Category: Interviews

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Interviews

Reuben Riffel: at home on the range

Reuben Riffel – chef, author, restaurateur – was born to cook. He just didn’t know it. But the signs were always there.

Even though he did not eat out until his mid-teens, Reuben and his 12 siblings grew up in a family where his grandmother, mother and aunts spent hours preparing ‘good but simple food’, such as tomato bredie, using ingredients grown by his grandfather. His mom brought home richer flavours, such as rotisserie lamb off-cuts or crème caramel, from the Franschhoek restaurants she worked at.

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Interviews Music

Candice Heyns: turning the tables

Candice Heyns is hooked on music.

‘When I search for  music on the net, I’m like an addict – I can literally sit for hours,’ she laughs. ‘I’m constantly looking for new artists and new sounds.’ It’s not surprising, then, that Candice has forged a career in the music industry, first working behind the scenes in promotion and management before she launched her career as a solo DJ, one half of electronic duo Blush n Bass, a radio and TV presenter, and a budding businesswoman.

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Interviews Tech

Ludwick Marishane: the entrepreneur’s club

Like all the best ideas, Ludwick Marishane’s was a simple one. Why bath if you can rub cleansing lotion on your body instead?

But, like all the best ideas, the simplicity ended there. It took him four years to develop the world’s first germicidal bath-substituting gel, DryBath – a task he juggled while completing matric and a business science degree. As a result, he’s been named one of the 12 brightest young minds in the world by Google, was judged the best student entrepreneur on the planet at the Global Student Entrepreneur awards, and is South Africa’s youngest patent holder.

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Interviews

Katlego Maboe: early riser

Spend an hour with Katlego Maboe and you want to be him. Well, except perhaps the part where you have to get up for work at 3.30am.

But he’s a man who knows what he wants (“Whatever I do, I want to be the best at it”), then gets it (hosting breakfast TV, joining a top South African boy band, establishing his own events company, graduating with a B.Com, scoring provincial colours in two sports – all before the age of 26).

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Interviews

Samantha Laura Kaye: blogger, baker, mover and shaker

Samantha Laura Kaye’s name is a mouthful. But so is her range of talents. An actress, MC, public speaker, model, hair- and makeup-artist, and blogger, you’re sure to have seen or read her work. If you’re in Cape Town, you may even have fallen in love with her cupcakes.

So who is the person behind the multi-hyphenated career description?

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Interviews Music

Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse: drumming up applause

‘You never stop learning,’ says Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse, a few days after his 60th birthday. ‘You learn from the past, the present and the future, which keeps your mind evolving and helps you discover a new person in yourself.’

He should know. His insatiable curiosity is behind a music career that, over the course of five decades, has seen him be a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, industry commentator, arts and culture advocate, jazz club owner, 46664 ambassador and even Eighties pop pin-up (complete with prerequisite Afro and black leather garb).

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Interviews Music

Nik Kershaw revives the ’80s

Can’t tell Nik Kershaw and Howard Jones apart?

Don’t worry — nor can Kershaw’s infant son.

The affable singer chuckles as he tells the story: “I’ve got the CD of the 25th anniversary gig Howard did because I played on it. The front cover is a picture of Howard, and my son pointed at it and said: ‘daddy’.”

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Interviews Music

Howard Jones is still standing

He may have lost the big hair, but Howard Jones has lost none of his passion for music.

“I still really love to play live and I’m touring constantly,” he says on the phone from England. “As long as I can get up on stage, I’ll be doing it,” he laughs.

“It really is good for me because I have this heritage of hit songs that people know and it’s such a pleasure then to play them for people so they can join in, sing along, and recall a part of their life with the songs.”

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Interviews Music

Watershed are laying new tracks

Watershed have spent the past two months touring South Africa. Some would call that a slog. They call it laying down new tracks.

“What we wanted to do with this tour was go out on the road and just go back to that thing that got us into the industry, why we do this. And it’s because we love singing, we love playing music, and we love touring,” explains the group’s frontman Craig Hinds.

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Interviews

Evita Bezuidenhout: the Darling diva

Forget Madonna. Sure, she’s sold more than 300 million albums over a career of 30 years. But, as someone hailed for her constant reinvention, all she’s really done is change her outfits and dance moves every few years. Those who call her multi-talented clearly haven’t seen her films, or heard of Evita Bezuidenhout.

The most famous white woman in South Africa has been (take a deep breath) an actress, newspaper columnist, politician, TV talk show host, chef, educator, activist, author, tweeter and musical performer. But before all that, she was just known as Evangeline Poggenpoel: a timid, shy girl growing up in Bethlehem in the 1930s.

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