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Morabo Morojele: The social and political drum beats of the Lesotho jazz musician
We use the term ' Renaissance man ' very loosely these days, for anybody even slightly multi-talented. But Lesotho-born jazz drummer, novelist and development scholar Morabo Morojele was the genuine article. He not only worked across multiple fields, but achieved impressively in all. Morojele died on May 20, aged 64. As a researcher into South African jazz, I encountered him initially through his impressive live performances. I was surprised to hear about his first novel and then – as a teacher of writing – bowled over by its literary power. Celebrating a life such as Morojele's matters, because a pan-African polymath like him cut against the grain of a world of narrow professional boxes, where borders are increasingly closing to 'foreigners'. This was a man who not only played the jazz changes, but wrote – and lived – the social and political ones. Economist who loved jazz Born on September 16, 1960 in Maseru, Lesotho, Morojele schooled at the Waterford Kamhlaba United World College in Swaziland (now Eswatini) before being accepted to study at the London School of Economics. In London in the early 1980s the young economics student converted his longstanding jazz drumming hobby into a professional side gig. There was a vibrant African diasporic music community, respected by and often sharing stages with their British peers. Morojele worked, among others, in the bands of South African drummer Julian Bahula and Ghanaian saxophonist George Lee. With Lee's outfit, Dadadi, he recorded Boogie Highlife Volume 1 in 1985. Studies completed and back in Lesotho, Morojele founded the small Afro-jazz group Black Market and later the trio Afro-Blue. He worked intermittently with other Basotho music groups including Sankomota, Drizzle and Thabure while building links with visiting South African artists. For them neighbouring Lesotho provided less repressive stages than apartheid South Africa. Morojele relocated to Johannesburg in 1995 and picked up his old playing relationship with Lee, by then also settled there. His drum prowess caught the eye of rising star saxophonist Zim Ngqawana. With bassist Herbie Tsoaeli and pianist Andile Yenana, he became part of the reedman's regular rhythm section. The three rhythm players developed a close bond and a distinctive shared vision, which led to their creating a trio and an independent repertoire. Later they were joined by saxophonist Sydney Mnisi and trumpeter Marcus Wyatt to form the quintet Voice. Voice was often the resident band at one of Johannesburg's most important post-liberation jazz clubs: the Bassline. Although the 1994-founded venue was just a cramped little storefront in a bohemian suburb, it provided a stage for an entire new generation of indigenous jazz and pan-African music in its nine years. Voice was an important part of that identity, which is particularly audible on their second recording. Play Morojele also recorded with South African jazz stars like Bheki Mseleku and McCoy Mrubata. He appeared on stage with everyone from Abdullah Ibrahim to Feya Faku. His drum sound had a tight, disciplined, almost classical swing, punctuated visually by kinetic energy, and sonically by hoarse, breathy vocalisations. Voice playing partner Marcus Wyatt recalls: 'The first time I played with you, I remember being really freaked out by those vocal sound effects coming from the drum kit behind me, but the heaviness of your swing far outweighed the heaviness of the grunting. That heavy swing was in everything you did – the way you spoke, the way you loved, the way you drank, the way you wrote, the way you lived your life.' Wyatt also recalls a gentle, humble approach to making music together, but spiced with sharp, unmuted honesty – 'You always spoke your mind' – and intense, intellectual after-show conversations about much more than music. Because Morojele had never abandoned his other life as a development scholar and consultant. He was travelling extensively and engaging with (and acutely feeling the hurt of) the injustices and inequalities of the world. Between those two vocations, a third was insinuating itself into the light: that of writer. The accidental writer He said in an interview: 'I came to writing almost by accident … I've always enjoyed writing (but) I never grew up thinking I was going to be a writer.' In 2006, after what he described in interviews as a series of false starts, he produced a manuscript that simply 'wrote itself'. How We Buried Puso starts with the preparations for a brother's funeral. The novel – set in Lesotho – reflects on the diverse personal and societal meanings of liberation in the 'country neighbouring' (South Africa) and at home. How new meanings for old practices are forged, and how the personal and the political intertwine and diverge. All set to Lesotho's lifela music. The book was shortlisted for the 2007 M-Net Literary Award. There was an 18-year hiatus before Morojele's second novel, 2023's The Three Egg Dilemma. Now that he was settled again in Lesotho, music was less and less a viable source of income, and development work filled his time. 'I suppose,' he said, 'I forgot I was a writer.' But, in the end, that book 'also wrote itself, because I didn't have an outline … it just became what it is almost by accident.' In 2022, a serious health emergency hit; he was transported to South Africa for urgent surgery. The Three Egg Dilemma, unfolding against an unnamed near-future landscape that could also be Lesotho, broadens his canvas considerably. The setting could as easily be any nation overtaken by the enforced isolation of a pandemic or the dislocation of civil war and military dictatorship, forcing individuals to rethink and re-make themselves. And complicated by the intervention of a malign ghost: a motif that Morojele said had been in his mind for a decade. For this powerful second novel, Morojele was joint winner of the University of Johannesburg Prize for South African writing in English. At the time of his death, he was working on his third fiction outing, a collection of short stories. Play Beauty of his work lives on Morojele's creative career was remarkable. What wove his three identities together – musician, development worker and writer – was his conscious, committed pan-Africanism and his master craftsman's skill with sound: the sound of his drums and the sound of his words as they rose off the page. Through his books, and his (far too few) recordings, that beauty lives with us still. Robala ka khotso (Sleep in peace). Gwen Ansell.
