Francois van Coke has spent two decades fronting a band that changed the sound of Afrikaans music and building a solo career that stands entirely on its own.
As Fokofpolisiekar's frontman, he helped drag Afrikaans music out of its conservative, easy-listening comfort zone and into something louder and messier. He pioneered a genre that could hold rebellion and vulnerability in the same breath.
Born François Badenhorst in Bellville in 1980, he grew up in Cape Town's northern suburbs before punk gave him a new name and a new outlet for feeling like an outsider in a fairly ordinary Afrikaans household.
Twenty-three years and two parallel careers later, Van Coke is still writing.
His 2025 solo album, Die Ruimte, has just picked up a Sama nomination for Best Rock Album, he dropped a documentary looking back on a decade of solo work earlier this year and his annual Francois van Coke & Vriende show returns to Pretoria's SunBet Arena in October. Plus Fokofpolisiekar is set to play Jägermeister Haus of Kühl in Johannesburg on 25 July.
We spoke to him about fatherhood reshaping his songwriting, what it's like revisiting 10 years of his own catalogue on camera and what keeps him motivated to continue making music.
Congratulations on your Sama nomination for Best Rock Album. Looking back on that album Die Ruimte (The Space), what do you think it says about where you are at this point in your life and career?
It's pretty relevant to where I am in my life. I got the title from something I say to my daughter all the time. When I started writing the album, she was about six or seven and very much into space exploration. I started saying to her: "I love you more than space." And that kind of made it into the lyrics and eventually the album title.
Obviously everything around us influences what we do. Having children and being a dad obviously influenced me a lot, especially on that album. And there's a specific song for my kids on there and I've never done that before. I wrote the song for both my children—my daughter Alex, 9, and my son Max, 5. So, yeah, it reflects pretty much where I am in my life.
Earlier this year you released a 30-minute documentary, Happy en Lucky, looking back on the past decade of your solo career. It features interviews with many of your collaborators from over the years in addition to yourself. What made you feel like this was the right time to look back?
It's actually quite weird. I was 10 years from being a solo artist and I don't know if I saw the documentary panning out the way it did because I just wanted to tell the story of my 10 years as a solo artist. Like: "These are the songs I made and this is that." But I gave the director, Eric T Graham, the project and told him to run with it.
He started making it a little bit more personal about my relationships and stuff, which I guess people can relate to a little bit more. It was very flattering and humbling, just my peers saying such nice things about me. I felt humbled and stoked that they feel that way about working with me, writing songs and doing stuff together for the past 10 years.
You've come a long way from the youthful rebellion of Fokofpolisiekar to being a husband and father making introspective music. How do you feel like you've evolved as a songwriter?
I think Fokofpolisiekar was also kind of introspective. The difference is it was me as much as I can be me but it's five of us in that thing. You know what I mean? My solo thing is completely my voice. In the band there's five voices that are very close to each other and very good mates but it's five different perspectives, not just one.
Our kind of ideals, the way we see the world and the way we see where we fit in is kind of the same as what it was. But I think we live completely different lives to when we started Fokofpolisiekar 23 years ago. I would hope it changed along the way because I don't think we would have survived it.
When we started the band we were trying to kind of liberate ourselves from our conservative upbringing. And we tried to push as much of ourselves into that process, like partying as hard as we possibly could and just saying the craziest things when we were together.
Trying to free ourselves from our upbringing and our history was kind of a process. I also think screaming at people for five years made me less angry. It was kind of a psychological process that we all went through. All of that kind of contributes to what we're doing today.
You've got the next edition of your Francois van Coke & Vriende that you started back in 2018 coming up in October this year. What can people look forward to?
That's my big baby. That's been my main show for the past eight years. I kind of work towards that and what I do in the year has an effect on that show. I try to just do special collaborations. I think this year is the eighth year we're doing it. We've done it in Pretoria every time and we also did two in Cape Town. This eighth one is going to be at the SunBet Arena in Pretoria.
Everyone on the line-up is somebody I've written a song with and released it. That's the main criteria: We have to have written a song together and it has to be in the public sphere.
Some of these people I've been working with for a very long time, like Jack Parrow, who was kind of my first collaborator. That was like 2009. We did a song called Dans Dans Dans (Dance Dance Dance). And we've written a bunch of songs over the years together, so he'll always be on that line-up because he's very important to me.
We've also got Spoegwolf, Karen Zoid, Robbie Wessels, Early B, Die Heuwels Fantasties, Zaan Sonnekus, Neon Dreams, Van Pletzen, Tasché, Hunter Kennedy, Die Gevaar and, of course, Fokofpolisiekar.
It's just a very special show of people that have worked together on songs for the past 20 years and are all my friends. We hang out, we play these songs that we created together and just have a massive celebration of over 20 years of making music.
Beyond the live shows, what have you got in the pipeline?
I'm working on a bunch of songs. I'm going to release a single every month end until the end of the year and will be releasing a five-song EP that will be part of a series of projects. I'm releasing a song at the end of this month that's kind of a punk rock tune about just being scared of what the future holds.
What pushes you out of your comfort zone creatively and keeps you wanting to make music?
It's the need to create something out of nothing because that, I believe, is the most important part of being a musician. Obviously these days, there's not that much monetarial value in recorded music but that is what we do first and foremost. We need to write the songs that connect with people and I think that is what pushes me.
I work with a lot of people and the best part of creating the songs for me is when it's done, mixed and mastered and I'm lying in my bed with my headphones and listening to that master for the first time. That's what satisfies me.
If people like the song afterwards, that's a massive bonus. Obviously, if people listen to it and enjoy it, that's amazing. But the main thing is to create it and to listen to it myself. That's why I make music. I want to make something that I want to hear that satisfies my ears.