Wednesday, 7 June 2023
Gopolang Botlhokwane is based in Mahikeng in North West, where he writes about culture. He’s also interested in social justice, sport, and geopolitics and international relations. He has worked previously as a radio producer and broadcaster.
The cultural worker’s film Sesasedi sa Tsodio explores the sociopolitical contexts of one of kwaito’s biggest songs, honouring music as an archive of migrant culture.
Workers sit along Mahikeng’s main road day in and day out, hoping to be hired for odd jobs, while the government fails consistently to address the issue of unemployment.
The pioneering producer and sound engineer played a large part in altering the course of South African hip-hop with his contributions to both kwaito and motswako.
Tebogo Chologi’s The Shack invites a more imaginative way of considering the structures in impoverished settlements and the lives of the people who inhabit them.
The structure, now close to becoming a white elephant, is a metaphor for the Bantustan it was meant to prop up. It was always doomed to fail.
The veteran emcee from Chicago is finally getting his dues with a series of albums inspired by the struggle for racial justice. But his political ambiguity endures.
With her third studio album, British vocalist Laura Mvula defies the critics who said her music wasn’t mainstream enough and rewards fans with her boldest album to date.
The legendary group and their producer took Setswana traditional music from villages to the world. But after a long hiatus and years of decline, can Ramco do it again?
In the North West’s Ratlou Municipality teenage girls living in impoverished communities, without access to decent healthcare and proper policing, endure statutory rape and exploitation.
This second of a two-part series looks at how the young activist came to symbolise the rage of a generation for whom the Rainbow Nation represented only false hopes and shattered dreams.
The legacy of the first South African boxer to fight in a multiracial bout at home during the height of apartheid mirrors that of his province. Once boxing royalty, they are now not even an afterthought.
The late Jabulani Tsambo – aka HHP – was a postapartheid South African icon. In the wake of anti-migrant violence in the country, his continental politics and legacy take on new meaning.
After a decade of setting motswako’s agenda, there’s an expectation that as the last standing founder of the hip-hop subgenre, Khulane Morule must address the realities of young people on the ground.
What was a dream coup for the people of North West, finally having a team in the elite league, turned into a nightmare when the club was reduced to a ‘tribal team’.
For much of his career Motlapele Morule has attempted to capture and make sense of the precarious position young black people occupy in democratic South Africa.
A brief history of the genre that sprouted in Mahikeng, and the political conditions that allowed it to become South Africa’s seminal