SBF-BRUTE FORCE Poetry & Hip-Hop Sessions

SBF-BRUTE FORCE Poetry and Hip Hop Sessions take place every Thursdays at Talamanca lounge at the Esplanade Beach Front in East London. Artists who perform during these sessions are emerging artists from around the Eastern Cape.

During the sessions the audience is requested to listen attentively since at the end of the session the  audience get to vote for the headline artist next Thursday. During every session a guest artist is invited to share the stage. Ntsiki Mazwayi was the guest artist on the 2nd of September along with  Sipokazi “Sposh” Petshwa who had just returned from Idols SA's top 14. The SBF-BRUTE FORCE Poetry & Hip-Hop Sessions fall under the Steve Biko Foundation's Arts, Culture and Identity Programme, which empowers youth to actively shape and express a positive sense of self through the arts.

Coming to See You Since I was Five: An American Poet's Connection to the South African Soul.

The 11th Annual Steve Biko Memorial Lecture

September 9, 2010

The University of Cape Town

Cape Town, South Africa
Copyright ©2010 by Alice Walker

I have spent most of the early morning thinking of what I want to say to you: there is so much.  First of all I want to say that I am in your country, have been drawn to your country, the beautiful South Africa, which for some years in our own struggle we referred to as Azania, because of a deep love of you, of your heroines and heroes, of your long, long struggle toward positive humanity for yourselves and for all oppressed people on the planet.  You have been a great inspiration to all people on earth who are interested in and devoted to Justice, Peace and Happiness.

I was asked to provide a title for my talk and this is what came to me:  Coming to See You Since I was Five Years Old: a Poet's Connection to the South African Soul.  The reason I have been coming your way for over sixty years is because when I was five years old my eldest sister Mamie Lee Walker, all of seventeen years old herself, came home from college her freshman year and taught my eleven year old sister and myself your National Anthem, Nkosi Sikeleli'Afrika. (Sung). We were the only children of any color who were taught this song in our tiny, totally segregated town in the deep South of the United States, in Georgia; the somber, intense passion and dignity of the melody entered my heart.  It has lodged there for the last sixty years.

Rewriting the Spirit of Steve Biko for the Twitter Generation

Mr Nkosinathi Biko, CEO of the Steve Biko Foundation.

The Daily Maverick’s SIPHO HLONGWANE spoke to the son of the iconic embodiment of Black Consciousness in South Africa, mostly about the apparent apathy of today’s youth toward political involvement.

Nkosinathi Biko sees a great need for quality leadership in South Africa. And he is not the only one. Why, he asks, would the ANC be speaking of forming a political school, if the issue of quality political leadership did not concern them?
The eldest son of Steve Biko is involved in quite a few non-profit organisations these days and is a director in several other business enterprises. He is also the CEO of the Steve Biko Foundation, the organisation that “bothers itself about the things that were important to Steve Biko”, as he puts it.