I’ve been going back and forth on whether Young Volcanoes intentionally caused Richard Dlamini’s death during their performance at the 2047 government gala, or whether it was an accident.
There was some earlier speculation on the topic regarding the involvement of APF, a colloid phenomenon that can be reproduced and manipulated if the Atakan Selvi page is any indication.
Then today a few updates dropped that firmly put me in the they-killed-him-with-music camp. For starters, there’s this update to the Spencer Hagen page that confirms Dlamini was the health minister who approved the 2031 trial that left Shahada Ndaba with worsened symptoms of her borderline personality disorder:
I’d say that counts as motive, both personal to Ndaba and more generally because Dlamini later became President on the back of signing up South Africa to G6, which “effectively returned the apartheid state”. Considering Ndaba’s experience with violence in her country, she had good reason to wish Dlamini all kinds of harm.
And then opportunity came knocking in 2047 with Dlamini’s presence at a government gala. There’s a lot of speculation around how Young Volcanoes got chosen to play at the event, but another update to the Shahada Ndaba page mentions that bassist Jade Wan could have hacked the admin portal to get them in:
It does seem like there was some kind of plan being put in effect there, especially when combined with the fact that Ndaba was seen winking at the other band members before launching into the part of their song that led to Dlamini’s brain aneurysm.
That leaves the aforementioned use of APF as means, which could also be attributed to Wan. We know that Selvi shared his findings on APF in 2035, and that Wan was knowledgable enough to track down obscure data, given how she recovered and reprogrammed Pavlova’s source code.
Wan could have seen the potential of APF, especially after it was extensively used to bring about the Palestinian Spring, an event that’s quoted as “a key factor in bringing the band together”.
In addition, the Young Volcanoes page mentions that Dlamini wasn’t the only one affected by the APF:
Add all of this up, and I could believe that Ndaba managed to channel her rage and sadness at what Dlamini did into her performance, which spilled over into the colloids of those attending and proved too much for Dlamini to handle… and that led to South Africa voting out G6, which makes the fact that the government gala was held on Freedom Day all the more poetic!
I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this.
