A Renegade Called Simphiwe

In eight essays, Pumla Dineo Gqola shows why Simphiwe Dana is arguably the most significant cultural figure working in contemporary South Africa today. Dana’s musical repertoire, self-styling choices, public debates, and growing written output display her causes. Controversy, tabloid headlines, and fluctuating public responses to Dana all reveal South African sensitivities on Blackness, femininity, language, and the imagination. Part intellectual biography and part commentary on South African contemporary culture, Gqola has captured a must-read portrait of Dana, her music and writing, her cultural activism, the vision in her work, and changing politics against the background of a changing postapartheid popular culture.