The Slow Fund: Exploring the Power of Music With Music Beyond Borders

Discover the incredible power of music in the fight for human rights during apartheid in South Africa with WE ARE NOT AFRAID, a captivating documentary co-directed by Janie Cole and Shameela Seedat. This inspiring film, set for release in 2023, delves into the lives of former political prisoners and how they used music as a tool for resistance.

Set against the historical context of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, WE ARE NOT AFRAID explores music’s critical role as a force for resistance and survival in the apartheid prisons, especially at the maximum-security prison on Robben Island, where activists including Nelson Mandela were imprisoned from the early 1960s onwards and at Number 4 women’s jail at the Old Fort in Johannesburg.  

Blending archival footage of major historical struggles markers such as the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre and the 1976 Soweto Uprising, extensive new interviews with former political prisoners, shot many years later after their release, and musical performance and observation, the film casts light on both past and present.

Through torture, harrowing prison conditions and abuse, black music performance provided resistance, critique, community, communication, therapy, memory and identity for political prisoners, uniting an oppressed people against a common enemy.

Night and day, political prisoners sang whatever was in their defiant hearts through torture, despair and hope, and united as one they could not be defeated. Women’s narratives and songs expose the deadly gender-based violence that underlay structures of state violence and express their fight against both racial and gender oppression and dehumanizing prison experiences, which differed sharply to a male-centred struggle world.  

Through these remarkable resilient individuals, testimonies and music, the film touches on broader questions about cultural expression as advancing social change and the uses of music by individuals suffering and protesting the violation of human rights under oppressive patriarchal regimes at the intersections of music, resilience, power, violence, gender, race, trauma and human rights. 

Dr. Janie Cole collaborates with B&R on Bespoke trips to South Africa and offers unique, private lecture experiences in her Music Beyond Borders “Travels in Sound” series, including “Robben Island, Mandela and the Story of Music in the Apartheid Prisons” to travellers.

The Slow Fund contributed US$10,000 to the development phase of the film project in 2019, enabling the completion of critical interviews with former political prisoners. The Slow Fund further supported the film's completion with a contribution of $15,000 towards the budget, and we're deeply honoured to be associated with this important work.