Jazz purists lamented the death of the art form when Rashid Lombard, the longtime festival director and co-founder of espAfrika (the company behind the festival) passed the baton to his business partner, Billy Domingo. But then, lamentation is an affliction and the pastime of many purists.During his tenure, Lombard would move through the Cape Town International Convention Centre, where the festival is still hosted, as though he was making an attempt at breaking the land speed record. Or as though he was trying to score one more goal for the books, to spite the bookies.He was a late starter in the festival game. He had 28 years of photojournalism behind him. To counteract the traumatic scenes he witnessed in his work during apartheid and the violent transition to democracy, Lombard would find solace in listening to, and sometimes playing, jazz. He said: "At the end of 1994, when the late Mr Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the first democratically elected president of S...
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