iQHAWE Media Restarts Issue 14 With Annual Coffee-Table Book Plan

What changed

Création Africa is backing iQHAWE Media’s next chapter, helping Renaè Mangena and Anastatia Nkhuna restart production of Issue 14 and move toward one annual coffee-table book, supported by digital covers during the year. The issue will focus on South African fashion businesses in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, with launches and pop-ups planned across the three cities.

Why it matters

iQHAWE began in 2019 as a way to document the people working behind the spotlight: photographers, cinematographers, directors, designers and other creatives whose work audiences consume without always seeing who made it. Since 2020, Mangena and Nkhuna have run it as a magazine, agency and non-profit organisation.

That makes Issue 14 more than a delayed publication. It is a test of whether a slower, physical format can give emerging creative businesses a durable record of how they grew. The first coffee-table edition, tested at Decorex in 2024, sold out. That result gave the pair evidence that print still has a place when it offers something more lasting than a monthly product quickly replaced by the next one.

The model also reflects a practical limit. Monthly issues demanded too much time and too many resources, so iQHAWE moved toward one carefully produced physical release each year. Digital covers can keep the platform active between editions, while the book becomes an archive rather than simply another piece of content.

The strongest case for that archive is the change it can show over time. Nkhuna recalled featuring the DJ duo Nouveux of Soundset Sunday when they were starting events at Royale, in an alley; when iQHAWE returned to their story, they were working with Nike. That is the publication’s real value: not just finding overlooked people, but preserving the moment before their work becomes widely recognised.

The planned launches and pop-ups could extend that function beyond the page, connecting the featured designers with audiences in three South African cities. A capsule collaboration and global expansion remain ambitions, but the immediate achievement is simpler and more concrete: Issue 14 is moving again, and iQHAWE has a model designed to keep documenting the people who make culture happen.