Featuring Comrade Fatso, Dennis Brutus and others.

Comrade Fatso is Samm Farai Monro, better known as Comrade Fatso, is one of the most explosive and controversial acts in Southern Africa today. Comrade Fatso calls his poetry Toyi Toyi Poetry, radical street poetry that mixes Shona with English and mbira with hip hop. It’s an art form that is an uprising against oppression. 2008 saw Comrade Fatso and Chabvondoka launch their much-acclaimed album, House of Hunger, banned in Zimbabwe but praised internationally labeled ‘undeniably alluring’ (Mail and Globe, Canada), ‘irresistably danceable’ **** (Songlines Magazine, UK) and ‘the most revolutionary album since Thomas Mapfumo’s music in the 1970’s’ (Agence France Presse). House of Hunger is now on sale through different record labels in Europe and the USA.

Dennis Brutus is a South African poet who was banned and imprisoned on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela and 1,000 others. He is the author of 12 books of poetry, including Poetry and Protest: A Dennis Brutus Reader and Still the Sirens. He is Honorary Professor at the Centre for Civil Society, University of Kwazulu-Natal, in Durban, South Africa and Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. Brutus was the recipient of the Langston Hughes Award in 1987 (the first non-African American to receive that award), and the first Paul Robeson Award in 1989 for “artistic excellence, political consciousness and integrity.”

Hosted by Elen Awalom and Akenji Ndumu with support from Split This Rock Poetry Festival, Haymarket Books, Trans Africa Forum, Africa Action and Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies.