MALAIKA WA AZANIA, real name Malaika Lesego Samora Mahlatsi, was born in Meadowlands, Soweto, in 1991, before moving to Dobsonville Extension 2 in her late teens. She is the former branch secretary of the South African Students Congress at Rhodes University, where she is currently doing her second year of study. Malaika is the outgoing secretary general of the African Youth Coalition, an umbrella body of youth civil society organisations affiliated to the Pan African Youth Union. She is currently the African Union African Youth Charter Ambassador for the SADC region and the executive director of her own writing and transcribing company, Pen and Azanian Revolution (Pty) Ltd. In 2012, she founded a pan-Africanist journal, Afrikan Voices of the Left, dedicated to the memory of PAC founding president, Robert Sobukwe. Malaika is a published essayist, a blogger, a columnist on Thought Leader, The Sunday Independent and DestinyConnect, a contributor to The Thinker magazine, a fierce debater and an activist devoted to pursuing the African Renaissance agenda.
She is currently based in Grahamstown.
SIMPHIWE DANA is a Xhosa singer and songwriter whose distinctive style fuses jazz, Afro-soul, and traditional music. Called “the best thing to happen to Afro-Soul music since Miriam Makeba” by South African media, she is also a prominent activist and the first African ambassador for Amnesty International.