One Global Voice

South Africa

Applying musictherapy to human health, an experience from Africa

Marta Bolgioni

Music has always been part of Nsamu Moonga’s life, a young African musictherapist working in Boksburg, South Africa. A passionate student of music and psychotherapy, he decided to offer his skills – and his vocation – to the community. He works with children and young people at risk, in schools and in public institutions. Confident of music communicative and healing capacities – and of the diversity within the continent to be treasured -, he works connecting practice and research, enhancing African traditions and music.

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Abigail George, when the word confronts the darkness of paranoia

Redazione

“Please help revise the jalapeños and Theodore Roethke” is the title of this poem that introduces us into an unusual yet familiar world. It is a wild territory where reality and dreams meet, where everyday elements remind us of their symbolic dimension and where the voices in our heads start a dialogue with the voices of authors whose books we have read or composers whose music we have listened to. Far from being a mere juxtaposition of images and sounds, Abigail George’s is an accurately structured poem that reveals the struggle for mental well-being and for becoming an independent, emotionally stable woman.

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“Like a candle in the wind”, so we blow out the flame of our life

Redazione

“It’s so difficult, this living thing / two decades sometimes / are more than one can bear”, this is the beginning of this moving poem composed about the sudden death of a very young and talented poet. It is the author herself to explain it, vangile gantsho, South African poet and healer who started to write and create at a young age and developed an interest into confessional and political writing. Although “some scars are too deep / even for poetry”, this poem enlightens the darkest emotions of the human soul that can lead to suicide, a choice no one should quickly label as coward and selfish, the author says.

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Noluthando Makalima and adaptive surf: living life into the waves

Marta Bolgioni

Noluthando Makalima was born with cerebral palsy, but her disability never prevented her from achieving what she wanted to do in life. She is a talented young adaptive surfer from Cape Town, who gained a silver medal at the 2020 World Paralympic Championship. She currently represents South African excellences in the international parasports field and she wants to continue her training to compete again next year, despite the challenges she has to face everyday. Her main desire is to become a role model for young people. Surf isn’t just a sport for this athlete: it’s therapy, a way to feel free and safe, to challenge herself, to fully live her body. Her experience is a real life story that needs to be known in order to raise awareness about people with disabilities in sport.

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Nobukho Nqaba: impermanence and migration in performance art

Antonella Sinopoli

When it comes to migration, nothing is certain: no one knows when he/she will arrive or how long he/she will stay. The art of Nobukho Nqaba tells us stories, both visionary and real, about what is transient, destined to end. Nobukho was born in Butterworth, a small rural city in South Africa’s  Eastern Cape. When she was six, she had to migrate within South Africa due to family issues. In this interview, she tells us about her performances that convey through her own body and presence – and often through the famous “Ghana must go home” – a sense of identiy, loneliness and otherness.

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