Showbiz

Johannesburg – One of South Africa’s most popular music competitions Idols SA, recently took to their Twitter to announce that the legendary Mathew Knowles will appear as a guest judge for this week’s finalists.

Mzansi Magic Dstv channel 161 which broadcasts the competition every Sunday, also announced the great news on their official site. Taking to their Twitter page Idols made the big announcement to their fans.

The Halo hitmaker’s father who landed in Mzansi earlier this week with his wife Gena and recently hosted the African leaders for change awards – also took to his Instagram to confirm the news of appearing as a guest judge on Idols,

“My wife, Gena, and I are having a great time in beautiful South Africa where I just hosted the African Leaders 4 Change Awards!” the 66-year-old talent manager captioned a snap of himself dressed in an all-black tux with his wife in a red dress to which he added.

“Next up…I’ll be a guest judge on Idols South Africa this weekend! Then I’m off to lecture at the University of Cape Town where I’ll be discussing my new book, The Emancipation of Slaves Through Music…”

www.channel24.co.za

Tina Turner is opening up about her son’s suicide.

Craig Turner, Tina’s eldest son, took his own life in July.

“I think Craig was lonely, that’s what I think really got him more than anything else,” Tina told CBS News.

Authorities found Craig dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his Studio City, Calif., home on July 3.

Tina would later scatter her son’s ashes in the Pacific Ocean.

“My saddest moment as a mother,” she tweeted alongside a picture of her dropping a rose into the water. “On Thursday, July 19, 2018, I said my final goodbye to my son, Craig Raymond Turner, when I gathered with family and friends to scatter his ashes off the coast of California. He was fifty-nine when he died so tragically, but he will always be my baby.”

Tina told CBS that she’s at peace with everything, and she thinks her son is too.

“I have pictures all around of him smiling,” she said. “I think I’m sensing that he’s in a good place. I really do.”

Craig was born in 1958 when his famous mother was 18 years old. His biological father is a musician named Raymond Hill. Tina said in her memoir that she never saw Raymond once she got pregnant. After Tina married Ike Turner, Ike adopted Craig as his own.

Through all the tragedy in her life — the alleged physical abuse at the hands of Ike, as well as the loss of a child — Tina says she’s finally happy as she lives out her years on Lake Zurich.

“I have everything,” she said. “When I sit at Lake Zurich in the house that I have, I am so serene. No problems. I had a very hard life. But I didn’t put blame on anything or anyone. I got through it, I lived through it with no blame. And I’m a happy person.”

www.msn.com

Thirty years after her iconic debut novel, Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga is back with a final look at her heroine’s harrowing journey through the Mugabe years, hoping to spark debate about violence against women in her country.

Often praised as a leading feminist voice, Dangarembga shot to fame in 1988 with “Nervous Conditions”, a coming-of-age story about a girl’s battle to escape poverty and get an education. The book became an instant classic.

Since then, Dangarembga said little had changed for women in Zimbabwe.

“Women are still being silenced,” she told AFP at the Frankfurt book fair where she presented “This Mournable Body”, the final instalment in the trilogy featuring her bowed-but-not-broken protagonist Tambudzai.

As in real life, the book describes a country where women “suffer disproportionally” and abuse by men is so normal it barely registers as gender violence, Dangarembga said.

“Violence is very much part of the fabric of our society and I believe we have to address this… if we want to overcome it.”

Dangarembga, 59, said she has been trying to get a #MeToo campaign started in Zimbabwe to highlight the abuse and discrimination suffered by women, as the viral movement had yet to make waves in her country.

“I want to talk about my own story of abuse, which really robbed me of eight years of my life. I want to be one of the people in the #MeToo spots.”

But her efforts have floundered so far, she said, running up against a lack of funding, the reluctance of families to let their daughters speak out and a lack of support from civil society groups.

Mugabe ‘myth’ broken

With her trilogy, Dangarembga paints a bleak picture of the years under former president Robert Mugabe’s rule, touching on everything from racism to economic hardship and the traumas of post-colonialism and war.

Despite the sometimes desperate circumstances, Dangarembga said Tambudzai’s struggles to find employment or put food on the table were never devoid of hope.

