As a nihilistic sex worker who is typically shunned by every social group I come into contact with, baddie culture was once a safe haven. Back then, being a baddie meant that as a marginalised womxn, your power lay in your ability to take the sour lemons life laid at your feet and make sweet…
Roses are no longer red and violets don’t gleam the same shade of blue in this dating era. Dating as a Gen Z has become hazardous. Everything has become hyper-focused on money, sex and ego. Ghosting has become the norm, while message responses are strategic instead of romantic and honest. Social media has allowed us…
This title may come across as clickbait, but it is not entirely unfounded. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the literacy rate in Africa was estimated to be around 64% in 2018, which is below the global average of 86%. Data from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators shows a lower availability of books…
The new Mzanzi Magic show Shaka ILembe opens slowly, transporting us into a time where it was tribe against tribe, and through narration, an age-old story is revived and given a fresh outlook and making it feel like stepping into a living, breathing historical era. The show has been advertised as South Africa’s biggest and…
Two years ago, Africans were united as they ran and not walked to stream the first season of Netflix’s Young, Famous & African. It felt that finally, we had a multicultural show that we could all enjoy, as we watched some of the most famous stars from Africa share a screen in a way that…
On the heels of Tsotsi’s Oscar win for Best International Feature Film in 2006, came another crime film from South Africa. Jerusalema: Gangster’s Paradise (2008), directed by Ralph Ziman was supposed to live up to the critical acclaim that Tsotsi did. However, where Tsotsi is about redemption and the breakaway from criminality in pursuit of…
Few names are as recognised across the globe as well as Shonda Rhimes. From Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal ( The Fixer), How to Get Away With Murder, Inventing Anna, and most recently Queen Charlotte set in the world of Bridgerton, Rhimes knows how to read the room and hit the content sweet spot right on the…
South Africa is a nation of significant symbolic capital. Through popular culture, South Africans participate in an exchange of sounds, fashion and dance – as an embodiment of identity, self-fashioning and freedom. At the nexus of social media and popular culture, we witness the unabated invigoration of the ‘Lüh Twizzy movement’ – a movement largely…
While it is pristinely produced, the Prime series Swarm has been unsurprisingly divisive. It was co-created by Janine Nabers and Donald Glover, with direction from Adamma Ebo, Ibra Ake, and Stephen and Donald Glover. Preceding each episode is a message that reads: “This is not a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living…
It is no secret that South Africa has an alcohol problem, one only has to look at the number of bootleggers that popped up across the country during the 2020 Covid Lockdown. People were digging into their wine collections and selling them to others at outrageous amounts. As the days of lockdown went past those…
Founded in 1886 after the discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand region, Johannesburg was once fondly called the “City of Gold”. It became a major centre for gold mining, with its surrounding areas producing almost half of the world’s gold output by the early 1900s. Today, Johannesburg’s mining industry remains an important part of its…
Television is a constant presence in the lives of many South Africans. Most people schedule their lives around the viewing times of their favourite shows, starting with Skeem Saam at 18:30, House of Zwide at 19:00, the News, and then Generations: The Legacy at 20:00, followed by Uzalo and a grand finale of Muvhango at…
