’t bat an eyelid if you saw him cleaning his dad’s pool in the Pretoria suburbs. He is also a man who believes in home; he turned down offers from Australia to become the first-ever world swimming champion to be trained in Africa. Along with his fellow South African gold medalist, Durban-based swimmer, Chad le Clos, he believes their win could boost swimming in South Africa.
“We have shown the country that swimming is worth investing in. There is a lot of money out there and I am sure the guys in rugby and cricket will be complaining because we will be taking money away from their sports,” he says.
On the face of it, van der Burgh is the consummate narrow-eyed sport professional. Since the age of 11, days when he beat all-comers easily, without training, his cellphone PIN has been 2-0-1-2, his year for the Olympics. By the age of 16, he was losing heart and could have tossed it all away if it hadn’t been for a painful freak accident.
It was the South African national championships in Durban and van der Burgh hadn’t made the finals and was beginning to wonder if he ever would. Instead of tearing through the pool he was out of it and messing around with a mate on the high diving board.
“I jumped once and it was OK, the second time I was wet. There were big banners saying don’t jump off the diving board. I got to the top of the stairs, my foot slipped; I fell three meters onto the tiles and broke my ankle. Boys will be boys,” he says.
“Three months and two operations later I was recovering when I saw all my mates were training away and I wasn’t even able to jump into the water. It was then I decided to push myself further.”
It wasn’t easy. For four years, training began at 8am, with grueling hours in the pool and gym, followed by a massage until 6pm.
“It is a hard life. It is a lonely sport with lots of sacrifices. I do get lonely,” he says.
The fruit of this labor has been crazy days, far from lonely, with people drawn to him like flowers to the sun. On the eve of the semi-final he had to switch off Twitter because 10,000 messages a night were keeping him awake. People have asked him to sign their arms and legs; one man asked him to attend his child’s birthday party. You can be sure more than a few South Africans will name their children Cameron. He was also amused by entering the gold medal club.
“Gold medalists like Phelps are in their own world and they don’t talk to you. I noticed, the day after I won, that they nod to me now,” he says.
The man himself can’t wait to go surfing in Jeffreys Bay, off the east coast of South Africa. He learned how to surf three years ago and says he is very good at paddling.
The future lies in financial management, which van der Burgh is studying through the University of South Africa (UNISA). He has already invested in a company offering accounting services to the mining industry.
In January, he will begin training for the 2016 Olympics, which he is sure will be his last.
“I want to go back and win the medal. So then I have done my job and can haul my togs up. I see it like a gladiator—after you have finished your job you can live and you can be proud,” he says.
Africa will be proud too.

The Golden  Gladiator

With just hours to go, the prevailing mood in Britain was hardly celebratory. On streets washed by rain, the number of tourists in London’s capital seemed below the average for the time of year. The last minute preparations were far from frenzied and all that anyone was certain of was that the opening ceremony involved live sheep.
But then the brutal cynicism that greets every major event in Britain was washed away by an event that left many around the world scratching their heads. The spectacular, which included dancing nurses, engineers, Shakespeare, James Bond and a cameo from the Queen, was a satisfying antidote to the blanket corporate sponsorship that had alienated many Londoners ahead of the games.
<div id="attachment_1187" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1187" class="size-medium wp-image-1187" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/149916643_10-300x203.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="203" />WINDSOR, ENGLAND &#8211; AUGUST 02: Sizwe Ndlovu, John Smith, Matthew Brittain and James Thompson of South Africa celebrate winning the gold medal for the Lightweight Men&#8217;s Four final on on Day 6 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at Eton Dorney on August 2, 2012 in Windsor, England. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)</div>
The ceremony—which saw a celebration of the National Health Service, the industrial revolution and modern day British multiculturalism—combined wit, elegance and a theatricality. It confounded a widespread belief in the country that the event would be an expensive and embarrassing disaster.
A security fiasco, which saw G4S, the lead contractor, admit with weeks to go, that it had not hired enough staff to man the games, saw the army drafted in to run X-ray scanners and patrol the venues. Last minute problems on some of the major routes into London raised fears of transport chaos, but, though the infrastructure creaked under the weight of the additional hundreds of thousands of users, it held—just.
Even the weather, which had appeared apocalyptic, from March through to July, turned. The ceaseless rain gave way to fierce sunshine as summer smiled—although the hailstorms did return to add spice to the cycling road race.
The early stages were not encouraging for African teams. Nigerian slalom kayak hopeful, Johny Akinyemi, fell at the first hurdle, accumulating too many penalties in his two runs in the K1 event and failing to reach the semi-finals.
The Nigerian basketball team, which qualified at the eleventh hour for their first appearance at an Olympic Games, showed some promise, but came up against a rampant USA ‘Dream Team’, who notched up an Olympic record winning spread of 156-73. One of the country’s two individual medalists from the Beijing Olympics in 2008—Chika Chukwumerije—had to wait until close to the end of the event to try to better his bronze in the +80kg Taekwondo.
<div id="attachment_1185" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1185" class="size-medium wp-image-1185" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/150115672_10-300x214.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="214" />LONDON, ENGLAND &#8211; AUGUST 10: Meseret Defar of Ethiopia celebrates as she crosses the finish line ahead of Jepkemoi Jepkemoi Cheruiyot of Kenya and Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia celebrates winning gold in the Women&#8217;s 5000m Final on Day 14 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium on August 10, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)</div>
Not that it mattered—London’s large Nigerian community has been vocal in its support of its team. A three day conference saw ministers and some of the country’s leading businesspeople gather in the Dorchester Hotel, while around town other delegations turned up to show off their country’s investment opportunities.
Juliano Máquina, Mozambique’s light-flyweight boxing hopeful, was soundly beaten by a clinical Aleksandar Aleksandrov, the Bulgarian took apart the Olympic debutant over the three rounds to win on points 22-7. Thomas Essomba, from Cameroon, the other African fancied in the weight category, put in a solid first round win, but failed to make the quarter finals, beaten by the Northern Irishman Paddy Barnes.
South Africa picked up some early successes in and on the water. The South African men’s lightweight four picked up a gold in the rowing, while Cameron van der Burgh and Chad le Clos were the surprise winners in the 100m breaststroke and the 200m butterfly, respectively. The latter, saw le Clos beat the world’s best—the American, Michael Phelps—by a fingernail, and made a hero of his father, Burt le Clos, whose hoarse and emotional post-swim interview with BBC quickly went viral.
As the first week drew to a close, it was only South Africans who had made it to the podium.
Hopes were boosted when the Kenyans arrived. With three Olympic champions—Pamela Jelimo, Brimin Kipruto and Asbel Kiprop—and four world champions—Vivian Cheruiyot, Ezekiel Kemboi, Edna Kiplagat and captain David Rudisha—named in their squad for the London games, there was no doubt the East Africans had come to win. Rudisha, an 800m runner, was set to follow in the footsteps of his father by participating in the 4x400m relay—the team’s pedigree crossed generations. In Beijing, Kenya was the highest ranking African country in the medal tables, taking six golds and 14 medals overall.
This time, they rejected the offer of a training base in Bristol, to the west of London, preferring to remain in Kenya to train at altitude right up to the last minute.
<div id="attachment_1189" style="width: 215px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1189" class="size-medium wp-image-1189" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/149585173_10-205x300.jpg" alt="" width="205" height="300" />LONDON, ENGLAND &#8211; JULY 31: Chad le Clos of South Africa celebrates after winning the gold in the Men&#8217;s 200m Butterfly final on Day 4 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Aquatics Centre on July 31, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images)</div>
Cheruiyot was the first in action, taking on a strong field, including the Ethiopian Olympic champion, Tirunesh Dibaba, in the 10,000m final. In the end, it was the Ethiopian’s day, kicking ahead to win gold, with Cheruiyot trailing in third behind her compatriot Sally Kipyego.
It was the Ethiopians again who denied Kenya in the women’s marathon; Tiki Gelana beat Priscah Jeptoo by five seconds to claim gold in the thrashing rain.
The highly fancied men’s team fared even worse in the 10,000m. On home turf, the British runner, Mo Farah, took gold ahead of the American Galen Rupp and Ethiopia’s Tariku Bekele, with the Kenyans trailing outside of the medal positions. It was the first time since 1984 that an African runner had not won the event—although some were quick to claim Mogadishu-born Farah for the continent. In a rather ugly series of attacks in the run-up to the games, the right-wing press had railed against Britain’s foreign-born competitors using the epithet “plastic Brits”. Farah’s response was definitive. Having taken gold, a journalist asked him whether he would have preferred to have won the medal for Somalia.
“Look, mate,” Farah replied, “This is my country.”
The Kenyans had to wait until Sunday afternoon to finally break their duck, Ezekiel Kemboi, a policeman facing an assault charge back in his home country, stormed ahead in the last lap of the 3,000m steeplechase, after his compatriot, Brimin Kipruto, had fallen. At the end of the race, Kemboi announced that he would retire from the discipline to focus on the marathon.
Amongst the running contingent was Guor Marial, whose story captured the imagination of many in the international media in the run up to the games. Marial was one of four competitors who joined the parade of athletes underneath the Olympic flag. Three—Churandy Martina, Philip Elhage and Rodion Davelaar—are previous competitors from the Netherlands Antilles, which recently became a municipality of the Netherlands.
<div id="attachment_1188" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1188" class="size-medium wp-image-1188" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/149771045_10-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />LONDON, ENGLAND &#8211; AUGUST 03: Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia celebrates winning gold in the Women&#8217;s 10,000m Final on Day 7 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium on August 3, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images)</div>
Marial, in his first Olympics, was born in South Sudan, and turned down an offer from Khartoum to run for the north. Granted refugee status by the US when he was 16, the marathon runner lost many of his relatives in the vicious civil war that saw millions displaced. With South Sudan newly independent and lacking an organizing committee, the decision by officials to allow Marial a spot marks the first time an athlete from Africa’s 54th nation has been able to compete.
While stories like that of Marial have provided great examples of the redemptive power of sport, the event continues to raise questions about the ability of athletes from the continent to be able to make their mark. While the raw talent and commitment of African competitors has seen them dominate a few important sports in recent decades, the London games more than any other may have shown that top-level sport is becoming so clearly bifurcated between the haves and the have-nots. The dominance of the US and China in the medal tables showed that financial clout can be the difference between a victor and an also-ran.
The press fell in love with the stories of hardship and graft of willing amateurs like Hamadou Djibo Issaka, the rower from Niger who took up the sport only months before the games. He worked as a gardener and swimming pool attendant in Niamey and trained in an old fishing boat. The 35-year-old finished a distant last in the single sculls. While narratives like his provide great examples of the vaunted “Olympic Spirit”, they also highlight the vast discrepancies in resources. British rowers, who had one of their best years at home, are the product of a well-established network of training facilities, coaches, equipment and finance.
In the end, African hopes fell in the most part to domestic competitors, as British athletes, fired up by the support in London, won through in events that would normally be dominated by the continent’s finest.
Although much noise was made around the ‘Africa Village’ hospitality area about a potential bid by Durban for 2024, with no African countries on the shortlist for 2020, it will be more than a decade before anyone on the continent will be able to claim that home advantage.
<div id="attachment_1186" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1186" class="size-medium wp-image-1186" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/149948438_10.jpg.-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Track &amp; Field: 2012 Summer Olympics: Kenya Ezekiel Kemboi victorious after winning Men&#8217;s 3000M Steeplechase Final gold at Olympic Stadium. London, United Kingdom 8/5/2012 CREDIT: John W. McDonough (Photo by John W. McDonough /Sports Illustrated/Getty Images) (Set Number: X155268 TK11 R1 F174 )</div>
Kenya’s prime minister, Raila Odinga, threw his country’s hat into the ring for a bid, reminding press that the country is not only home to some of the world’s greatest runners, elite athletes already flock to the high altitude training centres in Iten, in the Rift Valley. However, major international investment—and a change in international perceptions of the country, and the continent more broadly—would be needed for that bid to take off. It is unlikely to have been enhanced by the closure of the ‘Africa Village’ early due to unpaid debts, caused by the failure of many African Olympic committees to turn up and take out space.

