Hailing from Pitsane in the southern part of Botswana, Manele shared through an interview with Arts&Culture that his art serves as an antidote to his everyday life challenges. He stated that once he immerses himself in crafting his art nothing else matters. “My love or motivation started just as an escapism basically an escape for me. It was an escape from the world for me, the realities of this world. As mostly we find ourselves always going through something in this life,” Manele said. Though his venture into visual art was mostly purported by escapism from this side of the world, Manele stated that he was also influenced by his love for anime, which he became besotted with growing up. He said anime as most people call it, serves as a typical example for escaping from the real world as it is all about superpowers and superstitions.
“I grew up watching the Dragon Ball Z anime, which featured Go Ku the likes of Naruto. I was into that and that is the time when I developed the love for all of this as it took me away from the realities of this world,” Manele happily said. Little did he know that not only was this reason enough for him to fall in love with art and anime, it would later influence his speciality in doing art. As he reminisced, he shared that when he picked up the pencil all he could draw was the cartoons or characters he watched from the anime shows. “From my time of watching anime, that is the time I developed the love and I started doing my own comic and developed my own stories that tell a story that runs in my mind,” he said. Though he specialises in cartoons/anime drawings, Manele highlighted that he has not restricted himself to only that as he taps into other areas. “At the moment I only do animated cartoons but not in motion just still pictures. But that does not mean I am not doing that only, I also do abstract painting and masquerade art, among other things,” he said.
