Soweto Punk
Twenty One Children Feature.
Johannesburg, South Africa.
By Luke Marshin.
February 2026.
Twenty One Children are a South African punk trio of friends Abdula (vocals) and Thula (guitar), before evolving into the current lineup with Biko on drums. The band formed in 2023 after Abdula repeatedly asked Thula to start a project together over several years. “It was a band before we started jamming. Abdula had asked Thula to start a band with him for 3 years straight. He only agreed to start jamming on the 4th year.” The name Twenty One Children came from a series of coincidences at the time the band started. Abdula was working as a substitute teacher at an autistic school with 21 students in his class, Thula had recently spent 21 days in a mental health institution, and their first jam took place on 21 February.
Thula had already been immersed in punk through skateboarding before introducing Abdula to the music while he was hosting shows, with Biko joining later. Their most recent release, After the Storm (2025), was recorded at Biko’s house in Soweto using his father’s studio, which the band described as “just another day of jamming basically.”
Soweto, where the band are based, was established under apartheid as a segregated township for Black South Africans working in Johannesburg.
The area became internationally known after the 16 June 1976 student uprising, when thousands of schoolchildren protested the forced use of Afrikaans in education and police responded with lethal force, an event widely recognised as a turning point in resistance to apartheid.
Today the area remains one of South Africa’s largest urban townships and sits within Gauteng province, which continues to record some of the country’s highest violent crime levels; nationally, police recorded 5,727 murders between January and March 2025, an average of about 64 per day.
South African cities such as Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg frequently appear in, or top, rankings based on high crime indices and homicide rates per 100,000 residents. Johannesburg, Gauteng province’s largest city, is sometimes referred to as “Hate City”, a reflection of its reputation for violent crime. When asked directly whether the label fits, the band don’t hedge.
“Yes indeed. Jozi is Hate City. There’s so much hate here. Within the scene, between the bands. From outside the scene. Hella gatekeeping. It’s insane. Our scene might be the biggest and most vibrant in the country but it’s still super small compared to any other musical genres in South Africa. We need to join forces and work together. Make our own tour routes, build our own festivals and fill each other’s pockets. Some key players do see the bigger picture, which is great.”
While Johannesburg has hosted punk scenes for decades, the genre remains small compared with dominant South African styles such as amapiano, hip hop and house.
“MOST KIDS THINK THAT THE JOZI PUNK SCENE IS JUST RESERVED FOR UPPER-CLASS KIDS… SO WRONG. IT’S AS HOOD AND AS STREET AS IT GETS.”
On the question of how Johannesburg’s punk scene is perceived, they argue that outsiders often misunderstand both its size and who participates in it. “Outsiders think the scene doesn’t exist altogether. People are pulling their weight but we can definitely make a bigger noise and be more inclusive about things. At this point, it seems like only the cool kids know what’s up. Most kids think that the Jozi punk scene is just reserved for upper-class kids… So wrong. It’s as hood and as street as it gets.”
That context also shapes how they view scenes beyond South Africa. Touring elsewhere in Africa has given them a point of comparison, particularly when it comes to safety, audience engagement and the everyday conditions surrounding live music.
In 2025, the band played shows in Kenya, and the contrast with Johannesburg stood out to them. “We did a Kenyan tour: Nairobi, Lamu and Kilifi. We got really jealous of how safe and peaceful Kenya was compared to South Africa. We loved how clean the air was too. There were no people pissing in the streets or throwing rubbish on the streets. The people in Kenya support live music. They go all out. They may not have the best mosh pits, but they show up in numbers.”
Across the continent, punk operates on very different scales. Nairobi’s current scene, for example, has at times centred on only a handful of active bands, while in North Africa, groups such as Morocco’s Dima Punk have spoken openly about the difficulty of even securing rehearsal space. Independent labels have stepped in where infrastructure is thin, with Tunisia’s A World Divided Tapes releasing underground punk material on a non-profit basis.
Elsewhere, a similar DIY ethos runs through very different underground scenes. Uganda’s Hakuna Kulala label has built an international audience around abrasive experimental releases linked to Kampala’s Nyege Nyege network, while in Kinshasa, the collective Fulu Miziki have constructed instruments from scrap materials and performed internationally since forming in the early 2000s.
That wider landscape helps explain why questions about legitimacy tend to land differently for bands operating across African punk networks.
Those networks also shape how bands across the continent think about credibility and ownership of the genre. Twenty One Children say they’ve never felt pressure to justify their place in punk. “We never had to prove how legitimately punk we are. We live and breathe punk naturally. You have these old people with old ideas controlling the airwaves down here. Most people don’t even know that they’re punks until they come across us and our peers.”
That sense of self-definition has meant the band rarely chased outside validation. Yet recognition has still arrived in unexpected ways.
The band were contacted via Facebook by the team behind Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, a skateboarding video game franchise long known for featuring influential alternative and punk soundtracks, who told them they loved their track “Loony Bin” and asked for permission to include it. “We were hyped,” they say. “What a dream come true. Whoever thought?”
Despite growing recognition beyond South Africa, their focus remains rooted in Johannesburg’s scene. “The Joburg punk scene is in good hands,” they say. “The youth is all hyped up and restless. Give it a good five to ten years and things will explode.”
Away from predictions about the scene, their own routine remains largely unchanged.
For now, Twenty One Children are focused on what they’ve been doing from the start: making music together, playing shows where they can, and staying close to the scene that formed them. The rest, as they see it, tends to follow.
