The Establishment Blues:
The role of music in contesting Apartheid Jack Meakins may or may not have pierced his third nipple.
Located in the former Bantustan of Bophuthatswana lies the palace that is Sun City. Sprouting up from the lush savannah of South Africa’s North-West Province, the resort provides an idyllic escape for those wanting to forget the ennui of life in the nearby metropolises of Greater Johannesburg and Pretoria. Boasting a mix of Renaissanceesque cupolas, colonnades, and frescoes – infused with the usual furnishings of a game hunter’s paradise – one could easily mistake the resort for the setting of some Tarzan flick. However, for many, this mistake is not far from reality. For many, this appeal to a sense of luxury in a ‘lost city’ was by no means a mere fairy-tale. Sun City, in all its grandiosity, was a façade – intended to distract the outside world from the National Government’s policy of apartheid that facilitated it. A term that should, perhaps, be qualified further is that of a ‘Bantustan’. Intended as somewhat of a compromise between the minority white National Government and the majority indigenous inhabitants, Bantustans – or “homelands” – were territories set aside for Southern Africa’s non-white populations. These states – while in some sense distinct from the central National government, and thus exempt from both National censorship and international anti-Apartheid restrictions – were functionally still subjects of the 6
central, white minority state. As a result, Sun City was able to host a menagerie of star acts over its lifetime under apartheid – as was intended. While the United Nations imposed cultural boycotts over all administrations of the National government, Sun City’s owners offered considerable financial incentives to acts – boasting appearances by names such as The Beach Boys, Linda Ronstadt and Frank Sinatra. On the surface, this might pose no problems. As quoted by Queen’s lead guitarist, Brian May, there’s value in indiscrimination – wanting to “play to anybody who wants to come and listen”; and why not? If live music is actively being persecuted against by the National government, and there is a demand, why not meet it? It’s hard to think there isn’t some aspect of saviour complex at play here – a complex deeply fraught when considering the explicit and systemic outcomes of the Apartheid policy. What May might not have considered is that while Sun City was created out of a need to outmanoeuvre Apartheid era censorship, this by no means suggests it wasn’t complicit in the policy’s execution. Tickets for concerts came at a premium – by intention – with costs never accounting for the deep systemic inequalities caused by Apartheid-era policies,
Slim Dusty studied Electronic Music at UWA
