South African animations win on MTV and YouTube

PhaaToonz is a group of 20-somethings who have created the popular local cartoon series Kronikles of Hip Hop

I don't recall ever watching a locally produced animation in my childhood. The closest thing to anything local was probably in the '90s, when The Lion King came out and there was that scene where the meerkat and warthog tell young Simba in Swahili (never mind that the accent is American), "Hakuna matata."

South African animated shows such as Jungle Beat and Teenage Mutant Azanians aren't short of quality - the cartoons just don't seem to connect and stick with a South African audience the same way Spongebob does.

But the prevalence of hip hop in the local pop culture scene has created an opportunity for a group of eight young creatives to change attitudes to homegrown animation.

They call themselves PhaaToonz and their web series, Kronikles Of Hip Hop, is regularly watched by more than 30000 YouTube viewers.

Episodes run for less than 10 minutes and use South African rap artists and pop-culture figures as characters in funny stories inspired by current events. Think The Boondocks but with celebrities instead of an old man and his grandchildren.

PhaaToonz got their big break at the 2014 South African Hip Hop Awards, where their videos were used as skits during the ceremony. The animated inserts took aim at both AKA and Cassper Nyovest during the height of their superficial beef.

"We approached the organisers about using some of our episodes during the awards," says co-animator Sthembiso "Bringo" Mpehle, 25. "It was our first time on a huge stage like that and the audience really liked it."

The other members of the PhaaToonz team - Kearatwa "KK" Sedidi, Lindokuhle "B1" Malloy, Neo Nkwe, Shimane Applegreen, Teddy Ngodela, Siyanda "Chapterz" Sibisi, rapper Thapelo "Thiaps" Molatlhegi and producer Tumelo "Tweezy" Mathebula - are all under 30.

"PhaaToonz is building Mzansi's greatest animation channel, one episode at a time," says Mathebula, with the bravado of a millennial.

The success of their web series attracted interest from television, and last year Kronikles won a huge batch of new fans when the first season was reworked for MTV Base.

We are creatives. You don't want to be limited to one thing, that's the worst thing you can do if you want to be innovative

"The first thing that attracted us to these guys was their irreverence and independence," says Tim Horwood, channel director for MTV Base and creative director for Viacom.

"It's great to see local content like this being made by young creatives. A lot of the content we consume is made overseas, with very US or Eurocentric references, so it's refreshing to see local characters, accents, innuendos and jokes in animation.

South African hip hop has had such mainstream recognition over the last few years and it's great to see that referenced in other art forms."

Nick Cloete, chairman of Animation South Africa, adds: "South African audiences are hungry for local animation content."

Though they are best known for their cartoons, PhaaToonz prefer to define themselves as a content creation hub, also supplying graphic design and music.

"We are creatives, dog," says Molatlhegi. "You don't want to be limited to one thing, that's the worst thing you can do if you want to be innovative.

The end game is having our own channel, like our own Cartoon Network. We want to empower young people to have their own PhaaToonz, while also influencing the industry through our music."

This year they released an online music project titled Iskhat'Samapopaai ("time for the cartoons") and worked on Khuli Chana's recent Respek video.

"We're planning dropping a new series called iGuri," says Mpehle. (Guri is township slang for "fight".) "It'll be like South Africa's own Celebrity Deathmatch."