On a windy spring day in Johannesburg, South Africa, we make our way through the dusty streets of Braamfontein to the hallowed halls of the Joburg Theatre, a venue often described as the nucleus of the country’s theatrical history. It’s the perfect setting for the retelling of South Africa’s historic hit musical, King Kong, more than half a century after it was first showcased.
Ahead of the play’s Johannesburg run – from September 12 to October 8 – we are here to meet Nondumiso Tembe, the female lead playing Joyce, a role that catapulted the late Miriam Makeba to international stardom in the original production of <a href="https://www.kingkongstagemusical.com/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">King Kong</a>, which opened at the Wits University Great Hall in 1959 as South Africa’s first black musical. In 1961, the play transferred to London’s West End and was a stupendous success with a 200-performance run.
Tembe, an award-winning actress and singer-songwriter, has credits of her own, including HBO’s Golden Globe and Emmy-award winning True Blood, SABC’s Generations, the military drama SIX on the History Channel and Zulu Wedding opposite Darrin Dewitt Henson.
She walks in to Stages, the restaurant at the entrance of Joburg Theatre, with a beaming smile and a spring in her step. She is relaxed but excited– the opening night is in five days – and rehearsals are on at the theater. Ordering a cappuccino, she gets straight to the interview.
“I think for our generation, King Kong, and the legend of this man has always been alive in our consciousness as South Africans,” she says.
“And many of us were aware of it and perhaps our parents had shared some of the memories and the experience of the production with us but I don’t think we really knew or understood the story or the music in-depth… It was there alive somewhere in the back of my consciousness but I did not know too much about it and in particular, I didn’t know much about the role of Joyce.”
Tembe smiles as she also admits she was not aware Makeba originally played the role.
“I was humbled to be chosen to be part of a play that was incredibly historic, ground-breaking and deeply brilliant at the time. I was hired two weeks before we were meant to start rehearsals and honestly it’s all kind of a blur,” she laughs.
“Before I knew it, I packed up my life in Los Angeles and prepared to be away for an extended period of time. From then, I spent every waking moment researching the production, the period and the role, in particular the music.”
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Set in the 1950s’ Sophiatown in Johannesburg, King Kong tells the true story of heavyweight boxing champion Ezekiel Dlamini who named himself ‘King Kong’ because of his stout physique and fearless personality. The play is a story of love and self-destruction enacted to the invigorating music of Todd Matshikiza.
<div id="attachment_34495" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34495" class="wp-image-34495" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/King-Kong-Print-04-DM-e1511423075127-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" />From left to right: Nondumiso Tembe, Joel Zuma, Sanda Shandu, Barileng Malebye and Ben Kgosimore star in King Kong. (Photo by Daniel Rutland Manners)</div>
Dlamini is aptly essayed by actor, singer and dancer Andile Gumbi, who made his Broadway debut as Simba in Disney’s The Lion King.
Born in Vryheid in the then Orange Free State, Dlamini himself became an unwitting symbol for freedom and the wasted power of his people under apartheid. After sudden stardom in the boxing world, Dlamini&#8217;s life degenerated into drunkenness and gang violence.
In 1957, Dlamini was to be a classic Greek tragic figure when, in a fit of jealousy, he killed his girlfriend and at his trial asked for a death sentence, to serve as a warning to others. Instead, the white judge, who refused to take instruction from a black defendant, sentenced Dlamini to 12 years of labor. But, three months later, King Kong is found drowned in a dam on a prison farm. At 36 years old, he had taken destiny into his own hands and, inadvertently, become a legend.
Dlamini’s story bears a striking resemblance to William Shakespeare’s tragic hero Othello; a man consumed by love and his vices. Like Othello, King Kong is said to have ended his own life, unable to live with the devastation he caused.
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On the opening night of the re-imagining of this tragic tale in Johannesburg in September, the theater is abuzz, unlike the quiet venue it had been a few days ago when we met Tembe.
“I’m really excited about this remake,” says South African actress and author Pamela Nomvete, just before the packed show.
“Todd Matshikiza put together a phenomenal musical and John Matshikiza, his son, launched my career in the UK. So for me, it’s like being a part of history because it was so significant at the time.”
The set design on stage is simple, consisting of painted corrugated iron shutters complete with rows of brilliant golden lights, and with the energetic actors and the live nine-piece orchestra led by Sipumzo Trueman Lucwaba, takes you back in time.
The costumes worn by the all-South African cast form an integral part of the musical narrative set in Sophiatown, the legendary black cultural hub featuring Kofifi dance, Kofifi music and other forms of entertainment.
The 1950s was when the ‘Kofifi style’ emerged, just as apartheid was being implemented. Men worked mainly in mines and factories wearing overalls and the only occasions they could wear a suit – an integral part of the Kofifi style – was at funerals, weddings or on payday.
It was a combination of fashion and a rebel lifestyle that defined this period and people who lived it up as best they could.