From African Grit  To Plastic Brits

With just hours to go, the prevailing mood in Britain was hardly celebratory. On streets washed by rain, the number of tourists in London’s capital seemed below the average for the time of year. The last minute preparations were far from frenzied and all that anyone was certain of was that the opening ceremony involved live sheep.
But then the brutal cynicism that greets every major event in Britain was washed away by an event that left many around the world scratching their heads. The spectacular, which included dancing nurses, engineers, Shakespeare, James Bond and a cameo from the Queen, was a satisfying antidote to the blanket corporate sponsorship that had alienated many Londoners ahead of the games.
<div id="attachment_1187" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1187" class="size-medium wp-image-1187" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/149916643_10-300x203.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="203" />WINDSOR, ENGLAND &#8211; AUGUST 02: Sizwe Ndlovu, John Smith, Matthew Brittain and James Thompson of South Africa celebrate winning the gold medal for the Lightweight Men&#8217;s Four final on on Day 6 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at Eton Dorney on August 2, 2012 in Windsor, England. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)</div>
The ceremony—which saw a celebration of the National Health Service, the industrial revolution and modern day British multiculturalism—combined wit, elegance and a theatricality. It confounded a widespread belief in the country that the event would be an expensive and embarrassing disaster.
A security fiasco, which saw G4S, the lead contractor, admit with weeks to go, that it had not hired enough staff to man the games, saw the army drafted in to run X-ray scanners and patrol the venues. Last minute problems on some of the major routes into London raised fears of transport chaos, but, though the infrastructure creaked under the weight of the additional hundreds of thousands of users, it held—just.
Even the weather, which had appeared apocalyptic, from March through to July, turned. The ceaseless rain gave way to fierce sunshine as summer smiled—although the hailstorms did return to add spice to the cycling road race.
<div id="attachment_1186" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1186" class="size-medium wp-image-1186" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/149948438_10.jpg.-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Track &amp; Field: 2012 Summer Olympics: Kenya Ezekiel Kemboi victorious after winning Men&#8217;s 3000M Steeplechase Final gold at Olympic Stadium. London, United Kingdom 8/5/2012 CREDIT: John W. McDonough (Photo by John W. McDonough /Sports Illustrated/Getty Images) (Set Number: X155268 TK11 R1 F174 )</div>
The early stages were not encouraging for African teams. Nigerian slalom kayak hopeful, Johny Akinyemi, fell at the first hurdle, accumulating too many penalties in his two runs in the K1 event and failing to reach the semi-finals.
The Nigerian basketball team, which qualified at the eleventh hour for their first appearance at an Olympic Games, showed some promise, but came up against a rampant USA ‘Dream Team’, who notched up an Olympic record winning spread of 156-73. One of the country’s two individual medalists from the Beijing Olympics in 2008—Chika Chukwumerije—had to wait until close to the end of the event to try to better his bronze in the +80kg Taekwondo.
Not that it mattered—London’s large Nigerian community has been vocal in its support of its team. A three day conference saw ministers and some of the country’s leading businesspeople gather in the Dorchester Hotel, while around town other delegations turned up to show off their country’s investment opportunities.
Juliano Máquina, Mozambique’s light-flyweight boxing hopeful, was soundly beaten by a clinical Aleksandar Aleksandrov, the Bulgarian took apart the Olympic debutant over the three rounds to win on points 22-7. Thomas Essomba, from Cameroon, the other African fancied in the weight category, put in a solid first round win, but failed to make the quarter finals, beaten by the Northern Irishman Paddy Barnes.
South Africa picked up some early successes in and on the water. The South African men’s lightweight four picked up a gold in the rowing, while Cameron van der Burgh and Chad le Clos were the surprise winners in the 100m breaststroke and the 200m butterfly, respectively. The latter, saw le Clos beat the world’s best—the American, Michael Phelps—by a fingernail, and made a hero of his father, Burt le Clos, whose hoarse and emotional post-swim interview with BBC quickly went viral.
<div id="attachment_1189" style="width: 215px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1189" class="size-medium wp-image-1189" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/149585173_10-205x300.jpg" alt="" width="205" height="300" />LONDON, ENGLAND &#8211; JULY 31: Chad le Clos of South Africa celebrates after winning the gold in the Men&#8217;s 200m Butterfly final on Day 4 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Aquatics Centre on July 31, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images)</div>
As the first week drew to a close, it was only South Africans who had made it to the podium.
Hopes were boosted when the Kenyans arrived. With three Olympic champions—Pamela Jelimo, Brimin Kipruto and Asbel Kiprop—and four world champions—Vivian Cheruiyot, Ezekiel Kemboi, Edna Kiplagat and captain David Rudisha—named in their squad for the London games, there was no doubt the East Africans had come to win. Rudisha, an 800m runner, was set to follow in the footsteps of his father by participating in the 4x400m relay—the team’s pedigree crossed generations. In Beijing, Kenya was the highest ranking African country in the medal tables, taking six golds and 14 medals overall.
This time, they rejected the offer of a training base in Bristol, to the west of London, preferring to remain in Kenya to train at altitude right up to the last minute.
Cheruiyot was the first in action, taking on a strong field, including the Ethiopian Olympic champion, Tirunesh Dibaba, in the 10,000m final. In the end, it was the Ethiopian’s day, kicking ahead to win gold, with Cheruiyot trailing in third behind her compatriot Sally Kipyego.
It was the Ethiopians again who denied Kenya in the women’s marathon; Tiki Gelana beat Priscah Jeptoo by five seconds to claim gold in the thrashing rain.
The highly fancied men’s team fared even worse in the 10,000m. On home turf, the British runner, Mo Farah, took gold ahead of the American Galen Rupp and Ethiopia’s Tariku Bekele, with the Kenyans trailing outside of the medal positions. It was the first time since 1984 that an African runner had not won the event—although some were quick to claim Mogadishu-born Farah for the continent. In a rather ugly series of attacks in the run-up to the games, the right-wing press had railed against Britain’s foreign-born competitors using the epithet “plastic Brits”. Farah’s response was definitive. Having taken gold, a journalist asked him whether he would have preferred to have won the medal for Somalia.
“Look, mate,” Farah replied, “This is my country.”
The Kenyans had to wait until Sunday afternoon to finally break their duck, Ezekiel Kemboi, a policeman facing an assault charge back in his home country, stormed ahead in the last lap of the 3,000m steeplechase, after his compatriot, Brimin Kipruto, had fallen. At the end of the race, Kemboi announced that he would retire from the discipline to focus on the marathon.
<div id="attachment_1185" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1185" class="size-medium wp-image-1185" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/150115672_10-300x214.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="214" />LONDON, ENGLAND &#8211; AUGUST 10: Meseret Defar of Ethiopia celebrates as she crosses the finish line ahead of Jepkemoi Jepkemoi Cheruiyot of Kenya and Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia celebrates winning gold in the Women&#8217;s 5000m Final on Day 14 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium on August 10, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)</div>
Amongst the running contingent was Guor Marial, whose story captured the imagination of many in the international media in the run up to the games. Marial was one of four competitors who joined the parade of athletes underneath the Olympic flag. Three—Churandy Martina, Philip Elhage and Rodion Davelaar—are previous competitors from the Netherlands Antilles, which recently became a municipality of the Netherlands.
Marial, in his first Olympics, was born in South Sudan, and turned down an offer from Khartoum to run for the north. Granted refugee status by the US when he was 16, the marathon runner lost many of his relatives in the vicious civil war that saw millions displaced. With South Sudan newly independent and lacking an organizing committee, the decision by officials to allow Marial a spot marks the first time an athlete from Africa’s 54th nation has been able to compete.
While stories like that of Marial have provided great examples of the redemptive power of sport, the event continues to raise questions about the ability of athletes from the continent to be able to make their mark. While the raw talent and commitment of African competitors has seen them dominate a few important sports in recent decades, the London games more than any other may have shown that top-level sport is becoming so clearly bifurcated between the haves and the have-nots. The dominance of the US and China in the medal tables showed that financial clout can be the difference between a victor and an also-ran.
The press fell in love with the stories of hardship and graft of willing amateurs like Hamadou Djibo Issaka, the rower from Niger who took up the sport only months before the games. He worked as a gardener and swimming pool attendant in Niamey and trained in an old fishing boat. The 35-year-old finished a distant last in the single sculls. While narratives like his provide great examples of the vaunted “Olympic Spirit”, they also highlight the vast discrepancies in resources. British rowers, who had one of their best years at home, are the product of a well-established network of training facilities, coaches, equipment and finance.
<div id="attachment_1188" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1188" class="size-medium wp-image-1188" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/149771045_10-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />LONDON, ENGLAND &#8211; AUGUST 03: Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia celebrates winning gold in the Women&#8217;s 10,000m Final on Day 7 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium on August 3, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images)</div>
In the end, African hopes fell in the most part to domestic competitors, as British athletes, fired up by the support in London, won through in events that would normally be dominated by the continent’s finest.
Although much noise was made around the ‘Africa Village’ hospitality area about a potential bid by Durban for 2024, with no African countries on the shortlist for 2020, it will be more than a decade before anyone on the continent will be able to claim that home advantage.
Kenya’s prime minister, Raila Odinga, threw his country’s hat into the ring for a bid, reminding press that the country is not only home to some of the world’s greatest runners, elite athletes already flock to the high altitude training centres in Iten, in the Rift Valley. However, major international investment—and a change in international perceptions of the country, and the continent more broadly—would be needed for that bid to take off. It is unlikely to have been enhanced by the closure of the ‘Africa Village’ early due to unpaid debts, caused by the failure of many African Olympic committees to turn up and take out space.

It was not that long ago when South Africa’s most celebrated cricketer, Jacques Kallis, could not be persuaded to do much more than show off his superior ability with bat and ball. Always a reluctant leader, he did not want that responsibility. Kallis typified the South African cricketer: self-absorbed with his own excellence above all.
If someone had said then that Kallis would make a goon of himself in front of his teammates, at a fancy dress function, people would not believe it—on South Africa’s tour to England, that is exactly what Kallis did. For an improvisation theater session—the brainchild of South Africa’s performance director, Paddy Upton—Kallis chose to dress up as a hotdog. He was the star act of the night. The team man had emerged.
The progress of Kallis is a small, but telling, example of the progress South African cricketers have made in their bid to dominate world cricket. The team has usually bubbled under when it comes to taking the top spot. True, it has maintained a steady hold of the number two position in test cricket and is usually a World Cup favorite, which bows out when it gets tough. This year the team believed it was time to scale the summit and stay there.
South Africa’s change in form can be traced back to the series win in England in 2008. Although the team had been successful away from home before, that victory was a major breakthrough because it was the first since readmission in 1991. Furthermore, it was achieved against an in-form England side on territory considered tough to conquer.
Then the side went to conquer where others had failed for 15 years—Australia. Between 1993, when Australia lost to West Indies, until 2009, the national team had not been defeated at home. For South Africa, to be first team to win in Australia for 15 years was powerful.
Those two tours formed the foundation of six years in which South Africa did not lose away from home. Even though no other team had a record like this, South Africa remained second.
The truth is, South Africa lacked a knockout punch. A jab would have been enough if the team had won at home more often or whitewashed a team away. Against this backdrop South Africa took on England this year in the hope of something special.
Preparations were made with that in mind. Instead of a training camp at one of the usual venues in South Africa, the squad went to Switzerland for an adventure escape with explorer Mike Horn. Famed for circumnavigating the globe without any motorized transport, Horn is a tough guy in every sense of the word.
He made the squad ride up on bicycles and walk for kilometers with heavy backpacks, all on the same day. There was no cricket at all. It was only about being mentally and physically tough.
Wicketkeeper Mark Boucher, who was forced to retire after the first day on tour when he suffered a lacerated eyeball, was one of the outstanding athletes on this grueling journey. He rallied the troops when times were tough. Boucher transformed into a father figure and some of that may have rubbed off on Kallis. When Boucher was injured, Kallis stayed at the hospital for most of the night after his surgery. Kallis also stayed back at the hotel with Boucher the next day and did not go to the ground for a practice match. The next day, Kallis was at captain Graeme Smith’s side when he read out Boucher’s statement.
Kallis scored a century in the first Test, which South Africa won, and dedicated it to Boucher. In so doing, he also improved a record that had been magnificent everywhere but in England. He helped AB de Villiers, who had to take over Boucher’s wicket-keeping role, from his position in the slips and provided Graeme Smith with support due to his experience.
After seventeen years as an international cricketer, Kallis has blossomed late, in his own way. On this tour, Kallis contributed as a person as well as a cricketer. South Africa needed these contributions to go from good to great and the conduct of Kallis is a sign that the team is getting there.

