Insensitive as this may sound, the exclusion of many South African musicians from the Fifa Soccer World Cup Kickoff music concert on June 10 2010 is welcome. It’s timely shock therapy for South African artists in general and musicians in particular. This omission has jolted them into action from a slumber that they had been lulled into, perhaps as a result of a false sense of accomplishment bred by liberation. This is, ironically, in stark contrast to the role cultural activists played in helping to bring the apartheid monster to its knees.
There was a time when some people believed cultural activists carried the torch of liberation — so much so that they had more international clout than political activists and their respective organisations. For instance, to date, Miriam Makeba is the first and only South African who was twice given an opportunity to address the United Nations on apartheid (1964 and 1976). She received presidential treatment wherever she went, especially in Africa, while on her crusade to sing, on behalf of millions of voiceless South Africans, about the abhorrent nature of apartheid.
Meanwhile, exiled groups, such as the Amandla Cultural Ensemble, traversed the world and successfully called for the cultural boycott that isolated South Africa. Internally, a number of cultural organisations, such as Dashiki, the African Writers’ Association, the Congress of South African Writers and Performance Workers’ Equity did their bit to render the system ungovernable. These cultural activists understood the significance of the role of artists in a situation where there is a battle of ideas.
Many artists seemed to forget this truth immediately after the 1994 democratic elections. Many of the cited organisations summarily closed shop. Cultural activists went to their secluded corners to enjoy the benefits of a new South Africa. Social consciousness and dutiful conscientiousness were replaced by the quest for self-actualisation through lucrative contracts for arts projects.
Some cultural activists went into the private sector and government, from where they dished out funds and awards to apolitical arts projects. Others, who were either in nappies or not even born on the eve of the unbanning of organisations in the early 1990s, now walk red carpets at the opening of Parliament. Meanwhile, there are stalwarts of the cultural revolution who cannot even afford portable TV sets on which to watch the spectacle.
Ernesto Che Guevara once said that “a revolution is like a bicycle that falls down immediately when it stops”. The same applies to cultural revolution. In his book, Return to the Source, the slain Guinea Bissau scholar and activist Amilca Cabral wrote that “any act of culture is a political act” and, more importantly, that “a people who free themselves from foreign domination will be free culturally only if they return to the upward paths of their own culture”. This culture, Cabral points out, is “nourished by the living reality of its environment and [it] negates both harmful influences and any kind of subjection to foreign culture”.
There have been issues of national importance that have emerged in the recent past that have required the voice of cultural activists. Artists were, at times, supposed to come to the rescue of the government when it came under siege on matters of symbolic significance to the majority of South Africans. (For example, the naming or renaming of geographical sites to negate the oppressor culture that was imposed on us by colonialism and apartheid.) Yet no cultural activist came to the fore as expected.
Meanwhile, Afrikaans musicians such as the controversial Steve Hofmeyr have realised that — to borrow from Cabral — “vigilance is thus indispensable on the cultural as well as political plane”. The likes of Hofmeyr and Bok van Blerk are non-apologetic in pushing their right-wing Afrikaner agenda that is gradually dragging our society back into the dark days of racial supremacy where Western thought, behaviour and appearance is an acceptable cultural idiom for South Africa — hence the exclusion of many South African musicians from major national events, such as the Fifa concert.
Incidentally, Vusi Mahlasela, who is one of the three South African musicians in the Fifa concert line-up, is one artist who must be commended for continuing to hoist the cultural activism flag on his global tours — hence he was, wrongfully or rightfully, instantly recognised as a representative of a South African voice by the international world.
This point is not meant to condone the exclusion of other musicians from the concert but to emphasise that musicians must be introspective before crying foul. The Creative Workers’ Union of South Africa, for instance, must answer the question of whether or not it did a disservice to musicians when it emphasised the workerist or labour-based part of its mandate at the expense of other national obligations. The answer should be weighed against the proposition that the welfare of artists should go beyond copyrights, royalties, gigs and so forth.
So, where are the musicians at the cutting edge of the country’s cultural life? What are musicians such as Eugene Mthethwa doing for culture in high offices of the country, such as the office of the president? Where are the vocal cultural luminaries and activists such as Don Materra, Jonas Gwangwa, Mandla Langa, Nise Malange, Njabulo Ndebele and Gomolemo Mokae?
Is the absence of their voices on sociopolitical issues the death knell of the cultural revolution or does this call for another cultural movement that can take a broader cultural view of the society to shape national consciousness for a society that came about partly because of the relentless struggles of the cultural activists?
You are all out there. Respond to this call.
Lebogang Lance Nawa is a former president of the Congress of South African Writers and is an author and scholar in cultural studies