The South African project described Sophiatown as an area which “developed into the center of urban African music and culture and starting in the 1940s, it began to enrich its musical performances and elements of popular culture. Sophiatown symbolized something greater than the struggle of fitting in socially; it symbolized the fight for survival while having to deal with expensive rent, poverty, overcrowding, unfair wages, and unfair treatment. The people of Sophiatown established a strong community identity”.
The 120-minute play swiftly transforms from the playground to the boxing ring to the shanty town to the shabeen owned by Joyce, when Tembe makes her opening appearance with a soulful rendition of the legendary Back of the Moon, a sensual song written by Todd Matshikiza.
“The music for Joyce was incredibly challenging and sophisticated and multi-layered and really hard to sing. I was forced to buckle down and not think about the implications or the legacy we were carrying or the weight on our shoulders,” says Tembe at our meeting.
“The original script was very thin and the creative team agreed the characters were rather one-dimensional, more archetypes than real, complex, multi-dimensional human beings and we were very clear in our adaptation, not a revival of the original production; we were more interested in telling a human story the audience could relate to.”
<div id="attachment_34496" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34496" class=" wp-image-34496" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/King-Kong-Print-15-DM-e1511423279103-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" />Nondumiso Tembe. (Photo by Daniel Rutland Manners)</div>
It was not an easy challenge to accept for the cast.
“There were a lot of holes so we all worked very hard to fill those gaps and make it more rich and dynamic. For me the challenge with Joyce, because she was one-dimensional and didn’t really have a back story; there was the danger of her coming across as a vamp or a man-eater and I was very clear that my greatest nightmare would be for the audience members to walk away from the play thinking she deserved what she got instead of sympathizing with her,” says Tembe.
This was especially important for Tembe because of the current social context in South Africa, where there has been an epidemic of violence against women, and this being a story about femicide, it was critical for her to convey the right message.
“We really didn’t want our audiences to cheer at the end of the tragic scene between Joyce and King Kong and that actually happened when we first staged it, in preview week, so, the writer, Bill Michaelson, who I admire, snuck in, very last minute during preview week, and added a wonderful but very deep and pivotal scene between King Kong and Joyce which we rehearsed with the director for barely an hour and then Andile Gumbi and I had to perform it that very night in front of a paying audience, which was terrifying,” recounts Tembe, letting out a little scream.
Watching that scene in the play makes it hard to imagine the script was enacted without it. The raw emotions portrayed by King Kong and Joyce are paramount to the play’s climax; a pivotal scene providing great insight into the characters – who they are and why they make the decisions they do.
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South African actor Andile Nebulane calls the play “magical”.
“It’s brilliant, fun to watch and you cannot fall asleep watching it. The choreography is also brilliant; Greg Maqoma did an outstanding job.”
But he adds: “Although, I do think South African theater needs to move from the third gear into sixth gear. It needs to be shaken up, we need new stuff. We need to stop recycling stories, we need to write, we need to create and we just need to be recognized by stakeholders like government, which does not take us seriously.”
<div id="attachment_34497" style="width: 260px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34497" class=" wp-image-34497" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/King-Kong-Print-06-JK-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="375" />Sne Dladla (left) and Lerato Mvelase in King Kong. (Photo by Jesse Kramer)</div>
When the play was originally staged in 1959, the audience also included Nelson Mandela and his wife Winnie. King Kong toured South Africa for two years, and was seen by 200,000 South Africans, playing to record-breaking multiracial audiences, this as apartheid began to take shape in South Africa. King Kong in part, launched the international careers of Makeba and Hugh Masekela, among many others.
But, it was at this time that King Kong moved to London. The celebration of what had been deemed South Africa’s greatest play was short-lived because of the Sharpeville Massacre of March 21, 1960.
But in a fitting tribute to the art form and the local talent the country boasts today, Nomvete says: “I think South African theater is of an outstanding caliber and more people should be coming into our country to watch our shows; King Kong is testament enough of how well professionals in the performing arts are doing their thing and they are doing it well.”
The Fugard Theatre’s King Kong, directed by Jonathan Munby, was also staged at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town before its Johannesburg outing.
“I do think that Mariam Makeba and Todd Matshikiza and the entire original creative team who may no longer be with us are smiling down from heaven and are proud of the steps we have taken and how we have pushed the story and the production forward and caused it to evolve. We are proudly and graciously carrying the torch they originally lit,” concludes Tembe.
The standing ovation the play received more than confirmed that. &#8211; Written by Rofhiwa Madzena

