OUR ROOTS – Sonny Okosuns – 2023
*More from South Africa as I visited Soweto about 25 minutes by road from Johannesburg. I remembered Nigerian musician, Sonny Okosuns‘ liberation songs such as “Fire In Soweto Song” and “Papa’s Land.” Okosuns, a legend left us years ago but his music kept coming to me as we neared Soweto, and could not help singing his song. The story of the apartheid struggle in Africa, especially in South Africa, will be incomplete without the activism, through music, of Oziddi sound maestro, Evangelist Sonny Okosuns who passed on at 61 on 24th May 2008 at Howard Hospital, Washington DC, the United States. Dear reader, you can consider this as TAYO Fatunla’s South Africa Diary.
I visited where Nelson Mandela lived in Soweto on Vilakazi Street, Orlando West. It is located at number 8115, at the corner of Vilakazi and Ngakane streets. I also stopped by to see where Archbishop Desmond Tutu lived on the same street as Mandela. Nelson went back there when he was released from prison. He donated the house to the Soweto Heritage Trust.
Nelson Mandela’s home in Soweto, South Africa – Now Mandela House Museum
Mandela’s bedroom in Soweto
He and Desmond Tutu still are the only Nobel peace prize winners who both came from the same street, same town, and same country to have picked up their awards in Sweden. Vilakazi Street in Soweto, South Africa was buzzing with shops and restaurants and eateries and Mandela’s house which had been turned into a museum a popular tourist attraction.
The inside hosts some original furnishings from back then and memorabilia including photographs which the Museum guides helped explain whilst going ’round the house. It was where Nelson Mandela lived from 1946 to 1962.
The winning series for Best Artist went to Clovis Batebola for O Kingdom Come comic
The East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention 2023 and the GLYPH Awards
The annual East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC) and the GLYPH comics awards took place in Philadelphia. Usually the end of May. Congratulations to all the GLYPH nominees in various award categories and winners too. Shout out to Clovis Batebola who took home the Best Artist award for O Kingdom Come series. The Creator of the series is Dimeji Charles Ajayi who doubles as a writer as well.
ECBACC is Philadelphia’s region’s first black comic book convention, bringing together hundreds of comic book, science fiction, and fantasy creators, their colleagues, and their fans. It did not disappoint this year.
TAYO Fatunla
TAYO Fatunla whose work has been featured on MSN.com via EURweb.com is an award-winning British-Nigerian Comic Artist, Editorial Cartoonist, Writer, and Illustrator and is an artist of the African diaspora. He is a graduate of the prestigious Kubert School, in New Jersey, US., and recipient of the 2018 ECBACC Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award for his illustrated OUR ROOTS creation and series – Famous people in Black History – He participated at UNESCO’s Cartooning In Africa forum held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and the Cartooning Global Forum in Paris, France and has held a virtual OUR ROOTS cartoon workshop for SMITHSONIAN- National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C. His Fela Kuti image is prominently featured in Burna Boy’s mega-Afrobeat hit song “Ye”. – https://www.instagram.com/tfatunla123
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