Kallis Blossoms Late In The Orchard Of Victory

Football has certainly changed. In this fast-paced world of ours, our accessories and tools have undoubtedly become more sophisticated. Being a footballer was simpler in my day, now it’s difficult to keep up. You have to be one step ahead of the game with the latest boots and the newest cellphone.
Players have become global icons. With one good goal, gone viral as they say these days, one controversial tweet, or one status update on Facebook, a player can become an instant celebrity. Times they are changing and in so doing making the game more interesting for all.
It’s funny how today you always see players off the field sporting headphones. In my playing days, the portable music player was a ‘ghetto blaster’, weighing in at about 5kgs and carried on the shoulder. Players always want the latest gadgets.
<div id="attachment_1173" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1173" class="size-medium wp-image-1173" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/000_Par6804882-300x183.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="183" />FBL-AFR-2012-CIV</div>
I fondly remember in about 1982, one of our senior national team players, Clement ‘Soweto” Banda, was the very first player to own the latest portable music system comprising a tape deck and two massive speakers on either side. It was ultra-modern, metallic in color but he had completely covered it in plastic to minimize wear and tear. He was strictly the only person who was allowed to change or to turn the cassette over to the other side. We all thought he was highly technologically advanced as he masterfully operated his sound system. Later, we were introduced to VHS. We had a video machine attached to a small ‘box-like’ television in our dormitory and the only video we had was Sylvester Stallone’s, Rambo. We watched it over and over again until the tape got caught in the player.
Today, our players come to camp with iphones, iPods, iPads and ‘beats’ headphones and they are like walking communication and music hubs.
During my playing days in Europe, in the mid-eighties, there weren’t any cellphones. We used club house, office or hotel telephones to call home. I remember, when I first arrived in Belgium in 1985, at the club offices I asked if I could call home; they were surprised that there were telephones in Africa. Back then, communications with family and loved ones had to wait for the appropriate time and place.
It was only when I got to Mexico in 1994 that I was first exposed to a cellphone. Even then, we players always had to have the latest and the best technology, and so we did, with our ‘brick’ flap-open Motorola cellphones. Fast forward to today where all the players have the latest technology and are only a few seconds away from speaking to their nearest and dearest.
In my day, especially so with the Zambian national team, it was of huge significance to sing on the bus on our way to our matches. We took pride in this and it was a war cry, it pulled us together and united us. We would sing at the top of our voices clapping the bus seats and stomping our feet on the floor—we were going to battle, the war was on… we were there to play our hearts out, we were there to die a little for our nation.
Today, our footballers each listen to their own inspiration on their portable devices going to the match, however, I am pleased that as the Zambian national team commutes to matches, we still retain that same tradition&#8230; This age old ritual of singing, is too sacred to shed, too unifying to ignore and too beautiful not to be heard. Wherever you see Chipolopolo commuting to their matches, their preparation for battle on the field of play begins on that bus.
Somehow if feels good to see and to hear a group of young people, united at the top of their voices, as if their lives depended on it. Ninety minutes of national duty that means so much to millions of people.
Current football boots are a marvel to see. I am a traditionalist on this topic. I have always and still do on odd occasions, only play in the traditional black and white boots. Today, I see players that purposely wear a different color boot on each foot! My tradition was always to place my right boot on before my left boot and to always step onto the field with my right foot. Superstition or creature of habit, you decide. I still cannot recall anyone, during my nine and a half years, either at Cercle Brugge or at PSV Eindhoven, wearing colored boots. Watching the Euro final between Spain and Italy this year… was there even one player in black boots? Times have changed. Boots today have micro-chips inserted to measure speed and distance, so technologically advanced, who would’ve imagined in just two short decades the tools of our trade have progressed to such an extent. In the next two decades they will soon invent boots that score for you!
The latest hairstyles are also quite interesting, our most daring style in the eighties was the S-Curl perm, ‘Ray Parker Jr. style’, far removed from the current styles of different colors, dreads, shavings, slicked backed, Mohicans, bands and pony tails. Guys like David Beckham became the trendsetters in this hair fashion revolution.
The latest fashion seems to be that of donning tattoos and earrings. I can understand the earring with the advent of metrosexual males, but tattoos on our dark brothers seems to be lost somewhere. I know that they have personal significance to each player, but surely the objective is for them to be seen?
The question is, what is the difference between decades ago and today, in this fast-paced world we live in? The toys and accessories might have seen drastic changes but the ultimate aim, vision, determination and passion, remain the same. As a player you go out there to show your talent and to give your best. You go o