The King Kong Of Musicals

Uncle Ebo Whyte is a six-foot-tall, unassuming looking man. You could mistake him for a steward of the theater rather than the father of it. He speaks in a soft but confident manner but has an attention to detail that is slightly intimidating as we sit down in his cosy office to discuss his journey as one of West Africa’s best known playwrights. Surprisingly, the love of his life arrived by accident.
“I didn’t have the confidence to join the drama society because it had all the popular boys and I suffered from inferiority complex in those days, so I couldn’t enter their circle. One day they needed someone to fill in during their rehearsals and I happened to be the only person standing in the window watching them. What the director didn’t realize was that I had memorized the lines. It took the director only five minutes to realize I would be able to give a better performance than the previous actor he had cast for the role,” says Whyte.
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In 1974, Whyte wrote his first play. It was called ‘Man Must Live’ and depicted the struggles of two sisters whose father died and left them penniless. The story had echoes of his life. As the first of five boys, Whyte grew up in a competitive household. When he was 15 years old, his father passed away and his family lost everything.
“I was devastated when he died, I think for a year or two I was totally lost. Those were the days before the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) law came into place, for when a man died intestate, which protects the widow and the children. So, all the extended family took everything from us apart from the house we were living in,” says Whyte.
After studying statistics at the University of Ghana, Whyte almost got chartered but decided last minute against accounting. He wanted a life of spinning stories into gold.
“Roverman Productions started in 2008. The problem was that there was no template for me to know how I could make theater production into a business. My first three attempts of making this work were financially disastrous because I came from the background where drama production was free, hence putting together plays you had to sell was difficult, thank God I learned how to do it,” says Whyte.
He began alone and now employs 15 permanent staff and an 80-man production team.
Getting an audience for the plays was the easy part. The difficulty for Whyte was securing money for the quality of production he wanted. Whyte wanted his production house to produce quarterly plays and to become big enough to be a name in Africa.
Tourists are a big market. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, Ghana attracted 925,000 international tourists in 2015. In 10 years, international tourists are forecast to total 1.38 million. He reckons about 45% of the holidaymakers in Ghana come to his plays.
Then there was the tougher nut of corporate Ghana to crack.
“Gatekeepers in corporate Ghana could understand musical concerts but they could not understand how theater would work. We were the first company to pioneer theater in Ghana. When they saw how many people we were able to pull, they came easier and it became a much easier sell,” says Whyte.
“We have huge goodwill in the various boardrooms in Ghana. What is happening now is that a lot of the big companies are being controlled from outside Ghana and because the people pulling the strings are not in Ghana, they do not care about spending money here because they do not know about what is on the ground. So it is usually a budgetary issue with companies.”
Eight years on and there are still problems. Like the rest of Ghana, the theater is hampered by another drama – power cuts.
“One terrible moment was last quarter when the lights went out at the national theatre in the middle of the production. We were using a generator, which stopped an hour and half into the production. I think I died inside. Not because we couldn’t solve the situation because we got the power back in 30 minutes, but because of the excellence I look to achieve. I do not want my patrons to take certain things for granted. They should expect to pay for their tickets and nothing will go wrong. They do not need any excuses and I do not want to give them any. The fact that I could not deliver a production without a hiccup was very bad,” says Whyte.
George Ofori runs an art gallery in Accra. His family owned a theater business in the late 70s when stage productions were popular.
“The theater business died during the military rule where there were widespread curfews. My father and a lot of other production houses had to find new ways of making money back then. After that, the theater business has never really bounced back and a lot of people have struggled to make the business viable,” says Ofori.
“The theater business in Ghana is still very much at an evolving and developmental stage with a gradual effort towards audience cultivation. The potential for growth into a viable, consistent and highly rewarding industry is very high. Presently, Roverman Productions is the most identifiable theater entity owing to the consistent quality productions over the last eight years,” says Kabutey Ocansey, Head of Business Development for Roverman Productions.
For those closest to Whyte, his passion for the business is palpable.
“He is a perfectionist and passionate about theater and feels that Ghana has the talent to compare with any theater group in the world if we so desire and are willing to work diligently,” says Felicia Mensah, Customer Relations Coordinator at Roverman Productions.
For Whyte it is not just about business. It is about families dressing up and sharing in their cultural heritage. The golden tradition of families sitting by the fireside and sharing stories may be long gone in the world of the cell phone, but there is a renaissance of storytelling in Ghana and Whyte is responsible for this. As he recounts his journey, the quiet and reserved man is clearly in his element.

