ntsoana

Yesterday evening while working on a story, myself along with two other people were approached by a guy who offered to rap for us and asked that we donate whatever coins we may have, provided that we liked his raps. I had a camera with me and asked to film the process; he swiftly obliged. We were all duly impressed after he’d finished, but I got interested in why anyone would want to go around rapping for people in exchange for money which, presumably, was going to be spent on either drugs or food, or both. It didn’t take much prodding for him to tell his story:

His rap name is Anonymous, and he found himself down and out after he got retrenched from work. Months later, he’s in arrears with his landlord and has moved to a shelter in the centre of Johannesburg. He can’t go back home to the Western Cape because of family feuds – he’s got into a physical fight with his uncle previously. He has no other choice but to be here in the beast’s belly with a myriad of stories and the rap skills to tell them.