Be Prepared To Die With Your Boots Of Many Colors On

The South African Ballet was founded in 2001 by former members of the defunct State Theater Ballet, one of these dancers was Dirk Badenhorst. The company opened with a season of Giselle, which was performed at the State Theatre, in Pretoria. After some success, it was invited to perform in Russia, the first South African company to do so.
Badenhorst left the SABT because he wanted to explore and felt stifled.
“We started [the] South African Ballet Theater as an entrepreneurship… These young dancers that we train in South Africa need to be brought up with the idea that ‘I can create my own company. I can create my own work. I can create my own opportunities,” he says.
<div id="attachment_1168" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1168" class="size-medium wp-image-1168" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_0160-300x154.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="154" />Giselle &#8211; First Act</div>
In 2008, he cofounded Mzansi Productions—a classically based contemporary dance company—with Esther Nasser. That same year, he began the International Ballet Competition Gala, taking place every second year and bringing together dancers from across the world.
The SABT and Mzansi Production merged this year to form The South African Mzansi Ballet, (SAMB), of which Badenhorst is CEO. The new company will still perform the classics but will expand its offering to create a wider appeal. It’s a question of evolving to be more contemporary and relevant to an African audience.
Although Badenhorst enjoyed a dance career both in South Africa and abroad, he confesses to never being a fantastic ballet dancer, but has a passion for the art.
To most, ballet is an escape to worlds and times imagined. Not just for the audience but for the dancers themselves. Giselle is a great example. The first act is fun, flirtatious, colorful and light but then the second act transports you to a somber, whimsical, yet still romantic place as Myrtha—the Queen of the Wilis—dances onto the stage. You become transfixed not only by the story but by the amazing ways the dancers’ bodies move, their ability to be strong and graceful at the same time. It’s a beauty like no other.
A ballet patron and former first lady of South Africa, Zanele Mbeki, says it makes her feel as if her soul leaves her body and joins the dancers on stage.
“Ballet is inspirational and aspirational,” says Badenhorst.
The SAMB brought in Michaela DePrince to make her professional debut in its production of Le Corsaire, at the Jo’burg Theater in July. DePrince, from Sierra Leone, was adopted from a refugee camp after her orphanage was bombed. Her father was killed by rebels and her mother died of starvation. Despite this, she held onto the dream of being a ballerina, after seeing one on the cover of a magazine outside the orphanage; she carried the picture to her new home in the States. Once labeled a “devil child” by the care givers at the orphanage, DePrince is now a wonder child.
<div id="attachment_1167" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1167" class="size-medium wp-image-1167" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_3554-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />SABT/Air Products Development School, Alexander</div>
One of the reasons a merger between the SABT and Mzansi Productions made sense, was because it meant pooling the limited funds. The National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund has been a great supporter of ballet in South Africa. The fund gives to non-profit organizations and is legally required to spend 95% of its money on three sectors—including arts, culture and national heritage.
There seems to be competition between classical and contemporary dance and Badenhorst thinks there shouldn’t be, since the audiences are so different. The competition lies in the fact that both disciplines go after the same pot of money.
“When you are fighting for survival, then people find it hard to share,” he says.
Badenhorst feels that the problem of funding hampers the growth of the industry. The South African ballet companies, according to him, are not on par with the rest of the world on a national level. Despite this he thinks that South African dancers have more passion and hunger.
“When a dancer in South Africa gets to a certain level, in South Africa, we lose them to overseas companies because we can’t pay them what they can. We don’t have the stability in South Africa that they have.”
Badenhorst agrees that there is less support from the South African government compared to international companies and their governments. It seems that the new South African government still hasn’t moved away from the notion that this is an art for whites which was generously supported by the apartheid government. In 1994, South Africa’s central government issued a notice ceasing all funding to performing companies. At the time of going to press the South African government had not responded to questions from FORBES AFRICA.
It was once written that South Africans criticized ballet for being “a cost-intensive, Eurocentric art form that has no place in an African country”.
Badenhorst notes that while the elitism of the art in the past was racial, it’s now about talent. He compares it to an Olympic sport.
Despite this racial criticism, companies and schools have created programs targeting disadvantaged children in poor areas. The SAMB has about 500 young ballet dancers enrolled in its program. The Cape Town City Ballet’s (CTCB) Outreach, Audience &amp; Development Training program has reached 310,000 people in the last 15 years.
“When you go to the township and work with the young kids and you see what it does on their ability of experiencing themselves, on understanding their bodies… on their imagination development, then I also understand why I’m doing what I’m doing,” Badenhorst reflects.
Ballet in South African townships can be traced back to the work done by the late David Poole in the 1980s, in Cape Town. Poole was a former ballet master and artistic director of the CTCB, after an international dancing career. Former principal dancer, Philip Boyd carried on this legacy with ballet classes in Gugulethu, Cape Town—back in 1991. Boyd’s Dance for All has been around for more than 20 years and now offers training in diverse dance styles in 2 more townships.
A British charity began giving ballet lessons to children in the slums of Nairobi, to keep them off the streets.
In Africa, children are most likely to be pushed into careers that are thought to pay more or carry more prestige—like being a doctor, lawyer or footballer—rather than ballet.
Ballet requires a lot of commitment and focus in order to excel. Andile Ndlovu is a South African ballet dancer who’s been dancing since the age of 10 and is in his third season with The Washington Ballet. It’s hours of work from an early age and Badenhorst believes that aspiring professional dancers need to be ready to enter a company at the age of 16.
It’s not cheap either. The running cost of a performing company, a year, is around $1.4 million. This money can be gathered through ticket sales, private business and the government—if its lucky.
The SAMB has 60 permanent staff members, including dancers, and employs almost as many temporary staff in season. This art form from the old age European aristocrats may have made its way to the “African bush” but it fails to enjoy the same popularity—leading to companies facing financial strain.
Only a few years ago, the SABT sent out an appeal for funding. Badenhorst, who was not with the company at the time, says that the companies need to be more frugal, cut down on staff and change their models to fit the environment. By 2010, the company had raised $793,000, a sure sign that ballet in Africa is not dead.
For years, Badenhorst has formed a mutually beneficial relationship with the National Ballet of Cuba. The international company is performing abstracts from its best work in South Africa and has included South African dancers, like Kitty Phetla, in the show.
Phetla became the first black ballerina to perform in Russia in her role as The Dying Swan.
Badenhorst’s parting words: “We have to go back and we have to not see it [ballet] as an expense, but as an investment”.

Pirouettes Under The African Sky

On the eve of his fiftieth birthday, Femi Anikulapo-Kuti was as cool and calm as ever, as easy going as any peace-filled man should be.
Clad in a simple t-shirt and tie-dyed cotton pants, he was chilling at home, lounging around his living room, dividing his attention between the news on a wall-mounted flat screen TV, his three constantly beeping three cellphones and an old, rustic trumpet he cuddled and blew intermittently. He looked like a big five-year-old boy at play, home alone, quietly doing his homework while waiting for lunch.
Speaking before his ‘Femi Kuti @ 50’ party on June 23 at The New Africa Shrine, his nightclub where Afrobeat fans gather weekly to watch, dance and worship at the feet of the musical maestro, he said: “I feel truly loved at a time like this. I feel really honored that my family, friends and my fans have decided to throw this big party for me. I think it is a sign of how much love I have.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1161" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MG_3403-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
“I can’t complain. I have had an eventful life. I’ve learnt to understand the fact that life isn’t easy, so I don’t expect to take anything for granted. When I think of the suffering masses out there globally and even in my country, I can’t complain, my brother.”
At 50, Femi can truly be called his own man. Increasingly absent from media reviews of his songs are comparisons to his old man, the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who created the Afrobeat music genre in the 1960s. Fela died of complications arising from HIV/AIDS in 1997, at 58, and was constantly a thorn in the flesh of the civilian and military authorities of his time.
