We are Lizwi Choir — the founding voices of the choir you have heard on stages in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, Paris and São Paulo, and across millions of screens around the world.

We came together as young people in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, because singing with one another was the most joyful thing we could imagine doing with our lives.

We are now representing ourselves, under a name we own.

Join us for our first performance as Lizwi Choir: a live-streamed concert on Monday 27 April 2026 at midday (SAST), South Africa's Freedom Day.

Lizwi means voice in isiXhosa.

Not just sound — voice in the fuller sense: the carrier of memory, the instrument of agency, the thing that says I am here. In the choral tradition we come from, the voice is body and breath and witness all at once.

It is the right word for who we are. The choir is its voices. The voices own the choir. The name is the thing.

Briefly, we called ourselves The Real Thanda Choir — a way of marking that we, the singers who built this work, were now representing ourselves. We had reasons. We were proud of it.

In April 2026, shortly after the Carte Blanche investigation aired, the management of the Thanda Arts Organisation NPO instructed one of the largest law firms in the country, registered the Thanda trade mark, and wrote to us demanding we cease using the name within three days.

We thought hard about fighting. The legal arguments were available to us. So was the cost — months of litigation, money we don't have to spend, and money the NPO holds but raised on the strength of our voices and the generosity of our donors. We did not want the next chapter of this story to be a courtroom.

So we chose differently. We let the name go, on our own terms, and walked out of the fight to claim a new one we own outright. We relaunched as Lizwi Choir on Freedom Day, 27 April 2026.

We reserve our rights in the ongoing matter. We are grateful to our former management for the part they played in our founding chapter. And we remain gravely disappointed that the singers — the people whose voices built this reputation — were not able to share transparently in its success.

Our focus, from here, is forward. Clean energy. A fresh start. The same voices.

Yes. The voices are the same. The musical director is the same. The repertoire is ours — we wrote much of it, and we sing all of it. The recordings you've heard, the videos that travelled the world, the performances on the global stages — that was us.

What's different is the name on the poster, and who owns the work. The choir now belongs to the people you came to hear.

If you've followed us on social media, in the press, or on a stage anywhere from Khayelitsha to Paris to São Paulo — you already know us. We are the same singers, singing the same songs, under a name we own.

Lizwi Choir. Our voices. Our name. Our music.

Sixteen young people, most of us from Khayelitsha, every one of us part of this choir since its earliest days. We will grow, we already have a new joiner. See 11 below, we hope to welcome as many of the original choir members as possible.

Meet us properly on our Founding Members page →

For our international audience: Carte Blanche is South Africa's longest-running and most respected investigative journalism programme. Launched in 1988 on M-Net, it has won more than 120 local and international awards over nearly four decades. It holds a place in South African public life comparable to 60 Minutes in the United States or Panorama in the United Kingdom.

On Sunday 19 April 2026, Carte Blanche aired a segment titled "Choir Captured", presented by Claire Mawisa and produced by Jo Munnik. It brought into the open what some of us had been living with privately for a long time: questions about where the money from our performances was going, and why the singers at the heart of the choir were not sharing in its success.

We are grateful to Claire, to Jo, and to the wider Carte Blanche team whose careful work over many months made this possible. Above all, we are grateful to the choir members, past and present, who found the courage to speak.

You can read the wider public reporting on our In the News page →

We are establishing a new Non-Profit Organisation, managed and governed by the founding members of the choir ourselves.

While the new NPO is being formalised, our finances are held in a dedicated Capitec Entrepreneur account managed by our Treasurer — who is one of the founding members. Every rand is accounted for to the group.

Transparency is not a promise we will make later. It is the foundation we are building on now.

We are hurt, but we are not bitter.

We are not here for revenge. We are here to reclaim our voices, our music, our future, and the spirit of love that brought this choir into being.

We will pursue what is rightfully ours through the proper channels. Beyond that, we have a choir to run and a world to sing to.

We are not asking anyone to fight with us. We are asking you to sing with us.

The founding members who built the reputation, sound and spirit of the choir you fell in love with are no longer affiliated with the original management structure. We are now performing as Lizwi Choir.

If you have an existing booking under the previous name and you want the voices that brought you to us in the first place, we would very much like to honour that engagement under our new organisation.

Please reach us at bookings@lizwichoir.com and we will work with you to rebook.

Yes. We are singing, and we are available.

Book the choir. We manage ourselves. No managers, no management fees.

Our first performance under our new name is the Freedom Day livestream concert on Monday 27 April 2026 at midday (SAST).

To enquire about bookings, visit our Book the Choir page →

Not every singer who has been part of the choir has joined us in this new chapter. Some are still deciding. Some feel the pull of the management they have known for years. And many of our choir members are minors, whose parents are frightened and unsure which way to turn — which we fully understand.

We are not here to force anyone's hand. With the support of our stakeholders, we are building a funded, transparent and safe home that any singer from the original choir can come to when they are ready.

The door is open, and it will stay open.

Come and love with us.

The most immediate thing you can do is join us for our Freedom Day livestream concert on Monday 27 April 2026 at midday (SAST). Bring your family, bring your friends, sing along with us on this day of days.

Beyond that: follow our new channels, book the choir, donate via direct EFT (email us for banking details), share our story, or offer legal, governance or creative-industry expertise if you have it to give.

All of this is laid out on our How to Help page →

To everyone who has stood with us from the beginning — the audiences in township halls, the strangers who became family on tour, the people who have messaged us these past weeks — thank you. The same love that carried us through the first years of our story is what we are counting on now.