Mewtee, 4157 Ranaka Street, Randfontein (2025)

09/07/2025

Can you trust climate information? How and why powerful players are misleading the public.

Ten years ago, the world committed itself to keeping global warming well below 2°C (and preferably below 1.5°C) above the pre-industrial era. This would be done by reducing greenhouse gas emissions significantly by 2030 and ending all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This was the time of promises, with 195 countries signing up to the legally binding, global treaty on climate change, the Paris Agreement.

Ten years on, however, the climate crisis is more urgent than ever. According to the United Nations:

"The first 12-month period to exceed 1.5°C as an average was February 2023–January 2024, boosted by El Niño, when the average temperature worldwide was estimated to be 1.52°C higher than 1850–1900."

There’s a disconnect between stated policies and actual practices, and we wanted to find out why.

We are media and communication researchers focusing on environmental communication. Recently, we joined a team of 14 researchers who investigated misinformation about climate change for the International Panel on the Information Environment.

Our team carried out the most comprehensive review to date of scientific research on climate misinformation and disinformation. Climate misinformation is when people make mistaken claims about climate change and spread incorrect information. Climate disinformation is where false information is spread deliberately – for example, corporations that “greenwash” their products so that they can sell more. (Greenwashing is where false claims are made that products or services are environmentally friendly when they aren’t).

We reviewed 300 studies published between 2015 and 2025, all of which centred on climate misinformation. Our study found that the human response to the climate crisis is being obstructed and delayed by the production and circulation of misleading information.

We found that this is being done by powerful economic and political interests, such as fossil fuel companies, populist political parties, and some nation states.

The public needs access to accurate information about climate change, because this enables them to take action to stop global warming. Without accurate information, none of us will be able to do the right thing for coming generations and the wider natural world.

How we tracked down who is fooling the public
Climate science has been documenting the growing climate crisis and solutions for decades. The United Nations says access to information about climate change is a human right. They’ve even outlined a set of global principles for maintaining the integrity of publicly available information about climate change.

However, our study shows that misleading information is adding to the climate crisis.

Our research looked into five basic questions: who, says what, in which channel, to whom, and with what effects?

What we found was:

Who: The primary agents behind climate misinformation are powerful economic and political interests. These are fossil fuel companies, political parties, governments, and nation states. These powers have joined forces in alliances that operate without public oversight or transparency and include well-funded thinktanks such as The Heartland Institute in the US, which actively undermines climate science.

Says what: Denial of the reality of climate change is being replaced by strategic scepticism. This tries to downplay the seriousness of climate change by pretending that the consequences for humans are not that serious. The result is that mitigating climate change by limiting countries’ carbon emissions has been delayed. Not enough work has gone into adaptation, especially preparing for extreme weather events. Even worse, science-based solutions that have been documented by climate science for decades are being questioned.

In which channel: Both classic mass media (newspapers, TV stations) and social media circulate false and misleading information about climate change. Corporate sustainability reports are an equally important stream of communication. They often greenwash companies and hide internal awareness of climate impacts.

To whom: Anybody and everybody is a target of misinformation. But elected officials, civil servants and other decision-makers are special targets because they are key links in the chains of communication that shape decisions and actions. For example, our research found that policy briefs are fed by think tanks to mid-level administrators, who pass on misleading advice to policymakers.

With what effects: The communication of misinformation influences public opinion and policymaking over time. Conspiracy theories, in particular, undermine public trust in climate science and in the institutions translating scientific evidence into policies. The result is inaction and a deepening climate crisis.

What needs to happen next
On a positive note, the research pointed to several levers that could be used to increase public understanding of and political action on climate change.

1) Legislation: Laws are required to ensure that accurate, consistent, reliable and transparent information about climate change is available to the public and policymakers. For example, private corporations and public institutions should be compelled by law to report on their carbon footprints in a standardised way. Digital platforms and other communications media should also be required to label misleading climate information that appears online.