Fela spoke truth to power with his music. Femi’s music is equally acerbic, except that his beats are faster and more energetic, appealing to a younger, broader spectrum of Nigerian, African and international audiences.
Afrobeat is Nigeria’s contribution to world music. It seems that the style and substance of this music genre—even from Fela or Femi wannabes—is well suited to preaching and about the ills of society. It could be down to genetics though, for the Ransome-Kuti family has always been radically outspoken—Femi’s father and uncles were constantly in and out of jail on account of their political activism and brushes with the law; his grandmother famously led riots and campaigned for gender rights and female taxation in the 1920s in her native Abeokuta town. But the question for Femi remains: he is certainly a chip off the old block but is he as good as the great Fela?
“Nobody gave me a chance in the beginning, especially when I left my father’s band to form Positive Force [his own band]. So I was determined to prove them wrong. And if you come from a big heritage as mine, with a big father and a big family and everybody says you are going to fail for whatever reason, you can imagine the pressure… so I started from rock bottom; the fear of ever being poor again motivates me now. Also when I started to understand the greatness of my father—he was so courageous, he was larger than life—I was like ‘Wow, will I be able to live up to this heritage?’ I had so many worries along those lines. The determination to excel and succeed inspires me. I don’t know how to relax anymore probably because of the fear of my beginning, and knowing the consequence of failure. So I’m always on the move, I’m always practicing.”
Femi and his band are constantly on tour, playing around the world. His weekly shows, The Sunday Jump, at the Shrine are always jam packed, especially when he is in town.
Yeni Kuti, Femi’s sister, choreographer and matriarch of the shrine, said: “This is the only place on African soil where you would find street urchins and students, working-class professionals, tourists, diplomats and expatriates swinging in harmony to the soulful, frenetic rhythm of Afrobeat music.”
“Femi is a living legend. He has taken Fela’s legacy to another level,” Ayoola Sadare, an Afrobeat fan and convener of the annual Lagos Jazz Festival told FORBES AFRICA. “How many Nigerian artists have gone global successfully? How many Nigerian artists have received three Grammy nominations?”
“I know for sure that the difference between Femi and many other artists in Nigeria is consistency, dedication and sheer hard work,” Nseobong Okon-Ekong, entertainment editor of ThisDay newspaper told FORBES AFRICA.
“Very few are willing or prepared to do what it takes to achieve… Femi resumes at the shrine every morning after doing his school runs, he is always practicing with his band, always working on new stuff. That’s why he will keep being ahead of the pack.”
Beneath Femi’s affable mien is a fiery and politically astute mind constantly soliloquizing about the extant features of the global order and the sour political economy of his country: Africa’s most populous and fastest-developing market.
His greatest fear is the prospect of Nigeria falling apart, going to war. He says the global recession is frightening, trusting that Europe would eventually be propped up to rise above its present economic woes.
“You see, when Europe is telling us there is no money then we need to be worried. Africa has always understood no money; Africa has always understood poverty and all that. We need to be very frightened of the global corruption we face and the way politicians have made a nuisance of life generally.”
There is no peace in life now, he cries.
“Look at the current upheavals in the Middle East, terrorism, spats between America and Iran and all this talk about nuclear warfare, you just wonder whether there will ever be a time in our lives when we will ever discuss good things.
“I am worried about my children and their future. What kind of society would they be living in, in Nigeria? See the scandals, see the corruption; we are still discussing the things, the ills of society my father was discussing when I was in my teens. It’s incredible! See the poverty in the north, we have 150 million people so we need to be scared; see Somalia still talking about hunger, starvation, strife—all these things are really alarming.”
For someone with merely a secondary school education, it is amazing that Femi is arguably one of Nigeria’s foremost social commentators and critics. His articulation on and off the stage is impressive. His decision to quit school at 16 in favor of a full-time music career alarmed everyone—especially his mother and education-proud relatives—but pleased his father, who eventually owned up to being the source of the infamous counsel.
“The poor boy has learned enough academic nonsense, now he will begin to learn music and plenty of African sense,” Fela said then, defending the decision and, as always, promoting his penchant for homegrown knowledge.
“Yes, Fela was highly educated. He studied music in university in England but he believed school did not help him. He wanted to use me to prove a point and he said so himself before he died. He said that I did not need to go to school, read or write music to be a good musician. I think he just believed raw talent was better. How he came to that conclusion, I still don’t know. Only he knew why his formal education in music did not help him,” Says Femi.
In any case, Femi‘s lack of tertiary education did not mean the end of learning for the young man. His father exposed him to global cultures and imbued a disciplined work ethic in him.
“He expected me to still do my work, he expected me to go and practice every day and he gave me a lot of books to read. I was reading big books that my mates had no idea about their existence: I remember some of them like Stolen Legacy by George James, Black Man of the Nile which I read about four times, The Scramble for Africa, I just went crazy reading books.
“I was reading anything. Chinese history, the autobiography of Malcolm X… my father used to take me to this massive bookshop in Chicago and there I would just get lost reading books all day… I spent my entire days in this bookshop. I was reading about American history, African history, I was reading books on Egypt. In fact, I got a nickname there—Professor—because I wasn’t just reading books, I was questioning them, so if I didn’t agree with the author or something he said in a book, I would ask questions or question it… so I would always query things…we would argue and debate and just thrash out issues from the literature I was reading.”
His political and musical influences are somewhat obvious. Apart from his father, who insisted he listen to jazz, he also admired Patrice Lumumba and Kwame Nkrumah. So his musical tutelage under his dad meant also listening to Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones, and generally American music from the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.
“I didn’t like jazz in the beginning but my father insisted on me listening. Initially, it seemed so bitter in my ears but when I listened more and began to understand, I came to a crossroad where I had to decide whether I truly wanted to be a musician because I was amazed with what Dizzy and Charlie Parker were doing with their musical instruments. I thought it was impossible. It seemed like they were aliens. I couldn’t believe that any man could perform with such dexterity on their musical instruments. I was used to single note melodies and I just could not understand how they could be so creative, and I just came to a point when I told myself ‘Wow, I will never be able to play like this.’ That experience kind of gave me the inspiration to say to myself, ‘Okay, I cannot be a Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie but I can still form my own voice and style musically.”
Clearly, his father’s eclectic ways were a key influence. He however credits his late mother for his cool headedness.
“It is not my fault the press don’t ask about her but if they bring it out she dominates my story. So yes, my father was the superstar, he did all the singing and the fighting but I know that if not for my mother, I would not be who I am today; our family would not be where it is today… my parents were an interesting pair… My mother loved my father. She said she fell in love with him from the moment she met him, but she knew he was a womanizer and she still loved him ‘till the day she died.”
Was her demise the saddest time of his life? Not exactly, he replies. The day his younger sister and his mother died were probably the worst days of his life, he says.
“The day my mother died I had a concert and I had to fulfill it because I had already spent the money. That was very tough…”
“My junior sister’s demise was very hard on me too but I had to brave the situation, being the first male child in the family, the responsibility of her burial arrangements fell on me, and I had to take very fast decisions to quickly console everybody, forgetting that I was also in pain, it took me a very long time to understand that I was in real grief and I still mourn her even now.
“Even my mother, sometimes I wake up and I want to go and say ‘good morning’ then I just realize that ‘Oh, she’s gone.’ I think those two loses of very close family members still haunt me.”
An unpretentious, modest man, any talk of his potential net worth almost annoys him.
“I am worth more than all the money in the world because money can’t buy love. You could be rich and nobody cares about you. People are going out of their way to try to make my party happen; they are trying to give me a happy birthday. Left to me, I would be very nonchalant about it, because I wouldn’t care whether I was 50 or not.”

