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Barring the time he donned the Springbok jersey and his navy blue inauguration suit, there is no garment quite as synonymous with Nelson Mandela as his lively loose-fitting silk shirts.
Trailblazing South African designer Sonwabile Ndamase can be credited for creating the original Madiba Shirt at Mandela’s personal request while longtime Madiba tailor Yusuf Surtee has said the idea for their bold patterns came from the batik prints gifted to our first black president by Indonesian President Suharto in 1990.
However, if anyone has truly embraced the opportunity to scale this distinctive post-1994 sartorial design into a marketable product, it’s Desré Buirski.
Founding Presidential Shirt not long after she first gifted our first democratically elected president a shirt, the businesswoman can lay claim to having dressed Madiba in about 150 of her designs. Along the way she opened three stores featuring her distinctive wares.
On Tuesday evening, a few steps from the great statesman’s statue overlooking the piazza at Nelson Mandela Square, a well-heeled crowd including many a familiar political face (such as Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi) came for the ribbon-cutting ceremony of a shopping emporium bearing the brand’s new name, Presidential.
No sign of Desré’s distinctive blonde locks, but instead I meet CEO Rob Sim (wearing a black shirt with an outline of the map of Africa on the chest pocket, not unlike one of the very shirts Desré once gifted the old man) and executive director Geoff Mabote.
While Presidential mainly caters for men wishing to emulate Nelson’s style, the night’s MC, Sthandiwe Kgoroge, wore a monochrome designer shirt.
I caught up with the actress and Yvonne Chaka Chaka, who was nattily dressed in British designer James Lakeland, outside the store.
Mamma Yvonne has just returned from Switzerland where she attended the UN’s AI For Good Summit. Global AI experts, world leaders including Rwandan President Paul Kagame and musical superstars will.i.am and John Legend were there.
Turning to our homegrown musical talents, multi-award winning jazz artist and guitarist Ernie Smith opens the evening, while the familiar folk-inspired sounds of Vusi Mahlasela closed off the night.
In between, we hear from Rob and Geoff, Constitutional Court justice Albie Sachs and the great theatre orator Dr John Kani, who reminds us how transformative Madiba’s choice of wardrobe was to the national psyche.
“He liberated us from the suit,” says Dr John.
However, the night truly belonged to Naledi Pandor, who delivered a speech in her capacity as chair of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, in which she reminded us not only of Madiba’s legacy in social justice, but also the symbolism behind his dress sense.
“His wearing of this shirt is an illustration of what independence and freedom looks like. Of what thinking for yourself looks like …
“When you have the extraordinary as part of you, you cannot be ordinary. And by being xenophobic, by hating others, we are being half-ordinary,” says the former minister of international relations and co-operation, beseeching young people to become “different social media users – propagate knowledge, propagate equity, propagate a better Africa that is post-colonial and truly pan-African. That is what Madiba would want”.
Yes, we all realised threads can be thought-provoking and nation building. However, priced at just shy of 6,000 Randelas each, these Madiba shirts are probably out of reach of ordinary South Africans.
Now, turning to two extraordinary South Africans you should know about (but probably don’t).
The story of Kamogelo Moncho, who holds two gold and one bronze World Special Olympics medals, and Lumka Gogela, who is a Special Olympics National Games gold medalist, is captured in the enthralling documentary Catching the Wind which lit up the big screen on Wednesday evening at Ster-Kinekor in Rosebank.
“This started out as a short film, maybe 24 minutes, but by the time we started shooting, we knew it was going to be something bigger,” said filmmaker Thomas Holder at the launch, which was attended by both the Special Olympians who are inspiring examples of how an intellectual disability doesn’t limit your ability. Also there were Mathews Phosa in his capacity as chair of Special Olympics SA, the organisation’s CEO Ancilla Smith and minister Sindisiwe Chikunga (whose portfolio covers people with disabilities).
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