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Omair Anas, Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University
Turkiye's support for Pakistan signals a bigger neighbourhood problem for India Isolated from their powerful Western allies, Islamabad and Istanbul and need each other. But other South Asian countries are also being drawn into this arc. Omair Anas, Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University · 44 minutes ago
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Congress demands special Parliament session after military chief's statement on Operation Sindoor
The Congress on Saturday demanded a special Parliament session to discuss the four-day conflict with Pakistan, accusing the Union government of 'misleading the nation'. Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said on social media that in the wake of the comments made by Chief Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan, there were 'very important questions' that needed to be asked. 'These can only be done if a special Session of the Parliament is immediately convened,' Kharge added. On Saturday, in comments viewed by some as an acknowledgement of the Indian Air Force having lost aircraft during Operation Sindoor, Chauhan told Bloomberg that what was important was 'not the jet being down, but why they were being down '. 'The good part is that we are able to understand the tactical mistake which we made, remedy it, rectify it, and then implement it again after two days and flew all our jets again, targeting at long range,' the chief of defence staff was quoted as saying. However, he said that Pakistan's claims of having shot down six Indian Air Force fighter jets was 'absolutely incorrect'. The claims made by Islamabad have not been independently verified. Chauhan also told Reuters that India had suffered losses in the air in the 'initial stages', but that the tactics were rectified and the Air Force 'flew all types of aircraft with all types of ordinances' later during the conflict. Kharge also said on Saturday that the Congress was demanding a comprehensive review of India's defence preparedness by an independent expert committee, on lines of the survey conducted by the Kargil Review Committee. The committee was set up by the Union government after the 1999 Kargil War. The Congress chief also said that United States President Donald Trump had repeatedly claimed that Washington had brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan on May 10. 'This is a direct affront to the Simla Agreement,' the Congress leader said. In the wake of the remarks made by the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) in Singapore in an interview, there are some very important questions which need to be asked. These can only be asked if a Special Session of the Parliament is immediately convened. The Modi Govt has misled the… — Mallikarjun Kharge (@kharge) May 31, 2025 Tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad escalated on May 7 when the Indian military carried out strikes – codenamed Operation Sindoor – on what it claimed were terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The strikes were in response to the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam, which killed 26 persons on April 22. The Pakistan Army retaliated to Indian strikes by repeatedly shelling Indian villages along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. At least 22 Indian civilians and seven defence personnel were killed. India and Pakistan on May 10 reached an 'understanding' to halt firing following the four-day conflict. The announcement by Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri came minutes after Trump claimed on social media that New Delhi and Islamabad had agreed to the ceasefire. The US president had claimed that the ceasefire talks were mediated by Washington. However, India said that the decision to stop the firing was 'worked out directly between the two countries', a position New Delhi has maintained.