2) Lawsuits: These need to be brought against companies that perform greenwashing and other deceptive practices. For example, cases have been brought around misinformation as consumer fraud.

3) Coalitions of the willing: Movements need to be built across borders and private, public and civil society. These can counterbalance the alliances of powerful economic and political interests. One example is Climate Action Against Disinformation, a global group of activist organisations. The coalitions should use local knowledge and promote bottom-up (grassroots) participation.4) Education must broaden and deepen the scientific and media literacy of citizens and policymakers. Education is a source of empowerment and hope for the future.

5) Our research found only one study about the entire continent of Africa. More research about climate misinformation in Africa, by African scholars, is urgently needed.

Brazil hosts the annual climate change conference, COP30, in November 2025. The country has spearheaded a Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change. This is the first step in filling current gaps in knowledge about the global crisis of information integrity.

It is up to political leaders, scientists and citizens to jointly address the climate crisis and the climate disinformation crisis. There is a small window of opportunity between 2025 and 2050 to avert a looming climate catastrophe for humanity and biodiversity. Accurate and actionable climate information is a necessary part of responding to and solving the climate crisis.

Authors
Klaus Bruhn Jensen
Full Professor in the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen

Semahat Ece Elbeyi
Postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen

Disclosure statement
Klaus Bruhn Jensen receives funding from the European Research Council and is an Affiliate of the International Panel on the Information Environment.

Semahat Ece Elbeyi receives funding from the European Research Council and is a Consultant Scientist of the International Panel on the Information Environment.

22/06/2025

Stone tools from a cave on South Africa’s coast speak of life at the end of the Ice Age

The Earth of the last Ice Age (about 26,000 to 19,000 years ago) was very different from today’s world.

In the northern hemisphere, ice sheets up to 8 kilometres tall covered much of Europe, Asia and North America, while much of the southern hemisphere became drier as water was drawn into the northern glaciers.

As more and more water was transformed into ice, global sea levels dropped as much as 125 metres from where they are now, exposing land that had been under the ocean.

In southernmost Africa, receding coastlines exposed an area of the continental shelf known as the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain. At its maximum extent, it covered an area of about 36,000km² along the south coast of what’s now South Africa.

This now - extinct ecosystem was a highly productive landscape with abundant grasslands, wetlands, permanent water drainage systems, and seasonal flood plains. The Palaeo-Agulhas Plain was likely most similar to the present day Serengeti in east Africa. It would likely have been able to support large herds of migratory animals and the people who hunted them.

We now know more about how these people lived thanks to data from a new archaeological site called Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1.

The site sits 23 metres above sea level on the southern coast of South Africa overlooking the Indian Ocean. You can watch whales from the site today, but during the Ice Age the ocean was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the site looked out over the vast grasslands; the coast was 75 kilometres away.

Archaeological investigation of the cave began in 2014, led by Naomi Cleghorn of the University of Texas. This work shows that humans have been using the site for much of the last 48,000 years or more. Occupations bridge the Middle to Later Stone Age transition, which occurred sometime between about 40,000 and 25,000 years ago in southern Africa.

That transition is a time period where we see dramatic changes in the technologies people were using, including changes in raw materials selected for making tools and a shift towards smaller tools. These changes are poorly understood due to a lack of sites with occupations dating to this time. Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 is the first site on the southern coast that provides a continuous occupational record near the end of the Pleistocene (Ice Age) and documents how life changed for people living on the edge of the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain.

Before the Ice Age, people there collected marine resources like shellfish when the coastline was close to the site. As the climate began to cool and sea levels dropped, they shifted their focus to land-based resources and game animals.

I am one of the archaeologists who have been working here. In a new study, my colleagues and I analysed stone tools from the cave that date to about 19,000 to 18,000 years ago, and discussed how the techniques used to make them hint at the ways that prehistoric people travelled, interacted, and shared their craft.

