LESEGO TLHABI: INFLUENCER CLASS OF 2020

Interview: Gomolemo Lesejane

Photography: RTC Studios | Austin Malema

Make-up: Dr Katlego Lekalakala

Hair: Xola Madube

Very few people can think of the South African satire community without Lesego Tlhabi coming to mind through her viral sensation Coconut Kelz. Not only does she offer light-hearted takes on the most contentious conversations in the country’s political discourse; she also does so most tastefully, in ways that are not bigoted or exclusionary.

Having studied theatre in London at Brunel University and musical theatre and television writing in New York at the New York Film Academy and Columbia University, Lesego came back home highly anticipating a successful on-screen career. Her excitement was short-lived however, when it became clear that leading roles on television and in theatre were reserved for women purported to be conventionally beautiful: light-skinned and petit-framed.

It was then that she ventured into some content writing and producing work for some of the country’s most prominent entertainment entities: something she was great at, but not too excited about doing for too long.

Circa 2017, Lesego began using her private Facebook account to rant about what she terms “significant traumas that have come out of the experiences of being Black and having to assimilate to white spaces in this country” – the complex nature of what we have come to know as coconuts. Having been one of the first Black children to study at her Model-C or multiracial primary school, Lesego recounts how othered her existence became: too Black to be amongst her largely white peers; but not Black enough to relate to her kinfolk who didn’t share the same experiences with her. This sore point and the realisations it came with were triggered by the now infamous protest racist and discriminatory hair policies at the Pretoria High School for Girls. Lesego felt that her white acquaintances weren’t paying attention, let alone using their privilege to be credible allies for Black people. And that’s when Coconut Kelz was born.

Kelz is a "caricature of a self-loathing black person who hilariously articulates collective white anxieties in post-apartheid South Africa@. Lesego sees the over-the-top character as a way to "play these [racist] sentiments back to them [white girls] in a funny way so they'd actually listen and not get defensive.”

In a typically conservative media landscape like ours, you wouldn’t be mistaken to think that big brands would play far away from associating themselves with the likes of a Coconut Kelz who…well…calls a spade what it is. Be that as it may, our girl is booked and busy, and we think that’s testament to how authenticity trumps everything. Speaking on this, Lesego adds that “Coconut Kelz is a comedian that’s politically charged and opinionated, and I’m uncompromising when it comes to that. I don’t want to be silenced because my voice speaks for the disenfranchised. Satire is about speaking truth to power and I will continue to do just that”.

Looking past 2020, that we can all agree was sh*t show of note, Lesego has some learnings that she believed will guide her through the growth of Coconut Kelz. The most prominent one is that content creation shouldn’t be isolated from digital technologies and innovations, and that that’s where the realm of influence is moving. We can’t wait to be challenged, have our thoughts provoked and laugh from the belly with what she has in store for us!