dark angel

Dark Angel - A Gem in the Middle of the Bundu

Rural areas provide a fresh canvas inwhich beautiful paintings can be etched without the adulteration that comes with the bright lights of the city. This is the environment that feeds into fashion designer and singer Zanele Ndlovu (25)’s muse.

Zanele has lived in various places but finds inspiration from the sprawling hills and chirping birds of Timbavati in Mpumalanga. “I developed my love for designing at a very young age. That was before I even knew what it was. I was young when I started off designing clothes for my friends’ dolls.” she remembers.

Showing that an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree Zanele adds, “My mom is the reason I realised my talent, thus I learned all I know from her. She was designing and making dresses years before I was born”. Shadowing her mother had its perks. “I grew up learning and mastering my art through her mentoring, which has groomed me to this point.”

After completing her matric, though talented she struggled with finding her feet. “In 2011 I enrolled at Vaal University of Technology to upgrade my skill, however my ambition to pursue fashion academically didn’t last since I had to drop out due to the difficulties I had to face in a place far from home” Zanele reveals.“Today I find inspiration from simple things to do what I love the most. I am inspired by seeing the end product of what I envisaged, which is what keeps me going. Being a creator is the most fulfilling occupation I could indulge in, since for that moment I am a god – a creator and can marvel at the beauty of my work.” Zanele is a girly-girl with two sisters and a brother who all have ‘real’ jobs. What complicates her aspirations is that she’s also a talented singer with a free spirit. When she lived in Pretoria with friends she used to design clothes and handbags while also redesigning outfits they already had. In her daily life she is surrounded by an equally talented nucleus of friends who are either poets, musicians, writers or fashion enthusiasts. “During my year at VUT I met Buhle, a dear friend who is a developing designer I hold thumbs for in the SA fashion industry. She is currently doing her second year. I was impressed with her drive to obtain her degree whatever the cost, her neat work and the perfection she puts in each garment she makes” Zanele who also makes home accessories such as cushions, curtains and bed spreads relates.

For somebody who found academia too restricting Zanele’s thumbsuck designs do not give away the secret. She admits that her style is largely informed by the fashion she sees every day, which influences her to recreate and redefine existing fashion to her own taste.

Her fashion definition is creating beauty and allowing consumers of her work to feel and find their own identity in them. “My style can be defined in many terms even though I don’t want to put it in a box. It has been defined as traditional African, Afro- chic, Afro-centric. The aesthetic of such creations is my maintenance of a unique identity and definition of my style. Yet again I am able to expand my abilities to suit different occasions and different styles.”

This bohemian guitarist has had her fair share of press but it’s difficult when one is in Mpumalanga which has no Fashion Week focus. “We have not yet reached a stage whereby we can boast seasonal collections staged in the big cities, either simultaneously or successively. For us to reach that stage whereby we can have a Summer, Winter, Spring and Autumn Collections staged in both Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Bloemfontein and Nelspruit talent should be identified even in our rural areas, not only in Gauteng. This can help in the growth of our fashion industry with more players participating”

Zanele’s label is called Dark Angel Designs and while the name has a gothic ring to it her designs are colourful and gay. “I hope that in the next few years my fashion label will be embraced by a bigger market than I currently have. I would love to have my own fashion house where I’m able to dream up designs , create them and have them available to fashion consumers”, she concludes.

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blogging south africa

Blogging SA - The Politiks

Six years ago a blog named Khanya started the ball rolling with the question, ‘Where are the Black bloggers?’ The post upset a lot of closeted racists when it claimed, “when people from outside South Africa want information on South Africa, many turn to the Internet and what they find there are mostly white perceptions, and that is not a balanced South African view”.

If Khanya thought sarcastic comments such as ‘If whites want to blog, they’ll have to go overseas in order to blog from there, because the government will make sure local blog sites like iblog.co.za have a strict quota on the number of blacks!’ were annoying, they were a taste to a bigoted tirade that followed.

Weeks later journalist Lerato Mogoatlhe attended a South African Blog Awards event and commented in her Sunday weekly column about how unrepresentative the nominees and audience were. When Kasiekulture! expanded on Mogoatlhe’s observation a whole army of white bloggers accused Blacks of sulking and being tokens. The blogosphere nearly melted.

Pambazuka News weighed in with a half-diagnosis, “With most Black people still living in townships and a further 20% living in shacks it is not surprising that blogging and technology in general is not being taken up. Let’s face it, if you have just spent two hours struggling to get home the last thing you want to do is go and find an internet café and start blogging.”

Even then there were pockets of Black bloggers such as Nelspruit-based Khensani Mathetha whose blog Oh Really Now! was well-written and entertaining. “A friend suggested that I  read a post about relationships on his blog and I liked the idea of being able to write anything and everything I thought without holding back or worrying how it would be received by whoever that will read it”. Mathetha’s blog was more of a log book on life and living in Mpumalanga’s capital.

Oh Really Now! gave blogger love to artist/journalist Tshwarelo Mogakane whose YoDemo blog tackled controversial religious topics. Mogakane says, “Being a lover of words it was hard thinking a lot and not being able to share. Before blogging, you only had highly monopolised newspaper columns. So when the blogosphere appeared I was one of the first to be raptured”

Since those early days of a bigoted blogosphere and pioneering Black voices there has been more blogs spotted in aggregators Amatomu and MyScoop. It often raises questions how the few available SA aggregators rate local blogs.

South African Blog Awards’ 2012 overall winner Yomzansi, which also won Best Lifestyle and Music blog does not feature on MyScoop’s top 100 South African blogs. Yomzansi is published by Thabo and Thabiso Modiselle, a young and dynamic team of tech-savvy social media experts. However the blog that won Science and Technology category The Techie Guy is ranked higher than a three times national champion.

The scale balances on Memeburn’s ‘22 Black Bloggers you should be reading’. Here popular bloggers such as Khaya Dlanga, Ndumiso Ngcobo, Zinhle Mncube, Nonkululeko Godana etc are mentioned.

Arts blogs fanatic and artist Matete Motsoaledi believes that ‘Bloggers are mostly specialists in that they gravitate towards a certain subject and thus save me time weeding through adverts, announcements etc. that other publications have.” Bonapono blog’s Motsoaledi, an aspiring photographer used to run The Kriel Chapter blog.

Given Hollywood’s influence on processed information whereby most aspiring bloggers choose fashion, gossip and celebrity scene as trending topics maybe the question should be; ‘are Blacks blogging their reality or re-packaging Dion Chang and Perez Hilton’s posts?’.

Socialite Lelo Boyana carved a niche blogging for TVSA content that insinuated a Hilton influence. She told the blog Jucy Africa, “For you to be successful in blogging, you need to love people, you need to be a sociable type, love partying, coz that's where the gossip comes out.”

Dlanga recently posted ‘I am unAfrican’ which could have been a tongue-in-cheek spoof of President Jacob Zuma’s festive canine bashing. He claimed it was inspired by Thabo Mbeki’s speech while posting a picture of a youthful Nelson Mandela playing with a dog. While mainstream Black bloggers post largely about socio-politics, thoughts and market trends; which one can argue are South Africa’s ever hot topics, Mathetha feels most blogs have become pretentious and impersonal and are now dictated by market-generated content.

 Motsoaledi believes even with a proliferation of ‘micro-waved’ fashion and gossip blogs quality bloggers will prevail, “We do have a unique voice. Although our stories are universal, we tell them differently because we have a different perspective and influence from other people elsewhere. If only we could allow our more opportunity to let our voices dominate. We have plenty to share.”                                 

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