Welcome to our home.

We are the 21 founding members of the choir the world came to know as Thanda Choir — the voices you have heard on stages in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, Paris and Rio de Janeiro, and across millions of screens around the world.

We are now representing ourselves.

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

Thanda is the isiXhosa word for love.

Love is how this choir began — young voices from Makhaza, Khayelitsha, coming together because singing with one another was the most joyful thing we could imagine doing with our lives.

The last few weeks have brought a great deal of anger, on our behalf and from people who love us. We feel it too. But we are choosing, together, to channel it into love rather than bitterness. We are not asking anyone to fight with us. We are asking you to love with us.

As our choir has grown in reputation and stature, the time has come for us to represent ourselves.

We are grateful to our former management for the part they played in our founding chapter. We are also gravely disappointed that the choir members — the singers whose voices built this reputation — have not been able to share transparently in its success.

We reserve all our rights in the ongoing matter concerning the original NPO. Our focus now is forward.

Twenty-one young people, most of us from Khayelitsha, every one of us part of this choir since its earliest days.

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 in the name of Real Thanda Choir, 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.

The founding members who built the reputation, sound and spirit of the choir you fell in love with are no longer affiliated with, performing under, or contributing to the original management structure.

If you have an existing booking and you want the essence and origins of Thanda — 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@therealthandachoir.com and we will work with you to rebook.

Yes. We are singing, and we are available.

From this point forward, every booking directly supports the artists you are booking. No intermediaries, no opacity, no questions about where the money goes.

Our first performance under this new name is our 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 Thanda 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 Thanda choir member 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.

Thanda, ngokwenene. Love, truly.