Damian Stephens, Music Producer:

What’s unique about them and what attracted me is that they use their African heritage, like Hip Hop, they’ve taken an art form that’s come from the United States and around the world and instead of, like a lot of artists tend to kind of copy whatever is out there, they very much use their background and their knowledge and their culture and take Hip Hop and make it into something uniquely their own.

Apartheid and the decades of lost education may have taken their toll but artists like the Driemanskap crew are now shaping a culture confident of its own roots, its own traditions.

Damian Stephens, Music Producer:
Someone suggested putting subtitles under their latest video and the debate it caused was amazing… Because all the Xhosa speaking people were vehemently against it, like “why should we have to translate our language for anyone else?

Translated or not, the band’s lyrics make one point very clear – even today, a large sector of society is being left out of the country’s transformation.

“El Nino”, Driemanskap band member：
Driemanskap represents the voiceless people. I’m the man who’s helpless, who is a drunkard, who has no hope in life. Who thinks that buying cheap wine, that’s the only way to survive. I’m that kid, who smokes glues. I’m that thug who goes into white peoples houses and robs them and kills them. I’m that man in the parliament, I’m that pastor in the church. So its us, you know. We’re being influenced by everything that is around us.
The band has offered to show us their neighbourhood, Gugulethu.

Its not difficult to spot the Driemanskap crew. We meet at a place of pride in the township.

“El Nino”, Driemanskap band member：
Gugulethu 7 memorial. It’s a monument. To seven guys who were ambushed by the police. They were freedom fighters.

They may seem irreverant but Driemanskap are still rather in awe of struggle heroes like the Gugulethu Seven and Nelson Mandela.

“El Nino”, Driemanskap band member：
Mandela, you know, I would say he’s a man of peace and he helped us a lot. By saying, “Lets put down the arms, and no more with the armed struggle, let’s reconcile the Rainbow Nation. Let the people own the mines but then the indigenous people at least they must have a share.” So that’s why now there’s BEE and you have black CEO’s and you have black middle class.
A middle class life may beckon but the Driemanskap crew feel that like millions of other South Africans, they have been let down by the current leadership.

“Ma-B”, Driemanskap band member:
There is still something that is being done wrong. Maybe there is money that is being kept wrong or money that is going to all the wrong places. Know what I mean? So this is going to be a long conversation that’s not going to end now.

In the heart of Gugulethu is a home that, for years, has been at the centre of a vast “underground” music scene.

Its here that township life is given a voice that resonates far beyond Gugulethu.

“El Nino”, “Driemanskap” band member:
Ya, man. This is elder Zoro. He is the godfather, you know, the one who influenced most artists, like in Cape Town.

Zoro, who has just returned from Sweden, is producing a new creation from Ninja, a father of the local ragamuffin style, and Daddy Spencer

“El Nino”, Driemanskap Band Member：
Right over there is my man Digi Analogue

“Digi Analogue”, Musician:
As much as I do sing in English, at the same time you want to keep the authenticity, you want to say ‘This comes from Africa’.
It’s a place of inspiration – a place where that the crew feel Nelson Mandela would approve of.