69 Years to the Treason Trial: The Drill Hall Advocacy Project is an acoustic and editorial encounter rooted in Johannesburg, reaching all the way to Berlin. This release marks the latest installment of a trilogy that includes 56 Years to the Treason Trial (2012) and its revised edition, 58 Years to the Treason Trial (2014), all developed through the Keleketla! Library.

This vinyl-publication reflects on accountability and the reappropriation of a space shaped by oppressive histories: the Drill Hall in Johannesburg. The following quote from Rangoato Hlasane, co-founder of Keleketla! Library, captures the heart of the project: “To think of development on an infrastructural level is to account for trauma. Much of this trauma is rooted in migration and displacement. Uprooting of humans is a serious phenomenon that is not to be taken lightly or with any romanticism.

For Keleketla! Media Arts Project to take an ethical exile from the Drill Hall in Johannesburg was/is a traumatic experience for both the institution and the constituency it committed itself to: the Joubert Park neighbourhood and its several kilometre radiuses to the north, east, west, and south —extending beyond Soweto or Alexandra, as far as Roodepoort and, with deserved audacity, beyond the continent, to the ‘overseas.’

At the same time, to *act* on an infrastructural level is to practise radical hope. Keleketla! refuses to be stunned by the ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ threat and paralysis.”
Designing this object meant engaging with the relationship between orality and scribality, resistance and hope, accountability and trauma, people and the space they inhabit. The publication could be described as a vinyl book, conceived to let both music and written words honor the complexity of the archive of Keleketla! Library.

We took inspiration first in the visual language of kwaito album covers and activist archives from Johannesburg, to draw a connection between activism and music. We found that this relationship existed already, as the musical genre was deeply political.

Going further and exploring how to give a written form an oral feel, we focused on two key textual elements: “k!” and “Keleketla!”. On the surface, they appear as bold statements, but through repetition, they also invoke a rich historical and cultural lineage. A definition of Keleketla found on the website of the keleketla! Library is the following one : « Keleketla! » is a word from Pedi, traditionally used in response to the beginning of a story. It means, “I am here; I’m listening,” signaling a willingness to engage with the story being told. Though it has no direct English equivalent, it encapsulates a shared commitment to storytelling as a participatory act.”

The layout of the publication is built around the letter “K”, which dictate the arrangement of text and imagery in a radical and structured way. This constraint opened up new creative possibilities for the layout. Across the publication and the trifold insert, the phrases “Keleketla!” and “k!” repeat like rhythmic motifs—visual beats that punctuate the narrative. Rendered in bold Antique Olive or handwritten, they alternately take space and represent the individuals behind it—embodying both collective voice and individual presence.