Fifty Cheers For The Musical Maestro

He grew up in a world where doing business was a foreign concept and capitalism a dirty word. This was the world of Mozambique in the 70s and 80s where Moreira Chonguica’s worldview was formed by the regime of socialist-communist leader Samora Machel, who favored state-owned corporations over the private sector.
“The word business did not apply to me because of the context I grew up in. I never thought about business,” says Chonguica, 35, when thinking back to his youth.
So when he started playing the saxophone as a teenager, it was meant to be a hobby, not a career. It took him many years until he realized that he could make a decent living from his passion. Today, he is actively marketing himself as a brand, by associating with big corporations like Woolworths and Vodacom.
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Chonguica always felt at home in the world of jazz. Every afternoon after school, almost religiously, he visited the local library to browse through leading jazz magazines like Downbeat and Jazz Times, learning about the international world of music. He came to know about festivals, master classes, the music business and the evolution of sound technology.
“I thought, ‘Hello, there is something here that I am missing.’ I started questioning myself and I understood, ‘Ah, music is a business!’” he recalls.
Reading musicians’ biographies became his obsession. Chonguica wanted to find out all he possibly could about the person behind the voice, the business behind the musician.
“From watching music videos on TV, I always thought being a musician was just fun. But when I started reading about the successful artists of that time, like Bryan Adams, Sting, Michael Jackson, MC Hammer, Run-D.M.C., Vanilla Ice. It dawned on me that they are musicians, but they are also companies,” he says.
That’s what he wanted to achieve, as well, one day, he thought.
Chonguica did not only look behind the scenes of music. He also studied the careers of famous sportsmen like basketball star Michael Jordan and the business success stories of multinational corporations like fast food chain McDonalds.
“Michael Jordan created a fingerprint, an identity, a lifestyle. I understood that it’s not only about your success as a sportsman. It’s the way you talk, the way you dress, what you drink, with whom you collaborate. My perspective had changed completely. I started looking at music the same way as at sport,” he explains.
One day the penny dropped: he had to turn himself into a trademark.
But until then, Chonguica had a long road ahead. How was he going to grow his fledgling music career into a thriving business? Step one, was to leave poverty-stricken Mozambique, which had just emerged from more than two decades of bloody internal conflict. He enrolled as a music student at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa in 1997. Living for the first time in a market-driven economy, Chonguica woke up to a sobering reality: combining his dream of being a jazz artist with making money would be extremely difficult.
“I suddenly realized that it would have made much more sense to study economics or engineering or architecture. I got a fright. I thought I have no future. I didn’t want to be just another poor musician.”
In a panic, he played with the thought of de-registering from his studies. It was a drastic decision for someone whose relationship with music had begun early on in his life, pretty much before he could walk or talk. His father, a medical doctor who ran the national health ministry’s pharmacy department, was an ardent music lover. The turntable in the family’s living room in Maputo’s Polana neighborhood hardly stood still.
“My father had a huge collection of LPs. Miles Davis, Fela Kuti, Johnny Clegg, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, James Brown, Pink Floyd, the Police and lots of instrumental jazz. Every evening when he came home from work, he put the system on loud,” says Chonguica.
Chonguica, the boy, listened, and his devotion to music grew. He soon attended a state-subsidized music school where he was introduced to the saxophone—an instrument he never put down again. It was this deep-seated relationship with music that made him years later, as a student, change his mind once again.
“I realized that a musician is who I am. I decided that I have to make it work. I have to change the game. I cannot just play saxophone, I have to turn it into a business.”
And so he graduated with a degree in jazz performance and ethnomusicology and started to play and tour with top South African jazz artists, such as Jimmy Dludlu and Alvin Dyers.
“I purposefully attached myself to the big names, toured with them and played at the top jazz festivals in the world,” says Chonguica.
“It’s like when you’re a soccer player, you want to play with Real Madrid,” he says in reference to the Spanish football club, one of the top performing clubs in the world.
A trip to the United States in 2000 opened his eyes to the world of music even further.
“I saw musicians making a lot of money, getting the right publicity, becoming famous. It was ‘wow’. My perspective of how the music business works totally changed,” he says.
His role model became Quincy Jones, who over five decades in the entertainment industry not only excelled as a jazz trumpeter and performer but became one of the top record producers of all time, working with pop icons like Michael Jackson.
“Quincy Jones is my hero because he shaped and changed the world with music. He built an empire,” says Chonguica.
Back in South Africa, Chonguica changed tack. He didn’t want to be a member of someone else’s band anymore. He wanted to become an artist in his own right, build his own brand. He teamed up with Woolworths and was a celebrity model for the retailer’s winter men’s collection. He became a brand ambassador for Laurentina Premium, an SABMiller beer, Vodacom Mozambique and Mozambican airline LAM, and has collaborated with Nokia, J&amp;B and Mozambique’s largest commercial bank BCI.
“I am marketing myself differently [from other jazz artists]. I am creating concepts of myself, buzz words. Someone will say ‘I know that guy. I want to book him’,” he explains.
He also created an independent recording label, Morestar Entertainment, and produced several albums of conceptual African fusion of jazz, cleverly keeping tabs on his musical output as well as his earnings: “I own everything I do.” Three South Africa Music Awards (SAMA) and another two nominations later, Chonguica’s records can be downloaded from all major music websites, like iTunes, SoundCloud or ReverbNation, giving Chonguica a global presence.
But it’s the branding that has kept Chonguica financially afloat much more than income generated from performances or music sales, especially since the global financial crisis hit in 2008.
“The first thing that’s affected in an economic downturn is entertainment. There are less jazz festivals, reduced budgets for musicians. I came to the conclusion that I can’t depend on festivals and gigs to make money. It’s not sustainable,” he says.
Chonguica’s advice to young musicians: Create our own concepts. Brand your band, young man.

