VISITORS from a pioneering performance arts centre in a sprawling South African township will be in Comet country next week for a series of workshops and talks explaining how dance, drama and music are helping to transform young lives. Music producer Chri

VISITORS from a pioneering performance arts centre in a sprawling South African township will be in Comet country next week for a series of workshops and talks explaining how dance, drama and music are helping to transform young lives.

Music producer Chris Majozi and choreographer Lucky Cele are in the UK as guests of Christian Aid which helps fund the work of the centre in Kwa Mashu, a township of about 1.5 million people, 18km outside Durban.

During their stay, the pair will meet youth leaders, politicians and Christian Aid supporters as well as leading an inter-active event at Our Lady's Church in Grove Road, Hitchin, on Tuesday and, on the following Sunday, a workshop with the Lytton Players youth theatre in Stevenage.

The Kwa Mashu Community Advancement Project was founded in 1993 as an innovative way of bringing hope, and very real employment opportunities, to hundreds of young people in the township where crime is high and unemployment runs at 80 per cent.

In 2002, work began on the Ekhaya Multi-Arts Centre in the heart of Kwa Mashu. The centre, which boasts amongst other things a 340-seat theatre, a technically-advanced recording studio and a video editing suite, was officially opened in 2003 by the then deputy president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma.