Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
drum magazinelatest news & developments
Loving memory: Maria McCloy was someone who made
Johannesburg feel possible. Someone who gathered people across
class, art, music, fashion and politics and convinced them that
beauty, style and radical care belonged together.

Maria McCloy made Johannesburg feel possible

Friends, creatives and a city in mourning gathered to celebrate the woman who helped shape how Johannesburg saw itself after 1994.

Jazz in focus: The Peffers Fine Art booth at the RMB Latitudes Art Fair in Cape Town

Jazz in focus: Capturing a sound in image

From rare Ernest Cole prints to iconic portraits of Makeba and Masekela, this show captures the musicians and the energy of live music itself

Photographing past and present newsmakers

As I enter the exhibition titled Names in Uphill Letters — A historiography of the newsmakers who tread(ed) South Africa’s soil, at the Workers Museum in Newtown, I encounter a…

Lucky Michaels (right), businessman and owner of the iconic Club Pelican, pictured with some of the patrons. (Photo courtesy of Arena Holdings)

Pelican fantasy: How the iconic Soweto club influenced South African music

A nighttime haunt in the backstreets of Orlando run by a well-known bootlegger should have been a prime zone for nefarious underworld activities. Instead, it nurtured an…

Culture of struggle: Diturupa troupes in Makapanstad celebrate the role of black soldiers in the first and second world wars. (Photos: Lucas Styles Ledwaba)

Review: ‘Culture and the Liberation Struggle in South Africa’: On the arts as a catalyst in the quest for true freedom

This new collection of essays, tributes and analyses focuses on the role of culture in the fostering of radical consciousness

February 11 1990: Mandela’s media conquest

Nelson Mandela’s release from prison was also South Africa’s first ‘media event’. And, despite the NP’s, and the SABC’s, attempt to control the narrative, the force of Madiba’s…

History for sale: Images such as these of Winnie and Nelson Mandela

Exposed: SA’s iconic pics plundered

Our photographic heritage is being stolen by pirates peddling ‘pictures of pictures’

Jürgen Schadeberg

Casting history to his own Drum beat

Jürgen Schadeberg’s images form a vital part of our archive but, like a photo, what his memoir reveals is selective

Andre P. Brink

We mourn a friend and fighter as Zuma jols in Nigeria

Photographer, filmmaker and activist Peter McKenzie — ‘who wielded his camera the way other people use petrol bombs or saxophones’ — has died

Back in the day: Thandi Klaasen in 1955 ‘doing a little modelling for Drum’. Photo: Drum photographer © Baileys Archives

​Thandi Klaasen: Defying tragedy to do it her way

From being a starlet in Sophiatown through to a disfiguring assault, Thandi Klaasen’s capacity for resilience meant she just kept on singing.

Remembering Nat Nakasa

Nat Nakasa, who died in 1965, was one of those who were ground down by the alienation of exile. A friend recalls the time.

Five good reads on Nat Nakasa

As the body of South African anti-apartheid journalist Nat Nakasa makes its way home, we remember him in five pieces of writing.

Bonang Matheba.

Correction: Drum to apologise to Bonang Matheba

The press ombud has instructed "Drum" magazine to apologise to Top Billing presenter Bonang Matheba.

Iconic Drum turns 60

Cover pages of SA’s iconic <em>Drum</em> magazine evoke a 1950s black fashion and jazz culture which perished when apartheid forces razed Sophiatown.

Days that shook the world

Days that shook the world

Sunday is the 50th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre. Humphrey Tyler was the only reporter there when the police opened fire.

Restoring the Indian experience

In an edited extract from his new book, <i>The Indian in Drum</i>, Riason Naidoo shares his journey to find a nuanced picture of Indian identity.

Max Du Preez scoops Nat Nakasa Award

Three decades of journalism by Max Du Preez was recognised on Saturday when he was awarded the prestigious Nat Nakasa Award for fearless writing.

A long struggle for copyright

FOUR black-and-white images of Nelson Mandela in his autobiography are at the centre of the row between Jim Bailey and a former Drum photographer.