Earlier this week, I sat with Majesty Mnyandu, a South African poet and storyteller, for an interview at the Indoni Art gallery in Melville. I met Majesty a couple of months ago while exploring the Melville Art Mile, where he was making up stories on the spot for visitors looking at artworks in the gallery. We got into a discussion about the horrific state of the world, and he said something roughly to the effect of, “Don’t wahhh-ree,” [in that way that only South Africans can], “Humanity is making something new.” I knew that I wanted to chat with him for my blog.

Majesty Mnyandu at the Indoni Art gallery at 27 Boxes in Melville.

Majesty and I sat talking for about 40 minutes. Toward the end of the interview, he mentioned a project he’d worked on in Lawley, a township on Joburg’s far-southern edge, helping a group of aspiring film producers through his media company, Kasmedia. It sounded familiar. “I went to Lawley once,” I told Majesty. “I have a blog post about it.” I pulled up my Lawley post, and in that moment both Majesty and I realized we’d met before, almost exactly 10 years ago, and Majesty is already in my blog.

Majesty (left) in Lawley Township in January 2016.

The reason I asked to interview Majesty is because I’ve decided to restart my “Jozi People” series, which began (and ended) in September 2024 when I interviewed Sipho Makenzie. The idea was to find interesting people in Joburg, ask them three questions, and publish their responses as a blog post.

This turns out to be a lot harder than I imagined, as no person’s life can be boiled down into three questions — especially not a person like Majesty. I asked him more than three questions, and he gave back a lot more than I can fit into one blog post. But I’ve included some of the best questions and abbreviated responses below. My questions are in bold and Majesty’s answers are in italics.

Interview with Majesty Mnyandu

Majesty was born in 1982 in Umgababa — a rural, seaside community on the South Coast of KwaZulu-Natal. He came to Joburg when he was 13.

What brought you to Johannesburg?

The love for the arts. I grew up in a family where I had a brother who wrote radio dramas for SABC radio. There was no TV around those days, because we were in the rural areas. So radio was like the internet, the TV — the everything of today. To have a brother that used to write radio dramas and you would hear, sometimes, his voice on radio, made me inspired to be in love with the arts. I loved praise poetry, which was part of the things that you do as a young man in traditional societies in KZN. It’s one of the arts that you get exposed to as a child.

…What made me a star is that we were living in a space where there was no electricity, and my father had a generator and a set of lights that people would hire. So through my father’s lights and power, I had access to events in the community. With my artistic voice, the people in the community also liked me to perform. So by the age of 13, I thought I was ready to become famous. And I came to Joburg as a runaway child.

You ran away?

Yes. And I found my own way to survive.

How did you do that?

So easy! The were shelters for street children…So I saw a story about one in the news on TV. So my plan just came together. I said, okay fine, I will just go there and claim to be a street kid — sorted. 

Where was that?

It was called 80 Albert Street, here in Johannesburg. It’s a very famous building, actually.

Oh yeah, that used to be the Dompas building [Pass Office, where Black people obtained permission to move through Joburg during apartheid], right?

Yes, the Dompas building — the one that recently burned down.

And that helped my artistic life as well because as a group of street children that were housed there…It was fresh from ’94, I think — the year was ’96. Almost every elder who would see us sitting outside the shelter, either playing soccer or making noise as usual, they will always come there and ask us: Why are we here? And we will tell them, and then they will ask us if we know any history of the building. And then almost every day you will get a lecture — on the history of South Africa and the role that that building played in apartheid. That also made me more curious to learn about South Africa. So I integrated that a lot in my art, to say: I think I have a different understanding of old Johannesburg, old South Africa. 

…So, that building also fed into that knowledge. And also the fact that I was in town, the real town — the real Jozi! But now, the thing I did not notice is that I was a child. 

[Laughing] You didn’t notice?

[Chuckling] No, at all. Hey, I was even getting worried — why am I not getting rich? Hie! One day, I approached one of the business people that were my friends. I was like, no man — I’ve been here for years! And I’m still poor.

…But now, I wanted to be famous. I was tired of filming for community projects and small things. Then this guy told me that, young man, you are still a child. Hey, that thing hits me so bad, you know…Aye, man [laughing], I was feeling like I was in charge.

I asked Majesty about the meaning of the towel he was wearing on the back of his Zulu headdress. The towel is part of Bhinca culture, a Zulu subculture that is too complex to explain in this post but I’d like to do a dedicated post about it. The button on the towel depicts the current Shembe leader, Mduduzi Shembe.

Moving along…The businessman Majesty mentions was Dr. David Molapo, and he took Majesty under his wing. With Dr. Molapo’s encouragement, Majesty studied and earned a diploma in journalism. (He also trained as a pastor.) Majesty went on to work in the non-profit space as a storyteller, earned a degree from Wits University, and became a guest lecturer at Wits, the University of Johannesburg, and UNISA. He “created human beings” — four children, aged 15, 12, 10, and 5. He founded Kasmedia, working with young people in disadvantaged communities to produce films and other media projects.

Majesty’s career was badly derailed by Covid, although he maintained his periodic guest lecturing gigs. He’s still rebuilding his storytelling career today and currently spends much of his time at Indoni, where he collaborates with a group of visual artists.

At the end of the interview, I asked Majesty about his thoughts on storytelling in 2026. His answers really inspired me as a fellow storyteller and human being.

What do you think the role will be of this type of storytelling going forward? Especially with these machines [pointing to my phone] we have that record everything?

I think the development of technology is also great because it now enables even a single storyteller to be able to be disseminated to various parts of the world. At the same time, it also helps that storyteller to be able to reach eternal generations. I don’t think there is any way that it tampers with or harms the traditional storytelling…Even the AI-generated entertainment that we are now seeing emerging online — it’s still based on original stories. It’s all based on the knowledge of, the nature of, humanity. So the real human being will always be the core of the medium. There is no way a medium can ever be seen as competing or incompatible with the original forms of producing the creative words.

Majesty went on to describe the power of storytelling in the home, in higher education, in business — in every aspect of life.

Storytelling even has a role to play in science. I’ve recently noticed a writer who now writes children’s stories for African children in space. He says he doesn’t have the capacity to pursue African governments to establish or invest in space exploration. But he believes if he starts with this — children’s books, for African children — in a future to come they will be adults who may have a revelation about the need for space navigation for Africa. And it will be easier for them. So now, we are there seeing storytelling, actually partnering with science to facilitate development.

I think that’s the little I know about storytelling, and the reason why I love it more than peanut butter. 

You can follow Majesty on TikTok. Also, he makes amazing music! He describes his recent EP, Jomba, as “funky experimental music that fuses afrojaz, soul maskandi, rap and dancehall all in one song”. Listen to it here.

If you’d like to book Majesty for storytelling, praise poetry, or guest lecturing on indigenous South African art, contact him on Whatsapp at 072-872-4862.