 | |
| Editor | Sbusiso 'The General' Nxumalo, Nicole Turner, Sandile Dikeni |
|---|---|
| Categories | Cultural Magazine |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Year founded | 1998 |
| Country | South Africa |
| Language | English |
Y-Mag is a South African magazine established in 1998 from a joint partnership between Studentwise, publishers of white youth targeted SL Magazine , and black youth targeted Johannesburg radio station YFM.
Published under the pay-off "Y - because I want to know", the magazine was targeted to tap into the market that made YFM the biggest regional station at the time. This was what was referred to as the Y Generation, a "freedom's children" that got to celebrate the freedom of an apartheid-free South Africa. As poet Lebo Mashile explained:
"if we were 20 or 30 in the 1970s and 1980s we would have been using everything we had to fight Apartheid... but now we have the freedom and space to do what we want with our talent and we have the ability to really manifest our dreams..."
Under founder editors S'busiso 'The General' Nxumalo and Itumeleng Mahabane, Y quickly came to encapsulate this spirit of freedom of expression. Like YFM, its emphasis was on urban street culture with a strong focus on the sounds of post-apartheid black South Africa especially Kwaito. Written in spoken English and drops of Scamto, it was filled with diverse youth interests without ever narrowing them down to just entertainment. From the relationship between kwaito's apolitical, "hedonistic and flighty preoccupations", to President Thabo Mbeki's macroeconomic ideology, and to the politics of fashion and the aesthetic of struggle, this publication is very well rounded.
This radical challenge to the binary opposition of political/apolitical placed Y a step or two ahead of other mainstream magazines, intended for both black and white audiences. This also meant that corporate advertisers remained at arm's length. Inevitably the magazine gave over to market pressures and changes at the radio station. Both Nxumalo and Mahabane stepped down as editors. Since then Y has continued under no less than eight different editors but it has never recaptured the idealism or attitude of those first few issues.
South Africa is known for its ethnic and cultural diversity. Amongst black South Africans, a substantial number of rural inhabitants lead largely impoverished lives. Almost all South Africans speak English to some degree of proficiency, in addition to their native language, with English acting as a lingua franca in commerce, education, and government. South Africa has eleven official languages, but other indigenous languages are also spoken by smaller groups, chiefly Khoisan languages.
Kwaito is a music genre that emerged in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, during the 1990s. It is a variant of house music featuring the use of African sounds and samples. Typically at a slower tempo range than other styles of house music, Kwaito often contains catchy melodic and percussive loop samples, deep bass lines, and vocals. Despite its similarities to hip hop music, Kwaito has a distinctive manner in which the lyrics are sung, rapped and shouted.
Bonginkosi "Zola" Dlamini is a South African kwaito musician, actor, writer and poet.
The mass media in South Africa has a large mass media sector and is one of Africa's major media centres. While South Africa's many broadcasters and publications reflect the diversity of the population as a whole, the most commonly used language is English. However, all ten other official languages are represented to some extent or another. Afrikaans is the second most commonly used language, especially in the publishing sector.
YFM is a "Youth" radio station in Johannesburg, South Africa. Established in 1997, the station is formatted to mostly play urban music genres such as Kwaito, Hip Hop, and R&B along with a minority of its airtime being dedicated to talk shows. As noted by the name, the station's core audience consists of young South Africans.
The United Democratic Front (UDF) linked hundreds of popular organisations together in the struggle against apartheid. The non-racial coalition of about 400 civic, church, students', workers' and other organisations was formed in 1983, initially to fight the new Tricameral Parliament. The UDF's goal was to establish a "non-racial, united South Africa in which segregation is abolished and in which society is freed from institutional and systematic racism." Its slogan was "UDF Unites, Apartheid Divides."
The 2002 Soweto Bombings were a string of terrorist attacks that occurred in Soweto in South Africa's Gauteng province. Eight blasts took place on 30 October 2002, leaving one woman dead and her husband severely injured. One of the blasts severely damaged a mosque, while others targeted railways and petrol stations in the area. Police prevented one blast. Another bomb later detonated outside the Nan Hua Buddhist temple in Bronkhorstspruit, east of Pretoria. A white supremacist group, the Warriors of the Boer Nation, claimed responsibility for these explosions in a message sent to an Afrikaans newspaper.
Drum is a 2004 film based on the life of South African investigative journalist Henry Nxumalo, who worked for Drum magazine, called "the first black lifestyle magazine in Africa". It was director Zola Maseko's first film and deals with the issues of apartheid and the forced removal of residents from Sophiatown. The film was originally to be a six-part television series called Sophiatown Short Stories, but Maseko could not get the funding. The lead roles of Henry Nxumalo and Drum main photographer Jürgen Schadeberg were played by American actors Taye Diggs and Gabriel Mann, while most of the rest of the cast were South African actors.
DRUM is a South African online family magazine mainly aimed at black readers containing market news, entertainment and feature articles. It has two sister magazines: Huisgenoot and YOU.
Tsotsitaal is a vernacular derived from a variety of mixed languages mainly spoken in the townships of Gauteng province, but also in other agglomerations all over South Africa. Tsotsi is a Sesotho, Pedi or Tswana slang word for a "thug" or "robber" or "criminal", possibly from the verb "ho lotsa" "to sharpen", whose meaning has been modified in modern times to include "to con"; or from the tsetse fly, as the language was first known as Flytaal, although flaai also means "cool" or "street smart". The word taal in Afrikaans means "language".
Sathyandranath Ragunanan "Mac" Maharaj is a retired South African politician affiliated with the African National Congress, academic and businessman of Indian origin. He was the official spokesperson of the former President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma.
Benjamin Pogrund is a South African-born Israeli author.
Boom Shaka was a pioneering South African kwaito music group consisting of Junior Sokhela, Lebo Mathosa, Theo Nhlengethwa and Thembi Seete. They released their first single "It's About Time" in 1993, and subsequently released their debut LP, titled "Kwere Kwere" in 1994. Boom Shaka is one of the most successful bands of the mid-1990s in South Africa and their music became the soundtrack for many young people in the newly democratic South Africa. Boom Shaka was able to break into the international music scene and achieve success outside of South Africa, such as in London among other places.
Henry Nxumalo, also known as Henry "Mr Drum" Nxumalo, was a pioneering South African investigative journalist under apartheid.
John Arthur Mogale Maimane, better known as Arthur Maimane, was a South African journalist and novelist.
Scope was a South African weekly men's lifestyle magazine. The magazine was launched in the 1960s and was controversial for challenging Apartheid-era South Africa's strict censorship laws with its bikini-clad cover girls. The weekly was published in Durban by Republican Press until its final issue in 1996. At its peak, it was South Africa's best-selling English magazine, with a circulation of 250,000.
Tofo Tofo Dance Group is made up of three Mozambican men who integrated Kwaito music and Pantsula dance, which originates from South Africa, to create their own unique type of dance that has become internationally celebrated. This new form of movement has brought local African dance onto a global stage.
Pantsula is a tradition and also a highly energetic dance form that originated in the black townships of South Africa during the apartheid era. It developed into a form of social commentary for black South Africans and has undergone several transformations with the country's changing political tides.
Anton Harber is a South African journalist. He is executive director of the Campaign for Free Expression, director of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand, and the co-editor or author of five books.
Khabzela: The Life And Times Of A South African is a bestselling 2005 biography written by South African author Liz McGregor about South African disc jockey Fana Khaba, who died from AIDS.
Material in this article is duplicated from chimurengalibrary.co.za, which is released by GFDL.