Johannesburg’s Market Theatre will host the third Kaza Kamba Pan African Theatre Festival from 20 to 23 August, bringing together theatre, film, music, workshops and dialogue from across the continent.
According to the Market Theatre, the 2026 festival is organised around the theme Memory Against Forgetting, using performance and conversation to explore cultural memory, history and contemporary African identity.
Pan-African performance takes centre stage
The programme extends beyond stage productions, combining theatre with film screenings, music, workshops and a colloquium. That multidisciplinary approach places cultural exchange and ideas alongside performance, giving artists and audiences space to examine how Africa remembers, documents and retells its own histories.
The festival’s Johannesburg setting is also significant. The Market Theatre has long occupied an important place in South Africa’s performing arts landscape, including as a platform for work engaging with the country’s political and social history.
Memory as a contemporary African conversation
By framing its third edition around memory and forgetting, Kaza Kamba places questions of heritage, identity and historical narrative at the centre of a contemporary Pan-African arts programme.
The festival arrives at a time when African theatre, cinema and music are reaching increasingly international audiences while artists across the continent continue to develop spaces for cultural exchange closer to home.
Kaza Kamba opens on Thursday, 20 August and runs through Sunday, 23 August at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg.
Sources: The Market Theatre; South African arts-sector coverage was used for additional festival context.
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