In a bizarre echo of the suicide of a lover 10 years ago, the Afrikaans singer Johannes Kerkorrel committed suicide on Tuesday by hanging himself.
Born Ralph Rabie in Johannesburg in 1960, Kerkorrel took that satirical name (”Church-Organ”) when he left behind a career in journalism and took to the stage as an ”alternative Afrikaner” singer and songwriter.
The late-Eighties upsurge of musical and theatrical opposition to the apartheid regime nicknamed the ”alternative Afrikaner movement” culminated in the Voelvry tour of 1989. Along with Bernoldus Niemand (James Phillips), Koos Kombuis (formerly the Afrikaans writer Andre Letoit), and backed by the Gereformeerde Blues Band (to which guitarist Willem Moller made a vital contribution), Kerkorrel toured the country and gave a powerful voice to young Afrikaners disgruntled with the mores of their forefathers.
The tone was chiefly satirical — Kerkorrel et al mocked the stiff-necked uprightness of Afrikanerdom, poking fun at its repressive morality as well as expressing a clear dislike of its racial politics. Songs such as Sit Dit Af urged people to turn off the propagandistic SABC (which promptly banned all his songs from the air), and Wat ‘n Vriend Het Ons in PW sent up the then state president to the tune of What a Friend We Have in Jesus.
But Kerkorrel was also capable of touching sympathy in his songs, and Hillbrow, a lament for that increasingly impoverished inner-city area, showed his softer side.
After the Gereformeerde Blues Band broke up, Kerkorrel continued working as a solo singer-songwriter. His restless nature took him into new areas of musical exploration, and he paid tribute to this continent in the African-styled Halala Afrika, as well as experimenting with housey dance remixes (River of Love). He played at the inauguration of President Thabo Mbeki in 1999, and performed all over South Africa as well as touring regularly in Europe, particularly Belgium, where he built up a significant following. His solo albums included Bloudruk, Cyanide in die Beefcake and Ge-Trans-For-Meer.
Kerkorrel has been described by many who worked with him and knew him as an enigmatic figure, and his death leaves many questions. Police reports said that they did not suspect foul play — a note was apparently left at the house where he died.
He was notorious for his 1992 physical assault on the Afrikaans author Koos Prinsloo (who died of Aids-related causes in 1994): Kerkorrel felt that Prinsloo, in his book Slagplaas, which referred to ”My Sogenaamde Vriend die Popster” (My So-Called Friend the Pop Star), had defamed him by revealing aspects of his private life, including the suicide of his friend.
Shaun de Waal
Ralph Rabie, born 1960, died November 12 2002