MaXhosa By Laduma

In the mention of fashion here in South Africa we tend to think about the big names that can design anything from a retro ball gown to an eye peeling tux, we think of people like David Tlale, Gert Coetzee and Paledi Segapo. It’s about time to think fresh and think original and when you have, think Laduma Ngxokolo. As umXhosa I feel so proud right now.

Laduma Ngxokolo is the man who is changing the face of African fashion not only here at home but all over the world as well. Laduma prides himself in his Xhosa heritage by an infusion of the Xhosa culture into his designs. On his website it says he established his AmaXhosa By Laduma collection to appreciate and showcase the beauty of his culture (our culture). This concept has won Laduma many accolades besides having taken it across the world he won the 2015 Vogue Italia Scouting For Africa prize where he got the chance to showcase his collection in Milan and recently he won the 2016 Design Indaba Most Beautiful Object in South Africa for his gracious shawl trenched in pride which is the Xhosa prints. In 2014 Laduma was also afforded the opportunity to study at Central St. Martins in London, the very same institute that schooled designers such as Alexandra McQueen and John Galliano.

Here at Sel&EL we are not big on fashion but a man’s gotta look good on a day to day basis to represent his stature in society and having been ikrwala Laduma’s work instantaneously resonated with me when I stumbled upon it. At most times we are so clouded with what the rest of the world is doing that we forget the beauty of our cultures and there’s so many in South Africa. With Laduma’s collection it became clear that it is possible to be fashion forward while taking pride in the fundamentals of who you are. Make sure to check out the heart-warming work of Laduma that brings hella’ nostalgia to some of us on   http://www.maxhosa.co.za/

Trevor Noah To Man The MAMAs 2016

It was announced on Wednesday that Trevor Noah will be the host of this year’s MTV Africa Music Awards. Trevor came out tops after a couple of other African personalities were considered including the 2014 Big Brother Winner Idris Sultan. Trevor’s appointment only made sense because, well, he is African and he is globally known and for the fact that the event had been hosted by comedians in the past two years. In 2014 it was hosted by the American Marlon Wayans who according to us did a less than awesome job. We get that he is a comedian but his comedy just felt uncomfortable and his concept was a worn out one – in 2014 he resurrected the “Americans’ perception of Africans” concept and at that time that concept had been chewed up and spat out. In 2015 Anthony Anderson did an amazing job and did the best in trying to blend in, his pronunciation of the African names were on point, he looked as though he didn’t even break a sweat.

This year we are expecting flames as an African will be doing it for African.  Trevor’s is the best comedy you will ever come across on the African continent. We hope he keeps it original and tell jokes that resonate with most Africans and not bring us American crap, though we would like to hear all about that, just on a different show. Wait we have on Payback the Funny. We are also looking forward to how he is going to cater for other African countries and including them in his jokes without offending anybody.

On the show we are also expecting to see some of the finest ladies Africa has to offer. It would be nice to see the Nigerian actress Ini Edo who we saw battle our Samkelo Ndhlovu on Lip Sync Battle and slayed, we have to admit we just need to see that hotness one more time. It’s always bliss to see the funny Zimbabwean Vimbai Mutinhiri on a stage cracking it and we would also like to see our reigning beauty queen Ntandoyenkosi Kunene. We hardly see Terry Pheto anywhere; it would be nice to see her on the stage ahead of her upcoming BET series with Laurence Fishbourne.

This is bound to be the best award ceremony we have seen to date. The list of performers is nothing but fire and you might have guessed it Babes Wodumo is in it and every time she shows up it becomes Lit.

Who Reps The Best

A lot of South Africans have gone to make it big over the seas, namely Charlize Theron, Candice Swanepoel and recently Candice Pillay.

Some choose to shine and come back home. Terri Phetho had a taste of Hollywood success when she was featured in the American soap The Bold and the Beautiful where she gracefully played a doctor. This came after Tsotsi won an Oscar, a movie in which she starred in. in her stay in the sates she made great alliance with Idris Elba and came back with the expertise of producing an award winning film Ayanda. Now Terri is working alongside local legend Hlomla Dandala and the internationally seasoned Laurence Fishburne in a miniseries about the life of the extraordinary Tata nelson Mandela.

