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The Fezeka Choir in action.

THEIR powerful voices and shining enthusiasm will ensure the Fezeka Choir's performances at the Salisbury International Arts Festival are unforgettable.

I know. As a member of Salisbury Community Choir, I encountered them on our tour of Cape Town last spring.

The day we spent with them and their inspirational leader Phumelele Tsewu in the township of Gugulethu was humbling, impressing upon us just how much we take for granted in our own comfortable lives.

And the concert that evening that both choirs gave in the JL Zwane church and community centre left many of us close to tears - not just because of the impact of such astonishing singing in such a deprived place, but because of the warmth of our reception from the audience, many of them victims of HIV and Aids.

For the 77 young people coming to stay with Community Choir members and Festival supporters next month the experience is likely to prove even more overwhelming.

These are children who have never been abroad, never been on an aeroplane, and would not have dreamed of doing so had the Community Choir not introduced them to festival director Jo Metcalf, who was so bowled over by their talent that she promised to bring them to Salisbury.

Many have been brought up by grandparents, having lost their parents to Aids.

The very best houses in their township, where the main language is Xhosa, are the size of a double garage, while the poorest are shacks cobbled together from timber offcuts, plastic sheeting, corrugated iron and cardboard.

Most of them are used to just one meal a day, plus porridge made with water for breakfast. Kellogg's cereals, as one of the girls, 16-year-old Nokwanda, told us, are a luxury far out of reach.

Some will rely on the church - the focal point of the community -- to feed them. Nokwanda regards herself as lucky - her mother has a job, so there is a cooked meal at home every day.

The children showed us round their school, Fezeka High. It looks more like a prison and is just as bare, but they are incredibly proud of it.

The one thing each child is required to take in is a pencil. Some cannot afford one, so those who can, bring a spare to share.

Those young men who leave school with no qualifications have little to look forward to but gang membership and unemployment, relieved only by heavy drinking at weekends.

The streets glitter with broken glass from their partying, and the girls will tell you it isn't safe for them to go out.

The day before we visited, a local councillor had been killed in a drive-by shooting.

We realise that the English lifestyle will be an enormous culture shock.

A simple supermarket trip will face them with piles of food and drink they've only seen in adverts before.

"It's a different world from anything they will ever be able to afford," acknowledges John Elliott, one of the trip organisers who has had to contend with the chaotic nature of communications with the township. We are aware of the danger of raising hopes we can never fulfil. But I'd rather do that and inspire some of them to succeed in life, than never take the risk. And friendships will be struck up that could pay dividends later on."

While they are here, the Community Choir has begged, borrowed, bullied and called in favours to arrange all sorts of treats.

The highlights will be a private tea party with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and what the children told us was their greatest wish - a day out in London, with a ride on the Eye and a visit to Madame Tussauds, followed by a West End musical.

Every child will be given a disposable camera, and the Journal will present them all with souvenir group photographs.

The operatic style of their singing, which finds favour in South Africa, can strain young voices so coaching sessions are being offered to the children during their stay.

The choir has been busy fund-raising for months, and this will continue long after their visit is over, for possibly the most effective way it has found to help them is through the establishment of a music scholarship fund.

Getting to university is the best way out of the cycle of deprivation to which most in the townships are doomed.

And it is possible to take a four-year music diploma course at the University of Cape Town without having achieved conventional university entrance standards in academic subjects.

That's why singing in a choir is seen as cool, and why there are so many tenors and basses that English choirs, which struggle for male voices, can only look on in envy.

That's why 42-year-old Phumelele, who is actually paid to teach English, devotes so many hours after school to practice and competitions which have earned shelves full of trophies.

By the end of the festival the Community Choir hopes to have amassed enough money to meet half the university costs of seven students, with the rest made up by charities in South Africa.

12:45pm Thursday 22nd May 2008

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