Gigi Lamayne and Sho Madjozi on colourism

By Kaunda Selisho

As part of radio station PowerFM’s #987Woman series for Women’s Month, musician Sho Madjozi was invited to host the midday segment and take over as host for a day.

Madjozi was invited as one of 30 powerful women who are invited to the station for their annual three-day Women’s Day celebrations.

Every August, the station benches its presenters for three days in a row and invites various female newsmakers and offers them an opportunity to tell their stories and share their views about topics they are most passionate about.

Madjozi (real name Maya Wegeriff) touched on a number of topics but chose to dedicate the middle hour of the show to the topic of colourism – a topic that her name has been brought up in countless times, especially since her BET Award win earlier this year.

Sho Madjozi’s guest for the discussion was rapper Gigi Lamayne (real name Genesis Manney).

Lamayne shared how an unnamed South African celebrity tried to convince her to consider bleaching her skin in order to further her career. Lamayne also stated that this unnamed celebrity told her that she had done it herself and it had worked wonders for her own career.

The pair went on to discuss the innocuous ways in which colourism takes shape in day to day interactions as well as the more overt ways that darker-skinned non-white people are discriminated against by people from their own ethnic backgrounds.

According to Madjozi, one’s experience of colourism isn’t always negative as she often hears things like “you’re beautiful for a Tsonga girl”. She added, however, that although the people saying this think it is a compliment, the underlying implications of the comment are very problematic and may be hurtful to someone else.

Lamayne likened this to the conversations had in hip hop circles and the archetype that most men in hip hop find themselves glorifying. An archetype that Lamayne described as the “light-skinned, long-haired, thin waist, big booty” type of woman.

“I’m just looking at a Zodwa Wabantu as a phenomenon, she’s going to go down in history as someone who went against the norm. We sometimes need that Zodwa confidence,” said Lamayne.

When asked by Madjozi if she thinks how she looks has impacted her career, Lamayne said she did think so but namely because of the ideas people hold about skin colour and the varying levels of respect they afford to people based on how they look.

“It’s not that I’m bitter but I do acknowledge that if I looked a certain way I’d be further in my career,” added Lamayne.

The pair concluded by inviting listeners to be more mindful of the ways in which colourism played out and the little and big ways they contributed to it.

Today is the final day the Power Woman takeover and listeners can tune in to the other slots that will be hosted by eNCA’s Erin Bates, Nosisa Fakude and Economic Freedom Fighters member of parliament (EFF MP) Naledi Chirwa.

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