Welcome to Africa’s Superheroes, a series of blogposts focused on discovering the heroes and villains featured in the works of African creatives.

African comics are on a path of steady growth and each passing day spawns a new character, a new hero, a new warrior. Join us as we enter the exciting world of African comics and thrust into the spotlight, the heroes of tomorrow!

Meet Kwezi, protector and defender of Gold City. When we first ran into Kwezi he already has all sorts of cool powers. He’s super-strong, he can fly and he can take a hit from a fully armored vehicle moving at top speed, yup standard comic stuff.

Kwezi means Star in Xhosa and as you guessed he’s the star of his own show, he gets up when he wants, flies to wherever he wants and beats up thugs and criminals when ever he’s bored, exactly what you’d expect a nineteen year old who discovered he had powers to do!

I must say what I really love about him is that he’s normal, simple. He got up one day, found out he had powers and has been having fun with it ever since, but what I love most is how irresponsible he can be sometimes, having literally little to no regard for authority and to a large extent that’s what his story is about…responsibility!

So yes, even though he starts off very brash as the story progresses he learns a lot growing along the way. Kwezi’s creator Loyiso Mkize has spoken about how he hopes the character would become a cult hit and a hero that can finally represent South African youth in a really authentic way.

In many ways you can say the character has succeeded in doing just that, but for now we’ll just enjoy the ride as this young hero continues to kick ass and not feel shy to brag about it on social media!

In the end Loyiso can be proud, he’s given us a pretty dope character! You can follow Kwezi here and don’t forget to sign up to our email list if you haven’t already, you can also follow us om our various social media platforms, we’d love to hear from you!

So until the next one, stay awesome!