The Father Of Ghanaian Theater

Last year, cinema attendance reportedly dipped to 20-year lows in Western markets. Piracy and home-viewing are profoundly changing the way people consume visual media. But not so it seems in India, home to Bollywood, the world’s largest film industry by output, where the near-invincible sector is clocking in double the number of theatre-goers in North America.
Whether a function of India’s perennial love affair with the silver screen or a result of the ultra-modern digital multiplex theatres mushrooming in metros all over the country, Bollywood is thriving and is estimated to have been worth $2.28 billion last year.
For South Africa, this means more opportunities to service Indian film production houses increasingly searching for cost-effective locations offering all the comforts of home such as skilled support staff and quality equipment.
FORBES WOMAN AFRICA had the opportunity to meet up with the production crew of Ishq Forever, a Bollywood romantic comedy filmed in Cape Town in April-May this year.
Ishq Forever, or ‘love forever’ in English, stars Bollywood veteran Javed Jeffrey and Indian-Canadian actress Lisa Ray, as well as newcomers Krishna Chaturvedi and Ruhi Singh. The film is a production of Friday Cine Entertainment, a three-way partnership between Ajay Shah, Harry Gandhi and Shabbir Boxwala.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30745 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6785-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6785-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6785-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6785-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6785.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
It isn’t Boxwala’s first production in South Africa. In 2003, he co-produced the romantic drama Dil Ka Rishta, starring Bollywood royalty Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in Cape Town. Like Boxwala, Shah has been producing Bollywood films for over 20 years. The final member of the trio, Gandhi – the CEO of Unique Maritime Group headquartered in the Middle East – is a film industry newcomer but has been a film enthusiast for a long time.
“I have seen first-hand how much the local industry has changed over the past 10 to 15 years,” says Boxwala.
What was once a small scale and inwardly-focused sector is now world-class and attracting sizeable foreign investment. The growth comes from two directions.
The first is locally-produced and directed films telling South African stories – during the five years leading up to 2003, local releases averaged just three a year; 10 years later, the number is closer to 15.
The second, and significantly more powerful growth lever, is the increase in international productions, such as Ishq Forever filming on location in South Africa.
As a whole, the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) in South Africa estimates the industry contributes close to R3.5 billion ($282 million) to South African GDP each year and that number is growing at a rate of 14% per annum.
The location of choice is Cape Town and it’s safe to say that pretty much anyone who has visited South Africa’s Mother City can vouch for its natural charms.
Mountains, farms, beaches, oceans and semi-arid moonscapes are all within an hour’s drive from the city center, which comes with its own unique attractions in the form of the diverse architectural structures. During the summer months, Cape Town averages close to 15 hours of daylight and very limited rain – a further pull factor for overseas film productions.
Cape Town hasn’t ridden on its looks alone though. The Western Cape Provincial Government has invested close to R20 million ($1.6 million) into the sector and justifies the expenditure by means of a conservative projection of 30,000 skilled and unskilled jobs that have been created as a result of its efforts.
The majority of Bollywood films shot in South Africa use locations in Durban, the country’s third largest city, home to the largest concentration of people of Indian descent in the country and characterized by sub-tropical vegetation allowing for an easier set replication of Indian backdrops.
Ishq Forever is different – the film was shot in Cape Town and surrounding areas – such as sleepy coastal town Hermanus.
“Ishq Forever really celebrates South African culture. The action takes place in Cape Town where the young heroine (played by Singh), the daughter of the prime minister of India, is attending university. It’s a coming of age romantic comedy with lots of plot twists and chases,” informs Boxwala.
“We caused quite a lot of excitement when we filmed in Hermanus. I don’t think the locals had experienced a Bollywood film before. When we were leaving, the mayor thanked us and we have promised to come back and arrange a public screening of the film at an open air cinema.”
At present, the majority of the international films being filmed in Cape Town are American productions – most recently The Giver and TV series Homeland Season 2 – which benefit further from exchange rate gains as a result of the woeful decline in the value of the local currency against the US dollar.
The NFVF approximates that it is on average 40% cheaper to make a film in South Africa than in the United States or in Europe.
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Not Wooing Bollywood Enough
But where does that leave Bollywood? Not in an entirely favorable position, says Boxwala.
“As Bollywood film productions, we simply can’t afford to pay the rental fees which are charged to the big US productions. We just don’t work with those kind of budgets because our revenue streams are limited,” he says.
According to statistics portal Statista, Bollywood films grossed a modest $1.2 billion in 2012 against a $10.8 billion gross revenue from US productions. The numbers may not seem surprising at first glance – Hollywood is wholly more pervasive in the global popular culture – however, consider them against the fact that during that same year, Bollywood churned out a prolific 1,602 features versus Hollywood’s 476.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30746 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6136-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6136-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6136-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6136-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6136.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“A Bollywood production – even a mega blockbuster – will have significantly fewer distribution opportunities than its Hollywood equivalent, which rides on the virtue that Western productions are enjoyed by a wider audience,” says Gandhi. Ishq Forever, for example, was filmed on the relatively modest, all-inclusive budget of $2.5 million.
Gandhi says that the opportunity to attract more Bollywood productions to South Africa simply through widening the accessibility of local services is glaring. Boxwala recounts that the stock of basic equipment available for rent in South Africa during the filming of Ishq Forever was fairly limited and the resultant demand determined prices prohibitive to non-dollar earning filmmakers.
More than two thirds of Bollywood features are shot outside of India. The most popular locations are Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Malaysia and Eastern Europe. South Africa could be losing out on Bollywood opportunities, say Boxwala and Gandhi, due to the high local prices, the red tape related to the obtaining Department of Trade and Industry rebates and the fact that there are no direct flights between Johannesburg and Mumbai – the heart and soul of Bollywood. Having no direct flights complicates the transportation of filming equipment, which forces crews like Boxwala’s to rent locally and brings the problem back to the high rental rates set for US customers.
“We want to work here though,” says Gandhi. “It took us 40 days to film Ishq Forever. During that time, we hired 20 local technicians and created close to 900 short-term, low skilled jobs. We invested roughly $1 million into the local economy over the production time.”
“The locations here are fantastic and the level of skill is world class. We believe that South Africa could become an even more popular film destination for Bollywood films if it works on the negatives and builds on the positives.”

