At iKasi Creative we pride ourselves in South African centering youth creative industries of film and media. For our NGO Youth Month is of immense importance in that our purpose is to celebrate youth.
This month we commemorate the youth that were killed at the hands of a deeply racially segregated and unjust apartheid regime. We are focused on educating South African youth creatively and placing agency in the youth’s hands to tell their own stories, and to create their own projects without feeling ill-equipped in the media as a result of apartheid.
This Youth Month, we highlight four film and media industry breakouts in South Africa that you should know about. These industry breakouts are prime examples of the freedom from and resistance to social, industry, and funding barriers present to the majority of South African youth.
Faiz Toefy
Creative Director at Half&Halve
Half&Halve, a youth-led production house, has taken the South African broadcasting and media production industry to new heights focusing on South African narratives and storytelling. In a campaign with Studio88 x Adidas, released this past April, Toefy helped with creative direction and took all the campaign shots. In the past year, Faiz is making history collaborating with Milk and Cookies Festival in 2025 – filming Artist Kaytranada in Johannesburg, as well as working with BCKRDS “to showcase the depth and abundance of Capetonian culture” on the project Spotify M.O.M (Mother Of Music).
Toefy believes that “creating something meaningful…should be… done with immense care and creativity”. Toefy, now approaching twenty-four, has only widened his pre-production, production, and post-production skills in pursuing his creative visions.
Raeesah Noor-Mahomed
Social Scientist, Artist & Activist
You have heard their name on television, following the COP28 Dubai Conference in 2023, or perhaps you have heard of them as the Minister of Climate Change in the State of Youth Address 2024.
Twenty-three year old artist, activist, and social scientist Raeesah Noor-Mahomed is an organiser of social justice initiatives and local South African fundraising efforts, integrating art, culture, music, and social change. Noor-Mahomed uses various social media platforms, on top of personal and in-person networking, to create a reliable and honest culture of engagement with users on and beyond the screen. In South Africa, a country still deeply impacted by spatial segregation and discrimination, Noor-Mahomed’s intentional focus on local communities is key to leading youth toward greater social development. Noor-Mahomed has sustained an admirable commitment to improving social, environmental, and cultural spaces in South Africa through using social media landscape, which reflects just how effective these media platforms can work as tools of change, collaboration, and of taking action and leadership as a youth.
Na’ilah Ebrahim
News24 Business Journalist
Winner of the regional Western Cape award ‘Young Journalist of the Year’ of the Vodacom Journalist Awards, Na’ilah Ebrahim currently writes as a journalist for News24 but has culminated an impressive repertoire of news coverage and analysis throughout her career. Ebrahim was a finalist for the African Digital Media Awards for her contribution to the “Debunk Desk” amidst the National Election Misinformation throughout 2024. Na’ilah is dedicated to bringing to South Africa relevant news and honest representation of the country at large.
Kopano Mashike
Creator of the “City of Shacks” project
Kopano Mashike packed up her bare necessities and left her home with one aim: Collaboration for #TheOccupation Movement, to bring to life the “City of Shacks” Project with no funding aside from mutual aid and a network of funders for the place of Cissie Gool House (Old Woodstock Hospital). More than 900 people have been living in Cissie Gool House for over forty years, and in a struggle with the City of Cape Town to keep their home, the momentum of #TheOccupation has grown.
The City of Shacks, created by Mashike, managed to feed over 2000 people on Christmas Day 2024, and provided the space and attentive care in which the child residents of Cissie Gool House could celebrate and commune altogether. Using social media, Mashike and her team continue to document and form various forms of outreach projects to highlight the persistence of segregation and the continuance of apartheid across South Africa’s black and coloured communities.
Another year has come where we remember the 16th of June 1976, we recount youth in resistance and in opposition to a system designed to squander the vastness and accessibility of education in South Africa.
At iKasi Creative, we celebrate South Africa’s youth recurrently, we actively support and educate youth from marginalised backgrounds to promote and create their own projects where it is made central that Great Stories Begin at Home. Youth film and media industry breakouts, Faiz Toefy, Raeesah Noor-Mahomed, Na’ilah Ebrahim, and Kopano Mashike, have integrated their artistry with genuine concern for the state and future of South Africa and its youth. We are proud and encourage supporting these youth who are changing the country for the better.