Music of The Struggle

2024 marks the 30th anniversary of the end of Apartheid in South Africa and the 140th anniversary of the Berlin Africa Conference. Students at HTW Berlin (University of Applied Sciences) are developing the exhibition 1884/85 -1994: 110 Years of Anti-Colonial Resistance | The Struggle: South Africans in Exile in Berlin. To activate the exhibition, the lecture performance Music Of The Struggle with former Robben Island prisoner Luyanda Mpahlwa will take place at SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA. Music played a central role in the anti-apartheid struggle. Luyanda's lecture performance gives an overview of music and protest art, the most important South African and international musicians with their Struggle Songs, resistance songs and freedom anthems as well as their significance for the international anti-apartheid movement.

Luyanda Mpahlwa, born 1958, is an architect. After a five-year imprisonment on Robben Island, he fled in 1986 from South Africa to exile in Berlin. Here he worked as a DJ and activist, regularly played at anti-apartheid and other cultural events and returned to South Africa after the first free elections.