The Voice of Africa by Kelly Khumalo: Black Face or just Cognitive Dissonance?
The first time I saw the cover of the oh so marvelous album of Kelly Khumalo released in 2020, I was uncomfortable. My skin probably shredded a bit. It was just so uncomfortable to see her covered in what seems to be black paint in the name of portraying Africa. This irk then caused me to go and listen to the album. I would maybe find inspiration for this act I had considered to be a bit hideous. I also went on as far as to watch her reality show that is currently showing on Showmax ‘Life with Kelly Khumalo’. When she is asked on the show about her cover choice for her album, she laments that she wanted to show the strength of Africa, she further went on to describe how uShaka and his warriors would cover themselves in cow dough to be invisible to their enemies so they would defeat them in war, she made this reference when talking about the undisputable most successful song on the album ‘Empini’.
Now, why would I think of the cover of this album as a case of cognitive dissonance or even Black face ? To unpack this a bit, it is important that we remember that Kelly Khumalo has publicly admitted to undergoing skin bleaching procedures. She has termed this as doing what makes her feel beautiful. In one of her interviews she states that as a little child, she grew up watching people alter their bodies and had find this to be fascinating. To paraphrase her; she marveled at how one can be able to change herself to which ever extent. These comments clearly show that Kelly is comfortable with these procedures that she is currently undergoing. But not just comfortable, she seems to be pleased with them. Kelly Khumalo is not the only South African celebrity that have lightened their skin, one can make a quick reference to Khanyi Mbau who have publicly admitted that brightening her skin makes her feel beautiful, desirable and even sexy.
It is not unpopular for public figures to lighten their skins. Media is saturated with light skinned people who have used their skins for commercial gains. These light skinned public figures are used heavily on music videos, win beauty pageants and feature in Billboard charts. It is then not peculiar that we see Kelly Khumalo also falling to this trap. This is against the backdrop of her previous successful albums with a much darker complexion. Kelly Khumalo admits that even though she has bleached her skin, she is still an African woman and that women should not be constrained in what they do with their bodies. In so much as this may be true, this piece does not want to call Kelly on her agency but it is to question her loyalty to the so called Africa against the Western understanding of beauty.
Kelly has fell into the trap of using the western lense in thinking about beauty, making herself desirable for the broader audience. She has made her skin look as closer as it possibly can to that of white women who are one of the most privileged groups in society. What I however find troubling and even to reference cognitive dissonance as the title suggests is that; when she talks about making a big come back to the music scene to claim her relevance, she doesn’t use these same western standards that she has tapped into for the sake of desirability, but instead, we see her smearing her face with black paint to mirror what Africa looks like.
Kelly constantly refers to dark African women as beautiful on her show when making reference to the choice of cover for her album, the same Kelly Khumalo that paints her face black to depict this beauty but lives her life on a much lighter skin that she is currently trying to modify to look even more lighter. I have also thought about this as Black face, perhaps Kelly is aware of all the privileges that come with being a light skinned woman, something that her colleague Pearl Thusi argue against, but for the sale of the album it is distasteful to go back to the so called depiction of an African warrior in a dark skin when she can easily do it in her African bleached skin.
It is obvious that Kelly Khumalo distastes being a dark skinned woman, hence the constant procedures that she is having on her skin to look lighter. Perhaps she likes being dark skinned but because of the industry that she is in, she must constantly keep up with the trends and even look lighter, but what cannot be accepted is her using the dark skin narrative for no genuine reasons. She uses it not to fight against the stereotypes that mimic dark skinned women as undesirable and in most instances angry and dramatic but to make profit. It is also sad to see that Kelly Khumalo make no mention of the same women that she is mimicking in her cover but mythifying them as a demagogical figure that does not exist in the actual world.