Brand Your Band,  Young Man

Picture yourself living in early 19th century Africa. What would you be clad in? Most likely an outfit made of traditional cloth, perhaps Kuba cloth.
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“We have one of the most beautiful art forms in Africa,” says Crown Prince Kwete Kwete.
Prince Kwete is the son of the 125th king of the Bakuba Kingdom, King Kot Mbueki III. Textiles from Africa are said to be one of the most important gifts to the world of art. The Kuba cloth is associated with royalty and has inspired great artists like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Matisse’s appliquéd techniques were influenced by the Kuba cloth displayed in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Kuba cloth originated with King Shamba Bolongongo and his son, Shaamweky. From the 16th century, the Kuba people have dressed themselves in Kuba cloth, wrapping it around their waists like a skirt. The cloth is made of raffia from the palm tree. The raffia is picked and dried, softened and woven into different lengths and sizes. The process can take three to four weeks or up to a year.
“Textiles are a sign of wealth for us and every king has a cloth that he wears during ceremonies. When a member of the royal family dies, women from the kingdom wear a certain color cloth for six months. Designs are symbolic and used for particular ceremonies,” says Prince Kwete.
When a king dies, his wives wear special red cloth with subtle patterns in velvet on the borders and openwork embroidery in the middle. Specially designed weavings made of leopard skin and shells are reserved for the king, his wives, the royal court and dancers.
The Kuba cloth is made by the people of the Bakuba Kingdom in the Democratic Republic of Congo—formerly Zaire. But it is the Shoowa, a small sub-tribe of the Bakuba who are renowned for making intricate textiles from the palm fiber creating a tuft pile-like effect using the clipped raffia threads. Weaving intricate geometrical designs can take up to a year.
Some of the designs are on display in museums around the world and have been studied by scholars like George Meurant of Belgium. The beauty and complexity of the Kuba cloth has only recently been appreciated at a time when the most elegant designs are disappearing. European collectors of African textiles started amassing collections of embroidered cut-pile textiles towards the end of the 19th century. These pieces often fetch millions of dollars at auctions. Most collectors are private individuals in America, Britain, France and Poland.
Kuba cloth is on the brink of being lost; Prince Kwete is trying to preserve it with the help of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
“The Kuba cloth is displayed in leading museums, but people do not know where the Bakuba Kingdom is located. Kuba is still existent and we are a population of approximately half a million people including immigrants. Congo is bigger than Eastern Europe and Kuba land is three times the size of Belgium,” he says.
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Together with his father, Prince Kwete is working with the central government of Congo to reach out to other Africans through culture.
“DRC is known for war, but there are attractive investment opportunities in the country.”
King Kot Mbueki III is the first king of Bakuba to have travelled to Kinshasa and Europe.
“He ‘broke away’ from the kingdom by preserving tradition,” says Price Kwete who describes the Bakuba Kingdom as democratic.
“The king is there to reign and not to rule. We have managed to maintain our culture and art because each tribe is represented in the king’s court. When selecting a chief of a village, the people of a village have to go to the king and suggest someone. My father then honors the people’s wish by appointing the suggested person. This goes back nine centuries.”
According to Kenyan fashion model Emma Too, the Kuba cloth is one of the most valuable African textiles together with the Ashanti and Kente from West Africa. American fashion designer Ralph Lauren is known to have made several designs using the Kuba cloth and supermodel Iman wore Kuba designs when she modelled for Africa Heritage. The cloth is also used to decorate homes. Because of its growing demand, the market has been flooded by fake cloth.
“You can tell an original Kuba cloth by how it has been sewn, designed and the quality. If you compare a genuine and fake cloth, the quality of material is world’s apart,” says Prince Kwete.
The people of the Bakuba Kingdom use the cloth as a source of income to support their families through school.
“Since our main source of income was farming and that can barely sustain families, you find people selling their valuable pieces,” says Prince Kwete, who regularly organizes auctions to arrange money for projects in the kingdom.
The price of the Kuba cloth depends on the year it was made, how long it took to make, the design and history of the piece. There is a museum in Mshenge—the capital of Bakuba—which is used by the royal family to display valuable pieces.
“Once any society in Africa loses its identity and adopts a new one, your culture disappears,” says Prince Kwete.

