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"All-white Durban punk outfit Wild Youth gave the system an early jolt, but the arrival of multi-racial Johannesburg new-wavers National Wake posed a much greater potential threat to South Africa’s racially divisive late 70s status quo.

Formed after the 1976 Soweto uprising, the musically dextrous, politically committed quartet constantly battled police harassment, courageously building a huge following in both the Jo’burg underground and the country’s “non-white” townships and homelands by the turn of the 80s. Reissued by Retro Fresh in 2011, National Wake’s lone, self-titled LP initially briefly appeared on WEA in 1981. Its key tunes also form the bedrock of Walk In Africa 1979-81, though this 14-tracker dusts off a further clutch of demos and unreleased tracks from the vault.

The group split in ’82, after their LP was blacklisted and their Crass-style communal base commandeered by the authorities. They were cut down in their prime, but Walk In Africa proves they’d already fashioned a legacy that could exist beyond apartheid." Record Collector Mag

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