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Turkiye's support for Pakistan signals a bigger neighbourhood problem for India
In the recent India-Pakistan military conflict, Turkiye stood steadfast in offering unambiguous support to Pakistan before and after the conflict. Sources close to the Turkish government claimed that Turkish cargo planes carried military supplies to Pakistan, although this was denied by Turkish officials. This is one of the loudest statements Turkiye has made in a long time, marking a clear departure from its previously stated Asia Anew Initiative, as Turkiye reprioritises security over trade in its South Asia policy. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken several times since then, reiterating his country's support for Pakistan. Turkiye has clearly made up its mind on how it looks at South Asia and who it sees fit to support in the region. This has not happened overnight. Nor is it temporary. Turkiye is operating within its conception of a 'securitised South Asia,' where its national security is linked to the region. Nearly all statements coming from Turkiye after the Indian military action have condemned the 'provocative steps' and claimed that strikes inside Pakistan raised 'the risk of an all-out war'. No other Muslim or Arab nation, except Azerbaijan, issued a direct condemnation of the Indian operation. Turkiye and Pakistan share predicament There is general agreement that in the post-Cold War era, both Turkiye and Pakistan have lost their relevance to the Western security architecture. Both have been searching for ways to stay relevant in the changing security landscape. Turkiye's NATO allies have been harsh in their criticism of its growing ties with Russia, particularly after it purchased the S-400 missile defence system. Its allies have denied Turkiye crucial defence technologies and supplies to the extent that in today's Middle East, non-NATO members Israel and the UAE have received the best of NATO defence technology, which Turkiye has been denied, including the F-35. Pakistan, too, is vulnerably dependent on the Chinese defence industry – its only option after the West abandoned it. Turkiye's Pakistan policy may not be India-centric, but they need each other because they have few allies. The bigger question, however, is whether Turkiye can or should have a Pakistan policy at the expense of its relations with India. Choosing Pakistan over India There is an unspoken consensus in Ankara and Riyadh that Pakistan is far too important to be written off. Islamabad has already become Turkiye's most important defence ally outside NATO. However, this has come at a heavy cost: an antagonised India. Almost every Muslim nation, not just Turkiye, faces the same dilemma. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have, however, successfully de-hypenated their relations with India and Pakistan. Turkiye tried to maintain a degree of ambiguity about its relations with Pakistan for a long time and sought close and confident ties with India. Turkiye's offer to India was equally important, as it involved strategic relations with New Delhi in exchange for the normalisation of ties with Pakistan, including a peaceful resolution of their disputes over Jammu and Kashmir. For that, the Turkish president used all possible tactics to bring New Delhi on board, which mostly resulted in public and diplomatic backlash. The period 2019-2022 could be counted as the lowest point in Turkiye-India relations when the two countries waged a massive media campaign against each other. This was in the wake of the revocation of the special status accorded to Jammu and Kashmir within the Indian federal structure. Since 2022, there have been signs of withdrawals on the Turkish side as India gave Turkiye a clear message that Turkiye's special ties with Pakistan and supporting its Kashmir politics are the biggest obstacles in India-Turkiye relations. In 2022, Turkiye and Pakistan supported Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Armenia, defeated and isolated, rushed to India for crucial defence supplies, including India's indigenous air defence system, Akash. Not just Armenia, India quickly reached out to Turkiye's regional rivals and detractors, Iran, Greece, Cyprus, UAE and Israel, seeking close defence and strategic relations. Many in Delhi explained this as a reaction to Turkiye's defence relations with Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Maldives. Turkiye's rising influence in its immediate neighbourhood may challenge India's interests. By aggressively marketing its defence sector in Asia, Turkiye has attracted new clients and potential allies whose perspectives on regional security may differ from those of Delhi. India's foreign policy has gradually shifted. India has started reimagining itself as a resurgent power, taking pride in self-reliance (Atmanirbhar Bharat). 'India First' becomes India alone In the ruling party's ideological discourse, India First has always been echoed as a slogan, which means India's interests are the supreme objectives of its new foreign policy. Realist pundits in New Delhi have often defined, even exaggerated, 'India First' as 'India Alone'. This contradicts a previously practised the ' Gujral Doctrine ' that offered support to the neighbouring countries without expectation of reciprocity. India's geopolitical imagination of itself is even more complex. It goes well beyond the boundaries of its existing nation-state. Today, India sees itself as a reduced geographical version of a larger civilisational India. These two imaginations of India – 'India First' and India as the magnanimous neigbour seeking no reciprocity – demand distinct and occasionally contradictory foreign policies. 'India First' represents that realism that originates from the perceived trauma of the dismemberment or shrinking of a civilisational India. On the other hand, Turkiye and China are aggressively advancing transnational foreign policies by instrumentalising their Turkic and Ottoman pasts and the Belt and Road Initiative, respectively. Under Narendra Modi, India has successfully built bilateral partnerships worldwide, leaving regional cooperation forums, including the South Asian Association forRegional Cooperation (SAARC), mostly unattended or underrepresented. India's growing disinterest in regional cooperation forums has allowed India's neighbours to look beyond India. This has provided an opportunity for China, Turkiye, and the United States to ignore India's regional leadership in South Asia. India must be worried that the securitisation of South Asia has helped China, Turkiye, and other powers find new defence partnerships in its neighbourhood. The change was coming gradually and silently, away from the glare of diplomatic crises. The end of ambiguity in Turkiye's South Asia policy and the burgeoning Turkiye-Pakistan defence relations is a new reality that India must deal with. What is apparent, however, is that India does not have a Turkiye policy beyond transactional interests and temporary anger, which is insufficient to counter a rising power like Turkiye. It might need its allies within the Arab and Islamic world, particularly Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia to discourage Turkiye from its South Asian ambitions. Yildirim Beyazit University. He is also the Director of Research at the International Dialogue and Diplomacy Foundation in New Delhi.
