Glo-sponsored CNN African Voices screen  Nigerian, SA film directors

South African dancer, actress, storyteller, poet, playwright, director and author, Nokugcina Elsie Mhlophe, is guest on this week’s African Voices  Changemakers series on the Cable News Network (CNN), which is sponsored by telecommunications giant, Globacom.

The show will depict how Elsie and Nigerian producer, Choreographer, film director, dancer and actor, Seyi Oluyole, are taking kids off the streets.

Sixty-year-old Mhlophe  started as a domestic servant, progressed to a newsreader at the Press Trust and BBC Radio, and subsequently  became  a writer for Learn and Teach, a magazine for newly-literate post-apartheid  South Africans.

She  remains  one of the few female storytellers in the country and has employed her  charismatic performances  in four languages including English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa as a vehicle for encouraging South African children not only  to read, but also to imbibe the values espoused by her stories.

Mhlophe’s works have been translated into several languages including  German, French, Italian, Swahili and Japanese.

She has won the Obie Award for Performance as well as the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

She continues to traverse Africa and other parts of the globe, giving storytelling workshops on folklore, historical information, current affairs, songs and idioms.

The other star on the show this weekend, 27-year-old Oluyole, is a graduate of English and Literary Studies of Covenant University.

Oluyole founded a non-governmental organisation named The Dream Nurture Foundation to cater for despondent street kids and indigent young adults whose hearts are crying to be nurtured.

She also provides educational opportunities for them  through the NGO.

Similarly, her dance academy, Dream Catchers, uses dance as a major tool in getting indigent children back to school in line with her belief that “every child deserves to succeed irrespective of their background”.

She has successfully engaged such children in activities ranging from dance to drama  and sports, while  performing screenwriting for popular TV series including Tinsel, Hustle and Gbera leading to International music star, Rihanna, tipping  Oluyole’s mentees for stardom.

CNN African Voices Changemakers will be broadcast on DSTV on Friday at 9.30 a.m. and on Saturday at 12.30 a.m., 4.30 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. Several other repeats come up on Sunday and early next  week.