The African Imaginary Podcast

In our seventh episode of The African Imaginary Podcast, host Khangi Khoza talks to South African singer-songwriter, Bongeziwe Mabandla on the eve of his sold-out Cape Town show, fresh off a European tour, and amidst the build-up to his highly anticipated fifth studio album, Ndingubane. They explore the imagination shaped by his Eastern Cape childhood, how he has made a career from showing his vulnerability, and what it means to sing in isiXhosa on world stages for people who cannot speak his language, but still feel every word.

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Bongeziwe Mabandla is a multi-award winning singer-songwriter from South Africa, best known for his iconic blend of isiXhosa folk and electronica, which he calls Xhosa soul.

Mbandla was born in Tsolo, a small town in the rural Eastern Cape, and raised with church choirs and Bantu folk songs. The guitar arrived at seventeen, then drama school in Johannesburg and a role in beloved SA soapie Generations, before his 2012 debut Umlilo.

The real engine of the catalogue, though, is his partnership with Mozambican producer and instrumentalist Tiago Correia-Paulo. Tiago has been the architect alongside him since Mangaliso - the 2017 album that won Best Alternative at the SAMAs and established the formula that still holds: Mabandla's guitar and tenor at the centre, Correia-Paulo's electronics blooming around them. iimini (2020) - another SAMA winner - landed on American Songwriter's Top Albums of the Year; amaXesha (2023) was named The Guardian's Global Album of the Month.

Ndingubani, the fourth album with Correia-Paulo, dropped in June 2026. For the first time, he has collaborated with Cameroonian songwriter Blick Bassy, sparking his curiosity in working more throughout the continent, he tells The African Imaginary.

His world outside music includes a role in the acclaimed Shaka iLembe, and fashion collaborations with Thebe Magugu and Nao Serati. Drawn to the world of art and fashion, he painted the work on the cover of his latest album, and has designed his own merch.

Currently based in Paris, Mabandla remains a tender chronicler of vulnerability, his music a balm for lonely hearts.

🙏🏾 Thank you Bongeziwe for stepping inside The African Imaginary and transcending language with your isiXhosa soul.

In our sixth episode of The African Imaginary Podcast, guest Sunny Dolat and host Khangi Khoza talk about fashion, beauty, and why ‘a dress is never just a dress’ on the African continent.

Sunny Dolat is one of Africa's leading fashion thinkers, working as a curator, stylist, creative director and production designer. Since co-founding Nairobi's NEST collective and publishing the pivotal book Not African Enough, he has produced exhibitions, films and performances worldwide. His documentary project Stories of Our Lives was internationally acclaimed for archiving Kenya's queer voices — despite being banned at home. He helped shape the V&A's landmark show Africa Fashion, and joined The Business of Fashion 500, Class of '23.

So how does one of Africa's most compelling creative minds think about beauty, identity, and dress? Broadly, for a start. Sunny says, 'Everything I do is to expand our understanding of beauty and design, so people look further and harder to see the whole of the continent, not just the usual three or four places,' he says.

This remarkable conversation feels like it could only ever have taken place inside The African Imaginary. Such is the power of Malian artist Fatoumata Diawara, a visionary voice on the African music scene. The day after headlining the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, she talks with host Khangi Khoza about what it means to see your craziness as a gift, breaking taboos, transcending on stage, designing guitars and sewing costumes.

Fatoumata Diawara is a multi-faceted artist from Mali, known for her ability to cross Malian rhythms with contemporary sounds. She has collaborated with music giants like Damon Albarn and Herbie Hancock, she has been nominated for a Grammy, and in 2026 she became the first black woman with a Gibson signature guitar in her name.

Born in Ivory Coast, one of eleven children, Fatou grew up dancing in the streets before cinema found her. She took two films to Cannes playing characters her directors described as mad. "It wasn't acting," she says. "For me, it was normal." At 19 she fled a forced marriage, taught herself guitar, and began playing her own songs in Parisian bars. Her debut album Fatou dropped in 2011. In 2013, with her country at war, she gathered forty Malian artists to record Maliko, an anthem that still airs on Malian radio whenever tensions rise. The album ‘Fenfo’ (Something to Say) followed in 2018, establishing her as a genre-transcending musician, blending with ease afrobeat, jazz electro, pop and rock. Her new album MASSA drops on 5 June and explores the balance between her life as an artist and her role as a mother and activist. Always singing in Bambara, Fatoumata says, "I don't want people to understand what I'm saying, I want people to feel me.”

If you’re in need of good company and a far-reaching conversation, host Khangi Khoza and guest Blinky Bill have got you covered. In our fourth episode of The African Imaginary Podcast, they talk about what it means to build something original from African soil, what the continent's artists owe each other, and what soulfulness in music means in this new crazy world.

Blinky Bill is a Kenyan musician, producer and DJ, and one of the founding members of Just A Band - the art and music collective widely regarded as the forefathers of Kenya's alternative music scene. His songs have found their audiences on Netflix, on Nike campaigns, on stages around the world, and here on The African Imaginary Podcast where we licensed ‘Jam Now, Simmer Down’ as our theme tune.

Born in Eastleigh, Nairobi, to a mother who did missionary work and played the guitar, and a father who sang in the church choir, Blinky grew up absorbing gospel, lingala, jazz and hip-hop from home and the matatus that he rode in. His super-power is the massive music library in his mind that he effortlessly draws upon. It is why no two of his tracks sound the same, and it’s why his list of collaborators on and off the continent is so impressive, from Childish Gambino and Chance the Rapper to Idd Aziz, D’Afro and Sampa the Great. “I think that my biggest gift above and beyond the music is that I know how to bring people together and see their role in the vision,” he tells The African Imaginary Podcast. “I'm always connecting the dots.”

In our third episode of The African Imaginary Podcast, guest Justin Letschert and host Khangi Khoza talk about skin, the beauty industry, and why Africa is precisely the right place from which to launch a brand to the world. A rich and deep exploration into running a global business by leaning into humanness and instinct.

Justin Letschert is the owner of Africa’s most global and well-known skincare brand. Since 2000 he has navigated Bio-Oil from selling a handful of products a year in South Africa, to a product a second in over 160 countries - the fastest global rollout of all time.

So how does a 4-product brand from the tip of Africa generate a cult following? Justin credits Bio-Oil’s success in no small part to the fact that he and his brother (who is also his business partner) were born and raised in Durban, South Africa. ‘Being African gives you internal strength, tenacity and creativity. Exactly what is needed to navigate the international waters of taking a brand global,’ he says.