In
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
, Swenkas are
working-class
The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...
Zulu men who participate in amateur competitions that are part
fashion show
A fashion show is an event put on by a fashion designer to showcase their upcoming line of clothing and/or accessories during a fashion week. Fashion shows debut every season, particularly the spring/summer and fall/winter seasons. This is wh ...
and part
choreography
Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which Motion (physics), motion or Visual appearance, form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A chor ...
, the purpose of which is to display one's
style
Style, or styles may refer to:
Film and television
* ''Style'' (2001 film), a Hindi film starring Sharman Joshi, Riya Sen, Sahil Khan and Shilpi Mudgal
* ''Style'' (2002 film), a Tamil drama film
* ''Style'' (2004 film), a Burmese film
* '' ...
and sense of attitude.
The practice, called "swenking", ultimately derives from the English word "
swank".
These well-dressed men are proud and considered to serve as an inspiration to others. Frequently, on Saturday nights they meet up to compete in a fashion show of sorts. The Swenkas are judged both on what they are wearing (typically, expensive designer suits with well-known European names on their labels) and their choreographed movements (their 'swank'). There is an entrance fee to compete in these swank-offs and the winner of the night goes home with a portion of the money collected from the competitors. The men follow certain set values of swanking, such as physical cleanliness, sobriety and above all self-respect. In 2004,
Danish filmmaker
Jeppe Rønde
Jeppe Rønde (born 1973) is a Danish filmmaker.
Career
Rønde was born in Aarhus, Denmark and worked as a professional musician until he graduated in Film Studies and Art History from the University of Copenhagen in 2002.
In 2003, he directed ...
created a short documentary entitled ''The Swenkas'', free to view on
YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
and reviewed in 2005 in
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
as "a study in contrasts".
Elements of so-called "African dandyism" as expressed by the Swenkas are also found in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the participants are known as Sapeurs and the phenomenon is called
La Sape
La Sape, an abbreviation based on the phrase (French language, French; literally "Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People") and hinting to the French slang word ''sape'' which means "clothes" or ''sapé'', which means "dressed up", is a su ...
or Sapologie. According to a YouTube documentary entitled "The Congo Dandies" produced by
RT, Congolese soldiers returning home from France after WW2 brought with them a taste for the latest Parisian fashion, but
other sources say that as early as the 1920's West African colonial workers called "Bapopo" or "Coastmen" who came to the Congo, inspired the Congolese elite to cast off notions of ingrained inferiority caused by French and Belgian colonialism.
See also
*
La Sape
La Sape, an abbreviation based on the phrase (French language, French; literally "Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People") and hinting to the French slang word ''sape'' which means "clothes" or ''sapé'', which means "dressed up", is a su ...
- similar movement in
Republic of Congo
The Republic of the Congo, also known as Congo-Brazzaville, the Congo Republic or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo), is a country located on the western coast of Central ...
*
Vogue (dance)
Vogue, or voguing, is a highly stylized, modern house dance originating in the late 1980s that evolved out of the Harlem ballroom scene of the 1960s. It is inspired by the poses of models in fashion magazines.
It gained mainstream exposure when ...
References
External links
*
Zulu culture
Fashion aesthetics
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