IMG_6140

When Bollywood Comes Calling

It was in 1966 in Dahomey, old Benin. A little girl is standing under the glare of heavy spotlights at the Palais des Congrès de Cotonou, the majestic parliament building in the heart of the tiny West African country’s largest city.
She is only six and her slender legs sway and shake. Moments earlier, her mother, the theatre company director, had hurried her on to the stage. Her daughter was the only one who could fit into the sick soloist’s costume.
On stage, still shaking, the little girl forces the audience into laughter – they think it’s part of the program. She reads this as approval, she is the comedienne at home, and finds the courage to begin the song Atcha Houn. Her audience responds with shock and awe, the first of many apt reactions Angélique Kidjo’s voice would receive in her long and illustrious career.
Today, the 54-year-old songstress is radiant with confidence. After the death of her father, a photographer with progressive ideas, she began to return to her memories of the days before her award-winning music career. The memories, put to paper, became her seminal autobiography, Spirit Rising, released early last year. She  remembers her childhood as particularly happy and adventurous.
“I was a little girl, always running and jumping around our courtyard on skinny legs,” she says.
Kidjo grew up with music all around her. Her mother’s first love, traditional Beninoise musical theatre, ended when she was nine. However, soon after, the family took on another musical project investing in a number of Western style musical instruments in an ambitious plan to groom their seven sons into a homegrown version of the Jackson 5.
She, brimming with curiosity, wanted to be a part of this new sound.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29817 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Aija-Lehtonen-Shutterstock.com_-300x245.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="245" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Aija-Lehtonen-Shutterstock.com_-300x245.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Aija-Lehtonen-Shutterstock.com_-600x490.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Aija-Lehtonen-Shutterstock.com_-768x627.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Aija-Lehtonen-Shutterstock.com_-1024x836.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Aija-Lehtonen-Shutterstock.com_.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“After school instead of homework, I would stand in front of the kick-drum with my arms crossed and listen in awe as they rehearsed Get Ready by the Temptations in our little lounge.”
Soon, she was joining her brothers performing at a little bungalow bar on the Cotonou lagoon while still a schoolgirl. Her father would only let her perform two songs but it was something Kidjo looked forward to each time.
“Around midnight, my father would come to my bedroom I shared with my sister Mireille, to wake me. I was too excited to sleep, but I would pretend, holding my songbook and lying very still so I wouldn’t wrinkle my dress. I wore the same purple dress every time. My mother made it from fabric she used to sell&#8230;my father put his hand on my shoulder and gently shook me, telling me it was time to go.”
Decades passed, and Kidjo’s passion for music and performance did not wane. Instead, it took her to the bustling streets of Paris. Speaking to FORBES WOMAN AFRICA on the phone from London, Kidjo says that she was unwilling to compromise as an artist if she chose to stay in her country.
“In Benin, before the coup d’etat, it was a very easy-going country&#8230;and then the communist regime arrived and everything changed. The good teachers fled the country and education began decaying and music was hit because it was not possible to write your own music if you weren’t talking about the communist regime and the people in power. It was one thing I didn’t want to do. So the only option I had was to leave, otherwise I was going to end up in jail.”
On September 11, 1983, a 23-year-old Kidjo arrived in France. It was a chilly introduction to the odd European climate.
“I learned very quickly that when the sun is shining in Europe, it doesn’t mean heat like in Africa, sometimes the sun is out and you freeze your butt, for real!” she laughs about those early days in Paris.
Those days, unlike her childhood, were a challenge. She was living with her older brother, who was also a student in the city. Both of them had very little to survive and she often did odd jobs to make ends meet. But Kidjo says her mind was made up, she was going to be the musician she wanted to be on her own terms at all costs.
“It was not easy&#8230;my parents were not rich enough to send us money. It was very hard, I had to find work. I did babysitting, I did hotel room cleaning, I did hair-braiding, I was a back-up singer in a band. It was a matter of survival but I was free and that freedom had no price for me. As long as the work didn’t compromise my body or my brain, I didn’t mind working endless hours&#8230;”
The life of a musician came easily to her. She worked endless hours to make tuition to the prestigious Parisian jazz school, CIM. It was 1985 and she had just left a fledgling singing school in a hilly suburb of the city. The jazz school was in the 18th arrondissement and home to a burgeoning immigrant population. She took to learning, in earnest, the genre that would form the basis of the sound she is now famous for.
“I loved jazz because it helped me understand the connections between classical music, pop and African rhythms. I studied the way the musical notes flowed together,” she says.
Through a series of connections, Kidjo was introduced to Jasper van’t Hof, a celebrated Dutch pianist who was experimenting with traditional African beats. She joined his band Pili Pili soon after as a vocalist.
“Pili Pili was modern jazz with African lyrics and rhythms, and Jasper was a genius at improvisation&#8230;later on this music also had a great influence on my own jazz rhythms&#8230;the sound can be so complex and entrancing. It was my first glimpse of how to create something new out of the magic of traditional African music.”
Her time with van’t Hof’s band was a crucial step in her career. With them, she performed at the renowned Montreux Jazz Festival and often spent winters touring Germany where the band had a prominent following.
While still at CIM, Kidjo met her husband, jazz bassist Jean Hébrail. Together they composed a majority of her repertoire. As she grew more popular in the Parisian jazz circles, she met another key character in her history, a blue-eyed man named Chris Blackwell. She met him at the Island Records office in Paris.
“He was dressed very simply, just in a casual shirt, jeans, and sandals. If you passed him on the street, you would have no idea how rich and powerful he was.”
Blackwell gave Kidjo her big break in 1991, the record deal she had been working towards since she had landed, young and naive, from her home in Benin. She remembers having one stern condition.
“I told him, ‘I need to have the artistic freedom to sing what I want to sing and make the music I want to make’.”
Blackwell was true to his word. In 1992, her first mainstream album Logozo went to number one on the Billboard World Music Charts. She headlined at the Olympia Hall in Paris that year to rave reviews.
She recorded four more albums with Island Records, gaining her first Grammy award nomination in 1995 for the hit single, Agolo.
Two decades later, the determined girl from Benin has made her dreams happen and more. The Grammy award-winner is mother to a daughter currently at Yale University in Connecticut. At the same time, she is a UN Goodwill Ambassador, fighting for the rights of women of her continent.
Her heart remains rooted on African soil as her latest release, Eve, dedicated to the women of Africa, shows. Outside her music, Kidjo is also known for her cooking. Her book was initially imagined as a cookbook and she shares a few of her favorite recipes in the epilogue of her memoirs.
Despite her success, she still holds her beliefs on making it in the music business dear. Compromising on her artistic freedom is something she cannot fathom.
“One thing I learned as a young girl singing was always to be true to my inspiration, never ever give that up in order to please other people. If you cannot sing your song alone without instrumentation and be happy, don’t put it out there! You cannot be an artist thinking that you want to be somebody else. You need to know what kind of artist you want to be and why you want to be that,” she says.
Judging from the sheer scope and success of her career, these are words from the truly wise.

