Thina Siyazalana

In 2019 the Grade 10s of Queen's College walked up the stairs of the Rec. They were meant to have Phys Ed, but most had forgotten their kit, so they sang instead. They sang Thina Siyazalana, a gwijo, a traditional Xhosa call and response chant, sung a cappella and rooted in the sacred moments of Xhosa culture. The words mean We Are All Family. The video went viral, and the country sang with them.

Separately, in a tense first team rugby match against Hudson Park, a photograph captured a white Queenian placing his arm around a younger, frightened Black Queenian. Not to celebrate a try. To say: you belong here, and one day you will stand where I stand.

The school shared the photograph with the caption: "A quiet reminder that you belong here. That someone is walking the journey with you, and that one day, you too will stand where they stand."

The gwijo and the photograph became inseparable. One gave voice to the other. On the one hand, education. On the other, art. Both vehicles for the world to be rather than to seem. Loyiso Mkize, who matriculated from Queen's College in 2005, saw both. He saw himself in each boy. And he is painting that exact moment, at 2.2 metres by 2 metres, in oil on canvas.

Thina Siyazalana, We Are All Family, is Painting No. 1 of the Queen's College Vision 175 Art Series, painted as a partial donation to the Queen's College Kudu Foundation. It goes to auction on Tuesday 24 November 2026 at the Queen's College Kudu Foundation Headmasters' Symposium, at Chef's Warehouse, Beau Constantia, Cape Town. The starting price is R300,000. See the painting.

Loyiso Mkize is a visual artist and a Queen's College Old Boy, Class of 2005, from Butterworth in the Eastern Cape. Not by just any painter, but by a hand that once too received from the College. He left home for Cape Town with a pencil and a stubbornness, and he spent fifteen years becoming what he is now: an artist whose work hangs in collections around the world.

His portraits do not flatter their subjects. They honour them. When Netflix needed an image for The Trials of Winnie Mandela, one of the biggest documentary series on the platform, they commissioned him to paint the portrait. When Black Panther, one of the biggest movies ever released, needed a mural for its launch, Marvel commissioned him. Lupita Nyong'o, the Oscar winning actor and one of the stars of Black Panther, stood beside his mural with her co star Danai Gurira and posted it to her millions.

His paintings already sell for more than R300,000. He has painted full time for fifteen years.

On 22 September 2026 Loyiso spoke at the Queen's College Cultural Awards in Komani. In 2025 his Class of 2005 classmate YangaChief, the award winning rapper, spoke at the same event. The school runs deep in this painting.

He saw himself in both boys, the singer and the frightened first team player, and he is painting that exact moment. The result is Thina Siyazalana, We Are All Family, painted as a partial donation to the Queen's College Kudu Foundation. See the painting.

Education in one hand. Art in the other. Both vehicles for the world to be rather than to seem. The College taught him to be. The paintings show what that means.