Based on this analysis, we think the cave may have been used as a temporary camp rather than a primary residence. And the similarity of the tools with those from other sites suggests people were connected over a huge region and shared ideas with each other, much like people do today.

Robberg technology of southern Africa
In human history, tools were invented in a succession of styles (“technologies” or “industries”), which can indicate the time and place where they were made and what they were used for.

The Robberg is one of southern Africa’s most distinctive and widespread stone tool technologies. Robberg tools – which we found at the Knysna site – are thought to be replaceable components in composite tools, perhaps as barbs set into arrow shafts, used to hunt the migratory herds on the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain.

We see the first appearance of Robberg technology in southern Africa near the peak of the last Ice Age around 26,000 years ago, and people continued producing these tools until around 12,000 years ago, when climate conditions were warmer.

The particular methods and order of operations that people used to make their tools is something that is taught and learned. If we see specific methods of stone tool production at multiple sites, it indicates that people were sharing ideas with one another.

Robberg occupations at Knysna date to between 21,000 and 15,000 years ago, when sea levels were at their lowest and the coastline far away.

The Robberg tools we recovered were primarily made from rocks that were available close to the site. Most of the tools were made from quartz, which creates very sharp edges but can break unpredictably. Production focused on bladelets, or small elongated tools, which may have been replaceable components in hunting weapons.

Some of the tools were made from a raw material called silcrete. People in South Africa were heat treating this material to improve its quality for tool production as early as 164,000 years ago. The silcrete tools at Knysna were heat treated before being brought to the site. This is only the second documented instance of the use of heat treatment in Robberg technology.

Silcrete is not available near Knysna. Most of the accessible deposits in the area are in the Outeniqua mountains, at least 50 kilometres inland. We’re not sure yet whether people using the Knysna site were travelling to these raw material sources themselves or trading with other groups.

Archaeological sites containing Robberg tools are found in South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini, indicating a widespread adoption by people across southern Africa. The tools from the Knysna site share many characteristics with those from other sites, which suggests people were sharing information through social networks that may have spanned the entire width of the continent.

Yet there are other aspects that are unique to the Knysna site. Fewer tools are found in the more recent layers than in deeper layers, suggesting that people were using the site less frequently than they had previously. This may suggest that during the Ice Age the cave was used as a temporary camp rather than as a primary residential site.

Left with questions
Stone tools can only tell us so much. Was Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 a temporary camp? If so, what were they coming to the cave for? We need to combine what we learned from the stone tools with other data from the site to answer these questions.

Something we can say with confidence is that we have a very long and rich history as a species, and our innovative and social natures go back a lot further in time than most people realise. Humans living during the last Ice Age had complex technologies to solve their problems, made art and music, connected with people in other communities, and in some places even had pet dogs.

Despite the dramatic differences in the world around us, these Ice Age people were not very different from people living today.

Author
Sara Watson
Assistant Professor, Indiana State University

Disclosure statement
Sara Watson works for the FIeld Museum of Natural History and Indiana State University

06/06/2025

3 things Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o taught me: language matters, stories are universal, Africa can thrive.

Celebrated Kenyan writer and decolonial scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o passed away on 28 May at the age of 87. Many tributes and obituaries have appeared across the world, but we wanted to know more about Thiong'o the man and his thought processes. So we asked Charles Cantalupo, a leading scholar of his work, to tell us more.

His fiction, nonfiction and plays from the early 1960s until today are frequently reprinted. Furthermore, Ngũgĩ’s monumental oeuvre is in two languages, English and Gĩkũyũ, and his works have been translated into many other languages.

From a large family in rural Kenya and a son of his father’s third wife, he was saved by his mother’s pushing him to be educated. This included a British high school in Kenya and Makerere University in Uganda.

When the brilliant young writer had his first big breakthrough at a 1962 meeting in Kampala, the Conference of African Writers of English Expression, he called himself “James Ngũgi”. This was also the name on the cover his first three novels. He had achieved fame already as an African writer but, as is often said, the best was yet to come.

