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WiCDS Wednesday: Cultural resistance on Robben Island

Please join us as author Neo Lekgotla laga Ramoupi discusses his powerful book on music, resistance and culture on Robben Island

will be in discussion with  and in a session chaired by Zoya Naidoo.

12 August, 13.30-15.30

In person at the WiCDS office (13th floor, Es’Kia Mphahlele Building, cnr Jorrisen and Jan Smuts, above µÚÒ»³Ô¹ÏÍø Art Museum) or online (registration via the QR code on the poster).

Robben Island: Songs of Struggle, Izingoma Zomzabalazo

In the annals of South African history, Robben Island occupies a sacred and painful space. It is remembered as the prison fortress where the apartheid regime banished those who dared to imagine freedom. Yet within those stone walls, another history pulsed: one not only of resistance and incarceration, but of music. A living, breathing cultural memory. Professor Neo Lekgotla laga Ramoupi has given that memory its rightful place in history through his groundbreaking project Izingoma Zomzabalazo Esiqithini (Songs of Struggle on Robben Island). Driven by a deep sense of responsibility formed during his tenure as a researcher and oral historian at the Robben Island Museum (2000– 2003), Professor Ramoupi embarked on this book project as both a scholarly mission and an act of intellectual activism. His work not only documents the role of song as a form of cultural resistance but also fills critical gaps in South Africa’s liberation historiography, particularly the erasure of Pan-Africanist and Black Consciousness contributions.

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