A Renegade Called Simphiwe. Pumla Dineo Gqola
model is someone who affirms your desire to be more of yourself by mere virtue of living your own life courageously and joyfully. It makes sense to me that the women I listed should be role models, whether they actively set out to exist in this capacity or not. In any event, you do not choose to be a role model so much as people bestow the compliment on you as you go about your business.
When I listed the names above, I did not mean to highlight only the overlapping prominence, fame and genius. Yes, it matters that my students will recognise these names. It matters at least as much, although sometimes more, that each of these women is a game-changer. Game-changers are a breed of innovators who not only create something new, but shift the reference point on a certain matter or in a field. In other words, game-changers do more than come up with an exciting new product or way of doing things. Such discovery also changes the context of the innovation. These women are all courageous artists who dared produce and release publicly the kinds of visionary material that we did not have before. They are not just emulated and imitated on a daily basis; they have changed the rules of the game. And in the midst of contradictory messages about who they are, their value and their place in South African society, they survive. I see Simphiwe Dana as this kind of artist, and this kind of woman. Women artists like her are not the same person, carbon copies of each other, but they are products of this time and offer immense possibilities to think transformatively about ourselves and this time, on this part of earth that we live in.
Poet Lebogang Mashile often notes that as difficult as it is to think against the grain, and to pursue what you desire as a creative-intellectual in South Africa today, this time and place also offers possibilities that she cannot see elsewhere. In other words, there is something about South Africa right now that is making these artists possible, even if the response to their existence is not always as receptive and sophisticated as it could be.
I now turn to elaborate briefly on each of these women as part of my larger argument about Simphiwe’s place in our society.
Lebogang Mashile is the face of South African poetry. She is as magical in spoken word performance as she is elegant on the written page. As part of Feela Sistah, the poetry group that also comprised Ntsiki Mazwai, Napo Masheane and Myesha Jenkins, Mashile was key to shifting the largely male landscape of South African poetry to the current stage where the most prolific, exciting, productive poets are predominantly women. She is part of that generation that is unwavering in using its gift, profound intellect and sense of integrity to speak the unfashionable that nonetheless needs to be heard. Her presence in the public realm, painful though responses to her sometimes are, has been transformative and inspirational. Her television magazine programme, L’atitude presented an exciting fusion of beauty, critical commentary, creativity and diversity, initiating a formula that we would see repeated over the years with no accreditation in television programmes from Precious Africa to A country imagined. The popularity of the initially largely unknown Mashile testified to a phenomenon we have yet to grasp, intellectually, mired as we are in lazy diagnoses of ‘apolitical youth’ and ‘dumbing down’ of popular culture. This much patronised generation made L’atitude one of the most watched programmes even though this magazine programme was decidedly unglamorous in its topics, which encompassed menstruation, genocide, language death, the Jacob Zuma rape trial and cycles of complicity by the left, religious intolerance, spirituality and virginity testing. Furthermore, Mashile, as producer and presenter of the show, presented an inspirational image of femininity as narrator: a healthy-bodied, natural-hair-rocking, fresh-faced, opinionated femininity. Often without make-up, this young woman who asked difficult questions while showing a range of unscripted emotions on national television, then wrote and read a poem to wrap up each show. Mashile’s striking good looks and warm personality radiated off the television screen, but audiences were enchanted by more than her looks in an industry that is known for the high premium it places on beauty. Here, she achieved the difficult to explain: making feminist television the prime time viewers’ choice.
Her versatility has also led to her being cast in her debut acting role in the Academy Award-nominated film, Hotel Rwanda, a role in the 2008 Standard Bank National Arts Festival performance of an adaptation of K Sello Duiker’s 2001 novel The Quiet Violence of Dreams, and her multi-faceted collaborative pieces with choreographer Susan Glaser to produce Threads in celebration of Moving into Dance Mophatong’s 30th anniversary celebration, which also went to the 2009 Grahamstown Arts Festival. She has admitted to not really knowing what the Noma Award was until after she received a phone call informing her that she would be the 2006 recipient of the premier award for African writing. Her critical acclaim transcends well beyond South Africa’s borders.
Thandiswa Mazwai is the supremely talented musician who debuted as the woman vocalist for the kwaito group, Bongo Maffin in 1998. Bongo Maffin, my favourite music group of all time, released six award-winning albums before unofficially splitting up in the mid noughties. There was no announcement of a formal split, and their website still describes them as a group, but they have not toured or released an album together in over a decade. Although many struggled to categorise the group’s music, in interview after interview, kwaito was the deliberate label Bongo Maffin members chose, much to the chagrin of those pockets of their fans who thought kwaito was something to be disowned in favour of something deemed more refined like Afrosoul or jazz. In one television interview with a weekend show, a very young Mazwai declared kwaito to be a lifestyle in the same idiom that hip-hop was, while the three young men who formed part of her group, Stoan, Appleseed (later Jah Seed), and Speedy, nodded in agreement. This claim to kwaito was deliberate identification given with as much confidence as the advanced musical choices reflected in the group’s music.
Following the break-up of the hugely successful group, Thandiswa Mazwai has enjoyed the most successful solo career out of the three, since Speedy had left Bongo Maffin a few years prior to Mazwai’s solo release. Her debut solo album, Zabalaza (2004), reached double platinum and raked in numerous awards, which included two Kora Awards, three South African Music Awards (SAMAs) and a Metro FM Award. Her second album and DVD, Ibokwe (2009) went gold within six weeks.
Mazwai’s natural great looks, with her increasing array of intricate hairstyles, which are artworks in and of themselves, and her dimples, offer her a canvas on which to play with notions of beauty in performance. Her body on stage is a canvas on and through which she plays with notions of identity, femininities, movement, Africanness and possibility. Being in the presence of Ms Mazwai performing live is to experience an explosion of the senses.
Her musical genius and adventurous spirit are staged equally through the collaborations she chooses, as in her subject matter. Although nuanced, her politics are unambiguous to the attentive listener. Such politics are clear in her musical repertoire across time, in her sound and lyrics. They reverberate in her careful choices about which musicians she opts to work with. In interviews, she speaks about the importance of releasing work that is both musically full of integrity and that represents her real vision for each project. She is involved in all aspects of her music and, as I write this, is in the middle of a country-wide search for an all-woman band. This is part of her renowned generosity and commitment to nurturing new talent.
I remember her response to comments on her careful Facebook status update expressing both admiration and concern for the young South African musician Zahara, when the artist first gained prominence in 2012. Mazwai had expressed her wish that the newer musician be allowed the space to be the kind of artist and person she wanted to be even with the glare of the media and new fans. In a global patriarchal culture obsessed with reading women’s relationships as primarily adversarial, some responded with corrective sentiments about how Mazwai should not feel threatened by new artists since she was established. Thandiswa Mazwai’s next update pointed out that there was room for many different kinds of women artists in the world, and that as a feminist, she had taught herself to relate to other women in non-competitive ways. Therefore, she was asserting that her concern was genuine and suggesting that there was room to read it as such.
There are endless questions and much speculation about Mazwai’s private life, but she has control over what is said about her. Her Twitter presence is another manifestation of this carefully crafted presence: fiercely intelligent, humane and witty. Managing a very active performance schedule domestically and abroad, she speaks her mind on a range of topics. As present