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Once Upon A Legend

Indian theatre personality and Bollywood actress Lillete Dubey borrows a hat from a 17-year-old spectator. We are inside Johannesburg’s red velvet-upholstered Auto &amp; General Theatre On The Square, and this is an hour before the staging of 9 Parts Of Desire, a play directed by Dubey starring her 30-year-old daughter Ira.
“I woke at 5AM, have had a long day and must be looking a mess, maybe the hat will compensate,” says Dubey, before the photo session. She needn’t have bothered. At 60, she is slim, svelte and spunky, despite the “old rehearsal T-shirt” and sherpa boots she is wearing.
The hat is perhaps symbolic of the many she wears every day. Mother, wife, actor, director and recently, Richard Gere’s co-star in the sequel to 2011’s Judi Dench and Bill Nighy-starrer The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel that will release worldwide in February.
Snacking on a cheese-tomato sandwich, and between mouthfuls, Dubey’s glowing description of her handsome co-star is predictable: “He’s paired opposite me romantically and chases me in the film. Richard Gere is such a lovely, warm, charming, affectionate guy.”
Her first meeting with Gere though was anything but predictable.
“I had just thrown up after a bad reaction to something I had eaten. So when I was introduced to him, and he prepared to hug me, I said ‘please don’t come near me, I have just puked’. And he said ‘I have had a number of reactions from women, but this is a first’.”
Dubey had visited Johannesburg three years ago, as director of the long-running off-Broadway hit Dance Like A Man. The play has just completed its 505th show globally. Despite starring in 40 films in Bollywood and internationally, theatre remains her first love.
“Theatre is a jealous mistress, it leaves me with little time for anything else,” says the Mumbai-based Dubey, who is currently working on six stage productions. She had “stumbled into” Bollywood after 20 years of theatre, and is instantly recognizable in India’s thriving film industry.
Film credits include Shyam Benegal’s Zubeidaa, Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding and notable blockbusters with Bollywood royalty Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan.
9 Parts Of Desire, written by American-Iraqi playwright Heather Raffo, details the lives of nine Iraqi women between the first and second Gulf Wars. Dubey’s daughter Ira is outstanding essaying all nine women.
“It’s a serious play, has some humor, but is hard-hitting,” says Dubey, ecstatic about the response she received in Durban. The play was staged in South Africa as part of Shared History 2014: The Indian Experience in South Africa, in early September.
She regrets her trip to the country is brief. On her wish-list is a visit to the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town. But she’s not sure if she can make it.
“South Africa is steeped in music, dance and theatre. I wish I had the time to experience some more of that.”
Dubey is also thrilled about her newest film, Dr Cabbie, a Canadian production that has just released. “Yet, my heart is in theatre,” she says, before blowing our way kisses and disappearing back-stage to a realm that she calls her own.

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Tipping Her Hat To Theatre

Set in Kenya’s Hell’s Gate National Park, Disney’s animated film, The Lion King celebrates 20 years on June 15. The Lion King’s stage adaptation of the original 1994 film has grossed more than $5 billion across the globe. The original film is the highest grossing hand-drawn film in history.
It tells the story of Simba, a young lion who is to succeed his father, Mufasa, as king. But after Simba’s uncle Scar murders Mufasa, Simba is fooled into thinking he was responsible and flees into exile in shame and despair.
While growing up with two wastrels, Simba is given some valuable perspective from his friend Nala and his shaman, Rafiki, before returning to challenge Scar to end his tyranny.
The story is set in the kingdom of lions in east Africa, with influences from biblical stories of Joseph and Moses, as well as William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Though it has had great success, the production of The Lion King has also had its problems. A dispute arose between Disney and the family of South African Solomon Linda, who composed the song, ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, originally titled ‘Mbube’ in 1939. In July 2004, the family filed a lawsuit for $1.6 million in royalties from Disney. Two years later, Linda’s heirs reached a legal settlement with Abilene Music who held the worldwide rights and licensed the song to Disney.
In 1997, three years after the release of The Lion King, Walt Disney produced the musical stage adaptation of the same name, with the first show in Minneapolis in the United States. The musical went on to become one of the most successful in Broadway history and is still running across the globe to this day.
Britain’s stage production of The Lion King casts a huge number of South Africans. In the current run, 25-year-old Nicholas Nkuna is wowing audiences as the third South African to be cast as Simba, following Brian Temba and Andile Gumbi. Before heading to Britain to play Simba, Nkuna was the second youngest black Phantom in the musical The Phantom of the Opera.
“I auditioned for the show for two years and got a call back for the final in the third year. I went to Florida in America to do my final call back. Towards the end of Phantom, they rang me to let me know I got the job,” says Nkuna.
In July 2012, Nkuna moved to Bristol to start rehearsals for the spectacle.
Playing the lead is a huge responsibility and expectations are high. But as time went on, Nkuna says he eased into the role.
“It was incredible; it was eye-opening. The standard of performance is different, the preparation is different. With The Lion King, there’s acting, there’s singing and dancing and you also have the animal elements to it. So you’re half a lion, half a human,” he says.
“You need to learn how to move like a lion. It was interesting to do those workshops. We did Javanese movements. There’s certain cultural depth that they do that’s sort of similar to how humans would move animal-like.”
After two years of traveling with The Lion King, Nkuna has decided to end his journey as Simba to focus on his music and other business adventures.
But the show must go on. In March 2013, The Lion King was launched in Brazil and for the first time in Portuguese. It has been performed in six other languages. It has also been seen on every continent besides Antarctica.
The creators of The Lion King are probably sitting somewhere saying to themselves, ‘Hakuna Matata’, as the Lion King could enthral audiences for decades to come.
<h4>The Soul Of Simba</h4>
The opening scene of The Lion King is unforgettable. As the yellow African sun rises over the horizon, a Zulu voice cries ‘Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba’. It means ‘Here comes a lion, Father’.
That voice belongs to South African award winning musician Lebohang Morake, but to the world of arts and entertainment he’s known as Lebo M.
Morake grew up in Soweto, Johannesburg. From a young age, he started singing in a local pop band. In his first interaction with the music business he saw corruption. At the age of 12, he released his first single Celebration which received a lot of local success. However, Morake only received $20.
After finding success in Lesotho, Morake received a scholarship to study music in the United States (US). It was there that he met world-renowned composer Hans Zimmer. The two worked together on the score for the film The Power of One.
Years later, Hans Zimmer was hired to score the most successful animated movie in history, The Lion King. Zimmer wanted to make the music authentically African and there was only one person he had in mind for the job.
Zimmer traveled to South Africa to find Morake. The two returned to the US where they created a soundtrack to the film that won them numerous awards as well as a Grammy for best instrumental arrangement with accompanying vocal for The Circle Of Life.
Riding on the success of the film, Morake was then commissioned to write the music for The Lion King musical which instantly became a Broadway hit. Morake composed new songs for the production which went well with the music from the original movie.
It has become one of Broadway’s longest-running shows with productions in several countries around the world.
Morake’s original compositions and voice can be heard in a number of films including Chicken Little, Mighty Joe Young, Congo and Tears of the Sun. When you listen to Morake sing, you may not understand the lyrics but you will understand why everyone calls him the voice of The Lion King.

