Ampersand Mixtape 8: Pageturners

My investigation started as looking into an assassination, but became about land ownership in South Africa. I became increasingly aware of what it takes to achieve even small victories against powerful, established forces.

Ayanda Ngila was assassinated in the Ekhenana communal garden in Durban, South Africa, on the 8th of March, 2022. Ayanda was 30 years old and shot in broad daylight in the middle of the afternoon. He was fixing a water pipe in front of women and children and as he went down he yelled for […]

This mixtape, packed with tasty tunes from around the world, will titillate your palate and ears with music about veggies, fish and stews, as well as fruit, dessert and cake. There’s even a song with a recipe for a Brazilian shrimp stew

Among state-owned entities, the beleaguered power utility is far and away the biggest risk to the public purse

This mixtape gives you 38 musical reasons to be cheerful. It’s brim-full of happy songs from across genres, borders and generations, guaranteed to put a perma-grin on your face

Rodriguez was bigger than The Beatles in 1970s apartheid South Africa.

In the season finale of ‘This is Jo’burg’, an Ethiopian refugee/restaurateur, a Zulu migrant/scholar and a young surrealist painter take Charles Leonard into their lives in the City of Gold

Instead of sulking in the corner, the vocal residents Brixton in Jo’burg are finding solutions that are progressive and inclusive

On his eclectic, monthly mixtape Charles Leonard is celebrating with some classics, the quirkiest samples, favourite female rappers, head-nodding 90s party jams, deep underground rap and an obscure isiZulu hip-hop party-starter

Between 1936 and 1975 a radio station subverted young Jo’burgers all the way from Mozambique. LM Radio’s highly effective ad department came for their money, but it was its DJs that took their souls with the freewheeling “hippy” music that they played. Historian Charles van Onselen explains how that made the apartheid elders at the SABC spitting mad

In the 1980s Capital Radio 604 was more than just a cool station broadcasting from the hippy haven of Port St John’s on the Wild Coast. It’s small, but effective news team was based in Jo’burg, from where they tackled the state, one bulletin at a time

For this mixtape Charles Leonard has picked his favourite subversive songs from around the globe and tells their fascinating and often curious stories.
It includes an infamous drinking song