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Africori Celebrates Four Wins at the 2026 Basadi in Music Awards

MaWhoo, Kamo Mphela and Monique Bingham honoured as the women-led awards celebrate their fifth anniversary

Johannesburg, South Africa: Africori is celebrating an outstanding showing at the fifth annual Basadi in Music Awards (BIMAs), with its artists taking home four awards across the two-day ceremony held at the Joburg Theatre on 8 and 9 August.

Meaning “women” in Setswana and Sesotho, the Basadi in Music Awards have spent the past five years creating a dedicated platform to recognise the talent, impact and influence of women across the music industry. This year’s milestone edition, held under the theme REWIND, looked back at that journey while celebrating the artists and creatives continuing to move African music forward.

Africori’s four wins reflected that breadth, spanning amapiano, visual storytelling, radio impact and international influence.

MaWhoo emerged as one of the ceremony’s standout winners, taking home Amapiano Artist of the Year as well as the Highest Airplay Award for her hit single “Bengicela.” The double win caps another significant moment for an artist whose unmistakable voice and presence have made her one of the defining figures in contemporary South African music.

Kamo Mphela was awarded Music Video of the Year for “Partii,” recognising the dynamic visual world that has become inseparable from her artistry. From music and dance to fashion and performance, Kamo continues to build a creative language entirely her own, with “Partii” capturing the scale, energy and precision that have made her a formidable performer.

Completing Africori’s four-win night was acclaimed vocalist and songwriter Monique Bingham, who received the International Recognition Award. A celebrated voice in house music with a career that has connected audiences across continents, Bingham’s recognition speaks to both the longevity of her work and the enduring relationship between South African dance music and the wider global house community.

The wins arrive at a fitting moment for the Basadi in Music Awards, which have grown over five editions into an important celebration of women across the African music ecosystem.

“We’re incredibly proud of MaWhoo, Kamo Mphela and Monique Bingham. These four wins celebrate not only their individual artistry, but the diversity of styles, sounds and cultures that make African music so exciting,” says Adam Tiran, General Manager, Africori. “These wins speak to the range of women we have the privilege of working with, from artists shaping the sound and culture of right now to those whose work has made an impact across borders and generations. Basadi has created an important space to celebrate women on their own terms, and to have four Africori wins as the awards mark five years is something worth celebrating.”

For Africori, the evening was also a celebration of three women occupying distinctly different spaces within music, yet collectively demonstrating the depth of talent shaping the industry today. From MaWhoo’s command of the amapiano landscape and Kamo Mphela’s boundary-pushing performance language to Monique Bingham’s international legacy, the four wins offer plenty to celebrate.

AFRICORI – 2026 BASADI IN MUSIC AWARDS WINS

Amapiano Artist of the Year: MaWhoo

Highest Airplay Award: MaWhoo – “Bengicela”

Music Video of the Year: Kamo Mphela – “Partii”

International Recognition Award: Monique Bingham

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Author: entertainment entertainment from entertainment on behalf of music.

Source – MyPR

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Top Star Drive-In: The Cinema on the Mountain of Gold

The Ferreira Dump began growing in the late 1800s, composed of the crushed rock and chemical residue left over after early, inefficient mining processes had extracted as much gold as the technology of the time allowed. By the 1960s, it was a flat-topped, man-made mesa overlooking the city. In a stroke of entrepreneurial genius, the surface was tarred and the Top Star Drive-In was opened. It quickly became a South African institution. Its appeal was not just the movies, but the unparalleled view: as the sun set, the massive white screen would flicker to life against a backdrop of the glowing skyscrapers of the Central Business District, separated from the viewer only by the elevated M2 highway.

In the decades before television arrived in South Africa (1976), the Top Star was a primary social hub. It was a democratic space in an undemocratic time; while the city below was strictly segregated, the “car” served as a private bubble that allowed a degree of social freedom not found in traditional theaters. For many Johannesburgers, the Top Star was a site of nostalgic rites of passage—first dates, family outings where children were piled into the back of station wagons with blankets and flasks of tea, and the Saturday “car market” where the parking lot transformed into a sprawling hub for buying and selling second-hand vehicles.