Mzwakhe Mbuli, or the peoples’ poet as he is known in South Africa, was born in Sophiatown but was forced to move to Soweto when his family’s house was bulldozed by the regime. Mbuli’s first performance was at the funeral of an anti-apartheid acitivist. He went on to perform at…
Millers Point: A community under the hammer Get a sense for what is at stake in selling off Millers Point public housing with this interactive website from the Sydney Morning Herald. Learn more about the history of the area and the government’s plans for the future. Most importantly, you get…
Leichhardt used to be a neighbourhood where you knew all your neighbours. In our Leichhardt edition of There Goes the Neighbourhood, one resident states, ‘My grandparents live next door and my uncle lives across the road.’ Leichhardt is known for being a tight-knit community of (mostly) Italian migrants. The influx of Italians…
Lion Mountain Studio is a community project initiated by members of Sydney’s Sierra Leone community. The project was devised to assist people from Sierra Leone and other African communities to gain access and training in music making and recording in an informal structure, with the long-term goal of building the…
If you are a longtime listener of Afrikan Connexions, then this song will definitely remind you of a sunny Sunday afternoon. Recorded in 1965, after the assassination of Malcolm X, Miriam Makeba delivers a joyous song, praising the greatest parts of a great man. We can only imagine what a…
For over a decade, Marrickville has been the frontier for the gentrification creep. If you’ve lived in Marrickville for more than 20 years, you probably remember when the first white-Australian family moved into your street – or maybe you were that white family? Look at Marrickville and you’ll see the…
This interview first went on air in 1985 as part of an Afrika Connexions news segment, which was at 1 pm every Sunday. Maxwell Nemadzivhanani was virtually a member of the Afrikan Connexions team, although his primary role was chief representative of the Pan African Congress of Azania. He travelled…
When we started this project we spent a lot of time searching the Internet for people to interview. We were surprised, when we were looking for people to talk about online activism and its relationship with direct action, how hard it was to track down some of the key players.…
Michael Scott is the original Afrika Connexions presenter. Way back in the day, Michael worked on an anti-apartheid program at community radio station 2SER. The program was run by SASCA – a coalition of South African students who had fled their country following the Soweto uprising. They had 15 minutes…
During the time of the project, many things happened in the station’s broadcast area that meant the focus of an area had to change slightly. For example, we had planned on doing some work in Woolloomooloo but then the NSW Government decided to sell off Millers Point housing estate and…