The City of Joburg’s Arts and Culture and Heritage directorate, under the City’s Community Development department, hosted a two-day animated film project that ended at the Moses Kotane Primary School in Braamfisherville, Soweto on Thursday, 26 February 2026.

The learners were treated to a film Izinganekwane Zika Gogo. The film project is part of Primary Schools Film Screenings.

The two-day project started on Wednesday, 25 February, at Bree Primary School in Mayfair. It culminated with the Moses Kotane screening on Thursday. Grade 1, 2 and 3 learners were treated to a special programme that featured a live reading of Izinganekwane Zika Gogo, followed by a screening of the animated film, Upekwa no Nogwaja.

Fundiswa Ngcobo took the pupils on a memorable experience of song and dance roped into the educational film project.

The event invoked the nostalgia of growing up with grandmothers telling young ones bed-time stories. The era before TVs, iPads, smartphones was revived, and the real African stories came alive, right there in a school hall, mesmerising the young minds.

The learners were engaged throughout, responding with excitement and curiosity as they immersed themselves in the magic of African storytelling. Each learner also received a themed booklet extending the storytelling experience and reinforcing the importance of preserving and learning African folk tales.

“In the age where our children are inundated with technology and exposed to all sorts of information, most of which is not educational, it gives me pleasure to see projects like this one bringing back the good old African storytelling in the same format as the Cartoon Network, which the young ones can relate with,” said the City’s Arts and Culture director Vuyisile Mshudulu.

The brainchild of creative director Zuzekile Ndzunge, the film project started as a book in 2003, which was later adapted into a film in 2025. The project is set to expand into all South African languages and run in all national schools.

Written by Maseipati Tsotsotso