A Roaring Success

The children from Mosupatsela Secondary School in Johannesburg appeared perplexed but transfixed on this warm summer afternoon. Before them, a tragic slice of African history from 98 years ago played out; the night their spiritual great-grandfathers perished in the freezing English Channel 6,000 miles away. These children have more democratic rights and live in a different world to the more than 600 men who died in the SS Mendi tragedy – this contrast was part of the experience.
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The play, Ukutshona ko Mendi (The Sinking Of SS Mendi), was fittingly paid for by the Goethe-Institut, the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and the British Council, three institutes from Germany and Britain, the two states whose war drew the men of the Mendi. It is touring across South Africa. Writer, Lara Foot, tells the haunting and evocative story of the sinking of the troopship SS Mendi during the First World War.
Before dawn on the foggy morning of February 21, 1917, in the freezing English Channel, a 4,230–ton troopship, SS Mendi, was ferrying 823 men of the Fifth Battalion South African Native Labour Contingent to France. Many of the men had never seen an ocean before. Lurking in the gloom was SS Darro, an 11,484-ton ship that was speeding without signalling any warning.
With a terrifying crash, Darro, a meat ship on its way to Argentina, slammed into Mendi’s starboard, almost cutting the troopship in half.
The impact killed a large number of soldiers and terrified the rest. Legend has it that the men removed their boots and stamped a death dance on the slanting deck of Mendi, united as comrades in arms. Among them was their leader, Reverend Isaac Wauchope Dyobha. The ship took 25 minutes to sink and killed 616 men.
The brave survivors told how Dyobha rallied his men in the face of death.
“Be quiet and calm my countrymen, for what is taking place is exactly what you came to do. You are going to die, but that is what you came here for. Brothers, we are drilling the death drill I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers. Zulus, Swazis, Pondos, Basothos, and all others, let us die like warriors. We are the sons of Africa.”
The doomed journey of the unarmed African soldiers began in Cape Town on January 16. The British asked South Africa, its colony, for troops to serve as labor battalions during the First World War. They were to dig trenches, repair roads and cut timber.
It is considered one of the greatest tragedies in South Africa’s military history. The sinking of the Mendi almost took as many lives as the Battle of Delville Wood – one of the bloodiest conflicts of the war.
In the aftermath, an inquest heard that SS Darro captain, Henry Stamp, sailed away an hour later – leaving behind men screaming for their lives in the icy water. Stamp was later found guilty and suspended for a year.
Back at the play at Mosupatsela Secondary School, Xhosa songs such as Isilo asilali emanzini (Creature doesn’t rest in water) and Yiza nabo (Bring them back) touched the heart.
Warona Seane, an award winning actor and Soweto Theatre artistic director, played the role of Noria, the grieving widow of Daniel Mafika, a Xhosa headman who drowned.
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“The British sent a black dress with a letter telling me to mourn the death of my husband. I wish they would send me another one telling me to stop. I don’t know how to stop,” says Seane on stage.
“The black nation needs healing; the souls of the deceased are restless in the far seas.”
Mandla Mbothwe, the Director and Creative Manager at Artscape says, “It is an attempt to tell the story we all never witnessed but we also try to move puzzle pieces on what could have transpired. The memory, dream and subconscious are put together to make sense of why the black men went to the war. With all their respect for the water and the sea, why did they go to the war? It was beyond them to just work for their families; they needed their land back so badly.”
The play also emphasizes the poverty and trauma for widows and children. The quest to reconnect the spirits of the deceased with their ancestral land blends with the story of the captain of the ship that rammed the men of the Mendi to their death.
It could be argued that the men of Mendi were fighting for land. They hoped their loyalty would be rewarded by land restitution.
Over a year before the war broke out, on 28 July 1914, the South African government passed the Native Land Act of 1913, to take land from black people and regulate
its acquisition.
“Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African native found himself not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth,” wrote Sol Plaatje, the journalist and African National Congress (ANC) founder secretary.
The leadership of the ANC resolved on not to fight the act until after the war, and mobilized men to fight. Sadly, the men of the Mendi and thousands others paid with their lives.

