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National Arts Festival

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Sophie Joans in Play Things.

They Didn't Wait for an Invitation. They Built the Table Themselves.

Sophie Joans and Mxolisi Masilela, both recipients of the Mail & Guardian's Top 200 Young South Africans recognition, are theatre-makers who built their own spaces in the…

Deconstructed ballet: Hatched Ensemble speaks to anyone who has felt conflicted about their own identity
and where they belong in the status quo. Photo: Val Adamson

Mamela Nyamza’s global triumph, ‘Hatched Ensemble’, comes home for two nights only

Internationally celebrated dancer Mamela Nyamza returns home with two powerful productions interrogating identity, colonial legacies and belonging through bold, deconstructed…

Set for the stage: Ndumiso Manana is preparing for the first leg of a nationwide tour that begins in Johannesburg before moving to East London, Makhanda for the National Arts Festival, Durban, Cape Town and Pretoria.  Photo: Supplied

Manana and the art of trusting the process

Fresh off his Standard Bank Young Artist win, Manana reflects on growth, collaboration and creating space for alternative sound in South Africa

Immersive experience part of Nyakallo Maleka’s To Teach in Ways
That Teach Us to Take Care of the Soul exhibition at NAF 2025.

What kind of art world is South Africa moving into?

A sober look at how South African art is recalibrating for the long term — smaller, slower and more precarious, yet still thinking its way forward

Photos: Mark Wessels

Asanda Ruda’s body of healing

Melding protest, lyricism and ancestral tradition, Asanda Ruda’s Kemet is a visceral journey of emancipation, healing and artistic defiance

NAF 2025: A celebration of identity, resilience, and the power of art

Calvin Ratladi sees beyond the script, conjuring ghosts of land, legacy and loss in ‘Breakfast with Mugabe’

The world through Calvin Ratladi’s eyes

The playwright sees beyond the script, conjuring ghosts of land, legacy and loss in ‘Breakfast with Mugabe’

Nyakallo Maleke
makes joy an
art form

Nyakallo Maleke and the gentle radicalism of drawing as care

A tender meditation on care, memory and materiality, this artist’s work invites us to slow down and feel the soul

A moment in time: Images from Jonathon Rees’s show titled Stillness.

Jonathon Rees: Finding stillness in a note

Photographer’s images are a soulful visual tribute to South African jazz

Done waiting: Campbell Meas, winner of this year’s National Playwright Competition at the National Arts Festival. Photo: Boipelo Khunou

Campbell Meas is done waiting

A candid look at Campbell Meas’s journey navigating creativity, identity and the challenges of breaking into the arts industry

Siyazila: Siyababa Atelier and the sacred syntax of style

Mtshali’s latest collection renders death not as absence, but presence — grief draped in beauty, ritual and defiance

Thandiswa Mazwai returns to the stage for an intimate, soul-stirring performance at The Lyric Theatre. (Photo supplied)

Diary: National Arts Festival, Thandiswa live at the Lyric, Sisonke Afrohouse

Festival returns with fresh fire and fearless talent For 11 days this winter, Makhanda becomes the beating heart of South African creativity and artistic innovation as the…

My word: Modise Sekgothe has been given the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Poetry — the second recipient in four decades.

Modise Sekgothe’s poetry of transformation

In a quiet moment on an otherwise ordinary afternoon, Modise Sekgothe found out he had been selected as only the second poet to win the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for…

Rocking Tshivenda: Muneyi, who was the winner of the 2024 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music, says that his next project will be wholly in his mother tongue.

Muneyi: A decade of storytelling and musical integrity pays off

Muneyi, a poetic voice from Limpopo, blends folk and tradition into something urgent, modern and, finally, something celebrated

Off the wall: Art installer Bafana Zembe and his team at Nazo Arts and Projects are responsible for hanging exhibitions in galleries. (Photo supplied)

Bafana Zembe has no hang-ups about his job

Behind every work on a gallery wall is someone like the unsung art installer