Not until he co-wrote the play I Will Marry When I Want with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii was the name “Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o” on the cover of his books, including on the first modern novel written in Gĩkũyũ, Devil on the Cross (Caitaani Mũtharaba-inĩ).

I Will Marry When I Want was performed in 1977 in Gĩkũyũ in a local community centre. It was banned and Ngũgĩ was imprisoned for a year.

And still so much more was to come: exile from Kenya, professorships in the UK and US, book after book, fiction and nonfiction, myriad invited lectures and conferences all over the world, a stunning collection of literary awards (with the notable exception of the Nobel Prize for Literature), honorary degrees, and the most distinguished academic appointments in the US, from the east coast to the west.

Yet besides his mother’s influence and no doubt his own aptitude and determination, if one factor could be said to have fuelled his intellectual and literary evolution – from the red clay of Kenya into the firmament of world literary history – it was the language of his birth: Gĩkũyũ. From the stories his mother told him as a child to his own writing in Gĩkũyũ for a local, pan-African and international readership. He provided every reason why he should choose this path in his books of criticism and theory.

Ngũgĩ was also my friend for over three decades – through his US professorships, to Eritrea, to South Africa, to his finally moving to the US to live with his children. We had an ongoing conversation – in person, during many literary projects, over the phone and the internet.

Our friendship started in 1993, when I first interviewed him. He was living in exile from Kenya in Orange, New Jersey, where I was born. We both felt at home at the start of our working together. We felt the same way together through the conferences, books, translations, interviews and the many more literary projects that followed.

What are his most important works?
Since Ngũgĩ was such a voluminous and highly varied writer, he has many different important works. His earliest and historical novels like A Grain of Wheat and The River Between. His regime-shaking plays.

His critical and controversial novels like Devil on the Cross and Petals of Blood. His more experimental and absolutely modern novels like Matigari and Wizard of the Crow.

His epoch-making literary criticism like Decolonising the Mind. His informal and captivating three volumes of memoirs written later in life. His retelling in poetry of a Gĩkũyũ epic, The Perfect Nine, his last great book. A reader of Ngũgĩ can have many a heart’s desire.

My book, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Texts and Contexts, was based on the three-day conference of the same name that I organised in the US. At the time, it was the largest conference ever held on an African writer anywhere in the world.

What I learned back then applies now more than ever. There are no limits to the interest that Ngũgĩ’s work can generate anytime anywhere and in any form. I saw it happen in 1994 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and I see it now 30 years later in the outpouring of interest and recognition all over the world at Ngũgĩ’s death.

In 1993, he had published a book of essays titled Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms. Focusing on Ngũgĩ’s work, the conference and the book were “moving the centre” in Ngũgĩ’s words, “to real creative centres among the working people in conditions of gender, racial, and religious equality”.

What are your takeaways from your discussions with him?
First, African languages are the key to African development, including African literature. Ngũgĩ comprehensively explored and advocated this fundamental premise in over 40 years of teaching, lectures, interviews, conversations and throughout his many books of literary criticism and theory. Also, he epitomised it, writing his later novels in Gĩkũyũ, including his magnum opus, Wizard of the Crow.

Moreover, he codified his declaration of African language independence in co-writing The Asmara Declaration, which has been widely translated. It advocates for the importance and recognition of African languages and literatures.

Second, literature and writing are a world and not a country. Every single place and language can be omnicentric: translation can overcome any border, boundary, or geography and make understanding universal. Be it Shakespeare’s English, Dante’s Italian, Ngugi’s Gĩkũyũ, the Bible’s Hebrew and Aramaic, or anything else, big or small.

Third, on a more personal level, when I first met Ngũgĩ, I was a European American literary scholar and a poet with little knowledge of Africa and its literature and languages, much less of Ngũgĩ himself. He was its favourite son. But this didn’t stop him from giving me the idea and making me understand how African languages contained the seeds of an African Renaissance if only they were allowed to grow.

