🎷BUWA! The Sound of Speaking Out🎷
Whistling Against Silence – A Musical Movement for Active Citizenship
Project Overview & Vision
“BUWA! The Sound of Speaking Out” is an interdisciplinary music and cultural project that uses whistling and percussive indigenous music as creative tools for active citizenship, anti-corruption advocacy, and community empowerment.
Designed to inspire citizens of all ages to take an active role in shaping their communities. Wielding rhythm, music, and curated messaging, the production reclaims public voice as a powerful tool for justice.
“Buwa” becomes both an invitation and a command: Speak. Act. Resist. Build.
Meet The Cast
Tlale Makhene
Music lead & performing artist
Tiale Makhene is one of South Africa’s sought-after percussionists, who moved to Swaziland at a tender age of four and began drumming. Highly regarded by his peers, in the music fraternity and fans. The Soweto-born artist is a versatile musician/performer in his own right, producer, composer, session musician, and tutor. He draws his inspiration from traditional, world and jazz music.
Ceduma Qamata
Performing artist
Ceduma Qamata is an ethnomusicologist, vocalist, African indigenous instrumentalist and cultural practitioner originally from the Eastern Cape and currently based in Pretoria. Her mediums are sound, space, healing and indigenous instruments all aimed at preserving African indigenous knowledge.
Mabeleng Moholo
Performing artist
Mabeleng Moholo is a South African musician who honed his skills at the Mmabimba Institute of African Music and the Fuba Centre in Soweto. He furthered his education with a Diploma in Ethnomusicology from the Zimbabwe College of Music, where he studied Mbira Dzevadzimu, Marimba, Dance, Field Research, Theory, and Percussion.
Workshopping
The artists had a total of 5 days to develop the brief into a 60-minute musical production and rehearse it to perform to audiences. The workshopping and rehearsals took place from the 1st to the 17th of July. Aside from the one rehearsal on location at the first performance venue, all of the workshopping and rehearsals took place in Melville at Chiesa di Pazzo Lupi.
Performances
The strategy was to perform the production at different locations around Gauteng over winter,
looking to engage the greater public in the necessity of active citizenship to empower
communities.
Performance 1
Location:
Windybrow Arts Centre Â
Area:
Hillbrow, JohannesburgÂ
Date:
18 July 2025Â
Audience:Â
Holiday program learners within the 7 – 19 age range. Children from the Hillbrow neighbourhood who are embedded in a creative community program. +/- 30 people were in attendance.Â
Evaluation:Â
The audience was handed a survey to complete after the performance. The survey was developed to assess what they understood from the messaging of the performance and what they would do if a community member behaved badly. Surveys are still undergoing analysis.Â
Feedback:Â
Gerard Bester (Windybrow Custodian) communicated to us that the performance resonated with the learners and that the older children who watched BUWA! Started developing a theatre production the following week, involving sound-making workshops.Â
Performance 2
Location:
The Tramshed
Area:
Tshwane City Center
Date:
15 August, 2025
Audience:Â
An unsuspecting public of shoppers, workers and people passing by during lunch hours. +/- 35 people stopped to take in the performance.
Evaluation:Â
A handful of audience members were pulled aside and voluntarily answered questions on camera about the performance and their perceptions.
Feedback:Â
The indigenous instruments were very clearly the stars of the public performance. Many who stopped to watch, communicated that they were attracted by the instruments they were seeing, as they were not a common sight. This amazement allowed them to stop, listen and receive the message.
Performance 3 – Upcoming!
Location:
Market Theatre Lab
Area:
Newtown, Johannesburg
Date:
04 September, 2025
Audience:
Community development practitioners and stakeholders
The final performance of the BUWA! production, is being performed alongside other pilot projects commissioned by GIZ South Africa (The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH ), as part of their anti-corruption and active citizens project.
About GIZ South Africa:
As a service provider in the field of international cooperation for sustainable development and international education work, GIZ are dedicated to shaping a future worth living around the world. With over 50 years of experience in a wide variety of areas, including economic development and employment promotion, energy and the environment, and peace and security. The diverse expertise of our federal enterprise is in demand around the globe – from the German Government, European Union institutions, the United Nations, the private sector, and governments of other countries. We work with businesses, civil society actors and research institutions, fostering successful interaction between development policy and other policy fields and areas of activity. Our main commissioning party is the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
Acknowledgements
Thank you to all those involved in the implementation of the BUWA! Project, your contribution was invaluable to the delivery of the project.