Another lady that has recently done us proud is Pearl Thusi who got the opportunity to star alongside former Miss World Priyanka Chopra in the 2^nd season of Quantico. Pearl is set to play the role Dayana Mampasi – a lawyer who graduated top of her class in Harvard and has parents that own a law firm. Of course nothing less for our Pearl. Though she is mostly known for her presenting skills on shows such as Live Amp and Lip Sync Battle Africa is no stranger to the acting game, she has had roles on shows such Zone 14 and Isidingo.

2016 has evidently been a good year for South African ladies. Earlier this year the Queen B Bonang Matheba got promoted as one of the global ambassadors for the cosmetics giant Revlon alongside the forever beautiful Halle Berry and the unbeknownst to us Olivia Wilde and of course here at home she still host the Front Row show on Metro FM with her forever trending segment #AskAMan and also host the Afternoon Express on SABC 3 

Idols SA Guys Turn

Last night the guys of the top 16 took to the stage fighting for a spot in the top 10. So far one thing is for certain, the ladies this year have got more talent.  Even the worst of the ladies which was Nosihe was 10 times better than the worst of the guys which in our opinion is Bevin.

There were a lot of disappointments. First off we would like to disagree with Randall Abrahams after he said the guys were much better than the girls as a collective in their opening performance, he needs to go back and watch the savage that was the ladies’ opening performance.

Thami kept it local as the first solo performance of the evening with Dj Shimza and Dr Malinga’s Akulalwa. We liked the his performance, he could’ve given some tips to Sgherdeed as to how not to disregard a house track in terms of the vocals, he was all there, he sounded perfect and looked comfortable on that stage. He enjoyed himself so we enjoyed him. He was shortly followed by fellow Durbanite Sanele who gave us a somewhat satisfying performance of Charlie Puth’s One Call Away, it was just standard, and with that we could conclude that he deserves to be in the top 10. We are not really big fans of the song but we might reconsider that now.

Bevin had a déjà vu moment when he sang the same song that saw him as the sole survivor of his group in theatre week but when it came to his solo performance last night it was good until it lasted. What we mean is that he started off great and the greatness declined as the performance went on. Going forward he needs to get less predictable. One of our favourites in this round was Lusanda, this guy can basically sing anything, and we loved his performance of Thandiwe by Vusi Nova way too much. Another song choice accident occurred in the form of Tebogo. Tebogo failed twice to get into this round of the competition and what he needed last night was a performance that would leave his mark on the hearts of Mzansi, maybe a less groovy song and a more sentimental one would’ve just done that but his performance of Black Motion and Xoli M’s Rainbow was just good enough.

There is no denying that Thami is an awesome singer, last night he took a risk by singing Drake’s hotline Bling and throwing the original melody out the widow, that just shows us how much  balls he’s got and that he is ready to take the bull by the horns. Terra Cox made his mark last night Mzansi will forever remember him by his rendition of Maxwell’s Bad Habits it was one of the songs that will be remembered throughout the season. Another person who’s got pipes this season is Keegan but song choice is a beast, we think that his closest competition is Thami therefore he has to better everything Thami does but last night he hit below the belt of Thami’s performance but still good enough for us to pour some of our votes for him.

In our opinion the 10 worthy performances were that of Thamsanqa, Terra, Thami and Lusanda (in that order) and we would like it for the judges to save Sanele or Keegan.

Brenda Ngxoli Hustles Back

Brace yourselves for the awesomeness that is Brenda Ngxoli as she is making her way back to our screens and into our hearts via thenew E.TV series that is yet to air and judging by the promo it’s going to be fire.

The last time we saw Brenda must’ve been last year when she played Gladys on Rockville or when she played Pinky on Ses’Top La and trust she killed both characters.

It’s no brainer that our favourite character by her is Vuyo which she played on Home Affairs and scored an EMMY nomination for it.

We guess she is laying the funny to rest for now as she will be playing a “has been” artist on E.TV’s Hustle. The show is said to follow the shenanigans of the South African music industry which Brenda’s character Kitty will come blow to blow with.

