From oral free writing that detours into historical audio play before orbiting what we term the new super-nostalgic African futuristic spiritual chant non-genre, 69 Years to the Treason Trial is an acoustic encounter that emanates from the inner city of Johannesburg and resonates as far as Berlin. Consisting of eight sides of 12” vinyls of previously unreleased multi-sensory sonic works and an accompanying booklet of multi-genre texts, 69 Years to the Treason Trial is a collectible that resists the often elitist practice of material accumulation. As a case-building, epistolary petitioning tool in defense of cultural autonomy with regard to the built environment, grassroots pedagogy, and spatial justice, the publication sits at the intersections of municipal responsibility and accountability with a specific focus on the Drill Hall, Johannesburg, South Africa. 

69 Years to the Treason Trial is the third in the series, following from 56 Years to the Treason Trial (2012) and the revised edition, 58 Years to the Treason Trial (2014). The first two in this series were a compilation of advocacy documents capturing the praxes grounding the Keleketla! After School Programme (K!ASP) at the Drill Hall, Johannesburg, that took place between 2008–2014 and were conceived as pedagogical tools that support sites of educational encounters.

Alongside K!ASP, Keleketla! conceived, enabled, implemented, and supported a range of exciting and progressive sonic, performative, and musical projects at the Drill Hall, its surroundings, and elsewhere. In this offering, it is the first time that this XX Years to the Treason Trial advocacy series takes on a sonic modality.

Just as the title draws from the pivotal South African Treason Trial of 1956 as that which is still to come, this publication, as both a memory and a mode of advocacy, is an offering towards a future horizon, namely, the relinquishing of the lease of the Drill Hall. Bustling with the inimitable noise and energy of the Pan-African and Pan-Asian Joubert Park, this project is a living proposal. As such, the contents of what you are offered is both evidence of what happened and that which is yet to come, the unknown-known. 

With love, 
Malose Malahlela and Rangoato Hlasane on behalf of the Keleketla! massive