Post-African Fashion: The Bathu Sneaker Story

In this paper, I use the notion of Post-Africanism to rationalise the Bathu sneaker brand as an exemplar of post-African fashion in South Africa. Founded in 2015 by Theo Baloyi, Bathu has become an iconic and highly lucrative sneaker business that is synonymous with the apparel and street culture trends of youthful Black urbanites in South Africa. A discussion of the significance of sneakers within the global urban ecosystem is presented as a backdrop to the semiotic analysis of Bathu. The main argument proposed in this article is that the Bathu story is symbolic of how post-African innovation is a viable alternative to cultivating and growing the country's fashion industry, informed by the African experience but not limited to the logic of Afrocentrism.