You can make your dreams come true without resorting to crime, young people heard at a Freedom Day concert
I’m in the Beemer with two-thirds of Shana when the new Boom Shaka tune, Change Your Mind, hits the airwaves from Durban Youth Radio.
Nathi, one of the chiselled young singers of Durban’s hot new kwaito band, reaches over to the radio and cranks the volume to cranium-implosion level.
His mother, cool behind the steering wheel, is entirely unperturbed and continues to treat the N2 like Kyalami.
As the sultry throb of the kwaito queens reverberates through the car, Mnqobi, Shana member number two, turns excitedly to me. “What I like about Boom Shaka is that they care about the melody,” he says. “Too much kwaito is only about the beat. We love to hear the melody.”
On the radio, the DJ is asking listeners to phone in with their estimation of the song and declare whether to “pump it or dump it”.
To the great consternation of Nathi and Mnqobi, most of the callers say “dump it”, and they irately switch to Metro fm where the tail-end of a kwela song fades into The Lighthouse Family.
Yet Mnqobi can’t help noting with satisfaction that when the same station played Shana’s Wena Kuphela (the slow, sensual ballad off their debut EP Shende Lami), “everyone who phoned in said ‘pump it!'”.
We’re on our way to a Freedom Day concert at the Princess Magogo Stadium in KwaMashu, Durban, where Shana is scheduled to perform in an anti-crime music festival to be attended by Deputy Minister of Defence Nozizwe Madlala- Routledge.
Just before we turn into the stadium, Nathi pumps the bass through the ceiling and we cruise through the gates in a scene reminiscent of A Hard Day’s Night as young fans mob the car. We drive to the centre of the football field where the stage is positioned in absurd isolation, for the crowd is behind a fence almost 200m away. This is because several thousand firearms are to be burned on a pyre after the deputy minister’s speech.
The guns were rounded up during a recent anti-crime drive in Durban where those in possession of illegal weapons could hand them in to the police with guaranteed indemnity from prosecution.
As we arrive, precocious pre-teen kwaito icon Mzambiya has overcome the distance barrier and is sending the crowd into a frenzy by running along the fences while rapping like someone possessed. We discover Demor, the third suave Shana musketeer, surrounded by an army of fans and furiously signing T-shirts proclaiming “Crime Beware: Together We Stand”.
The concert was organised by the Durban Metro youth development department and the KwaMashu Youth League with the intention of instilling in the township youth the belief that a criminal is a very, very bad thing to be.
Sipho Mbatha, manager of the Durban metro’s youth programmes, says: “The event is part of a collective effort between local and national government called Operation Ventilation Three, whose main objective is to wipe out all elements of crime, particularly among the youth. We know that young people are key participants in criminal acts, especially the illegal possession of weapons.
“The concert is designed to target the youth, to give them the message that you can lead a positive lifestyle and have dreams, even if you live in KwaMashu. This is why we are featuring Mzambiya and Shana, because they are young people who prove that hardship can be overcome if you remain true to yourself.”
As if to prove his point, Shana emerge onstage and live up to their acronym by being Simply Hot and Naturally African, mixing sweet traditional melodies with kicking kwaito beats and singing in Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho and English.
If the youth in the stadium on Thursday are indeed searching for role models, they need look no further than these handsome, clean-cut, talented and snappily dressed young stars.
Next up behind the microphone is Madlala-Routledge, who delivers a stern and heartfelt speech extolling the virtues of community spirit and describing how “South Africa and KwaZulu- Natal are sick and tired of young people who don’t want peace”.
Mixed with her message of hope is the practical advice that, while township youth might be at a disadvantage, going into crime only worsens it.
Whether the kids respect this sentiment only the statistics will tell, but those keen on feasting their eyes on a huge heap of weaponry going up in flames are disappointed.
The police, citing security concerns, refused to allow the impounded guns to be burned in the stadium, so a smaller pyre was lit upon which plastic weapons were symbolically incinerated.
As the sun sets on Freedom Day and the Shana-mobile leaves the stadium, I recall two harried, middle-aged white women on Metro fm’s Tim Modise Show complaining about how they “didn’t feel free on Freedom Day”.
Indeed the world is a dangerous place with more bullets and hunger than milk and honey, but freedom is an act of will and not available through a mail-order catalogue.
George Clinton, an authority on the subject, once said: “Free your mind, and your ass will follow.”