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‘The Book of Guilt': What if Hitler were assassinated and World War II ended in compromise?
Catherine Chidgey's ninth novel, The Book of Guilt, has been hotly anticipated. Following the critical and commercial success of her last two novels, it was the subject of a bidding war between UK publishers. The Book of Guilt is also now the first of her books to be released in Australia at launch: a depressingly rare feat for a New Zealand author. Chidgey's career has been defined by a willingness to experiment and innovate with new genres, subjects and forms. Shifting from the New Zealand focus of her recent novels, The Book of Guilt is set in a version of 1979 Britain. It operates as a disturbing thriller that unfolds from three different perspectives. While its setting is something of a departure for Chidgey, the novel continues her interest in the legacy of Nazi Germany, which some of her previous works have examined. It also explores the questions of guilt, awareness and moral responsibility which have preoccupied Chidgey in her earlier novels, particularly with regard to characters who are trapped within, or even victimised by, exploitative systems. A government program for orphans Vincent and his triplet brothers William and Lawrence, at 13, are the last children living in Captain Scott House, an isolated countryside home in the Sycamore Scheme (a government program for the care of orphans). Their days are strictly regimented by their three guardians – Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night – who record both their dreams and transgressions, and administer medication to help them overcome a mysterious 'Bug'. The promise is that once they are deemed well enough, they will be relocated to the seaside resort town of Margate, where all the children before them have gone, to enjoy its rides and attractions. Until then, their contact with the outside world is limited. Elsewhere, 13-year-old Nancy is living in similarly constrained and isolated circumstances. She has been raised by doting parents within the walls of their suburban home, never permitted to step outside. As she starts to chafe at her confinement, she grows increasingly suspicious of her mother and father, and their strange obsession with the Sycamore children. Finally, the newly appointed Minister of Loneliness has been charged with dismantling the Sycamore Scheme. Its dwindling (unstated) benefits are no longer sufficient to justify the expense of running the houses, and she is left to determine what to do with the remaining children. She is desperately seeking a positive outcome – something that will mitigate the scandals from the program's past – while also strangely fearful at the prospect of having to visit Vincent and his brothers at Captain Scott House. An eerie alternative history In many ways, the world and period that Chidgey establishes seem familiar. A prime minister resembling Margaret Thatcher has just won the general election. The IRA is still active. Jim'll Fix It, a show with the premise of children writing to Jimmy Saville asking him to make a dream come true, is on TV. But there are also differences. In this world, the moon landing occurred in 1957, not 1969. The polio vaccine and mass-produced penicillin have been available for far longer than they have in our history. And, crucially, the Sycamore Scheme was established in 1944, following the successful assassination of Adolf Hitler. The Book of Guilt, then, can be understood as an alternative history novel. This genre typically explores the timelines and scenarios that might result from a historical event having a different outcome. Within this tradition, World War Two is a frequent subject of speculation. Chidgey's alternative history hinges on a more subtle difference. What if Major Axel von dem Bussche 's 1943 attempted suicide bombing of Hitler had succeeded? As a result, the Nazi leadership are unseated and an interim government negotiates a surrender to the Allied powers. Rather than Germany's total defeat and capitulation, the European war ends in compromise and 'difficult decisions'. We are not told exactly what Nazi crimes went unpunished because of this determination to secure 'peace at any price'. But one of the terms of the 'Gothenburg Treaty' that ended the war was that the results of the inhumane, often deadly medical research performed in the concentration camps by SS physician Josef Mengele and others should be shared with the Allies. It is clear from early in the novel that the Sycamore Scheme operates as a sinister continuation of these practices, though its exact nature – and the origins of Vincent and his brothers – are a slowly unravelling mystery. Literary thrillers and Nazi legacy As New Zealand literary critic Philip Matthews observes, the The Book of Guilt can be read as a meeting point between two strands in Chidgey's writing. It follows The Axeman's Carnival (2022) and Pet (2023) as the third in a string of tightly plotted literary thrillers.e It is also her third novel to consider the legacy of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Like The Wish Child (2016) and Remote Sympathy (2020), The Book of Guilt is preoccupied with the subject of complicity: how characters live within, accept and deflect their full awareness of systems that exploit, violently dehumanise and murder others. What subtle, internal trades and compromises are they prepared to make for their own comforts and security? Or