24 :: ? “These dances hold so many stories that will be lost to a lot of people if we do not begin to afford them the appropriate respect, instead of minimising them as airport entertainment,” she explains. And it was not long after that “awakening”, that her engagement with African traditions was further tested, through her calling to train as a sangoma. The youngest of seven children – all of whom speak and learned to read in different languages, having grown up on different continents as a result of the the tumultuous political climate in South Africa – “everyone came home” after Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and after more than a decade, they were (re)united as a family. It is this intrinsic understanding of what it means to be a part of the African diaspora that makes her an appropriate choice as leader of a Pan-African cultural space. Deeply rooted in the spiritual consciousness of her people, educated by the great thinkers and creators of the cultural “WE NEED TO UNPACK OUR IDENTITY AS AFRICANS. TOMORROW’S CHILDREN ARE GOING TO BE RUNNING THIS CONTINENT – WE NEED TO SORT OUT THE ‘STUFF’ BETWEEN US, TO ACKNOWLEDGE AND EMBRACE OUR SIMILARITIES, SO THAT FUTURE GENERATIONS CAN STEP INTO THE POWER, VALUE AND BEAUTY THAT THIS CONTINENT HAS TO OFFER.”