Jennifer Ferguson, a true legend of South African music, has been a singer-songwriter, musician, composer, social activist, ANC Member of Parliament (1994-97), actress, cabaret artiste, theatre director, music producer, scriptwriter, life-skills coach, Tai Chi practitioner, pianist, poet, student, sound-journey creator, wild dolphin swim facilitator, corporate human-development facilitator, special-needs children animator, voice teacher, waitress, writer, lyricist, housekeeper, mother, metamorphic massage technique practitioner, chef, entertainer on a cruise liner, wife, mistress, counsellor, sales girl, birthing assistant, marriage facilitator, song safari tour guide, TV jingle and score composer, events producer, urban greening consultant, children's choir facilitator, shamanic ceremonies facilitator, in spaces of deep retreat and a lot more.

The true learning occurred on a journey outside the walls of academia and formal studies, graced with the presence of master teachers along the way such as Barney Simon (playwright and co-founder of the Market Theatre) Swami Narajani, Anders Nyberg (Swedish/South African choral conductor/composer and husband), her children - Ralph and Gabriel (currently at Waterford Kamhlaba UWC in Swaziland) and the greatest teacher of all: Johanna Nyberg (11), born with ‘Up” Syndrome, as she prefers to call it, and of course, in the crucible of life itself.

Ferguson lives both in Sweden and South Africa : an old g ård in the remote village of Dala-Floda in the heart of the Scandinavian forest wilderness; a small apartment in Stockholm and an equally small apartment in Beryl Court, Troyeville, in the eastern inner-city slums of Johannesburg.

Ferguson comments: “I have been greatly blessed throughout my life and I have tried to be in the spaces God wants us all to be: the place where our greatest joy can meet the cries of the world.”

Leaving to Return

There is a land that is not
There is a song not forgotten me
There is a point of no return
This is the lesson I must learn
This is the life that has chosen me

This is the land of my birth
This is my mother earth to me
Here where I stood a lonely bride
On the ocean’s turning tide
Here the sky so blue it bruises me

But I’m leaving
Leaving to return.
Here in this land I have grown
And a bitter sweet harvest sown
Here where the blood and water fl owed
In the family I disowned
Here my blessed and most brutal home

And I’m leaving
Leaving to return

Here the sunlight that fi nds me
In my darkest night it blinds me
Here the blood ties that bind me
To this earth

Then comes someone to walk beside me
Help me grow this child inside me
Teach me to see my world more tenderly
Where every death is birth
And blood is earth
And life…life is love
Now is forever.
This is the land none can own
This is the song that might touch the stone
Here in the place of crust and bone
This is the prayer the sky alone
Vast as forgiveness
Receive the coming home…

And I’m leaving
Leaving to return and return and return…