imploded over the remaining months of 1981, and by the following year its members were all pursuing other movements and careers that would eventually carry them all over the world. Gary Khoza continued to work sporadically as a musician, traveling to the UK with the Malopoets and living briefly in London before returning for good and finally achieving his private goal of being an ordinary “citizen of Soweto” who played at church functions and gave music lessons before tragically ending his own life after a long battle with severe depression and mental illness. Steve Moni relocated to Rome, where he set up a small recording studio and composed soundtracks for experimental films. He worked in journalism and the local film industry before returning to South Africa to produce a documentary about Italian prisoners of war during World War II and writing a screenplay for an abandoned project with noted activist poet Don Mattera before withdrawing from the film world and moving to the Czech Republic, where he resides today. Punka Khoza went on to form the pioneering Dread Warriors as well as playing with Kenyan guitarist Simba Morri and numerous leading figures of the South African jazz world. Encountering a number of legal problems including a lengthy court case that ended in his acquittal for manslaughter, he finally found peace by relocating for a time to rural Ireland, eventually returning to become a relatively successful businessman running corporate drum seminars in Johannesburg with fellow percussionist Steve Newman. He died of AIDS-related causes in 2003. Ivan Kadey inherited the National Wake sound system and used the equipment to co-found the influential South African 1980s alternative music label Shifty Records with Lloyd Ross before suffering severe injury from a near-fatal electrocution and emigrating soon thereafter to California, where he lives in Los Angeles, working as an architect and specialist in acoustic architecture. It has taken history a long time to finally catch up to the legacy and music of National Wake, but it becomes increasingly apparent that their importance transcends the South African context and is of truly international scope. Their album should be considered as not only as a stellar musical accomplishment but also a significant moment in the international history of punk-derived global protest music. But Ivan Kadey summed up the band’s legacy best: I don’t know of any other band with quite this mix and sound that the album has. I know there are certain accidents of place, equipment etc., but I’m thinking of the “flavour,” the “taste,” the “tang.” I think the Wake had a sound that was trans-genre. And that sound was a unique, authentic blend of who we were and where we were, and it runs through all the various genres we present on the album. That is our mark.
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