Mosupatsela Secondary School, African history, SS Mendi tragedy, Theatre, Play, Stage, Acting, February 2015

A white marquee goes up in Chinatown behind police cordons. It is not mid-Autumn festival, it is not Chinese New Year, this is bigger: the South African president is coming to town.
Jacob Zuma’s visit to the Cyrildene Chinatown, in Johannesburg, in October was the type of theatre that only business and politics can deliver. This was a spectacle of influence and a performance full of the choreography of friendship and co-operation. It defines much of how Chinese business is done in South Africa. Anderson Lee is a businessman; head of the Chinese community policing forum (CPF) and the deputy editor of one of three Chinese-language newspapers in South Africa, the China News. Lee is also a coordinator for the Chinese chapter of the ruling political party’s Progressive Business Forum (PBF).
“We have been working on getting the president here for years,” says Lee, seated in the CPF’s offices along the main drag of Johannesburg’s second Chinatown that mushroomed in the late 1990s.
It mirrors the mass arrival of Chinese newcomers and ties in with the cementing of diplomatic ties between the People’s Republic of China and South Africa in 1998.
Political connections are a business lubricant and the reason the community’s business people can set a target to raise around $100,000 for the PBF each year. The walls of the CPF offices are lined with photographs of VIPs posing next to oversized cheques.
There is also a satellite police office here and the policemen are being taught to speak Chinese. Lee says it is not reverse assimilation.
“Some policemen who don’t know the community treat the Chinese badly. But if we can teach them about us, and our language then we start to change their minds.”
Zuma’s Chinatown appearance was a triumph for the Chinese business community. But there are many Chinese migrants who don’t benefit from political favors.
The Chinese Embassy in Pretoria dodges questions on the number of Chinese in South Africa; the amount of smaller businesses operating in South Africa; how many visas are granted and its assistance programs for Chinese business people. What is known is that bilateral trade remains healthy and last year totaled $60 billion.
Lee arrived in South Africa in 1999 as an employee of a state-owned agricultural supplies company but he knew nothing about the country.
“I once drove from Johannesburg to Durban to meet farmers even though I didn’t know how to drive, but I did it because it’s business,” says Lee of the risks he used to take.
In 2005, state funding for the company he worked for dried up. Lee was given the option to head back to China or to go it alone. He stayed and now exports South African goods, such as wine, macadamia nuts and avocado oil, back to China.
Lee sees the full range of Chinese life stories play out on South African soil. For every tale of success there are as many failures. There are hawkers surviving on slim profits and waitresses who work for a few years before returning to China. On the other hand, there are restaurant owners who start out in the familiarity of Chinatown then spread their wings to swankier suburbs.
The container revolution of the early 2000s helped make Johannesburg the largest dry port in Africa. Direct supply was key to transforming the fortunes of those who hawked on streets.
“Once people had direct supply from China, their businesses could grow. The Chinese make money because they work hard and they’re flexible, they will do with a little for a long time and they save their money,” Lee says.
Warehouse-style malls have now started to rise in response to crime and hostilities directed at Chinese hawkers. The man who opened Johannesburg’s first Chinese mall is Robin Xu. He arrived in South Africa in 1994 and within two months was held up by criminals. In the 20 years Xu has been in South Africa, he has been a victim of crime four times.
The Chinese are seen as soft targets because they deal in cash transactions. Xu saw the need for a more secure environment and so China Mall in Amalgam, west of the city, came into being. He owns three malls today, two in Johannesburg and one in Durban. Alongside his are a slew of others.
Xu though says the market for malls is reaching saturation point. His second Johannesburg mall, China Mall West, has dozens of empty shops. It is the whim of the markets and why Xu says it is a mistake to think every Chinese person has an easy ride to financial success. More than saturation points and downward trends, crime and corruption dents business confidence and scares off entrepreneurs most.
“Local customs officials go through the people coming off flights from China. They don’t confiscate things to destroy them, but take them for themselves. It makes business people think South Africa is a dirty country,” says Xu.
Though Xu is also part of the PBF and displays magazines of the ruling political party, the ANC, in his office, even political connections are not enough to calm his fears. He says people are looking north of the Limpopo for the next business destinations.
Back in Chinatown, metro police officers confiscate goods and take people’s money under the pretext of bylaw enforcement. The action is applied so sporadically it is a show of power rather than real policing.
Property agent Alice Hu moved into Cyrildene before the boom of Chinatown. She has seen the enlarging footprint of the Chinese in South Africa kick up all kinds of contradictions that have fomented into a toxic symbiosis of political and business back scratching.
Hu arrived from Taiwan in 1990. The Taiwanese wave of migration to South Africa gained ground in the 1970s and 1980s when the apartheid government courted trade with other nations on the global periphery.
She is quick to point out that she took a legal route to form a prominent property agency. Hu is tired of the stereotypes. She is also irked by the assumptions that she is willing to bribe her way up the economic food chain; to string sheets across her windows as curtains; or to illegally build onto to her home.
She calls herself mixed masala. South Africa has been her home for 24 years but she prefers to drink a rare variety of oolong tea, harvested in the mountains of the country where she was born.

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