We’ve seen the promo and what we saw is that a young thing will be stepping into the shadow of Kitty and Kitty will battle drugs and what looked like a pimp. We saw some of the cast member s and we spotted Dineo Ranaka and Lungelo if you remember him.

We seriously can’t wait for this one team, it gives us South African Empire typa’ vibes

Sihle's Jeopardy Game

A lot has happened since the death of King Ngubane. His son got married, his widow finally found happiness and everybody in the royal lodge is happy – well almost everybody.

Off late a lot of people have been looking for Nkabinde, including the reigning Queen. The Ngwenya’s searched high and low to track down Nkabinde and now that they have found him Sihle wants a piece of him too. Sihle has got tragic plans for Qondi whom she is very jealous of. The problem is Nkabinde cannot be trusted and also the people that introduced him to her cannot be trusted either.

Remember how Nkabinde used Ngubane to try and settle his score with the Zungus?

That ended with Ngubane being the one that lost his life and Nkabinde went to on to get a fresh cut and a fancy car for himself in the big city. First of all Qondi is a child of the Zungus and the Zungus have got Mehlo’emamba on their side the only guy that knows Nkabinde’s tricks, now we can’t help but wonder if this is who Sihle really wants to mess with. We know for sure whatever is going to go down is going to backfire and setback Sihle into the commoner she once was and Qondi might walk out of this battle unscathed, she has dealt with Nkabinde before. We feel very afraid for Sihle

The Queen Rises

The Fergusons have done it again, right after a successful first season of Igazi they brought us The Queen, well not exactly after Igazi, they brought us Rockville first but we’re not interested much on that.

Okay in the first episode of the Queen we saw Harriet Khoza masterminding the murder of her husband Mzi Khoza, who runs a drug empire disguised as a logistics business. The couple has 3 children: Shaka who is daddy’s right hand man and knows the ins and out of the core family business, Shaka seems to be self-centred and doesn’t care to give a dime for his two other siblings who have a different mother (Harriet)

Then there is international superhero Kagiso who came back from his soldier duties in Congo to attend his sister’s wedding. Kagiso is the good sheep of the family who enjoys the family lifestyle but seems to be naïve about how it is funded. He meets his true love Amo under rather unfortunate circumstances. Then there is the obnoxious Kea who is the only daughter and seems to have been spoilt rotten. Kea has no problem with anything but she has problems with everything (if you know what we mean).

When we first heard of the show we knew that Connie Ferguson who plays the role of Harriet would wear the boss shoes, but in the first few episodes we were surprised to see her being a puppet to her brother Kgosi (played by Sello Maake Ka Ncube), seemingly it was Kgosi’s idea to kill Mzi which makes sense as to why he has been always there when his sister cracked under pressure and Shaka (played by S.K Khoza) wore the boss shoes

Just as when we thought the “queen” is just being used by the power hungry Kgosi who is so determined to drive out the Zulus, Harriet blossoms and becomes her own and we finally understood why the show is titled The Queen. Harriet takes to the throne after cleaning up Shaka’s mess that could’ve seen them out business; first she deals with the drug buyers that were upset by Shaka and replaces Shaka and Brutus at the golf course where most of the business is conducted. Harriet steps up to the plate once more when she shoots and kills Mogapi as he was about to confess who sent him to kill Mzi to Shaka and Brutus, this leaves both Shaka and Brutus shocked of Harriet’s capabilities and the doubts they had about her fly right out the window.  So fam it’s safe to say The Queen has entered the building

Idols SA Live And Lit

Last night we saw the first live show of the 12^th season of Idols SA and it was quite spectacular as the ladies took to the stage with hits of the last decade. When we first heard the theme we were kind of confused as we thought it would be hits from 10 years ago, but no, it is anything from 2006 to this day.

