Difference between revisions of "Medu Art Ensemble"

Revision as of 11:50, 8 October 2026

Medu Art Ensemble (1979-1985) was a cultural collective based in Gaborone, Botswana.

Medu means ‘roots’ in the southern African language of Sesotho.

The organisation played a key role in shaping South Africa’s culture of struggle against apartheid.

History

The collective was formed by South African cultural activists exiled after the 1976 Soweto uprising and it worked with artists back home, Botswana citizens, and some from other countries. Medu used the creative arts – visual image, theatre, music and literature – to give voice to South Africa’s liberation struggle.

Medu Art Ensemble was divided into six creative units: theatre, graphic arts and design, publications and research, film, music, and photography. Led by an annually elected executive body, Medu’s stated aims, in its own words, included:

training Botswana nationals and exiles in the above-mentioned skills,
fostering an environment suitable for cultural work,
creating closer relations between cultural workers and the community,
establishing closer relations and practical cooperation amongst Southern African cultural workers.

Artists involved in Medu's work incudes writers Keorapetse Kgositsile, Mongane Wally Serote and Mandla Langa; musicians Jonas Gwangwa and Dennis Mpale; and visual artist Thamsanqa Mnyele.

A Pan Africanist and anti-colonial enterprise, Medu engaged with international revolutionary art including the work of German theatre-maker Bertolt Brecht, Vietnamese resistance poetry, the Mexican mural painters and Chile’s muralists who spoke back to dictatorship.

On 14 June 1985 the South African military targeted Medu members in Botswana in a cross-border raid. They killed 14 people and destroyed the art-making collective.