Host: Charles Leonard

Illustrator: Anastasya Eliseeva

Production: Reframe

With the support of: The French Institute of South Africa & Sacem

Songs:

1. The Heptones – Christmas Time Is Here

2. Édith Piaf – Le Noël De La Rue
3. Chris Cornell – Ave Maria (featuring Eleven)
4. Oscar Peterson – O Little Town of Bethlehem
5. Majida el Roumi – Sahrit Eid
6. Wham! – Last Christmas

7. Daphne & Three Sisters – Xmas Ifikile
8. Doris Molifi And Her Jazz Singers – Don’t Forget About Christmas
9. The New All Stars – Xmas Jive
10. Clarence Carter – Back Door Santa
11. Albert King – Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’
12. Bessie Smith – At the Christmas Ball

13. Darlene Love – Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) 
14. Jimmy Smith – Baby, It’s Cold Outside
15. Ella Fitzgerald – Santa Claus Got Stuck in my Chimney
16. Eartha Kitt – Santa Baby
17. Amy Winehouse – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

18. Marvin Gaye – Purple Snowflakes
19. Dent May – I’ll Be Stoned for Christmas
20. Beck – The Little Drum Machine Boy
21. Shonen Knife – Space Christmas
22. Jacques Dutronc – La fille du Père Noël

23. James Brown – Santa Claus Go Straight to The Ghetto 
24. Snoop Dogg – Santa Claus Goes Straight to The Ghetto
25. Run DMC – Christmas Is
26. Steve Earle — Christmas in Washington
27. Lou Reed — Xmas in February

28. The Crossfires – Santa and the Sidewalk Surfer
29. Brenda Lee – I’m Gonna Lasso Santa Claus
30. Can – Silent Night
31. Sun Ra presents The Qualities – It’s Christmas Time
32. Ramones – Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)

1. John Lennon – Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

Title: Ampersand Mixtape 9: Celluloid Heroes

Host: Charles Leonard

Illustrator: Anastasya Eliseeva

Production: Reframe

With the support of: The French Institute of South Africa

Songs:

1. Jean Knight – Mr Big Stuff
2. Miles Davis – Générique
3. Cinematic Orchestra – Man with a Movie Camera
4. Pogues – Down All the Days
5. Kinks – Celluloid Heroes
6. Bauhaus – Bela Lugosi’s Dead
7. Mdou Moctar – Tahoultine
8. Roxy Music – 2HB
9. Georgie Fame – The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde
10. Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg – Bonnie et Clyde
11. Big Audio Dynamite – E=MC2
12. Cornershop – Brimful of Asha
13. The 5.6.7.8s – I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield
14. Gorillaz – Dirty Harry
15. Bread – Aubrey
16. Carpenters – Goodbye to Love
17. Donna Summer – I feel love
18. Trammps – Disco Inferno
19. Stone Roses – Fools Gold
20. Steely Dan – Peg
21. The Upsetters – Return To Django
22. Massive Attack – Safe from Harm
23. Nas – The World Is Yours
24. Air – Cosmic Club (Le Voyage Dans La Lune)
25. David Essex – Rock On
26. Andre 3000 – I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album but This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time

Title: Ampersand Mixtape 8: Pageturners

Host: Charles Leonard

Illustrator: Anastasya Eliseeva

Production: Reframe

With the support of: The French Institute of South Africa

Songs:

1. The Lulus Band – I can feel it
2. Marcel Khalife – Rita
3. DakhaBrakha – Vynnaya Ya
4. Chicco & Mzwakhe Mbuli – Papa Stop the War
5. The Roots – Table of Contents
6. Linton Kwezi Johnson – If I Waz a top-Notch Poet
7. Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights
8. Brigitte Fontaine – Comme Rimbaud
9. The Rolling Stones – Sympathy for The Devil
10. They Might Be Giants — The Communists Have the Music
11. Simon & Garfunkel – A Simple Desultory Philippic
12. Bob Dylan – You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
13. The Clash – Spanish Bombs
14. Van Morrison – Cleaning Windows
15. Beastie Boys – 3-Minute Rule
16. Kanye West – Hey Mama
17. A-House – More Endless Art 
18. Mary Gauthier – Last of the Hobo Kings
19. Prince – Ballad of Dorothy Parker
20. The Magnetic Fields – I Don’t Want to Get Over You
21. Dexys Midnight Runners – Dance Stance
22. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – We Call Upon the Author
23. Ella Fitzgerald – You’re the Top
24. The Noisettes – Atticus
25. Burning Spear – Marcus Garvey
26. Black Star – Thieves in the night
27. Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit
28. Thandi Ntuli – Sunset

LISTEN TO EPISODE 4 – What about a conviction?

Ayanda Ngila was assassinated in the Ekhenana communal garden in Durban, South Africa, on the 8th of March, 2022. Ayanda was 30 years old and shot in broad daylight in the middle of the afternoon. He was fixing a water pipe in front of women and children and as he went down he yelled for people to take photos of the scene so the truth of his death could be known. Those are the words of a man who was expecting to be killed and was clearly at the center of a conflict that he imagined would end in his death.

Ayanda was a land activist and part of the organization Abahlali baseMjondolo, who have spent almost two decades fighting for the rights of the poor in South Africa. This story is about an assassination, but also about the violence you can face when you fight for your basic human rights like food, water and shelter.