“This is about your average Zimbabwean woman who is doing nothing special apart from surviving day to day,” she said.

“Sometimes one doesn’t do it elegantly, or very morally, but one does manage.”

“Nervous Conditions”, recently named by the BBC as one of 100 stories that shaped the world, and its 2006 sequel “The Book of Not” were both narrated in the first person – but the final book is written in the second person.

Dangarembga said she opted for the unconventional “you” point of view because some of Tambu’s experiences were “so emotional and painful” that she needed distance from her.

The story ends at the turn of the millennium, around the time that Dangarembga, who is also an award-winning filmmaker, moved back to Zimbabwe after living in England and Germany for years.

The author said she wanted to see with her own eyes the land seizures she heard about on the news.

She witnessed Mugabe’s historic ouster in a de facto coup last year but said she doesn’t “really see things changing in the post-Mugabe era”, as the country’s wrecked economy undergoes a fresh bout of chaos.

“I think that because of the way Mr Mugabe was removed from power, the government today has to be more circumspect… it needs to cultivate legitimacy.”

But with Mugabe’s downfall, “a myth was done away with”.

“Now people believe that things are possible, and that’s good.”

Dangarembga’s appearance at last week’s Frankfurt book fair came as African writers grabbed the spotlight at the annual event with a record 34 publishers from 19 countries on the continent showcasing their work.

“This is an exciting time to be an African author,” Dangarembga said, noting that there was also “a big rush” to make African films and television shows.

“These are where the new stories are that shed another light on our shared humanity. I think it’s beautiful the world is beginning to understand that.”

AFP

Disgraced US television icon Bill Cosby will return to a Pennsylvania court on Monday to face sentencing for sexual assault, five months after his conviction at the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era.

The frail 81-year-old — once beloved as “America’s Dad” — faces a maximum potential sentence of 30 years for drugging and molesting Andrea Constand at his Philadelphia mansion in January 2004.

He will be the first celebrity sentenced for a sex crime since the 2017 downfall of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein signaled the beginning of America’s public reckoning with sexual harassment.

The pioneering comedian and award-winning actor was found guilty April 26 on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Prosecutors will ask for him to be sent straight to prison, while his lawyers are likely to appeal for him to remain under house arrest pending the outcome of any appeals, celebrity website TMZ reported.

His legal team will likely argue for leniency given his age and frailty. Cosbymaintains that he is now legally blind.

The final decision rests with Judge Steven O’Neill, who will impose the sentence after a hearing that could stretch across two days in Norristown, a down-at-heel town just outside Philadelphia.

The reputation and career of the once towering figure in late 20th century American popular culture — the first black actor to grace primetime US television — is already in tatters.

Predator assessment

Once adored by millions for his defining role on “The Cosby Show,” he has been confined to his Philadelphia area mansion on a $1 million bail for nearly three years, fitted with a GPS monitor and subjected to a violent sexual predator assessment after his guilty conviction.

As soon as the jury returned their verdict, prosecutors demanded that his bail be revoked, arguing he was a flight risk — but O’Neill refused to “lock him up right now.”

“He doesn’t have a plane, you asshole!” yelled Cosby in his first public outburst and loss of control after chief prosecutor Kevin Steele claimed he could flee anywhere in the world by private jet.

Around 60 women, many of them onetime aspiring actresses and models, publicly branded him a calculating, serial predator who plied victims with sedatives and alcohol to bed them over four decades.

The case involving Constand, a Canadian former basketball player and Temple University employee turned massage therapist, was the only one that happened recently enough to prosecute.

O’Neill has refused to allow additional Cosbyaccusers to give statements at his sentencing, although it is not clear if the five others who testified at trial will in fact appear.

Cosbyis now on his third lead lawyer, Joseph Green, since his arrest in December 2015, having parted ways with celebrity advocate Tom Mesereau after the guilty verdict.

Cosby’s first trial ended in June 2017 with a hung jury, hopelessly deadlocked after 52 hours of deliberations.

