Keleketla! Library

https://keleketla.org/2025/05/02/69-years-to-the-treason-trial/

69 Years to the Treason Trial How do you pursue a meaningful, generative, effective and efficient conversation with a city that doesn’t listen? Mothofatša daai ding. Humanise that city. Mothofatša daai ding. Personify tha…

If you are in Berlin on Saturday 26 April, come to HKW from 6pm!

May 2025 marks 10 years since we staged an ethical exile from the Drill Hall, Joubert Park, Johannesburg, a state-owned, city-neglected site of memory that was renovated with a budget of circa R10 million, and then practically left to deteriorate. Our exile was motivated by operational health and safety - the lack thereof - as the primary beneficiaries and creators of our work were children of the inner city of Johannesburg and beyond.

Built circa 1904, serving largely as a colonial military barrack, the Drill Hall was a host of the 1956 Treason Trial of South Africa during apartheid. Abandoned in the mid-80´s, it served as refuge for homeless people, until two tragic fires in 2000 and 2001 woke the city up to either demolish the site, or declare it a site of memory, and a site for the community. Thus, it was re-opened in 2004 freshly renovated, only to be abandoned. Keleketla! Library entered the site in 2008, taking over from, and inheriting the bureaucratic struggle with the municipality from the Joubert Park Project, for the upkeep, maintenance, care and accountability of the city. This means that Keleketla!, founded and run by then students and young activists, simultaneously ‘opened the doors of education and culture’ for the community while mobilizing the city administration to account, with no success.

Nonetheless, beauty prevailed! This exile in 2015, therefore, was traumatic. Nonetheless, as custodians of the work created between 2008 and 2015 at the Drill Hall, we are humbled to present this document on behalf of all creators.

This document, 69 Years to the Treason Trial: The Drill Hall Arts Advocacy Project, is as much a letter of rage to the City of Johannesburg, as it is an endearing tribute to all the creators, the true recipients.

90% of the work herein was made at the Drill Hall, between 2008 and 2015. 95% of the work has never been made public.

Who made this work? See next post.

Skaftien #6 13+ km around the Drill Hall Arts Advocacy Project
Haus der Kulturen der Welt
22.–23.11.2024

Bana ba Baloyi? (Children of the Witcher?)

Sun Xa Experiment led a performance that has been conceived as a sonic chronicle of the trials, tribulations, and insurmountable triumphs of the Drill Hall, serving as a mirror of the restless land/people and their riotous movements across space and time. The narrative unfolds over a two-night concert at HKW’s Miriam Makeba Auditorium, both a summoning and a reckoning. 

The title of the offering is borrowed from one of the songs in the forthcoming two-night set – the notion of sorcery/witchcraft carries a plethora of meanings that challenges society to reframe them in terms that blasts open possibilities of placing colonialism as one of the many ways of thinking about trickery, consumption and annihilation on the one hand, as well as emancipation, healing and cleansing on the other, as central to reclamation of boloi/sorcery/witchcraft as (soft)power for the former and currently oppressed peoples of the world. The metaphysical collaborator on stage—coarse salt, symbolic of cleansing and fortification amongst many other functions—is a vital component of the performance, complicating the question of who exactly are Bana ba Baloyi, eintlek? 

Cast Sun Xa Experiment:

Lebohang More (line)
Buyisiwe Njoko (Lead Singer, Toys)
Lerato Seitei (lead guitar and vocals)
Tebogo Mkhize (bass guitar and vocals)
Karolo More (Dance/Movement and Singing)
Benedict Watte (Djembe drums, toys, percussion, gong and singing)

Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media

13km-and-more Radius from the Drill Hall (Arts Advocacy Project)

Because we are Keleketla! before we are a Library Many people do not know that Malose Malahlela and Rangoato Hlasane, the co-co-founders of Keleketla! Library are the co-founders of innacitycommunity, a then student collective at the then Mariston…

It's been a long journey to shape our project Skaftien #6 in Berlin. The immense administrative work it takes to negotiate and create a favorable environment for to be able to act out its full mandate without compromising our institutional values, especially operating outside the continent, is something I'm proud of. The mastery that comes with time, and the default understanding that we're 'bigger than the tick box' - for those who don't know that's also the title of our chapter in the publication "Creating Spaces Non-Formal Art/s Education and Vocational Training for Artists in Africa Between Cultural Policies and Cultural Funding"

Of course, such a risky process can only be executed with like-minded individuals like Dr. Director of , a key player who guided our ship through murky waters of German institutions from the background.

