Sara has been adding colour to creative landscape
Newtown-based South African Roadies Association offers on-the-job training, international exposure and theory to empower young people
The South African Roadies Association (Sara) based at a historic and beautifully graffitied building under the bridge in Johannesburg’s Newtown is the only South African black-owned and managed training and development academy for the technical and production services sector of the creative economy. Founder Freddie Nyathela started his career as a roadie. During the 1980s he toured all over Southern Africa as roadie with pop group Harari. When Sipho Hotstix Mabuse performed in the 1990 festival in Swaziland alongside Eric Clapton and Joan Armatrading, it gave Nyathela the opportunity to work closely with international technicians. He studied the music industry further through books. "It was the purpose of the apartheid system that black people must dance and act and the technical production side must be a whites-only affair. This encouraged me to set up Sara so that the coming generation doesn’t go through the same experiences," Nyathela said. Sara, a nonprofit organisation, was fou...
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