even just to preserve their own self-image? These are always pertinent themes, and Chidgey's alternative history provides her with a new lens for exploring them. Her vision of slightly altered late-70s Britain, one that has become rapidly tawdry, bleak and cruel for the sake of a few limited advancements, is powerful. The novel also offers an intriguing commentary on 1979 itself as a tipping point in British history. The cold pragmatism of the new conservative government justified sacrificing the welfare of a considerable portion of the population for greater prosperity. Chidgey's scenario recalls Thatcher's positioning of herself as the ruthless, unflinching doctor capable of curing the ' British Disease '. In this regard, The Book of Guilt joins a small tradition of literary alternative histories, which use a skewed perspective on the period they examine to reflect contemporary anxieties and preoccupations. It brings to mind Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, which explores how a populist leader – elected at exactly the wrong time – can light a powder keg of racist resentment. And also Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me, where the continued work of mathematician and code-breaker Alan Turing on artificial intelligence gives rise to an alternative 1980s Britain. There, new forms of robotic consciousness are the subject of both fascination and uneasy suspicion. But, of course, the novel The Book of Guilt most closely recalls is Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me G o, which also features a remote country home for mysteriously parentless children, in an alternative Britain where medical history has taken a different, sinister path. Reading The Book of Guilt with an awareness of Never Let Me Go makes it almost impossible to not anticipate key revelations quite early on. However, Chidgey's approach to this scenario serves as an interesting counterpoint to Ishiguro's in some ways. In Never Let Me Go, the adolescent protagonists are prompted by their guardians to attempt to demonstrate their humanity to a largely indifferent world. It ends with their melancholic, fatalistic acceptance of their lot. The Book of Guilt, by contrast, follows Vincent's attempts to comprehend his place in a setting gradually revealed to be inexplicably hostile. As his suspicions of his 'mothers' mount, he slowly realises he and his brothers are being constantly tested for signs of 'brutish' behaviour, ethical lapses and hidden, subliminal urges. The reasons for this scrutiny speak to broader themes around nature and nurture explored in the novel, and the temptation and dangers of arbitrary, 'scientific' classifications and definitions of human life and value. The Book of Guilt is not derivative of Never Let Me Go, but a rewarding variation on a similar theme. Adolescence as liminal space The Book of Guilt is also the third of Chidgey's novels to focus on characters entering early adolescence, and interrogate their developing knowledge and moral responsibility – even within systems and circumstances arguably beyond their control. The Wish Child examines the perspective of children who come of age while indoctrinated in the poisonous ideologies of Nazi Germany. Pet follows the narrative of 12-year-old Justine, who falls under the thrall of a charismatic yet strangely malicious teacher, Ms Price, who both woos and exploits her. Like Chidgey's other adolescent protagonists, Vincent is not positioned as a perfect victim. While thoughtful and sympathetic, he is also complicit in various acts of cruelty. He ultimately makes a fraught, highly compromised 'ethical' choice at the novel's denouement, which will haunt him, and likely the reader as well. In The Book of Guilt, Chidgey continues to explore early adolescence as a liminal stage of life, where levels of awareness and accountability are often frustratingly (and fascinatingly) unclear. Though Chidgey's handling of her younger characters remains astute, I was most taken with the Minister of Loneliness in this novel (though it did take me a moment to remember this is now an actual position in the UK government). Her narrative delivers some much-needed humour at various points, particularly in her interactions with the implacable, Thatcher-like prime minister. Tangled and morally complex While The Minister of Loneliness occupies a more remote and peripheral role in the novel than Vincent and Nancy, her weary adult perspective provides a necessary point of contrast. Her initial attempts to deny the horrors that have landed at her door are immediately, damningly, relatable. As the novel develops, her reluctance and inertia give way to rushed, desperate decisions and ruinous consequences. She feels very familiar. Very human. But what at first seems like a simple satire of an ineffectual bureaucrat proves surprising. The Minister is not ultimately overwhelmed by either the history she is forced to confront, nor by her own failings. She recognises, in the end, the weight of her responsibilities, even when she is given leeway to ignore or deflect them. In The Minister of Loneliness, Chidgey delivers an acutely realised portrait of a faintly good person who resolves, miraculously, to do a little better. Hers is arguably not the most heroic trajectory in this dark, tangled and compelling novel – but it feels like the closest it comes to a moment of moral triumph. Julian Novitz, Senior Lecturer, Writing, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology.
