91Èȱ¬

For playwright Mike Van Graan, satire remains a powerful tool: but the targets have changed.  His new play, ‘Return of the Ancestors’, imagines murdered activist Steve Biko visiting modern South Africa. Encountering government corruption, poverty and police brutality, Biko begins to question whether his sacrifice was worth it.

As a mixed-race African and adoptee, poet Phillippa Yaa de Villiers has always felt like an outsider in her own culture – something she says has been an advantage as an artist.  Free of the constraints of a traditional role, she simply tries to tell her truth as generously as she can. 

Arts journalist Percy Mabandu believes that jazz is the most democratic of all art forms, and so uses it to measure how far his country has come over two decades. Like democracy, the music demands strict collaboration but also handsomely rewards individuality. 

Jazz singer and pianist Nomfundo Xaluva performs a live rendition of Yakhal’Inkomo and explains why this song, which holds deep meaning for black South Africans as an anthem of the anti-apartheid struggle, still inspires musicians today.