South Africa, like any other country, has a deep-rooted history, culture, and diverse identities. Zooming into the cultural aspect of it all, South African identity is often treated like shared inheritance, but in reality it’s shaped and sometimes gatekept by those with social, cultural, or economic power. Who gets to tell what story? & what makes it authentic?

The questions are multilayered and date back to previous generations. For decades, power imbalances have shaped who gets credit and who gets erased. We’ve seen people take from others’ plates without giving thanks or acknowledgment. Established music executives building empires on the creative labour of marginalized communities, and industries profiting from the cultural output of poor Black townships while giving little back. These patterns aren’t new, they sit within a long history of extraction, exploitation, and unequal recognition.

Allow me to explore three different scenarios and maybe, just maybe by the end of this article we will be able to answer the following questions; who gets to own South African identity, who gets to tell the stories and who gets erased in the process?

Who Really Owns the Game?

For years, I’ve written about local brands because our publication is deep rooted in authentic South African storytelling. One brand has long been central to reigniting local football culture from the inside out, building its identity through community, lived experience, and a genuine connection to the game. Another emerged from outside that world and recently shifted into creating vintage South African inspired football jerseys, placing the two in direct competition and sparking the discourse we’re now seeing online.

This goes beyond design overlap. It’s a question of cultural ownership and power. When an outsider brand adopts the aesthetics and heritage of township football culture, a culture deeply tied to Black South Africans, it becomes cultural commodification. Profiting from a legacy one isn’t rooted in while overshadowing those who built it from within. Ultimately, it asks… Is it really just business or is it a reminder of how easily a culture can be borrowed, marketed, and quietly written over?

Black Suburban Kids Cosplaying for Clicks

There’s a growing number of creatives in the South African creative scene whose work borrows heavily from Jozi street culture, township semiotics, and the visual language of ‘authentic’ Blackness despite not having lived those realities. 

Their practice leans on the spaces they never occupied. The aesthetics of the grit of inner-city chaos and the coded gestures of kasi life, but when these references are extracted from lived context and reassembled in galleries, lookbooks, and moodboards, the result becomes cultural cosplay. A stylised imitation that feels more like performance than memory, and while their work is celebrated for its “rawness” and “edge,” the communities whose experiences they “borrow” from remain largely absent from the room, except as inspiration. It raises a quiet but necessary question about who gets to translate black urban life into art, and who gets to profit from it.

Who Really Owns the Idea?

In the world of contemporary art, questions of ownership and creative credit often spark intense debates. When multiple creatives draw inspiration from the same cultural spaces, it can be difficult to claim something as rightfully yours. Yet, the question remains: how do we draw the line between inspiration and appropriation? Titles and themes may overlap, but the work itself can take very different forms… some stylised and conceptual, others documenting and celebrating real people and their lived stories.

This tension highlights a broader conversation about creative responsibility and the ethics of influence. It challenges audiences and practitioners alike to consider what it means to take inspiration versus borrowing someone else’s vision. At its core, the discussion is about respecting the integrity of creative work while acknowledging the shared cultural landscape from which it arises.

To close off, the stories we tell reveal as much about us as they do about the subjects we explore. Not every story carries equal weight, its authenticity comes from lived experience, insight, and respect for the people and culture it represents. Asking ourselves which stories we are telling, and why, is essential as it challenges us to consider whose voices are being centered, whose perspectives are overlooked, and what responsibility comes with shaping the narrative.

Who gets to own South African identity, who gets to tell the stories and who gets erased in the process?