The sound of struggle: South Africa's lasting legacy of cultural resistance

Thirty years after the end of apartheid in South Africa, the cultural resistance artists waged against white minority rule continues to inspire new generations of creators.

"Nelson Mandela himself always said that the struggle against apartheid was a collective effort," Tshepo Moloi, history lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, told RFI.

"People who were not in leadership had a great role too: the labourers, the workers and the cultural activists – people who sang, poets, painters, sculptors," said Moloi, a specialist on the liberation struggle.

"They played an important role for the international community to know what was happening in South Africa."

Thirty years after the long fight led South Africans to freedom, that cultural resistance has become part of the country's essence, inspiring new generations of artists.

Johannesburg, a hotbed of resistance

"Some people would easily understand the speeches by leaders like Oliver Tambo, who went around the world informing about the brutal system of apartheid, but some people would sympathise through music or poetry with what was happening inside the country," Moloi says.

The African National Congress, the liberation movement that has since become South Africa's ruling party, even had its own performing group, he says. Named the Amandla Cultural Ensemble after a local word for "power", it toured the world promoting the anti-apartheid cause.

But back in segregated South Africa, just making music as a black artist could be an act of defiance in itself.

Read more on RFI English

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