AFP

Nicki Minaj took to the airwaves on Monday afternoon to address her fight with Cardi B at a Fashion Week event in New York City on Friday.

Speaking on Beats 1’s Queen Radio, which can be heard on Apple Music, Minaj said she found the incident “mortifying and humiliating” especially considering it took place in front of “upper echelon people who have their lives together.”

Responding to the claim that Minaj had made disparaging remarks about Cardi’s newborn daughter, Minaj said, “It’s all lies,” adding, “I would never ridicule anyone’s child. [It’s] so sad for someone to pin that on somebody. … I would never talk about anyone’s child or parenting. … These lies are ridiculous.”

Using her real name (Onika Tanya Maraj), Minaj added: “It’s crazy for me that people always need to make Onika the bad guy. … I was wearing a Gaultier gown off the mother f—in’ runway and I could not believe how humiliating it all felt — how we made ourselves look.”

Addressing Cardi directly, Minaj lambasted: “You came into my f—in culture. I never had to [pay] a DJ to play my songs. You call black women roaches. Real b-tches never attack a woman. You’re angry and you’re sad. This is not funny. Get this woman some f—in help. This woman’s at the highest point in her career and she’s throwing shoes?”

The star-studded Fashion Week party on Friday was billed as the Harper’s Bazaar Icon bash.

In one of several videos posted to Twitter, Cardi B, wearing a red dress, can be seen lunging towards Minaj before throwing a shoe at the rapper as their security teams rush to break it up.

Sources confirm to Variety that it was, in fact, the two hip-hop artists involved in the melee, which happened just as the red carpet shuttered.

Cardi B was later photographed with a large bruise above her right eye as she left the party. The back of her dress was also torn.

Minaj, who was unharmed in the encounter, was quickly escorted downstairs by Minaj’s security team.

Insiders confirm to Variety that Cardi B’s bump on her forehead was the result of an elbow from one of Minaj’s security guards.

MSN

SHE is hardly known on the Zimbabwean music scene. But her sound is so familiar with Zimbabweans with a taste for South Africa’s popular disco chanter Daniel Tshanda and his Splash music.

Gogo Wodumo, real name, Sikhanyiswe Ndlovu (34) is a woman of great determination who took the bold decision the track down disco King right to his musical backyard in Johannesburg.

The result has been a mouth-watering two albums.

Her first album – Siyemakhaya – was recorded with KB Studios, South Africa in 2017 while Sigcwele Ngamazwe was produced with Dalom Music stables.

Sigcwele Ngamazwe, which also has some Shona lyrics, is a lamentation of the daily struggles the millions of Zimbabweans now scrapping for a living on foreign land face.

Khanyi Golden Rythms as she is also popularly known, grew up in Bulawayo listening to Splash and Dalom Kids and could not resist the temptation to follow her passions through playing the music as well.

“That’s the music that touches my soul most it reflects in to our lives in message wise,” she said.

Indeed, no one could extinguish her determination as she made the great trek to Mzansi to meet with her childhood idol who took her through her paces to produce her own music under the stable.

“When I got hold of his phone number, I asked to meet up with him because I needed his hand so that I could come out with the original Splash flavour…lucky me he agreed.”

“Dan Tshanda is an amazing person; more like a father to me…we worked so well and he never undermined me for being a new artist.

“He listened and respected all my views a lot,” she says, adding that Tshanda played all instruments and recorded her.

Pity some locals are still to listen to her music when she has managed to penetrate Botswana and Namibia’s music scenes.

The South African based emerging disco queen speaks of selling some of her CDs among Zimbabweans based in the UK and the US.

“I’m so happy even the Queen Patricia Majalisa is loving my music so much she says she is willing to work with me in future,” says the vocalist and composer.

Majalisa is a household name in South African’s disco music scene and is also popular among Zimbabwean music lovers with a taste for the South African beat.

Gogo Wodumo is not the first Zimbabwean artist to work with Splash as Bulawayo based dancing queen Sandra Ndebele and Khuxxman have also been to the South African music factory.

NewZimbabwe.com

Aretha Franklin, whose impassioned, riveting voice made her a titan of American music, has died, her niece, Sabrina Owens, confirmed to the Free Press. She was 76.

