Jack Meakins

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 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,

barring entry as economically prohibitive to most. It is clear Sun City was never made for the inhabitants of Bophuthatswana, but instead to act as a masquerade for the National government in purporting some false sense of artistic freedom. It was beyond both Sun City’s and the National government’s gaze that the real contest was taking place.

Music, along with other modes of oral tradition, has deep historic routes throughout the African continent – long predating imperial colonialism. However, nowhere was this undermined more than by the censorship and anti-dissent laws of Apartheid-era South Africa. The National Government’s Publications Act of 1974 gave the state unrestricted agency to censor all modes of artistic expression, under the premise of targeting ‘subversive statements’ – phrases perceived to undermine the social hierarchy achieved by Apartheid policies.

While such reforms were extreme in both form and execution – music’s nature as an oral tradition afforded the mode the ability to subvert much of this legislative oppression. Oral transmission of song offered its proponents seclusion and anonymity compared to written form, allowing both artists and the South African people to collaborate rather clandestinely – promoting the use of hidden oral messages. Shifty Records’ anti-Apartheid compilation, “A Naartjie in our Sosatie”, while literally translated from Afrikaans as ‘a mandarin in our kebab”, was used as a partial-homonym for “anarchy in our society”, a statement otherwise rendered as subversive. The tradition also made the production and consumption of music relatively low-barrier, and enjoyable without the unequal economic and literacy-related symptoms of Apartheid policies.

While its nature as an oral tradition facilitated the mode’s strength as a relatively ‘free’ form of expression under such stringent censorship laws, it was – rather undoubtedly – the poetic and other stylistic components of music that drove its anti-Apartheid sentiment. Lyrical content, whether explicitly ‘subversive’ or – as in Shifty Records’ case – a little more subtle, was pivotal in catalysing the anti-Apartheid movement at large. An often-cited example of this is the popularity of American singersongwriter Sixto Rodriguez. The artist’s sombre dissatisfaction with ‘the establishment’ combined with hopeful allusions to social progress through ‘people power’; titles such as ‘The Establishment Blues’ and ‘because’ both resonated with the struggles of the victims of Apartheid policies, as well as giving them a peaceful and anthemic rally cry – an effect much unbeknownst to him.

“Garbage ain’t collected, women ain’t protected Politicians using, people they’re abusing The mafia’s getting bigger, like pollution in the river And you tell me that this is where it’s at.” – Rodriguez, ‘The Establishment Blues’ (1970)

Furthermore, poetic and stylistic choices gave victims the ability to outwardly respond to Apartheid-era atrocities, such as the 1976 Soweto Massacre, which saw thousands of black schoolchildren subject to an undignified and abhorrent display of police brutality. The stylistic choices of Miriam Makeba’s title, ‘Soweto Blues’, reflected the deeply melancholic and despairing response of both the residents of Soweto, and victims of Apartheid at-large – a starkly nonviolent response when juxtaposed against the explicit and visible acts of force under the National Government and its agencies. “Benikuphi ma madoda, Abantwana beshaywa? Ngezimbokodo Mabedubula abantwana? Benikhupi na?”

[“where were the men, when the children were throwing stones? when the children were being shot where were you?”]

– Miriam Makeba, ‘Soweto Blues’ (1977) [translation provided]

But perhaps the most important role music had to play in contesting Apartheid is somewhat more conceptual or incorporeal: its propensity to bring people together in cooperation. Apartheid, at heart, was a policy instituted to divide and isolate its people upon racial lines – socially, culturally and economically. However, music – as somewhat of a universal and communitarian concept – had the means to transcend Apartheid’s rigid

ideals of how society ought to be structured; a reality even Sun City – a towering reflection of the rigidity of Apartheid South Africa’s elite – could seldom avoid. Artists United Against Apartheid, a group of some of the biggest names on the international stage at the time (Bob Dylan, Bono to name a couple), released the aptly named Sun City – a scathing yet anthemic ensemble, encapsulating a sense of both cooperation and solidarity with victims of Apartheid from the international community.

However, just as Sun City – with its palmlined oases and ornate chandeliers – still stands, so too do the lingering effects of half a century of racial degradation, subordination, and hostility. Although the age of Apartheid policy is over, it would be somewhat of an injustice to assert its effects are seldom being felt today. So, while many people worldwide continue to fall victim to oppressive societal norms and attitudes, just remember: “This system’s gonna fall soon to an angry young tune, And that’s a concrete cold fact.”

– Sixto Rodriguez, “The Establishment Blues” (1970)

Author’s note: while only a few examples were given due to print constraints, the abundance of anti-Apartheid music – whether directly, or as in the case of Rodriguez, tangentially – is incredibly expansive and diverse. What I have provided is only a small subsection, and is not exhaustive nor wholly representative – a fact that should be acknowledged.