The weekly magazine programme on CNN on African Voices Changemakers, sponsored by telecommunications giant, Globacom, will in its next episode, showcase the potential of two creative talents on the African continent- South African born Zana Masombuka, a creative director and Kabelo Julius Morokotso, a well-respected welder from Botswana.
Kabelo Morokotso is best known for his massive masterpieces that have wowed crowds across the continent. In 2017, he founded Cyber Kajumo rigs, a company that reposes metal waste into useful materials like gates and trailers.
According to him “New ideas bring fresh research and innovation. I love everything about welding, I just don’t like simple stuff, and I need a job that would challenge me, because that’s how I learn”.
Morokotso, a father of two sons, spent 18 months to build the gigantic nine-metre robot supported by the two of them whom he describes as his project directors. He said the inspiration to build the robot came from watching a 2013 movie “Pacific Rim” with his sons who challenged him to build a robot after watching the movie.
Zana Masombuka on the other hand, is a Johannesburg-based conceptual artist who is inspired by her upbringing in rural KwaNdebele, in South Africa.
A graduate of International Studies from Stellenbosch University where she learnt art of critical thinking, Massombuka has stated severally that her work is inspired by the vibrancy of the Ndebele people. “Africans need to interpret their history themselves and seek to reinvent Africa according to their own terms”, she shared on the featured episode.
She documented the celebratory homecoming of her brother and the other men who had taken part in the initiation ceremony, a process of welcoming young boys into adulthood in the Ndebele culture of South Africa. This led to Ndebele Superhero series; a photographic platform that she founded to delve into the evolutionary process of culture through the perspective of a 21st century Ndebele woman.