We are proud of this collaboration with Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), and we have a beautiful offering for the 22nd and 23rd of November. Link in bio. Also, see posters that are circulating around Berlin in our stories.

What more can I say but to give thanks.

MEET YOUR AUTHORS HERE AND AT THE LAUNCH!! IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

Mawethu Nkosana; Moshibudi Motimele; Ayabulela Mhlahlo; Nomancotsho Pakade; Gorata Chengeta; Tumi Mogorosi; Same Mdluli; Rangoato Hlasane and Zukolwenkosi Zikalala Mawethu Nkosana; Moshibudi Motimele; Ayabulela Mhlahlo; Nomancotsho Pakade; Gorata Chengeta; Tumi Mogorosi; Same Mdluli; Rangoato Hlasane and Zukolwenkosi Zikalala

BTW better later than never! You can meet your authors during sundowners at the rooftop. All roads lead to Keleketla!!

UNMISSABLE. Save the date! Free and open to all.

Image on cover slide: Cyprian Mpho Shilakoe. ‘My Ancestors’ (Ed 1/25, c.1970). Woodcut. 30,5 x 40cm. Courtesy of the Johannesburg Art Gallery with kind permission of Faith Nelly Shilakoe.

we making books baby...

Keleketla! Library, in partnership with the Narrative Enquiry for Social Transformation (NEST) is proud to present our latest publication: 'Wondering Hand(s) and Spirited Ink: Snapshots into the Black Public Humanities'

Edited by: Moshibudi Motimele and Rangoato Hlasane with contributions by: Mawethu Nkosana; Moshibudi Motimele; Ayabulela Mhlahlo; Nomancotsho Pakade; Gorata Chengeta; Tumi Mogorosi; Same Mdluli; Rangoato Hlasane and Zukolwenkosi Zikalala.

EXTRA Special shout-out to Chimurenga for design mentorship and quality control, INVADE- for design and layout and PULP Paperworks for Book Production.

In fond memory of Professor Bhekizizwe Peterson - for his timeless and priceless mentorship and fellowship.

Know more here: https://keleketla.org/2024/05/28/wondering-hands-and-spirited-ink-snapshots-into-the-black-public-humanities/

PLEASE VISIT keleketla dot org FOR A LIST OF STOCKISTS in the coming week!

Publishers’ selling price: ZAR250, stockists will of course add their %

Information on a series of launches coming soon, starting at the Keleketla! mothership.

How do libraries act as correctives? How do they become sites of intervention, gathering, and radical storytelling? This event—co-presented by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School and Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong—brings together the C& Center of Unfinished Business in Berlin, Keleketla! Library in Johannesburg, and Sister Library in Mumbai to explore the transformative potential of libraries in the cultural field.

The C& Center of Unfinished Business discusses how an itinerant reading room highlights the traces of colonialism in the holdings of existing institutional libraries. Keleketla! Library introduces how a library initiates advocacy programs to bring stakeholders in the fields of culture, heritage, and governance. Sister Library investigates the tension between temporary and semi-permanent reading sites to contribute to discussions of feminisms.

Join us Monday, April 24, 10–11:30am EDT. Kindly register at the link in the VLC’s bio.

Image credit

Keleketla! Library, The Allure of Gold and Other Solidarity Stories, 2018. Installation view as part of Keleketla! Library, 10. Berlin Biennale, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU2), Berlin. Photo by Timo Ohler. Courtesy the artists.

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