Our favourite for the night was definitely Valentine Mathe who belted Beyoncé’s Halo. Even from the very beginning Valentine has been our favourite and last night she did not disappoint as she showed up looking stunning and set the mood for the evening. After her it was Lucia who took to the stage with Adele’s Send My Love, she was good enough for us to vote for her but we still await that wow factor from her. Just as the night was in motion Sgherdeed was the first to drop the ball when she performed Deep In The Bottom by Black Coffee ft. Monique Bingham, we should be excited that she went local but her performance just never came together and she didn’t look comfortable on the stage. Luke one of the 4 ladies from Durban followed suite with a horrendous song choice and a performance that lacked fire (someone take her to Chicken Licken) as she slaughtered Janelle Monae’s Yoga. And then the roof blew off when Noma attacked Rihanna’s Stay in a soulfully beautiful manner which made the words sit deeper in the heart. Siyakha brought some intense facial expression as she introduced Trademark ft Zinhle Ngidi’s Valelisa, we say introduce because even some of the judges had never heard the song and 3 of them are radio show hosts but apparently the song spent weeks on the charts(we wonder which charts) but Siyakha did it enough justice to for us to like it. Amanda (not our favourite) sang Arianna Grande’s Dangerous and it was just ayt but the disappointment of the night was Nosihe’s take on Beyoncé’s XO, we had so much faith in her and she just let us down.

Since the viewers get to save 4 of the ladies if it were up to us we would definitely save Valentine, Lucia, Noma and Siyakha and pray that the judges save Nosihe 

2016 Must Be Yonda Thomas' Year

With no formal training under his belt, Yonda Thomas is one of the best new generation actors in our country. In just 2016 alone we have seen Yonda in 3 different productions on 2 different channels.

At the beginning of the year he came back for the second season of Mzansi Magic’s Saint And Sinners where he played the role of detective Siya Malinga, chasing the man who has held his potential wife hostage. Just after he had saved his beloved from the psycho Gibson Mosia(played by Tumisho Masha) a blast from the past descends and blows up the fairy-tale ending for detective Malinga and Phindi(played by Nompilo Gwala) when a baby is thrown in the mix and the detective has to choose between his fiancé and the baby-momma. The decision became easier after DNA tests proved that the baby wasn’t his but a tougher demon approached when detective Malinga’s partner (played by Schelaine Bennet) had to arrest his mother-in-law at his wedding.

As if that wasn’t dramatic enough Yonda appeared on our screens just after the season finale to play the role of Sanele Mweli who is arrested at the alter after he was framed of killing the stripper from his bachelor party  in the drama series Doubt on Mzansi Magic. We just have to say that Doubt is the most mind-fucking thing we have on South African screens to date.

Yonda’s role is that of Sanele a judge’s son who is fighting the good fight to save his marriage and clear his name from behind bars. Sanele is arrested at his wedding and because of Yonda’s good acting you can tell that Sanele has nothing to do with the murder even though as the show goes on you begin to doubt him as there appears to be motives and a past relationship with the stripper. After everything it is clear that Sanele is innocent and was just framed with false evidence by his best friend and lawyer who seek the affection of Sanele’s wife. And big ups to the producers of Doubt for having prison scenes with no shower incidents (sesiEnough with that now)

Currently Yonda can be seen be seen scheming with Nina’s right hand man Hector in his attempts of cleaning up Horizon Deep in his role of Majola on Isidingo on SABC 3 

Nasty C pulls out of Bang Out video shoot and K.O is not impressed.

SA hip hop fans were excited when one of the best collaborations this year took place. Dj Vigilante dropped his hit Bang Out and it featured K.O, AKA, and the young king Nasty C. The song was obviously a smash hit, but like all other smash hits it needed one more thing to take it to the next level, and that’s a music video.

But fans were left rather disappointed when they found out that there wasn’t going to be a video. This is because Nasty C took a decision not be a part of it. K.O seems to be more disappointed than anyone else. When asked by Slikour, K.O said: “It’s just sad cause me and AKA had put in time. And it was also our way of saying this nigga definitely is gonna be the next god. You know what I mean? That’s like that level of respect and appreciation for his talent at such a young age.”

K.O then went on to saying why it was important for the video to be created.

“So it was important for myself personally to say I would like to be mentioned alongside this guy cause I know the future is definitely his. And now that there’s no video it’s sort of, kind of, disappointing. But, I mean, hopefully we can create something else with the young boy in the near future.”

Dj vigilante on the other hand took to twitter to assure fans that there was no beef between the artists. They still respect each other.