Who is gibson kente

In , his Soweto home was firebombed. When he was diagnosed HIV positive, Kente began his last play. The Call is about a man aiming to bring hope to people living with HIV. The hero, Smudza, forms a group to educate people about HIV, but then they fail to practise safe sex themselves.

Smudza himself relies on muti from a sangoma instead of condoms. Parts of it could have been autobiographical. In his heyday, Kente lived a glamorous, fast-paced life. He drove fancy cars, partied energetically and had numerous girlfriends, some decades younger than himself. When he was diagnosed HIV positive, he said he was not surprised. In a society that venerates old people and stigmatises Aids victims, it was brave of him to come out at the age of 70, a move for which fellow senior citizen, Nelson Mandela, personally commended him.

Kente passed away on 7 November Being the cardinal storyteller illustrating black pain, love and aspiration in the time of apartheid, it is with great pleasure that Joburg City Theatres announces that he will be commemorated in a musical tribute at Soweto Theatre this festive season.

Smudza himself relies on muti medicine from a sangoma a traditional healer instead of condoms. Gibson Mthuthuzeli Kente died in Johannesburg on 7 November The tribute is the brain child of Hudson's head of Drama, Pierre Perold, who had met Kente in the s.

Whenever people come to the venue they will learn about who Kente was. Buffalo City Tourism. Recent Posts See All. Nicola Smith takes flight as East London's first woman airport manager. Post not marked as liked. Through the musicals he put on with his company, G. Productions, he discovered and trained hundreds of black artists, including Peter Sepuma and the pop diva Brenda Fassie. Among the 23 shows he wrote, arranged and produced during his township theatre career, several were banned at venues across South Africa, including the political melodramas How Long?

He was jailed for a year in while attempting to make a film of How Long? But the authorities' action against him just increased his appeal and - in contrast to the heavily subsidised "white" theatre and opera - Kente in the mids kept three travelling troupes going without a penny from the state. But, as with many prominent figures in the struggle against apartheid, Kente's hero status did not follow him into the post-apartheid era, after Nelson Mandela's release from prison in The early years of freedom for the black majority were a period of carefree consumerism for all South Africans in which the performing arts - with the possible exception of contemporary dance - failed to attract audiences.

In the s, even Johannesburg's cutting-edge Market Theatre was playing to empty houses as South Africans opted to stay in front of their television sets rather than venture out on to crime- ridden streets to go and see a live show. The taboo surrounding Aids is South Africa's current "struggle", and Kente joined it in February last year when he stated publicly that he was HIV-positive. At a function at the Laager Theatre in central Johannesburg, he announced:.

I want to say to you that you have come to save Bra Gib, not to bury him. My HIV status is going to let me live longer than I would have normally lived because I know I have got a challenge; because I know I have got a duty to the people out there to inspire them that "folks, the fight is on". Let's hold hands. Let's not hide. But he had already suffered several bouts of illness and it became clear that he was in severe financial difficulties.

Leading figures in South African theatre created the Gibson Kente Foundation through which they arranged for him to receive medication and saved him from being evicted from his home.