Man is born free but he is everywhere in chains - Jean-Jacques Rosseau.

The man was fashioned in His likeliness but soon dwelled to the outer regions of loneliness. It is time to break the chains and travel back to the source. The route is known to the heart, but what about your mind? Rebel Song is a bequest to a nameless reader. What does it mean to become the god of our own destiny? Isn't it true that to become [G]od(s) would require us to accept crime? Albert Camus once remarked: “On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself.” Yet, it seems as though changing times and their dark agents persistently prompt us, the collective, to say: “Come down from the cross, and we shall believe in you.”

There's presently an invitation to take stock of the direction we, worldly citizens, have chosen to take. The investigation suggests that the status quo should not be measured lightly but with scales in hand. Rebel Song reiterates the invitation. To muster hope against the backdrop of a seemingly senseless plight of liberating us, and enjoining us and them with the kind of goodness that can only be set in motion through a heart-centred and centring journey.

Rebel Song is a conceptual diptych consisting of this bundle as well as the author's English translation of André Brink's timeless novel Lobola for Life. It echoes past literary voices and applies them to our post-pandemic reality. Are you liberated enough to be free?