Before Y Magazine came into existence in the late 1990s, the idea of a print magazine dedicated to black youth culture in South Africa did not exist.
The magazine is linked to the rise of the YFM, a Johannesburg-based radio station which played wall to wall kwaito–when other stations had not caught onto the commercial possibilities of the genre. YFM, as is now well know, quickly became synonymous with postapartheid black popular culture.
The initial idea behind Y Magazine was a “club magazine.” Basically an infomercial for the radio station (its DJ and presenters) and the artists they feature. Simultaneously, it was also an attempt by the publishers of Student Life, a magazine aimed at young whites, to capture the black market.
But the inaugural editors of Y Mag–S’busiso ‘The General’ Nxumalo and Itumeleng Mahabane–had other ideas (as this short film, “In Conversation: The General and the Civilian” directed by Aryan Kaganoff, shows).
They instead turned the magazine into a space for critical ideas and innovative writing, hired great writers like Nicole Turner (see her essay in the Chimurenga Library about her experiences with Y) and wondered about their place in the new South Africa.
Eventually Nxumalo and Mahabane eventually left and the magazine had at least eight or nine editors since then (a mixture of journalsts and music DJs). The writing and content got progressively worse (take for example this crit by one of its former contributors), it did begin to resembled an infomercial and the editors and designers aped their industry-driven North American counterparts, Vibe Magazine and XXL, to name the obvious examples.
This week the magazine closed. I feel bad for the people working there, but I don’t think people stopped missing the magazine after The General and the Civilian left the building.
R.I.P.
I actually wrote something about the filmmaker Sechaba Morojele that appeared in one of the later editions around 2003 or 2004. I don’t have fond memories about the experience of getting it published.