....Awu yebo Bafazi
The Joburg Theatre does not often carry a Swati accent through its halls, but on the nights of 7 and 8 August it did, twice over.
Somewhere between the sequins and the standing ovations, three women who grew up under the same Eswatini sky walked home with trophies from the fifth annual Basadi in Music Awards and each one, asked how it felt, gave nearly the same answer. It can only be God.
That refrain belonged first to Nomzamo 'Zamo' Dlamini, then to Nothando Hlophe, then to Zee Nxumalo. Three different rooms, three different crafts, one country claiming all of them.
Zamo: the hands behind the faces
Before make-up brushes became her trade, Zamo was already a voice people knew. Born and raised in the Kingdom, she started singing in church as a child, cut her first demo at fifteen, and watched it find steady rotation on Eswatini radio the kind of beginning that shapes an artist's ear for the rest of her career.
She went on to perform alongside the likes of Salif Keita and Mbongeni Ngema, graced stages at Bushfire Festival and the Eswatini International Trade Fair, and lent her voice to SiSwati children's television. Somewhere in the middle of all that, she picked up a second calling.
Since 2015, Zamo has built a name as a professional make-up artist, working behind the scenes on South African music videos and eventually counting gospel heavyweight Benjamin Dube among her clients.
It is not a career she describes as easy. New artists enter the industry every day, she has said, and the competition never lets up.
But she has kept at it long enough that the industry has started noticing back in June this year she was honoured at the Africa Under 40 CEOs Summit in Sandton, and now, months later, she stood on the Basadi stage as this year's Makeup Artist of the Year.
Representing Eswatini in a room that size, she said afterward, made the whole thing feel different. Heavier. More hers.
Nothando: The Methodist Medley Queen
Nothando Hlophe grew up between Manzini and Lobamba, singing first in Sunday school at Lobamba Christian Fellowship Church, the kind of small beginning that gospel careers are so often built from.
She placed seventh out of four hundred contestants in the 2008 Gospel Challenge, sang backup for Frans T Dlamini and Banele Dlamini, and eventually found her way into Women in Praise before striking out on her own with a debut solo album in 2016.
By 2019, she had swept the MTN SWAMA Awards Female Artist of the Year, Best Gospel Artist, Song of the Year, three trophies in one night.
Then came a different kind of chapter. Nothando stepped away from music between 2019 and 2022, a hiatus that coincided with her marriage to Prince Majahonkhe Dlamini, a son of King Mswati III, which brought her into the Swazi royal family with the title Inkhosikati LaHlophe.
When she returned to the stage in 2022 with a live album and a performance at The Great Revival in Mbabane, it was clear the years away hadn't dulled anything.
Her sound now sits somewhere between contemporary gospel and traditional Swati music, built on a voice she has always described as ministry before career.
That combination carried her all the way to Johannesburg this year, where she picked up Song of the Year for 'Methodist Medley' proof, if anyone needed it, that the girl from Enyakeni never really stopped singing for the same reason she started.
Zee Nxumalo: the frontrunner who almost didn't do Amapiano
Zandile 'Zee' Nxumalo was born in Eswatini on January 6, 2003 and moved with her family to Alexandra, Johannesburg, while still a child.
She has told interviewers she never planned to make amapiano music at all her instinct ran toward Afro-pop but a 2018 cover of Mlindo the Vocalist and DJ Maphorisa's 'AmaBlesser' posted to social media when she was just fifteen, pulled in over a million views and set a different course.
By 2023, her feature on 'Funk 55' alongside Shakes & Les, DBN Gogo, Ceeka RSA and Chley had gone five times platinum. A year later came the album Kwa Nxumalo and the EP Inja Ye Game, cementing her as one of amapiano's most reliable hitmakers.
Zee arrived at this year's Basadi as the most-nominated artist in the entire ceremony, with as many as seven nods spanning Artist of the Year, Amapiano Artist of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Styled Artist of the Year.
She had already had a big year by anyone's measure a Forbes Africa 30 Under 30 listing, more than one hundred million cumulative streams, a run of Red Bull Symphonic performances at Montecasino.
Walking away with Artist of the Year was less a surprise than a confirmation of a trajectory that has been climbing steadily since that first viral cover seven years ago.
What Basadi is, and why Eswatini mattered this time
The Basadi in Music Awards were founded by Hloni Modise in 2022, created in association with the South African Music Performance Rights Association to celebrate women working across the music and entertainment industries not just the artists on stage, but the managers, journalists, stylists, producers and presenters who keep the machinery running behind them.
This year marked the awards' fifth anniversary, staged under the theme 'REWIND Your BIMA, Your Way' and split across two nights at the Joburg Theatre: a Vanguard Circle night honouring the industry's behind-the-scenes professionals, followed by a main awards night for performers and hitmakers.
Five years in, BIMA also made its clearest move yet beyond South Africa's borders. Nominees this year came in from Lesotho, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and Eswatini, and for the first time the awards extended their SMS nomination platform previously South Africa only to cover Eswatini and Lesotho as well, letting Swati fans vote directly rather than relying solely on the online portal.
BIMA's advisory board framed it as evidence the awards were no longer asking whether women from different African countries belonged in the same conversation, but simply proceeding as though the answer had always been yes.
Against that backdrop, three wins from one small kingdom lands differently than it might have in a purely South African field.
Zamo, Nothando and Zee work in entirely separate corners of the industry beauty, gospel, amapiano and none of them shared a stage or a category.
What they shared was a country, a country that just spent one weekend proving it belongs at the centre of the conversation rather than the edge of it.
A list of all the winners
Basadi in Music Awards 2026 - Night One Winners
Artist Manager of the Year - Sannah Thwala
Entertainment Journalist of the Year - Ivie Ani (Nigeria)
Entertainment Radio Presenter of the Year - Boipelo Mooketsi
Entertainment Radio Producer of the Year- Letty Nyathela Chili
Hairstylist of the Year- Smangele Sibisi
Makeup Artist of the Year- Zamo Dlamini
TV Show Presenter of the Year - Candice Modiselle
Stylist of the Year - Khanyisile Mdletshe
Entertainment TV Producer of the Year - Minnie Dlamini
Podcast Presenter of the Year - Khanyi Mars
Song of the Year (Night Two)- Nothando Hlophe, 'Methodist Medley'
Artist of the Year (Night Two) - Zee Nxumalo
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