She died at 9:50 a.m. surrounded by family at her home in Detroit.

A family statement released by her publicist Gwendolyn Quinn said “Franklin’s official cause of death was due to advance pancreatic cancer of the neuroendocrine type, which was confirmed by Franklin’s oncologist, Dr. Philip Phillips of Karmanos Cancer Institute” in Detroit.

The family added: “In one of the darkest moments of our lives, we are not able to find the appropriate words to express the pain in our heart. We have lost the matriarch and rock of our family.”

Franklin was the loftiest name in the rich history of Detroit music and one of the transcendent cultural figures of the 20th Century. Raised on an eclectic musical diet of gospel, R&B, classical and jazz, she blossomed out of her father’s Detroit church to become the most distinguished black female artist of all time, breaking boundaries while placing nearly 100 hits on Billboard’s R&B chart — 20 of them reaching No. 1.

The Queen of Soul, as she was coronated in the 1960s, leaves a sprawling legacy of classic songs that includes “Respect,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Chain of Fools,” “Baby I Love You,” “Angel,” “Think,” “Rock Steady,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Freeway of Love,” along with a bestselling gospel catalog.

Her death follows several years of painstakingly concealed medical issues, which led to regular show cancellations and extended absences from the public eye.

Visibly feeble but still summoning magic from her voice, Franklin played her final Detroit show in June 2017, an emotion-packed concert for thousands at an outdoor festival downtown.

Detroit Free Press

Cape Town – Local TV personality Bonang Matheba sent her former BFF Somizi Mhlongo a special shout-out and it looks like they’ve finally patched things up.

The pair were friendship goals for many years, climbing the social ladder together, before their friendship abruptly ended in 2016.

That same year, Somizi revealed on an episode of his reality show that Bonang was under the impression that he outed her affair with AKA to Zinhle.

It was announced on Tuesday that both celebrities have been nominated for a DStv Mzansi Viewers’ Choice award in the category, Favourite Personality of the Year.

Bonang, who hosted the nominee announcement event in Johannesburg gave Somizi a personal welcome from the stage: “A very warm welcome. I see celebrities, members of the media, friends and family, some familiar faces, hello SomGaga.”

After which the guest in attendance erupted into laughter.

According to a source, who was at the event, the two were friendly with each other and shared several jokes.

Since AKA is now out of the picture, does that mean the pair will put their beef aside?

Somizi also shared an Instagram Stories snap of him enjoying her signature drink, a pink egg white champagne cocktail. – Which was featured on the first season of Being Bonang.

Channel24

WASHINGTON – A light-hearted quip about a soccer team has sparked a serious debate about identity politics and the merits of France’s “colorblind” republican model versus American multiculturalism.

When the host of American television’s popular “The Daily Show” joked that the real winner of the World Cup was “Africa,” it prompted a fierce reaction on social media and drew a pointed rebuttal from the French ambassador to Washington.

Trevor Noah, the popular comedian who hosts the TV show, was calling attention to the fact that many of the winning French team’s players are of African origin – immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants.

“Africa won the World Cup,” he said, before adding: “I get it. They have to say it’s the French team, but look at those guys: you don’t get that tan in the south of France!”

Noah’s gag provoked an avalanche of reactions on social media, reviving angry debates about the very different approaches to race, immigration, and assimilation taken by France and the United States.

While many commenters found Noah’s remarks amusing, others accused the 34-year-old – who grew up under South Africa’s race-based apartheid system, with a white father and black mother – as doing the work of the extreme right.

French Ambassador Gerard Araud immediately sent Noah a stern letter saying that “nothing could be less true.”

“The rich and various backgrounds of these players is a reflection of France’s diversity,” Araud said. “Unlike in the United States of America, France does not refer to its citizens based on their race, religion or origin.”

“To us, there is no hyphenated identity, roots are an individual reality,” the ambassador continued. “By calling them an African team, it seems you are denying their Frenchness.

“This, even in jest, legitimizes the ideology which claims whiteness as the only definition of being French,” said Araud, who regularly defends France’s republican model on Twitter.

