By Benevolence Mazhinji I feel an anxious anticipation as I try to capture the story of our newsroom and the myriad experiences the CUE staff have had this Festival. This is a feeling that has followed me since the day I walked into the first diary meeting. I think the question that we all carried in our minds was: “Am I going to serve everyone who has invested and relied on me with the kind of excellence that they hoped I would bring?” For most of us, we have learned, that feeling never goes away, and neither should we try…
Author: Benevolence Mazhinji
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Blind Photographer Pasha Alden’s Exhibition Venue: Red Café Review By Benevolence Mazhinji Even when her eyesight began to recede into a shadow and her vision slowly thinned into a few streaks of colour across the light, Pasha Alden has continued to rely on the faint glimmer of brightness and the bold flashes of colour that are present in the world around her. “Some days I could see the sun, and I could even see some blue in the sky, like a stripe of blue on the horizon,” she said. Her photographs are more than just a creative output; they are,…
Kujenga, Jazz. Venue: Diocesan School for Girls Next Performance: Thursday 3 July 17:00 Preview By Benevolence Mazhinji. To spend time in conversation with the soulful band, Kujenga, is to sense immediately that their music is the most audible version of the spiritual power that music has to ground us in our identities. The name Kujenga means “to build” in Swahili, and this emerges as a declaration of intent as much as it is a refusal to couch their aspirations in a language that never belonged to them and is not capacious enough to hold their grief, their politics or their…
Eben Keun’s redesign of the National Arts Festival logo Review/Interview? By Benevolence Mazhinji At first glance, the 2025 National Arts Festival logo appears to be effortlessly simple. Two hands facing each other, connected by clean lines and circular forms. On the surface, they seem to reach or mirror one another in an act of exchange. However, this visual ease belies a profound depth and a meticulously crafted system, designed to serve as an open and welcoming invitation. For Eben Keun, Chief Brand Architect at Breinstorm, the process of designing this logo began with listening, before any visuals could take form.…
What Do You Think the Birds are Doing? Theatre. Venue: Gymnasium Next Performance: Thursday 3 July 12:00 Review By Benevolence Mazhinji I knew the story of Jojo and Beatrice would stay with me forever when Beatrice said, “We can’t be like the birds if we keep living like rats.” The existential dread here is not really about birds or a rat but about the brutal, punishing shape of a life lived in fear. The theatre darkened to make way for the two characters who crawled onto the stage through what looked like a tunnel. It felt as though we, as…
Grommels, Children’s Theatre. Venue: Glennie Hall Review By Benevolence Mazhinji Rushing in from the buzz of a crowded Village Green flea market and running past toddlers with sticky fingers and stallholders yelling over the music, I wasn’t prepared for the whimsical and engrossing world of Grommels, full of sunshine gathered in invisible handfuls and colours so concentrated they seemed to glow from the fabric itself rather than simply sit on top of it. At first, not much seemed to happen. Yellowgrommel and Bluegrommel lived on opposite sides of the grey wall, each wrapped in their own rituals. One of the…
Credo, Music. Venue: Guy Butler Theatre Interview Review By Benevolence Mazhinji In the hush before the first downbeat of Credo, it’s easy to forget how much work it takes to hold a piece of this scale together. The score itself stretches across 187 pages of dense, intricate writing for choir and orchestra; each measure layered with details demanding total command. For conductor and choirmaster Kutlwano Kepadisa, bringing Credo to the stage meant rebuilding the entire score line by line. “I didn’t want to rely on recordings,” he said. “I had to type it all out and know exactly what happens…
Credo, Music Venue: Guy Butler Theatre Next Performance: 29 June 11:00 Preview By Benevolence Mazhinji Seventy years ago, in the winter dust of Kliptown, ordinary South Africans gathered to sign the Freedom Charter, a vision that dared to imagine a country built on equality, dignity and hope. This year, composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen’s monumental oratorio Credo returns to remind us of that audacious act of imagination and its enduring resonance. Originally commissioned by Unisa and premiered on Mandela day in 2013, Credo sets to music a libretto by writer Brent Meersman, whose poem weaves historical text with a deeply personal longing…
Venue: Victoria Girls’ High School Gymnasium Next Performance: 28 June 14:00 Review By Benevolence Mazhinji Clown shows are often written off as frivolous and surface-level, but A Fool For You uses its slapstick surface to deliver something surprisingly emotional. Performed entirely without words, the show follows two clown best friends, Christie van Niekerk and Ane Koegelenberg through a stylised journey of friendship, betrayal and forgiveness. The duo’s physical vocabulary is elastic and expressive. In one moment, they writhe with exaggerated pleasure while reading erotic novels. In another, they coach each other through the perfect selfie pose for their romantic interests…
Bad African. Comedy. Venue: Victoria Girls’ High School Gymnasium Next Performance: 26 June 18:00 Preview By Benevolence Mazhinji What do Kendrik Lamar’s “Not like us” and Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding out for a hero” have in common? For Céline Tshika, they both belong on a playlist that best captures the emotional range of her solo debut comedy show, Bad African. In this genre-blending performance, Tshika aims to crack open the silent weight and confusion of the impossible expectations placed on African daughters. She draws on stand-up, original songs, physical theatre and drag to explore how purity culture and religious fear shape…