This is a four-part podcast series produced and presented by Paul McNally for Develop Audio. Visit their website at https://developaudio.co.za/

Listen to the first episode here.

Listen to the second episode here.

Listen to the third episode here.

Music was composed by John Bartmann.
Mixing and Mastering by Danny Booysen.
This series was made possible with the support of The Henry Nxumalo Foundation. Check out their work at https://henrynxumalofoundation.co.za/

LISTEN TO EPISODE 3 – It’s a dirty war

Ayanda Ngila was assassinated in the Ekhenana communal garden in Durban, South Africa, on the 8th of March, 2022. Ayanda was 30 years old and shot in broad daylight in the middle of the afternoon. He was fixing a water pipe in front of women and children and as he went down he yelled for people to take photos of the scene so the truth of his death could be known. Those are the words of a man who was expecting to be killed and was clearly at the center of a conflict that he imagined would end in his death.

Ayanda was a land activist and part of the organization Abahlali baseMjondolo, who have spent almost two decades fighting for the rights of the poor in South Africa. This story is about an assassination, but also about the violence you can face when you fight for your basic human rights like food, water and shelter.

This is a four-part podcast series produced and presented by Paul McNally for Develop Audio. Visit their website at https://developaudio.co.za/

Listen to the first episode here.

Listen to the second episode here.

Music was composed by John Bartmann.
Mixing and Mastering by Danny Booysen.
This series was made possible with the support of The Henry Nxumalo Foundation. Check out their work at https://henrynxumalofoundation.co.za/

We also explore the workings of the organisation that Ayanda belonged to, Abahlali baseMjondolo and their claims of being systematically targeted by South Africa’s ruling party, the ANC.

LISTEN TO EPISODE 2 – Gathering the testimonies

Ayanda Ngila was assassinated in the Ekhenana communal garden in Durban, South Africa, on the 8th of March, 2022. Ayanda was 30 years old and shot in broad daylight in the middle of the afternoon. He was fixing a water pipe in front of women and children and as he went down he yelled for people to take photos of the scene so the truth of his death could be known. Those are the words of a man who was expecting to be killed and was clearly at the center of a conflict that he imagined would end in his death.

Ayanda was a land activist and part of the organization Abahlali baseMjondolo, who have spent almost two decades fighting for the rights of the poor in South Africa. This story is about an assassination, but also about the violence you can face when you fight for your basic human rights like food, water and shelter.

This is a four-part podcast series produced and presented by Paul McNally for Develop Audio. Visit their website at https://developaudio.co.za/

Listen to the first episode here.

Music was composed by John Bartmann.
Mixing and Mastering by Danny Booysen.
This series was made possible with the support of The Henry Nxumalo Foundation. Check out their work at https://henrynxumalofoundation.co.za/

LISTEN TO THE FIRST EPISODE

I have since moved back to South Africa permanently and put together the podcast series based on my investigation from here. It is called The Last Afternoon in The Garden and the first episode is out today. There have been arrests, court cases and more violence during the 16 months since I became involved in this case.

During that period straight after Ayanda’s death Durban was wrecked by astounding flooding and Abahlali was out in the townships helping people, collecting donations and antagonising authorities to do more.

The most interesting part of producing this tragic series was how Mbale Kubheka, the attorney working for Abahlali, emerged as the star. She has been working for them under the premise of “watching brief” where someone attends court to largely observe the procedures and flag any inefficiencies of the police, but Mbale has taken on a mammoth task guiding every step of the process, from collecting witness testimonies to arranging private autopsies. It has shown the sheer amount of work needed to prop up a case that should be exclusively handled by the state. And her work does eventually see results.

Ayanda was the deputy chairperson of eKhenana and a committed activist. eKhenana is a prominent land occupation in Durban and has become a space of huge contention in the community. It’s a beautiful green space with a river snaking through it. Abahlali wants the land to remain a socialist stronghold for people – they plant vegetables and keep chickens, selling the products for money that they share equally among the commune’s members. To be honest, it is a situation that makes you feel incredibly positive about Abahlali as an organization and even ignites some hope for the country as a whole. However, there are prominent members in the community who allegedly want the land to be carved up and sold for profit. And meanwhile there are families living on the land with very little security who after Ayanda’s death were too afraid to go out and tend to the crops. They were so fearful that the spinach began to shrivel and die.

Over 130 civil society organisations expressed their outrage over Ngila’s assassination in a widely publicised letter. The Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI) called on the Minister of Police and the South African Human Rights Commission to investigate his assassination. Besides the violence, members of eKhenana have also been routinely arrested. Ayanda, a year before his murder, along with three other leaders of the movement, was arrested and charged with murder. The members were held without bail for six months before the charges were withdrawn due to a lack of evidence. I spoke to the man who was with Ayanda in a different province when the murder he was meant to have committed took place.

My investigation started as looking into an assassination, but became about land ownership in South Africa. I became increasingly aware of what it takes to achieve even small victories against powerful, established forces. And ultimately the story is about the need for activism, particularly in a country like ours.

The Last Afternoon In The Garden was produced by Develop Audio and was done with the support of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation.

This is a four-part podcast series produced and presented by Paul McNally for Develop Audio. Visit their website at https://developaudio.co.za/.

Music was composed by John Bartmann. 

Mixing and Mastering by Danny Booysen.