Different approaches

That republican model is based on the idea that true equality can be achieved only when the state interacts with people as individuals, not as members of national, racial, religious or linguistic groups.

That precludes any official collecting of race-based data, for example, but it also rules out the affirmative action approach used in the US explicitly to overcome – not prolong – years of discrimination.

Some French see Americans as relentlessly race-conscious in ways that are needlessly damaging. But some Americans say the French system allows minority groups to live on in official invisibility, facing self-perpetuating social and economic obstacles.

For Noah, the French simply need to get a sense of humor.

“When I’m saying ‘African,’ I’m not saying it to exclude them from their French-ness, I’m saying it to include them in my African-ness,” Noah said in a video posted Wednesday on Twitter. “I’m saying, ‘I see you, my French brother of African descent.'”

Double identity

Noah said he recognised that the far right in both France and the US used the argument of people’s origin to attack immigrants and their descendants at a time both countries face sensitive immigration issues.

But he added that he found it “strange” to suggest that France’s soccer stars could not be simultaneously French and African.

“Why can’t they be both?” he asked. “Why is that duality only afforded to a select group of people?”

“What they’re arguing here is in order to be French, you have to erase everything that is African?” Noah continued.

“America is not a perfect country, but what I love about this place is that people can still celebrate their identity in their American-ness,” he said.

An American can attend a parade to celebrate his or her Puerto Rican or Irish heritage, for example, while still being American, Noah said.

The comedian said that some French media and politicians evoke a person’s African origin when the person is unemployed, accused of a crime or “considered unsavory.”

But “when their children go on to provide a World Cup victory for France, we should only refer to them as ‘France,'” he added, referencing the case of Mamoudou Gassama, the 22-year-old African immigrant who was granted French citizenship after scaling four floors to rescue a child hanging from a balcony.

Noah said he would continue to sing the players’ praises as both Africans and as French.

“And if French people are saying they cannot be both, then I think they have a problem – not me.”

Former US president Barack Obama touched on the same subject, but a bit less contentiously, during a visit to Johannesburg to mark the centenary of the birth of Nelson Mandela.

Praising the virtues of diversity, Obama singled out the French team, adding with a smile, “Not all these folks look like Gauls to me (but) they are French, they are French!”

AFP

NEW YORK – Michael Jackson returned posthumously Friday with new music as the late King of Pop starred on the new album by Drake.

The Toronto hip-hop star, one of the top-selling artists in recent years, had kept fans in suspense for weeks as he prepared the release of his fifth full-fledged studio album, entitled “Scorpion.”

As he put out the 25-track album, one of the most striking features was the appearance of a special guest – Jackson, who is credited as the co-artist on the song “Don’t Matter To Me.”

A dreamy mid-tempo R&B track driven by a synthesized bass, “Don’t Matter To Me” is in line with the late output of Jackson whose distinct voice is heard on the chorus.

“All of a sudden you say you don’t want me no more / All of a sudden you say that I closed the door / It don’t matter to me,” Jackson sings.

Drake revealed nothing about the song’s genesis.

But Jackson is known to have left a series of unfinished tracks when he died in 2009.

A previous posthumous duet, “Love Never Felt So Good,” came out in 2014 between Jackson and pop star Justin Timberlake.

Like “Don’t Matter To Me,” the Timberlake collaboration was credited in part to the legendary crooner Paul Anka.

Jackson had been working on an album of duet with Anka, the voice behind such classic pop hits as “Put Your Head on My Shoulder,” in 1983.

But the project fell by the wayside with the former child star’s release of “Thriller,” which went on to become the top-selling album of all time.

Drake has voiced admiration for Jackson.

In a rare interview last year, he described Jackson as a longtime model and voiced dismay at being pigeon-holed as a rapper.

“Don’t Matter To Me” shows Drake clearly in pop mode, singing the verses with his voice reaching toward Jacksonesque highs.

The song coincidentally comes out little more than a day after the death of Joe Jackson, the King of Pop’s father and manager who guided his children’s careers but was so ruthless in his discipline that his children were left traumatised.

AFP