I knew that the historical European Renaissance rooted, grew, flourished and blossomed through its writers in European vernacular languages. English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and more took the place of Latin in expressing the best that was being thought and said in their countries. Yet translation between and among these languages as well as from classical Latin and Greek culture, plus biblical texts and cultures, made them ever more widely shared and understood.

From Ngũgĩ discussing African languages I took away a sense that African writers, storytellers, people, arts, and cultures could create a similar paradigm and overcome colonialism, colonial languages, neocolonialism and anything else that might prevent greatness.

Author
Charles Cantalupo
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English, Comparative Literature, and African Studies, Penn State

Disclosure statement
Charles Cantalupo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

05/06/2025

City police in South Africa’s capital have a bad image – how to fix it.

Corruption in South Africa’s public institutions has been a pressing issue for the past two decades. From national government offices to local municipalities, stories of officials enriching themselves at the expense of the public have become all too familiar.

The Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department – responsible for traffic policing, crime prevention, and by-law enforcement in South Africa’s capital city – has not escaped this crisis.

With over four million residents spread across 6,298 square kilometres, Tshwane plays a vital role in the country’s political and economic landscape. Yet its municipal police department, one of the largest in South Africa, with an average of 4,000 operational staff, is increasingly associated with allegations of bribery, abuse of power and unethical behaviour.

I am a postdoctoral researcher with a focus on criminal justice, and an active social justice advocate. In a recent research paper, I explored how corruption in the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department is damaging public trust and compromising law enforcement and crime prevention.

I was able to observe the culture and environment of the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department as a motorist and as an employee under the city’s Community and Social Development Department.

My research drew on texts and context rather than analysis of numbers, since the study was written after I left the City of Tshwane. I relied on my first hand experience, and already published and documented evidence. I did not need special permissions to do this but cited sources consulted.

The study found that motorists view the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department as predators rather than protectors. Corruption in the traffic police is more than a betrayal of public trust. When officers take bribes instead of enforcing traffic laws, road safety suffers.

Inside the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department
In recent years, the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department has been accused of recruiting members with criminal records and cases of corruption.

My key findings were about:

Hiring practices: Individuals with criminal records have been recruited into the department. Vetting is conducted, but the reports come later when they are already employed, then they are expelled.

Bribery: Motorists frequently report officers soliciting bribes during routine traffic stops or other bribery related incidences. Some of these reports are made to the mayoral committee member for community safety.

Lack of accountability: Officers implicated in corruption are not always dismissed, or may face minimal consequences.

Public complaints: Over 200 officers have been under investigation for various misconduct allegations in recent years.

Political interference and leadership instability
In the course of the research, I found that another key factor undermining the effectiveness of the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department is political interference in operational matters and leadership appointments as a result of the structure of the municipalities across the country. All mayoral committee executives and council members are politicians.

Frequent reshuffling of senior leaders based on politics rather than merit weakens strategic direction and fosters corruption. Politically connected individuals often secure positions without proper vetting, either due to delays in completing reports or human resources not waiting for the report before proceeding with appointments.

The combination of weak vetting processes, inadequate oversight, and political interference has created an environment where corruption is not only possible but, in some cases, normalised.

Damage to the capital city’s global reputation and tourism
The corruption within the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department not only affects local residents but also tarnishes Pretoria’s reputation as South Africa’s administrative capital, home to embassies from around the world.

As the city hosts more than 130 foreign diplomatic missions — the second-largest concentration of embassies in the world after Washington DC — the behaviour of municipal police officers directly influences the capital city’s global image.

When officers solicit bribes or abuse their power during routine traffic stops, they might not distinguish between local residents, foreign diplomats or tourists. This indiscriminate targeting is likely to create an unsafe environment for international visitors and damage the trust of foreign nations engaging with South Africa.