The Cloth Of Kings—For Sale

Stacked plastic boxes of Dutch Wax, the colorful patterned fabric ubiquitous in West African communities, obstruct the cramped staircase of Yinka Shonibare’s studio, a converted warehouse in east London.
Now a signature of his work, the tangled history of the material encapsulates some of the themes central to the artist’s canon. Originally based on Indonesian batik printing techniques, the fabric was commercialized by Dutch and Belgian traders in the 19th century and sold on to West Africa in huge quantities. Since then, Chinese manufacturers have begun to capture large swathes of the market.
Dutch Wax is, like Shonibare himself, a cultural chimera, a combination of global influences. Born in the United Kingdom in 1962 to Nigerian parents, Shonibare moved to Lagos at the age of three and returned at 17 to complete his education. Today, his joyfully subversive work mixes quintessentially British iconography with African accents, taking aim at a broad range of domestic and international issues.
“My point is that identities are often made up of different influences from around the globe&#8230; no culture is actually static,” he says of his chosen material. “A lot of cultures actually take and reuse things. But there is a romantic wish to freeze culture in a sort of time warp. Even within the continent of Africa, no such thing [as stasis] actually existed within traditional cultures. People always incorporated and took on new things as part of a growing, dynamic, living culture.”
<div id="attachment_1151" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1151" class="wp-image-1151 size-large" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/143776123_10-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="713" />Artwork Homeless Man by Yinka Shonibare</div>
He is comfortable with the Nigerian-British or British-Nigerian labels he is routinely given. The world accepts “hyphenated identities” as does he.
“I have no wish to run away from my identity. I’m informed by history. I’ve been defined by a colonial encounter with Nigeria… So, I enthusiastically explore that historical fact in my work because to stand outside of it would be to delude myself. If I don’t define myself by it, then others will. So I might as well do it first.”
Shonibare resisted definition from an early stage. At art school in London during the last days of the Soviet Union, he began working on art that explored perestroika. His tutors, however, saw an African artist and with that, came preconceptions. He was asked, he says, why he was not producing “authentic” African art.
That was difficult, he says for “somebody who grew up in a cosmopolitan city like Lagos, watching Sesame Street on television. I don’t think people understand that here. They think Africa is still the jungle. It’s coming from that mentality and that’s why I thought I’ll give you ‘Africa’, but I’ll give you Africa with a twist.”
“At the time, I guess I was facing the world and trying to understand how I was perceived by it. I learned through that process that actually, as a black man in Europe, anonymity was rather difficult. Now things are different, but I think then, whatever I did, people would have said ‘that’s a black man who doesn’t make work about being black.’”
Shonibare’s reaction to this early pigeonholing created the signatures he uses to this day—British imagery remade. One set of photographs cast Shonibare himself as a Victorian dandy. Another of his most popular pieces—which had a long residency on the empty fourth plinth beneath Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square—was a scale model of Admiral Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory: its sails made of Dutch Wax. The work is frequently playful, an ironic comment on aspects of European society and globalization through the eyes of someone with a “hyphenated” identity.
“I think for me, it’s just generally amusing. No-one ever questioned Picasso’s obsession with African clichés—why can’t I do the same to European culture? There was a fetishization of African culture by a lot of modernist European artists. So as an African artist now, I can do the same to European culture with a lot of amusement,” says Shonibare.
Post-colonialism and the colonial ties that link global Africans like Shonibare to Europe remain a major theme in his work. Unlike some of his contemporaries, however, he has avoided sliding into bleak assessments of the crushed optimism of early post-colonialism. The reason, once again, is his refusal to fall into line with preconceptions and labels.
“It’s extremely important not to be anybody’s victim. Power does not lie in victimhood, so you are more assertive if you are in control of your own image and your own culture. One group does not have a monopoly on aesthetic pleasure. Anyone has the power to express themselves in the way they want to. I dictate the terms of my own work,” he says.
In the same vein, he refuses to appear to be suffering for his art. Shonibare is wheelchair-bound after contracting Transverse Myelitis in his youth.
“I think what’s normally expected is some sort of sob story of the victim. That’s not the narrative I’m particularly interested in; especially where historically my people have been oppressed and disempowered. Why should I fall for another victim narrative, when I could actually take control of the means of production?”
“That sounds very Marxist,” he laughs. “The artist is meant to be some kind of van Gogh who will die with no money and suffer generally, but I actually think in 2012 that’s just old hat. It’s not interesting. You have to take control.”
Art, he says, has been a spiritually and commercially fulfilling career—although his father would still have preferred him to become a lawyer. It’s one that continues to provide new outlets for his musing on identity and culture. For the next five years, his latest work—a ballerina dressed in bright purple and green Dutch Wax fabric, will rotate in a glass bubble on the corner of the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden. In August, he curated a major exhibition of African art and culture at the opera house, overseeing, among other performances, an African ensemble performing Handel’s Messiah in the heart of Britain’s cultural establishment.

Yes, But Is It African Art?

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Tayo Oviosu is a trained engineer with a penchant for venture capital and private equity. His journey to spearhead Nigeria’s first mobile money company and foremost mobile money transfer service has been long and winding.
Oviosu was born and raised in Lagos, then moved to the States in 1994, aged 16. He earned an electrical engineering degree from the University of Southern California. Later, he began with a couple of start-ups where his entrepreneurial spirit was born. Regardless, he went to work for Deloitte Consulting where he led a number of system integration projects. The thirst in Tayo was far from quenched and stirred him to seek formal business knowledge at Stanford University, where he obtained his MBA.
While at Stanford , the thought of moving back to Nigeria drifted through Oviosu’s mind.
“Many people had warned me that Nigeria was still too much about who rather than what you knew,” he says.
This was a major deterrent for him and instead, he started thinking of what he wanted to do long-term.
“I concluded, I wanted to help build an ecosystem of early stage venture capital in Africa, help build entrepreneurs and see businesses come to life,” he says.
Oviosu thought of ways to marry his tech background with these lofty aspirations and this led to his next venture with one of Silicon Valley’s priced tech houses, Cisco Systems, where he helped develop strategies for businesses’ investments in Africa. This project brought him back to Africa. As an early stage venture capitalist, experiences with colleagues and business partners—while carrying out the project in South Africa—drew his entrepreneurial fantasies closer to Nigeria.
“I get a real kick out of bringing ideas to life,” he says.
In 2008, Oviosu took up the gauntlet and returned to Nigeria. Loaded with ideas, he joined Travant Capital Partners, a private equity firm, within which he executed investment strategy in West Africa and also spent time identifying opportunities within the Nigerian market.
A few months into his involvement with Travant, Oviosu knew the time was now.
“I was more convinced about Nigeria and the opportunities that are present in this country more than ever,” he says.
Of all these opportunities, one particular issue stood out for him—having to carry cash, to make payments and transactions, was rather frustrating. This led to the quick realization that there was very limited access to financial services in the country.
A huge number of Nigerians are unbanked, but an estimated 60 million of the country’s 160 million people, have mobile phones.
“This got me thinking—what if the phone became the primary means of electronic transactions,” he says.
That is where the mission to bank the unbanked, for profit, started.
Oviosu raised seed capital from friends and family, while he nursed the idea and hunted for the right people.
“Learning to navigate and operate in Nigeria is indeed, an art, one I’m still yet to master. However, if you’re passionate enough about a course, you will overcome any hurdles,” he says.
Oviosu’s passion did the trick and in 2009, Pagatech, the company that was to make his fortune, was born, a direct consumer mobile payment service. Its first product offering, Paga—a direct to customer mobile service—was launched in February 2011. The service allows users to send cash, pay bills and make payments using the cellphone or the internet.
“I’m extremely motivated about what I can see Paga doing for Nigeria and that inspires my team and I to overcome any frustration that may come along,” he says.
“When I’m not working or thinking Paga, I enjoy listening to good music and dancing away. I’d like to be remembered as a fun guy.”
With more than 200,000 transactions, since it launched, 153,342 users and $16 million in transaction volumes, Paga has taken off like a rocket and there seems to be no stopping Oviosu now.

I’ve Got Your Number

The hustle of the noisy, crowded, streets of Lagos is spawning a raw sound that is catching the ear of the world. They call it Nigerian urban music and it could be a gold mine.
Twenty million people-a-month, in 98 countries, tune into Nigerian urban music on YouTube and the numbers are rising rapidly.
“Nigerian urban contemporary music is about young, powerful, trendy, attitude-driven Africans who are not talking about poverty, exclusion or famine. They are saying we’re the new world, the new way, get in with it or forget it,” says Obi Asika, CEO of Storm Records—a leading entertainment company—who also sits on the board of COSON—Copyright Society of Nigeria.
<div id="attachment_1136" style="width: 211px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1136" class="wp-image-1136 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MI_Bubbles-Magazine-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="300" />M.I</div>
Nigeria is in a prime position to take advantage of this music. It has some of the finest recording studio technology in Africa and a thriving home market on which to test new sounds. The only problem is corruption and rampant music piracy, which threatens the growth of this vibrant Nigerian music.
Asika says the deterrents to growth are regulation, copyright and piracy issues, which leave artists with a lack of income from record sales.
“It is a constant battle but we are making a lot of progress,” he says.
“If you give Nigeria the same resources the Americans have, we will have full domination of the entertainment scene. This is a fact because they don’t have the story. We have a unique story, a unique culture, a unique urban identity and it is in high demand.”
One of the problems is the average Nigerian musician’s recordings can be bought at the side of the road in Lagos traffic, for a pittance. It means concerts and live shows are the moneymakers.
<div id="attachment_1137" style="width: 194px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1137" class="wp-image-1137 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Tu-Face_Now-Musik-184x300.jpg" alt="" width="184" height="300" />Tu Face</div>
For this reason, the United Sounds of Africa—a music project taking African talent on a seven city tour of North America—was created. On tour will be: Tuface; M.I; Jesse Jagz; Ice Prince; Brymo; Timi Dakolo and J.Martins. They will play in Atlanta; Houston; Washington; New York; Los Angeles; Chicago and Toronto.

Tag: September 2012

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