What needs to be done
Addressing corruption in the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department will require urgent reforms. Based on the research, I argue that the following actions are essential:

Stricter recruitment processes: Background checks should be mandatory for all officers. Individuals found to have criminal records should be disqualified from serving.

Body cameras and digital monitoring: Equipping officers with body cameras would provide an objective record of interactions with the public.

Independent oversight: An external body should be established to investigate complaints and ensure accountability. Currently, municipal policing is governed by the South African Police Service Act 68 of 1995, and the Independent Police Investigative Directorate investigates some complaints. But it appears to have limited resources.

Ethics training: All officers should get regular training to reinforce the importance of integrity and professionalism. They are currently trained at the Police Academy and get support from academic institutions, including the University of Pretoria.

Community engagement: Building partnerships between the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department and the communities it serves can help restore trust and improve transparency.

Municipal policing law
Restoring public confidence requires more than piecemeal reforms — it demands a new legal framework.

A South African Municipal Policing Act could create a unified standard for municipal policing across the country, addressing many of the root causes of corruption. This legislation could introduce:

National municipal police officers register: A centralised database that records applications, criminal background checks, disciplinary history, and performance assessments of all municipal officers.

Uniform ethical standards: Clear ethical guidelines that apply to all municipal police officers, regardless of location.

Independent oversight: An investigative body focused solely on municipal policing.

Mandatory pre-vetting process: All applicants would undergo fingerprint-based criminal record checks.

Cross-municipal blacklisting: Officers dismissed or suspended from one municipality would be automatically barred from working in another.

Digital recording systems: All municipal police vehicles and personnel would be equipped with body cameras and GPS tracking systems to improve accountability.

A framework like this would close loopholes that allow corrupt officers to move between municipalities undetected. It would also prevent the recycling of officers with criminal records.

Author
Azwihangwisi Judith Mphidi
Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Tshwane University of Technology

Disclosure statement
Azwihangwisi Judith Mphidi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

31/05/2025

Morabo Morojele: Lesotho’s swinging jazz drummer who became a literary star.

We use the term “Renaissance man” very loosely these days, for anybody even slightly multi-talented. But Lesotho-born jazz drummer, novelist and development scholar Morabo Morojele was the genuine article.

An older African man with a beard and glasses smiles as he sits in front of rows of books.
At the launch of his latest novel. Maggie Davey/Jacana Media
He not only worked across multiple fields, but achieved impressively in all. Morojele died on 20 May, aged 64.

As a researcher into South African jazz, I encountered him initially through his impressive live performances. I was surprised to hear about his first novel and then – as a teacher of writing – bowled over by its literary power.

Celebrating a life such as Morojele’s matters, because a pan-African polymath like him cut against the grain of a world of narrow professional boxes, where borders are increasingly closing to “foreigners”.

This was a man who not only played the jazz changes, but wrote – and lived – the social and political ones.

Born on 16 September 1960 in Maseru, Lesotho, Morojele schooled at the Waterford Kamhlaba United World College in Swaziland (now Eswatini) before being accepted to study at the London School of Economics.

In London in the early 1980s the young economics student converted his longstanding jazz drumming hobby into a professional side gig. There was a vibrant African diasporic music community, respected by and often sharing stages with their British peers. Morojele worked, among others, in the bands of South African drummer Julian Bahula and Ghanaian saxophonist George Lee. With Lee’s outfit, Dadadi, he recorded Boogie Highlife Volume 1 in 1985.

Studies completed and back in Lesotho, Morojele founded the small Afro-jazz group Black Market and later the trio Afro-Blue. He worked intermittently with other Basotho music groups including Sankomota, Drizzle and Thabure while building links with visiting South African artists. For them neighbouring Lesotho provided less repressive stages than apartheid South Africa.

Morojele relocated to Johannesburg in 1995 and picked up his old playing relationship with Lee, by then also settled there. His drum prowess caught the eye of rising star saxophonist Zim Ngqawana. With bassist Herbie Tsoaeli and pianist Andile Yenana, he became part of the reedman’s regular rhythm section.

The three rhythm players developed a close bond and a distinctive shared vision, which led to their creating a trio and an independent repertoire. Later they were joined by saxophonist Sydney Mnisi and trumpeter Marcus Wyatt to form the quintet Voice.

Voice was often the resident band at one of Johannesburg’s most important post-liberation jazz clubs: the Bassline. Although the 1994-founded venue was just a cramped little storefront in a bohemian suburb, it provided a stage for an entire new generation of indigenous jazz and pan-African music in its nine years. Voice was an important part of that identity, which is particularly audible on their second recording.

Morojele also recorded with South African jazz stars like Bheki Mseleku and McCoy Mrubata. He appeared on stage with everyone from Abdullah Ibrahim to Feya Faku.

His drum sound had a tight, disciplined, almost classical swing, punctuated visually by kinetic energy, and sonically by hoarse, breathy vocalisations. Voice playing partner Marcus Wyatt recalls:

"The first time I played with you, I remember being really freaked out by those vocal sound effects coming from the drum kit behind me, but the heaviness of your swing far outweighed the heaviness of the grunting. That heavy swing was in everything you did – the way you spoke, the way you loved, the way you drank, the way you wrote, the way you lived your life."

Wyatt also recalls a gentle, humble approach to making music together, but spiced with sharp, unmuted honesty – “You always spoke your mind” – and intense, intellectual after-show conversations about much more than music.

Because Morojele had never abandoned his other life as a development scholar and consultant. He was travelling extensively and engaging with (and acutely feeling the hurt of) the injustices and inequalities of the world. Between those two vocations, a third was insinuating itself into the light: that of writer.

The accidental writer
He said in an interview:

"I came to writing almost by accident … I’ve always enjoyed writing (but) I never grew up thinking I was going to be a writer."

In 2006, after what he described in interviews as a series of false starts, he produced a manuscript that simply “wrote itself”.

How We Buried Puso starts with the preparations for a brother’s funeral. The novel – set in Lesotho – reflects on the diverse personal and societal meanings of liberation in the “country neighbouring” (South Africa) and at home. How new meanings for old practices are forged, and how the personal and the political intertwine and diverge. All set to Lesotho’s lifela music. The book was shortlisted for the 2007 M-Net Literary Award.

There was an 18-year hiatus before Morojele’s second novel, 2023’s The Three Egg Dilemma. Now that he was settled again in Lesotho, music was less and less a viable source of income, and development work filled his time. “I suppose,” he said, “I forgot I was a writer.” But, in the end, that book “also wrote itself, because I didn’t have an outline … it just became what it is almost by accident.”

In 2022, a serious health emergency hit; he was transported to South Africa for urgent surgery.

The Three Egg Dilemma, unfolding against an unnamed near-future landscape that could also be Lesotho, broadens his canvas considerably.

The setting could as easily be any nation overtaken by the enforced isolation of a pandemic or the dislocation of civil war and military dictatorship, forcing individuals to rethink and re-make themselves. And complicated by the intervention of a malign ghost: a motif that Morojele said had been in his mind for a decade.

For this powerful second novel, Morojele was joint winner of the University of Johannesburg Prize for South African writing in English.

At the time of his death, he was working on his third fiction outing, a collection of short stories.

The beauty of his work lives on
Morojele’s creative career was remarkable. What wove his three identities together – musician, development worker and writer – was his conscious, committed pan-Africanism and his master craftsman’s skill with sound: the sound of his drums and the sound of his words as they rose off the page.

Through his books, and his (far too few) recordings, that beauty lives with us still. Robala ka khotso (Sleep in peace).

Morabo Morojele: Lesotho’s swinging jazz drummer who became a literary star
Published: May 21, 2025 2.35pm SAST
Author
Gwen Ansell
Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of Pretoria

Disclosure statement
Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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09/07/2025

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